Saturday, December 4, 2010

Red Bull Catalina Grand Prix 2010 - From Long Beach To Avalon

Traveling in to Avalon from Long Beach to experience the Red Bull Catalina Grand Prix 2010. [ctrl-click image to launch video slideshow of the trip]. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2010)

Red Bull Catalina Grand Prix 2010 - From Long Beach to Avalon

The crowd gathered to board the Catalina Express for a first in a lifetime chance to restart a grand tradition - serious motorcycle competition on roads that snake around the chaparral covered hills that surround the romantic village of Avalon on Catalina Island.

For eight years from 1951 to 1957, a competition event that started as a way to promote and sell motorcycles evolved into a small tradition where the greatest motorcycle racers of the day would make the then spring time seaborne trip to the Island that featured a Casino and was once the spring training ground of the Chicago Cubs to break in their equipment for the upcoming AMA points paying season in the "Grand National" circuit. This event became known as the Catalina Grand Prix.



Today, December 3, 2010, all of the competitors, spectators with a room (booked months in advance), and press traveled on the Catalina Express to get settled in before two days of competition that will be held in 12 races, 800 riders, and nearly seven miles of paved, dirt, and motocross prepared sections of Island racetrack!

Welcome to a new era which starts out December 4-5, 2010, as the Red Bull Catalina Grand Prix 2010.

... notes from The EDJE

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