Rambling Update

Today is Sunday. We've already had three beautiful days to make up for the rains. Now it is so nice I don't even know what to do. My wife has been sitting on the front porch lately about once a day. Her barn cats come over and sit with her. They run away when I come out to sit. They are semi "feral". The porch is in desperate need of a new floor. My wife doesn't seem to mind because it's all about the animals and they like the holes in the floor which give them instant access to the crawl space. I don't have the funds or energy for the new porch floor, but it would be a great fall project. We sit out there and drink coffee and watch the tractors work the large field across the street. That's when you know you are retired.





I am not a motor head. In one of my blogs I have a post about what a really bad mechanic I am. I have seven cars. One not running. One in California. I have two cars visiting that are not mine. In the last week or so, I have had three cars break down and wind up in various shops. Friday I picked up one of the cars from the shop. I drove it sixty miles and it broke down again. It is back in the shop. That was the second time in two weeks that I had two breakdowns in one day. I can't complain. There was a long period where all six cars just did their job. I'm bad about maintenance. I take them to Jiffy Lube, but that's it.





A while back, after our fly-in, a good buddy of mine made me an offer. This unnamed buddy, let's just call him Dempsey, had an idea. He suggested I let him base and store and work on his little sports car in my shed and he in return would work on my "Brittish piece of sh-t". Well, I have never been able to afford a mechanic to work on a hobby car. So I took him up on it. My little Brittish car is called a TR-6 and it was way not running. It could not even move with it's rusted brakes locked. It had not been driven in about 13 years. I have had it eight years and kept it high and dry in my shed and in 2003 I had patched the floorboards so it would not be like a "Fred Flintstone" car. Our first day of working on the thing was just getting the bees nests out of it and making sure the snakes would not come back. About three weeks after our "deal" I found myself driving the crazy little thing down the runway at 50 mph with no brakes. Fueled by a soda bottle full of 100LL aviation gas run through brand new fuel lines into a new fuel pump into the unknown carburators. We had robbed a battery out of my jeep. I was amazed the starter and the clutch and for that matter the engine itself, mostly worked. It was a long way to come from a "dead" car. After that drive I was happy and telling Dempsey he was a "genius" and a "wizard". And he was and is. But there is a long long way to go. Last Saturday we nursed the car about thirty miles on back roads to a "Wings and Wheels" fly in. Dempsy drove the TR and I followed chase in the Ford pick up. We had a great time. Saw two B-25 Mitchells, a Corsair, a T-28, T-6's and many others. And so many beautiful cars. You know. You've been to car shows. If you saw any one of the cars in a grocery store parking lot you'd be blown away. But when there are 200 of them you barely have time to give them a look. I coveted a beautiful cream white Studebaker Avanti parked along side it's show mate, a cherry Hawk. There were 60's convertables, Corvairs, which my mechanic and I both like. Antiques like Model A's and T's, rat cars, etc. you know. But there was my little Triumph on the front line by the planes. Yes it was a rat. No top. Primer patches, bondo patches, no carpet, every single thing on it needing some kind of attention. Yet as I sat in my lawn chair by my car as if I had an immaculate 1957 T-Bird, I talked to passers by who said things like "Oh yes, I know exactly what this is. There was only one at my High School. I love these" My car was a hit. And we had fun because we knew some of the aviation folks too. I owe it all to you Dempsey. Thank you.

LLITTY :::::+:::::