The school is on Wed-Thu-Fri, so if the best demos at the computer museum are on Saturdays, that will work. Thanks for the heads-up.
There’s a museum of printing near Boston that has a working Linotype machine. I love that there are museums that still keep things like that functioning.
Thanks for the shout out, @LSLGuy, but although I taught High Performance Drivers Ed for almost a decade, that was all at tracks on the East Coast, where I lived. I drove a few events in rented cars at two tracks just north of L.A., but never got to Laguna Seca. Not having a chance to drive there is undoubtedly my greatest regret in my HPDE career. It’s an absolutely legendary track.
I did the Skip Barber three-day school at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (another great track) in the summer of 2001, and it was definitely one of the highlights of my driving career. So I’m insanely jealous of @Robot_Arm. You will have a great time!
Others have provided plenty of info about things to do off the track in the area. And with only a few days to go, there’s not much I can tell you that would help you prepare for the school, other than to say, have someone take pictures of you in your car out on the track, and come back and tell us all about it afterward.
When I decided to do this, I checked which tracks were available, and Laguna Seca was my first choice. So I booked it for last year. Then the track owners moved up their repaving project and the school got moved to Sonoma. I opted to wait a year. It’s a track with a great history, although I’m a little worried my stomach will climb up into my throat in the Corkscrew. If I do the advanced class, I’ll probably choose Sebring.
I don’t remember that thread you linked to. (Let me take a quick look; yes, I did post in it.) I’ll read through it before my trip. Any other tips anyone would like to share; I’m all ears.
Thanks for the good wishes, @commasense. It would be interesting to pick your brain about various tracks you’ve been to. A couple years ago I did a trip through upstate New York and paid for a few laps at Watkins Glen. Now there’s a track with some history.
I’ve just read through some of the driving threads we’ve both posted in, and I’m pleased to see you already have extensive track experience. That is one of the main things I’ve suggested people try to acquire in less-expensive HPDE sessions, before going to an expensive school like Skip Barber.
I had about a dozen HPDE days under my belt before doing my Skip Barber school, and it helped me make progress much faster than those students who had never been on track before. Even though I was far from an expert, I already had lots of seat time, and had many of the basic concepts and skills down. So I hit the ground running, so to speak.
With all your experience, I won’t be surprised to hear that you were at the top of your class at SBRS. Have a great time!
BTW, you live in Boston? I’m on the North Shore. Maybe we can get together and trade track stories some time.
I’ve been to some go-cart tracks (not the really high-performance ones), a couple autocrosses, track visits in street cars, some video games (prefer the realistic ones), and I’ve seen almost every episode of Top Gear. Not a complete neophyte, but this is a major step up from anything I’ve done before. I’ll admit I’m a little apprehensive; hopefully it just enough to be alert and focused, but not intimidated.
You’re on, as soon as I have some proper track stories.
For Mexican food, you’d probably enjoy La Taqueria in San Francisco. They’re famous for their burritos.
Since you like science museums, you might want to visit The Exploratorium in San Francisco. One problem, though, is that it’s often full of screaming kids who make it hard to see and experience the exhibits.
There’s a Monterey Bay Sanctuary Exploration Center in Santa Cruz:
The Seymour Marine Discovery Center in Santa Cruz isn’t on the same level as the Monterey Bay Aquarium but it has interesting exhibits and it’s definitely less crowded. Even if you don’t go in to the museum itself, the whale skeleton out in front is a good photo op.
Just south of Pacifica on Hwy 1 are the Tom Lantos (Devil’s Slide) Tunnels. The old roadway is now a trail with parking lots on either end–good spot to stretch your legs and take in the view (southern trailhead has the good views). If you’re hungry, Gherkins Sandwich Shop is just down the road in Montara–they make excellent (and quite large) sandwiches, wraps and burgers.
There’s also great food at Gayle’s, at 504 Bay Ave, in Capitola.
I haven’t tried Gherkins. Thanks for the tip.
My neighbor took that class at Laguna Seca a couple years ago and had a blast. If you’re still amped up after a day of racing, spend an hour or two playing pinball at Lynn’s Arcade in Seaside. $15 and you play as long as you want on their 30+ pinball machines.
My assembly language class at MIT was on their PDP-1, and when I retired I figured I could volunteer on it. Until I went and talked to the guy who did the demo, who was also one of the guys who invented Space War, which was done on it.
