Learning to enjoy the silence

Monday 4/20/2015

Well, it’s back to the solitary life for me! Once again it’s just Jane and I against the world running down the blacktop to new adventures. Every time I leave some event like this it’s kind of jarring. I have to go from being surrounded by friends to being a one woman show. I suddenly have no one to talk to, just Jane. So sometimes I do act like a crazy person and talk to my car just because I need to hear a voice. That was definitely the case today.

To be honest though, I needed a break and some time for peace and quiet. I had been burning the candle at both ends and in the middle, as the saying goes, for 5 days by Monday. I had lost my voice from talking too much and I was that kind of tired that goes right down into your bones. So I took a leisurely drive out to Joshua Tree National Park.

Pretty giant wind farm on the way out of town.

I got there sometime in the afternoon and cruised around for a bit looking at the cool landscape. Joshua Tree is unique in that it is basically the intersection of two deserts – the Mojave and the Colorado deserts. So as you travel through the park you see a very distinct transition between the two with completely different landscapes, flora, and fauna. Super cool! I stayed in the northern end of the park for the day.

Jane and some Joshua trees

And a different view... couldn't resist taking pictures because she's so clean (for now)!

This thing looks silly.

Of course, the first place I pulled off to wander around, I hadn’t been away from Jane for more than a minute before she was besieged by Germans. This happens almost everywhere I go. Germans just have a thing for my car and I am happy to let them take pictures to their heart’s content – they’re always very respectful and admiring and I’ll admit that I appreciate the ego stroking.

Adding more people to Jane's fan club.

I went on some brief hikes, including Joshua Tree's most popular short hike - Hidden Valley. Absolutely beautiful though I am not the biggest fan of igneous rocks (which is a silly geologist thing to say).

Check out the size of these enormous cactus flowers! Holy cow!

It's like a pineapple, except disappointing because there's no pineapple attached.

A bird's nest in a cool cactus tree.

Jane found a friend! This is the first time I have ever seen a classic Mustang on my adventures outside of a city.

Yep, those are some nice rocks.

You can tell what direction LA is in because of the haze.

Jane and a tall Joshua tree.

Jane and a large rock and some Joshua trees.

Yep, still Jane.

After touring around for a little bit I decided to retire to my normal road trip habitat – the nearby campground. This little spot was just the place to really recuperate from my crazy weekend. It was located in an oasis and I had the whole campground to myself. Literally a two-acre patch of desert was mine to roam around in. But I prefer to keep all of my stuff close (mostly out of laziness), so I put it all in one spot and left the rest of the grounds to the tumbleweeds. Right next to the camping spots was a really nice pond full of ducks and fish. Of course I forgot to take pictures because ducks are one of my favorite animals (weird I know) and mostly I just wanted to sit there and feed them. So that’s exactly what I did.

Comfortable solitude.

As night fell I sat up against Jane and watched the stars twinkle into sight. A few shooting stars sailed past and a nice cool breeze gently stirred the palms fringing the oasis. It was without a doubt one of the most peaceful places that I’ve been in a long, long time. So I just hung out for a few hours and watched the stars rotate in the sky while I thought about my insane, incredible life. I say it all the time but I am so incredibly lucky to have what I have. Sure, I’ve worked for it, but a lot of it is just dumb luck. Not many people in this world can say that they have what I have: an incredible vintage car that always gets me where I need to go, a job that lets me roam on road trips freely, amazing friends and family, the freedom to do what I want when I want. And I will value that for my entire life.

Kelly signing out.

Learning about Fords (and friends)

Sunday 4/19/2015

Today was the big day: Fabulous Fords Forever at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, CA! This show is one of the biggest shows on the West Coast and has been on my bucket list since… well, last year I guess. Not a terribly long time but it sounded like a hell of a lot of fun so I made a point to get there this year.

We got to the show grounds at 8:30 AM so that we could clean up our cars and wander around a bit before the show started at 10 AM. The unfortunate part about this show is that everyone is grouped by class, so all of the different years of Mustangs are in different spots. This means that I didn't get to park with any of my friends – major bummer. But that’s okay because I was totally swamped the whole day anyways.

I actually didn't get to leave my car to get registered until 10:30 AM! I had a bunch of people come up to introduce themselves – mostly other VMFers and StangFixers who knew me from the forums. It was pretty insane how many “Internet friends” I met in person. Must have been a couple dozen!

