Thinking About Cars: Honda Civic

The Honda Civic has been around as a discrete model for 38 years.  Nothing else except the Porsche 911, which has had a longer production run, comes close.

You could argue that the Toyota Corolla is in fact older, and as a nameplate it is, but it has undergone larger changes in its basic architecture (formerly a rear driver, for instance) than the Civic ever did.  From one end of its existence to the other, the Honda's evolution has been almost linear, contrasted to the Corolla's watershed transition to front drive.

At its introduction, the Civic was a small car with a small engine driving small front wheels.  It got good mileage.  The engine ran in the opposite direction from almost every other engine on the road.  It was simple and reliable.  I had one.  It weighed 1700lbs with me in it.  I could park it anywhere, it was so small only a motorcycle had more parking choices than I did.

 This is a nicely enhanced 1978 model, probably lots of new 

goodies under the hood.  But the body looked just 

like this.  Image from Honda Tuning Magazine

A few years down the road and the Civic was a tiny bit larger.  To cope with larger Americans in its developing market, it got a somewhat larger engine.  Honda got a handle on the dreadful rusting issues that plagued their little cars.

A few more years down the road and the Civic was updated with angular styling that still evoked the original slightly frowny expression of the predecessors.  Mileage stayed fantastic.  Now the Civic could be had in a decidely sporty flavor, the CRX Si which, with over 90bhp on tap and a feathery 2000lb curb weight, actually lived up to its promise.  In the emissions-strangled 80s when the big 5.0 Mustang delivered all of 210hp and the Camaro's "big" engine was a peculiar anemic 305 from the GM stables, the "Crixie" Civic was economical, an absolute blast to drive both in straight lines and through corners (unlike the Camaro), and even easy to insure.  Roads all over America were riddled with them.

An excellent image from Car and Driver, 1985 CRX Si

Then in the 90s Honda noticed that curves were all the rage.  Not on the roads, on the cars.  What Ford had begun with the Taurus and carried to an outlandish expression with the suppository-shaped third generation of that model, Honda and most other makers picked up on.  The Civic became something of an egg.

Starting about 1996 but achieving full fruition in the current generation in '06, the Civic is a sleek one-box design.  It doesn't even feel right to call it a one-box design, because boxes have corners.  The Civic has none.  It is an ovoid of aerodynamic idealism, carried out with grudging compromises for the realities of wheels and doors and oh yes, human occupants.

A 2012 Civic

The aerodynamic advances, in conjunction with serious engine advances, transmission advances and lord knows what else, are why the new Civic, weighing about 1000lbs more than the old CRX Si and packing about twice the horsepower, still gets better fuel mileage.  It can even be had as a hybrid, which calls into serious question whether you would ever want the Insight, Honda's purpose-built hybrid model.  Unlike the Toyota Prius, the Insight is small and dreadful, an ill-wrought response to what was a seriously well-executed initial effort from Toyota.  The hybrid Civic is, on the other hand, a Civic that in city driving especially sips like a teetotaller, an already thrifty and very useful car made even thriftier while giving up almost none of its original utility.  It's a better choice than the current Insight.

I had a 1978 Civic, with the rare Hondamatic "semi-automatic" transmission.  It didn't shift itself, but it didn't have a clutch pedal, either.  1st took you to about 50mph, and 2nd took your everywhere else.  You could skip first if you wanted.  It was so compact it was ridiculously easy to park.  All four corners were clearly visible from the driver's seat, so planting it anywhere there was room was almost as easy as walking.  Shoot, as compact economy cars went it was even quick, the torque converter allowing the engine to leap up to its torque peak and hold there as the car gathered speed with impressive rapidity.

Like your first girlfriend, your first night away from home and your first day in a college classroom, there are things you remember, and that old Civic was my first car.  I would give rather a lot to have it back.  It was a very good little car, and I wish new cars were as simple and unabashedly fun as it was.

Why Rick Perry Can't Be President

He looks like Ted McGinley, for one.  We can't have POTUS jump the shark, can we?

Texas Governor Rick Perry

Ted McGinley, seen here not cursing any show at all

Ted McGinley is the actor who, through no fault of his own, is somehow associated with TV shows that tank.  He's a perfectly nice guy, easy to look at, typical leading man rugged charm.  But when he's featured on a show, it's like some distant death knell sounds somewhere.  I was so unhappy to see him on Sports Night.

