Car Photo(s) of the Day: My final “BK bunch” cruise-in.

Still Life with Odd Panel Gap & Blower.

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks working like a mad man to clean up the property and prepare for selling the house. We’ve cleaned and painted the house and barn. We hired a handyman to rebuild the last un-rebuilt deck. Now we have to paint it. I’m brewing up as much of the remaining WVO into BioDiesel as I can so I can dismantle the brewery and clean and repaint that part of the barn. I’ve basically been running non-stop. Part of the barn-cleaning process involved moving the Jaguar – a drive from the barn to the garage. As I pulled the cover off the dirty car I realized that it has sat unwashed and unused since the Northwest Passage Rally in June(!) I resolved right then to wash the car, and take it for a drive, even if it was just a run into town for the local cruise-in. So yesterday when I finished the runs to the dump and recycling I pulled the 65E out of the garage and gave her a good sudsy washing… and zipped to the Burger King on Highway 9.

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I slide behind the wheel of the E-type after a hiatus. It sounds so good, feels so good – in fact it is always better than how I remember it. It isn’t neck-snapping, or awesome… just very very good.

Along the way I saw a pair of Morris Minors driving north – obviously returning home from the ABFM in Bellevue. At the cruise-in was the usual collection of yank tanks and muscle cars, plus a few machines I’d never seen here before. I wandered around, chatted with a few guys, and snapped some photos…

The Arlington, WA BK Bunch cruise-in… an informal car show every Saturday evening all year around.

A blown... Fairlane?

Two for the die-hard CPotD car-spotting geeks:

The only other non-domestic machine this time. Can you name it?

This car was next to mine.

Unfortunately I didn’t see many of the folks I usually run into, so I missed my chance to bid them farewell. Oh well.

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Pixels!

Apologies for the lack of updates this week. It has been a crazy 10 or so days.

In short: Sue & I flew down to central Oregon, and found a new home, then we came back and I’ve been working like mad to prep our current home for sale.

As far as house-shopping goes, I am a good husband and just let Sue find what she wanted. I only ask for enough garage/workshop space for my hobbies of old British car maintenance and homebrewing. Everything and anything else is just a “sure honey, whatever you want.”

The choice came down to two places (after discarding dozens of alternatives) and both had excellent detached workshops for me. One had a stunning 270° hilltop view of all of central Oregon and the Cascades from Bachelor to Adams, along with a Garage Mahal of a workshop… easily room for a half-dozen cars and then-some. Unfortunately the house itself was … odd. Really a bizarre mish-mash of architectural styles thrown together in an outrageous excess of late90s/early00s Mcmansionism.

The alternative, and the one we ultimately chose, is a very understated and elegant house, that fits our personal style. It has a modest view (Mt. Bachelor & the Three Sisters) and a fairly generous workshop, though not in the Mahal-class of garages. I think I’ll have to put the homebrewery in storage until Spring, as the property will require a bit of preparation for it. The current owner runs a woodworking shop now, but it should adapt well to a car-wrenching area. Here, have a look for yourself:

The ceiling is a tad low, so lift clearance may be an issue. Not so much for the Jaguar, but certainly for the Jeep and maybe the Jetta. We’ll see.

We move at the end of August, which is timed to have Nick start at his new high school the beginning of September. Meanwhile my blogging may remain sparse until we are settled and I’m in a reasonable daily routine. I start my new job on Monday 8/2, but will be in the Bay Area at first. Would love to meet any Northern California readers for dinner/drinks in early August!

I’ve got a nice backlog of “Car Photo of the Day” posts, so I’ll try to make them live when I can.

Car Photo of the Day: You don’t see these every day!

Name this car.

I encountered this car in a parking lot in La Canada, California as we departed on the return trip northwards back home on our Father-Son road trip last summer. I don’t think I posted it, or made any reference to it at the time, so it is a newcomer here on the web site. In fact I’ve never seen one of these before or since… it is that rare a car.

