A Sunday Drive.

Sorry about the fuzzy phone-cam shot… like an idiot I left my “real” camera in the barn when we drove out!)

My friend Dan O’Donnell is in town this week on business. I’ve “known” Dan for a dozen years… since 1995. To but a more dramatic scale on it, since he was 38 and I was 31! Oddly enough, though the bizarre nature of “Internet Friendship” we never met face to face until just a few years ago. Funny how that works. We do have a lot in common and know a lot about each other as a result. I almost bought a vintage car from him in the late 90s (a 911sc targa), and later, when he was trapped in a job-from-hell scenario, I made an introduction (I think we’re supposed to call that “social networking” now) that resulted in Dan landing a dream job. I love it when that happens. Since that day, he’s promised me a dinner as a “thank you” for that intro, and he finally settled that debt this weekend.

Dan celebrated his 50th birthday this past Saturday and I was privileged to have him spend it with me & Sue, at our favorite local restaurant in Arlington. It was an odd accident of schedule that our long-delayed dinner fell on his birthday, so it was odd to have him buying dinner. In exchange I gladly nabbed a wonderful Pinot Noir from the Captain’s List. I know Sue thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, so a fine time was had by all.

The weather I’m sure was a shock to his Southern California system, as he arrived at Sea-Tac on some pre-dawn flight from LAX into drizzle and low clouds… topped off by the melting remains of an eight inch snowfall up at our house up in the Cascade foothills. In preparation I had a fire going in the fireplace and despite what I recognized as a rapid warming trend (the snow disappeared in a matter of hours), he was obviously appreciative of the extra warmth afforded by the fire. In fact, when it died off he sheepishly asked if I’d stoke it up. We enjoyed an afternoon of just chatting. Dan’s had a rough time of late as his father recently passed away, quite suddenly. We talked a lot about fathers, sons, and family relationships… and he had the opportunity to witness it all as I fielded calls from both my father and Christopher, who made an unexpected call from Chile Saturday afternoon.

When we returned from dinner, the stars were out and I made a bold prediction that we’d have a sunny Sunday. Sunny enough to take the E-type out for a drive. Well, I was wrong and we awoke to high overcast. Undaunted, we took the Jag out anyway. The roads were dry, but it was quite … “brisk.” I drove the car east on SR 530 to the location of the famous “Miss January” photo, where we got out of the car and admired Whitehorse Mountain. I invited Dan to take the left seat for the trip home and from that moment on, he just had this goofy grin on his face.

Like all genuine “car guys” he treated the machine with respect and tenderness, but could not resist the temptation to play with the loud pedal now and then. Doing that just made him grin even more. I got the distinct impression that he enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too.

Hypocrisy in the Middle East

Hypocrisy in the Middle East
“If honest democratic elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, many countries would elect religious fundamentalist leaders hostile to the United States.”

In six short paragraphs this Congressman has summarized exactly why the US’ actions in the middle east over the past six years have been complete blunders. As Robert David Steele, the founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command famously said: “America has begun a hundred-year war on six different fronts precisely because the President lacked intelligence in every sense of the word”

The boobs in the White House have gone off half-cocked in all the wrong directions, over and over again. Completely unable and unwilling to finish what they start. If you recall the initial attacks were to bring Osama bin Laden “to justice”… well they abandonded that after a while and decided to institute a “regime change”… leaving that job unfinished, they then dropped that to win an election at home… something they actually accomplished, but with the message “stay the course.” I kept asking “What Course?” but nobody ever answered that question. Go figure. Now they’ve decided to “bring democracy to Iraq.”

Congressman Paul states the obvious point that I have always made, which is IF we allowed the citizens of these Arab nations actually vote in free elections, they all vote for Mullahs. Mullahs whose campaign promises and platform would all be “Death to America!”

Even a dim bulb like George W. Bush should be able to figure that out, right?

Apparently not.

