The Northward Contrail

On moments for us

A lot's happened in the time since I last posted, and most of it's been good. There continue to be some annoyances, but most of them are trifling. The rest of life in this year 2012 is actually pretty decent so far, and I'm finding it possible to breathe a little.

Over the last couple months I came to realize that there's very little left for me to prove to anyone other than myself. The remaining ambitions are mostly very intensely personal, and none of them involve Big Questions. Those have been answered, and happily so, and the answers to those Big Questions contribute to a sense of inner peace.

Happily, it's coincided with no small amount of simplification in my life. At work, I renegotiated some duties and worked out a new agreement on the student paper; not only is it a better deal for the students, and not only does it provide me with some sorely needed help, but it also takes away some major sources of stress. In my personal life, my five-year budget is ticking along as planned, and I'm thinking about long-term financial strategies that may enable an earlier retirement from teaching than originally planned. Why? For one, hubby's older than I am, and when he retires I want to share the time we have left doing the things we've always talked of doing. The other? Because the day I no longer feel I'm effective, the day I'm no longer getting it done, I want to make way for someone who has the fire and the ability. I don't want to overstay my usefulness. I've known people who have, and suffered as a student under some teachers who passed their "use by" date long before I got there. I don't want that to be me.

And the vacation from daily posting has been good, too. I'm remembering how to listen to life's pauses a lot more, and finding that while writing is good, just sitting and listening and thinking and all that kind of thing is sorely underrated. I have thoughts for topics, but no longer having to throw daily treatises on a website has been good for me. No doubt that's had something to do with why life has seemed a little happier of late.

With things thus far being humming along, and with fewer demands on my brain, I've even had time to spend at the workbench. A few hours of parts cleanup, a little bit of paint through the airbrush, and an evening with some glue got me this:

It's the make-rocket-go-now end of the 1:20 Tamiya McLaren M23, reissued about a year ago. It's an ancient kit by modern standards, but satisfyingly detailed and, in typical Tamiya manner, is generally a joy to build. With some luck, paint goes on the body this weekend, and I'll be able to install this monster. It took some time to overcome the workbench inertia, but once I got going, I remembered how addictive it is. When it's something that, in typical Tamiya manner, fits so well that it just begs you to keep building it once you've started, it's pure pleasure.

I've noted before the strangeness of being able to have good things, but not enjoying them because you can't let yourself comprehend that you do have those things for which you've worked so hard for so long. But lately, it feels that's changing, and I'm coming to realize just what I do have. Maybe I'm letting myself enjoy it. That would be nice.

For Dan Wheldon

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

                                        -- A.E. Housman

Smokey gets his wish

A couple days ago there was a fire in Daytona Beach, and the last remaining section of an automotive landmark became history.  It was all that was left of Smokey Yunick's garage, and it went up in a rather spectacular blaze.

Smokey's garage was one of those places you had to seek out, especially as Daytona Beach grew up.  A few years ago, we were in town on one of our semi-regular visits and we drove up Beach Street to find it.  Smokey had been gone a couple years by that point, and we knew the garage's days were numbered anyway.  But we found it.  It was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence and stacks of old tires dotted the perimeter at intervals.  The buildings were quiet and empty.  Partly out of respect, but mainly to avoid trespassing, we didn't dare approach the fence; instead, we sat in the shopping center parking lot next door and shot a few photos. 

There's doubtless some folks who wished Smokey's garage could have remained as a museum and showcase.  But Smokey wasn't among them, and for several reasons.  He knew the land was valuable and could provide for his family after he was gone.  He didn't want to get into the museum business (according to some accounts, he'd noted the struggles Don Garlits had gone through keeping his museum afloat).  And by the 1990s, the place was getting run down, and keeping the accumulated stuff inside intact was becoming a lot of work.  In his very entertaining (and highly recommended, available here) memoir, Smokey wrote, "My goal is get rid of the stuff, get up on the roof with 20 gallons of gas, spread it around and light it.  The garage is 55 years old and it's getting in really poor shape.  We had two hurricanes in '99 and the roof looks like a chicken with most of its feathers off."

