what's up?

time is fleeting

1947 chevy fleetline

mmmm. i'm feeling like seeing a nice, sleek fleetline. i blame danny and several of his fleetliners club buddies. i had gone up to whittier yesterday, and they drove past me on greenleaf. my better half said a bunch of other old cars had been elsewhere in town earlier, mentioning in particular this mercury. where you all going??? sometimes i wish you'd put down some sort of bread trail i could follow...

and of course, later on, walking on the same street from the theatre, passed the tribe guy in his chevy, looking for prime parking in front of the cigar bar.

intended to stop by the latin gents show yesterday, but was too overheated and lazy to get out of the house once we got back from the movie. saw monsters university, btw. not bad, even for an adult to enjoy. guessing the artists at pixar grew up with tex avery and looney tunes, like i did.

as i was saying, here's a fleetline. shockingly without one of the pharaohs members walking into the shot. they'd just driven in, and were setting up their tent and getting stuff out of their cars, so there are random people in several of the shots i took of their cars. some i was just too exasperated and was already getting too warm, that i didn't bother to take them. i'll see them again, somewhere else. hopefully not on hot asphalt.

saved from an untimely crash

1950 chevy deluxe

i was working on this picture a couple of days ago. i was about five minutes from calling it a day and posting it, and then wham, blue screen of death. shit.

i'd already put in a long day at work, sat in traffic for two hours in what should only be an hour drive, but is becoming a more typical evening drive. then to start playing with the pixels, and for it to bomb out at almost ten o'clock at night, just topped off my day and week.

going crazy at work, trying to meet multiple, overlapping deadlines, which is also par for the course, only more so with a redesign of monthly reports. also really lowering my energy to get to as many car shows after work as i used to like to be at.

thought about going to the broiler tonight, but after the drive home and being glued to an office chair and a car seat for hours, i just had enough fight in me to walk uptown for a slice of pizza.

there are a couple of cigar bars/drinking establishments, that i find more and more often frequented by owners of classic cars. tonight there was an old plymouth sitting in front of one of the wino bars. almost went in to find the owner, and ask if they'd be there if i went home and got my camera, but no. it will be back. if not another time, then maybe at the uptown show in august.

as i was saying at the beginning, i was afraid that this file was going to be corrupted by the computer crash, as has happened before, but shockingly, there was only a minor, fixable flaw. i liked the location, the sun setting behind the trees, but there was a decent breeze blowing the treetops a bit more than i like.

thinking of going to the show in rialto and/or the show at la habra high school this weekend. i wanna say there was somewhere else i was supposed to be, but it eludes me right now.

hey, ernie, here it is

1951 chevy deluxe

i'm pretty sure this is ernie's car. from back in february. a few of the latin gents drove all the way out to norco, where they found crazy me, who also drove all the way out to norco.

they got there kinda late, so had to park down the lane, instead of in a space as a group.

i've made the pilgramage out to this big boy a couple of times now. the lot was full up both times. i had wanted to go out to the show on memorial day, but we went to see the shuttle and dino bones instead.

written in the sky

1948 chevrolet fleetline

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.

drive

1948 chevy fleetmaster

i have monday off from work. only know of one show, out in norco. i went to one there last year. lots of cars. worth the trip, but also very hot. used to have a reason to drive that far out of my way, but not really now. so i'm thinking about it, but haven't decided for sure if i really want to drive out to east jesus nowhere yet.

i should just hit up a couple of shows tomorrow and fill up my memory card with enough to keep me happy for a while. still a couple of weeks for my favorite monthly shows, so i'm just idling through older pictures in my collection.

i think this is one of the latin gents cars, out at ruby's last summer. they don't usually make it this far north for a smaller show, but i think there were a couple of them out that night. 

been busy

1953 chevy bel air

finally got a couple of hard drives and spent the weekend backing up stuff, getting ready to make room on my hard drive. plus it rained, so i skipped a couple of shows, assuming no one would go.

so, i'm still finishing up some back ups, but if its not raining tomorrow, i intend to check out a new show in el toro. i'm not quite sure why its starting, since there's still the one at fuddruckers at the same time. i've been away from it for a while, so maybe there's some drama going on with the organizers or the restaurant. maybe they intend to move it all over to the new one. i don't' know, but i'll check it out.

