The Elysian Fields

Kids these days... I am not really a fan of a lot of the tuners out there. I have lawn mowers that sound like they have more power and presence than some of the tinny, high pitched gurgly little tuner cars out there.

My automotive background did begin with some interest in stock car racing and drag racing. For the most part, there's been two cars that have been my focus: the 1969 Camaro and, later, the 1978 Lamborghini Countach. My favorite configuration for the Camaro is to set it up for Trans Am racing: wide tires, suspension tweaked so it can turn corners, and so on.

Back in elementary school, I had a subscription to Car Craft. I also had many issues of Hot Rod, CARtoons, Super Stock, and a number of others. I read and re-read every one of my dad's Road & Track magazines. I think I had a subscription to that at one point, but I'm not sure.

In elementary school, I hung around a garage, drawn there by the owner Fran's pro stock 1969 Camaro, named "Obsession". It didn't hurt that Fran also owned a pro street 1969 Camaro called "Procrastination" or the restoration-in-progress and (I think) unnamed (big surprise here) 1969 Camaro. I helped out, handed out tools, did some stuff around the shop, and some time in late elementary to early junior high, I stayed late at AutoCraft to help them tear down the engine of an early sixties Corvette. Another time, I biked a dozen or so miles to a car show. When I went to high school, the intention was that I would be in the automotive program.

So you figure with that kind of background my cars would be muscle cars or sports cars, right?

My first car was a gift from my parents, a 1976 Dodge Aspen. To say it had issues was putting it mildly. I never owned it, but I did drive the Mercury Marquis. Next up was my parents 1991 Ford Taurus. When we moved down to Pennsylvania, Deb bought a 1982 Chevrolet Citation from her stepmother. I did all the work on that car except for inspections and the water pump. Rebuilt the carburetor on it, even. I think that's when my parents got a minivan, and they gifted us with the Taurus, later named Bessie. When my grandfather died in 2001, my grandmother gifted me with the 1998 Ford Contour, almost never called by its name Mithril.

When Bessie was ailing, we looked into something safer, more stable to cart the kids around and get back and forth. The car would be Deb's, so I mostly kept out of the decision making. She picked out a 2006 Subaru Forester. It was ~ still is ~ the only car I've bought new. I drove it at times, when the Contour was in the shop or when it was snowy. Loved the handling on that, and she often wondered why I didn't drive it more. Partially, it was because I figured the more I drove the newer, better car, the more I'd want to keep driving it, and partially it was because even though I liked lots about the Forester, I wasn't too into the whole wagony SUV thing. Well, I kind of had already picked out my new car, a 2005 Subaru Legacy GT Limited. It just never got to the point where we could afford to get a new car.

A key point, to me, about the Subaru was the all wheel drive. It handled beautifully in all weather situations. It also kind of spoiled me. I'm not sure I could bring myself to buy a vehicle without AWD. Although this does rule out the Camaro and the Countach, it does still leave open the possibility of a Gallardo or Murciélago sometime down the road...

So that's the history...

I'm very appreciative of all the gifted cars ~ wouldn't have been able to get around without them ~ but, at the same time, I've never had a chance to choose my own car.

Until now...

Yep.

My oldest kid is now a licensed driver.

=)

Here, on Road & Track.

I actually almost like it. Sort of.

And the turbodiesel or hybrid possibilities are interesting...

It's always the SUV's that I see on their side (or upside down!)

Didn't see the one in that link, allegedly caused by the storm here. Personally, I expect it had more to do with someone unable to compensate for road conditions than from the road conditions themselves.

Seriously - in the first winter I was here, I saw three large to mid-sized SUV's in compromising positions. One was spinning around on its roof. Two were involved in a cross-collision that resulted in one a pregnant driver going into shock and the other driver losing their arm (at least. I saw it pinned, so I know that much. Whether or not the person attached to it pulled through, I do not know.) Unfortunately, I've also seen quite a few others - in corn fields, up the side of a hill, rolled into ditches, and more - since then.

Ummmm, yeah. Just a little excitement.

Not enough to plow. Yet. Looks like it's heading that way. I even had to use 1st & 2nd gear on the ride home, and spent a half hour on a stretch of road that usually takes 40 seconds.

One car had made a left turn to a side street to avoid all the traffic. He finally ground to a halt after spending about 300-400 feet plowing through some yards. Apparently he hadn't realized he was parallel to the road and not on it. That's actually giving him more benefit of the doubt than anyone deserves. Judging from his trail, he took the turn too fast, dropped over the edge of the road, and, being a moron, tried to keep going and make it to the driveway and back up to the road (at this time his roof was level with the road due to a bank).

