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1973 NBHS Class Will

Yesterday we started going through some of the Bogardus/Morrison archives. We have a half dozen fairly large plastic storage boxes, that are full of photos and stuff from both sides of the family, just sitting around in the family room downstairs since we have moved in here 4 years ago. We have been vowing to go through them to sort them into manageable chunks and weed out anything that might no longer have any significance to anyone.

Most of it belongs to Donna’s side of the family, but one box was chock full of stuff that belongs to me. Some of that was I inherited when my mom passed away in 2007, like report cards from elementary school through high school, my diploma from good ol’ New Britain High School. There were also a few certificates from U.S. Navy schools and even a commendation letter for being the highest ranked person in the Basic Electronics course. The bulk of things in that box though were proofs, negatives and submitted projects for everyone of the half dozen photography courses I took at Delgado Community College in New Orleans.

The one thing that caught my eye was the fifty year old Senior Class Will. There were around 600 kids in my high school class and with a circle of friends of maybe 1% of the that, I was practically invisible among the graduating class, except for this one thing.

In the fall of senior year our Current Events class made a field trip to NYC, about a 100 miles away, to see a couple of Broadway plays. Most of the details of the trip are lost to dying brain cells, but two of them are indelibly etched in my memory. The first play was Jesus Christ Superstar which I love to this day and I, along with 2 other classmates, were left behind in the Big Apple.

The two plays were at different theaters about 10 city blocks apart. We were told that after the second show the bus would be parked right outside the theater and to just get on it. After the wonder that was JCS rock opera, the second play was a real drag and the three of us, based on the Playbill listing, ducked out of that second theater at the beginning of the last song to get a good seat on the bus for the ride home. There was no bus!

In typical teenager fashion, none of us had really paid that much attention to the details, so we put our heads together and we decided that maybe the bus was parked at the first theater. We hustled back the 10 blocks to theater number one and of course there was no bus there either. Well, hell. So, we high-tailed it back to theater number two only to find no bus there either.

Obviously the bus was supposed to be at theater #2, but had yet to arrive when we ducked out early, so there we were 100 miles from home and no ride back. We walked a a few blocks over to Grand Central Station. I was broke, along with one other kid, but the third had enough money to buy three tickets for a Greyhound or Trailways bus that was bound for Boston with one of its stops being New Britain. Now with all of us penniless we had to call parents collect to let them know what happened so no one was panic at the other end when 3 less kids got off the charter bus. I think the three of us got a stern talking to from the vice-principal the next day at school, but I’m betting our teacher and any chaperons got it a lot worse.

40,000 AQI

We had a very smoky drive home from Portland on Sunday. We drove within a couple of miles of Mt. Hood but couldn’t even see it at all for the smoke in the air. I’m not sure exactly what the Air Quality Index was but it had to be pretty dang high. By the time we got as far south as Bend, the smoke wasn’t as bad, visibility was up to around a whole mile.

Right around the same time the Mini’s mileage turned past the forty thousand mile mark.

When we got home the car had it numerous squashed insects and road grime washed away down our driveway.

Year Number Three of Sport, Off-Road, Touring by the Numbers

Wrapping up another year of my selecting the perfect 3-car garage from Bring A Trailer each week. One is a dedicated sportscar, one off-road vehicle and a car that is suitable for road-tripping, but not too sporty or off-roady. If you are interested, here is last year’s wrap up and the year previous that too.

This year I picked only 151 cars instead of 156 which is fifty-two weeks multiplied by three. Let’s break down the short fall. The first Monday in September of last year I went off-script and picked car dealership signs. Then just like last year I missed picking cars one week and just like last year it was because we were in the beginning week of a road trip vacation. But, Brian, 151 is not divisible by 3 evenly. How come? Glad you asked, there were an abundance of very nice Miatas in the first week of last November so I opted to pick just Miatas, one from each of the 4 generations.

If I actually won all auctions of the cars I chose during the past year I would have spent a total of $8,343,123, making it an average of $55,252 per vehicle. This is down a little over $1.3 million total and seven thousand dollars respectively from the previous year. My tastes have taken a turn for the cheaper this last two years as the total is down around $2.8 million and the average per vehicle is down around $16 thousand.

The most expensive car I picked, as usual came from the Sport category, was a 2022 Ferrari F8 for $430,000. The most expensive auto in the Off-Road category was a 1976 Mercedes-Benz Unimog 416 Doka for $220,000. The highest priced auto in the Touring category was a 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S Coupe at $178,000. There were 20 vehicles that went for over six figures.

The least expensive car I picked was from Off-Road category, a 1972 Daihatsu Atrai Turbo-EX 4WD 5-Speed that went for a paltry $7,100. The least expensive Touring vehicle was a 1920s Bugatti-Style Modele Sport No. 1/27 Pedal Car that sold for $4,300. The least expensive Sports car was actually a 2002 Mazda Miata that went for just $8,000.

