We made the Picture of the Week at PistonHeads!
Which got picked up at TheSamba!
Very cool.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Mongolia Pictures!
These pictures are very special to me. This is the family that entertained us while we were stuck in the desert for 9 hours waiting for a truck.
The kids were an absolute joy. As I said in the post, the girl is very bright (and a stunning beauty)! She picked up on using the camera in the iphone very quickly. The boys were having fun doing some martial arts bit from a movie. Does anyone recognize the moves?
I love the pictures towards the end. The little boy is ridiculously cute. The grandparents have stunning dramatic faces. I'll be looking at these pictures for the rest of my life.
The kids were an absolute joy. As I said in the post, the girl is very bright (and a stunning beauty)! She picked up on using the camera in the iphone very quickly. The boys were having fun doing some martial arts bit from a movie. Does anyone recognize the moves?
I love the pictures towards the end. The little boy is ridiculously cute. The grandparents have stunning dramatic faces. I'll be looking at these pictures for the rest of my life.
Iran pictures!
Unfortunately, I took very few pictures of the guys in Iran of the car club that helped us out.
That's Saeed in one of his dune buggies at his superkart track. The t-shirt was a gift from Robert and I to the club. In the group picture, Saeed is on the left in blue, Abbas is seated center in horizontal stripes, Mr. Ali is standing in the back, and Mohammad is on the right. And finally, Mr. Ali's 1956 beetle!
These guys really saved our butts. They get my enduring devotion.
That's Saeed in one of his dune buggies at his superkart track. The t-shirt was a gift from Robert and I to the club. In the group picture, Saeed is on the left in blue, Abbas is seated center in horizontal stripes, Mr. Ali is standing in the back, and Mohammad is on the right. And finally, Mr. Ali's 1956 beetle!
These guys really saved our butts. They get my enduring devotion.
Building Ladybird pictures
I've uploaded some pictures of Ladybird at various stages of production. We started in February 2010 and you can see that there wasn't much bolted to the car. It had wheels, doors, and not much else. I would drive down to my dad's on the weekends and bolt on parts that he had gathered during the week. Unfortunately, he also had to work on the car quite a bit because of the time crunch.
The car was mostly ready in time for Robert's first visit in July and the car shipped two weeks later.
The car was mostly ready in time for Robert's first visit in July and the car shipped two weeks later.
Famous in Instanbul!
Robert just found that we have pictures up on the site for the Volkswagen Club of Instabul! I'm really excited about this!
I've uploaded my own photos of that day to Flickr. The guy in the blue V-neck in the last photo is Herr Volkswagen! If you remember from here, he did some excellent work for us getting the engine running well. I really can't thank him enough.
I've uploaded my own photos of that day to Flickr. The guy in the blue V-neck in the last photo is Herr Volkswagen! If you remember from here, he did some excellent work for us getting the engine running well. I really can't thank him enough.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
France, Cheese, Chateau and Strike Update
Our trip so far has been an absolute pleasure. After a whirlwind few days in Paris consisting of too much food and not enough sleep, we headed out to the French countryside. Slowly making our way down the Loire Valley in the direction of the Atlantic coast, we have been sampling the excellent cheeses, wines and chateau of the Loire, picnic-ing for lunch and treating ourselves to an excellent dinner in the evenings. We have met some very cool people along the way - the guys at Slide Performance in Orleans who helped us get some repairs done on the bug, the couple who run the Bed and Breakfast at Domaine Beaufort who shared some of their bubbly wine with us and who showed us their 1925 wooden-body Citroen car that, along with the farm and vineyard, had been in their family for 3 generations.
We are currently just outside of Angers where our friends have put us up in our very own chateau! OK, it's not really a chateau, but it certainly feels like one. It's actually an old farmhouse, parts of which date back 200 or 300 years (no one is quite sure - nor are they terribly interested in finding out because in the French scheme of things, 200-300 years is not very old) The farmhouse, which comes with it's very own name - La Fontaine du Mont - has been added to, remodeled and updated during it's history and now encompasses 1 rehearsal studio, 2 staircases, 2 living rooms, a dormitory for visiting bands, 2 offices for music producers and promoters and at least 20 other rooms. The main jewel of La Fontaine is the kitchen which is located in the oldest part of the house. It sports a stone floor, exposed beam ceiling (with enormous, smoke darkened timbers) modern appliances and a fireplace in the center of the room. It was here that, on our first night - seated on one side of the massive fireplace with our friend Chimene and her son, Goya - four-and-a-half year-old Aloise presented her spectale du danse from the other side of the rectangular fireplace, using the the frame as her "stage".
