Category: Automotive

Deep Summer

Well it’s the second half of the summer now, and we’re getting our first real heat wave. It’s been in the 90’s since last week, with no rain for a change, and no end in sight. We’re getting peppers and tomatoes from our garden daily now. And even though we’ve been busy, we’ve had some time to enjoy summer activities. We took the kids to Playland last Friday evening and the kids enjoyed the rides and we saw fireworks. Michelle is exactly 4 feet tall, which was the cutoff for a lot of rides, and it some of the ride operators were being extra picky. They wouldn’t let her on the big rollercoaster (too short), and then later they almost wouldn’t let her on some the kiddie rides (too tall)! They wouldn’t let me on the bumper cars for being too tall. The park has a bunch of old, classic rides from the 1920’s. The carousel had a genuine calliope, sort of a player piano crossed with a pipe organ and robot percussion section, that was fascinating to watch and listen to.

We went to beach on Sunday, which was great, except for on the ride home the car started making trouble, one of the brakes was overheating and seizing up. It’s in the shop now, but the car has just about 100,000 miles on it, so we’re starting to think about how long we want to keep it and keep repairing it. There are a lot of things I like about the Jeep, and over all it’s in pretty good shape, so it’s tempting to just keep it running. On the other hand, that’s the strategy we’re following with Jeannie’s car, so we don’t want to be in the situation where we need to replace both cars at the same time. And of course to replace it would be a whole research project to figure out what kind of vehicle to replace it with, and it’s gonna take a whole lot of precious time to do it right. Since I’m so tall, most of the cars our there are not good for me to drive, and even a lot of larger SUV’s are not well designed for tall people. Right now is not a good time for it’s since we have a camping trip coming up this weekend, and another road trip a couple weeks after that. Still, I think we better start looking into it so we’re prepared.

I’ve been making progress on a bunch of side projects. Luckily we’ve had no major home repairs or other projects of necessity for a little while, and things are at an even keel for the time being with my job, so I’ve been doing fun stuff. I’ve basically taken the summer off from working on origami and my book, since I was jamming on it really hard back in May and June. But it’s getting close to the top of the list as other things get done. I dusted off the Foldinator and began development of version 2.0. I worked out a format for Origami XML, and posted a first build. The second build will be along in a few weeks. I stated redoing my web site in PHP to support dynamic pages, and have implemented the first set of scripts. Still on the todo list is take pictures of all my new 2009 origami models, which will happen sometime this fall.

I’ve been making great progress with music. I bought a guitar a few weeks ago, and have been playing it enough that I’m starting to get somewhere. I’m think of writing a guitar based song even, something in the approximate style of Greg Lake. That will be on a future project, as this one is nearing the end. My friend Erik has agreed and to help me mix and master my record, which is great news. And I finished a complete song in record time in July. Now I’m working on the ninth and final song for my record, with the help of my friend John. More on that in a future post.

Catching Up

It’s been a while since I posted so here’s a quick update. I’ve been in the middle of a bunch of things; progress on multiple fronts.

Summer’s here! Summer Fridays are in effect at my office. The kids are counting the days until the end of school. We had a good visit with our friends Seth and Cathy at their new summer house over the long weekend, kayaking and making barbecues. Great time. Thanks!

I replaced the drive gears in my garage door opener, and then had to debug all kinds of fussy settings for travel and balance and torque so the thing would go up and down smoothly without tripping the automatic safety shutoff when it wasn’t supposed to. Looks like it’s pretty much there. Also I took the Mustang out for a good long drive the other day. It sounds kinda rough under 30 MPH, especially when the engine is cold, but once it gets above 50 it’s strong as ever. Strange. I wonder what can be done about it. Once I straighten that out I’ll feel better about getting the bodywork done.

I’ve been slowly getting back into updating my web site, which is long overdue for a major overhaul. As a start a made a new index page, which combines the features of old index and home pages, replacing them both.

