a surprise

1962 chevy impala

so got my better half away for a night. didn't go very far away, but he got the rest he so much needed.

we were out in fullerton, picking up some breakfast/lunch at a northgate market before heading home. this particular location doesn't really have a dining area, and it was way too hot to sit in the car under a blazing sun.

so i suggested we stop over at the sonic around the corner, order drinks and just eat under the overhang. that, or go to a local park, or we wait to eat until we get home. we pull into the first spot, roll down the windows, and just order drinks.

roller girl waitress brings the drinks and goes away. we start eating our carnitas, listening to the music in the background. then better half notes that they don't seem to be able to select a song to play.

i'm looking in the rearview mirror, and note that there are two lowriders back there. figure that the sonic employees are playing more appropriate music for their customers, or are taking requests.

then i note that there are pop up tents, and i see a guy in a club shirt seeming to be setting up traffic cones in the lot, and carrying caution tape. i joke with the better half that i believe a car show has found us, and i don't have my cameras with me.

from my window, i ask the club guy if there is a car show today, and he explains, yes, he's the club president, he actually works at the establishment (he didn't use that word), and they're just setting up. hoping to get it to be a more regular show. maybe start with a flyer?

then a couple of viejitos cars pulls up. my better half is finding this all very humorous, as he starts thinking i'd planned it this way. come on, if i had, i would have brought the cameras! lol.

anyway, we get out and walk around. say hey to the viejito that i have met before. he said other guys were going to show up. the club president hosting the show said they expected up to seventy cars. i think that should always be taken with a grain of salt...it's more of a hope.

anyway, we tell them we are going home to fetch our gear, and we will be back.

i don't think they believed us, and better half said they seemed surprised to see us again when we showed up a couple hours later.

hmm. not so many cars as mentioned. no additional viejitos, or either of the other two clubs that had been mentioned. 

oh well. we're there. we take some pictures.

found this one on the other side of the building. told the owner i'd post it. i want to say we've shot other cars from this club elsewhere. i think i may have even shot this one before...go look on my search page, type in 'one family'...i think it's the first one that pops up.

taking my sweet time

i've been very lazy this weekend. enjoyed the rain, recovered from the busy work week. come tomorrow, repeat the previous week. sometimes i wonder how many different ways you can be pulled without breaking. very draining, and finding it difficult to even want to turn on my computer in the evening.

shame too, because i do enjoy futzing with these cars.

i was up early today, and briefly considered going to pomona, but then it sprinkled a bit, and i decided not to. i suppose i should clean the cameras, as i switched the lens quite a few times last week, when i went to my son's alumni baseball game.

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anyway, found this wonderful chevy at the viejitos show last october. i just love it. love the hood ornament too. and no one around; they must have been doing the raffle tickets at the time.

o xmas tree

i'm trying to ignore all the activity going on behind me. relatives in town are helping my mother-in-law put up the tree and decorations.

there is a mini skating rink with little figures spinning around on the "ice" and the music loop playing keeps making me think the ice cream man is driving outside the window in circles, instead of his twice an evening pass-by. i'm wearing headphones, but i can still hear it faintly. 

anyway, the lens flares through these trees are a more appealing sight for my xmas celebration. and i could really get in the xmas spirit if there was a car like this waiting under the tree for me. it's just stunning. 

my better half seems really interested in this kind of car, and he's mentioned a few he's seen for sale at shows. he can dream, right? no where to put one even if he could buy one, and i doubt they fit in newer garages anyway.

