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I’ve had a series of thoughts rolling around in my brain for a while, and a comment made by Robert Farago made them all gell and roll out all at once. I offered it to him as a sort of “rebuttal” to his statement and he published it today. You can read it here:
I normally “preview” things I write here on my blog, but this one came out so fast it never had a chance to show up here first, sorry.
This Triumph 250 was driven by a father/son duo in a couple of the GTTSR’s I attended a few years back. I don’t know much about the TR5 variant beyond what I read in the wikipedia entry.
This year’s GTTSR event should be starting this weekend. I won’t be there as I chose to do our father/son road trip instead.
This car is a winner. It was victorious in a Grand Prix. Do you know the car? Can you name the race?
Remember when I pulled the yellow tape off the top of the Jaguar and stuck it to the nose of the car? All night at dinner I had people asking me “What’s that yellow tape on your car for?” At first I answered truthfully, but as it involves a long explanation after the third time I just started making things up:
“It is holding the headlights on.”
“Oh, that is to increase visibility.”
“Without it the engine falls out.”
“I put it on to confuse people. It is Confusion Tape. It is working!”
I have to admit, this was enjoyable. It became something of a mental exercise to come up with good ones all day today.
Continue reading “2009 Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally: Day Two”
Life’s been keeping me very busy.
At home Chris & I have been rebuilding the deck. I know… it seems like this is a never ending project! When we bought the house a decade ago the inspector told me “You’ll be replacing the roof, and rebuilding the deck at some point.” The deck has been a piecemeal project that I’ve been doing for years now. The roof we wisely hired out. With the exception of the break when we took the road trip in July Chris & I have been replacing the rotten wood on the deck every spare moment we’ve had this summer. Before July we finished up the southwest side of the house, and after the return from the road trip we started on the southeast side. At first it was just a “replace the railing and a few rotten boards” scope, but once we started on the southeast side I changed it to include replacing ALL the old original wood, both the remaining old joists, and the deck surface. We took the time to pre-paint all the wood (except for the deck surface, which was only primer.) This added at least 3 weeks to the task, and we should have been finished about a week ago except the weather turned right as we hit the home stretch. It is still raining and we can’t add any coats of the “Deck-Kote” stuff until we have a 3-day stretch of sun.
Once this is done we’ll rebuild the railing. It will all be done just in time for winter rains! (sigh)
I’ve missed two JCNA slalom events because of this project. 🙁
At work I’ve been REAL busy on something of a skunk-works project. We’re developing software for managing our power resources. I built a prototype over the past year and this summer I’ve grabbed one of our coding geeks to take my prototype and make it real. To free up his time I’ve been covering his shift as best as I can, which means working nights in our Network Operations Center. My sleep schedule is all messed up. Then to top it off Seattle City Light made our week interesting.
I’m trying to write up the Monte Shelton rally story as fast as I can, so stay tuned.
My father and I have been Vintage TSD (Time, Speed, Distance) Rallying now for eleven years and three months, and you would think we’d have it figured out by now. Our first rally together was in May of 1998, and I flew back to the USA from England, where I was working at the time, to join him in his newly restored “retirement project” E-type Jaguar. We won our class and had a great time driving all over Maine in this amazing car. Since then we’ve rallied all over the country, and once even all the way across it. We’ve done stately tours, and insane regularity rallies where we’ve fallen into almost every trap. The one thing I’ve learned in that time is that when we’re on, we’re on. But… when we’re off, we’re REALLY OFF!
Continue reading “2009 Monte Shelton Northwest Classic Rally: Day One”
I’ve been leaving for work very early in the day recently. Caught this image just as the sun came up over the mountains to the east, casting an exceedingly warm orange glow over everything. This is a white wall with green numbers but the rising sun’s amber glow overpowers the spectrum. I love the shadows, especially of the wood grain itself, and the screws.
Just thought I’d share.