The other reason, the big reason, is Rick Perry's faith.  He's too Christian.

That's right, too faithful.  Too devoted to his own spiritual path, too Christian.  It pains me to say it, being Christian myself.  But Perry's big prayer rally was, in my opinion, a big coffin nail in his not-a-campaign to run for President.  There are things you might do as a private citizen that you just don't do as a politician.

To hold a big prayer rally is a good thing.  Make no mistake on that.  But to hold it as governor of a state (or quasi-country, from their point of view) is another thing entirely.  It smacks of endorsement.  As governor, you shouldn't do that.

As President, you shouldn't do that.


This nation is largely Christian, yes.  This nation was founded by Christian immigrants who were seeking a freer place in which to practice their own brand of faith, yes.  But it was also founded by companies looking to make a buck.  And the framers of our own government proclaimed freedom of faith - not just Christian faith, but any faith up to and including no faith.  Perry's presidency, should it happen (God forbid), would undermine and dilute all of that.  He can't set aside his own spiritual path long enough to admit the legitimacy of anyone else's.

See, the scary thing here is that Perry has decided on many things that many people are still debating.  He's decided and no argument, evidence, or debate to the contrary is likely to dissuade him, ever.  So those gray areas that make politics such a pain in the butt for the rest of us simply don't exist for him.  He's got a certainty, and now all he has to do is find a way to make reality match his convictions.  Abortion?  That's just wrong.  Every time.  Gotta get rid of that.  Gay marriage?  Can't have that, the queers will start breeding.  State's rights?  Totally for them...until he's not.  Hmm.  Bit of waffling there.  Maybe as a presidential hopeful he's less concerned about state's rights.

I'm not the only one thinking along these lines.  A President must be fair and balanced, in a very not-Fox-News kind of way.  I don't think Rick Perry can become balanced that way, and that by itself is a deal breaker.

Helpful Household Hints: Water Heaters

It's been a while since you did one of these.

I know.  Real life intrudes.

Today I want to talk about water heaters.

What about them?  It's just a big tank full of hot water.  There's not much you can do with it, right?

Wrong.  There's a few things you can do to improve its performance and extend its life.

Okay.  You convinced me last time about how it's smart money to buy a few tools and do for myself.  So lay it on me.

First of all, your water heater uses either gas or electricity to heat the water.  If you have a gas water heater, be ready for it to die.  In my opinion, gas water heaters don't last as long as electrics.

Why is that?

Corrosive combustion products condensing inside the flue tend to attack the metal and cause it to wear out sooner.  That, on top of all the usual points failure in a water heater means a gas water heater generally goes toes-up at a somewhat younger age than an electric one.  But the difference is generally not noticeable, and the fuel savings of gas over electric is huge, so it's a wash in the long run.

Okay.  Let's say my water heater just died and I want to replace it.  What now?

First, turn off the water and turn off and disconnect the power or gas, and drain it.  Open a hot water faucet nearby, connect a hose to the drain valve at the bottom of the tank, and drain it by opening the valve.  If you have a window or doorway nearby you can just run the hose outdoors; if not you can take it to a nearby sink or toilet, but if the hose has to go uphill at any point, you'll probably find yourself carrying buckets of water.  Be ready for that.

If your water heater has a couple of shutoff valves in its water supply pipes, when you remove the supplies from the tank you can keep those valves shut, but keep the rest of the house's water on.  That means it isn't quite the emergency to get the job done quickly.

You still  want to get it done quickly, because you're going to want a shower at the end of the day, but at least your toilet and sinks will be working.

Once the tank is empty, you can remove any restraints it might have that keep it from toppling over (required by code in some places), and get it out of the house.  Most trash services won't take something that big, so you'll have to get it to the dump on your own or call a junk removal service.  But it's out of the house and that's the important bit.

Why does it say "fragile" on the box of the new water heater?  It's a big steel tank, looks pretty solid.

The tank is lined with glass.  That's slightly oversimplified but essentially correct.  Water attacks metal, but glass is effectively inert in the presence of water.  So the entire inside of the tank is lined with enamel or some other vitreous coating, just like a good cast iron bathtub.  Bounce it around or drop it, however, and the lining can crack.  That means water can get to the steel, eat it away and there you are after just a few months with a leaky tank, and doing this again.  So handle the entire tank as if it were all made of glass.

