Car Photo of the Day: Mystery Car
I have been woefully remiss in posting of late, both CPotD and regular updates. Truth is, I’ve been living out of hotels for the past two months plus! I’ve been travelling for work, and moving my household from northwest Washington to central Oregon. Nick & I have been at the latter location for the past two weeks as he’s started school, and I’ve been attending to all those things that setting up a new household takes… first of all being getting the house itself! As many have heard, securing loans these days is damn near impossible, with banks dragging their feet and tracking every penny, both yours and theirs. Sort of the opposite end of the scale from the freewheeling zero-down, credit for anyone with a heartbeat days of not so long ago. Honestly I prefer it somewhere in between, but more on that later. The good news is, we have the house and the movers arrive tomorrow. Stay tuned for details.
Meanwhile here’s a “Name that car” mystery for you all to ponder while I set up power, TV, Internet service, and start unpacking our goods in a new home. I found it in a museum (obviously) and it stuck me as a real oddball in a lot of ways. What oddities can you note about it? Can you identify it? Discuss in the comments…
Mystery Cargo!
I saw these devices being carried on a flatbed in Tacoma, WA. Can you identify them?
Milestone
This morning I pumped the hydraulic fluid out of my car lift and dismantled the lift mechanism.
This is essentially the final step prior to moving. I’ve packed up and organized everything else. The movers come in a little over a week. On Tuesday Nicholas & I depart for Oregon as he begins school on Wednesday. We’ll be living in a hotel for at least a week while the house closing completes. It has been a long and stressful month for the Goolsbees… here’s hoping things start to smooth out going forward.
More Flights of Fancy, and some difficult news.
Last weekend I was in Northern Virginia and on my way back from the Bull Run battlefield I noted an exit for the Udvar-Hazy Center which was very close to my hotel. I popped in with camera to check it out. It was 90 minutes from closing, so I was unable to see the entire museum. I did capture some highlights however:
It was really a dash, with inadequate equipment (I really should have had my monopod for better shooting in the low light) but it was an interesting place that I’ll have to return to some time. You can see the rest of my shots here.
My life all went awry later when I received a call from home with Sue informing me that her mother had passed away. This news was both shocking and upsetting. Sue’s mom just spent several weeks at our home, on her usual summer trip to visit family, and she looked better than I’d seen in years. In fact she had accompanied Chris & I to the airport when I left for the east coast, as Chris was dropping her off at King Street station to ride the Cascades down to Portland to visit her brother next on her trip. Sue was beside herself, as you would expect.
It always seems that things like this happen when I’m away on business trips. 🙁
Thankfully my new employer is understanding and compassionate, and in short order I was able to change my travel plans, cutting short my stay in northern Virginia. I’ll return again sometime soon however.
A day off in Northern Virginia
I’m on the east coast this week, in Northern Virginia to be specific, visiting my new employer‘s facilities. As I have some downtime over the weekend, I figured I’d hit some sights that I’ve never seen. When I was a child I had relatives in Maryland and visited all the major sights of the Capitol: the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, the Capitol, and of course the Smithsonian museums. This time I decided to drive down to Manassas, the site of the first major battle of the US Civil War. I brought my camera along so I could share.
I stopped at a few sites of minor skirmishes, but the main battlefield at Henry Hill provided the best photographic opportunities…
After Manassas I drove to the Capitol and stopped along the river to shoot low-flying aircraft (seen above) and then over to the Jefferson Memorial. I’ll post those images soon.
On the road…
OK, so I haven’t really been on the ROAD, so much as up in the air, or in a hotel, or working at my new gig. Apologies dear readers, for the dearth of updates, and the complete lack of “car photo of the day” posts. I am at home now after spending two weeks in northern California being immersed in my new job. Facebook is a very cool company to work for, and my new colleagues are awesome.
My time home here is really just a “touch & go” visit, as I arrived back very late on Friday (actually Saturday morning!) and will be flying out to the east coast on Tuesday afternoon. While I’m here I’m taking care of household issues. While I was gone the skylight over our “sun room” sprung a leak during the first rain in ages, and caused the back room of our basement to collect some water. It is as if the house knows we’re leaving and is throwing a fit. Yesterday I bought sheets of polycarbonate twin-wall to replace the 30+ year old poly sheets, and this morning Nick & I were on the roof replacing it. I did a better job of installation, using silicone sealant and bonded washers on the stainless screws. It should last another 30+ years.
I’ve also finished the complete dismantling of the BioDiesel refinery out in the barn (Sorry Bruce!) so now we’re ready to move when I come back from the east coast.
Hopefully the east coast datacenters will be less distracting than my visit to Silicon Valley, where meetings at HQ interrupted my time in the facilities learning the Facebook way of doing things. If so, I should be able to have some time in the evenings to post to the blog here. (sound familiar?)
OK car geeks… where was the above photo shot?