Strolling Amok

Valuable Crap!

Charity shops don’t know what to do with weird stuff like this, so to eBay it goes.

Now is the agony of selling off obsolete junk that, to the right people, is too valuable for me to donate or discard. From the start, I have a month to do it. So, it’s eBay time. The stuff falls into two categories: 1/10th-scale radio controlled race cars and film cameras.

RC cars, as they are called, were once popular as a hobby. The cost of the equipment and race day fees got out of hand however, and it turned into a fad lasting two decades. It’s the typical story of having to become a wealthy equipment geek to win, and many couldn’t simply enjoy the drive. People still race RC cars today both on and off-road, but despite equipment prices having dropped, the numbers are way down and it’s a tiny niche compared to what it was at its peak. I’d guess that three quarters of the race tracks have folded, too. It was a lot of fun for me to go racing, but many of the remaining off-road tracks have morphed into overdeveloped venues with gonzo jumps that older equipment was never designed for. It was about racing then, and now it’s about seeing how high your vehicle can jump without breaking. The cars have also gotten bigger, evolving into caricatures of vehicles that once were close to scale. Since all my stuff is obsolete and mostly uncompetitive now, I figured they were a discard. Not so. For some reason, vintage RC cars are going for Read more…

Oh, That’s Just Wrong!

This is what you can find in commercial campgrounds in July.

I guess I’m officially an old curmudgeon now. Out for my morning walk, I passed a park sign that announced a “Christmas in July” celebration today, complete with an alleged turkey dinner (bring your own sides). That’s the thing with campgrounds that bill themselves as resorts. They have to offer amenities and manufacture social events to justify the cost of staying there. Some folks just love this kind of stuff as a way to have fun, meet new friends and socialize. For me, it’s offputting to even think about trying to enjoy being in a roomful of complete strangers and sitting down to eat at a bench and table. I prefer meeting people one-on-one, like the couple who were in back of my site that were full-timers. Very nice folks. They recently left for a month to head for Wisconsin to see the kids and grandkids, and will return after that. Anyway. walking on, I saw the above holiday tragedy of Read more…

A New Record!

Stax-O-Wax no more.

The transfer of records to digital is done: there were more than 290 LP albums, many of them double platters. Then there were 125 45 RPM records, and over 300 78 RPM records. Thats more than 715 albums, folks. If I’d known that before I’d started, I might have chickened out. It took awhile. But it’s over, and I’ve moved on to less glamorous and less tedious tasks. I’m still transferring my movie DVDs to hard drives when I get a chance. That’s a story in itself, in that it’ll fill most of two 3TB drives! There are somewhat more compact ways of going digital with movies, but I’m insisting on creating them in a format (.iso) which will allow direct transfer back to DVD, if needed at some point. Things happen to DVDs, and few of them are happy things.

Junker or Jewel?

This 1972-1974 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia was found sinking into the ground at a storage facility.

On my last trip to load up the final carton of LP record albums from my storage unit, I went in search of a car that my son had found and “loved the look” of. The Karmann Ghia was a car I had always been ambivalent about, because in the days of my youth, the best thing to do with a Volkswagen seemed to be to tear off the body and replace it with a lightweight fiberglass Meyers Manx dune buggy shell. Now, in hindsight, I can appreciate this model for what it represented.

This Karmann Ghia is one in spirit only, having been seriously cleaned up and rodded with a Porsche Engine. Still, all the original lines are there.

After World War II, Germany was trying to get back on its economic feet and get some of its bombed out factories going again. Volkswagen was pumping out a few Beetles and had contracted with a couple of coach-building firms to hand-build a convertible version. Volkswagen grew a bit concerned over time, because post-war countries such as the U.S. were beginning to look toward better, more elegant products, automotively speaking. Not everyone mind you, but those who began to prosper again first.

Frankly, postwar automobile design in the U.S. was at an all-time low just at a time when Read more…