Month Of May

May is many things to me. Ski season is definitely over, spring is really here, and my niche sports really put it in gear.

Bicycle racing begins the Grand Tour Season with the Giro d’Italia on May 5th.

AMGEN's Tour of California kicks off May 13th, and comes through the Inland Valley May 15th.

Formula One returns to Europe in May. Teams are testing at Tuscany's Mugello this week, and the racing starts in Catalunya, Spain May 13th.

IndyCar spends the entire month of May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway preparing for the Indy 500 on Memorial Day Weekend.

May is Mount Everest month. Several hundred climbers will summit the World's Tallest before the monsoons come.

Major League Baseball settles into it's summertime groove this month. I'm liking what I see from my San Francisco Giants. There's a few anniversaries in Giants history this year. The Giants went to the World Series for the first time as the San Francisco Giants 50 years ago. They lost to the New York Yankees.

Time for me to duck outta here, I'm LIVE streaming Peter Windsor's "The Flying Lap" today at 11AM PDT Guests include Pirelli Tire's Director of Motorsport, Paul Hembery to talk testing from Mugello.

This season is shaping up to be a total geek-out for me. Formula One really has stepped up it's Social Media Outreach. I spent much of my morning following F1 testing on Twitter. Brilliant "spy photos" of all the teams latest developments, from pit lane. Most teams are still working on their exhaust exits and how the exhaust gasses help produce rear downforce. Teams haven't forgotten the front of the cars either, many new front wing refinements are on track at Mugello.

Did I mention May is Monaco Grand Prix month? F1 on the streets of Monte Carlo and the Indy 500 both run on May 27th.

Gentlemen, Start...Your...Engines!

Aboard BB-61

I got my butt down to Richmond Saturday. A glorious sunny San Francisco Bay day. Getting off San Pablo Dam Road and onto I-80W took 15 minutes. I finally got on the freeway, and headed West. We were making 50-55 MPH until a mile from my exit. I jumped off the freeway and made my way to San Pablo Avenue, once upon a time, this street was part of the Lincoln Highway. I took it into Albany, and pulled into Casper's Famous Hot Dogs for lunch.

Properly sated, I pulled back onto San Pablo and turned left on Cutting Blvd. I arrived at the Battleship Expo a little before 2PM. I paid ten bucks to park, and shot a dozen or so photos before I strode up the gangplank.

There were a lot of people on board, including a troop of Boy Scouts in uniform. Workers were hard at it, too. Up on the bow, volunteers were removing the old teak decking. The carpenter in me asked one of the volunteers: "How many boardfeet of teak are we talking?" He sheepishly replied, "I'm just volunteer labor" his partner said "I think they said about 150 thousand square feet from bow to stern" "Times two inches I replied" That's 300K boardfeet plus waste, I thought...

2 X 6 Nominal Teak Deck

We visitors were kept forward of the superstructure. Plywood walkways were laid down for visitor safety. The old teak deck was past due for replacement. I could hear a symphony of grinders coming from the stern.

I strode forward and stopped at the business end of Gun Turret One.

16 inch guns fire 2000lb shells 27 miles

I snapped some photos and struck up a conversation with a docent in his hardhat. I put my foot in my mouth in my first sentence. I asked about the Missouri-Class USS Iowa. The docent corrected me...the Iowa-Class battleship Iowa...(I edited yesterday's blog when I got home)

I asked him: "Where is the analog place here on the Iowa where Japan signed the surrender in Tokyo Bay on the Iowa's sister ship USS Missouri?" I stumped the band...it's been several months since I last viewed the famous photo of MacArthur signing. Now that I look at the pix again, I think the ceremony wasn't on the main deck, but upstairs aft of the citadel, forward from turret three.

I really wanted to walk Iowa from stem to stern, all 861 feet of her. Today Iowa displaces uphill of 50K tons, and walking her decks feels like walking on the hard...no sense of the sea or swell. Granted, she's side tied in harbor, and even with a steady 10kt wind, she wasn't moving a millimeter.

Iowa ships out May 20th. The restored Liberty Ship  SS Jeremiah O'Brien will set sail to honor Iowa's departure with "A Champagne Toast to The Iowa" The liberty ship will flank Iowa through San Francisco Bay and out under the Golden Gate Bridge.

I'ts definitely worth a trip to Los Angeles Harbor to visit the USS Iowa when she fully opens as a museum.

Battleship Of Presidents

The Missouri Class  Iowa Class WW2 battleship, USS Iowa showed up in my Facebook News Feed Friday morning. The USS Missouri was one of four Iowa Class battleships built of the six planned.

My favorite TrainwreckNews was doing live remotes all morning from the Iowa...of course I didn't see them live, COMCAST only feeds one Sacramento station to the Inland Valley.

The Iowa is still berthed in Richmond Harbor getting a new paint job, and general maintenance before she's towed down to Long Beach to become a floating museum.

You can get a taste of the ship from GoodDaySacramento's clips Here and Here.

The Iowa is open weekends 10AM-4PM in Richmond for two more weekends before she ships out May 20th.

I had planned to watch them move the Iowa, but May 20th is when the annular eclipse happens, and I plan to be in Truckee when the Path of Totality crosses over!

I better get my butt down to Richmond post haste!

Nap Time

It's after 2AM...I'm pretty much wide awake...it's my own damn fault...

I was up at 6AM and fell back asleep before 6:30AM.

I woke up again and stayed up at 8AM.

The Giants pregame started at 8:30AM on the radio...9AM on TV.

It was a pretty good game...then it got tough...and the Giants won it in the 9th on an Angel Pagan three run homer.

