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cinco de mayo

the annual season opening cruise night at ruby's in whittier fell on cinco de mayo this year.

first and last shows here are usually overflowing with goodness on wheels. being that it was a 'holiday' or excuse for a lot of people to get more drunk than usual on a friday night, it did not get as busy as i would have wished.

being that our family member was still in the hospital in the middle of los angeles at the time, i chose not to endure that traffic, and spent the day at home alone, cleaning, working, and running laundry in anticipation of the patient's return.

end of the day, decided to get out of the house, and headed over. i didn't really hit this show that much last year, and figured it would get a few cars i'd like to shoot, in spite of the party day.

i took some pictures, chatted with a few people i hadn't seen in forever (hey dave), and shook the cobwebs from my head.

got home, downloaded the pics, and promptly forgot about them for a couple of weeks. figured i should post one, for the hell of it at this late date.

i mostly have gotten over fifty-seven chevys, as they are quite numerous, but i still love to shoot the fins. didn't do it this time, since i was trying to get the building sign in the shot. that, and the speaker there was a bit loud on the eardrums to stand there for very long.

it was slightly hot out that evening, i started having a hot flash, and my head got swimmy, so i packed it up after about an hour and a half.

bee

1950 oldsmobile

i made it out to ruby's for the first time this season, this weekend as well. happened to have friday afternoon off for a change, so waited to see if my better half to get home, to see if he wanted to join me.

dude needs to get his air conditioning fixed in his car. after his hellish drive home, with the trapped heat of the day and warm wind blowing in through the windows, he was in no mood to go back out. completely understandable. i hate friday evening traffic more than anything—well only slightly more than evening traffic any other day of the week.

anyway, it was about as expected, a month into the season. there were cars. just not a lot of what i like to shoot. there were a few of the old regulars, and a few old regulars, that were not there...hopefully, just because they didn't go that evening, but you never know...

i'd heard the first couple shows of the season had been jammed with cars i'd love, but i just couldn't work them into my schedule. now this thin showing i was experiencing was no suprise to me, and it was fine. i'm still kicking the tires on these new camera bodies, making sure they are working well enough.

in the few lanes of cars, were some cars i'd never seen before, so i started with them. this bright yellow olds, is one of those. well, i just don't see too many oldsmobiles, actually, and i don't recall seeing one of this model.

curiousity brought out one of the owners...the lady of the couple, of course...to ask about my photography. she was delightful, and we had a quick chat. told her i'd post a picture, so here you go.

as she walked away, she brushed a bee off the hood. i hadn't noticed it before, but there it is on the hood in the picture. i'd have shot a close up of it, but too late, it was gone.

picking coins out of a bear's butt

fourth of july. sitting at my puter watching illegal fireworks through the window. was going to walk uptown, but my better half said that there are a-holes throwing m-80s in drive-bys. interesting city, whittier and los angeles. hate living somewhere, where you have to worry about something stupid like that. could be anywhere now-a-days, i guess. where i grew up, the worse to worry about was eggs being thrown.

there's been some jerk in the neighborhood spending time late in the evenings driving around tossing the things here and there, playing cat and mouse with the cops. i have a hard time falling asleep as it is, so thanks bozo. he just went by, and five seconds later, a cop, lights still dark following at a fairly quick rate...hope he catches him.

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here are some random cars, the right colors for the day. red, last night at ruby's; white, last april at chicano park; and blue, march at the unidos show at walnut high school. all chevy's, all beauties, all, i wouldn't mind having.

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oh, if you're wondering about the title, i've spent the last two days rolling all the spare change in the house. i don't have a piggy bank—i have a bear. he was stuffed so full of coins, i had to keep poking him in that little hole on the bottom to get them loose enough to shake out. i've had him for like thirty years, so i really didn't want to smash him.

found a 1945 mercury dime in my bear; a few other silver dimes in other jars.

between my change and the buckets my better half uses for his, we hauled over a grand to the bank. damn that stuff is heavy! but hey, all we need now are a few days off at the same time and a road trip is in order.

star spangled

ahem. memorial day. simply, a big thank you to all who served our country, including my sister-in-law, my brothers, my uncles, my grandfather, and in particular, my dad.

go navy.

in the pink

made it out to ruby's yesterday. was out of town when the season started, then was driving by last week, but didn't have my camera.

pleasantly surprised that there were so many cars there, in spite of it being a holiday weekend. i took a lot of pics. was there relatively early, so i guess a lot of people were inside having dinner, and leaving me mostly to myself with the cars.

saw the owner of this car. hadn't seen him in a long while. he always sits by the speakers, so i can barely understand what he is saying. always welcomes me with a hug. not a big hugger, but there are a few that i do allow.

pretty car. i think he told me once it was his girlfriend's car, but i could be wrong. i hear so many stories about your cars.

road warrior

i always feel worn out after the drive home from work. typically takes over an hour when it should only be about forty-five minutes.

and people on the freeway are insane, so i'm not the only one. but really, most people drive fine; it's the one too many f-holes that think they are exceptional and the road is theirs. you know the ones i mean—they swerve in and out of lanes, giving semi-trucks no effective warning or brake space. they'll drive up the shoulder if need be.

