On Sunday before SpoCom I met up with Steve Goldfield who drove this Maserati Gran Tursimo S on the 2009 Gumball rally. We did a Gumball driver profile with him at our sister website www.luxuryvice.com. We shot the car right by my house on Sunset Blvd. at the old Sunset Beach location. After a quick shoot I was off to SpoCom which you can find here on Wrecked Magazine http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/blog/2009/06/15/spocom-2009-gallery/. A busy Sunday that ended up with us watching the NBA Finals at Smooth’s in Long Beach as the Lakers took home the championship.
E3 kicked off today and sadly I will not be making it to the show until tomorrow but Microsoft had a conference today and unleashed this. Say goodbye to productivity for a good while. I play too much video games already without all this excitement as many people can back me up on.
While visiting the United Arab Emirates we went on a little trip out into the desert. Luckily some nice camel owners alowed us to hop on a take a little ride on them. These things smelled worse than anything I could ever imagine and they are not that comfortable or fun to ride. Anyone who has ever used a camel for a means of transportation gets mad props from me!
After adventuring and dune bashing for an hour or so we took a quick stretch/pee break in the desert. After a long debate Jayke deemed if we were left that we had a good hour to live. I didn’t give us 15 minutes with the air temperature about 50 degrees Celcuis (130ish F) and the gusting winds that just melted your face and blew sand everywhere. Luckily we did get a ride back into town and it completed our amazing journey into the UAE desert. We did spot some wild camels walking around which was pretty cool!
Something I never realized until we got out here to the United Arab Emirates is that quite a bit of the Internet is censored by the king. Many websites like Flickr.com pull up an error like this one above, pretty crazy. It’s about 6:00am on our first full day here so hopefully I will have some exciting updates for you guys very soon.
After missing our chance to make it to the Formula 1 race this weekend due to the crazy Memorial Day traveling nightmares (that we totally forgot about) when booking this trip. After faulting on our Formula 1 chances in Monte Carlo we figured Europe was no longer worth our travels and we have deceided to head out to the beach in the Persian Gulf for the week. See everyone soon, I will have some updates on the blog from my trip.
Here is the video of us being pulled over in Holbrook, Arizona. We got clocked speeding and after issuing us a citation they opted to remove our license plate and keep it in their possession. What a mess that was but we were able to keep on Gumballing with no impound.
Well the Gumball 3000 is over and sad to say I wish I was still on the open road with 120+ cars driving somewhere. Next year’s rally seems so far but I am going to have to make it from rally to rally it looks like. If you want photograph overload of my work you can visit www.luxuryvice.com for thousands of my photos I took on the Gumball 3000 rally. If you want to hear my story in detail check out www.speedhunters.com for my diary of the rally. Below I just posted up 10 photos I really loved from the Gumball 3000 so check it out.
I am driving Car #109 on the rally with my co-pilot Victor from ID Agency. We leave Santa Monica Saturday morning and you can follow me all week over at LuxuryVice.com.
The Gumball 3000 is around 48 hours away and the Bentley is almost done being wrapped. Tomorrow it’s getting the Gumball decals on it and Friday we are ready for Santa Monica. My new co-pilot (I have gone through about 7) is now Victor Carillo from the ID Agency. More updates coming soon and the Lambo almost has it’s orange camo wrap on so pictures will be up soon of her as well.
The American LeMans series is an entertaining one to follow through the year. I grew up just an hour away from the amazing Petit LeMans at Road Atlanta round of ALMS. Above is one of the LeMans cars I am most familar with is the LMP2 class Mazda. Thanks to the guys over at Mazda I got to see one of their LeMans effort machines at a BP station in downtown Los Angeles last year and got to hear about the new 2009 program at their motorsports luncheon (where we got free In & Out).
Our partners at Wrecked Magazine Falken Tires brought out their Porsche to do battle at ALMS which is a very exciting venture for all of our friends in Fontana at the Falken office. Here is a photo I snapped as the XM Radio Acura prepared to overtake the Falken Porsche in Turn 10. The XM Radio Acura is in another class and the pass did not change the Porsche class position.
This was the best battle I watched take place during the whole Streets of Long Beach event. These guys really duked it out for several laps and I thought the black Corvette had it in him.
I saved the best for last, this is my favorite photo of they day by far as the Ferrari soars around turn 10. The framing and detail on the race birm really make this shot gorgeous. The focal depth and bright orange cones make it one of my favorite race photos I think I have taken in some time.