I spent quite a while cleaning Jane up, mostly because I was juggling talking to people and actually cleaning. But she turned out pretty presentable despite all of the road grime. Jane had eaten a pretty big dragonfly somewhere in eastern Arizona and its wings were all crammed up into the top of the windshield trim, but I left it because it was pretty silly looking. Other than that everything got the quick detail treatment to at least get rid of some of the dust. Special shout-out to my friend Dieter, who helped clean Jane’s glass and wheels! That was super helpful.

Eventually I was able to leave my car and wander around to see other peoples’ cars for a while. That’s the point of a show, you know! I checked out all of the VMFer / StangFix cars that I could find first and made sure that I knew everyone and their cars. From there I spread out to see whatever I could see. Half of the show was Mustangs which suited me just fine, though I did really enjoy seeing all of the other Fords present. There were a lot of cars there that I had never seen before.

This shot can't even begin to capture the sheer size of this thing. I need an aerial shot!

So here’s some pictures from the show – I didn’t take as many as I should have but I was far too busy looking to also take a bunch of shots!

I think this car was my favorite because of how ridiculous it was - a Mad Max-style 4x4 Mustang made out of a '67 plopped on top of a Bronco frame and welded together. It was just awesomely silly.

A really super nice car. Talked to this guy for a while and he said that he was afraid to drive it because his wallet was still recovering. Interesting to contrast Jane to his car - we had a lot of the same general modifications but way different executions for way different purposes.

His car had the better looking engine bay for sure!

Sometimes you just need horsepower more than you need to be able to see.

One of 4 or 5 cars on display that had 427 SOHC engines in them. They were very, very cool.

I liked the lace pattern in the paint on this car!

Interior was pretty awesome too.

A '68 GT500KR surf wagon, of course.

I just thought this was funny because it is the tiniest battery I have ever seen in my life on a car. This was on a 428 car... how??

Another one of my favorites, a '68 GT/CS that had been pulled out of the weeds...

...and given a giant NOS tank on the sly.

More than one tire in the grave on this one. The guy driving it was dressed up as a scarecrow which was pretty awesome!

Just liked the old school hot rod vibe of this one.

The most ridiculous roll cage I've ever seen in my life. I don't even know what is going on inside this car but it must be extraordinarily uncomfortable.

There were a ton of Pintos there! This one made me laugh.

Quite a few old racers as well which was very cool.

A really nice clean engine bay on a Cougar.

In the Cougar row... lots of great cars here!

This Continental was ENORMOUS. It must have been 30 feet long and weighed 6000 lbs. Huge!!

Never seen an Edsel before!

Just liked the contrast here - a Ford GT next to a rodded truck with a nice bike on the bed.

This copper paint was gorgeous.

What is this???

An Australian Falcon - liked the badging

An original '70 Boss 302. There were quite a few super nice cars in the Boss line, including Dana's yellow Boss 302, which he drove 900 miles round trip in! Awesome stuff.

We all met up for lunch at Portillo’s, a pretty famous hot dog joint in the area. Absolutely delicious and it provided a nice respite from the sun, which was pretty strong. I was quite warm but in absolute hog heaven. The sun and I are very good friends and cold is not really my forte.

Anyways, it seemed like not too long later that the show was ending! I didn’t get a chance to see all of the cars because I was so busy talking to people, but that was not at all a problem. Guess it just means that I’ll have to come back next year. All of us that stayed behind to let traffic clear out lined our cars up for a couple of glamour shots. It was funny, once we lined all of our cars up, all the sudden a bunch of people appeared to start snapping more pictures. Guess they hadn’t had enough of cars yet either!

Hopefully all of these names are spelled right and associated with the right cars... if not, I apologize! From left to right: Bill's '67 vert, Tracy's '65 fastback, Jeff's '67 fastback, Mike's '67 fastback, Ken's '66 fastback, Armon's '69 vert, and Jane! 

Good looking group of cars! Too bad 5 or so people were missing from this shot - but I guess that would have been hard to take a picture of, ha!

I asked some guy who was taking pictures which car he liked best. He said "this blue one right here in front". I told him he had good taste and that it was my car and we had driven all the way from Colorado to be here. He then said, "DUDE YOU'RE A LEGEND". I'll take it!

