what's up?

pinche…

remembering last year’s show at fedde sports complex. coming up again next weekend, hoping to attend at some point in the day. saw this car at a few shows last year too. nice reflections across the doors. minimal pinstripes is nice too.

watching the padres @ dodgers game on tv in nashville. weird. wth padres just scored in 2nd inning, already 6-0.

today i’ve attended meetings, gone to an art museum, and walked downtown as far as the river. must me some big plans for fourth of july—lots of music stages being set up here and there. good thing i’ll be heading home before then.

it’s also been hot af, but afternoon storm clouds rolled in, and cooled things down to a tolerable level. i was even able to go out for dinner instead of delivery.

topless

no one puts baby in a corner…and yet they did. a lovely convertible from a cinco de mayo show back in 2019 at pico park.

still lived in whittier at the time, and my mother-in-law was still kicking then, so my then theoretical better half was at home tending to her. was easier to get out to so many shows when you are at ground zero of car culture.

she’s been gone six years now, as of a few days ago. time is zooming by.

pomony

digging in archives on this here ipad, whilst i am sat at a random bar, in front of a large screen tv playing some little fifa game of the us vs bosnia, waiting for my burger and fries to arrive. us winning so far, as i understand from the occasional enthusiastic screams from the other tables.

hadn’t drank a coke in over a year and a half; now i’ve had almost one a day in the last two weeks. slippery slope. and i’m paying for it, with being unable to sleep and a pain in my side.

this merc was out early at pomona swap meet back in twenty-nineteen. warm, early morning sun kissing the bumper. and me and a camera, enjoying some alone time.

burger was acceptable, double cheeseburger, but the fries were better.

i’m melting

I managed to get to the bomb club super show a few weeks ago, albeit a bit later than i prefer. i’m usually there before the sun comes up, and the air is still cool, but because i now have a dog that needs watching, i didn’t arrive until after ten-thirty in the morning, only to find i had to wait in line at the gate for an hour and a half to get in, while the staged cars and drivers were searched by security, and driven through the tunnel to the center field.

It was a hot day, and I was almost ready to say fuck it and go back home sans photos, when they finally started letting people through.

it was an excellent turnout, and had i gotten in earlier, i would have taken more pictures and thoroughly enjoyed myself. instead of taking lots of pictures, i was forced to be more selective, because i was in a time crunch to get back to the car and drive another hour home to pick up the dog from daycare before they closed, as well as beginning to melt in the heat and feeling faint. hated to go, but it is what it is.

i thought this picture was a good representation of the quality of cars that showed up, not just focused on one car, but showing a small overview of the field. i do love me a pretty fleetline, though, so center stage here.

so I’m sitting here in a hotel room in nashville, tennessee. here for a few days in town for business, and i think the temperature is supposed to be one hundred and ten tomorrow, with thursday and friday having possible thunderstorms. should be fun. i grew up back east, so this hot, humid weather is no stranger to me, but i’ve acclimated to california weather the last fifty years, so it sucks.

it actually hasn’t been so bad to walk a few blocks after sitting inside frigid cold meeting rooms for several hours. there’s a small breeze, and if i don’t think about the heat, i can just manage to get to the next frigid destination. i joined a group of people walking around the other night, down broadway, towards the neon lights and honky tonk bars. it was still in the eighties after eight pm, and I just couldn’t keep going knowing i’d still have to walk all the way back to the hotel, so I bailed on them. i don’t drink anyway.

bored, and lost in my thoughts, i’ve already read news on the ipad and the tv channels in this hotel are pretty basic—had to watch house of the dragon on my ipad. maybe i’ll write a couple of posts. maybe i’ll chat about my, as it turns out, not so better half, or just leave you hanging, to come to your own conclusions. that could be fun.

meanwhile, my daughter is enjoying the air conditioning at my home, on a temporary respite from bakersfield, and her boyfriend is playing with my dog.

round the corner

1963 mercury comet s-22

1934 ford sedan

car enthusiasts

1934 ford hood ornament

1963 mercury comet emblem

1959 edsel ranger

2026 doria park-04009And8more.jpg

realtors sponsored a community car show in my mom’s neighborhood yesterday. her neighbor is part of a group of enthusiasts, not an official club, so she asked me to go take pics of his cars.

the neighbor’s cars are the edsel and the fairlane (for sale btw).

since mom is willing to watch my dawg when i want to go to some bigger car shows in the future, i agreed.

i got up early, walked my doglette for a couple of miles before breakfast, dropped her with my mom, and walked over to take some pics.

my sister showed up soon after. she likes to talk to everyone, and enjoys cars as well.

