Arroyo Seco

Today, on our Labor Day day off, we went for a picnic at one of the parks along the Arroyo Seco.

Arroyo Seco translates to "dry stream", which it almost never is, but usually there's not much along this portion. Whenever we're by there, the younger boy wants to go for a hike along the stream.

A couple of posts back, I'd made mention of my latest technology purchase, but never said what it actually was!!! Ipod Touch 4th generation, same as my older picked up, but I got mine as a refurb rather than used with a corner of the screen cracked already. I've been kind of keeping an eye out for a decent but tiny camera at a reasonable price. Most weren't much cheaper than this, and only would take pictures!!! Found out afterwards that the generation 5 has a WAY better camera, and experience a tad of buyers' remorse. My younger boy has been saving for one of his own, and I've agreed to sell him mine at a nice discount when I get myself a gen 5, probably around gravy time. Did I mention that my wife got me a nice case for it for my birthday???

All the pictures here are from my Ipod. The only edit I preformed on them was to use the clarify function in Paint Shop Pro. First shot is by where we entered, he declared it to be dead hobo swag.

Second shot is looking upstream. If I'd had my Pentax with me, you would probably be able to make out the antennas of Mount Wilson!!! That was the shot I was going for. Picture #3 is straddling the stream, and #4 is one of the inlet pipes, probably from the local street drains. I know I've got a shot from a while ago of the stencil they have near storm drains that have the "empties to the ocean" legend on them!!!

The last shot, I'm guessing, was one of the unfortunate victims of the freeway running alongside the Arroyo.

Flaunt It

Today was the car show and company picnic at my work.



First time for the car show, not a huge turnout, but a lot of neat, unique rides on display. I'll probably post some of my favorites later. One of my fellow bin fillers came up with the idea and organized it. Still don't know who won in the categories.

I'm going to use this post to highlight my Falcon, I finally got a few more pictures of her, looking good.



I did a bit of work on her, put a thread repair insert on the starter bolt that was stripped out (made me think I had a bad starter with the grindy noise). The other thing I did was finally installed the rectangle headlights I'd bought years back. I'm going to eventually install a pair of generation one 300Z driving lights inside of them, then fabricate an aluminum bar grille. I can picture it.

I also picked up a set of Mooneyes Moon Discs for the wheels. Ended up being up until almost midnight last night getting 'em set up. I'm very pleased with the results, and I got many comments on 'em!!!



My dad has been a tremendous help, he repainted a spot that'd been polished through, and took care of getting it to a shop to sort out a couple of brake issues, where it'd get air bubbles if I parked it downhill on the street, and the back right wheel would lock up under hard braking. Now I've actually spent more just to have someone dial in the brakes than the car cost me to begin with!!! Of course, if you've got brake issues, your whole purchase is at risk, isn't it??? More than that my dad did, but I can't remember it all right now. Mostly wanted to show some fresh pictures of her!!!

Three Kegs, One Bottle of Chardonnay

Arrrrrrrrrrggg!!! It's been FOREVER since I've posted!!! At least I'm in good company.



Anyway, I had noticed over the weekend that the Maverick was getting ready to roll the odometer over to 200,000. Today it did, and I thought it a momentous occasion, and was rather amazed that it's that far along!!! However, after I took a picture of it to commemorate it here, I realized that this is an old school odometer, that only goes up to 99,999.9 miles, so it's actually up to 120,000.

Last weekend I adapted it to disc brakes. I'd bought the components some time ago, but finally made the time to get them installed. That very weekend, the Storm developed some kind of hinkiness to its front end, and it feels a bit unstable and unpredictable at high speeds. The front tires are shot, might be all it is, but the struts are gone, too. Screw it, I'm gonna junk it out. Ain't worth the hassle. A shame, as it pulls down a solid 25-30 MPG. Saw a Metro convertible with a raggedy top advertised today, got me thinking that way.

In other auto news, I FINALLY got the part for the Benz, hopefully that'll run fine after Friday. When I went to move the Falcon to do the brakes on the Maverick, found out the ignition switch has come apart. I managed to get it back together, but it only held long enough to get it moved. I hot wired it the next time I moved it, that was far easier. Ignition switches are purely to keep honest people honest on early Fords.



What else??? Besides the work outing and my nephew's wedding, a couple of weekends ago was the company picnic and my wife's birthday. I told her we were having a picnic in honor of her birthday. Here's some of the new construction in the bin structure. See how there's a third level to the red bins now??? Previous to this, there was only blue bins there. They have yet to be populated.



They had the open house tour again. There's one of my co-workers, they were working on the day of the picnic. Actually, in the background you can see the printer I was on today.



Here's the "quad" area I've referred to in past posts. The yellow plants in the foreground are Australian kangaroo paw plants.



And there's the birthday girl!!! Isn't she lovely??? This picture is actually when she'd opened a bottle of bubbles the youngest had won, and it sprayed her down. Turned out to be the best picture of her that day!!! She drank half a dozen glasses of wine there, which she waited until we got home to hork up. Three kegs, one bottle of chardonnay, that's what the server told me. The last time I went to get her a glass of wine, they had run out of the little 8 ounce cups and were using the 12 ounce beer cups. She stopped at a little more than half, and I made the "keep it coming" gesture. She complied, and told me that about the kegs versus the bottles.



Last Friday was the boy's sixth grade graduation. Good times.

More to follow... Hopefully...