Once upon a time, I'd have been in the "preserve it" category.  But over the years, I've seen what happens to a lot of preserved structures: they lose their context with each passing generation, and become touristed-up, or get seized upon by those who want to use them as symbols for this or that, or they become pawns in larger battles, or someone buys them as expensive "look what I got!" trinkets.  Or they're not maintained properly, and either start looking utterly ridiculous because of improper restoration/conservation, or they're neglected and eventually fall apart. 

Don't get me wrong, for I am firmly in favor of preserving significant artifacts and structures.  But so little of what I see is done the right way, and so much of what has to be done to make them pay for themselves gets tawdry.  And the more of it you do, the less you preserve of what you're preserving, and the more context you lose over time.  Every once in a while I wonder if the stuff that gets demolished doesn't get the better deal, because at least they don't have to maintain their dignity and context in a world that's hell-bent on destroying that dignity and context in favor of the tawdry and the quick buck.

That's part of why, when they started tearing down Smokey's a few years ago, I couldn't get too terribly sad about it.  Because, that way, it stayed what it was until the very end.  And, more than that, it wasn't my call.  It's what Smokey wanted.  He made no secret that he wanted the property sold and the garage torn down.  No shrines.  His family wanted his wish carried out, and was prepared to fight for it.  And now it's over, and the family is relieved, justifiably so. 

Smokey, I don't know if you were serious when you wrote what you did ten years ago, but it's funny how it came to pass, exactly the way you wanted.  Here's to you, you magnificent ol' cuss.

Idling in conversation

I have the blessed curse of being a gearhead, and that's among the many fascinations I carry in this life.  Sometimes I get to daydreaming about the garage I'd have if I suddenly got that job as a billionaire, or even a millionaire.  What would I have in that stable?  Some people daydream about Ferraris, some daydream about Rolls-Royces, others dream about race cars.  But my daydreams generally haven't been that far out there.  Some of them even involve a car or two that I could afford on my present salary, if I moved some things around.

In no particular order, here's what I'd look for:

1.  1961-63 Lincoln Continental. Okay, I admit I fell in love with this generation of Lincolns because of this car, which in its original configuration was one of the most gorgeous automobiles I've ever seen.  And, once upon a time, I did daydream about a project like this.  (It is neat that particular car got done up right; I remember watching that miniseries and thinking that poor mocked-up limo didn't look right, so I'm glad it was bought by someone who invested the effort to redo it correctly.)  Since those days, though, I've come to appreciate that generation of Lincolns on their own merits.  Compare the 1960 Lincoln to the 1961 Lincoln - or, for that matter, consider what Cadillac and Imperial were offering in 1961.  The contrast couldn't be more striking.  The competitors were still taking their design cues from the decade just ended, but Lincoln provided something elegantly simple, a car from tomorrow.  For my Lincoln, I'd love a four-door convertible, but I'd be willing to consider a nice hardtop if need be.

2.  1975-76 Chevy S-3 Laguna. By this time in automotive history, cars weren't what they had been, what with fuel efficiency and emissions control and all manner of safety mandates.  And although I can't argue with that, it still meant a lot of cars weren't what they used to be (witness what happened to the poor Dodge Charger that decade).  It's kind of a shame the 1975-76 S-3 Laguna didn't come along a half-decade earlier, when cars really had punch to them, for its angular nose screamed speed.  I fell in love with these cars because they were the cars to beat on the stock car tracks in the mid '70s. I'd want to spend some time under the hood to bring out the potential of whatever engine happened to be in mine; I also wouldn't be satisfied with an automatic transmission, so let's fix that too.  As for colors, paint mine red-orange to honor a favorite racer or Kelly Green to honor someone I admire.

3.  A Porsche 911.  But which Porsche 911?  Do I channel my inner Hurley Haywood and buy a nifty vintage model, or do I buy a new one and have it built to order, and then pick it up from the factory?  (Or from Brumos?)  Ah, heck.  If I'm rich enough to consider the care and feeding of one 911, I can afford 'em both.

