Author: chuck goolsbee

Living in the Past

The choices for dining near my office are slim. We are in a sort of no-man’s land between Boeing Field and Sea-Tac airport. The roads, due to topology only run north-south – we are on a steep hillside, with the Duwamish river below us to the east, and the hill behind us is topped with golf courses (in the flight path of Sea-Tac of course!) North of us is the industrial flat-land of the Duwamish valley. As the Puget Sound developed, industry and agriculture dominated the flat surfaces, and business and residence ended up on hills. Downtown is on a steep slope, located there because at the base of the hill is a natural deepwater port that provided a safe place to moor ships with no risk of grounding as the tides dropped sea-level by 20 feet in 6 hours. Industry filled in the flat areas between the hills (glacial moraines) of West Seattle and Beacon Hill. With the twin residential exceptions of Georgetown and South Park, the course of the Duwamish is flanked by industry; Boeing of course being the largest. Boeing has consumed virtually all of the land between us and Georgetown, which does have some good eats. South Park, which has transformed into a Mexican neighborhood has some awesome food from that region, but requires crossing two bridges to get to. That leaves us with going south. International Blvd (nee Pacific Highway South, nee Route 99) has the redundant array of generic fast food, and a few places near the airport (13 coins, and some hotel places.) It also has a relic …a pre-Grunge, pre-historic, pre-boom Seattle throwback that is a time-warp into the past.

There was a time when Seattle was a very working-class, very industrial, very white place. “Ethnic minorities” consisted of Danes amongst the Norwegians and Swedes. Yeah, there has always been a significant Native American and Asian/Pacific population, but the area up the hill south of my office 40 years ago was not the ethic mishmash it is today. They didn’t have Mexican, Ethiopian, or Somalian groceries; no “Bollywood Video” store; no Halal meat market. They could never have called it “International Boulevard” in the 1960s unless it was a reference to the airport. Oddly enough, the street sees enough traffic that rents are too high for small “mom & pop” ethnic restaurants, so it is basically a long stretch of gas stations and fast food. There is a little Mexican place called “El Rinconsito” … the food is good, but they play the Mexi-pop tunes so loud I can barely stand it. Oh well.

But to take a trip back in time, drive to where I.B. and Military Road S. meet. There you will find “The Pancake Chef.” It is a snapshot of Seattle, before the World’s Fair. At a time when the intersection of Highway 99 and Military Road was as important as where I-5 and I-405 meet today, except unlike the Interstate you could pull over an eat anywhere in those days, instead of either flying along (or more often, staring at the license plate of the car in front of you as you stop, shuffle, stop, shuffle, stop, etc your way along.) The patrons at The Pancake Chef look like they’ve been eating here since 1962 as well. They don’t fit the demographic of the neighborhood as it stands in 2006, that’s for sure. They are pretty much all white, and all very old. The food is excellent, and deserving of that long-term loyalty, but sitting inside I’m reminded of visiting the old Fredrick & Nelson department store on 5th Avenue circa 1987… looking around and knowing that the establishment was doomed because all their customers were going to die… soon. Every time I go there I drop the median age by 25 years, and I’m not that young! Walkers and portable oxygen gear surrounds several tables. There is artwork on the wall for sale, with the business card of the artist. On that card is a phone number without an area code… dating from the days when all of western Washington was “206”. It was almost 20 years ago when 360, 256, and 425 arrived. I wonder if the artist still draws breath? The loudspeakers play a style of music that hasn’t been heard since KBRD… “as beautiful as a bird in flight. K-bird, FM 104 KBRD Seattle”… went off the air goodness knows when! String arrangements of Beatles hits, 70s TV themes, and show tunes. It is surreal to sit and play mental “name that tune” games as the playlist moves on to the next song. I get flashbacks to the dentist office waiting rooms of my childhood… all that is missing is the fish tank.

Despite the time-warp decor and surroundings, the food is excellent. I bet the menu hasn’t changed, other than prices, since the day it opened four years or so before my birth. They close early (3pm!) so it is strictly breakfast and lunch. Odd-hour meals, a staple of the 7/24/365 business I’m in, are off the menu (for that, we have 13 Coins, which I’ll have to write about someday.) Everything I’ve ordered has been fresh, tasty and served swiftly. The Club Sandwich is excellent, with buttery toasted bread, thick bacon, and tasty smoked turkey. Breakfasts are awesome. I need to work my way through their specialty pancakes and waffles at some point. My sons say their pancakes are great.

