goolsbee.org, serving useless content from an undisclosed location since 1997
I sat down at lunch today, fired up iPhoto to grab a particular image out of my archive (posted momentarily) and this happened. I can’t imagine this is very good. Once I okayed the dialogs iPhoto ran fine, but we’ll see how things go.
Any iPhoto experts seen this before? Is my world about to get ugly(ier)???
From the days when a padded cockpit served as a driver’s seat. I seem to recall that this car was in a section of the lawn at Amelia reserved that year for Indy cars, but I might be wrong. Do you know what car this is (because I sure don’t!)
Update: I think I found it, via Google. Sounds like this is the car.
No guessing games should be required here, as the 917 is a legendary machine. However in their old age it appears they have become the playthings of very small children!
Go figure.
Got any 917 stories? Did you see the “Can-Am Killer” in its heyday? Tell them us the comments.
I never participate in these things, but this one was just too goofy to pass up: “Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister”
Apparently the Prime Minister’s office in the UK has an website where the Queen’s subjects can request favors and allow others to vote for it. Somebody wanted Jezza as PM, and they actually ran it. Mind you just to prove how lame the system is it allowed me to vote – using nothing but my old address in Wiltshire as “proof of eligibility”… hell I was merely a resident alien and that was a decade ago!
Well, yesterday I received an email from the PM’s office stating:
From: “10 Downing Street”
To: “e-petition signatories”
Subject: Government response to petition ‘PMClarkson’
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:10:11 +0000You signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to “Make Jeremy Clarkson
Prime Minister.”The Prime Minister’s Office has responded to that petition and you can view
it here:http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page16590
Prime Minister’s Office
The page they reference points to a YouTube Video:
Unlike our government, at least the brits have one with a sense of humor, or humour, as the case may be.
In the midst of the Monte Shelton Rally I popped online and posted a “Car Photo of the Day: Name that race car” picture. It was one of those ironic twists of entangled coincidence that lead to that post. Let me unravel it for you.
I have a bunch of photos I’ve collected over the years of various cars, and among them is a bunch of race cars. I’m not intimate with many of them, and figured I’d post them here for fun. One group of them were a collection of Indy cars presented at the Amelia Island Concours a few years back. I attended this Concours as part of the Forza Amelia Vintage Rally. I have one photo which I thought matched a model car I have, that was presented to me at the conclusion of another rally, namely the 1999 Cannonball Classic. The Cannonball Classic was a goofball idea hatched by two insane men, namely Brock Yates and Martin Swig. It combined the passions of both of them into a crazy week of old cars, driving insane distances. My Dad & I participated in the Cannonball Classic together and you can read my whole report here.
The guest speaker at the Monte Shelton Rally was Bill Warner, who is the chairman of the Amelia Island Concours, and a frequent participant in the original Cannonball Baker Sea-to-shining-sea Memorial Dash back in the 1970s.
So I posted that photo, as I thought all the events and people were somehow linked.
Then I looked closely at my model and it is similar, but not identical. This appears to be very similar, if not identical chassis to me previously posted race car. Can you name it? Hint: It won the Indy 500 in 1963 (the year I was born)… which adds yet another layer of coincidence here, so lets just all shiver with a bit of deja vu and get back to regular daily life.
When I was a college kid I had a t-shirt that read “Fight Gravity.” I was a climber and it made for a good joke. Now as a middle-aged homeowner I should get one that says “Fight Entropy.”
My son Christopher’s summer project was going to be painting our deck. His reward was to be a laptop for use at college. The first step in the job was sanding and scraping. That took quite a bit of time, especially as the weather here stayed rainy until early July. A couple of weeks ago, when I started inspecting his job as it neared completion of this step, to my horror he had uncovered a LOT of rotten wood. Major portions of our deck have been held together by a layer of paint!
Above: This is the worst of it. We replaced those big main beams two winters ago when they broke under the weight of a big snowfall. Long-time readers of this website will recall that bad winter. After Chris sanded, I tapped the exposed wood with a claw hammer and it basically vanished. Lots of rot in both the intermediate beams, the deck top, and the facia under the railings. I suspect I’ll be completely dismantling this part of the deck soon.
What started as a paint job has transformed into a complete rebuild. Ugh.
Above: Chris painting the trim around the windows.
Above: The same spot, viewed from below. You will note the deck railing is off, and there is a pile of lumber in the driveway. Most of what Chris is standing on has to be replaced. He has a plank-painting factory going on in the garage. I prefer to pre-paint all the beams and planks.
Above: The deck on the south side of the house has two parts, the main part near the kitchen, and the other part near the back bedrooms. A thin walkway connects them. It is still in good shape, with only one support beam that requires replacement. This is a view of that part. Chris has already painted most of it. You can see some rotten planks out in the yard that I removed from the main part near the kitchen. The tarp is up because rain is in the forecast tonight and tomorrow.
Above: This is the main part of the deck. This is where we cook out, sit in the evenings, watch the stars, etc. You can see I’ve replaced three planks here, and done a lot of patching here and there. I bought some uber high-tech deck coating for this section, which requires 4 days to put on, and 7 days of curing. Hence the tarp to make sure it stays dry and out of direct sunlight. Hopefully it will last longer than the 2-3 years we’ve been getting from the paint.
Oh yeah… it has been REAL hot this weekend too. In the 90s, which is very rare here. 😛
Rally results were not available at dinner on Saturday night. Instead we were treated to a guest speaker, Bill Warner. Mr. Warner is an noted Automotive journalist and photographer, racer, and founder of the Amelia Island Concours. He treated us to stories about running the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Sea Memorial Dash back in the 1970s. It was quite enjoyable.
