Who likes Bumper Cars?

STREET LEGAL BUMPER CARS




It's easy for a gear-head to be discouraged about the state of


the world, especially in times of Carpocalypse and Cash for Clunkers.


But occasionally, a bright light of awesome renews the spirit.


Road-legal bumper cars do just that.






Yes, you read that right; these little beasties are street legal.


Either Kawasaki or Honda motorcycle engines for power, and retired


vintage bumper car bodies - transformed into the most awesome form of


mini-car we've ever seen.

There's seven of these little monsters floating around


California, and they're all the creation of one man, Tom Wright, a


gyro-gear loose builder on the outskirts of San Diego who figured the


leftovers of the Long Beach Pike amusement park needed a more dignified


end than the trash heap.


They were originally powered by Harley engines but rattled like heck and


Tom replace them with Honda or Kawasaki 750's... and a couple have been


'measured' [not run at] theoretically as capable of 160 MPH which is


terrifyingly fast in machines with such a short wheelbase. Doesn't mean


we would totally rock one should the opportunity present itself. In


fact, we now have only one burning desire, to see these things running a


go kart track with a clown in the drivers seat.

Think of the fun you can have driving this around town.

I love the license plates!

I think these are limited edition models.  Where would you find some around here?

Ok, clutch, brake, gass and shifter!  That is all I need.  Oh no, you can't pick up girls! :-(  No wait, it looks like a two seater!!

Just remember you have a bumper car, the others on the road don't!

Monday Fishing!

I love to fish Mondays on the Manistee River.  The weekend crowd is gone and I can wade where ever I want.  Today was nice and it didn't rain.  We are getting our 4-5 days of Indian Summer right now. 

I headed down Cardiac Hill and decided to use the flies I have been teaching in my Fly Tying class at Brethern High School.  I tied on the Black Leech and started drifting it down the river.

Looking upstream towards the Coffer Dam were two guys floating bobbers and egg sacs.  I decided to stay down by the bend.

I could just make out two guys below me and they were throwing bobbers also.

This is the North side right at the boat launch at Tippy Dam.  No combat fishing today.





I kept drifting my leech and doing repetitive casting.   Drift down, bump bottom, lift and reel in.  Throw out again, drift down, bump bottom, and reel in.  Over and over and then move a few steps down and do it again.  Whoa, what was that!  I go to set the hook and am fast into something.          The bottom!  I tugged but it didn't tug back.  Finally, the line broke and I had to re-rig.  Then cast and cast again.  The sun was out and a little windy but nice to be on the Manistee River.

Fish on!  A colorful Brown Trout hit the black leech!  Yeah, I can tell my fly tying class that the fly does work!

Back to the casting and drifting.  I fished from 9:00 - 11:45 am.  It was relaxing and fun.  This is day 159 of fishing for this year.  I have to teaching Fly Tying on Tuesday night and Glass Bead Making on Wednesday night and Thursday I am heading over to Slippery Rock, PA   to help my son, Ryan, put down new flooring.

So I only have a couple more days of fishing before I head down to Key West for 30 days of sunshine!

Not many people and lots of open space to fish...priceless!  I have to work on my boat trailer bearings so I get all the water out before winter.  I was going to start the job this morning but the nice weather beckoned me to the river.  I switched to a new style of  a leech.  This was made with marabou tail but petite Estaz black braid body.  I thought it would work as well and I tossed it out.  Second cast and wham!

The new Black Leech works as well as the old style fly.    Another Brownie!  Where are the Steelhead?

I switched to the Nuclear Egg pattern.  I told the class it was a great fly.  I snagged another one on the bottom and broke off my rig.  I re-tied and started floating the egg pattern down.

All right, a Rainbow trout that will grow up to be a Steelhead.  Ok, three fish and no Steelhead. I released everything to grow bigger.  I decided it was time to head back.  My Egg pattern caught a fish and my Leech caught two so I could report that fishing was good on the Manistee River on Monday!

As I started up Cardiac Hill I took this picture.

What do you see?  Notice the railing?

This shows the railing on both sides.  The wind gets pretty strong sometimes and last Spring it blew over several pine trees and bend the railing.  The hillside is rocky and the tree roots do not get a deep root here. The stairs were closed for 2-3 days before Consumers Electric cut up the trees and opened the stairway.

I carried up another bag of trash and noted that it still looks pretty good.  Remember what Smokey the Bear says....."Pick it up and pack it out".  At least, I think that is what Smokey told me last week!

History is Interesting!

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:












Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . .. . brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.






Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"






Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath... It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."






There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.






The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor.." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.






(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)






In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.






Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.






Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.






Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.






Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky... The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.






England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus,someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer...