ya, my hands hurt sometimes from gripping the wheel too tight. after a long day at work, followed by that drive, i feel about as old and tired as this truck.

but it's still here. and so am i. i need a vacation, but don't have one scheduled. maybe i'll visit my kid tomorrow and sit in the jacuzzi. better half can't go anywhere on weekends until his mother is better, and even then he'll worry about her.

call it a day

going to be transporting my puter to another location tomorrow, so it will probably be a couple of days before i post again. but then again, maybe i'll post one more time before i move it. got one or two car shows to visit tomorrow, so you know, gotta back up my pictures and that usually leads to a post...

did three shows yesterday. well, only really shot anything at two. the one at the elks club didn't have anything i felt like shooting, and only made one loop through the show. usually i can find some viejitos there, but they were no where to be seen.

found this one at ruby's before getting some dinner. i've seen it before. i always love the hood ornaments on these.

anyway, i'm not feeling well, so i'm going to take it easy the rest of the day. ttfn.

lone wolf

i suppose i'm up this late because i slept late this morning. i mean until almost noon. and i hardly ever do that, at least later than nine-thirty. guess i needed it.

so i missed the show in yorba linda. but my mom's foot doctor likes taking pictures of stuff like cars, and happened to have gone to the show and already posted stuff. i guess i didn't really miss anything, as i haven't seen much in his pics that i would have taken a picture of.

went to ruby's yesterday. still not as busy as last year, but there were more varied cars there, which i haven't seen before, or in a while. i've seen this one before, but not at ruby's. pretty sure it belongs to the wolves car club. not quite sure why he wasn't parked over with the rest of the pack, except maybe he got there late.

hey steve, liked your bike set up. had all his camera gear in the baskets on his bike, and just cruised up and down the aisles until he saw something he liked, then got up and set up his tripod. easier than carrying that stuff around. he said its got a motor on it too, for when he's too tired to pedal. that's convenient.

got eddie murphy's "raw" playing while i type this. haven't watched this since i was in high school. remember when he used to be funny...?

my point of view

so my better half is always telling me to post something bigger. we're not in a pissing match or anything, but sometimes its fun to compare shots of the same thing.

he's six-foot-five-ish, triple-x-sized, with delusions of being on the ten-foot high ambercrombie & fitch posters in san fran. he makes me laugh, though he'd probably say i'm the one that makes him laugh. i don't think anyone else could possibly come close to understanding me, but he kind of gets me, though he mostly can't understand a word i'm saying on any given day.

i'm about five-six, unless i put on some heels, which are inconvenient to wear at a car show, and more so due to my tweaked foot, much to his disappointment. anyway, the difference in height, our abstract backgrounds, and/or my being a girl, albeit, more of a tomboy, leads to some interesting perspectives on the same subject or what we see or don't see at any given location.

i really like hood ornaments. i gave out a book of them for christmas gifts this year. click the link for a perfectly arbitrary display of a few of the pages.

pontiacs are always fun. i don't think this one is an original, it's too perfect, and the seams from the mold are too obvious. but i didn't find any of the original, crackled, ravaged, aged beauties the other evening at ruby's.

i shoot my close-ups with a newer 100mm lens. with all the new technology and lens coatings, i don't think it stands up to my original secret handshake lens that he bought me several years ago, but sadly crapped out on me last year. i used the hell out of a twenty-seven-year old lens, and then some; a little internal plastic thing broke, and it became more tempramental on whether it would work or not, whether it would focus or not. i wanted something that was reliable.

my better half would borrow it sometimes, and has borrowed the new one a few times. i always wonder if i'll be able to get it back from him, he goes so ape shit over it. i guess it would only be fair, as since he let me start borrowing his equipment, he has had to replace each item, because he doesn't get it back. strange that he keeps offering to let me try out his new camera, huh?

well, he pulled the handshake out of the drawer not too long ago, and it's temporarily behaving, so he's been out using it. he thinks it works just great.

so schweetie, here's a big one. how does it compare to yours?

screw it, here's a chevy

so i like old chevys better than the rest. been a while, so i'm posting one.

saw this one last night when i gimped around the ruby's show in whittier—hadn't been since last year. i saw it cruise past me fairly silently while i was shooting another chevy. they went down the aisle and under the caution tape...sadly thought they were leaving, then realized they were just taking a shortcut to another aisle.

i've learned that if i really want to shoot a car, i need to go find it pretty quickly, in case they decide to drive away again. so i headed over the two rows to where they'd parked. it had hydraulics in it, so here it is dropped down a bit. later, i got my better half to come over and admire it. he'd upped the front end by then for some reason, but i took that one too. didn't think that one was so interesting, so here's my favorite of the few i took.

it was mostly overcast, so the sky here is almost as silvery as the car, but the sunset was still peeking through here and there. there weren't so many cars as i'd usually see here, and my foot was starting to ache, so we didn't stay until full sunset.

the owner did come over to ask about where he might see the pictures. said he goes to lots of shows, but i don't recall ever seeing this one before. hope i see it again, in another setting, and without my foot distracting me from getting a good shot.

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