it was about what i expected in her neighborhood: a few classics, hot rods, muscle cars, and some random stuff. only about twenty cars parked along the curb by the park. if it wasn’t so close to mom’s house, i wouldn’t have bothered, but being car show starved lately, i’ll take what i can get. i’ll add a few more…but i have to go walk the dog again…

toasted in bakersfield

was asked by my daughter to attend a car show fundraiser up in bakersfield this past weekend. she is involved with helping to rescue dogs and find new homes for them, so it was important to her. i ditched a couple of other shows to do her the favor.

here are a few of the cars i shot, and i’ll post more as i am able.

it was going to go up to ninety-four, so i tried to get started early. i arrived about eight a.m., and it was already warm. i was pretty much done by eleven. hadn’t had any breakfast really, and did get some water from the guys in the booth next to the forty-six ford. mostly stopped, because i was starting to feel dizzy out in the sun. don’t have that big guy following me around anymore to tell me i need to stop, so there you go.

i happened to have some cheetos early in the morning, and while i was eating those, one of my crowns on my teeth popped off. so, one more thing to worry about on monday. probably because a black cat crossed my path the night before.

i adopted one of her rescues about a month ago now, and i find myself walking about ten thousand steps a day against my will.

i try to work my eight hours a day, in between walks, but it’s tough. if she isn’t sleeping, she’s staring at me wanting to go go go. basically, at the end of the day, all i want to do is sleep.

out and about

finally talked myself into getting out of bed last saturday, and showed up rather later than usual to the kustom car club’s monthly bbq out at legg lake.

saw several very nice cars leaving as i arrived. that always sucks that i missed shooting them, but it was my fault for my lateness. and i was taking the chance it wouldn’t get stupid hot outside after lunchtime. hate the heat. makes me all fainty, and burns my pale skin. give me a gloomy or rainy day anytime. i’m in a mood, i guess.

had a nice long chat with an acquaintance from san diego. far from home, but said his wife had sent him out for the day or weekend, while she visited with an ailing friend. said the brakes were out on his own car, so was driving hers.

there were enough cars to keep me busy for a bit. still not sure how long this old computer will last, but make hay while the sun shines, so they say.

i’ve had a long day at work, but feel the need to post something, before i’m forgotten. interesting mercury here. custom chop job. liked the tail lights and pinstriping.

i did have to boot up the better half’s computer to get my pics onto a hard drive, then bring it over here to this computer. haven’t decided if it’s worth using his computer instead; i don’t like the setup. and it’s only slightly less old than my own as well.

actually, i rarely turn on the computers at all lately. other things to do, and a day vanishes quickly when i get lost in the files.

can learn a lot about a person by the files on their computer, and how they’re arranged. smoke and mirrors. it was a nice dream, and now it’s done.

computer is dying too

1954 chevrolet bel air

here’s a shot from too early in the morning at pomona, while i waited for my nephews to show up. mmmm. chevys. (not the restaurant—lol.)

exposures slightly quicker since i’m shooting near the lights, but enough to still blur the moving parts, err, people.

ugh. this computer has probably reached the end of it’s usefulness. it’s more of a hassle to boot up anymore. well, it’s had boot issues for years anyway.

takes up a lot of desk space too.

my better half built it for me probably over a decade ago now, and the parts are so old, i can’t install the latest version of windows. same problem for his pc.

so my options are to transfer everything over the mac, or buy a newer pc. some of my software doesn’t work on the mac, so i’m kind of on the fence for converting over fully versus why waste the money on another computer.

i can pull the hard drives from this one if i have to. the computer keeps crashing, so i’m guessing when i took the cover off and blew the dust out of it a week ago, i probably knocked some part loose. it’s a heavy motherf*ckr, so i don’t really want to drag it out again, but maybe i’ll just pull the cover off and have a look.

just pisses me off when stuff he used to fix easily stops working, and i didn’t pay enough attention when he showed me how to do stuff with it. and i just lose hours farting around with his computers figuring things out, instead of getting other things done. bottomless pit of despair there, and interesting to see how his mind worked by how and what he saved there.

this just sucks. but i’m in a good place otherwise.

visiting

so i’ve been a bit of a shut-in lately. i do go for daily walks, but mostly, i’ve stayed home. i should be doing more cleaning out the clutter, but i seem to spend a lot of time catching up on tv series that i hadn’t seen before.

i enjoyed all the seasons of outlander; currently trudging through the fourth season of the witcher. henry cavill, i’m all about; the current season with one of the hemsworth brothers, meh. probably won’t finish, or watch the next season. he’s such a dud.

two of my better half’s nephews visited this weekend. picked through his books, guitars and skateboards. tried to get them to take some furniture, but they don’t need it. besides that, some of it is heavy oak, and one of the boys just had his appendix out, so no lifting anyway.