I got the horn section for my new song Green Glove recorded and mixed, and I need just one more session to tweak some levels before I’m ready to post the rough mix. I’m also nearly complete my origami War Elephant. I’ve been working on this steadily the last month or so. More on both of these in separate posts soon.

Fixin’ The Machinery

I’ve been feeling for a while like random tasks have been piling up, to the point where I took a day this week just to get a few things done. Last weekend I did some work on everyone’s bicycles, and I also had to rebuild the support that holds out our mailbox. But I ran out of time Sunday while the todo list keeps increasing.

The specific motivator was that my Mustang, being and old car, wouldn’t start this spring. The car is mechanically sound, but alot of the hoses and gaskets are just old. So I had to get it towed to garage, which was kind of a big deal. The place I took it to a couple years back to get the carburetor worked on (basically they replaced all the gaskets and seals in it), that specialized in classic cars, is no longer in business, so I took it to my main local mechanic. It turned out the problem was the fuel pump was leaky and needed to be replaced, a fairly straightforward fix. While they were at it also replaced a radiator hose.  I drove it home and it’s nice to be running again. The engine was a bit rough but it was a cold rainy day so it didn’t get warmed up. I need to take it out on the highway for a good run this weekend until I get that warm rumbly feeling of anachronistic V-8 power. I’m also wondering if it could use new shocks.  Also, this is the year I hope to get the body painted. I have been saying that every year for the past few years, but this time I really mean it! Still there’s always something coming up that demands my attention, so we’ll see how it goes. The first step is to shop around for a body shop to do the work.

The other fixit project is my garage door opener, which stopped working last week and was conveniently easy to reach with the Mustang away at the shop. The motor spins and goes on and off, but the drivetrain and the door don’t move. I took it apart to find the main gear — which inexplicably was made out of soft plastic — was completely stripped and snowlike shavings all over the inside of the box.  Also the main axle was seized. I lubed up the moving parts and tracks for the garage door to make it easier to slide, suspecting the problem was excessive strain on the gears. I ordered a replacement gear kit, so hopefully when it arrives I can put it back in working order.

Bad Luck With Things With Wheels

The weather this fall has been really great. Exceptionally mild, sunny and in the 70’s quite often. It’s been getting dark earlier, and soon (probably tomorrow) I’ll have to switch to biking from skating after work, favoring the mode of exercise that has lights and brakes. And not long after that we enter the season of getting up for work in the morning while it’s dark out.

So last Sunday I went to take my Mustang for a ride, possible for the last time this season, depending on the weather. When I parked it I noticed something leaking from the engine, looks like oil or maybe gas. Grumble, grumble. Well it stopped shortly after the motor shut off, and of course it might not be a big deal to fix but you never know, and the hassle factor makes it a bit daunting. And this on the heels of fixing up my every day car.

After that I thought I’d go for a bike ride. I haven’t ridden in a couple weeks and my bike had a flat. After fretting over the Mustang I didn’t really feel like dealing with this too, so I decided to go rollerblading instead. Well as soon as I got down the road my left skate started going thump-thump-thump every time I shifted my weight to that side. About a mile later on of the wheels just tore right off! Well at least this put and end to the noise and rattle.

So I was able to fix my flat and replace the wheel on my skate with a spare old wheel I had lying around. All the wheels are pretty worn but it’s late in the season, and I thought I’d wait until the spring to put on a new set. At this point I’m thinking of getting a whole new pair of skates anyway, since my skates are original Rollerblades that date back to the early 1990’s and are pretty worn.

As for the Mustang, the path of least resistance just to leave it garaged for the winter and deal with it in the spring. But you never know, I just might get motivated sooner if the good weather holds.

Weekend in D.C.

Over the weekend we went to Washington to visit my friend John, who is an accomplished origami artist. It was a really fun trip.

