sick of being sick

so right on queue, following a week long road trip vacation, comes the annual week long cold/flu thing. usually follows being stuck in the confines of an airplane next to patient zero, but this year my better half blames it on me out on the ferry in san francisco bay without a coat and wearing flip flops too late in the evening. pfft.

i blame it on the coworker calmly telling others about the cold that's run through her family, and she was still fighting it off, but was valiently slugging through a day at the office a few days before our trip. her, or any one of the thousands of people in the city that happen to sneeze or cough or hoick in your vicinity. but no, i don't think getting chilled for a couple of hours will do it to you alone.

whatever. thusly, with said illness, i am banished from the house, in the effort to prevent the mother-in-law from catching any respiratory bug, which at her age, may not be in her best interest, which also separates me from my computer and my blog. my kid is in my house, and i'm not going to get mr. law student sick. just spent my vacation fund, so not going to a hotel. end up at my parents house for almost a week. i think i heard my dad sneezing a couple of days ago, but mostly he's just a couch potato, asleep in front of the tv.

decided i was well enough to go to the office on friday. was about forty minutes from shutting down and heading over to ruby's last show of the season, when the boss asked if i could tweak a file and get it uploaded to a vendor before i left. spent over two hours trying to ftp the fricking thing, and it was the ftp at the other side that kept crashing. file too big to use dropbox.

ended up simplifying the file and sending it in parts, only to have the last piece get stuck. sent an email to the boss, who later responded that i hadn't been expected to stay, and the guy at the other end had left the office for the day. pissed that the traffic was too effed up to tackle and get to the show in time, headed back over to my mom's for another night. glad i'd kept a couple of extra sets of things to wear over there just in case. at least when the company moved their headquarters, it's only a five minute drive on the freeway to my mom's house.

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enough blathering. sick of it now. here's a car from the show in san diego i mentioned before. they block off about five blocks right near horton plaza in downtown sd. my better half didn't really see anything he wanted to shoot, and ended up being my bag boy the whole time, pulling my gear around, but i suspect mostly just checked out my ass when he thought i wasn't looking. he also made sure i was properly slathered in suntan lotion and that i didn't forget to drink water.

really expected a lot more there than there was. i mean, i've been to shows in rialto, riverside, whittier,... with blocks closed off and they get cars out the ying yang. this one mostly had blocks segregated, by decade or type. most crowded block was full of ferraris and lamborghinis...freakin teenie peenie club members. maybe i'll post a shot of those. nah. seen one, you seen them all. just imagine the show room in all reds and yellows and whites, and that was what was on the street.

then there were muscle cars <yawn>, too many with their hoods up, so buh bye. too few chevys and low riders. really didn't take so many pictures as i'd have hoped to. guess we'll have to make a point to go the show in chicano park next spring, to find the kind of cars we like.

i was only going to shoot the hood ornament on this one, when the owner walked over and asked if i'd vote for his car. they had awards for the different categories, but also a people's choice, so he was being proactive. i shot the car while he convinced my better half to also sign for it. it was a nice car, and i liked shooting a car in a different setting, so there you go.

new life

here's another of the few images i took from the showlow's st hilary show. don't really pay attention to low riders unless they have some exceptional, eye-catching something that compels me to stop.

there weren't too many at the show, at least that i noticed, being lost in a reverie of old chevys. i liked the artwork on this one, and that it was low enough i didn't curse the day for not bringing a ladder to get it. per their facebook, the club has reformed from a long ago disbanded group.

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so i took a week off with my better half, on a road trip from san diego to sausalito, with stops in between, celebrating our fifth anniversary. makes it difficult to post without a computer, and from an ipad or iphone, formatting is a bitch. i managed to only post once while on the road, and have since fixed what was screwy with the previous car post.

i did check for car shows, but only found one near us in san diego, and didn't want to drive over to oakland for another at the end of our trip. i'll post a few pictures from san diego soon.

taking the day off to sleep in and take care of laundry, etc., after the eight hour drive home yesterday. not looking forward to going back to the office tomorrow. it's always such a shock to get back into the swing of things, that we really only take time off once a year or so. i think they managed to get by without me, but hopefully they missed me anyway.

here's a shot from pacific grove, up by monterey, at sunset. nice, but needed some clouds or something. it was very windy, other than that, a pretty average sundown.

on the down low

i guess its cool to customize a car and install hydraulics or airbags or windbags or whatever you call it. you can make them hop, bounce, dance, sit on three wheels, and slam to the ground. i seriously doubt this one would ever bounce; it would mess up the beautiful lines too much. leave that to the low rider guys.

then there's my dad. drives my sister's mid-90s nissan quest. no hydraulics at all, yet he's had it up on two wheels. only way to explain the broken motor mounts. no idea what he was doing or where the hell he managed to do it. sometimes a man's heart is a deep well of secrets. or maybe he just forgets stuff.

there is never enough time

i'm kinda bummed about this show in pico rivera. sponsored by the showlows car club, i had several people tell me about it. i was going to be out of town with my better half and miss it.

turns out, our plans weren't cast in cement, and we were heading out the day of the show. had a little time to spare and it was not that far out of the way to the freeway, so we swung by the show. my better half stayed out with the car and cleaned the windows, while i did a too quick run through.

so bummed i didn't have more time. there was a smorgasbord of exactly the type of cars that i love. had to just quickly pick and choose. it was around noon, also a hot day, which slows me down. and then in the midst of it all, one of my kids calls and wants to chat. so even less time available to shoot. ah well.

