Great moments in multi-tasking

Here we have what must be one of the greatest demostrations of doing two things at once and doing both of them well.

I can't state that I know the circumstances that lead to this guy needing to engage in communication in the midst of a power on drift but I like his style.

"Well fuck you too buddy, but I win since I'm also racing a car while I'm insulting you"

PS: I freely admit I stole this photo from Hooniverse, who stole it from someone else. Not good form but how could I not share something this great.

Irony

"Crap, the jack is under all these tires!"

He must have really liked that car

Here’s a vintage photo of unknown origin of a guy who went to extraordinary steps to save his car from a flood. I’m assuming the car did not run or he would have just driven it someplace safe.



I hope all that water didn’t loosen up the soil and cause the tree to fall over from all the weight hanging off one side of it . It would be a real bitch to do all that and come back and find your flooded car with a huge tree on top of it. Note the house on the right is completely flooded out.

1950s Fiat dealer in Vermont - Make that California

Here's a cool shot I ran across of a Fiat dealer in Vermont in the late 1950s (Note- A reader of this blog I pretty much trust states that this dealer was in California, not Vermont). The blue car in the front is a Autobiachi based off the Fiat 500. Even nicer is the Fiat Jolly in the showroom. Originally sold with wicker seats and a canvas "surrey" top these car are highly desireable today and a mint example can fetch north of $60,000 at auction.

Not bad for a Fiat 500 with roof chopped off!

"I'll take the 2 fer deal!"

Little known facts – Washington really is the evil empire

Sometime back in the 1980s a contest was held for children to design grotesques for the National cathedral in Washington DC. Third place runner up was kid named Christopher Rader, who drew a picture of Darth Vader. This was accepted and immortalized in stone on the cathedral.

The statute was designed by Jay Hall Carpenter and carved by a guy named Patrick J. Plunkett and sits on a gablet on the northwest tower.

I know it sounds like something I just made up but I’m not that good. May the force be with you.

Topiary abuse

#1 reason not to piss off your landscape crew:

El Huerfano

There’s lots of stuff in America that people just don’t know about. Not big enough to garner national notoriety but interesting nevertheless. As a service to my fellow Americans, when I find this stuff I’ll tell you about it here.

Driving north on I-25 in southern Colorado is mostly a boring exercise spent looking at endless rolling plains with far off mountains it the distance. However near the town of Walsenburg is a curious rock formation erupting from the grassy plains.

Named “El Huerfano”, or “The Orphan” by Spanish explorers in the late 1700s, it is a volcanic cone of large blocky gaseous basalt several hundred feet high.

The butte was used as a marker by early travelers and first appears in Spanish documents in 1818. The area was incorporated as part of Mexico in 1821 and large tracts of land were granted to favored individuals and many small settlements and ranches were established near El Huerfano. Many of the towns and landmarks around it still have Spanish names. The area became part of the United States in 1848.

This drawing, based of an 1853 photograph made by Soloman Carvalho (photographer to the Col. John C. Freemont’s 5th western expedition), shows Huerfano Butte looking pretty much the same as it does today, minus the four lane highway running past it.

There’s not much in the area so the Colorado highway dept. constructed a pulloff on the side of the interstate so you can stop and view the little orphaned mountain in the middle of nowhere.

It’s located a few hundred yards off the highway on what looks like private ranchland but there’s really no one around for miles to stop you from taking a closer look. A dirt road runs beside the rock formation that you can go down to get closer.

Day job, part 2

I spotted this truck driving down I-40 in North Carolina one day. Single?, Really???