The L.A. Auto Show

When my parents were over for Christmas, my dad made mention of having a complementary set of passes to the The L.A. Auto Show, and asked if I would be interested in going. I vaguely remember saying that I would, but with the delirium of my illness and the excitement of going back to work this week I forgot.

I had my second session of the latest round of physical therapy for my finger today. Its been something like three months since I've had therapy, due to lack of approval from the insurance assholes. I go twice a week for 8 weeks, Tuesday mornings and Fridays. The first half of my sessions on Fridays is at 2:00, and the second half is at 11:00. However, in my feeble dyslexic mind I transposed the times and showed up at 11:00. My therapist was a little surprised to see me, but was good enough to work me in at that time instead. While I was hooked up to thousands of volts of electrical muscle stimulation my dad called me up and asked what time we should head off to the show. I told him around 1:30 to 2:00 would be good.

Upon leaving the therapist's office, I checked the Frys ad in the newspaper, just to see what they have on special. They had a 160 gig hard drive for $39.99 after rebates. I've been looking for one since my last computer escapade, the motherboard upgrade I did a couple months back. Right now I've got Granny's old 40 gig that she let me have in exchange for rebuilding her computer a couple years ago, and it's about 95% full already. Since I was about halfway there already, and had enough cash in my money clip, I decided to go ahead and pick that up. Now I have another project to get to...

Finally, my dad and I made it to the Auto Show. We both had our cameras, but it seemed to take quite a while before either of us were inclined to remove our lens caps. There are a lot of just plain old production cars there, and they're mostly boring. There were a few mildly customized cars there, and some interesting concept cars. Mercedes had a Rolling Stones bigger bang station wagon there, mostly just a fancy paint job and amplifiers and subwoofers in the back. Keith Richards must be rolling over in his grave. Chrysler had some nicely painted and dubbed chargers there. Then there were exotics, Ferarris and Lotus, and a brand I'd never heard of before, Spyker. VW had an interesting concept car there, a tricycle with one rear wheel. I found it interesting that the rear wheel was the driven wheel, while most of their lineup is front driven. Seems like it would be much easier to keep that kind of configuration. Over in the aftermarket and accessories hall, there was a natural gas powered tricycle, and the Zap electric cars. Off in the corner there was a guy with this unique engine he was showing. It reminded me somewhat of a rotary engine, but quite a bit different. It has a series of opposing flat discs traveling in a round torus housing. No valves, just two intake and exhaust ports, and two plugs. Very compact, very simple, and looks potentially very powerful. I tried to nail the guy down on price, but he wasn't giving.

As we were leaving I took some pictures of the downtown skyline. The sun was setting behind us, and it created a nice shade to the buildings. I took a couple of the sunset, too, but it was shooting across the freeway so they came marginal.