I hope The Pancake Chef doesn’t suffer the same fate as F&N, but I suspect it is inevitable. If some good breakfasts and an old-Seattle flashback is in order, I suggest a run down to Sea-Tac.

4th of July

A few weeks ago I contacted the organizer of the 4th of July Parade here in Arlington and asked if they needed an old car. The parade here is a fun little affair, with old cars, tractors, business vehicles, the high school marching band, etc. We’ve always gone and watched, and had a great time. Neighbors always told me I should put my car in, so I called. The organizer asked “Is it a convertible? I need convertibles to carry people” and when I replied affirmatively she said “Yes, you’re my hero! I need a convertible to carry the Police Chief.” I confirmed with her the start time & place, washed the car that morning, and headed into Arlington for the big day.

When I arrived I was told that my position was #1, which meant I’d be leading the parade. Very cool. I was given a pair of large magnets with the Police Chief’s name and title on them, and told where to line up. Then it was just a matter of waiting. Thankfully I had left the tonneau cover on the car and was able to put it on to keep the interior cool in the hot sun. The Arlington Fire Department lined up behind me, including an beautiful antique fire engine. I had a look at the engine’s engine… a unique machine. It was a flathead straight six, with two plugs per cylinder. I took a photo, which I’ll link to later. As parade time approached, more participants lined up, and I noted another Jaguar, in this case an XK8 lined up opposite me.

How symmetrical. Two open topped Jaguars, each carrying a “top cop” in my case the Arlington Police Chief, in the other the Snohomish County Sheriff. That’s cool.

BUT. My dignitary had yet to arrive! Literally as the moment arrived to start the parade, (The Color Guard had lined up right behind my car and raised the flag) the organizer came up to me and told me that the Police Chief was not going to ride in my car, but would instead ride in a patrol car. Her walkie- talkie was going like mad, and I was not able to ask what I was supposed to do (drive along behind him? go to the back of the line? carry the Dairy Princess? go home?) A cop came along and took the signs off my car. So here I was, at the head of the line, stripped of my “parade gear” and left with no instruction. I hopped out of my car and ran after the parade organizer, but she already was climbing into her truck, still talking on the walkie-talkie, and pulled away.

I climbed back into the Jag and told the Color Guard to be careful of the exhaust, and fired it up and pulled away, and found a spot at the back of the parade lineup. I ran up and found my family and offered the passenger spot to my boys, which Nicholas gladly accepted. He really wanted to throw candy to his friends – I had bought 3 pounds of smarties at the Food Pavilion for the purpose. By the time we got back to the car the Parade was progressing and we only had a few minutes to chat with the guys from the Stilly Valley Pioneer Museum who we were parked behind. They had two old Fords, a Model A and Model T, out for the parade. The guy in the Model T lives near me and owns a couple of really old Rolls Royce’s, so he had an appreciation for old British six cylinder machinery.

So as we pulled away, and followed the Fords, Nicholas prepared to start slinging Smarties. We pulled inline and started down Olympic Avenue. I was primarily concerned with not abusing my clutch, and staying an even distance behind the Fords. As such I didn’t have too much time to relish the experience. I was able to throw some candy to kids who looked like they needed/wanted it – including my wife, who caught the candy I flung at her with a smile. Nick was able to wave to his friends, and throw way too much candy out… in fact he ran out about halfway down Olympic avenue! Should we ever participate again he’ll have to pace himself.

They had an announcer on a loudspeaker calling out what was in the parade, as we passed there was silence. We were out of order due to the last minute change with the Police Chief, which obviously confused things. I did have at least FOUR people walk away from the curb and ask me about the car, plus innumerable “nice car!” shouts from folks who stayed on the curb. I answered the questions, and said “thank you” to all the compliments. I’m indeed lucky to be the caretaker of such a nice machine.

It was all over, way too soon. The car did well, never looked like it would overheat or stall.

Nick & I went home, enjoying the ride. After our arrival, I went to work at replacing the front plate that had been removed from the car after the incident with the pickup truck. The repair of which removed the plate from the car.

It was a fun job. I hadn’t done any wet burnishing in a while. You can see if you look closely, that I used fishing line as a guide to make sure I lined up the plate level. I built a grid by tying down the line at various places on the car, then misted and placed the plate down. After it was down, I noted that it was just a bit higher than it was before… oh well. Next I’ll put the numbers on.