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thinking i'll go to the old memories show tomorrow at bruce's. went there once before, but since it's the toy drive, maybe there will be more to see this time.

next saturday, the whittier xmas parade marches irritatingly close, down the main street here. usually seems to be several old cars participating and lining up nearby, so thinking as long as they and all the school marching bands are going to wake me up, i might as well go out and take some pictures.

then there are a couple of shows to choose from in the afternoon. i wanna say there is somewhere we have to go in the evening, but i'm not finding it on my calendar. stupid iphone. maybe it's on sunday evening.

and i'm kind of craving ice cream now.

one family

when i was in high school, i had an armenian english teacher. he was funny. he talked funny, like he had a mouth full of marbles, he mumbled through the day. i took several classes with him during my years there.

he liked the way i wrote. so much so, that for one of my finals, while everyone else furiously wrote their minor tomes on whatever the topic was, he had me write a satire about the students in the class. i was already gonna get an a, so why the heck not?

i took classes on shakespeare and the classics from him. the papers i wrote for that class, i used for term papers in college. i knew how to write, i guess.

i think about him once in a while, joke with my brother about him too, since he took classes with him after me.

he was older then, so i can only guess that he's gone now. but i do wonder what he would think of this late night drivel i scribble without thought of order, more of a stream of consciousness than anything else. i suppose without wringing it out and editing it over days and hours, this is what you get. but i wasn't an english major, and i mostly just write whatever pops into my head at the time i'm sitting here.

and that had nothing at all to do with this car. this is anthony's car. i know his name is anthony because his shirt says "anthony" on the patch. oh, and that he spent a lot of time talking with my better half.

i suppose i should be jealous at how easily my better half can work a crowd, get into a conversation on a wide variety of topics, and come out the other side with lots of stories to tell.

but i'm not jealous. he's just that kind of guy, not shy. big, gregarious...greg-garious. lol. he gets more stories. i get more pictures. i'm the innie to his outie.

and to my dad, who seems to be reading this blog more often than i think, no, there's no competition with who gets better shots. just simply the joy of taking the pictures and for me, of getting out, trying to get more out of my comfort zone. but i'll never get as comfortable as my better half just chatting people up. my mouth freezes up, just like in high school, when we had to give a speech.

but it all depends on the person who wants to converse. personality trumps shy anytime. or, if you're a richard, i'll just stare at you in amazement and write about it later.

back to the car. clean, basic, classic. the guys were sitting on the curb behind it eating their mickey d. i was perfectly happy to just squeeze down nearby and shoot the car, but they politely moved their feast away from the car, happy to have someone taking a picture of it.

yes, my better half took a similar shot. his is better. my opinion.

all in one weekend

went to three shows this weekend. good ones. missed ruby's last show of the season, but i'm ok with it. i've seen other people's pictures and i'm still ok with it.

continuing with the bomb club cars...

here's richard's (not that one) master deluxe. he pimped one of the photos in my book—was a picture of his friend's car, got him to look at it, got it sold after carrying it around for a couple of years.

i took several shots of his car. i liked this one best. just loving the fog. wish it happened more often.

then the next day, we went to the viejito's show. (ya, my better half likes to spend time with me when he's not working.) who do we happen to run in to? yep. same guy. same car.

as i was saying, fun to shoot the same car in different places, different times, different light. what do you think?

dude, buy a print. i mean if you want.

here's the plaque from the car next to it, since richard's car has window blinds covering his.

it was their halloween show, btw. not as many cars as usual. i assume it was the baseball game again. but i did see this...which was pretty scary in itself.

they all head south for the winter

so, i'll get back to riverside in a couple of days, but i wanted to put one of this beauty up before i forget. my better half talked the owner into closing it up later that afternoon.

i basically stare at cars with their hoods open if i really want to shoot it, and hope the owner notices and offers to close it. i've only asked owners to close it a couple of times because it was too good not to get it, and most typically will just walk past a few times and hope to see it again some day.

of course, i took advantage of the hood closed, and took several more shots. but i thought i'd share this one, just to show that i sometimes break my own rule. i think my better half mentioned that it's rare to see one in such immaculate condition, but if memory serves, d, there was about five of them in a row down at chicano park, each just as delicious as this one. but i did skip most of those, since they had one side up and one side down.

ok, this one had a nice engine, so i guess that was part of the reason i went ahead and took this shot. my better half liked this one better than the others i did, so maybe that's why i'll share it with you.

out of town tomorrow, so riversiders, hold your breath until wednesday. unless i go to big boy...