But first the part about danger and adventure. About a month ago, after all our summer travels were over, I took my car into the shop for an oil change, tire rotation and new front brakes. Since that time, I’ve only driven to the train station and back, and have not taken the car about 30 mph (48 km/h). The kids had a half day of school on Friday, so we lit out for DC about 2 in the afternoon. The trip was great, the traffic smooth and light, and the weather turned from cool and cloudy to mild and sunny. But I after I got on the highway I started to notice a vibration in the front end, and as the trip went on it got worse. By the time we got off the Beltway it was pretty bad, and soon the front brakes were smoking! Luckily we made it to John’s house and there was a garage just a couple blocks away.

It turned out one of the tires was seriously worn along the outside edge, to the point where it was ready to blow out! I think the garage last month must have screwed up with the tire rotation, cuz this was not normal wear. On top of that the rear brakes were shot. So I got new back breaks and ended up getting four new tires, cuz one other tire was pretty badly worn and all of them were more than five years old in any event. Ah well, it was an expensive hassle, but I would have had to get this work done at some point, and all in all we were pretty lucky.

And it didn’t even slow us down very much. There are a lot of good restaurants in John’s neighborhood and Friday night we got Mongolian food. Saturday I got up early to deal with the car, and then we all took the train into downtown D.C. We went down the Mall to the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. I haven’t been there since high school, so it was interesting to see how the place had changed. For on thing they put up a slightly incongruous World War Two memorial right near the Washington Monument.

It’s also interesting how some thing haven’t changed. It’s a long walk (4 miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and back), and you’d think they’d have trams or bicycles or something for the tourists in this day and age of fat America. It would also come in handy for people with kids or a bad ankle, or people who don’t want to walk the whole length of the Mall twice. Also the food selection is pretty meager, just a single concession stand with bad pizza and hot dogs and soda. You’d think there’d be row of places to get lunch.

The highlight of the day was the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. This is a fantastic place and I’ve been to it every time I’ve been to Washington. It’s full of spaceships, including such legendary craft as the Apollo 11 Command Module, and of a more recent vintage Spaceship One, and storied airplanes including the original 1903 Wright Flyer plus hundreds of later models from every era of experimental, military and commercial aviation. There used to be a Space Shuttle but that’s now gone. I understand they moved it to a new museum hall out near the airport.

The kids really loved it (as Jeannie I both did at that age), and I don’t think they ever really thought to spaceships as something real before, only an idea out of movies. I grew up in the 70’s and I remember the waning days of the Apollo program, Skylab, Viking and Voyager, and the development and debut of the Space Shuttle. All that stuff was really cutting edge back then; now it seems almost nostalgic. I mean, my 41-year old classic muscle car is built of the same technology that took humanity to the moon! I read in the paper today that the US will not have manned space light capability for the next five years and will have to pay Russia to send up our astronauts like dotcom zillionares do. Sigh, yet another failure of our government.

In any event the museum was a blast and it was a great day. When we got back to John’s neighborhood the garage was still open and I picked up the car. We get Peruvian food for dinner and played Settlers of Catan after. (It seems John always wins.)

John has a grand piano. It’s been a few years since I’ve played a grand. I used to play one a lot when I lived in California and hung out at my friend David’s house. My own piano is an upright, and it’s good for what it is, but a grand has a faster, better action and much more definition in the sound, especially in the bass registers and the very high end. So it was very enjoyable to play on that.

And of course we spent a lot of time talking origami. I folded some models out of his forthcoming book, a magnum opus of polyhedra and geometric origami. He has a chapter on polygons, including a regular pentagon and a golden rectangle. His pentagon is (folded from a square) is a very accurate approximation, but the golden rectangle is mathematically exact, which is very interesting because it’s only a few steps; the golden rectangle is latent in the square. I have been searching for year for a method to fold a regular pentagon (or a 36 degree angle), and his is the best I’ve seen. But it doesn’t beat the method I’ve come to prefer, which is basically to eyeball it, because I’ve gotten good at it with practice. In any event, since the golden ratio is expressed everywhere in pentagonal symmetry, I feel intuitively that there must be a way to develop a mathematically perfect pentagon from a golden rectangle. I plan on investigating this.