We also learned from the rallymaster that the problematic pre-lunch segment from that day was going to be “taken care of”… which was good news for us. Apparently our instinct that the timing was off (even before we got lost in the “free zone”) turned out to be right. The rallymaster had apparently made some timing errors in the TSD calculations and it was indeed a violation of the laws of physics to stay on-time on that segment. With that tantalizing tidbit in our minds we finished our wine and went off to bed.
The next morning I got up and moved the car closer to our room from the parking area in the field (I placed our car’s rose on the Mercedes 230sl being navigated by Lauren Fine, parked next to the 65E… I figured she’s appreciate it more than Dad!) and wandered off to breakfast and the awards ceremony.
There were 80 cars in the Rally (and another 5 in the Tour), and “medals” were awarded to the top 50. Places 1-though-10 received Gold; 11-25 received Silver, and 26-50 Bronze. Last year we earned a silver medal by finishing in 18th place. Our goal was to improve on that. In this year’s other technical TSD rally we managed to improve just one place from the year before. We hoped to do better than that for this year’s Monte Shelton, and we felt confident in our performance. We were in 11th place after the first day and would have been very happy maintaining that. Given our run yesterday though we didn’t have a lot of hope though. Of course the unknown factor to us was just how much everyone else screwed up, or did better as the case may be. The key to winning at any competition is not only doing well yourself, but also making fewer mistakes than the other competitors.
They read off the places in descending order so we kept expecting to hear our names in the “silver” category… but it never came. Then when they named the 9th place finisher they called us out. NINTH place! Out of 80 cars and only on our second time to this very tough rally! We were, and still remain, ecstatic about this result! We racked up 240 penalty points. The 1st place car had 82, second 138, third 145, fourth 158, fifth 162, sixth 168, seventh 223, and eighth 228. Had we not collected that off-course penalty we would have placed seventh. So Dad got us to seventh place, but I dropped us to ninth.
Unfortunately we had a long drive ahead of us and the prospect of the traditionally BAD northbound I-5 backup on Sunday afternoon, so we had to leave the breakfast and dash.
Dad was still packing while I was out playing Tetris with the E-type’s minimal boot. I had packed light, even leaving out a day’s shirt on the assumption that I’d get one from the rally this year. Of course, Murphy’s Law kicked in and we didn’t get shirts (I had to wash one of mine in the hotel sink and hang it up to dry!) but instead they gave us blankets. I always carry a blanket (from the 2006 GTTSR) so the last thing I need right now is two MORE blankets. Thankfully the GTTSR blanket has nylon webbing straps and buckles around it, so I just snapped it to the luggage rak to make room in the boot for our luggage plus two new blankets! (and no shirt! =P )
While I was handling that situation, Vidur Verma and his navigator Cecilio Rodriguez arrived to start packing up their 1938 BMW 327/28 which was parked next to the 65E. We spoke for a bit as I admired his car. They too were going back to the Seattle area and were thinking of alternative routes. I told him how we planned to go, and shot a few photos of his car.
Shocking what changes happen in 30 years of car design, isn’t it?
We chose this route, which avoids the trouble-prone sections of I-5 for weekend traffic:
Additionally, is route brings us close to the Windy Ridge observation area on Mt. St. Helens… a truly amazing place. Dad has never seen the devastation area up close, so it was a worthwhile trip. Unfortunately we found two issues once we arrived: The mountain was completely shrouded in clouds, and the road to Windy Ridge was closed. Oh well, this route was still a far more enjoyable romp through western Washington than I-5!
We looped south and east around Mt. Hood, also shrouded in clouds:
Then down to Hood River, over the bridge there, then along Washington State Route 14 along the north shore of the Columbia River through the Gorge. This was familiar territory to me, as my son Christopher & I traveled it back in 2003 in the Jaguar on our first rally together, The Run To The Gorge. This section of road, along with the tunnels have been immortalized in a semi-famous YouTube video:
The fun starts around 2:30.
We did not have a video camera this time, but the route, road, and tunnels were just as fun as they were five years before. Just past them Dad’s phone rang and I had to slow down to quiet things for him to talk, eventually pulling off to allow him to carry on a conversation. Good thing too as there was a Washington State Patrol car waiting there:
We drove up and past Mt. St. Helens, enjoying every inch of that wonderfully twisty road. People rave about roads like Deal’s Gap, but I have to say I’ll take these roads out west over those anytime. Unlike there, I had over 100 miles of twisty two-lane, with lots of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gear driving, all while tugging the steering wheel this way and that with a smile plastered across my face… and we saw MAYBE three other cars. It was heavenly!
We dropped down the other side to Randall, then up through Eatonville (where a Local Cop gave us a “thumbs up” as we drove by… even though he had another car pulled over for a ticket!) then up to I-5 north of Puyallup. I dropped Dad off at my sisters house, and headed home to Arlington. The E-type is resting in the barn now, with a few minor bits of work to do before the 2008 GTTSR. I’ve placed our “Gold medal” next to last years’ Silver in my “trophy case”:
…and the Abarth Zagato steering wheel I bought at the auction is now on my office wall:
This rally was a ton of fun! I’d love to run it again next year. HUGE kudos and thanks to my AWESOME navigator, my father Charles Goolsbee. He is the one truly responsible for our excellent placement in the standings… he tells me where to go and how fast… I just press the loud pedal and turn when he tells me to.