Laguna Seca MotoGP
2012.07.29
Day Seventy Three. Went over to Laguna Seca for the annual MotoGP race. Definitely would have preferred the American Le Mans race, but scheduling conflicts decided that wasn't to be ... oh well ... I still got to spend the day at Laguna Seca. Monster put on a pretty awesome stunt riding display, which was unfortunately kept behind a chain link fence. Ducati had their own island! They put on a fashion show (of all things) with some very nice Ducati girls (there were guys too, but I certainly wasn't looking at them, save the one doing free-standing handstand pushups ... very impressive). You may notice that I didn't get too many pictures of the race itself ... well ... it turns out it's rather a bit difficult to (a) focus on and (b) shoot super sport riders doing 160+ MPH through a chain link fence. The autofocus was of absolutely no help, so I ended up manually focusing on a spot where I was hoping the biker was going to be when I eventually snapped the picture (I ended up with a lot of pictures of either nothing, or the rear wheel of the bike). It would have been nice to chat with one of the pros who was there, but I couldn't find any down in the Paddock area and when they were near the track, they were wearing hearing protection and (for some reason) seemed concentrated on the track. There was about a four foot gap between the track wall and the Jersey barriers they used to keep race fans away from said track wall. The pros had passes that got them into that gap, allowing them to stick their lens through any of the small rectangular cutouts in the fence, keeping them (mostly) safe while permitting visually unobstructed access to the track. Before the race, just for fun, I looked up the requirements for a press pass ... lets just say I've got a ways to go before even coming close to starting to qualify for one. Oh well ... despite all of the chain link fences, the day was still a fun one :)