We spent some time considering the Archimedean Solids and their duals. I developed and folded a Truncated Octahedron from a square sheet of paper. This a really interesting shape, composed of eight hexagons and six squares and has the property of being able to tile space. To my surprise and delight, my design mainly worked, right up until I got closing the model and locking the last face in place with it’s neighbors. This ending stuff can be tricky but is essential to a nice model. My current design wants to spring apart, but it looks like I can get make it with stiffer paper and a slight adjustment of the layout of the faces on the paper.

Back in the office today I got a demo to Flash 10 from an Adobe evangelist. It has a lot of cool new API for doing 3D. My friend Veronique turned to me and said this would be cool for my origami software. She’s totally right, but this had the effect of making me sad because I’d love to have the time to work on that project again. I started it back in the dotcom bust when I was out of work and got a lot of design work done and start on a demo, but it would take months of full time work to get to the next level with it. Ah well, with the economy going the way it is maybe I’ll get my chance. Heh!

Happy Autumn, Part I

Today was the Equinox, and I’m into the fall groove over here. Getting caught up on some little things and starting in on a bunch of projects. Getting around to everything in the inevitable rotation of activities.

The weather has been really nice this September. Soon we should have a whole lot of ripe figs. Meanwhile I’ve been enjoying skating as always, and going for bike rides on our local trails in the Nature Study Woods. Mountain biking is fun, and in another month or so I’ll have to switch from skating to biking after work cuz it’ll be dark out, so I’ve started biking once a week after doing almost no biking the whole summer. The NSW is a nice place, with woods and lakes and horses and swans all kinds of birds and critters. The only real problem with the place is the trails are kind of eroded and need some work. Some of the hills are too hard to go up, not because they are steep but because they are so rocky.

I’ve also been taking my old Mustang out for a ride now and again. It started making a noise a little while ago in the engine, like the lifters were clacking. I remember from when I lived in California and used to drive that car every day, that when that happened I just needed to top of the oil. So I checked the oil but the dipstick said full. So I didn’t quite know what to, and just sort of worried and figured I’d get it checked out in the spring. I’ll probably only drive it once or twice more this fall. Yesterday before I drove it I topped off the oil anyway, and shawnuff the noise mostly went away after a few minutes. Damn dipstick, I guess it must be reading off. Well what do you expect for an old car. I’m still gonna get it checked out in the spring, but still I’m relieved about that.

A couple weeks ago I finally decided to do something about my downstairs stereo, so I could listen to tunes while I work out. My old CD player died a couple years ago, and I had been using an old discman as a replacement, but it had problems with the jack or the cables and one side never sounded right and would drop out from time to time. I didn’t know if the problem was in the CD player, the receiver, the speakers or the cabling somewhere. So as an experiment I repatched the system to use my DVD deck as the CD player, using its extra audio out. Works like a charm and sounds great. I’ve been listening to Steely Dan’s Alive in America for 2 or three weeks now every time I work out.

Now on to what are the works in progress.

Our major home improvement project this fall is to paint all the bedrooms. A much easier job than tiling, for sure, and also this year I don’t have to do all kinds of concrete work, so I’m grateful for that. In any event, it’s September and we figured we’d better get started. Got colors picked out for the girls rooms and everything. We decided to do Michelle’s room first. We were all set to paint the walls, but when I was doing the prep work I noticed some spots that needed spackling, which necessitated painting the ceiling too. So got that done over the weekend, and the wall are coming next.

Camping, Storms, Guitars, Cars and Rest

We finally had a weekend with no travel and no commitments, and hung around the house and relaxed and got a bunch of things done. So now’s a good time to bring all y’all up to speed.

