Child of Thunder

I though I’d add some more pics of my Memorial day trip. I’ve gone camping countless times, and this was one of the best trips I’ve done.

I decided to put my projects on hold and check out a lake I saw online called Sparks lake, near Bend. I used to camp near it all the time as a kid, and never heard of it, but I’m glad I did. It’s now my new favorite camping spot! It’s huge, but only about 10 feet deep! I paddled all over it, and it was only about 3 feet deep even in the middle, and there’s tons of places to explore. It’s shaped like a hand with 50 fingers, lots of basalt outcroppings to paddle around. I camped on the other side of the lake, and found a cove you couldn’t see unless you came right up on it. I named it, “Ghost Tree Lagoon” from all the dead trees surrounding it. The peninsula that framed the cove had a lake drain in it and you could hear water gurgling down through it, magical! There were tons of frogs, butterflies, a small snake, ospreys, trout, and yet very few mosquitoes. I seriously think I got the best spot on the lake. I spent three days, two nights, and rarely got bored, but got a twinge of loneliness. I need to talk my friends into buying kayaks and canoes, and bring them here. And the view! The lake is framed by three dormant volcanoes, and at night, you could see the lights of an alpine lodge on one of them. If only it wasn’t a 4.5 hour drive, I’d go all the time

So I took a break form the Space Cruiser to capitalize on the good weather. You see, my flat roof is in bad shape, and I’ve always dreamed of developing it into something unique. I wanted a deck, an access hatch, a cupola style skylight in front, and a small green roof/garden, but didn’t want to cut up a good roof. since time has turned it from good to poor, it’s time to get on it! My first mod, is the hatch. You see, I have two closets in my back bedroom, so I’m converting one into a secret passage. The cliche bookshelf, move a book, door slides open, and there’s a ladder on up. The view up there is wonderful! Every time I’m working on it, I don’t want to come down.

Wolfman

So the dashboard slowly went back in, though there’ a couple of small sticking points, the swing away steering feature is a bit stiff, and there’s a slight gap between the dash and the base of the windshield. I think the new windshield gasket isn’t as thick as the old one, so I’ll have to fill in the space with some weatherstrip. I also made this gauge pod for my custom tach and boost gauges, which will bolt around the steering column. Mustangs of that era had a similar ‘Rally Pac’ pod, but they don’t look as good, and start around $200. Mine cost about $15 worth of PVC and some vinyl dye.

Some more pics of the dash, with the heater core back in place. I also replaced my modified brake pedal assembly. The booster is from a Suzuki Sidekick, and the master cylinder is from a Samurai. Yes, they all work together perfectly, I know exactly what I’m doing, and sweated over pages of math to get ALL the numbers right where I wanted them. Good engineering just LOOKS right, and this does. Even some Thunderbird purists might not realize this isn’t factory original.

So my roommate was out of town for a while, and since my kerosene heater works, I went nuts on the Space Cruiser in my now warmer garage. I rewired the dash, replaced and enlarged the fuse panel, moved some existing circuits around, added some NASA style insulation to the firewall and transmission tunnel, and replaced the heater box. I also ordered all the transmission parts to rebuild and modify it, so once I clear my work bench of dash board stuff, I can refill it with transmission parts.

Another productive weekend! I restored an old kerosene heater I got from my Grandma, and now it works, just in time for summer. Big Brown Santa (UPS) brought more Space Cruiser parts, so tomorrow I’ll start working on it again. I can no longer use a cold garage as an excuse not to proceed!

I made some mason bee nests out of some bamboo tubes I cut, and some paper straws I got at the dollar store. I’ll hang this up in the yard, and do my neighborhood a favor. How? Google mason bees, I did!

My roommate’s been out of town for two weeks, and it’s been wonderful! It’s hard to explain how exhausting it is to live with an extrovert when you are (somewhat) introverted. The day after she left, all my creativity returned, so here’s what I’ve been up to. I finished the front room door, repainted my front closet door, and glued an old world map over it, hence the ‘map’ room. I also repainted the faux pillars in the hall to match more of a stony, Mediterranean look, and added an awning over my bedroom door. I just have the hall closet and cabinet doors to finish, and the hall will be complete!

Wolfman

   I think there’s a whole cottage industry built around selling herbal tea to coffee drinkers for their tea drinking friends, making cute little boxes with pretty floral prints and snuggly cartoon animals, thought provoking ingredients, and musings about the purported health benefits of steeping the box’s contents. We should be thankful that they are so thoughtful. It it thoughtful? It isn’t thoughtless, they gave it some thought. Thoughtsome, perhaps? At any rate, there is one glaring, massive problem with herbal tea. There’s no tea in it. Tea is a plant. You take the leaves and steep them to make the drink. If it doesn’t have tea in it, it’s BROTH. As I’ve joked many times, imagine I try to make you a cup of coffee using garbanzo beans. After your angry confused spit-take, I tell you, “It’s herbal coffee, I thought you’d like it!” You can’t make coffee without coffee, and you can’t make tea without tea. You just can’t stuff any old yard debris in a bag and treat it as an equal. Orange peels, licorice, Chamomile, Pennyroyal, et al. have their places, but I argue that they can never be tea. Asking your tea drinking friend what they like could go a long way to repaying the courtesy, and leveling the playing field.

Now that I’ve been cleaning up the front room, I decided to add yet another project to my list, refinish the door! I need to wait for the weather to improve so I can take the door outside, but I’ll cut a giant hole in it, glue these window frames in it, then repaint it. I just stenciled the window, and propped everything up to get an idea of what it might look like. I already changed the door knob to an antique one, and covered over the hole with thin plywood. I filled in the knob holes in my other two doors, but got lazy this time and just covered it. I think it should look fine after I paint it. It might even look better than the other two!

Yes folks, K-marts’ condom isle is having a ‘blowout’ sale!

  Art is incredibly subjective, good art, bad art, or even if it qualifies as art to begin with. And with many different outlets for artistic expression, even what we eat, there’s no shortage of opinions on the matter, to the point where most people are tired of hearing the opinions of others. The standards are different for everyone. So in the spirit of possibly trolling, here’s my take. Anything can be art. It doesn’t have to be beautiful, it just has to make the beholder think, and being that we’re all wired differently, ten people can look at the same art and have ten different thoughts. Picasso’s work is famous for this. He’d draw faces that included both the front and side profile at the same time. People more sensitive to face recognition would look at his paintings and have that part of their brain overloaded, and be tripped out, others not so sensitive to faces would say, “I don’t get it”. You don’t have to like it, ‘get’ it, or understand it, but it’s art. Someone, somewhere, may ‘get’ it. But you can judge it, everyone reserves right to judge any art, as it should be. I judge it simply; if it makes me think, I like it. If I can do it, I’m not impressed by it. If I can do better, I don’t like it.

Wolfman

Wolfman