Eventually we cleared out of the show lot as well and headed to dinner at an Italian place nearby. From there we went for ice cream at the famous Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor. I had the biggest ice cream sundae I’ve ever seen. I must admit though that I was super tired and the high-energy vibe of the place was a little too much. It kind of just made me more tired, ha!

Finally it was time to say our goodbyes. Goodbyes are always bittersweet for me because I am always ready to hit the road but I really do hate to leave my friends. It occurred to me as I was walking away that all of these people, who had no idea who I really was but had taken me in and made me feel welcome and included at all times for three whole days, were people that I would really miss. Sure, I haven’t known them for very long, but they still felt like good friends. And the prospect of not seeing them again for another year or more was more than a little depressing. So I put on some nostalgic tunes and let the roar of my American pony car – which has provided me with more friends and opportunities over the span of a few years than I’ve ever had in my life – transform my sadness to joy and optimism. There is nothing that a good drive in that car can’t solve.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading back out into the great unknown. But I know that I'll be back at Knott's again sometime and I'm already planning on how I'm going to get there. Best get some rest as I am totally 100% exhausted. Kelly signing out.

Learning how to make the most of a day

Saturday 4/18/2015

Saturday morning at the totally unreasonable time of 5 AM, I woke up to do some more hot rodding (in theory). What really actually happened was I woke up at 5 AM, made sure I was wearing all of the proper clothes required of me by society, and blearily made my way over to the other hotel to meet up with Jeff and Armon, my two die-hard Mustang buddies. From there I blearily followed them to a donut shop somewhere in the vicinity of Huntington Beach, where I blearily parked and blearily answered questions about my car. Once day dawned (finally), I woke myself up a bit and was able to really look around at where I was.

Clearly I am not enough of a morning person to take a good picture at 5:30 AM.

Donut Derelicts, as I mentioned in my previous post, is this giant informal cruise-in that has been happening for years now. It started as just a few “car guys” gathering at the local donut shop for breakfast and has now, in true California fashion, evolved into a full-blown meetup complete with around a hundred awesome classic rods. I saw just about every variety of classic there that’s available in this world – rat rods, hot rods, slammed rods on bags, giant trucks, custom builds, crazy cars with entirely the wrong drivetrain in them, sports cars and stock cars and racers. I grabbed a couple of donuts and warmed them up on my radiator (for which someone made fun of me for some reason), then wandered around for a couple of hours just looking at all of the cars. Unfortunately I forgot to take a lot of pictures (early morning and all that), so you'll just have to trust me that there were some seriously cool cars there.

One of several rows of cars. Donut shop was in the very back right of the pic there.

A Jag with a distinctly not-Jag drivetrain.

It was an awesome little meet! I still struggle to identify cars outside of Mustangs just because I haven’t seen a whole lot of them. So I made a point to figure out what everything was and to ballpark the years based on styling cues. Figured I’d test myself later (I didn’t). One day I’ll get better at this thing.

Anyways, after everyone cleared out around 9 AM, we decided to head to the beach! After all, what’s California – especially SoCal – without a little beach action? I wish we could have stayed longer but we had a ton of plans for the day. So after a couple of hours of wonderful sun and sand, we headed back inland to Knott’s Berry Farm.

I may have borrowed this picture... but this is exactly what it looked like! Widest beach I've ever seen in my life.

Can I just say that Knott’s Berry Farm is a very misleading name? This place is definitely NOT a berry farm or anything remotely resembling one. It is an amusement park and quite a good one at that. Apparently what happened was that it was originally a restaurant that served fried chicken that was so incredibly delicious that people would stand in line for hours waiting for a table. Well the restaurant owners thought that maybe their waiting guests would want some entertainment, so they built some exhibits. And then they built some rollercoasters. And then somehow this thing turned into a full-blown amusement park. And the restaurant is still there and it still commands a pretty good wait on most days. Now if that is not a ridiculously American story I don’t know what is.

The roller coasters were awesome - though one wooden coaster did probably make me a good candidate for a chiropractor - and the chicken was totally delicious! Biggest home cooking meal I’ve had in a really long time and I was glad for it. I’m not a very good Southerner despite being born and raised in NC, but I am always down for some good soul cooking and man can I pack it away when it’s put in front of me.

Suitably stuffed, we headed back to the hotel for some relaxation. It seemed like days had passed since Donut Derelicts despite it being that morning. But Sunday was the big day – Fabulous Fords Forever at Knott’s Deceptive Berry Farm! I of course had not cleaned the road grime off of Jane at all but I figured I could do it early in the morning before the show started (wrong). But more on that later in the next post… Kelly signing out!