Last weekend we went camping. It was our second camping trip of the summer and it was a big group of people. Us, Erik and Jen and Ellla, Max and Miguel, Shannon and Shawn and their three kids, Bob and Lisa and Jimmy and Lisa and Emily and Lauren. Wow. We left Friday afternoon, although some of the other families waited until Saturday morning because of the threat of rain. And sho’nuff it started raining just as we were packing the car, and by the time were on the road it began raining really hard. We actually pulled over and discussed whether to turn back, but we were able to get a weather report on Jeannie’s blackberry that said it was clear up in the Catskills. So we went head and passed thru a wave or two of heavy storms. Later we found out that there was some serious flooding and even tornado warnings in Westchester, and they closed the Hutch, Saw Mill and Bronx River Parkway shortly after we got out of town. But after an hour the sun came out, and we got to the camp site and set up our tents and got the fire going, before a scattered shower that went away after half an hour or so. The rain came again after dark and the kids were asleep in the tent and Jeannie and I were watching the fire. Another scattered t-storm rolled thru and after that we still had to put water on the fire before we went to bed. Saturday and Sunday were clear and all in all it was a beautiful trip, although they always feel too short. Got some nice canoeing in, and the girls got to play on the beach and catch salamanders. We got home there was a good amount of leaves and branches on the ground, but no real damage.

I spent some time jamming on guitar on the trip. Guitar is maybe my fourth best instrument, which is to say I know the basics and never practice. Most of what I know I picked up from watching guitar players in my various bands over the years. I can play a good number of Neil Yong songs (Powder Finger, Heart of Gold, Mr. Soul, etc.) and some other tunes, just accompany myself singing, no prog or jazz chops. I’m not very good at bar chords so there are a lot of songs I can’t play. So I decided to start practicing guitar for a little while and see if I get any better. And its so far so good. I know the chords so came up with a few little exercises to cover them in all keys. And then I picked a handful of songs to work up, with some of the new chords. I have a good number of music books. I’m practicing Burned, Down to the Wire, Broken Arrow by Neil Yong, and I Will and Mother Nature’s Son by the Beatles. When I get those down I’ll pick some others. Right now I can only practice about a half hour every other day because it’s hard on the fingertips.

I actually own two guitars. One is acoustic that I traded for a boom box many years ago. It has almost no wood in it (plastic body and metal neck, an ovation knock off), and is kinda hard to play cuz the action is high and the intonation isn’t great, but it has a good resounding tone and is a great guitar for camping. The other is an eclectic, a Guild solid body with two humbuckers, which has great action and good tone, and is a nice versatile electric guitar. However the tuning seems to drift and I have to tune up after every song. Ah well maybe it’s just that the strings are old and I haven’t played it in a while. Anyhow, I’m thinking I want to get a new guitar, a better quality acoustic, and with a pick up so I can use it for recording. I’ll give myself a month or so to see if I’m gonna want to keep on practicing (this also means I’m going to have to cut back on piano), and if the answer is yes, I’ll start looking for one sometime this fall. Luckily the big music store district is only a couple blocks from my office, but I have a feeling they’ll be pretty expensive there.

I also fixed my car over the weekend. There had been a leak in the exhaust manifold, where a clip to attach a heat shield, which had been welded onto the pipe with a different metal, had rusted thru. My local mechanic gave me an estimate of $1600 or something outrageous like that to replace the manifold. So I just kinda let it be for a while, but the noise has been getting worse. So I got one of those muffler fixit kits. Basically it’s a bit of aluminum foil and special wrap that bonds to the pipe from the heat of the engine. I put it on and seems to have done the trick. Only problem was that the directions say to use a piece to tape to temporarily attach the wrap to the pipe, and then run the engine for a while to heat it up. Well Sunday all the kids in my neighborhood were hanging out in my driveway which made finishing the job difficult. So I left a bit of tape on, and this morning drove to the train station. The tape has some plastic in which started to melt and burn. I checked it out when I got home this evening and it looks ok, there’s just a little black stripe left on the pipe.