4.  A mid-'70s Pontiac Firebird.  Like you even need to ask why.

5.  I'd be pretty darn happy with all this, so I'd save the fifth spot for something Mopar for hubby.  He loves him the Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth products from the 1960s and early '70s, when they were really dealing in horsepower and a force to be reckoned with on the track.  So this last one is his, for his enjoyment.  Besides, I'd be awful busy with the other four (or five) cars on this list, wouldn't I?

Safety

A few days ago I was reading a post on a motorsports bulletin board.  There was one thread about a race in the 1970s, remembered most for a horrific accident that killed a fairly well-known racer.  A couple of contributors to the thread were actually at that race, and one of them was nearby when the accident happened.  Just reading their recollections was horrifying enough; you'd hate to have been there to see it happen.  There are others, some of them pretty horrific just to read about, like what happened to this poor guy.  (I recommend you not watch the video that's linked at the end of that article, by the way.  Take my word for it; you don't want to see it.)

It's a sad fact that much of motorsports safety, much like automotive safety or aviation safety or any other area that involves putting a soft, fragile item (you) into something that goes really fast and can potentially go squirrely, is tombstone engineering -- it came about because somebody died.  Anybody who really knows the history of stock car racing, for instance, can tell you why window nets and fuel bladders and seat belts with crotch straps became required equipment; just look back on what a slaughter the year 1964 was in motorsport and how many great names were taken from us. 

More recently, take a look at 2000 and 2001 and notice how much changed.  Kenny Irwin and Tony Roper and Adam Petty (and, if you want to go back far enough, what happened to Rodney Orr and Neil Bonnett in 1994, and what nearly happened to Ernie Irvan) were the warning signs that something wasn't right. But it took losing an icon of the sport for the message to sink home.  If it happened to Earnhardt, it could happen to anybody (and because it happened to Earnhardt, the sanctioning body had to finally act).  And things started to change: mandatory head/neck restraints, soft walls, "capsule" seats, etc.  They were all such logical and relatively low-tech changes that should have been implemented years before. 

There was much complaining when the "new" stock car was introduced a few years back, and I'll admit it took some getting used to.  Some argue the racing isn't as exciting and that the cars look too generic and interchangeable; personally, I was no fan of the front splitter, nor did the wing work out all that well.  But for safety reasons, I gave the new car a pass.  I love exciting racing, yes.  Don't get me wrong.  But if it's a choice between a boring race or someone getting hurt or killed, there's no contest.  And the car started demonstrating its survivability, too.  Perhaps the greatest testament to the new car, and all the improvements that have been made the last few years, is what happened to Elliott Sadler (in the #19 car) in this clip.  If that had happened in 2001, he'd probably have died on the spot.  In 2010, the worst that happened was that he was sore from his belts grabbing him. 

There's still plenty of risk in motorsport these days (and I still cringe when I see accidents in open-cockpit series like IndyCar or F1; I fear that someday sooner rather than later, we're going to see a fatal head injury, as we almost did with Felipe Massa a couple years back).  But it's safer than it used to be, and I'm glad for that.  On the other hand, I think about all the great racers we lost, and all the careers that were truncated, before it became as safe as it is now.  You think about all the "what if"s, and it makes you sad. 

And every time you see a 19-year-old rookie Cup driver complain about how they're out of the race because they crashed, you want to say to them, "Kid, if that's what you're complaining about, you don't know how lucky you are to be racing in this series at this moment.  Realize just how much worse it would have been back in the day."

I love a good mystery

One day not so long ago I was looking around on the Intertubes at one of the message boards I'll check every now and then, and started reading a thread about a famous race car being offered up for sale.  Problem was, it didn't appear authentic.  The deeper I got into the thread, the more intrigued I became.

The Internet, of course, being a huge series of rabbit holes, I followed a link to another link and found this story.  A little more probing led me to this absorbing thread on another message board.  It's hard to put into words, but this kind of detective story is why I love research so much.  In that message board thread, notice how the story unfolds and how the evidence builds up to the payoff, when the photos of the real thing surface.  No need for hokey dramatics, as you'd see on television; it speaks for itself.  This kind of thing is why I love being a historian.

