July 21-23 2006 Laguna Seca Moto GP Trip

[G.Irish]

Here will be all the details for the trip. You can post any information you find about it or anything else that would be pertinent.

Tickets
3 day pass (Fri-Sat-Sun): $90
2 day pass (Sat-Sun): $80
1 day pass (Sun): $55

I'll be getting the 3 day pass. I have no idea how fast they'll sell out this year but last year they didn't sell out until April or May I think (maybe later).

Airfare
Last year I flew into Oakland, CA and drove down to my hotel which was about 30 minutes from the airport and an hour from the track. Monterey is about an hour and a half from Oakland, an hour from San Jose, and almost 2 hours from San Francisco. Any one of those airports is going to be cheaper than flying directly into Monterey (by $50-100 or more).

Right now the airfare is around $300, which is about what I paid last year. Search on Sidestep.com, it scours all of the other sites. You might also want to try pricewatch.com. Last time I got my fare from Jetblue (jetblue.com). This year a flight leaving on Thursday and returning that Monday is about $280. I'll probably be flying Jetblue again.

So, you'll want to depart from:
DCA (Washington National)
IAD (Dulles)

And arrive at:
OAK (Oakland)
SFO (San Francisco)
SJC (San Jose)

Accomodations
We could do maybe 3 things.

*Rent a hotel near Monterey
This will cost us about $200-300 per room per night. So we'd be looking at somewhere around $250-$350 total per person. I don't like that option.

*Rent a hotel within 1 hr of Monterey
The closest would be Watsonville, which would cost about $125 a night which would come out to about $125 per person (Thurs-Mon).

*Camp, get a RV
We could rent a 4 person RV for about $125 a night, but we would be right next to the track, rather than having to drive 1 to 2 hours every night.

This could be pretty cool because we could party into the night and we wouldn't have to fight with the looooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg lines every night. When I say long, it took over 3 hours to get out of there last time. At least if we have an RV we can party in the meantime. Crack a few beers and watch cars attempting to do a hillclimb up a 45 degree incline to cut onto an access road...

I'll have to call the track to find out where exactly the camping area is and everything. I also have to call some RV rental places.

Roll Call
Gerald - Confirmed
RJ - Confirmed
Matt - Confirmed
John.C - Confirmed
Minh Nguyen
Andrew

[.RJ]

RV sounds interesting.... not sure if I like that idea or just camping.

July wouldnt be a bad time to find a bike to ride back either

[G.Irish]

Camping would be cheaper but with the RV:

*Security
*Refridgeration
*Cooking
*Climate control
*Electricity

Even though in general the road race watching crowd is an honest bunch I'd be hesistant to leave stuff in the tent.

[.RJ]

Wont have much to leave if all i can keep around has to fit in a tank bag for the ride home

[JohnC]

Wont have much to leave if all i can keep around has to fit in a tank bag for the ride home

Yeah - my thoughts exactly.

[John]

Hmmm... perhaps I should plan a business trip to my client's Monterey facility the week prior... hmmm...

[Dragon]

Considering I already bought my 3 day pass you know I'm in.

[Sijray21]

hmmm....i could be very down for this

i don't suppose we could rent bikes, huh? :wink:

the RV sounds pretty interesting though, i wouldn't even think of something like that.

[G.Irish]

You can rent bikes but the only place in Cali that rents sport bikes that I know of is in LA. They had a booth at Laguna last year so maybe they'd be willing to transport the bikes up with them (worth a shot)?

It was fairly expensive though, about $125 a day for a 600. It might be fun to do on Thursday or Friday since the area has some nice scenic coastal highway.

[JohnC]

I just ordered my 3-day pass.

And I'm all about the RV idea. That sounds like the ideal compromise between camping and a hotel. G - can you go ahead and set that up? And get whatever kind of camping permit we need?

[G.Irish]

Ok I did some preliminary research on the RV idea. They have a pretty confusing system but anyway...

C class 25 foot RV (approx. like the picture)



The minimum is a 4 night rental. The cost is ~$785. The agent said she can give us a 10% discount if we make our reservation before the new year so that might be ~$706. I'm not sure if the price quote included the discount or not.

The C class sleeps about 5 people. This breaks down to:

$196.25 per person (4 people)
$176.50 per person (4 people with 10% off)
$157 per person (5 people)
$141 per person (5 people with 10% off)

C class 30 foot RV (I believe the diagram is missing a bed)



The 30 ft sleeps about 6-7 people on paper, probably 8 if its us doing it. The 30 ft has a 5 night minimum. It comes out to $1109. This breaks down to:

$277 per person (4 people)
$249 per person (4 people with 10% off)
$184 per person (6 people)
$166 per person (6 people with 10% off)
$158 per person (7 people)
$142 per person (7 people with 10% off)
$138 per person (8 people)
$124 per person (8 people with 10% off)

I figure we're looking at 4 to 6 people coming with us. The 30 ft would be pimp but I don't know that we could get 6-8 people reliably so the 25 ft would probably be the best bet with the amount of interest we have here.

Another plus I hadn't thought about is that we can save a ton of money on food since we can cook our own. Food wasn't OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive for the most part but it was not really cheap either. If we were staying at a hotel we'd obviously have to eat out.

I'll do some recon on the camp site tomorrow. It looks like the camp pass would be $135.

[HAULN-SS]

couch = other bed probably

[ScottyB]

one way or another, at some point in this debacle, i want to see an RV getting air over something, with an OG at the wheel.

[Dragon]

Oh my buddy from Allsports will be coming too, add another asian to the mix, Minh.

[Ginger]

Wont have much to leave if all i can keep around has to fit in a tank bag for the ride home

Yeah - my thoughts exactly.

Me three...


now I've got to bomb for this plane ticket...

[.RJ]

Andrew had a good idea - rather than try to find a decent bike in a narrow time window on the left coast, ship the bikes to the left coast and then ride 'em back.

[G.Irish]

That would be what I'd do if I were hell bent on riding back. Shipping by freight would probably be somewhere between $200 and $500 ish (that's about what it costed to ship my engine from the left coast). Might be able to get the bikes over there on the auto train.

[Ginger]

Andrew had a good idea - rather than try to find a decent bike in a narrow time window on the left coast, ship the bikes to the left coast and then ride 'em back.

I think that's what I'm going to have to do. After working on the Veeeefr last night I noticed on the way in this morning that the radiator cap does leak (on to my knee).... and then I realized that the speedo not working also means the odometer doesn't work, which means that I'm going to have a really hard time keeping track of gas. Like you say "just give up."

By the time this winter is over I should be ready to buy something else which I'll ship over. We should talk to MSchu over on H-T about that, he's shipped a lot of bikes lately. If we need to I have that friend in San Francisco that can take delivery for us - but riding Route 1 would be more better.

[.RJ]

A quick check with Forward Air shows that shipping one way, in their container, will be under $400 from IAD to SAN. I like that idea.... pick it up and ride up the coast to Monterey

[G.Irish]

Good news bitches, I get a 15% discount on RV rentals with Cruise America from my Honda Rider's Club membership

I just have to find out if they're part of the same group I got the quotes from, apparently its a conglomerate of like 5 differently named companies, that is essentially the same thing :?