Auto Didact

Well I have no new creative output this week, but I do have some updates on this and that. After the last 3 weeks being so busy entertaining and all, we decided to take it easy of the Memorial Day holiday. At one point we were considering going for a day hike somewhere, but the weather got really hot (in the 90’s), so that was not in the cards. Ah well, the summer is just beginning, there’ll be another opportunity. Instead, we mostly hung around the house, made some barbeque, played outside, played videogames, went out to dinner, ran some errands, and did a bunch of shopping. We got Lizzy a new, larger bicycle and gave her old one to Michelle.

I did manage to get my ’67 Mustang fixed. After my regular mechanic was reluctant to look at it, and told me I’d need find parts on my own, I looked around for another garage and found a place in Bronxville, Ultimate Auto Center, that specializes in servicing, maintaining and restoring classic cars. After the carburetor blew out and started leaking fuel I was a bit hesitant to start it up, so I asked Jeannie to stand by with a fire extinguisher. Well the engine turned and nothing burned, so off I went to the garage, hoping I’d make it as the car sputtered up the big hill. When I got there, the guy who greeted me was smoking a cigarette (dude, indoors in an auto garage, not too smart!), so I asked him to step back a bit and then explained my problem.

The guys at Ultimate took good care, I’m happy to say. First they gave the car a complete looking-over for mechanical and other problems, and made recommendations (my car is solid, as it turns out). Then they took apart and rebuilt the carb, replacing the worn out accelerator pump and all the gaskets. They even steam-cleaned my engine and it looks like detailed the car too! And it wasn’t even too expensive, at least compared to what the mechanic at my regular garage said it’d be to acquire a rebuilt carb. Now it runs great, with more power and a smooth, satisfying rumble when it idles. Jeannie says it “purrs”. Ah.

While I was there, I asked them to give me an estimate on repainting the car. His figure was almost twice what I paid for the car in the first place! Yikes. It also was more than triple the estimate I got in 1999 in Palo Alto (I was all set to get it done then, but then Lizzy came along and we move back East and I ran out of time) and a good deal more than I really want to spend. So while I think I’ll shop around for a better deal on that, I’ll at least ask him to break it down so I know what that cost would include. I think he wants to take the whole car down to the metal, and I don’t think that’s necessary. In any event I’ll keep you up to date on how this project unfolds.

Auto Motive

Well this week I’m in the middle of a lot of things. Kids parties last weekend and next (pictures coming soon!), and work has been really busy. I worked on Sunday, and on top of that allergy season is in full effect now, so it’s making me a little cobweb-headed. So I feel like it’s the wrong day of the week. Logical Thursday, but really Wednesday. Must keep it straight. Ah well, soon a big ol’ web site redesign to share with all y’all.

Sunday was a beautiful perfect day, and I decided to take my old car for a ride. You see I have a classic ’60’s muscle car, a red Ford Mustang. It’s 40 years old, older than me. I bought when I lived in Palo Alto, a little over 10 years ago. I’d been living there for about 6 months and commuting to work on rollerblades, and then I bought a bike because the trip was rather hilly and I thought, as I cruised down the big slope behind Hewitt-Packard approaching the speed of cars, that I really ought to get a mode of transport with a brake (I’d taken the brakes off my skates for hockey) before I spill and hurt myself. So I bought a bike, which was a big improvement, and rode that all summer. I noticed a little neon sign in the window above Palo Alto Bicycle Shop at the time that said “Google”. Hmmm, I said to myself, an internet startup. I wonder what they do?

