Month: July 2025

56 Years Ago

Apollo 11 reached the moon and the following day man first stepped on the lunar surface. Like every kid born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties, I wanted to be an astronaut. Turns out doing that involved a lot of smarts and a lot of hard work and as it turned out I didn’t have either of those qualities. Apollo 11 happened on my and my siblings annual visit to our grandmother’s house and at the age of 14 I was allowed to stay up past bedtime to watch those blurry black and white images from nearly a quarter million miles away.

So yesterday when those memories resurfaced I decided to watch some space media to sort of honor those days fifty-six years ago. I didn’t search out documentaries, which I probably should have, but instead I watched some fluff on Apple TV+, first, the movie starring Scarlett Johansen and Channing Tatum, Fly Me To The Moon. Followed by the first 2 episodes of For All Mankind. I don’t know how long I’ll stick around for this one, I’m barely hanging on and there are 38 more episodes to go, plus 10 more for the 5th season yet to be released.

Maybe I’ll try some documentaries…

That’s Over

COVID Clear

Last Wednesday when I tested positive for Covid for the 4th week in a row and feeling better I started to wonder if the text kits I was getting at Fred Meyer were bad our something. So, for this Wednesday I bought a different brand kit at Fred Meyer’s. What do you know? I was clear.

Now after questioning the first series accuracy, I also decided I didn’t trust this one either. In an overabundance of caution, a belt and suspenders kind of thing, I bought a kit at Walgreen’s yesterday evening. I used it this morning and I guess I am no longer contagious. Yippee!

Bucky’s Back Baby

Bucky’s Back Baby


 
He has been over at the Mazda dealer having his clutch made all new. He was gone for 3 weeks and a week and a half of that was waiting on the machine shop to resurface the flywheel. Besides the clutch work they fixed a couple issues that FTW tuning missed when they had the car refurbishing all the fluids and rubber belts. First up was they missed the clutch fluid, they also missed a small rodent’s nest underneath the plastic cover where the windshield wipers hide. They didn’t change spark plugs, I didn’t think of it to ask, and had I done that they may have found that the wiring harness that plugs into the coil packs had broken tabs that might have allowed them back out due to vibration. I had them change out the two short spark plug wires that bridge from the 2 coil packs that sit on one plug to go to the other plugs. Lastly, I had them re-chase the threads in one of the passenger seat’s mounting rail that was stripped out. I only found this out when I pulled the seats to get under the carpet to really clean the interior.

I have a couple of maintenance items that I need to address. The turn signal and wiper stalks are creaky sounding in use, so I’ve ordered so dielectric grease to make them smooth and quiet again. The other I haven’t dug into yet, but the driver’s side rearview mirror doesn’t move with the switch. Might be something spontaneously unplugged itself or the mirror internals are broke. Something for me to look at this weekend when the weather gets back into the 80s.

I’ve one more modification I want to put on the car, side stripes in a color that closely approximates the bronze wheels. I have an appointment with the DMV on the 7th of August and PDX Wraps is practically next door, so maybe when I’m done trying to get the car titled and registered I can drop it off for some stripes.

Post Office Updates

After yesterday’s 15 post office flurry, I’ve photographed 234 out of the 391 in the the state. Which means I’m at 60%. Today I added those fifteen new photos to their respective galleries.

I tried to break up the nearly 400 post offices into 8 groups of around 50 each. Using the spreadsheet I went back and added up how many of the photos taken were in each of the eight groups. In order, Group 1 has 28 of 48, Group 2 has 30 of 49, etc. Group 6 has the highest at 38 of 50 for 76% and Group 8 has the lowest at 22 of 46 for 48%.

When you go to the Oregon Post Offices galleries page it shows right there how many photos are in the gallery and none of them are right. All fall short of how many photos should be in the gallery, With me adding yesterday’s photos the groups miss the total by 3, 5, 2, 7, 9, 2, 2, & 3 for a total of 33. All of those that need to be added so the galleries reflect what’s been done so far.

Tomorrow.

1 Car Wash & 15 Post Offices

At the Car Wash


 
To eliminate what happened 2 weeks ago, me missing a post office and having to go back, today I wrote down the names of all the post offices I was after. And it was a good thing too because I would have missed Falls City. And not only would I have missed the post office, I would have missed getting the car washed by a girls softball team.

Today’s post office total of fifteen is the largest daily haul so far in Oregon. I want to say when doing the South Carolina post offices, there were a couple of days where it was in the twenties. But then again, South Carolina has about 150 more post offices and has 1/3 the land area, so everything is a lot closer. I did some chipherin’ and there is 1 post office for every 71 square miles in South Carolina, and Oregon has 1 post office for every 252 square miles!

Now I’ve got to go back and write something about each of today’s fifteen post offices…

Halfway

Yesterday I mentioned 1989 briefly and 1999 a little longer; today we go back to a year about halfway between those two: 1995.

Back row: Mary, Scott, and Me. Front: Paul, Lynn, My mom, Donna, and her mom.

In May of ’95 we gathered some family and headed off to Las Vegas for a weekend because it was Donna’s mom Barbara’s 65th birthday. Donna and I flew in from South Carolina. Mom came from the state of Washington with her youngest son, Scott. Barbara’s best friend and sister-in-law, Mary, came from New Jersey with her youngest daughter, Lynn. And my mom came from Connecticut with her youngest son, Paul.

We all stayed at Circus Circus. During the day we all went our separate ways, but we all met back at the hotel for dinner together. One day Donna and I walked into every casino on the strip so I could look for just the right polo shirt for my souvenir. We all went together one afternoon to the downtown area; one stop was to try our luck to win a million and buy the $20 photo of all of us; see above. This is where all the below photos came from; the area, while revitalized with the Fremont Street Canopy, still had that slightly downtrodden old Vegas look.

Miata World ’99 Revisited

Getting the Shot at Miata World ’99 in Dallas


Back in February of this year I took a photo album from 1989 off the shelf and scanned the photos I liked. I then used them to create five separate posts of content out of it.

Today I jumped ahead a decade to 1999 and scanned some images from the photo album of our trip to Dallas to a national Miata event. Most of these photos aren’t nearly as scenic as the 1989 ones. If you are new around here you might assume that all that Roadside America stuff from the recent April-May-June trip was something new, au contraire, I’ve been making road trips “meaningful” that way since the end of the last century. Postcards also played a crucial roll in this trip as well. See the – Slow Miata to Texas Tour