Two other cars were pulled one to each side of the road a bit further on. The bright pink lowered, flared, and wannabe-racified little import had its hazards - four-ways - whateveryacallums locally - on in back, and his tail lights as well, but the entire front of the car was lights-out. The bright yellow mini-SUV was not rolled over in a ditch - I say this, because SUVs from the tiny Suzuki's to the hugeous Expeditions are what I usually upside down in a field - but did have a deep impression in the drivers-side doors that rather matched the boxy front grill of the pink thing. My guess - the SUV pulled out of a driveway, possibly cutting off pinko, possibly just taken out by the get-off-my-racetrack speed of the pink thing, which had no doubt been chortling along with an exhaust note similar to my bargain lawn mower (the big DR has a much deeper sound than those modified mufflers lend the import crowd).

But soon... soon! Plowing! =)

Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to the Poetry Circle tonight at the Moravian Book Shop. Too much going on. I do have the one new poem - and another one whispered to me on the ride in. I'll have to see if I have time later to write it down.

Although I have long known this, two of my fellow commuters saw fit to remind me that those funny red signs with the letters S, T, O, and P do not, in fact, mean stop, as those silly DOT folks might want you to think. In fact, they have multiple meanings: the first being: Almost But Not Really Pause and Don't Even Slow Down Because You're More Important Than Those With The Right-Of-Way.

I have several different posts in mind that will help resurrect Pieces of Me - not to mention the ones I had planned to write just before my father was diagnosed, declined, and died. Although that particular series - on religion - was originally planned for the holiday season, I think I'll still get to those posts, but just mixed in with other topics.

The snow around here looks like someone poured molten shiny plastic. Our driveway was barely even scuffed when I drove over it last night with 3165 some pounds of Subaru. It's kind of like having a paved driveway, really. No more gravel - just all this white asphalt. Which would be healthier for my snowblower if the gravel hadn't already eaten the chain in the Thursday round of snow.

Molten plastic. I thought of this on the ride in, as I noticed that down here in the tropics of the Lehigh Valley, along with the mirror sheen of the poured plastic stuff, there were footprints. You could see where people went to get some mail, or drove a car. Apparently they got a more brittle mix way down south.

Of course, the whole molten plastic obsession could really be coming to mind because today - and last Friday - my preheated car smells an awful lot like an injection molding machine that's in use. Ahhh! the smell of molten plastic in the morning... Not sure what's on fire, yet. But it hasn't fully burned away. Yet.

I know, without a doubt, that it's not the windshield wipers.

You see, last year I discovered that Deb's pre-heated windshield wipers were the first I've ever found that freeze motionless and still try to work. One of two things then happens. Whatever's frozen thaws, and the wipers can complete their cycle ~or~ the motor on the wiper burns out and the wipers can't complete their cycle.

Turns out my car, with its lack-of-special-pre-heater-that-thaws-ice-so-it-seeps-in-and-freezes, has been spending too much time around Deb's car. Justin and I managed to cut most of the ice block from around the car, and, as I completed that bit of work, Justin made the ice-cement berm from the township plow into more of a ramp - wouldn't want my pitiful little front-wheel drive car to go belly up and hang their helpless, front wheels spinning. After all that, I managed to get around the corner, flip the wipers on, and watch them stick. Straight up.

That position is commonly known as the "Hey Officer, Look! My Wipers Don't Work!" position. At least when the wipers on Deb's car stuck, they stayed down. Didn't help clear the slush and grime on the window, but weren't dual flags sending coded signals to law enforcement officers. I pulled over, cleared every last little bit of ice from around them - not that it should have hung them up; they made it all the way to the top and were on their way back down - and still no change.

Called Justin up to put on some water for tea and headed home. Two teakettles of boiling water later - and, Justin on his way back for a third while I squinted at the engine compartment, looking for smoke or flames - they suddenly leapt into life.

~ ~ ~

In other news, I have the CPAP machine and I can now breath. Except for all those burning plastic fumes I sucked up on the ride in...

Turns out my sleep apnea was officially labelled severe. I had something like 46-51 episodes per hour, on average. I suppose not breathing and forcing myself to snort myself back into gear close to once a minute could interrupt the sleep a wee bit...

Somewhere along the way, I managed to make my way through the entirety of the Michael Hedges tune Ursa Major. I can play about half the material semi-competently, while the other half remains in the semi-incompetent stage. There is, however, hope.

