Bryan & College Station, Texas

Have you seen Google’s Street View thingy yet? It’s a way for you to look at a 360 degree view of certain streets in certain cities.

Major cities like San Fransisco, Houston, and Miami are available, and Google said they would add cities in the future.

Well, my wife was driving in town and saw one of the Google Maps vehicles. That means that our minivan might be on the Google College Station Street View. That would be fun. I’ll let you know when College Station Street View becomes available. The day the vehicle was spotted was December 6th, 2007, around 2:00pm, on Texas Avenue between Villa Maria and University Drive. I read that there’s 6 vehicles out there at any given time.

There’s been some legal issues with all this and privacy. I guess people don’t like the idea of not having a choice if their property or their picture are publicly displayed. Looks like Google is working to conceal faces and license plates in the future, at least in Europe, and possibly in the US. Apparently there were some people photographed walking into adult book stores and strip clubs and they could actually be identified.

I’m assuming Google doesn’t reveal where they are going to be so that there won’t be people doing things in front of the cameras. If I knew they were going to be in town, I’d probably make a sign or something. Maybe rent a mascot costume and chase the van around to try to get into multiple shots. That would be fun.

I found another picture of what one of the camera mounts look like (below), so keep your eyes peeled, and your mascot costume in the trunk of your car.

jorge

Just South of College Station is a race track, you know, for cars and stuff. Well, just about every weekend (not quite every weekend), they have something going on. It may not be NASCAR high speed racing, but it’s still cool.

I’ve been to several events out there, and for the most part, being a spectator is free. I’m assuming that when there’s some big race it’s not free, but for clubs that go out there and use the track, you can watch all day.

Like for example, one weekend, there was a motorcycle school, where you could take your motorcycle, pay the dues and race. I took my oldest out here that day, and my mom and dad were in town and they went too.

We talked to one of the drivers and he said that top speed on this track for the 1000cc bikes is about 175mph. You’d be surprised what that looks like…and what it sounds like.

Another time there was a Porsche Club out there running their cars out there. Most were student drivers with instructors, but the faster ones were loud and awesome.

You’ll just have to go to the website (which is not very informative, actually) and find out what’s going on.

By “not very informative” I mean that it doesn’t tell you what time or the cost of these smaller events. But considering it’s not too far from town, it’s not too far out of the way to go and ask.

We’re still looking forward to seeing really fast cars race on that track. The turns are banked. The fast Porsches had to be going 180mph and they didn’t use the banked turns. My dad was telling me that gravity would mess with the shocks on the cars not built for taking those turns at high speed, so maybe that’s why.

Here’s the Texas World Speedway website, and a map of how to get there.

Jorge