Larry Wade was with us at the time, so he’s disqualified from guessing the car as he’s seen it!

Car Photo of the Day: Parallax View

Name that car.

This is actually a lousy photo. The depth of field is off – pushed too far towards the lens. Pushed a bit outwards, it would have been a bit better as the window frame and other further bits would have been sharp. Oh well.

However it is salvageable as a CPotD though as the odd view of this car, with a wide lens, and a close perspective on the trailing edge of the window presents a view that few people have really paid attention to. The car itself is somewhat common, and has appeared here before, so don’t go fishing into exotica to name it.

My Next Challenge: Facebook in Prineville, Oregon

Facebook's Prineville, Oregon Data Center.

Now I can finally tell everyone what’s been going on… what all those cryptic status messages I’ve posted on Facebook & Twitter over the past several weeks have meant:

I’ve taken a position with Facebook in their Technical Operations group as the Lead Datacenter Technician at their new Prineville, Oregon facility, working for Ken Patchett. I’ve talked often about the migration of the datacenter industry into rural areas, and now I’m living up to that conclusion. Facebook is a rapidly growing company and performs technical operations on a scale I never could have experienced at digital.forest, so I’m very excited about this opportunity. In the decade I’ve worked at d.f I was immersed in every facet of the datacenter business except scale, as our largest project ever topped out at ~2MW/10,000sq’. Day One at Facebook for me will exceed that scale by a wide margin. I can’t wait to meet my new colleagues and be a vital part of building and operating the best facility on the Internet. I start at Facebook on Monday, August 2nd.

Sue has found a position as a Public Defender in Crook & Jefferson counties. This move will something of a homecoming for Sue as she was born in Prineville and grew up in various small towns in central and eastern Oregon – her dad worked for the USFS. We’ll be close to family now too, as Sue’s dad and two sisters still live there. When I first heard about Facebook’s choice of Prineville for their new facility I joked to Sue about her birthplace being suddenly thrust into the limelight… then a few months later they called me! It was like fate or something. She’s very excited about being able to move back to Oregon. Due to the Oregon State Bar process she can’t start practicing law until early October, but we hope to be all moved down there by early September at the latest to have Nick ready for school.

Nick is mildly apprehensive about all this, as he’s really settled into a good spot in life here in Arlington. He has all those things teens need: great friends, good grades, and a passion (running X-C.) As much as we tell him that he’ll be able to find all that in Oregon, he doesn’t know that … yet. We hope to find a place where he can fit in, so we’ve been emailing the coaches of the various X-C teams in the area.

We’re currently shopping for a home down there (dictated by Nick’s terms above, and of course with some good shop or barn space to build my “Garage Mahal”) and will update everyone with our new address as soon as that process comes to a close.

It is of course tough to say goodbye to our home of the past eleven years here in Arlington, and our friends, family, and colleagues. But we’ll still be in the region. Come visit us at hit the slopes!

This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter in the Goolsbee’s life. As always stay tuned to follow along!

Car Photo(s) of the Day: More of that 1938 Tatra T-87

I posted a tight crop of a headlight and partial bonnet of this car a few days ago. I thought I had perhaps posted a real puzzler, but you guys are all too good. It was properly identified instantly! Perhaps my post title was the give-away as I called it a “Secret Weapon” a shortened moniker it received by the occupying Germans during the Second World War, as it had a habit of killing German officers who drove it beyond its performance envelope.

Until I stumbled upon this example I had yet to see a Tatra T-87 in the flesh. This one appeared before me as soon as I stepped onto the show field of the Art Center School of Design’s 2009 car Show. A great introduction to this amazing car as well, as this example is in near perfect condition. I hovered around it for quite a long time – so long in fact that the car’s caretaker noted my minor obsession and opened a door for me so I could photograph the interior.

I’ll just shut up and let the car speak for itself via my photos. Feel free to share observations, obsessions, and/or Tatra knowledge in the comments!

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