Ten years ago

Ten years ago today we were about to move.  We'd signed the papers on a new apartment closer to where I worked.  Oddly enough, we'd signed just after I'd been told my services were no longer required where I worked.  However, since the events had been set in motion, since money had changed hands, and since we'd given notice where we were living, we couldn't back out.  So we'd started crating things up for the big move, which was to happen the following weekend.  This last weekend in the old apartment, though, was a last weekend to relax in the first place we'd called home together.

Hubby was very much into racing at this point.  I was slowly gaining enthusiasm for it.  When we met, I couldn't stand racing, for it was a symbol of everything about my background I was trying to flee.  I remember the mild disdain I had as we watched the Daytona race that first July together.  But, over time, I came to appreciate it, came to appreciate stock car racing's storied history, and found a rooting interest in a handful of drivers -- for instance, my affection for the doughily handsome Tony Stewart was starting to take hold.  I'd even grown fond of my father's favorite driver, Dale Earnhardt.  Hubby was an Earnhardt fan from way back, and between him and my father, I guess I had no other option. 

So that last Sunday in the old apartment, we had lunch and sat down to watch the Daytona 500, the first one to air under the new television deal with Fox.  Of course, Fox had pulled out all the stops on the coverage, too.  And much hay was being made about the new aero package and the potential for "the big one."

Now, I don't know why it is, but as I watched the race that day, there was a feeling I had that something wasn't right somehow.  Something was off.  I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had the feeling something bad was going to happen.  So I watched with interest, but also with clenched innards.  It wasn't helped each time I saw another instance of high-banked slicing and dicing at 190 miles an hour.

When the threatened "big one" happened on the backstretch, and Tony Stewart's car went flying end over end, I thought, "Oh, man, this is it, isn't it?"  It was a truly scary thing to watch unfold.  Cars started flying around, pinballing off each other, creating a real mess.  I was certain someone -- Stewart, perhaps -- had been killed.  But "the big one" had been all bark and no bite.  A lot of good cars had been turned into junk, but no one had been maimed or killed.  They had to stop the race to get all the mess dealt with.  It was about that time a friend of ours called to chat.  I made some crack about Mark Martin's Viagra car "hitting something hard," and hubby found it amusing and relayed it to our friend.

Eventually the thing was again underway.  I'd kept my eye on two cars the whole race: Earnhardt's #3 car, and Michael Waltrip in the #15.  I'd come to know the story of Mikey's 0-for-462 career, and as the laps ticked down I started to think, man, wouldn't it be neat if he could do this?  Close the deal at the biggest race of the year, in his first race for Earnhardt's team?  Yeah, another Earnhardt win would have been neat, but Mikey, whose battles with futility struck a chord in me, had me in thrall as he led the closing laps.

The white flag flew, and I was relieved because this controlled crash of a race was about to end.  The #15 was still in the lead, and my eyes were on it. Darrell Waltrip, calling the race, was coaxing his little brother to the finish, and it was hard not to get caught up in that.  "Come on, Mikey!" I kept saying.  But as the freight train made its way through the fourth turn came the cry "The three car - OH!"  In the background, as the #8 and #15 shot toward the finish line, we saw a familiar black car crabbing, sliding down the track toward the infield.  As I cheered for Mikey, I could hear hubby say "It's Earnhardt!  Damn it, he's gonna end up finishing twelfth."  We didn't know we'd just seen a man get killed on live television.

What followed was perhaps the most subdued victory celebration I've ever seen, made even worse by the pictures from the infield that kept cutting in.  It didn't look like that bad of an accident, and we expected to see Earnhardt bound out of the car and talk to Schrader.  But the longer it went on, the worse things got.  I think we both knew what was going on when, in the closing moments, the Fox cameras showed the ambulance driving away.  Halifax Medical Center is not that far away from the speedway -- I know, for I've traveled past it more times than I can count -- but the ambulance was traveling at a distressingly low rate of speed. 

