Here’s a long-delayed video update covering everything after Nationals to now, including yesterday’s excellent Travelall update: The truck is starting again, after I ran out to the 800, stole the ignition switch from that, and swapped it in. As I was testing the old one I found that the lock barrel was just spinning inside the switch, which is very much not supposed to happen. This was the unit from the replacement wiring harness, so it was probably 60+ years old, and definitely due for a replacement.
Interesting…
As the years have gone by, I’ve taken fewer and fewer pictures of the Catonsville parade, but I do still pick up the phone to shoot interesting things.
This year, the weather was so hot (“feels like 112˚”) there were probably 1/3 of the usual participants in the parade, and 1/2 the people normally watching. It was just miserable outside. As usual, we spent the day before preparing for it through the heat, and I was outside from about 8AM until 1:15 getting everything set up before I could run upstairs for a shower. Jen’s sister and her family were with us, and it was a low-key day, but it still took everything out of me.
As this beautiful shoebox Ford drove past, one of many classic cars, I commented to my sister-in-law that it was the one I’d want in my driveway out of all the others present. About 20 minutes later, a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could charge his jump box from one of my outlets: it was Larry, the driver of the Ford, who told me the car had sputtered to a halt one house past ours, as the generator wasn’t charging the battery. I got him an extension cord and some water, and we stood in the shade while it started charging the box. Turns out Larry knew me from my trucks and figured I’d be the guy to ask; I didn’t recognize him because he wasn’t driving his sick blue T-bucket hot rod, which he normally has at Cars & Coffee. As I mentioned earlier, the parade ended early, so we walked up the street and were aided by four firemen who helped push the car back and into our driveway, where it cooled off under the tulip tree.
Once the jump pack was ready, I threw my tow straps into the Scout and followed Larry back to his house, where he tucked it into the garage. Along the way we saw another of the antique cars from the parade dead on the side of the road; I think it would be a huge gamble to take my trucks through a parade on such a hot day.
I think the only time any of us were outside was during the parade and its aftermath—it was just too hot to be outside. Our guests left at about 9:30, after a passing thunderstorm cooled things off a bit, and we all collapsed into bed. I had to tackle Hazel while the local pyromaniacs lit off fireworks until 11:30, and then we were able to go to sleep.
Over at the Autopian, founder and chief editor David Tracy had been periodically updating the site with progress on his latest crazy idea: building a new WW2 Jeep from parts sourced strictly through eBay. He’d gone dark for the last couple of months, but reading his July 4th article wrapping up the entire project, it’s clear why: he was working nonstop to get it done by the deadline, so he could drive it 900 miles to Moab for the Jeep Roundup. It’s a great story for anyone interested in foolish ideas, old Jeeps, or road-trip adventures.
Jason Kottke posted a response to an interview I hadn’t been aware of until now: Ezra Klein interviewed Ta-Nahesi Coates for the New York Times, contrasting the way they each see the current situation in America. Andrea Pitzer took a look at what they said, and contextualized the different ways they see things:
It might sound pessimistic to see, as Coates does, the likelihood of many losses looming ahead, even as we fight for wins. But if you consider the long history of the problem at hand, it releases you from bright-kid syndrome, from the illusion that you yourself are going to have every answer or fix the world. You understand that to do so is impossible. You are—at most—going to be one piece of that solution in a chain of many people that begins before you were born and continues after you die.
Her take on things is really smart, I think, and sums up a lot of what I’ve been struggling with for the last ten years: I can’t fix everything, but I have to stick to my core values and continue to do what’s right for my people and my little corner of the world.
This is a really interesting historical and technical background to the unique and sexy sound of Morphine, one of my dear departed favorite 90’s bands. I knew Mark Sandman played a heavily modified bass with two strings, but didn’t know he played everything with a slide—and the action on his strings so high.
I also like how the host goes into the interplay between Sandman and Dana Colley’s baritone sax and how the latter complimented both the bass and vocal melodies in such a unique way. There’s something about a tight group with a rock-solid drummer high in the mix that does it for me; see: Soul Coughing, Smashing Pumpkins, early Queens of the Stone Age. It also just occurred to me that Sandman died two years before I started this weblog.