The strike, which continues with no end in sight, has made it difficult to find gasoline. It's a little disconcerting to drive past station after station and see that every one is closed...especially when you're down to 1/4 of a tank. No one here seems to be freaking out about it, so we're remaining calm as well. The gas station closure has led to a couple of funny goose-chases: We hear from someone that a station "just down the road" has gas, but invariably get lost trying to find it. If and/or when we find the station, they have run out of gas and we end up hanging out in the station parking lot, chatting with other drivers who had heard the same rumor and arrived to find that there was no gas. The strange thing is that no one is upset. Everyone seems to support, or at least understand the strike and everyone is sure that the government will figure things out very soon and that things will go back to normal. I'm sure things will go back to normal, but I am equally sure that it won't happen until after we leave the country.
We are currently just outside of Angers where our friends have put us up in our very own chateau! OK, it's not really a chateau, but it certainly feels like one. It's actually an old farmhouse, parts of which date back 200 or 300 years (no one is quite sure - nor are they terribly interested in finding out because in the French scheme of things, 200-300 years is not very old) The farmhouse, which comes with it's very own name - La Fontaine du Mont - has been added to, remodeled and updated during it's history and now encompasses 1 rehearsal studio, 2 staircases, 2 living rooms, a dormitory for visiting bands, 2 offices for music producers and promoters and at least 20 other rooms. The main jewel of La Fontaine is the kitchen which is located in the oldest part of the house. It sports a stone floor, exposed beam ceiling (with enormous, smoke darkened timbers) modern appliances and a fireplace in the center of the room. It was here that, on our first night - seated on one side of the massive fireplace with our friend Chimene and her son, Goya - four-and-a-half year-old Aloise presented her spectale du danse from the other side of the rectangular fireplace, using the the frame as her "stage".
The strike, which continues with no end in sight, has made it difficult to find gasoline. It's a little disconcerting to drive past station after station and see that every one is closed...especially when you're down to 1/4 of a tank. No one here seems to be freaking out about it, so we're remaining calm as well. The gas station closure has led to a couple of funny goose-chases: We hear from someone that a station "just down the road" has gas, but invariably get lost trying to find it. If and/or when we find the station, they have run out of gas and we end up hanging out in the station parking lot, chatting with other drivers who had heard the same rumor and arrived to find that there was no gas. The strange thing is that no one is upset. Everyone seems to support, or at least understand the strike and everyone is sure that the government will figure things out very soon and that things will go back to normal. I'm sure things will go back to normal, but I am equally sure that it won't happen until after we leave the country.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
We made it!!
I'm a tad late in posting, but Robert and I made it to Paris! It was the most difficult undertaking of my life and I'm so glad I did it. I found new depths of fatigue and heights endurance. I'm quite sure this will change my outlook for a lifetime. My life will forever be divided into pre-rally years and post-rally years.
I was so happy to see Michelle, Dave, Jessica, and Natalie at the finish line. It was a whirlwind of pictures, congratulations, and introductions, but with no time to spare, we had to rush off to prepare for the big gala! I jumped out of my dirty rally clothes and into my tuxedo, Michelle slipped into her fancy dress, and we set off to the award ceremony. The rally peeps had put together a slide show and video to accompany the five-star meal.
Mostly in St. Germain dés Pres, we spent the next few days doing our best to empty the city of saucisson, fromage, and pain chocolat. Dave, who has visited and lived in Paris several times, played host in his adopted city. I met his friends, Val and Vincent, and I met Michelle's friends Kenji and Anaïs. We drank wine, sipped café, and explored the streets. As I relaxed and got used to living without a schedule, I started to feel the tug of the road again. I was oddly anxious to get back to driving and seeing more of the country.
Wednesday, Michelle and I packed up the car and set off for the Loire valley. The countryside is beautiful and I am having very little difficulty converting to vacation mode.
Today I wanted to do a bit of car work, mostly just to tighten up some oil leaks and make the car more comfortable. We found a great VW shop called Slide Performance in Orléans. These guys are a full-featured VW performance shop building engines, doing body work, suspension work; they do the whole works. The guys were extremely helpful and let me use a space behind the shop to work on the bug, also offering their tools and assistance. I changed 3 pushrod tubes, re-sealed the valve covers, replaced the air cleaner with a quieter street assembly, and patched 2 leaky tires. Thanks to David at www.slideperformance.com who provided invaluable assistance and had an uncanny, almost magical ability to come outside and see how we were doing just as I had a question or needed a special tool for a job.
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