The race broadcast signed off with things still uncertain, and there was no further news for the moment; the best we could do was check the Internet.  We had things we needed to do, namely the weekly grocery run, so we drove up the street to the grocery store and got weekly provisions.  But what I'd seen was on my mind, and I'm certain hubby was thinking about it, too.  But we couldn't do anything about it, and we had things we needed to do, so we did them.  About 45 minutes or an hour later, we returned home.  I jumped online for an update, and there was the awful news.  Hubby was in the kitchen, right next to where my computer was set up.  "Earnhardt's dead," I said to him.  "Awww," he said.  It was one of those "awww"s that was sorrow mixed with the likely outcome of what we'd seen.  Sure, it hadn't looked that bad at first, but from Ken Schrader's shaken post-race interview, and from the way the ambulance crept toward the hospital, the inevitability had started to sink in.  By the time the word came, it wasn't that much of a surprise.  But it was still sad.  Something had changed.

The next morning we awoke.  I remember laying in bed after the alarm clock went off, and wondering if it had really happened.  The radio station was playing Sarah MacLachlan's "I Will Remember You," the live version.  When the song ended, one of the morning show people mentioned what had happened the day before.  Yep, it really had happened, and the mourning was on.  The Internet was awash in news, reactions, opinions and everything else.  That afternoon I stopped by the corner hobby shop to pick up an airplane kit, and noticed in the car section that practically everything with a "3" on it was gone.  Hubby came home that night with a copy of the local paper.  "Earnhardt Killed in Daytona Crash," the headline read above a picture of the crash. Soon the newsstands were filled with commemorative editions and all sorts of other things. 

Many people mourned, very deeply.  One of them was my father.  He never talked terribly openly about it, but it's not hard to understand why he loved Dale Earnhardt: another kid from a poor background who had worked, with hands and determination, to build a successful life.  A few weeks later I flew home to visit my family over Spring Break, and while connecting in Atlanta I found a very nice Sports Illustrated commemorative edition dedicated to Earnhardt.  I bought an extra one to bring to my dad.  My mother told me it would be best not to give it to him.  He had even taken the model of Earnhardt's car I'd built him as a birthday present many years before, one that had sat on his desk for years, and put it in a box up on a closet shelf.  He was heartbroken.  He never said it openly, but he was.

For many reasons, I'll look back on 2001 as the freakiest, scariest, and all-around worst year I've yet lived.  Sure, it had its moments of laughter and joy and wonder, and it was the year I earned my doctorate and found the job I still have.  But it was also the year I was fired from my first teaching job, and the year a few hard-fought dreams got punched in the guts.  And it brought some moments that creeped me out and rattled me as have few others.  In some way, I think the indestructible Earnhardt finally meeting his doom as we watched live showed me that all bets were off, and that the unthinkable could occur, and that nobody and nothing was immune, and the world could go bananas as you watched.  Another event, on live television, half a year later really drove that point home in perhaps the most awful way possible, and completely threw our world off its axis. 

But these events, or most of them anyway, were yet to come a decade ago this afternoon.  For now, I think back to the last lap of a race that was but a handful of seconds from ending in unalloyed, delirious joy, and of what should have been.

On not giving up

Each year while the 24 Hours of Le Mans is going on, hubby and I take part in our annual model building challenge, constructing an automobile model entirely within the 24 hour span of the race.  This year, since we weren't able to get to Daytona for the Rolex 24, we did the same thing just for laughs.

The ratty pic above is of my entry in this year's competition, a Revellogram C5 Corvette that I bought for no particular reason many years ago.  It had been on my pile of stuff to sell.  But, for various reasons, none of the more appealing stuff in my stash really called to me.  Okay, well, the Tamiya Porsche Boxster kit did, but once I got started, I realized I'd misplaced the instruction sheet.  Okay, well, back to the Corvette kit instead.

This build seemed doomed almost from the start.  First were the multiple primer coats, because I couldn't get a smooth coat that didn't have a blotch or a piece of dust in it, so I had to sand all that out and re-prime it multiple times.  In between, I worked on the chassis and interior.  That went reasonably well, until I tried airbrushing the seats a different color and found not only that the color wasn't as complementary as I'd thought, but the paint was also too thin.  That's not to mention the adventures in assembling some of the trickier parts, including a rear suspension component that took flight and didn't turn up until I was cleaning up before bedtime.