And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

November Fish Camp

November Fish Camp is now officially over.  Wednesday, some of the former actors in the great Canadian Fish Caper were present.  We had Gary from Elk Rapids, Chris from Interlocken, and Mikey-Pikey from Grand Rapids.  Gary arrived early and we went down to the Manistee River to fish for steelhead. We both had several fish on.  Gary was using Mepp type spinners and I was using Egg patterns and a black leech flies.  I caught a Brown Trout on an egg pattern fly and had 2 large steelhead on my black leech fly.  I managed to land one!

After the rest of the guys arrived, back to the river to fish.  Everyone had a few trout caught before dark.

Back to the house for a Fish Boil.  Gary brought his Turkey Fryer and put in fish, potatoes, and onions for a Boiled dinner.

The water and seasoning were boiling and it was time to start adding the ingredients.  It sure gets dark early.  I had to run to Brethern High School to teach my Glass Bead Class.  You can't keep 7 women waiting for their night of bead making!

The food wasn't ready when I had to leave but the guys will save some for me.

Arriving at school, I got the room ready for the propane torches and tonight's lesson on adding compound dots and encasing the beads.

The beads were coming out great.  We only have one more class and they are doing great.

After class, I hurried home and had some fish boil.  They guys were relaxing and watching the last game of the World Series.  Early to bed tonight because tomorrow may be another fish day.

We were afraid that the rain from Wednesday would carry over or worse!  But when we got up, the weather was not too bad.  It was cloudy but no rain!  So off to the North side of Tippy Dam.  We fished below the boat launch on the gravel bars.

My brother, Gary, was using his home-made Mepps type spinners and caught a few trout.  The water was cloudy and fast today.  The dam must have released water.  It was flowing pretty good. The Fall leaves are pretty much down but it is still pretty on the river.

I told you, Gary, to hold the fish out in front of you with your arm straight to get a bigger picture of that fish!  Oh well, next time it will be a steelhead when it grows up.

Chris has one on, I can tell by the expression on his face.  Chris loves to fish and is pretty successful up near Traverse City.  The wind was cold and the water was getting cold.  When you stand in the water for hours, it starts to sap your body heat.  Notice we didn't wade out above our knees.  Somehow, the guys don't like to wade in cold water up your waist.  It seems to make our voice go up an octave. Is that due to shrinkage?

Right next to shore was one of the last hold-outs from Salmon Season.  The tail is mouldy and this fish won't last long.  The salmon spawn in the Fall and die.  The steelhead and trout come in and feed on the salmon eggs but they spawn in the Spring.  Some will return to Lake Michigan and some steelhead and trout will stay in the river until Spring.  You can fish year around on the Manistee!

Mikey-Pikey is now Steely Mike!  Well, it is a small steelhead that is going to grow up to be a big steelhead.  Mike enjoyed the time in camp and catching a few trout.  Everyone caught fish this year so on one was skunked!

Gary said the weather wasn't as bad as he expected.  In fact, he said he was quite warm.  He just looks cold in this picture.

As afternoon approached, we headed back to my place for lunch.  After lunch we posed for our group photo.  You know the one where you try to hit the timer button and run back to get into the picture.  Ask the guys how many tries it took to get this last shot!   And I was reading the instructions!

This was the last Fish Camp before I head to Key West for the rest of Nov. and Dec.   We had a good time and are ready for the next outing.  Maybe we will have Ice Fishing Camp this year!  I have some shots to tempt you guys.

What do you think?   Heh, guys, you want to go ice fishing?

Cajun Trip to Louisiana

My brother, Gary, and my sister, Barb, and I headed down to LA for a visit.  We flew to New Orleans and rented a car for the trip over to Crowley, LA to visit my daughter, Molly, and Joey.  After we arrived Joey ordered two 20 # gunney sacks of live crawfish from a local farmer.  We picked up the bags and put them on the back porch.  We ran cool water on the bags several times as we waited for the crawfish to purge.

Here I am holding a pail of fresh crawfish waithing for their bath and hot tub!  We had the Turkey Fryer going with water and Cajun boil spices.

These critters are lively and we sort out all the ones that appear to have suffered a stroke or something else. Don't want any bad crawfish in our Hot Tub.

The local rice farmers flood their fields after the rice crop and the crawfish start reproducing.  Crowley is considered the Rice Capital and they have a huge Rice Festival.  Then the flooding of the fields.  We were a little early and the crawfish were only medium sized.

This is after the hot tub bath!  Any crawfish that have straight tails, instead of curled tails are picked out.  Then it is time to 'suck head and eat tail'.  Eating crawfish is slow process and half the fun is getting some ready to eat.  Everyone in the neighborhood stopped over.  The smell of crawfish in the air brings people out of the woodwork. About 12-14 people were here for our crawfish boil.

First, you make you own sauce.  Everyone makes the sauce different.  We start with some Mayo, ketchup, hot sauce, and some special spices.  It is mixed up in a bowl beside you and then they bring out the platters.