I also managed to stumble across the Legend section of the Study Notes on Rootwitch.com which clearly indicates what I'm supposed to do with notes represented thusly: (9) Somehow I had missed the existence of this section - or glossed over it - while I was able to determine much of the rest of the stage directions from the individual study notes and from the MPEG tutorials. Of course, I discovered that this morning, and I played the song last night, so the twain should meet as soon as I can get a guitar in my hands. The technique here is simple: play the notes so softly that you can barely hear them; the attack of the pick is louder. Of course, for this particular tune no pick is used, so I'll have to play around - and listen to Michael play the piece - to determine exactly how to play the part.

Without any further documentation, I was able to do the tap harmonics, although they're a lot harder to produce than the slap harmonics. On the surface, they seem to be identical techniques. The slap harmonic is sounded by thwaping the strings with a finger - usually index or middle - over a fret to get the harmonic to ring out across multiple strings. The tap harmonic also involves striking over a fret, but it uses the tip of the finger instead of the length. The difficulty with the latter involves getting the note to ring out as a harmonic - it's too easy to just tap the fretted note. That's a common technique, brought to fame - although not invented - by Eddie Van Halen. Getting the quick attack needed to play the passage and combine it with the right touch - a bit softer than usual - isn't as easy as it looks.

Part two of last night's 10 minute practice section was As the World Falls Down - just the vocal melody. I've managed to learn the chorus, so now all I have left to learn are the vocals following the second chorus - essentially, more bits of chorus and ad libs. Such a simple and beautiful melody over a 3/4 waltz.

I didn't even attempt to work further on the music itself - I was half asleep when I went upstairs, and just played through the songs before lying down and drifting off. Actually, I think that's what helped with Ursa Major: I was playing quietly to avoid disturbing Rachel and Brandon, and the song benefits from a light touch.

The day before, I did realize a goof with the bass part I was working on - for the first four measures the bass clef is replaced with the treble clef and I hadn't noticed that. That changed the notes played, and because the fingering was different, helped me realize that the bit is a set of variations on the same arpeggiated chord structure used in the Police's Every Breath You Take. That realization made it easier to play, but both nearby fingerings cause some difficulty with the intro melody. That melody on its own is exceedingly easy, but the two parts just don't fit together - as written - on the same guitar neck. With one of the fingerings, I lose the signature slide if I want to hold the notes that are supposed to ring out; with the other, I'm not even able to get near the melody part. I'll still have to mess around with it and see what compromise works out the best.

~ ~ ~

This afternoon I have to take care of Justin's birthday present. We won't be giving it to him unitl his birthday - a week away - but I have to take steps to get it ready. Next year at this time we'll have to see if we have a spare car lying around. Of course, I watched him and his cousin - who drove up after dropping dragonflypug at the Schoolhouse with Deb and 1jadedhart - play GT3, and after seeing them bounce a Dodge Viper off wall after wall after other Viper, I'm not quite sure how he'll do on the road...

~ ~ ~

In other news, Brandon likes to go "out-ide" so we've been spending more time doing so. This can be difficult for Rachel, especially, who wants to Catch 'em All^R. Justin is generally happy to go out, provided someone is there to toss a baseball or frisbee or kick a soccer ball back and forth - which generally means "not me" because I don't like to let Brandon wander alone around the yard, more so after the close call last year with the bear. I really don't want to find out how good - or bad - I am at bear wrestling. Rachel doesn't like baseball much after she tried to catch the ball with the side of her face and then, a few days later, her wrist.

Or, The Story of What Happened to the Windshield.

Of course, we're really not sure *exactly* what happened to the windshield. What we do know, is that a certain teenager known for being overenthusiastic (he snapped two ice scrapers while clearing ice from my car after the last storm) was brushing snow off the windshield of the Subaru. I made it down the end of the street before I realized that the funky line going from left to right about 4-6" up from the bottom of the windshield was a crack. We suspect the involvement of a rock-pock-mark right along the line (with moisture worked in, and heated to the snapping point).

It will be about $500 to get it replaced, which is much more than when we had to get the Taurus window done 5 years or so ago. The insurance will be covering it, or at least most of it, but still, less than fun. So, I have to use another PH today (no more working from home for me). At least I'll be here when the HVAC guys come by to finish off the supply vents in Justin's room, as well as look into sealing off the basement/former returns and getting the heat to spread out better along the front-to-back plane.

Oy.

...that Micro$oft Windoze is actually built upon DOS, we are served with this reminder:

"Please restart your system for the changes to take effect."

For reference purposes, this would be like having to go out and crank start your Hummers and Lexii and Mercedes and Orang-utans and Porsches and BMWs and all other cars that presume to be spiffy, elegant, or made since, oh, the 1920s or so.

Stone age software, coming soon to a Vista near you...