That's when my trouble started...my nap was a good hour long...

I woke up in time to make red snapper picata with rice and a zucchini mushroom medley.

Now I can't get to sleep...

It's not helping to read some really geeky Formula One technical blogs...there's still some grousing about the Bahrain GP, too...

More in depth news reports on the CA/NV fireball are trickling in too...pieces of the meteorite landed on California's Mother Lode...it seems somebody drove over pieces of the meteorite in a park parking lot...

That's it...I'm going to stream some radio podcasts and turn the lights and TV down...

More Fireball Fallout

That didn't take long! Pieces of Sunday morning's meteor have been found in California's Mother Lode.

It seems like I spent more time looking for the story than it took for the meteorite hunters to find the meteorites!

This one frustrated me 'cause it reported the finds, but not the locations. These deals drive me crazy...like those braggadocious Fishing Reports that talk about what good luck and what great a fisherman the report's writer is, but leaves out the location of the catching!

Ha! There's a human angle too...Behold the tweets of the Sacramento CBS station's reporter, @mariaCBS13 :
"We found the meteorite hunter who found the first meteorite from Sunday's sky spectacle! More on #cbs13 at 6 and 10pm! @CBSSacramento"

@mariaCBS13 :
"Oh, and ladies -- the meteorite hunter looks just like brad pitt. Watch at 6 and tell me if you agree!"

It's so refreshing when TV Station Brass let the troops have a little free reign! Yes, Talking Heads are People too... To my eyes, the on-screen talent at Channel 13 seem like "just regular folks" when compared to the other news outlets in the Sacramento market...at ease, relaxed, human.

Clearly, not all astronomy is a nightime, dark sky endevor...which brings me to Solar Astronomy.

The Sun has been on my mind a little more than usual of late, there's an eclipse coming up on May 20th. An Annular Eclipse that will obscure 96% of the Solar Disc, and it's path of totality comes right over Truckee!

I'm taking a break from the keyboard now to watch NOVA on PBS. Tonight's new episode is "Secrets of the Sun" Perfect...

Impressive show...pushing the catastrophic CME crashing the Power Grid possibility...beautiful images and video....but not a word on how the Sun has been so quiet this cycle. The quietest it's been in 100 years...

Stay tuned...

What'd I Miss?

Well, I didn't miss any Giants baseball or Formula One racing over the weekend!

I gave a shot at seeing the Lyrid Meteor Shower Saturday night. I walked into the back yard at the Ancestral Digs, and despite the high level of urban light pollution, I saw a shooting star in about 20 seconds! Even with a New Moon, the meteorite was very washed-out by the ambient light...satisfied I wasn't going to miss an awesome show, I headed back inside.

To really view any meteor shower, you should try to find a place where the sky is dark enough to see the Milky Way. Saturday night, I could only see a few dozen stars

Sunday morning people from Winnemucca, NV to Sacramento, CA to Bakersfield, CA heard the sonic boom of a meteor exploding over the Sierra Nevada foothills. Scientists who study these things say the meteor was about the size of a minivan, and released the energy of five kilotons of TNT!

Lisa Warren photo courtesy Reno Gazette Journal

The meteor was visible in the bright morning sky just before 8AM.

With the Giants-Mets game postponed due to the big nor'easter that pounded the Northeast, I listened to the radio most of Sunday. The meteor became national news by dinnertime in New York.

There's lots of news stories about the meteor:

"American Meteor Society: 82 Records Found for Event 588"

"Spaceweather.com: Sierra Fireball Decoded"

"Scientist says sound signal from exploding meteor lasted 18 minutes"

"Fireball over California/Nevada: How Big Was It?"

"Local resident's photo of Sunday's meteor goes international"

I was fast asleep Sunday morning, and read no reports of the blast being heard in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You know what they always say...Snooze, you lose...

Tardy

Late again...sorry...

I got caught up...really. Just as I was about to put my head on the pillow, I noticed that LiveUpdateGuy was going to cover the last Spring Classic before Grand Tour Season begins for real with the Giro d'Italia.

Liège–Bastogne–Liège, "La Doyenne" (The Oldest) is the last of the Spring Classics in Belgium's Ardennes...I even ran a Fantasy Team for the event. I started following the race about 45Km from the finish.

It got so hot during the day Saturday, that it took me until almost 1AM to cool my room enough to sleep anyway...so I logged onto the chat and read along as events transpired...it started raining on the course as the riders were making the last steep climbs.

My eyelids finally got heavy and I konked out, but the alarm clock roused me at 4:30, but I fell back asleep during the F1 pre-race show. I woke up about seven laps into the 57 lap race. I didn't have any trouble staying awake, it was a great race, with uncertainty aplenty, high tire wear, and passing on the track from front to back!

After three rounds of trouble in a the new 2012 uncompetitive car, my guy finally won. That makes it four different winners, from four different constructors, in the first four races.

In the twelve hours since the checkered flag waved, there's been no reports of violent civil unrest in Bahrain.

Today's big Nor'easter started pounding the Northeast, washing out the SF Giants/NY Mets game, so I watched the re-air of the Bahrain GP Pre-Race and the first laps that I slept through, before tuning in and ignoring the final 40-something laps of the NASCAR race from Kansas...Boring...

The Giants/Mets stage their Make-Up Doubleheader Monday, and our mini-heatwave is forecast to abate...TeamCorduroyPlanet, my fantasy bicycle racing team finished 43rd out of 48 teams in La Doyenne...my nine man team finished in 9th, 15th and 16th...

I'm goin' to bed now...

Monday 12:28AM Update

That didn't last long...Reports out of Bahrain cite violence and Foreign Journalists detained.