You can see a bunch of the photos over at the “official” blog at www.mc1000blog.com … and you should look over there for the official story on the trip. But here are my personal highlights:

- Talking with a Fox News reporter about his experiences in Iraq, and with his Producer about her experiences in presidential politics (and OJ stories)

- Taking the Superbird (the crazy green car with the huge wing) down to the aircraft carrier… never having driven it, not being able to find the lights nor the seatbelts, with no rearview nor side mirror, not knowing where I’m going, and chasing a bunch of speeding muscle car maniacs … in retrospect, fun!!!

- Filming, hearing, watching, feeling a drag racer speed by me at 130 mph to get a 10.6 sec quarter mile time, while talking with the guy who runs the track.

- The crazy, insane, let-it-all-loose evening at Mikado restaurant in Palm Springs, with Michelle and her pink wig, seeing the entire men and women doing karaoke, and watching (anonymous) have something like 30 shots of sake … what a night.

- Having our cars line up in caravan so that the news helicopters could “chase” us as we entered LA for new spots.

- The luxury and amazing service of the St Regis … the sheer grandeur and history of the Beverly Hills Hotel … sitting on the BH Hotel’s enormous balcony, enjoying the perfect weather, palm trees, and muscle car roars as they arrived

- Standing on the Bev Hills Hotel’s 4th floor balcony, talking on the hotel’s cordless phone while in my suit … seeing a bus full of tourists doing the “star tour” … and having said tourists immediately begin snapping pictures of me on the balcony.

- Having Wendy invite me over to her table… so I could sit and have dinner with playmate Tabitha Taylor… and then talking with her all night (very sweet girl, actually), trying oh-so-hard to not be distracted by the fact that she was only bodypainted with a Muscle Car 1000 logo.

- Watching the MC1000 participants get a little loose and jump into “the grotto” and swim

- Taking tons of beautiful photos on the deck of the USS Midway aircraft carrier, as well as at the Palm Springs Air Museum

So … that’s a lot more highlights than I expected. I guess it will go down as one of those “it was really fun in retrospect” kind of weeks, huh?

This week I’m filming and shooting The Muscle Car 1000. I’ll be posting daily over on the Muscle Car 1000 Blog.

Please check over there this week, as I said, I’ll be updating daily (assuming internet access).

www.mc1000blog.com

1) The Muscle Car 1000 video has been “taken down”. (But you can still find it at the link at left)

2) The Amanda promo has been “taken down.” (Again, find it linked at left)

3) New family pictures have been posted in the new family section, and some other minor changes.

www.f8fotos.com

For updates on the MC1000, I’ve just finished the blog. There are tons of pix there …

www.mc1000blog.com

…enjoy.

My personal thoughts on the rally? Well, the events were incredible. But it was hard hard work. On Friday, for example, I worked all day photographing, etc, then stayed up until 7 am prepping things for the video. I slept for 2 hours, then slept a little bit more in the car ride down to Santa Barbara. Then … 7 hours of editing — and a hell of a lot of stress — later, I finished the video. (It was a miracle, though, that we even got it done… technical issues almost killed it at the very last minute.)

Anyway … the trip was kind of like Kilimanjaro … really fun in retrospect, but really difficult and hard at the time. I’m not sure that I’d do it again in the same way … not without some different parameters and conditions, I think. So check out the other blog for pix. And here’s one that didn’t make the other blog, but that I like:

www.mc1000blog.com

The coolest thing for me, though, was a very strange coincidence. As you may know, my dad passed away not too long ago. I haven’t been up to visit his house (and my stepmom Sofia, his wife) again except for the 1-year “anniversary” ceremony we did up here.

Anyway … long-story short … I fall asleep in the car, for the first time … and wake up as we are literally sputtering, about to run out of gas … we exit the freeway, and I realize we’re about 1-mile from my dad’s house. We call Sofia, and she says “come over!” She was just about to leave … we got really lucky. Anyway, I got to see her (and look at the house) for a quick 15 minutes. It was good to see her, but a little sad to walk through the house. When I walked back towards the bathroom, I somehow expected that my dad was going to come out and say HI … I could even hear his voice in my head. So it was impactful… but a good experience.

Apparently this was meant to happen, since the way things worked out we had perfect timing to pick up my good friend Doug Sakurai from the San Fran airport — again, total coincidence — on our way out of there. I’m too tired to tell the whole story, but it was quite interesting. Anyway, tomorrow is drag racing. I’m still incredible behind on video editing, but I’ve made some headway on the pix. Here’s my favorite from today:

Anyway, the day started at Bacara in Santa Barbara … and after a little chaos we passed the flag man and got on the road for the first time. Mark and I ended up ahead somehow, but we stopped and got some good footage of the cars from above (as we’d stopped on an overpass.) Boring stuff, I guess, if you’re not into driving really fast, really loud, kind of smelly old cars. But the drivers all seem to be loving it. (And overall it’s a great trip so far … although a little too jam-packed with no resting spots for my tastes.)

BTW, Mark has a fun Roadrunner made in the year I was born (1971) with a 440 cc (big) engine. It’s been a great car so far, and seems to be more comfortable and pleasant than some of the other cars.

Anyway … I should be editing photos, so I’ll be quick. The day included a really beautiful drive up Highway 1 through Cambria to Hearst Castle. The castle was stunning … almost too perfect for words. It’s such a cliche, it’s even a cliche when you see it in person. (Does that make any sense?!?) We drove from there to our hotel (again, really beautiful drive) and had dinner at the caves at Eberle Winery. So now it’s 1 am, and — if I had the energy — I’d have about 3 hours of work to do before going to bed. But I don’t have the energy … maybe I’ll skip something tomorrow to get caught up …

One more thing… there was a huge tarantula running around at Hearst Castle … I know it’s not too rare, but I’ve never seen a 6-inch wide spider in nature. It was kind of cool…

www.mc1000blog.com

Sorry to have it in 2 places, but it’s too much work to put it in both places. But I’ll make sure to let you know when there’s another post, and my private reflections will be here.

Today Mark O and I drove in his 1971 Roadrunner. The trip up to Santa Barbara was great … but when we got here we heard that Chris’ car was seriously broken down, as was Mike Belitz’s car. So, we jumped in the Roadrunner to go to Napa Auto parts … and of course, it too wouldn’t start!!

Anyway… the Roadrunner is now fine, but the other cars are dead-on-arrival. Before the start of the rally… too bad.

The rest of the night was nice … a perfect sunset … fantastic dinner … and 3 hours in my room downloading video and editing pix. I can tell this is going to be a difficult trip in that regard … but fun in the days. See below for a quick self-portrait … otherwise, more tomorrow …