The body continued to be its own adventure.  After much agonizing, I decided to use a can of Tamiya's Racing Blue, a very dark metallic blue I'd bought for the FW24 kit I have upstairs.  I liked the idea of using a Formula One color on a street car, and I love Tamiya's spray paints because they set up quickly and smoothly.  I put a pretty good progression of coats on it Saturday night, and left it to set up overnight.

Things were going reasonably well until I looked for some pieces and couldn't find them.  It turned out the kit was missing an entire runner of clear parts.  The windows were there, as were some other things, but the kit was missing its taillights, rear marker lights, and a couple other clear parts.  I don't know if the kit never had them, or if I lost them, or what.  Regardless, rats.  I tried to figure out what to do, since I was too far in to just throw in the towel.  Besides, something inside me didn't want to give up, anyway. 

Just before bedtime, I had a thought.  Upstairs I had a kit of the C5R Corvette, the fifth-generation Corvette built as a racer for Daytona and Le Mans.  On a hunch, I test fit one of the C5R's taillights on the stock C5R.  It worked fine.  I decided I'd thermoform new taillights for the C5 kit using a C5R taillight as a pattern.  Simple enough.

Sunday morning dawned and the race coverage came back on, and after a bit I went back to work.  That's when I realized that not only were there imperfections in the body's finish coat, but I'd missed a couple of recessed areas and some undercuts.  So I sanded out the imperfections as best I could and re-shot the body.  The second attempt was much better, but as I polished it, I got the hood a little too thinly coated.  So it was one more shot of paint, just on the hood and front fenders.  This one worked, and it polished out reasonably well, so I was happy.

By the time I had the body in shape, the race only had about an hour and a half to go.  I had to hustle if I was going to make it.  So I masked off all the stuff that needed to be painted on the window trim areas and such, and went to paint them black.  That's when I remembered that I forgot to clean my airbrush's color cup the night before; sure enough, it had a solid coating of dried paint inside.  While it soaked, I'd have to find another one.  Okay, well, our airbrushes use the same color cups, so no hassle.

I was starting to think I would make it.  Then I installed the windows.  Windshield went in okay.  The rear window...well, it was a little too close to some super glue I used to install some interior components a minute or two before, and within a moment or two there was a smoke ring crazed into the rear window.  That's when I decided the model had beat me, and I put it aside to watch the last half-hour of the race.  I didn't like how I was hurrying in the last stretch.  I was disappointed, because it's the first of these three builds I've not completed by the end of the race, but by that point, it wasn't worth it.  (Hubby, meanwhile, had completed a gorgeous build of a Toyota Celica from a Tamiya kit.)

The race ended.  I folded laundry after it was over.  My stuff was still set up on the kitchen table.  And I started to think about how I'd thrown in the towel.  We'd just spent the last day watching a race that's all about endurance, where the success goes to the people who don't give up even when things go wrong.  You routinely see teams a hundred or more laps down, long out of contention, but they'll bring their cars in, patch them up and change stuff out, and get back out there.  Because, you see, merely finishing a 24-hour race is an achievement in itself.  As long as your car can start and its engine can send power to four rolling wheels, you're not out of it.  We have pictures taken at past Rolex 24s of cars missing all manner of body components, looking beat to kingdom come, but they were still out there when the checkered flag flew, plugging away.

And that got in my head.  Why not?  So I sat down and started to work, fixing the things that bothered me.  I got some thermoform plastic and smash-formed the missing taillights.  I popped out the crazed rear window, used my polishing kit on it, and got rid of the smoke ring.  I fixed as many of the little things as I could.  And I got it finished.  There are a few touch-ups I have yet to do, but that little model is, for all intents and purposes, finished.

