Cars

38,000 Homeless People in Portland

When we visited the Pacific Northwest this year we flew into Portland instead of our usual Seattle because we wanted to check out our possible (now imminent) new city of residence in Oregon. What we did see of Portland did nothing to dissuade its quirky reputation.

We spent a couple of days in the City of Roses exploring. We were staying near the airport and one evening we took the light rail train into downtown. What amazed us were the number of homeless people that were encamped along the right of way of the tracks. Also, any highway overpass the train went under, you could see a dozen tents, or shirts stretched across the bushes. We thought there were a lot, but didn’t think it was as many as, a Portland State University report says there are, 38,000 of them. That is roughly equivalent to the entire population of our soon to ex-city of residence, Aiken!

This morning when I dropped off the CTBNL with my Fairy Godbrother1 David who is going to park it in his garage until we get an address in K-Falls to have it shipped to. When I was there he said, “You haven’t had a chance to to drive the addition to my stable, the 944 Turbo.” “Got time to go for a drive?” I said said, “Sure.” I probably would have said the same thing even if I didn’t have the time…we promptly spent the next hour or so bombing around the back roads of Aiken County. Going to miss these random drives. Somewhere towards the end of our trip I put the thirty-eighth thousandth mile on this thirty-ish year-old German engineered marvel.

Track, Daily, Crush

The 5-Speed Edition. All these cars have 5-speed transmissions, although only one of them came from the factory that way. As of Monday, September 30, 2019 at 9:00 PM eastern time:

Track Daily Crush
1963.5 Ford Falcon V8 1994 Mazda MX-5 Miata 1978 Honda Civic
1 2 3

1. My very first car was a white 1963 Ford Falcon. It had an inline 6 cylinder engine mated to a 3-speed manual transmission with the shifter on the column. My mom bought it for me for $100 in 1971 when I got my license. I promptly ruined the transmission trying to master the the whole clutch/gas pedal dance under tyrannical instruction of my mom’s current boyfriend. It was back to riding a bike after that.
2. Our second Miata was a 1995 Laguna Blue B Package, We traded it in on a second generation 2003 Garnet Red LS Miata and 15 years later we kind of still regret the decision.
3. The third new car Donna and I ever bought was a 1980 Honda Civic in Rhodes Red Metallic with a 5-speed manual. We bought it for me to use to go back and forth the sixteen miles to work at the Meridian (MS) Naval Air Station. That allowed her to drive our already existing 1979 Honda Accord to and from college.

Everyday Driver Bingo

So for practically every Tuesday and Friday morning walks since sometime in May I have been rocking the Everyday Driver Podcast on my walks. So that is around two dozen hours of listening to these two guys talk cars. They also have a show that runs on Motortrend TV first, before ending up on Amazon Prime, so I have been watching those when they air and the old ones on Amazon, so there have been about 28 episodes of that I’ve seen. They also have a YouTube Channel with a literal crap ton of videos, of which I’ve watched a bunch of.

Needless to say, I am familiar with their work. The other day while walking and listening to a podcast I had a crazy idea. But I then quickly realized my database skills are not as good as I thought, so all I managed to create was my one demo. I emailed it to them at their gmail address and told them to feel free to run with this idea and sell ’em on their Amazon Store.