All my pictures from the day are here.

An Environmental(ly Friendly) Disaster

Legend has it that Captain Joseph Hazelwood had been drinking beers and vodkas in the hours before his ship became tragically intimate with Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. I will admit to having a margarita on Monday night, though my oil tanker is thankfully nowhere near the size of the Exxon Valdez. I also didn’t run into anything, certainly not a reef… my catastrophe was a bit more complicated.

You see, I have a home-brew Diesel fuel setup that filters waste vegetable oil and turns it into something I can put into my car. Being a lazy human with neither the time nor the energy to pump heavy, thick oil through 30 and 10 micron filters, I have created a system that takes advantage of a free energy source to push oil through a filter; namely the mass of the planet and its by-product, in the form of gravity. Oil, like any liquid, naturally flows downhill. I carry the oil up the “hill” in 5 gallon increments, which takes me 10 seconds. It comes back down the hill, this time through filters, at somewhere between a drip and a trickle. It can take a week to produce 20 gallons. This is fine since gravity pretty much works all the time: 7/24/365. Gravity is a reliable source of energy since planetary mass remains more or less constant, and should it experience rapid change, lowering the cost of operating my car will likely become the least of my worries. The only variable I need to be concerned with is ambient temperature.

Summers in the Pacific Northwest are not what anyone outside of McMurdo Sound would describe as “hot”… in fact on the first day of summer of 2003 I spent my day sitting in a chair in front of a roaring fire updating my website after the New England 1000 rally, with outside temps 15 degrees above freezing. But this past week we experienced a relative “heat wave”, with temps reaching 90°F (33°C). We are not mentally or physically prepared for such levels of heat here. Very few facilities or houses have air conditioning, as temps rarely exceed 80°F (26°C) thanks to our latitude and close proximity to the largest body of known water in this solar system, perhaps even the universe.

Monday I was working from home, and towards the end of the day I was doing some pre-sale mechanical work on the Bug before it went on ebay. I was out in the barn around 3pm, and everything looked fine. Around 5 pm I had made myself a margarita and wandered out to the barn again and was greeted with a shocking find. Coming out from under the pickup truck was a steady stream of vegetable oil. I ran to the back to find the bottom barrel of my gravity-fed system copiously leaking from an overflow condition. I shouted to Nicholas, who was out playing with the dogs to run and get the truck keys. I dove for the stop-valves to put a halt to Isaac Newton’s invisible forces.

Nick returned at a run with the keys and I got the truck out of the oil spill. Veggie oil destroys rubber. Tires are made of rubber last I checked. By now Sue and Chris have arrived to find out what was going on. I started evacuating things from the expanding puddle, running oil off the top of the overflowing barrel, put Nick to washing off the truck tires, while the others brought me a pile of old newspapers. I spread the newspapers out over the spill:

I finished removing everything removable from the space (it needed a cleanup anyway), spead some of my oil absorbant and couldn’t really do anything until the newspapers soaked up some oil. We decided that after this little flurry of family activity that we needed to take a break, so we went out to our local Mexican food restaurant and had dinner (I had another Margarita!)

I took the next day off work to focus on the cleanup. The night of sitting on the oil did the trick with the newspapers, they were soaked. Off they came and into a 55 gallon drum, and another layer went on. While that soaked I set fire to the previous layer in the drum, and performed a general nonoil cleanup of the area. Entropy had led to disorder, which I set to correcting. I also processed what oil remained in the barrels “uptream” to cover the deficit lost in the spill and 20 additional gallons I had picked up from the burger joint I get it from the previous week (you can see that in the form of white PVC 5 gallon buckets.) I have no idea exactly how much I had lost, but I suspect it was between 15 and 30 gallons. That represents about 650 to 1500 miles of driving! Oh well.

Thankfully it is completely organic, and completely non-toxic as it is basically rapeseed (aka “Canola”) oil, and molecular bits of potato, with some onion ring batter thrown in as well. Actually since this was at the “end” of my processing system it was pretty clean (filtered to 10 microns) so virtually pure oil. I take it from that last stage down through a combo 5/1 micron filter sock and from there into 5 gallon jerry cans. So unlike Hazelwood’s blunder, my spill wasn’t going to do significant harm to my local environment. In fact, it’s benign to the point of being edible. One of our dogs in fact ate some. To them, a bit of spilled oil is a treat. Dogs are not known for their discriminating palletes, especially ours.