The oldest car I chose was a 1935 Plymouth Deluxe Woody Wagon LT1-Powered that was from the Touring category and the reserve was not met at $40,250. There were no more cars selected from the 30’s and none from the 40’s. There were only eight from the 50’s and twenty-two from the 60’s. There were nineteen vehicles selected from the 70’s, 15 came from the 80’s, 29 were from the 90’s and the 2000’s was the most popular decade again with a total of 30. There were 16 picked from 2010-2019 and the 2020’s accounted for the last seven. There were three dealership signs and 3 pedal cars that had no year of manufacture noted. Taking all the vehicles into account, the average model year car was 1989.

The cars came from 55 separate manufacturers, a full dozen more than last year. The most popular make was Porsche with 19. The runner-up was BMW with thirteen. Mazda was third with a dozen. There were 33 manufacturers with only one car chosen.

The most chosen model name this year was Miata with 10, Wrangler was the runners-up again with 7 and 3rd place was the 911 with six picks. There were 85 one and done model names.

To wrap this up, the most popular car of this year, if it existed, would be a 2008 Porsche Miata that cost $15,000.

Hulu Hoops

With football season just around the corner it was time to start thinking about how we were going to get the local channels after cutting half the cord back in February.

To get those football games we had the option of going with either YouTube TV or Hulu. In the end we chose Hulu because for about the same price as YouTube they were offering a bundle that included Disney+ and ESPN+ to go along with that Live TV.

ESPN+ I’m not too sure about, but Disney+ is going to be a treasure chest full of promising stuff. All the Star Wars stuff, the old movies and the new original TV content and the whole Marvel Universe of movies and TV as well.

Hulu has a couple of original series that I’ve heard good things about, but have never seen. Like Only Murders in the Building and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Another big draw to Hulu was it was the home of FX which has a couple of shows I’ve seen and would like to watch again Justified and Better Things. FX also has a few newer shows that sound promising, like Mr Inbetween, Reservation Dogs and The Old Man.

40 Posts to the End?

I joined Instagram in early 2018 as a way to kind of recreate a photo of the day blog I had back in the very early 2000’s. I wasn’t really thinking of it as a social media thing. So much so that that first post didn’t have a caption of any kind and nary a hashtag. Slowly I started to add captions, descriptions and hash tags, but I still really wasn’t using it as a “social Media” platform. I started following some accounts and started gaining followers, but I was not doing a lot of commenting. I was only liking photos that I actually liked, not just automatically liking something because because the follower was liking everything I posted.

Slowly over time Instagram has added more and more ads and has tried to become more of a video site instead of a photo one. Now every third post in my feed is a photo from some influencer I don’t follow or video of some sort or an ad for something. Bleh. I’m thinking that I’m going just quit the ‘Gram.

From that first Instagram post in February 2018 until yesterday, or 1,990 days, I have posted 1,960 pictures (pretty close to one a day.) The number 2,000 seems like a nice round number for my last IG post. I could do it ten days from today, but then the post count will be 1,9xx, so I’ll wait until I get an even 2,000 posts and then quit.

I’ll still leave my account there though in case someone I’m actually friends with wants to DM me. Also, because Donna uses it to look at a couple of accounts that she’s interested in too. Maybe I’ll create a second account with no posts at all just so I can click on explore and waste some idle time.

82,000 Points on a Chart

We are only a little over two weeks away from 7 years of ownership of the CTBNL and in that time frame we have driven it almost 35,700 miles. If you look at the chart above you will notice that there is a really noticeable change in the trajectory of the mileage numbers between the left side of the red line to the right side. During the first 38 months of ownership we put a good portion of 30,000 miles on the car, so that works out to an approximate average of 790 miles per month. That red line indicates when we moved from Aiken to Klamath Falls. Since then in 46 months we have added just under 6,000 making the average around 130 miles per month.

There are several reasons for the decline in miles for the Miata. First up is winter, in Aiken it got driven practically year round while here it is luck if it gets driven every 10 days or so and then for just a quick local spin. But probably the main reason is that we no longer take real road trips in it anymore. Since we have been here we took one 3 day trip to the coast in it. We’ve almost aged out of road tripping in entirely.

Now when we go somewhere we usually take the Mini. For comparison, during those same 46 months here in Klamath Falls the Minis have travel 19,000 miles or over 400 miles a month. That could have been higher too because we made three trips (2 to Santa Fe & 1 to Granite Falls) in rentals for various reasons.

Yesterday on a 30 mile morning drive, the CTBNL it rolled past the 82,000 mile mark.

39,000 Little Dead Bugs

Since we returned from the Washington state trip a little over a week ago I have been meaning to wash the thousands of dead bugs off the front of the Mini. But because we have been pretty busy I’ve never gotten around to it. Add to that it has been, like most of the country, pretty dang hot and the only reasonable time to wash it is pretty early in the morning.

I am promising to get to it this weekend though. Either on Saturday if we get back from the downtown farmers market early enough, which is unlikely. Or Sunday after breakfast and the morning show, but then again Sunday is bike riding day and the best time to ride is also early in the morning…

Sometime yesterday, or maybe the day before, while running errands or shopping the Mini rolled through the thirty-nine thousand mile mark.