Thematic Photographic: Aged

I have no idea how old the sign is, but the Ritz Classic Bowling Lanes opened for business in 1958.  Unfortunately it closed down about a year ago.

This is what’s left of an old pier out on the Great Salt Lake. 

Strewn across the western landscape are these huge concrete arrows.   They are remnants from the early days of air mail delivery.  Before the advent of GPS and other directional technology, the pilots flying the U.S. Mail would use these arrows to direct them on their routes.  They would fly in a straight line, until they came to the next arrow, about every 20 miles, where it would indicate which direction they need to change to.

And finally, this guy.  I have no idea how aged he is, but he sure doesn’t look like a spring chicken.

For more “AGED” pictures, head on over to Carmi’s blog:

Latest change.

Plasti-Dip is great stuff. It's a spray on plastic paint that can be peeled off without any damage to the paint underneath. It's not good for the long run, but it worked perfect for seeing if I wanted to paint my tire rims white. Painted one, saw that I really liked it and then had to peel it off so I could paint all 5 rims with real paint.

I thought about painting the center cap black, like in the picture of the spare tire, but as soon as I put the back tires on I thought "VW Beetle". Not the right look for my Jeep. So I went back to all white. Looks great. I don't know if you can see the difference that well in the pictures, but the first one is original and the last one is with the white rims. That was my day today.

Before:

After:

City of Straight Lines.

There is no better city to live in for someone who is teaching 7^th grade math.  Salt Lake City, and as far as I know all cities and towns in Utah, are set up on a coordinate system.  If you know the system, finding addresses is a breeze, I can tell you exactly how many blocks from Temple Square any address is, and in what direction.  For example, the house I grew up in was at 992 So. Vista View Drive (2950 East).  [On the coordinate plane it would be written (29.5,-9.92)].  That’s almost 10 blocks south and 29½ blocks east from the intersection of South Temple and Main Streets.

In order to keep to this concept of the coordinate plane, the city is made up of parallel and perpendicular straight streets, going either directly north-south or east-west.

Not all streets are perfectly straight, or directly n-s or e-w.   Most of them are either in newer developments, or caused by natural formations:  waterways, gullies and the mountains.

South Temple Street, below, is the city’s x-axis.

Main Street, below, is the city’s y-axis.

And even the city cemetery follows the same grid system.

I managed a pizza delivery restaurant for years before becoming a teacher, and this system made finding homes a breeze.

To see more straight line pictures, check out Thematic Photographic here:

Auto design WTF?s.

It all started with the Pontiac Aztek (ok, maybe not, but that’s where I’m starting.)   This thing looks like the person who designed the top and the person who designed the bottom never talked.

And then there is the Toyota FJ.  Not a bad looking vehicle, but you gotta wonder why they put that huge, seemingly unnecessary, blind spot on a vehicle that already had poor visibility out the back.

Another case of one designer not talking to the other.  This time is was the left side and the right side. 

I saw this one about a week ago.  The skewompus belt line caught my eye, but I didn’t catch the make.  Today I saw one again and discovered it was a BMW.   Seriously, what’s with that back door line?  Did someone accidentally smoosh the clay model and no body wanted to fix it?

Now as you might know, I’m not a big fan of how cars are all looking the same these days, but looking different doesn’t have to look like a mistake.

A day on the lake.

I got invited to spend yesterday boating up on the Jordanelle Reservoir.

The water was a little chilly whenever we went in, but warm enough that we got used to it quickly.

The weather was perfect.  Warm enough that an occasional jump into the chilly water felt great.

It was a little windy, the water choppy, so some of us “non-professionals” had a hard time with the wakeboard, skis and surfboard.  But we all could master the floating couch. 

There was only one cloud in the sky, which happened to find it’s way in front of the sun just as Barry was getting into the water.

Me, getting ready to ride the floating couch.

And the bathing-beauty with our incredibly high-class “rider down” orange flag.

A couple other sights on the lake.

On the road again...

A month ago, the very weekend after my brother had to help me get my Jeep out of the mud, I was driving my ‘78 Mercury around.   I filled up the gas tank, tried to start up the car again and nothing.  Died right there at pump 9.

For the second weekend in a row I had to ask my little brother to help me get a vehicle back home, this time we towed it from the gas station to my house – about 3 blocks.

Anyway, school is out and things have calmed down a bit, so I spent the last few days working on it.

First, I thought it was the accelerator pump on the carburetor, which did need fixing because it was spewing gas every time I pulled on the throttle.

But it wasn’t, fixed that and the car still wouldn’t start.  I tried spraying starter fluid right into the carburetor and it still wouldn’t start, not even an attempt.

This made me think that it must have something to do with the spark.  The beauty of old cars is that if it cranks but won’t even sputter there’s only two things that could be the problem: no gas or no spark.

So coil.  It had to be the coil.  I pulled it out and took it down to NAPA to get a new one.  No, this is why I go to NAPA – the guy there told me that ‘78 was new enough to have electronic ignition, so it could be either the coil or the ignition module.  I already had the coil out, so I bought that hoping it would be the whole problem.

But no, the car still wouldn’t even attempt to start.  I pulled the module and headed back down to NAPA.  Preparing myself for total frustration, I went home and installed the new module.

Voila, it started.  Yea!

A peek into the psyche of 8th graders...