An unusual week.

My week started out normal enough. I went out for a beer with John “Mad Dog” Morrow (who is nothing at all like his moniker BTW) on Tuesday night, at the Diamond Knot Brewpub in Mukilteo, right by the ferry dock. (that begins a sort of nautical theme for the week!)

Wednesday evening I met my sister, her husband, and my nephew, along with my parents, (here in town for a few days,) at Chinooks at Fisherman’s Terminal on Salmon Bay near the Ballard Bridge.

My little sister MP, and her son Ian.

Carol Goolsbee and her grandson, Ian Gotschall.

It was fun to see them, and after dinner we went to their home in the North Beach area of Ballard. Ballard was our home from 1987 through 1999 and I have a lot of fond memories of the place. However it has changed a lot, with urban sprawl overrunning the place. It was a quiet neighborhood when we lived there, and now it seems to be getting overbuilt and gentrified. No longer home to small industry (usually relating to fishing or boats) it is being overrun with apartments, condos & coffeehouses. For example the little grocery store where we used to shop is now a HUGE condo complex.

After I left my sister’s home I drove by my old house, then stopped at my favorite little park on Sunset Hill, overlooking Shilshole Bay. It was just as I remembered it: Quiet, contemplative, and one of the best (unknown!) views in Seattle:

twilight over Shilshole Bay and Puget Sound.

Hard to see in the darkness, but trust me, it is amazing.

The next morning I left work early and hopped aboard a ferry going cross-sound to Bainbridge Island. From there I drove across Agate Pass, through the Kitsap, and over the Hood Canal bridge to the south end of Discovery Bay near Port Townsend.

The Bremerton Ferry off the Duwamish Head, shot from the Bainbridge run.

The TDI sits on the Bainbridge ferry. Seattle fades away behind.

At Discovery Bay I went to the home of Doug & Vicki Breithaupt, which is an old schoolhouse (where Doug attended in 1st grade.) I was there to attend a celebration of Vicki’s life, as she passed away on April 21st after a long struggle with breast cancer.

the Breithaupt home, on a hill above Discovery Bay

The turnout was amazing, with well over one hundred people attending. Thankfully given the nature of their home, we could all fit inside:

Doug Breithaupt sharing memories of Vicki.

The ceremony itself was very nice, with Doug presenting images of Vicki through her life and their marriage, followed by memorials provided by friends and family. Following this, three of their four children provided us with some music:

Sophia Breithaupt smiles after playing her recorder for us.

Amelia Breithaupt plays the violin, while her brother Bentley waits to accompany her on trumpet.

Afterwards we all enjoyed a potluck meal. Doug & Vicki have participated in, and organized many vintage car rallies here in the Pacific Northwest and it seemed that at least a quarter of the attendees were car people. Doug works for a non-profit that is involved in higher education scholarships and they announced that two scholarship funds were being set up; one in Vicki’s memory, to be awarded to students usually overlooked in traditional scholarship programs. The scholarship will seek out achieving students who might not qualify for traditional awards based on financial need or high-GPA. The other fund will specifically help the four Breithaupt children.

After the celebration ended I headed to Port Townsend to catch a ferry home, via Whidbey Island and Deception Pass. After a short wait, I boarded a very small ferry, the MV Steilacoom II. It seems to be far too small a vessel to be plying the waters at the mouth of Puget Sound, which is open to the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north and northwest. If any waters are going to get rough on any route the WSF runs it is this one. This evening however the weather was truly spectacular.

Rowers in Port Townsend wait for the ferry to depart.

Mid-Sound, as we crossed the main shipping channel a VERY large Ro-Ro (car carrier) appeared on our starboard bow, traveling northward at high speed. It is always impressive to see such a large vessel at speed. The Steilacoom’s skipper had to slow, and give way to the behemoth, even making a sharp turn as we crossed the wake in order to take it bow-on.

The large car carrier is the Swedish ship M/S Elektra, out of Stockholm sailing for Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines. The photos do not adequately show how truly immense this ship is (228 meters/750 feet long) A bit of googling revealed that she’s recently been elongated and can cary 7194 cars. I watched her cross our bow, and sail off into the sunset.

Here’s a brief digicam movie from the Steilacoom II’s stern. A 360° view around, starting from NE, counterclockwise around:

You can see the Elektra there near the sun. Sorry about the bad sound and shakey-cam at the start.

The drive up Whidbey to Deception Pass, then south through Skagit county was wonderful. The sun setting behind me the whole time, as twilight is beginning to last longer and longer here at the higher latitudes. I’m blessed to live in such a beautiful place.

The Truth About The Perpetually Rusty Toyota SR5 Rear Hatch.

Thousands of them, all with rusty hatches.

In early April Eugene, Oregon resident Paul Niedermeyer of thetruthaboutcars.com wrote a review of the Nissan Stanza Wagon under his ‘Curbside Classics‘ category. I commented that surely there will be a followup covering the ubiquitous mid-80s Toyota Tercel SR5, with their invariably rusty rear hatches. These cars sprang up like mushrooms here in the Pacific Northwest, and remain ubiquitous on our roads a quarter century later. Nearly every damn one of them in beige, and every damn one of them now sporting rust spots on their rears. I don’t know why, as the WaSDOT rarely if ever salts the roads, and certainly not in Port Townsend. I posit that there was just something faulty about the construction or finish of these hatches as they came from Toyota. Note how the rest of the car is fine, yet the rear hatch looks like it is in the advanced staged of Kaposi’s Sarcoma. Note the HOLE just to the right of the hatch handle. Next time you see one of these old Toyotas on the road check that spot and I bet you a sushi lunch there is a hole, a rust spot, or a primer spot right there. I see these cars fairly frequently as I drive around Washington state and I swear every damn one of them has a rusty rear hatch, and of those 60% have a rusty hole right at that exact location. Let me know if I’m right.