found this one in a line of pharaoh's cars. very nice line up. hope to see them again.

this show was a first. hopefully it will become an annual, and that i can drag my better half in there with me.

how much is too much?

i gotta think there is a point when one should stop. think michael jackson and his face nipping hobby, until his nose was practically falling off without the tape on it. what's the point of tweaking your face, if you're always covering it up with a mask?

i think there was a time, that this car would have been just fine. new upholstery, more than enough decorative vents on the hood, along with a chromed grille and wheels. that would have been nice and clean.

but it seems like a crazed pinstriper got set loose on this puppy, and went mask crazy with his mad airbrush skillz. and the glitter bomb. so much stuff globbed on, that there seems to be bubbles and creases on the paint. what causes that? a build up? almost like the decals we'd put on model airplanes as kids, and didn't squeeze the air out from underneath. you can kind of overlook it because the darker patterns distract the eyes, but still...wait a minute. is it just one of those car wraps, poorly applied, with some mad photoshop skillz killin it? that would be cheating, now wouldn't it?

could be worse. could be a honda with a big whale tail, all lowered in the front and all pimped out, windows tinted black. and an engine that sounds like the squirrels are going full tilt on the wheel that doubles as an engine. and big ass speakers in the trunk and sub woofers in the doors, rendering the passengers sterile with the sonic boom of the crap rap playing inside...oh, sorry. thinking of a car i passed on the street not so long ago. pfft.

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on another note, my better half finally got a call on wednesday, with the opportunity to get into LAX and shoot pictures of the shuttle, up close and personal, before they moved it out. ya, we know a guy...

any other day, he'd have been there, no question. but it was our fifth anniversary, and told the guy, on this day, he just couldn't. of course he didn't mention it, until it was too late to go. i would have told him to go ahead, or else take me with him. errr. figures he'll see it at the museum eventually, and we'd seen the one out at dulles before. guess he has his priorities straight. i think i'll keep him. happy anniversary d.

everything old is new again

i'd never seen one of these before, at least that i can remember. dropped to the ground, it was hard to decide which point of view would be best. i have a front view, that i like, but it doesn't give you a sense of how low it was, so i'll show you this one instead.

wish the three dudes had moved out of my shot, but they persisted in just standing there for more than five minutes, so i just said screw it, and shot away. maybe that was the whole point of staying there anyway. at least they aren't being dorks and making faces.

low down

i have a hard time passing by the back end of impalas, with their sweeping fins. so i found this version in the form of a wagon unusual, but still enough to make me stop.

turns out to also be a viejitos member, only this one for the inland empire. nice and low. which is exactly how i was to get this shot, which if i remember right, had the owner wondering what the heck i was doing behind his car. for all i know, that's his kid sitting there, wondering the same thing.

miss the light? uhh, no.

i went to a couple of shows on friday, which i have not been to in at least a year. because frankly, they were sucking donkey balls. i'll give a show a couple of trys before i decide it ain't worth the drive for either the number or variety of cars, or else just the people and/or vibe. and with the price of gas spiking thirty cents in a day, i guess i should get more picky.

on fridays, there are at least three shows i used to hit up when i got started. and all are basically on my way home, so it worked out. the one in garden grove used to be pretty huge for a main street show, until the local businesses, the show organizers and cops squeezed out the bad boys, and then pissed off a lot of the car owners.

that was the first one i stopped at. not much has changed in a year. pretty much the same diehards there. not as many cars as before. the latin gents were there, and i did take time to shoot their cars, because they're pretty sweet. i'll post some of them eventually.

then, for whatever reason, i decided to give the elks club in buena park another shot. i'd been there a couple of times a year ago. where i found quite a few of the deserters from garden grove. i also shared the story, here somewhere, of my parking in one of the grand poobah's spaces, getting told to move it, and how that wasn't very welcoming at the time. that, and the fact that there warnt much there.

forward to yesterday: the lot was packed, lots of hoods down, no one really bothered me, and surprise, surprise, several of the viejitos were parked out in the back along the wall. mind you, i had just spent the previous sunday at their show in fullerton, but i'm always happy to see the cars in new locations, at a different time of day.

ok, it's getting late, almost midnight, so i gotta wrap this up.

i took a bunch of shots of their cars, then went off to take others up by the entrance. as it was getting later, and closer to raffle time, everyone gathers in the middle of the lot. so i went back over to the best cars, as the sun was starting to go down. it was awesome, because, no one was around to get in the shots, and i could pretty much do what i wanted.

there was one old guy (it's an elks lodge after all) who walked slowly by, who remarked on how i was losing the light. i told him, i certainly wasn't, and i was going to be getting my best shots right about now. wonder if he'll see them when i post them.

thinking i should have stayed a bit later, but this will do. and i came thisclose to going to ruby's as well, but i had to eat, and figured they'd be about done when i got there. so now i probably won't make it there until their last show of the season at the end of this month.

this car was/is for sale. i know how to get hold of him, if you're interested.

de la chica

sorry i can't chat tonight. gotta get to bed, but wanted to at least post a purty picture. this one belongs to one of the ladies at the viejitos show. she came over and chatted for a minute. beautiful car...so jealous.

ttfn.

the ’burb

ya, ya, i've posted this one before. i have no problem reposting cars, when i think i got a better shot of it. or just because i can.

in this case, a different location, time of day, and light. and it's so early, there's no one around. booyah!

orange you glad i posted today?