i guess i’ll be calling a junk hauler to get it out of the house, as i have no other way to get it out nor anywhere to put it. also would prefer to get rid of several of his computer monitors, which are actually smaller large screen tvs, but i have yet to find remotes for them. they’re good for the tall guy he was, but i don’t like them for computer use.

speaking of computers, mine is so old, i can’t update it to the current version of windows. i will need to figure out how to move over my files to his mac. mine now. finally hacked into it. take that apple. thanks for not helping with that.

anyway, one of the nephews intended to go to pomona for the swap meet. i hadn’t thought about it, but since they both said they were going to go, and be there at the opening of the gates, i told them i would go.

i’m quite glad that i did. perfect weather, lots of cars, friendly people. i arrived at five-thirty a.m., after about four hours of sleep.

i’d gotten a text message when i was halfway there, that the nephews had overslept, and would be arriving after six. they know where i hang out, and would find me when they got there, though they said it would be more difficult with their uncle nearby, since he was so easy to spot.

being there early, in the dark, it was kinda cold, but i hadn’t wanted to haul a jacket around after sunrise, so i quietly shivered while i waited out some long exposures.

one of the bridgetown guys came over to inquire how i was doing, and expressed his condolences. thank you, kind sir. i really am doing better than i should be, probably, aside from too much television viewing. a bit of escapism never hurt anybody.

as usual, i wandered here and there in the show area. i think it was more packed than i could recall it being in a long time. saw this lovely impala somewhere in the middle. told the owner i’d post a picture of it after i gave him my card.

i seem to remember it being more of a salmon color, but the sun hitting it, seems to have made it more red than i think it was.

it was good to get out and stretch my legs. i stayed just long enough to start feeling dizzy from skipping a full breakfast, so left after four hours, though i could have stayed the whole day otherwise.

only felt a little sad as i headed home, as it would have been the time better half and i would have chatted about what we saw and who we talked to at the show.

atypical

it’s been a weird couple of weeks.

standard work load. they gave me a new macbook pro to use. i hate laptops. i haven’t used a mac in years, so everything is so backwards in my head.

from shortcuts, down to the mouse wheel scroll, i just feel like i’m driving a car in london, on the wrong side of the road. and a bunch of network stuff is not doing what i want it to do. it doesn’t want to connect to my mom’s wifi, and i don’t want to change her password, that would screw up other stuff in her house. so i feel like i’m working with one hand tied behind my back.

almost to the point where i will trade my coworker for the pc laptop they gave her. she says it’s a slooooowwww pig, so not really selling me on the idea. might as well stick with it, as my better half left me with his mac studio, and this pc is going to crash one of these days.

other than that, i spent last saturday in temecula, visiting my kid and his children. then when we wore them out, i headed over to vail hq, for the ramble on the ranch show. perfect weather for it, and i was there early enough to still have some light to work with.

i started out in the parking lot instead of the space between the stores this time. in the summer it stays too hot out in the lot and i just can’t stay very long.

didn’t seem like there were as many cars as usual. i think there was some other bigger show going on that day. worked for me, fewer people in the way.

this olds was really spectacular. don’t see many like it. i probably should have posted one of the other shots, but this will do.

my daughter and her boyfriend had intended to meet up with me for the show. unfortunately, her dog sitter called to let them know one of her dogs was not acting right, so they had to turn around and head back home. fortunately, they hadn’t gotten to the grapevine yet, and all the terrible traffic waiting on the other side, so it only took them about twenty minutes.

she rushed him to the doggo er, and spent most of the day there. unfortunately, they had to make that terrible decision to let him go about midnight. heart issue, and though they drained some liquid off of it, it was not going to help, so decided it would be kinder to put him to sleep. he was an old, huge doberman, eight or nine. still didn’t think it would happen so soon, but big dogs don’t live as long as yappy little dogs. glad they were there with him at the end.

so i got a phone call at six am next morning, that my daughter wasn’t dealing with it well, so off to bakersfield i went. super foggy the past few days, and sunday was the same. was lovely and sunny up the grapevine, then descended again into pea soup fog on the other side. didn’t get a whole lot better for most of the afternoon.

long day there. considered staying in a hotel then driving home at three am, but didn’t want to get up early on little sleep. was home by ten pm. still needed to get up early for work and an appointment later on.

got through the week without much sleep. spent yesterday watching outlander. what a good show. i really have a lot of other stuff i need to do, but i just don’t have the mental capacity or energy to deal with it yet.

today, i pulled more of my better half’s shirts out of the closet, folded and threw them in a box. i need to get more boxes from storage. it’s already dark, so not today, and it’s supposed to rain most of this week. sorry, that’s what i wanted for xmas, and looks like i’ll get my wish.

p.s. - happy ninety-first bday mom!