He was an overweight smoker who was too frail cardio-vascularly to have rotator-cuff surgery on his injured shoulder. He was way overdue for a heart attack according to all the statistics I’ve seen - smoking adds 10 years to your body, so he was effectively 89 at death, pretty elderly if you ask me.

My Dad had a 1979 450SL, his second SL, and I drove it often, all the way to Florida and back on a long vacation once. It was a great car, I rarely ran it over 100, but it would do it without complaining. It was white with tan interior, a beautiful convertible.

My uncle was a turret gunner on a bomber in the South Pacific - probably not a B-29. He wouldn’t talk about the war at all. I think the horror of seeing crewmates shot by heavy projectiles, seeing other bombers auger in after being damaged, the way he dealt with it was to forget it, and talking about would just raise…

A good friend is an inspector with the public health department. I have learned that mosquitoes can reproduce in a comparatively tiny amount of water, way less than a cup. So any “container” can do it - like a footprint in clay, a piece of plastic of foil stuck to a bit of mud, a cat food can, etc.

We had 18 inches, so my excitement was shoveling off the front steps Sunday, and uncovering the car yesterday.In the 40s today, steps melted and mostly dry yesterday. 4-wheel-drive Kubota tractor to plow out roughly a mile and a half of farm road/county road that the govt won’t plow. Car all wheel drive with Blizzak…

Does Mercedes-Benz have one of those order a car, pick it up in Europe and drive around the autobahn and over the alps for two weeks packages?

The stock version IS a track package.

A couple of weeks before Xmas we drove into town along with a black Alpha. We were behind it as the first traffic light, I had been trying to see the emblem while following it, finally at the light I said “That’s the new Alpha sports car!”

Chrome baby shit greeeenish yellow. Yetch!

I bought a used F-150 from a private individual on last Thursday, 12/31. I had an independent garage take a look, and they found several things wrong. When we agreed on price after that, he pulled out his title and signed it. It was partly covered by scribbling by his toddler, who got hold of it as seller was getting…

I test drove one of these after seeing that it was made in Europe by Opel, and liked it pretty well. But then I saw a M-B C300 on sale with 8K miles for $5K less that the Buick/Opel. I got rear-ended by a Nissan Altima going 65 while I was stopped at a red light, and the M-B may have saved my life.

The day when I buy any car at any price that has any software connected in any way to Microsoft is NEVER!!!

I bought a 1991 Saab 900 from the dealer for $17K - list was $23 - because it had air bags. We had done VWs for 20+ years, but they had a seat belt attached to the door, which spooled out 8 feet. There was no way to get into the car with an armload of stuff. I hated it.

The body is as ugly as you say the seats are uncomfortable. I don’t really like black as a color for cars anyway, and all those creases and bulges in the hood and front fenders are grotesce to the extreme.

Most of these large underground gas storage systems have multiple wells to pump gas into storage when there is excess gas available, and then to remove it from storage when more gas is needed.

Great owl. A co-worker got a good photo of a Screech owl peering from a split in a big tree. It was almost invisible in the photo, let alone out in the woods.

Some years back I went prospecting in Colorado and Wyoming one early summer with a rock-collecting buddy. We drove from Canyon City, CO north to Cripple Creek Mining District on a one-lane dirt road up the side of a box-canyon.

The HQ of Cummins Engines has a blown-up diesel in their lobby, along with a diesel-powered Indy racer, one of their first commercial diesel engines 1&1/5 HP IIRC, but the exploded engine, with all the parts suspended on nearly invisible wire, is totally amazing. Done by an Italian sculptor I think. Well worth the…

In Tuscon AZ the concrete of highway installations is usually cast and painted quite artistically. There’s a pedestrian bridge near the U of AZ that is a giant rattlesnake, tail with rattles at the south end and gaping mouth with fangs at the north end, for example.

Who knows? My last boss was an AF vet, and he said the only way the Air Force decommissions a class of aircraft is if they have a superior replacement. While flying, the Blackbird was mostly top secret. I imagine its replacement is also Top Secret.