Lots of good old hardware there, including an LGP-30 the predecessor of the LGP-21 I learned to program on in high school.
Carmel is very close to Monterey so can be done in the evening. Cool place. Definitely the aquarium. But if you walk down the street the aquarium is on, away from town, you’ll get to the waterfront where you can see otters free. Really just a couple of hundred feet away.
Not really, and I’ve driven it from LA to San Rafael, in chunks. It hits the coast south of San Luis Obispo, and is very nice there, but then goes back inland. 1 is definitely the way to go to see the coast.
Agree. 101 does run along the coast in Oregon and far northern CA, but the town of Leggett is Hwy 1’s northern terminus, and that’s where one going southbound would want to turn off 101 toward the coast.
Our own (but long absent) WordMan now owns a coffee shop in Pacific Grove. Could be fun to drop in as part of a stroll down the main strip in PG.
Speaking of Pacific Grove, it’s a good time to visit the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. They started showing up a couple of weeks ago. There are around 3,300 of them in the grove according to the latest count, hopefully with more on the way.
If you find yourself a theatrical mood passing through Moss Landing, the Shakespeare Society Of America has an impressive collection of Bard-related artifacts.
Cannery Row Antique Mall in Monterey has tons of interesting stuff–it’s as good as a museum in my book.
Emphasis mine. You mentioned in another thread that you’d driven the Nurburgring, right? That’s pretty impressive.
I’ll be interested in hearing about the current SBRS cars, and how they run the class. Back in 2001, when I did it at Mid-Ohio, they had observers around the track with walkie-talkies, and you stopped each lap and got a report on how well you had done the particular element they were teaching at that point. I’m guessing now they have radios in the student helmets.
Also, IIRC, the cars I drove had sequential shifters using a side stick and no synchronizers. One of the lessons was on double-clutching. I’m guessing you’ll have paddle shifters, and perhaps no clutch pedal.
If they’re still using the same practices as 22 years ago, you’ll share a car with someone approximately your height and size, and they’ll customize the pedal and steering wheel positions for the two of you. Half the class is on track at a time, and the rest are observing, with an instructor commenting on how the cars on track are doing. Watching someone else’s mistakes can be very enlightening.
The course is extremely well organized. They focus on one element at a time: the racing line, braking, double clutching, etc., but you’re continuing to use the previous techniques as they add each new one. Sometimes I felt I wanted more time on a certain element, but I found that even as I moved on to the next thing, I was able to improve on the previous one. It never became overwhelming, and I think your previous experience will help you in this regard.
I just realized in comparing my picture below to yours that your cars have aero! You will be going a lot faster through the corners than we were 22 years ago!
So jealous! 
In terms of keeping the dream alive, a company I worked at in the early 2000s had an IT guy with an interesting story. He had grown up with motorcycles and sports cars and probably had some track time, but nothing formal. At some point, he and our company’s founder went and did the Skip Barber school at Laguna Seca. At the end of the day, as the story goes, the instructors pulled him aside and told him he might actually have “what it takes”.
Now I am not going to pretend that a big part of what he had wasn’t cubic dollars, having done well at Microsoft, but he started racing in some kind of arrive-and-drive thing that Barber put on, eventually turning that into a mini-career with the pinnacle (IMO) being a class win at the 24 Hours of LeMans.
He then went on to drive in the European and American LeMans series before his career evaporated due to budget cuts at the Mugen Honda team he was on. So it was back to the salt mines of technology infrastructure support.
Two laps in a rented diesel Mercedes, but it was a lot of fun. There was a series of decreasing-radius esses that I nailed the second time through.
I’d be happy just to get in the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
I don’t know anyone who raced at LeMans, but I know someone who raced in the 24 Hours of Lemons, on Team Tinworm, who won the Index of Effluence.
Agree also, if you want to spend all day on that road. My recommendation to people is to take CA-1 from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, or even to Castroville, and that gives you plenty of coastline. Yes, Big Sur is beautiful and dramatic, but so is the area around Devil’s Slide south of Pacifica. Much of San Mateo County’s coast is beautiful, and you’re not “trapped” on the coast for the long stretch from Castroville to Cambria.
It’s a moot point right now because of the closure between between Lucia and Limekiln State Park.
Santa Cruz Bikes and Ibis both have factory demos near there, it’s a good place for a bike ride.
It’s also a good time for a whale watching trip out of Monterey. I’ve done a couple with this group.
Monterey Bay Whale Watch - Whale Watching Trips