The Northward Contrail

Ghia

The latest off the workbench.  You may remember my pre-economy measures essay about the Karmann Ghia, and how I'd really like to have one someday, since it's likely to be the closest thing to a Porsche I'll be able to afford anytime soon.  I've had the Tamiya kit in the stash for several years, and during the days of economizing, I started to build it as a sort of balm to my bruised automotive aspirations.

This kit shares a lot (obviously) with the Beetle kit, just like the real thing, but with new parts as appropriate.  For the most part, it was an easy build, and as usual with Tamiya there's a lot of really nifty engineering.  However, the chrome trim gave me fits.  I had an old sheet of Bare-Metal Foil that didn't want to work any longer, and an attempt to spray-paint the trim went hilariously wrong.  So I had to repaint the whole body.  By that point, there was enough paint on the body that the trim wasn't as crisp, so my new foiling attempt wasn't much better.  However, I got it done, and it is a nice four-footer.

Someday before too long, when things get paid down/paid off enough, I hope I'll have the real thing.  (Though I don't know what color it'll be.  Yellow is my usual sports-car color for some reason.)  For now, though, this was a nice way to blow off some steam.

There I go again

Yep, it's happened again.  I've been busy the last few days, so nothing new for today.  I do promise entries for later in the week, complete with photos of a few things I've been up to.  Stay tuned.

In the air again

Next week I'll be traveling again, going back to Alaska.  And, again, I'm feeling that strange thing I feel when a trip looms: it's anticipation and excitement, but it's also dread and inertia.

It's not like I hate the place I'm going.  Far from it.  I love it up there.  Every time I go, it's absolute sensory overload.  Everything's bigger, more beautiful, more spectacular, more jaw-dropping.  I love the people up there I spend time with. 

But, oh, I hate the travel to get there.  It's not the flying.  I love flying.  Trips to Alaska, at certain points, are like flying in space, especially when you catch the red-eye and look out the window at the dawn.  It's lovely.  And, thanks to some circumstances in the past, I've been able to fly there first-class, and that's been pretty neat.  But this time, I'll be in the back of the plane.  I got a heck of a deal on a ticket, so there's no way I could pass it up.  Even then, though, the cattle-car nature of modern flying in coach class is what I hate: being crammed into a seat with little leg room for six-plus hours, not really being able to recline, not being able to do much of anything, basically being at the mercy of your seatmates for everything.  It's bad enough, but when you're sort of long-legged and have just a tiny touch of agoraphobia, it gets even more fun.  (I wonder if the yield-management people ever try their own product, especially in the back of the airplane, and especially if they have to go to the toilet.  Getting out of your seat in coach class with two other people sitting beside you?  Just not possible.)

I'll be doing what I can to alleviate the misery.  I've tried two other sets of noise-canceling headphones in the past, but while they're both good, they haven't delivered the shut-out-the-world feeling I've wanted.  So I finally plopped a few weeks ago for a set of them big-time fancy Bose Quiet Comfort 15 headphones.  They cost a lot, but, man alive, those things are eerie-quiet.  With that, an iPod full of favorite music and old-time radio broadcasts, a good book to read and a book of New York Times crossword puzzles for solving, I should be able to make the most of it.

And, if all else fails, I always fall back on what gives me hope each time I take these long trips: knowing that every mile that ticks by is a mile closer to being there, and knowing that before long, I'll be looking out the window at those huge mountains that have become so familiar over the years.

I'll get through it.  And I know it'll happen as it always does: the wonder of being there will outweigh the minor miseries involved in the journey.

(That said, when I finally make that trip to New Zealand -- which is going to happen, because promises have been made to certain parties -- I'm popping for the higher-priced enroute accommodations.  I don't care what I have to mortgage to do it.  It'll be worth it.  Otherwise, I don't see how I'll be able to spend that long on an airplane.)

A little love

Soon it'll be a decade since I started my present job.  It's hard to believe it's the same place. 

