Memories?

 From Wikipedia:

On 5 November 1990, as Abraham Lincoln was anchored in Valparaíso in Chile, Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez guerrillas detonated a bomb inside the restaurant Max und Moritz, in the seaside resort of Viña del Mar, wounding three of her sailors.^[6]

I was on the Lincoln in Valparaiso, Chile.  I have no recollection of this happening.  I feel like it would have been a big deal. 

My first motorcycle

 With hesitation from my mother and support from my father, he and I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles and got Learner's Permits to ride a motorcycle.  I would have been 17 or 18, so 1982ish.  I bought the bike pictured below for $850.  Paid too much, it never really ran right, one time when I got it running the RHS mirror fell off when I got to 50 mph, I had to push it all the way back up the hill by our house when it wouldn't jump start by the time I got to the bottom, sold it for $300 when I left to join the Navy.

Looking back it was only 9 years old so it can't have been cared for very well to be in such horrible shape but I didn't grow up working on vehicles.  My dad was a firm believer in the philosophy that you do what you are good at and pay others to do what they are good at.  So we never worked on cars together.  When I got a bike, I had no idea what I was doing.  Youtube was not a thing.

Anyway, this popped up on FB Marketplace this morning and brought back memories.  That was the year, the bike, the color.  I'm not going to buy it.  I have no use for a 350cc street bike and my garage is already full enough with four other bikes.  But it's fun to look at the picture.

Vinyl Memories

Not Clauswitz posted about heading out to look at (purchase?) an old receiver, high quality sound, the kind he couldn't afford back in the day.

Made me start thinking about vinyl records and this is the comment I posted.  Thought you might enjoy it so copied it over here.


I still have a box full of vinyl.  I can barely lift it and half of them are warped due to being in the box for so long.  It is also, not coincidentally, a box full of memories of my teen years, so there it sits.

Fisher direct drive turntable sits in a box nearby.  Occasionally I set it all up, play some records, marvel at the full, rich sound, then pack it all away again when I realize that it's been two months since I played a record.

So much easier, if less fulfilling, to plug the iPod into the surround sound and listen to one of the eight or nine hundred albums stored there.  No cleaning off the dust first, no flipping the record mid-play, no scratching or warping.

I do miss (in a "those were the days but I really don't want to go back" way) taking a record out of its sleeve and sitting and listening to it, scratches and all.

To this day I still can't listen to Trooper's Two for the Show without expecting there to be a little skip midway through the title song.  That skip is embedded in my central nervous system.

A Little Bit of HIstory

1983. I move to Los Angeles, move in with my Uncle Pete and Aunt Noreen and buy this car.

Ok, it wasn't exactly this car. Inexplicably I can't find one single picture of my Challenger anywhere in my stuff.

Ok, OK. It wasn't even this model. You can tell because of the passenger side mirror.

Anyway, enough of the interruptions. Can I finish my story?

I love this car. At one point it had shark teeth, Flying Tiger style. At one point it had a Batman logo on the driver side door. Then the Principal of Regent College drove it for a year and asked if he could paint it, so it became British Racing Green.

At some point the original 383 motor blew and a 440 was installed. Didn't run any better but it did get worse gas mileage.

Skip forward twenty eight years. Over the years various people crashed into me, causing damage that I was or wasn't able to fix depending on their car insurance and my financial state. The transmission had started to slip and the engine was burning oil. One day my wife pulls up in front of my work, comes in and says "Honey, the car is making a funny noise". Apparently women find loud knocking noises funny. Who knew?

Shut it off, tow it home, there it sits. I love this car. Coolest car I ever owned. After one Dodge, I am a committed Mopar man. I will fix the motor. I am a mechanic, I can do that.

Sort of expensive though. One year follows another. The tires rot. The headliner collapses. The seats start cracking and falling apart. I keep thinking, "One day I will restore this car. I really love it."

Last week I gave in to the inevitable. It ain't gonna happen. I don't have a shop, I don't have the tools, I don't have the money, and I don't have the time to do a full restoration on an old classic.

Today my baby went away.

The good news is that the new owner loves Challengers, has a fully restored Barracuda sitting in his garage, and is committed to fixing her up. NO SCRAPYARD for my baby.

Someday, maybe, I will buy one that has been maintained properly and never sat in the back yard of someone's house for fifteen years. It will run and just need minor work to clean it up and make it really nice. I will do that because that is something I can realistically do. I can dream, can't I?