To eat crawfish, you first twist off the head and then you use your thumbs and first fingers  on each side of the tail to crack the shell and pinch the end of the tail to have the tail meat pop out.  Most shuck several tails before they start eating. The size of your pile of tail meat depends on how hungry you are.  Can you wait for a big pile?  Ears of fresh corn and new potatoes were in the hot tub with the crawfish and you have a complete boiled dinner.

My sister was a little hesitant to eat crawfish for the first time.  She thought she would only taste a few.  In a short period of time, she had a plateful of shucked crawfish and decided they were pretty tasty.  You can see the hot sauce and Tony Chachere's seasoning on the table.  What do you do with all those empty heads and tails?

You make puppets, of course!  My brother , Gary, was having a little puppet show to tell how much he liked those little guys.

After a day of rest we headed out for the Town of Mamou..  This was a little drive NE of Crowley.  A lot of interesting history was here.

We arrived at 9:00 am on a weekday.  What to see first?  Well, we could hear the music and saw the sign and our minds were made up.

That's right...the Mardi Gras was revived in 1950 right here at Fred's Lounge.  It was 9:00 am and the musics was blasting and some people were dancing on the top of the tables.  Being from the North, we had never witnessed such a sight so early in the morning.  Well, it was a sight and a site to remember.

A true story about Mamou.  A Judge was sentencing a man for being drunk in public.  He stood weaving back and forth in front of the Judge.  "How could you appear in court, 5 days later, and still drunk?" the Judge asked.  The man said only, "Sir, I am from Mamou".  Case was dismissed.

What a culture stop!  Zydego music, cajun music, and you don't say 'no' when asked to dance.  It ain't friendly!  Just about every weekend you can find a festival and a band going on somewhere.

 

   If you get to Louisiana, be sure to see some of the smaller town away from New Orleans. You will meet friendly people who know how to celebrate life.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez .... Let the Good Times Roll.

Fall on the River

No, not fall in the river, I mean Fall on the Manistee River!  I got a new pair of winter waders for the steelhead season.  Darn ole rubber soles!  I hate them as they as so slippery.  Will have to get some "chains" for the soles!

Here is the Fall view of the path to Cardiac Hill and those dreaded 200 steps to the river.

Fall is in the air.  The leaves are coming down and maybe the steelhead are running.

This is a view of above the Coffer Dam at Tippy Dam.  There are two waders and then a boat with two guys in the middle between the two trees, and then two more waders to the right.  I guess the first run has jumped the Coffer Dam but I want to fish down below the Coffer Dam.

Not as many fishermen below the dam so there is room to spread out and fish.  I head down to the gravel bars at the first bend.  Every once in a while I see a fin or tail of a fish coming up.  I know they aren't feeding on top, but just exercising.  Now if I can get one to bite my fly!

I spent about 2 hours drifting the 'hot flies' I tied last night in class.  I told them they were 'hot flies', I guess I exaggerated a little!  I saw a few fish on and only one or two fish landed on the North side.  Why do the fish always seem to bite better on the opposite side from where I am fishing?

The Fall colors are already past peak but still look good.  They are coming off the trees and the trees will be bare soon.


I decided to give it up for the day and started out.

This shot is above the Coffer Dam and just to the left of the black spot between the trees is a ladder with a PVC pipe holding a fishing rod!  Someone carried the ladder out into the stream to fish from.  Now, I have seen something new!

Once again, I have a feed bag full of garbage from the Salmon fishermen.  The South side is pretty clean now.  I'll have to clean up the side across from the Handicap Pier next time.

Now, I have to climb those 200 steps up hill dragging a feed sack of trash.  OK, I didn't get into the fish but today was Day #153 of fishing for 2009. I don't leave for Key West until Nov. 19/20th so I have some time to get back in the water.  Next week, Gary & maybe Mikey-Pikey will come for Fall Fish Camp. There is always tomorrow!

'I use to live in a Barn!'

When I lived in PA, I bought an empty 50' by 40' bank barn and 4 acres.  I thought I was going to tear it down and build a house.  My friend convinced me to re-model the barn into a house.  We started the project in February and moved into it in late August.  At that time we had no inside doors, no heat, and no water.  We had a drywall party with about 10 couples helping.  Only 5 people had ever drywalled.  We put them in separate rooms and handed the crew 16" sticks.  "That is what you use to know how to nail the drywall." 


After a few years of work, room by room, the barn became a home.

Two thousand square feet in the basement, 2000 sq. ft. first floor, 2000 sq. ft. on second floor, and about 1200 sq. ft. in the attic.  It had 4-5  bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, a 2 story entryway, and a 2 story setting room off the end of the upstairs.  In fact, you can just see a 6' hexagonal window near the peak.  That was the highlight of the setting room upstairs.