At the end of summer (October out there) I knew the rainy season was coming, and that I’d need a car. The way it played out was that I only had one weekend to find a car, and didn’t have a lot of money to spend. So I bought a paper and started looking thru the want ads. My budget was only a few thousand dollars, basically as cheap as possible but still reliable, and there were a lot of 10- or 15-year-old Nissan Sentras and that sort of thing. But there were a handful of classic older cars in my price range, including some Cameroes and GTOs, and 4 ’60’s Mustangs. If you’re from the Northeast like I am it’s a bit surprising, but it’s just a California thing, all these classic cars still on the road. I decided to concentrate on the Mustangs and check them out. The first one I looked at was in good shape, no rust, sound mechanicals. It was red and with a V-8, the perfect image of what I thought that kind of car should be. It has some minor dents and the paint was pretty dead on the roof and trunk. The next one was blue, a ’66, in perfect shape. I mean absolutely beautiful. But the thing is, it was a 6 cylinder, so not that interested. Plus it was the most expensive of the group. The last 2 were in bad shape; one had a Lincoln Versailles engine and other franken-parts, the other was half bond-o.

So I went back I bought the first one, which was actually under my budget limit by a few hudred. It turned out to be a great car. I drove it every day for years, all around Silicon Valley and up to San Francisco for band practice and gigs. Replaced the alternator once, and some other minor repairs, but that was it. The engine, powertrain, etc., never had any trouble. I did replace the weatherstripping and, believe it or not, the driver’s seat. The main thing it needed and still needs is a new coat of paint, and I was all set to do that in ’99. But then we moved back to New York rather abruptly, baby in tow, so that got postponed.

I couldn’t bear to part with the car; it represented one of my favorite aspects of life in California. Moving it back east probably tripled its value, since cars like that are basically nonexistent in this part of the country. I ended up keeping the car in my brother’s barn in upstate New York for a couple of years. There was no point in moving it to Brooklyn; it’d just get stolen. And car insurance in Brooklyn is so expensive that our insurance premiums actually went down when we put the Mustang on as a second car parked somewhere else.

When we bought our house I drove it down here, where it sits in the garage, an anachronistic absurdity, still cool but mostly harmless. In this day and age of trendy hybrid cars it seems a bit, uh, decadent. Although to be fair, it’s fuel economy is not too bad, because the car is light and even though it has a big engine, it revs really slow. In any event, I still like it and drive it on nice days in the summer, and still dream of fully restoring it and driving down the road listening to ZZ Top on the radio. Of course real life being what it is, it’s pretty far down on my todo list. So I took it out Sunday, the second time this season. The first time was the weekend before, and it ran great. Except that it needed a jump cuz the battery had died over the winter. I was hoping a week later it’d still have some charge.

When I got it out on the highway, traffic was all backed up, so I couldn’t even get up to a cool 55. On top of that, I noticed the pickup wasn’t all that great, and it seemed to hesitate when I stepped on the gas. I got it home to look under the hood, and there was gas dripping out from the around the throttle lever in the carburetor onto the intake manifold and engine block. Oh no, potential fire hazard! After a few minutes it stopped and I cleaned it up, but from the look of it I really ought to get it fixed. I once tool apart and rebuilt a carburetor, but it’s not really something I’d do for fun nowadays. There is a great garage down the street from here, so I guess I’ll call ’em and see if they can do that kind of work on a car that old. I don’t think new cars have had carburetors in about 20 years.

But of course the episode brings up the whole existential question of the value of material possessions. Should I get it fixed or just sell it? If I sell it, it’d be worth more if I fix it up first, but then if I do that, there won’t be any point in getting rid of it. Round and round …

Meanwhile, the pollen from the trees has been so thick these days that my current practical-for-all-seasons-on-the-East-coast everyday car is coated with a sticky golden dusting. Trying to clean my windshield I discovered that my squirts were broken. I could here the little squirter motor going, but the windshield remained dry. But I open the hood and there was washer fluid dribbling under the car … the hose must’ve come loose. But it looks like a nontrivial operation to take off enough plastic to get at it. Still, it’ll probably be simpler than fixing a carburetor.

So dribbly automotive fluids abound. Ah well, I have Friday off cuz I worked on Sunday. Maybe I’ll have time to get it then.