buy a print here

written in the sky

so on the next-to-last day of wearing the bionic leg, we went to three car shows. my better half just got himself a new camera, and since i mentioned there was a viejitos show, he was all about taking it out for test drive. their show is usually packed with tasty treats like this one. while, there wasn't as many as is typical, he seemed happy enough with what was there.

so i'm pretty sure i've seen this one at the latin gents show a few months earlier. you tell me, but i think this is the back end of it. i was blown away then, and am still in love with it now.

i had some difficulty getting the low shots of the cars with the boot on, but i managed a few. my other leg was sore the next day from all the squats.

there was a skywriter scribbling across the sky, but either it was too bright for my eyes, or it was so small and blurry, i have no idea what it said, but there it is curving down into the roof of the car.

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so, i got the ok to take off the boot yesterday, and today did physical therapy. i'm not sure if it just hurts because it's not fixed, or if the therapy is just aggravating it and/or helping it heal as intended. whatever, i'll carry the thing in my car for a while, just in case. but no more shots, please. they suck.

going to riverside this weekend for the show-n-go. sounds like my better half has to work on some deadline at the office, so that kinda really sucks donkey balls.

cornered

beauty, chevy is thy name.

the viejitos show was absolutely packed last sunday. second show of my day. this one had no wind, just sun, with an occasional breeze.

i walked past this one several times. group of dudes sittin' in front of it. hard to admire a car with a pod in front of it. i made the circuit of the parking lot three or four times, and finally, on the last pass, i went up and asked the guy if i could take a picture of his car. 

why yes, and he, his friends, and the chairs moved away from it for a few shots. don't think i've had the nerve to ask people to move before, but i just couldn't walk past this one. why it was backed into the corner, i just don't know. just perfect.

so fine

california is great. great weather, even if it is being blown by a cold breath from the arctic this week. still beats where i grew up on the east coast, though i do miss snow just a smidge. but then, i can always drive up to the mountains for that.

the one thing i don't like, the last few years, i've been working in tall buildings. they're built for earthquakes. the buildings "roll." maybe it's just me. maybe my ears are extra sensitive to the movement of the buildings. but i feel it more often than not. usually just the wind blowing against the building, but it makes me queasy just the same. on some days, i have to check the usgs website to see if there really was an earthquake or how far away it may have been.

when i leave the building, i always take my purse, my keys and my phone. just in case. if the building falls down, i tell myself, i could at least maybe get my car and drive home. but then i think, if the office fell down, it would probably fall on the parking garage. if i have my stuff,  i could at least walk and get in the house.

the last couple of weeks, if i wasn't driving out for lunch because of rain, i was out for a walk. took some cash, in case i got hungry or thirsty, but otherwise, i only took my phone. i still feel strange without the keys in my hand, but i tell myself, that's mostly because i have nothing to fidget with while i walk. my inner introvert needs something to help ignore all the people driving by. so instead, i'm out getting some fresh air without my things, and hoping the idiots stop for me at red lights.

anyway, i have a cubicle not quite on the top floor of the building now. it was windy today. i got a headache. and i went for a walk. and the building was still there when i got back.

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another car from an old viejitos show. swirly pinstripes all the way down the sides and across the trunk.

oooooooohhhhhhhh yeah

looking back through some favs. forgot about this one. from the viejitos show in fullerton. not sure i remember correctly, but it might belong to raynbow; if not, definitely one of the other viejitos. what wonderful cars they have, and what wonderful cars show up at their show. looking forward to their show next week. assuming they're collecting toys for xmas. was so crowded last year.

never happy this time of year, heading into the holidays. doing the usual ping pong between family and family. better half staying here with his mom; his sister's family coming down from northern california. i'm going to my bro's for thanksgiving. driving my parents there. don't trust my dad driving. drives his nissan like its a porsche. going to have to pry his keys out of his hands sometime. truth is, he admitted he doesn't like driving at night so much, so he isn't fighting me driving too much. just can't wait to sit in traffic. not.