Above: Yours truly sweeping up oil-soaked newspaper.

After the second layer of paper came up, I fired up the pressure washer with a inline injection of Simple Green cleaner and started to spray:

The cleaner was spread over the entire area, and allowed to sit for a bit, then the long, slow process of going over every inch of the affected area under high pressure spray began. Pressure washing is something of a Zen activity. It requires focus and concentration. You have this object, that if allowed to behave naturally, would be flying around haphazardly, being propelled by a 2100 PSI stream of water. You have to hold onto it, then make it do what you want, which in this case is coax a film off of, and some level of saturation of oil out of concrete. Thankfully oil and water do not mix, so you can visually see when you have removed most of it, and move on to the next section. It took a while, and two full passes at the area, but I’m pretty sure I managed to get most of it up.

We’ll see after it has some time to dry. I didn’t bother to look at it this morning when I left for work. I really don’t want to look at it until I know I’ll have some time to start work again. The upside of this situation is that I now know that my filtration system goes from a trickle to a torrent when the temperature approaches 90°F. It all seems logical in hindsight of course, since in the depth of winter the stuff would barely drip. Sometimes the blindingly obvious takes a little hindsight to light it up.

Thankfully, it was only a portion of one barrel, not a portion of 1,480,000 barrels.

I’ll drink to that!

Slalom!

I’m sitting here at home, sucking down the final remnants of a “Top-Shelf” Margarita (made with some of the wife’s Cabo Wabo).. a fitting end to a fine day out. My son Nicholas & I just got back from a trip to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia for a JCNA Slalom event in Vancouver.

I haven’t slalomed since July of 2004. I of course took a year off from it due to the “Great Collapsing XK Engine Incident of 2005“… which ruined my year, and doomed my children to community college. I had a dim recollection of how fun it was, but today brought it all back. It is more than fun… it is a blast! I strongly suggest getting out and doing it yourselves. Ton of fun.

JCNA runs a standard course and timing gear, so you can compare your performance against other people in the US & Canada. Honestly, I’m not really looking for any sort of award, or national standing… to me this is just too much fun to NOT participate. I have an excellent car and feel that as a DRIVER I could stand a lot of improvement, so I really only care about how I do “against myself.”

It is about a 70-90 minute drive to Vancouver from my house depending on conditions at the border. Nick & I left around 8, and arrived at the 49th Parallel around 9-ish, only to be met with a snarled border crossing. They only had two lanes open, which is odd for a weekend (there are something like 8 lanes available) so people were queue jumping like mad in the outside lanes. I’m surprised there wasn’t any fisticuffs. I would have been there right on time, but I missed a turn on highway 1A, and ended up doing a big lazy “S” through Surrey, and finally dead-reckoned my way to the Scott Road Skytrain station parking lot (after a stop for some $CDN out of an ATM) where one of the BC MG/Jaguar clubs was holding the event.

Nick & I signed in, paid our fee, went through tech inspection, and prepped the 65E for it’s runs (this involves the giant “reverse Tetris game” of unloading all the spares, rags, tools, garbage, flotsam, etc from the Jaguar cockpit and boot. Once excavated, my pile was quite impressive. People were shocked at how much crap I had stowed away in such a small space! I am a master at Tetris! (and I wasn’t even carrying all my spares!)

I grabbed my camera and shot some stills of the folks who were making their runs. These included Bruce Cox, the fellow E-type owner from Burnaby whose new Pirelli tires I had smuggle^X^X^X^X brought over the border earlier this year. Bruce drives a very nice maroonish red Series 2 OTS. He & his better half Jayne have owned it since the late 60s. Good to see a “survivor” on the cones course!

Our turn came very swiftly, and Nick & I headed out onto the course after I’d handed my camera to Bruce to get some shots of us. Like I said, it has been two years since I last did this, and I was chanting out the mantra: “hourglass, figure 8, oval… hourglass, figure 8, oval… hourglass, figure 8, oval…” in my head, but of course it all fell apart once on course… somewhere I lost concentration and mistook one cone for another… here I’m thinking that I’m swinging wide at the bottom of my second lap when all of a sudden A CONE JUMPS RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR!