Learning to sing when there's no song

Friday 4/17/2015

You know, I’ve gotten really good at singing when there’s no song. You see, I’ve had to – because when you are going a jillion miles an hour in a car with loud exhaust and no overdrive, there is a 0% chance of you getting to hear an entire song. So I’ve gotten pretty good at picking up a couple of notes and singing from there and usually I’m pretty dead on. A couple of times I’ve accidentally sang the whole song and only noticed when it suddenly switched to something else while I was still singing. But most of the time I’m pretty close. Today’s music of choice was my “JTFO” playlist – a selection of high quality jams from the 70’s-90’s. Once I sang along to Skid Row when it was actually .38 Special, but the rest of the time I had it on lock!

But that’s not what you want to hear about, probably. You want to hear about how I daringly hauled ass across the California state line and into the dreaded traffic of SoCal, zipping left and right to get to my destination safely among a sea of disinterested or clinically insane drivers. So I’ll get right to it:

I left my hotel sometime early morning and jumped back onto the interstate. This close to California I started seeing a lot of classic car traffic and affiliated vendors. And the closer to California I got, the more interesting things got. I saw a pair of RVs pulling a pair of hot rods on the side of the road – one of the hot rods had blown a tire. I saw the Roush guys and waved as I blew past them at 95 mph. And I saw a Suburban that had inexplicably flipped itself upside down on a completely empty freeway with no obstacle in sight. But other than that, mostly I just saw… a ton of sand and desert plants.

Lots of rocks.

A terribly boring welcome sign.

Sand...

More sand, but with mountains in the background.

Late morning saw me crossing a giant volcanic field. Actually pretty fascinating because you could see the cinder cone that had blown and the distribution of the lava flow / ashfall in its immediate vicinity! But that may just be the geologist in me speaking.

Oh dang check out those flowssssss

Then I headed into L.A. traffic. I’ve heard many, many horror stories about the terrible drivers of the SoCal region, but unfortunately I can’t add to them. Traffic was a little rough but not too bad, and I saw exactly zero insane drivers. Only two guys hung out of their windows to shout at me (about the car, not about my poor driving skills) and other than that it was totally uneventful! It was a nice breath of fresh air to get off the interstate and onto the nice wide boulevards of Buena Park though.

I stopped at the Knott’s Hotel, where I had reservations, and sat around for a couple of hours cooling off before dinner. I met up with the StangFix guys – about 20 die-hard Mustangers that have been meeting for this show for 13 years now – at Outback for a delicious steak. I was pretty surprised at how many people recalled my face (and, more frequently, my car) from last year’s road trip.

Dinner was quite pleasant and then… well, then I hung around and hot rodded until 1AM. When I say I was hot rodding, I mean I was mostly just driving around enjoying the warm night. There is something just truly wonderful about a warm nighttime cruise on a neverending night. But alas, the night had to end fairly early (as in midnight, not 4 AM like usual), as we had plans to go to Donut Derelicts in the morning! This informal cruise-in has been going on for years in Huntington Beach at a donut shop. More on that in the next post – just know that it was very, very early when we had to get on the road to get there. Kelly signing out.

Learning to Fly

First of all, I’d like to start by apologizing for not updating this blog in a timely fashion! It has been a wild trip. I’m now near the end of it but late is better than never for a post!

Thursday morning dawned with an accompaniment of a light sprinkling of snow. I, of course, disregarded the white stuff and hit the road! Jane and I had a lot of running to do as I was aiming to be in Kingman, AZ by nightfall. This meant a drive from Raton to Kingman through Las Vegas (NM), Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Grants, Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams, and Seligman. In short, a lot of Route 66 – the Mother Road!

Cruising Route 66 is something of a nostalgic American pastime, especially for “car people”. I can very truthfully say that what I did on Thursday was not anywhere close to a cruise. To put it succinctly, Jane and I hauled ass down Route 66 and made it across two states in one day. We stopped only once in Albuquerque for some delicious green chile chicken enchiladas – a New Mexican specialty. The rest of the time was spent eating away at the miles, pounding down the blacktop to a backdrop of screaming guitars (hair metal, of course).