Most of the siding was from fir strip  batten boards that I got from the Amish lumbermen. We bought the windows and made our own framing.  All the trim wood was 4" or 6" pine boards.  The flooring on the first floor was from old boxcars.  The flooring was tongue and groove, 4" thick boards that were 1' by 12' long and made of laminated strips.  I bought a whole truck-load of them for $400.  I had to hand chisel off the old bolts.  After the flooring was layed down, remember this was an empty barn with nothing inside but hay, I rented a large drum sander for a week to sand the floors.  Then I put down 2 coats of gym sealer.

A funny story about the stairs.  I had a section of scaffolding set up in the entry room with a piece of flooring  running on it over the stairs to the beam so I could put up drywall.  I had to go down the stairs and get some more nails and as I was hurrying back up the stairs, I forgot to look up and wham, my head hit the plank across the stairs!  My head was bleeding across my forehead.  I hurried to the ER and had 6-8 stitches.  Feeling like I better get some more work done, I headed back to the barn.  As I started back up the stairs, I suddendly remember the plank across the stairs.  Yes, you got it....back to the ER to have some more stitches!   Twice in one day,  Did I ever have a lot of explaining to do!

The scaffolding was right beside the stairs and over to the beam.  Every beam was preserved and visible in each room.  I had to frame around the inside to make the walls.  Finally, we had to cut the beams in several places for doorways.  I wasn't sure the structure could take cuting the beams, so I hired a guy to put steel rods across the barn in both directions and bolt them to large steel Ss on the outside.  We carefully cut the doorways one at time and the building held!

This shows the front of the house and the 2 story entry room.  I saved some of the old roof slate and covered the bottom half of the entry hall wall opposite the stairs.  Some more of the slate became the panels for kitchen cupboards.

The counters and center kitchen island were made with some of the flooring.  This window looks out the north end of the barn and the deck.  I boxed in a walk-in cupboard for food and pantry items.  There was an old iron stove converted to propane in the corner that was used for holiday cooking.  We used the new stove for everyday use.

Off of the kitchen was the dining room.  The kitchen and dinning room were 20' by 20'.  You can just see the plank flooring in the kitchen.  I lined several doorways with small barn beams. All the decorating was done by my talented wife.

This is a middle setting room between the dinning room and the living room.  On the left side of this picture would be the back of the barn.  Being a bank barn, the first floor starts at ground level in front and looks out the back one story up.  Understand?  On the back wall I installed  double glass doors that opened to nothing...but a 16-18' foot drop. Why?  It was cheaper to use glass doors for window that were floor to ceiling. Never got around to putting on a back deck 16-18' tall! But I did keep the doors bolted and locked!  Not to keep people out, but to keep people in! :-)

This is a view the back half of the living room which was 20' by 40'.  To the right was windows on the back wall and straight ahead was the south wall. It really looked like a place out of "Country Homes" thanks to my wife.

This is the rest of the living room and shows the handcut barnstone fireplace that continued up from the basement, past the living room and then up into the upstairs setting room and out through the roof. I started building the chimney and got up to the first floor when I assessed my work.  Then I hired a stone mason to finish the fireplace.  It had 4 flues.  One for an oil furnace, one for a wood-burning furnace, both in the basement, one for the fireplace and one for the small wood-burner in the setting room.  It was very difficult to heat this place, after all, it is a barn.  I had insulated it as much as I could and still keep the beams showing in each room.

 
We hand-cut 14-16' christmas trees for the entryway for a few years, until we went green with a very large artifical tree.  It just wasn't the same as hiking out to the woods to cut our own tree.  You can see the grey slate wall behind the tree. This was a great house for the holidays and celebrating.  I had many of my graduate classes out for the last class of the semester.   I once found high heel marks/holes in the flooring after one such party.  I was in 'hot water'.
 
 

This is the deck off the kitchen on the north side of the barn.   It had some nice shade and was handy to use by being right off the kitchen.

The basement held the two furnaces and we cemented in the floor.  I sided the back overhang in as a 15' by 50' garage.  I then took my chainsaw and cut a doorway into the basement and straight out the middle of the garage.  I found 4 large glass doors for windows and made two large sliding doors for the openings.
 
What a lot of work!  My Dad came over for a week to help me when I was building.  I hired two recent HS graduates to be my work crew and together we got most of the siding and framing done before I ran out of money in June.  Then I worked by myself and friends would come over and help on the large projects.  It was fun but it was impractical for just two people.  We did have over 10 university students rent rooms 1-2 at a time, each semester.  They became part of the family.
 
 What happened to the Barn?  It is still there in Slippery Rock.  When I divorced, my ex-wife got the Barn and I got my retirement $$!  Not a bad deal!  She is happy and so am I!
 
 
Besides,.......did you ever see the movie, "The Money Pit".  I lived there!  :-)