meanwhile, my better half's van has been having engine and/or electrical issues, and i have to drive him over to pick it up again in few minutes, so here's a quick post. it's a viejitos car. it's red. red's a bitch.

juicy

1940 chevrolet fleetline

so i stayed home today because of my cough. been trying to do some real work, but the program that connects me to the company servers isn't seeing the servers. and the help(less) line to india couldn't figure it out either. so i've been sitting here all day doing what work i could via email, and expecting any time i had to step away from the computer, "bob" would call me to try and walk me through it again.

i'm sure they'll call me tomorrow, when i'm actually in the office, and it will be a moot point. doubt i'll try to work from home ever again. just isn't worth the aggravation.

so i've been putting final tweaks on this one in between monitoring emails. it is a beautiful car, but i really liked it best in this shot, though from the front the sunset was just beginning, and that is also pretty spectacular.

pretty, shiny things

1950 chevy deluxe

another from the latin gents. i wanna say this belonged to the same guy that closed a bunch of car hoods last time i was at the show. and this time he was busily buffing the dust off this car before i got to it. i could totally be imagining it, but i like to humor myself sometimes. wish he would have moved the not so interesting sign further away, just for a few, but there you go. shot it as i found it.

fast food

chevy fleetmaster

this was a pretty nice convertible, again at the latin gents show. it looks black, but if you looked close in the right light, it's a deep, dark, blue. and so shiny, it really soaked up the refections.

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fast food implies crap food. well they try their best, at least you hope. you hope the food is real and not biomechanical by-products. would rather eat play-doh sometimes. i was given a handful of gift cards to crap food places i frequent on my weird work hours.

the habit has recently been popping up all over. first time i had it was at their original establishment in santa barbara last year. wow, it was good; ate there twice in one weekend. then had it somewhere else, still good. then a few months ago, stopped by one in san luis obispo. uh. college town, college students...i gave them a little slack on the quality.

a new one opened up in whittier not too long ago. first burger there was pretty good, but its been spotty since. tonight, i had a salad. it was awesome in santa barbara. it was average in san luis obispo. this one was soggy. instead of slices of avocados, a scoop of "fresh" guac. i had thousand island dressing, which definitely wasn't a name brand, if not just ketchup mixed with stuff already in the store. i ate the chicken and the bacon bits, and an occaisonal bite of wet lettuce and blue cheese bits. am i just catching a bad batch? or have the bean counters caught up with the success, and started cutting back on quality?

will they go the route of other food chains, eventually adding the brass bell to ring for (dis)satisfaction, with the employees like trained pavlovian seals to respond "thank you!" i always substitute "eff you!"

fortunately, i still have a full card for in-n-out, and they mostly are pretty good, about 95% of the time.

that time of year again

1939 chevy master deluxe

baby, it's cold outside. skies are spectacular. it's time for rain. and it's time for the tree carcasses. randomly discarded, used up christmas trees. arbitrarily dumped anywhere and everywhere. sure, this week, people are dutifully putting them, untrimmed, out with the trash.

then there are the people who make that extra effort, who actually take the time to put them in their car to find some lonely deathbed to toss them out on. usually just sitting by the roadside, but i did see one jauntily propped up in a bus shelter corner, still attached to the stand. wonder where it was going...

spent the morning at the honda dealer, for an oil change. of course, they found something else...back brakes almost gone, so replace them and resurface the rotors. never get out of there for less than $300. i suppose when it starts being more than $500 a pop, i'll think about getting a new car.

anyway, i managed to make it to the latin gents show yesterday. arrived a little late, stayed a couple of hours. probably left right when the light was getting good, but i thought i was meeting up with people for an evening at disneyland. i got there, but they didn't, but that's another story.

parking lot was full of chevys, mostly bombs. i was happy. lots of clubs too. i took a bunch of pictures, and just hoped my hard drive would fit them. it did, so i have a few good ones i'll post over the next few days. i can probably do about thirty more pics, then i'm done until i save up for a new drive. blah blah. whine whine.