It was super windy in New Mexico again and the wind noise inside the car was phenomenal. I saw a semi truck get blown over by a lane and Jane was getting whipped around pretty good. I figured that at some point Jane was just going to take wing and fly with the wind, which probably would have saved me quite a bit on gas. Because we were driving so quickly I was only getting a measly 18 mpg. But alas, all four tires remained (mostly) on the ground and so I was restricted only to the paved parts of the American Southwest. There were some sections of road that were so straight that I could have let go of the wheel and still been on the road 30 minutes later no worse for the wear.

I can’t say that the day was eventful, but it was at least beautiful. The weather was kind of overcast but that was made better by news that I received from Colorado – apparently it had snowed over a foot at my house! The overcast weather also kept me from needing sunblock or A/C or anything else. Mostly I just drove.

We finally pulled into Kingman around 7:30PM after hammering down the highway for a full 12 hours. I had booked a hotel room for my stay, as I wanted to be able to leave bright and early again. My place of choice was El Trovatore Motel, a classic Route 66 stop. It’s a motel that was built in the 50’s and never updated. It boasts around 20 rooms, each with a separate movie star theme, and comes complete with a giant Route 66 mural and the traditional 50’s Route 66 giant neon sign. Very cool retro vibe! I stayed in the John Wayne room and watched old black and white movies late into the night. And so I concluded my Route 66 day – with a time warp back into the glory days of the Mother Road.

Sunset over the mountains heading through Flagstaff - absolutely gorgeous time of day.

Very cool old school sign!

Even cooler old school sign. This tower was really, really tall.

On the road again!

Well, it's time to resurrect this blog as Jane and I are once again on the road! I should have done an introductory post yesterday or last week or something, but I forgot so... this is what's up:

I am headed to SoCal to Knott's Berry Farm for Fabulous Fords Forever 2015! I decided that I could use a vacation from the cold of Colorado (and the boredom of living rural) so I took a week off of work to head back west for another round of California fun. For those of you who are not familiar with the event, it's a giant All-Fords show that hosts a couple thousand classic Fords every April. It's only a one-day event, but most people come to stay for a few days and fill up the rest of their time with cruises, other shows, and beach time. I plan to get there on Friday, spend Saturday at the beach / entertaining myself in a myriad of ways, and then attend the show on Sunday. The Monday morning after the show I will head to Joshua Tree National Park; from there I'll make my way back through Arizona and New Mexico, stopping at several interesting places along the way. I'm optimistic for good weather and plenty of fun times ahead!

Today my main goal was to get to New Mexico, as there is a big snowstorm heading into Colorado tonight. I wanted to get past all of the major mountain passes before the snow swept in, which meant that I needed to get out of the Rockies and then down across Raton Pass on the NM-CO border. I got Jane all loaded up (with substantially less gear this time) and we hit the road mid-afternoon.

Well first of all, it was so windy that I'm surprised I didn't end up in Oz (or worse, Kansas)! Wind speeds were in excess of 30 MPH the whole drive south with very strong gusts that were blowing cars all over the road. Most people slowed their speed to compensate, but of course I am young and lacking in common sense so I took the weather circumstances as a challenge and maintained rather high rates of speed. I have to say that I'm really glad that Jane is lowered, as a stock-stanced Mustang would have really been skidding around. Mostly I just had to deal with incredible amounts of wind noise, a horrible whistling sound when the wind angled just right under a loose piece of trim, and the occasional swerving around trying to keep the car on the road while the wind did its best to get me off of it. But I'm pleased to report that I seem to have lost no parts (I was sure that the antenna was a goner with the way it was whipping around) and Jane seems to be running excellently!

Oh, and you know how I was all concerned about making it through the second mountain pass (Raton Pass) before the snow hits? Yeah, that is the WEENIEST pass I have ever seen in my life. I don't even know if it counts as a hill. I go up bigger inclines when I go to the grocery store every week! What a crock. Had nothing to worry about with that but at least I'm over it and out of the storm's way.

I've been working on tuning her up recently and this morning actually checked the timing for the first time ever. Imagine my surprise when initial timing was at 25* BTDC! I backed it off to 15* and of course now the car runs worse. So probably tomorrow I will give 20* a try and maybe I'll have it sorted by the time I hit California. Nothing like testing and tuning your way across the country!

Anyways, no pictures for today. Hopefully I'll have some good ones for tomorrow though as I will be covering a LOT of ground. The plan is to hit Kingman, AZ by dinnertime. That said, time for me to hit the hay! Kelly signing out.