To say the place was "limping along" when I got here is an understatement.  It was close to shutting down, and I didn't know until much later just how close to oblivion we were, that at one point we were one hiccup away from folding up like a card table.  I remember in the early faculty meetings I attended that there was some breath-holding, as we had to improve some things to satisfy our accreditation agency.  I remember worrying about what might happen if we lost our accreditation.

Slowly, gradually, we dug our way out.  Improvement took a while to see.  There were rumors floating around about what might or might not happen, but I tried not to spend too long thinking about them.  The worrying wasn't going to solve anything.  The decisions were being made by the higher-ups, and, besides, my job was to teach the kids, and worrying wasn't going to get them taught.  

There were some hits, and some misses.  Any time I'm tempted to get too nostalgic about my early days here, that's all I have to do, is remember some of the things that didn't work out and some of the people who didn't work out here, either.  We had some really great folks who had to leave, and I miss them still.  (And there's a handful that...well, I wish them well, but I don't miss them.)  All the while, we had some pretty good leadership.  Not everything went exactly well, and indeed some initiatives turned out to be real duds, but the place not only stayed on the rails, but it managed to grow.

A couple weeks back I had a meeting with someone about a project we're trying to hatch, and in the course of his visit I gave him a tour of the campus.  I told him something I find myself saying more and more, that the place looks nothing like it did ten years ago.  Back then it looked worn and tired, there was a shuttered, abandoned building in the middle of campus, and it just looked worn-out.  Now, though, that abandoned building has been reconditioned and is a showpiece, there's new student housing, there's things being repainted and reconfigured and all kinds of good stuff.  A few weeks ago at a special faculty meeting, one of the things we were told about was a new facilities management plan, and that a lot more things were going to get some money invested in them.  For someone who remembers the sad, sore-eyed campus I first saw in 2001, this is heartening news.

I've sometimes been asked why I continue to stay at a tiny college when I could (theoretically, at least) command a higher salary and a lighter teaching load elsewhere, maybe even get to teach some graduate students.  The story I often tell them -- that it's not cutthroat here, that I like the smaller atmosphere and the fact that I know my way around, and that it's not all about money -- is only a part of it.  The part that I very seldom share is that my years here have made me develop an attachment to this little place.  I didn't graduate from here and I don't buy into putting the stickers on my car and all that, but it was a place that, almost a decade ago, took a chance on me and allowed me to flourish, become happy, find my calling.  It is a place that has been extremely good to me, and in return I find myself very loyal to it.

Could I have made more elsewhere?  Unquestionably.  But it's not about the money.  It's a deeper satisfaction.  All the extra money wouldn't mean beans if I wasn't happy about the way I earned it.  Instead, I feel affection for the college, and for my little department, and for my students.  Since my first year here, I've felt about this place the way Charlie Brown felt about his pitiful little Christmas tree: it's not so bad.  Maybe it just needs a little love.

Treasure!

There's been a great technology purge at work.  A lot of stuff that's been in storage for many years was pulled out and dumped into a vacant classroom.  Whatever we want, free of charge, as long as we got it the hell off campus by a certain date.  Well, they didn't need to invite me twice, that's for sure.

Last week wasn't just about test strips and phone calls.  Nope, one day I stopped in to have a look.  I didn't expect much, and there was some stuff up there I could find no use for, but...man, somebody was ditching an IBM Selectric II.  And a couple slide projectors.  And two Cortelco 2500 phones.  Sold. 

The next day, I stopped in for another look.  A colleague had put a pristine Selectric I up there for disposal.  I chortled with joy as I instructed it to come home with mama.

Then Monday I was by for one last look.  Almost as if it had grown there overnight, there was an IBM Model M keyboard, the best keyboard ever constructed on this planet, and free for the taking.  I grabbed it, along with a few other obscurities.  

Some of this stuff may turn out to be junk.  Some of it is useful just for the curiosity factor.  And some of it works (the Selectric I, for instance, just needs a minor tune-up and it should be goin' like sixty again, and I imagine the Selectric II will be fine once the gunk is blown out of it).