I’m amazed at how quickly I stopped. I didn’t actually hit the cone, but I’m sure I scared it enough to give it second thoughts about jumping in front of me like that again! Of course, I had to reverse to get away from the wayward, evil, scheming cone, so I DNF’ed that run. (Kudos to Bruce for managing to capture that critical moment!)

We queued up to run again, and got some advice from one of the organizers. He refreshed my memory as to how to run the course, and told Nick to hold on to the grab handle. He got tossed around a bit, and in fact his helmet banged my right arm at one point, which is still sore as I type this nine+ hours later. We managed to complete our second run without mishap, and turned a respectable 00:49.291. We queued again and this time I concentrated on being smooth, and Nicholas did an excellent job of calling out lap sequence for me as we ran the course. This time we ran it in 00:47.560.

Given that my best time from 2004 was 48.6 this was my new “Personal Best”.

I still felt like I over-braked in the far opposite corner during the “figure-8” lap, so next time I concentrated on improving that. Result: 00:47.400.

Whoo hoo!

The last run, I figured I’d push it a bit more, and ended up getting some messy oversteer midway through the figure-8 lap that robbed me of a bit of time. Pushing that envelope! Final run clocked in at 00:48.140. Not bad actually.

After everyone’s timed runs were done, the course was open for “fun” runs, so Nick & I went out for three more, but this time we brought the camera in the car and Nick used the “film mode” of my digital camera to capture the event in full motion and sound. Unfortunately Nick is still pretty young, and not tall enough to see over the bonnet. The first time he held the camera up to his eye, and captured an excellent movie of the dashboard and the sky. =)
(BTW that run we turned a 00:47.940)
The next run wasn’t much better camera-wise, but I got my time down to 00:46.800.

Finally, after watching his results while we waited our next turn, I suggested that he hold the camera UP and sight along the bottom of the lens, and angle it as we approach turns.
The result was excellent.

It also turned out to be our best time of the day, and my best time ever:
00:46.105

Too bad I couldn’t pull that off when it counted!

I wanted to try to get a particular style of movie… the traditional “out the side of the car” shot, so I recruited Bruce to drive for me. He grabbed a helmet and climbed into the 65E. I don’t know why he was so nervous, but he started up the car and lurched into 1st gear before I even had my door closed, and promptly killed the engine. Poor Bruce… he probably thought he’d broken my car because it then refused to start. The starter was obviously heat-soaked, either that and/or my battery was so weak from last week’s alternator shenanigans that it just didn’t have the grunt to spin the hot starter… I’ve had the car do this to me before when very hot like this. (Did I mention that it was hot out today? It was!) I hopped out my open door, and rocked the car back and forth while it was in gear, then out of gear and hit the starter, and eventually hit the right spot where it would fire.

That crisis solved, we hit the course
It was fun to run it while not driving. It seems a LOT easier from the navigator’s seat! Bruce ran a respectable 00:52.250 and I had a fun time… capturing it mostly how I wanted.

We then reversed the Tetris game repacking the car, had to push/rock start it again(!) and bid adieu to Bruce & Jayne, and headed for home. We stopped in White Rock at a Baskin Robbins for some ice cream to cool us down (I parked the 65E on a down-slope in case it was still too hot, but after the our cool-down, it was cool too and started on the first try. The border crossing at the Peace Arch was insanely long, so we hopped over to the “Truck Crossing” and found it also backed up… we continued east on ‘0 Avenue’ towards the Lynden/Aldergrove crossing, and found it backed up too, though not as bad. It REALLY sucks to sit out in the open, surrounded by queued cars, baking in the hot sun on the asphalt. It seemed like an eternity before we made the 100m trip to the customs stop. Both us and the car were overheating and tired… thankfully the border guard didn’t ask me to turn off the car. He had searched a few cars ahead of us in the queue, and I really didn’t want to go through with that *and* suffer the indignity of the car requiring a push start! Thankfully he waved us on and we were very happy to be running in the wind again at speed. We angled east towards the mountains and took back roads up into the foothills seeking shade of tall Alders, Douglas Firs, and Western Red Cedars. It felt GREAT to get out of the sun. We eventually found our way onto SR9 and followed it home to Arlington.

Nick & I are tired… the sun just sapped our energy (we are both burned, despite frequent application of sunscreen) but we’re enervated and happy, having spent a great day out together.

Speaking of kids, there was a 16 year old out at the event today driving an MG B. He too looked like he was having a blast:

That is my favorite image of the day.


Here are all of them.

I think it is time for another Margarita.