one man's trash...Long Beach Sunday Market

So my wife swings-by the farmer's market that our friend runs yesterday, just to say hi and procure some fresh veggies. Well, since the vendors were packing-up, they were dumping lots of perfectly-fine food. 25 pounds of strawberries and 10 more of celery, red cabbage, zucchini, blueberries etc! We prepared the strawberries and threw 'em in the blender, then froze it all. The celery went right into the evening's bitchen' soup. The rest? It went to the chickens and rabbits and pig. Looks like Shannon will start selling her soap there (as they've wanted her to do all along), and bring home the farmer's leftovers from now on! It was a kick-ass end to the weekend.

Paul & Dydia's T-87 MUST WIN CONTEST; you can help!

As regular readers will remember, my pals P&D have brought their T-87 back from the dead to be the premier example of this car in the world. I implore you to take 2 minutes and help them out. Forward this to any hot rodders or car peeps you know; thanks!

Hi Friends, Acquaintances, and People We Might Not Really Even Know,

Thanks to your help, our 1941 Tatra T87 “osmivalec” (“eight cylinder”) has been selected from 2600 entries for the New York Times 2010 Collectible Car of the Year Contest.

The prize is $5000 — and if we win the Czech beer is on us. (Greg's note: they're serious)

Help us win — vote early and vote often. You can legally vote every day. No kidding. These are real New York, not Louisiana, rules. (If you live in Louisiana, or want to use Louisiana rules, sign up under your dead relatives’ email addresses and vote for them too.)

Voting is fast and simple:

1) Click here http://collectiblecars.nytimes.com/contest/Vote.asp> to view all of the finalists.
2) To view the profile of each car, click on a photo. Look for “osmivalec” with its three headlights.
3) Click on the "Vote" button to submit your vote for your favorite car.

Just three steps and you're done!

Vote now, vote again tomorrow, and again every day until May. Just like coffee in the morning, chocolate in the afternoon, whiskey at night, or beer any time — a regular routine.

The contest voting ends May 17th. Each day’s votes count toward the total.

Never mind health care. This is something really insignificant! It’s up to you. Don’t let the vile pretenders win this contest! Vote Tatra! Vote today! Vote tomorrow!

Send this to a thousand of your closest friends.

Do you want free beer? Vote Tatra!

--Dydia and Paul; Harpo, and Ernie.


P.S. If you’re not familiar with the Czechoslovakian Tatra T87, it’s a rear engine, air-cooled V8 with a dorsal fin down the back. The Czech Batmobile. We bought it “junk” nine years ago and finished its restoration (in the Czech Republic, at a shop in the town where the car was originally built) in 2009. Tatras were the only civilian cars still in production during WWII, and this is one of 3,023 made over a fifteen-year period. Ours is one of roughly 100 surviving in the world. Osmivalec was brought to this country by a US serviceman after the War, sat as a broken-down used-car-lot lure for who-knows-how-long, wallowed axle-deep in manure for over a decade, and then stood outdoors in the snow of Upstate New York for ten more years. From its “parts-car only” “not restorable” status we spent almost a decade restoring it. It runs, it stops. And it could win the contest. Vote Tatra! Vote today!

so close, yet so far

I work 2 blocks from a pretty terriffic & stylish company, Catalina Flying Boats. In the past, I've been allowed to sit and draw their vintage DC-3s out on the tarmac as they loaded and unloaded them from their twice-daily runs out to Catalina Island. Today I spied this perfect (as in original slightly-faded paint, red interior) early '60s MGA mk.II sitting in their loading area. Damn,what a great car.

ah, the onion

to wit...

• Horoscopes »

  

  Aries Mar 21 - Apr 19

  The stars would love nothing more than to reveal your future this week, but unfortunately, they're just large luminous balls of plasma held together by gravity in space.

speedster obsession continues

1. trailer
2. truck
3.malibu
4.R75/6
5.speedster
6.mga

1.pay for/complete
2.brakes/engine
3.airbags/interior/paint
4.clutch/various seals
5.acquire
6.acquire

happy St. Patrick's day / Pogue Mahone!

It's 80 degrees, no clouds, just amazing ...out the back door of my job. Happy St. Patrick's day all. Pic is of the Fagan, the only Irish motorcycle I'd ever heard-of. Been driving the Malibu to work this week fyi.

mmm, yeah, I want it

American LaFrance, known to me priorly as "American LaJunk" by some guys who were firemen in the 80s and weren't so fond of the companys' hook truck, is now a new obsession...to be tended-to post striking-it-rich. Check this out.

2 quick things before tending to Shan's garden

It's Sunday morning, daylight savings time has sprung forward (I can't wait to get outta work and still have daylight left! Man, it's really like I survived winter this year) and I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee, and the kids are sorta behaving. Cute though. Anyway, two things before I go outside:

1. I was already gonna see that Tron: Legacy movie, with its bitchin' lightcycles and Daft Punk soundtrack...but now, well, damn...
2. and thanks to Jalopnik, I'm reminded of assholes that make it look like they're livin' large, but are pretty insufferably cheap and annoying about the little things. Like people who own $26,000 motorcycles and think that tire and labor prices are negotiable at 5:50pm on a Friday evening. To wit; this guy sneaking past the parking toll in a 1/2 million dollar car.

think your 'lil hot rod project is tough?

Having trouble sourcing parts for your 1927/40/59/76 Chevy/Ford/Pontiac/Peugeot? Aw, poor baby... try building old airplanes, like these guys. The New Zealand outfit The Vintage Aviator has a super-focused and amazing ambition; to make airplanes from 1914-1918 a flying reality in our times. Ninety-plus years of time-marching-on would put a kink in your plans, and eventually, you'd get so sick of looking for old rusty splintery, dry-rotted relics, you'd decide to start re-popping everything you needed, like they have. Everything. Handcrafted and built like it was then, from the original schematics! If you roam around their site for 10 minutes and are not impressed, you have no soul.

wednesday

Work

Been pulling the too-much work routine due to our Open House party/raindance this past Sat/Sun. The upside? Lots more girls than usual at work, and stuff like this going-on in the back parking lot. ...and doughnuts aplenty. The downside? No forward progress on the C20 or any of the vehicles lately. Pete at Sierra Trailer restoration is elbows-deep into the pop-up at the moment, and called me for interior elevation drawings. Also, for the first time ever, I owe the US government $1100 in taxes! woo -hoo!

jesus christ, could I love the Raveonettes any more?

...seriously, they just keep getting better... dig;

...and that's on top of songs/videos like these; (!)

weekend report + happy March

Some of my photos from Actions, Conversations & Intersections which we all enjoyed very much. Also rad is Ideational Architectures, a show that shares the space with A,C&I and introduced me to the kick-ass work of Alejandro A. Pereda and Alexandre Arrechea. Many thanks, too, go to Amy Caterina for letting my kids frolic in her fuzzy forrest installation, and who was nice to talk to, too. These two installations complimented each other in a masculine/feminine way that was seamless. By the way; Shelly & Sandras' giant knitting needles each have one of those "cow/moo cans in 'em, so when you flip 'em, the needle goes moooooooooooowwww." Thru April 18th 2010.