Still, man, for a techno-history junkie...treasure!

Dang it

I went to the doctor a couple weeks ago for my annual check-up.  Routine tests detected a problem common to ladies, and she gave me prescriptions for it.  I didn't know anything was wrong, because nothing felt weird, but I'm not a doctor.  Anyway, I took the full course as prescribed and figured I could go on with life.

Well, not so fast.  Last week there was a minor flare-up.  I felt a little warm, a little droopy, all the usual signs.  Went to the drug store for test strips.  Yep, there it was.  So I called the doctor's office, left a message for my doc.  A couple hours later, they called back with some instructions.  Try this and this, and if it's still bugging you in a week, we'll see you then.  

Since then, it's gotten somewhat better.  The remedies prescribed via phone have made a marked difference, and I've also identified a few things I've been doing that haven't helped matters, either (all the coffee and iced tea haven't helped, for one), but the test strips show there's still something there, so I'll probably have to go back by for further assistance. 

Thankfully, it's nothing that serious; it's more a nuisance right now.  On the other hand, the timing couldn't be much dicier.  In a couple weeks, I'm on an airplane headed north again, and will be spending another week in the wilderness.  Civilization isn't that far away, of course, but when I travel, I like not having to worry about my health.  I have enough on my mind as it is, and having fallen ill on a trip before, I know firsthand how awful it is. 

I imagine by then it'll all be cleared up.  It's not that serious, and if I do need treatment, that's straightforward enough.  Still, it's one more thing.

It's that good

We all have the places we love to eat.  Sometimes, circumstances dictate that it's a place at which we loved to eat -- because of health problems, or because it went out of business, or because you moved away.  Roger Ebert, for instance, wrote some time ago about how he loved Steak 'n' Shake.  I think it's fair to say all of us could write something similar about our particular favorites.

There have been some incredible meals I've had.  There's a bakery and cafe in Girdwood, Alaska that makes the most unbelievably good breakfast I've ever had, complete with a cinnamon roll about the size of your head.  We've discovered wonderful little Italian restaurants here and there, little family-owned places that make us yearn to travel back to those cities just to eat there again.

Then there's Char-Hut.

I didn't discover Char-Hut until long after I'd moved out of South Florida.  I used to drive by them all the time.  Hubby would talk about how good it was.  But I didn't do a lot of eating out by myself, and when we did, we'd go someplace a little less fast-foody.  One day a few years back, though, we were down visiting family, and hubby had the idea to have lunch there.

Wow.

For the uninitiated, Char-Hut is a little chain of burger restaurants in South Florida.  As the name implies, they cook the burgers over flame, and then they build the burger your way, sort of the way a sub shop does.  That's good enough, but the fries and onion rings make things even better.  (Oh, those onions.  Bliss.)  If you order the veggie burger, they'll put that on the grill and it gets flame-broiled.  It's wonderful.

Since that first visit a few years back, it's become a required stop when we go back down there.  The last time, we went to Char-Hut twice during our stay.  Hubby pretty much has standing orders that we visit there at least once while we're down there.  The last time, we were even trying to figure out just what we'd have to do to finance a satellite location near us.  Starting a business is such a colossal headache for so many reasons, but, man, it would almost be worth it to not have to travel night and day just to enjoy that kind of bliss.

That's how good it is.

The project that wouldn't end

About five years ago I was in the local Uber-Mart.  I'd read a Scale Auto piece by Pat Covert about a mild customization of the then-new Revell-Monogram Chevy SSR kit: he'd turned it into a hardtop (as opposed to the retractable hardtop) and used various shades of Krylon to give it a different look.  I liked the project, and thought it would be fun as a quick project.

Heh heh.

The chassis, engine and interior gave me no real problems.  The body was the real piece of fun.  First, I could never get the seams completely out of the hardtop, especially along where the drip rails would be.  I couldn't get it to sit down straight, so I had to add little trim pieces. Then I primed the thing in gray primer, not realizing that with a yellow topcoat, it would look awful.