Niedermeyer affirmed the future appearance of the Tercel, but claimed that in Oregon, they are not equipped with rusty rears. Bullshit. I very much doubt this and offer the above photo as Exhibit A in my case. This Tercel with Oxidized Ass was spotted in a grocery store parking lot in Port Townsend, Washington yesterday afternoon. While the rot on this hatch is a rather advanced case I will verify that almost every Tercel SR5 I see looks like this. I’ll snap and post a photo of each one I see until Mr. Niedermeyer admits the error of his ways.

Name that flu… Schweinerdämmerung!

A bit of a meme has popped up on Twitter, with people trying to come up with a better name for the swine flu and its accompanying media pandemonium. My friend Damian Amrhein tweeted this one he had heard: “porkulinum panicausinus”

I used to work with Damian and his Germanic origins were always a source of geek humor around the office, so this one popped into my mind: Schweinerdämmerung!

Schweinerdämmerung!

It just seems to fit, given the whole “end of the world” hysteria being whipped up by the media. I came home yesterday to a Seattle Times headline in 72pt type “SWINE FLU FOUND HERE” … c’mon folks. More people have died falling off ladders in the last week than have been killed by this illness. But you don’t see any mass panic about the danger of ladders do you?

I don’t watch TV, especially not the news, and barely read the paper or listen to the radio. The 24hr news cycle is just too worthless to spend time on when all they can do is work into a lather about completely pointless things.

Car Photo(s) of the Day: a two-fer.

Gary Herzberg's E-type FHC

Mystery Car with funny sticker

I’ll be “on the road” today, heading over to Port Townsend for a memorial service. Meanwhile here’s a couple of photos for you. The first one is a very nice shot of Gary Herzberg’s 1963 E-type fixed head coupe, taken above St. Mary’s Lake in Glacier National Park on last year’s Going To The Sun Rally. I had thought Gary’s car was black, as up until this point of the rally it had been raining and overall pretty gloomy. On this day the sun came out, and even through the dirt I could see that in fact his car was “Opalescent Dark Blue” as Jaguar called it; that is the Yang to my Opalescent Silver Blue’s Yin.

This photo was chosen to adorn the month of July in this year’s XKEdata calendar.

The second photo was taken on the Classic Motorcar Rally (aka The Annie & Steve Norman/ College Planning Network Classic Motorcar Rally) at the very place I’m heading to today. The rally organizers have always been Doug & Vicki Breithaupt of Port Townsend. Vicki lost her battle with cancer last week and her memorial is today. Last year their plan was to have the rally in eastern Washington, but Vicki’s illness prevent her from traveling a lot, so they held it in Port Townsend. One of the rest/lunch stops was at their home which is an old schoolhouse on the edge of town. I wandered about taking photos of the cars as they gathered and noted this funny sticker on the windscreen of one of the cars. You’ll note the dashboard is quite unusual, so perhaps it will reveal to you what lies outside the frame of the photograph. Have a guess in the comments below.

I’m off to catch a ferry, more on Vicki Breithaupt, Doug, and their children later.

Car Photo of the Day: Another priceless classic, undergoing restoration.

I shot this photo at another rally rest stop, which happened to be a notable restoration shop. This car’s body was off the superleggera frame, and on a jig, undergoing extensive work to be put back to proper shape. As you can see the body is a lightweight alloy and rather delicate at that.

Do you know the car?

Spring Cleaning

Sort of like a trip to the Dentist.

I spent 3+ hours the other night out in the barn with the Jaguar, doing some Spring Cleaning. The very rainy GTTSR last year left the car’s obscured bits VERY dirty. It has been embarrassing to open my bonnet. The E-type sort of opens like a clam, revealing ALL when the bonnet is opened; engine, suspension, everything. Mine has been splattered with dirty water for miles on end, and like all dirt, it has managed to find and fill every available space, nook, and cranny. There was even a splatter line inside the headlight area!

C'mon, open up and say 'ah'

So I put the car on the lift, pulled the wheels of, covered all the sensitive bits with plastic bags and went at the major accumulations of dirt with the pressure washer. Don’t worry, it was a light spraying and never on the outer parts of the car. Mostly up under the wheel wells where there was a thick layer of dirty crud… almost like an undercoating. Next I took the wheels outside and really went after them good with the pressure washer, along with some wheel cleaner, and shortly had them sparkling.

Next came the hard part. I got out a bucket, some soap, and some little scrubber pads and brushes, cleaning by hand the area all around the driver’s side front wheel. The splash guards, the fender, frame, suspension, etc. Just scrubbed and brushed until things were good and clean. Got out the grease gun and squirted some goo into the zerks while I was in there too. So after three hours I had one corner of the car cleaned up, and three more to go.

the clean side

the dirty side... after the pressure washer!

Mind you this is not “Concours d’Arrogance” clean, down to the q-tip level. This is just “Chuck won’t be embarrassed to open his bonnet” clean. Good enough for me.