Christopher’s first email from Chile

The beach was nice, but the pacific seems to be cold no matter where I go whether it be Alaska, Washington or Chile. I religiously applied sunscreen and avoided the sun as much as possible, but I managed to burn the one part of me I didnt expect to get burned or bother to apply sunscreen, back of my damn hands.

We received our first email from Chris in Chile today!

I emailed friends and family with his contact details last week. If you would like them let me know via email. (note: If you READ rather than click the “contact me via email” link over there in the right-hand column you can figure out how to contact me.)

He sounds well, and as I suspected is not quite up to speed with his Spanish language skills, but that will sort itself out naturally as time goes on.

Ouch!

According to my SCM pocket price guide, this car is worth AT LEAST $1,000,000. Yes, that says One Million Dollars. Feel free to hold up a pinky and impersonate Dr. Evil when you say that. Add to that fact a footnote which says “a car with all its original parts and no stories will bring three to four times that of a “bitsa” with only a few authentic parts.”

I had a chance to look over this car very closely prior to this … um… incident, and it appeared to be very original. The car had a wonderful patina and it appeared to be a survivor. Here is what happened as I understand it: On day two of the 2005 Colorado Grand, the owner of this car stopped in Telluride for some morning coffee as the rally left for Ouray and Durango. This was the day that we went intentionally off-route and the little Alfa SZ-1 punctured its gas tank on a chunk of rebar. Yes, two “ouches” in one day! A lady in an SUV backed into the bonnet of this Jaguar while leaving her parking space.

Mind you, only sixteen (though I have also heard the number 18) Jaguar XK-SS cars ever left the factory in Coventry. The XK-SS is therefore probably the most rare and valuable Jaguar car (with the possible exception of the XJ-13, of which only one exists.) A factory fire in the winter of 1957 destroyed all the tooling and remaining D-types which were being converted into XK-SS models. This car has a value somewhere between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000… possibly even more. So imagine what happened to the lady when she called her insurance company to report the “fender bender” or in this case “Bonnet bender”…

“Hello, Biginsuranceco, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I had a little accident.
“Is everybody OK? Can I have your policy number ma’am?”
“Yes, I’m fine, nobody got hurt. My policy number is (blah, blah, blah.)”
clickety-click “OK, here we go, I have your file. So tell me what happened.”
“Well, I stopped at Starbucks and climbed back into my Tahoe and started to back out of my space. I swear I didn’t see this little tiny car anywhere in my mirrors.”
“Alright, what happened next?”
“Anyway, I just barely tapped this eensy-weensy little sports car’s front side. It is barely a scratch! I swear, men are so hung up about cars… you would think the guy was going to have a heart attack, or cry or something. I apologized, but jeez!
“OK Ma’am, can I have the make and model of the car you hit?
“I didn’t HIT it, I barely scratched it!
“Sure ma’am… the make and model please?”
“I think he said it was a Jag-yooo-war.”
“clickety-click “OK, Jaguar. What model? XK8?”
“Something like that… XK-something… hold on, I have it written down, in fact it said it right above the scratch…”
“Take your time ma’am.”
“Here it is! XK-SS.”
clickety-click “I don’t have the model in my computer.. I have XK8, XKR, XJ, even XKE, but those are real old. Did the owner state what year it was?”
“Um, yeah… hang on… 1956”
“OK, bear with me, I have to do a special query for anything older than 1967. Just a moment…” clickety-click
“Is this going to take long? I have to pick up my children from soccer practice.”
clickety-click “Just a moment ma’am, we’ll have this wrapped up as soon as possible.” clickety-click
“That guy was so annoying… you would have thought I ran over his kid… “
clickety-click “uh-oh”
“Pardon me?”
“I said ‘uh-oh'”
“What do you mean… ‘uh-oh’?”
“I don’t know how to say this ma’am, other than… you just hit a car worth over one million dollars.”
*thud*

Imagine what her premiums are now? Will anyone even insure her? Did her husband leave her? The possibilities are endless. Discuss…