It gives me some hope that I did this.  If there's one quality I really like about myself, it's that I never completely give up.  Yes, there are times when I get really down and out and feel hopeless, but those tend to be short; most of the time, my mind is working, itching to get back into the fight so I can knock the problem into submission.  I don't like it when problems win.  I'm one of those people who has that test pilot mentality: when other people are going "Oh, no!  I've only got ten seconds before I crash!", I'm saying to myself, "Hey, I got ten seconds!  I bet I can save this thing!"  And that's how it was here.  Maybe I missed the end-of-race deadline for the project.  But the only disgrace would have been if I had put the model back in the box, taken it back upstairs, and put it back on the shelf as a failure.  Instead, I have a pretty nice little model -- not perfect, but not bad, either -- and a lesson from it.

Oh, and if all goes well, next year's Rolex 24 will be with us once again in the stands.  (Though I seriously doubt we'll bring model kits to build as the race is going on.)

It's about to be over

The end of the week is almost here, and it's more welcome than usual.  Both of us have had to deal with weather complicating our ability to get to work.  The little unpaved roads out our way are still choked with ice buildup, and I've played it safe by getting out only after the sun's been up a bit and softened things up a little.  This morning, though, hubby left at his normal time, and I followed him out.  The going was a little cautious, of course, but my little car proved up to the challenge and I got to work just fine. 

The week has been interesting -- it started out beautifully, but got tricky as things went on.  I say "tricky" not because of the weather, or the ice or the snow; that has been something different, and I've dealt with it, and it's worked out.  If nothing else, I've felt like I've been back in you-know-where for another week, and that's given me a little bit of a smile inside. 

No, what's made it "interesting" is that our part of the world is so unprepared for this kind of thing.  We just don't see it that often.  As a result, our agencies aren't quite prepared for it.  It's been almost comical how unproductive some of the ice countermeasures have been, and I include in this the truck with the blade on the front that passed me on the way in yesterday; it didn't do much but plane the high spots, and the rest remained, leaving the road as much of a skating rink as before.  I also include in this number the people who think that because most of the road looks okay, it's once again safe to drive like a maniac.  Yesterday I was crossing the bridge into town, and it had a little ice on it, so I was being careful to keep as many wheels as possible on the cleared parts of the road.  In the opposite direction on this two-lane road came tearing past somebody in an SUV, driving like they were qualifying at Talladega -- you know, one of these people that'll tear past you and end up in a ditch two miles down the road.

I don't have a problem with snow and ice.  I've been in places where it's a fact of life, and people deal with it very well, and I've adapted to it just fine.  It just is.  You deal with it.  It doesn't slow things down if you act with reasonable caution and good sense.  But around here, as it's often said, two inches of snow may as well be two feet of snow.  (And Heaven help you if there's ice.)  And, with people on the roads so seldom exercising good sense when conditions are good...well, I'll let you figure that one out yourself.

Anyway.  It's almost over for us here; there's a long weekend, with Monday being a day off for me.  If the forecast holds for this weekend, it should be warm enough for a lot of the remaining gunk to melt away.  When things pick up again next week, it should look far different, and I should be ready to get back in the game for the semester.

Down the rabbit hole (part 2)

I was reading an issue of a Formula One-themed magazine a few weeks ago, and came across an article about this.  Now, as much of a cynic as I am about the international traveling soap opera, I still have this basic desire to go fast.  So the thought of a simulation really intrigued me. 

Enough to where I started doing some online browsing.  I mean, it costs nothing to look.  So I started.  What would it cost me?  Well, you'd have to choose your platform, and we don't have any of those gaming systems (nor have we really had any desire to get one).  Nor do we have a television suitable for use with any of them.  And if you just get a bare-bones system, what's that worth?  No, if I'm going to seriously use a driving simulator, I need the steering wheel (preferably with paddle shifters) and the pedal set, too.  And, while we're at it, we might as well get the racing seat, too. 

Nor is it that much different if you get the version for Windows.  Just as I'm not going to fly a flight simulator without a yoke and rudder pedals, I'm not driving a racing simulator without a decent steering wheel and pedal set.  Even if I ran the Windows version on my Mac laptop through Windows emulation, it still wouldn't be the same.  And all this for a piece of software I'll use a few times, and then probably get bored with.

Nope.  I think I know of a few other places I'd rather spend that money.  I'm stayin' away from that rabbit hole.