So the thing sat in its box for many years, and through a move.  Until I got my second wind on it a few months back.  Problem was, some of the parts took missing.  First I couldn't find the mirrors.  Then they turned up.  Then I couldn't find that big rear bumper piece.  I was so close to having it finished, too.  I was considering various options, including making a new custom bumper.  Thankfully, the bumper turned up in a box of parts.  One repaint later (this time with white primer beneath), here it is.

This one's a definite four-footer (i.e., get no closer than four feet to it and it looks okay).  But it's done.  I didn't let it lick me.  Although it came close.

A Puma in tiger stripes

A few years ago we were in a hobby shop and I saw this kit.  I'm a sucker for well-done tiny-scale kits, and since I'm mama to a little tiger already, I couldn't resist.  It was only six bucks.  Why not? 

This is the 1:144 Revell-Germany Puma in 2005 Tiger Meet markings.  It, as we say where I come from, ain't no bigger than a minute, but it's nicely done, and a fun way to blow off some steam between more complex projects.  The really fine details like antennae and grab handles are, by necessity, molded too thick, but replacing them would have taken away part of the fun of building this little one just for the heck of it.

The tiger stripes are broken down into sections of decal.  I was a little apprehensive about them, but they cooperated very well and Solvaset helped them conform.  Touch-ups were easy; just a little bit of black paint here and there and you're done.

It's off my beaten path, both because I don't do a lot of this kind of subject and because I don't do a lot of special schemes, but this was a really fun diversion. 

McLaren

I wrote weeks ago about this little devil.  Now, she's finished.  This is the Revell 1:24 McLaren Mercedes MP4-20, all finished, as a generic Juan Pablo Montoya car from the 2005 season.  I really wanted to build this as his car from the 2005 US Grand Prix fiasco, but there are some differences between it and the kit plastic, so I did the best I could without having to conduct major surgery.  It's sort of a mix of the USGP car and the Australian GP car, or at least that's my story.  I'm really not up on my McLarens, so that had something to do with erring on the side of caution.

My original entry about this little one detailed some of the problems I faced, so I won't reprise them.  Painting was a little bit of a challenge because of all the curvy masking and goofy angles, but I got it done.  I thought it looked like hell at first, but once the stripe decal was applied, it started looking much better.

I went all out on the carbon fiber decal on the Renault, but decided not to do the full monty on this one.  Revell gives you foil decals for some of the rear suspension components, for the areas exposed to the heat from the exhaust, so I just applied those and didn't wrap much of the rear suspension in carbon fiber, and did the best I could with the front.  Technically, I should have used carbon fiber decals on both sides of the barge boards, but I just painted them black instead.  It looks okay to me at normal viewing distance.

In some ways this kit was more crude than the Renault.  There were seat belts molded into the seat pan, and I had to grind those out with a motor tool.  The wing and spoiler components also seemed clunkier and required a good bit of thinning.  I also had to grind inside the back of the wheels so they'd fit properly; otherwise, they tracked way too wide.  The front wheel camber wasn't engineered into the kit, so that had to be induced too.  (Yes, real Formula One cars have that goofy front-wheel stance.)  I used some leftover etch from the Renault's photo-etch to make a new set of seat belts.

The kit's clunky, but the decal sheet is gorgeous and is a pleasure to use.  There's no tobacco decals, just the drivers' names done in goofy logotype the way they were done at Hungary and Magny-Cours.  So, again, Crazy Modeler decals to the rescue for the tobacco sponsorship.  The only other addition was a bit of wire for the little antenna and a couple of little plastic strakes behind the cockpit.

There were times I wondered if I'd ever get this kit finished, because it really fought me at a few points.  But I'm glad I stuck with it. It's no Tamiya shake-the-box experience, but it was rewarding in its own way.  It's a nice companion for the Renault, and it's interesting to compare the boxy R23 to the curvy, muscular-looking MP4-20 and see how much F1 cars changed within just a couple of years.

That said, I think I'm done with carbon fiber decals for a little while.  Something simpler would be in order for the next project, I believe.