So you and a helper wrestle the new tank into place, reattach the water and power and/or gas, and there you are.  Let the water in gently.  Open that hot water faucet again to give the air inside the tank someplace to escape from.  Check for leaks as it fills, and as the tank finishes filling and takes on pressure, check for leaks again, looking everywhere you reconnected pipes.

All done?  Is that faucet done gurgling and spitting air?  Good, job's finished.  Turn the power back on, wait an hour and take a shower, you've earned it.

You said something about making it last longer, too.  I tried to save a few bucks by getting the shorter-warranty model, what can I do to keep it in good shape?


Like anything else, a water heater fares best if it gets a little maintenance once in a while.  Remember the drain valve on your old one?  Did you notice what kind of water came out at first while it was draining?  Pretty gritty, gunky looking stuff, I'll bet.

Every six months, hook up a hose to the water heater and drain off that sediment that's collected at the bottom of the tank.  Just let the water run until it comes out clear.  I've seen many pounds of grit and crud come out of the bottom of a water heater and the owner later told me it was as if I'd installed a new tank, twice as large as the old one.  But all I'd done was rinse out the sediment.  Results not typical, but you get the idea.  If space inside your water heater is taken up with something besides water, then obviously you're not getting the full benefit of the device.  Get that crud out of there and it'll be able to do more for you.

Check the thermostat setting.  I don't know what the factory setting is on your water heater but the last one I saw was defaulted at 140 degrees.  That's pretty hot, hot enough to do some damage.  If you don't need water that hot, turn it down to, say, 130.  I don't recommend much lower than that because you want to be sure it's hot enough to kill bad microorganisms like Legionnaire's disease.  130 will do it, 120 might not.

Double check the thermostat by running hot water over a candy thermometer.  Try to get it to within two degrees of the desired setting at the faucet.  If that means turning up the thermostat at the tank, so be it.

Insulate your hot water pipes everywhere you can.  If they're under the house in an unconditioned space, you give up an awful lot of heat to the winter air when it's cold out.  If they're running through the conditioned spaces inside your house, you're dumping a lot of heat inside your home, which your air conditioning then has to run extra to remove again, all summer long.  Either way, insulate your hot water pipes.  More insulation if you're already wrapped isn't a bad thing, either.

If it's electric and for some reason the heating elements go out, you can replace them.  Turn off water, turn off power, and drain like you're going to replace the whole thing, fit that big wrench onto the element in the side of the tank, wrench it out and wrench in the new one.  Apply a little plumber's grease to the threads or some teflon tape to make installing the new one easier.  Reconnect everything, check for leaks as it fills.

But mine's gas.

No sweat.  Check your burners from time to time.  Clean out the air intakes to be sure there's nothing interfering with proper airflow.  Check the flue, too - no leaves or bird nests (that's unlikely) clogging the output.  That could be deadly dangerous, the flue gases will kill you if they can't get out of the house.  Notice, I didn't say "might," I said "will."  Carbon monoxide is a primary component of flue gases and it has no odor or flavor, and you can't see it.  Worse still, it binds with hemoglobin preferentially, so the red blood cells in your blood tend to hook up with CO more readily than oxygen, and don't willingly give it up.  You can build up to a bad dose over a period of time, get to fresh air for a while, and come back into it and start back on building up a lethal dose, almost from where you left off.  It takes hours to flush CO from your system.

Anything else?


Just one more item, and this is difficult: if you can, replace the anode rod inside the tank every three years.  The anode rod is a sacrificial piece of metal inside the tank that corrodes before anything else does.  It's what keeps the tank from being attacked by water; as long as the anode rod is still there, your tank will probably last forever.  Replace the anode rod on a periodic basis, and you may never need to replace your water heater again.

This requires turning off the water and gas or electric again.  You probably won't need to remove the tank from its resting place.  You'll have to latch onto the rod on top of the tank, so you'll probably have to remove the water supplies so you can get the top of the tank jacket off, unless they've been convenient and made it possible to get to the rod without removing the top of the jacket.  Hook up a big wrench and about as big an extension handle to the wrench as you can find, and spin the rod off.  Lefty-loosy, remember.  Replace with a new one and enjoy a new lease on water heater life.

You may have to shop around for a new anode rod.  Lots of places don't carry them, since they simply accept that "water heaters wear out, there's nothing you can do."  Bosh and tish, says I.

When you go to install a new anode rod, give those pipe threads a gentle daub of plumber's grease.  A little goes a long way, and it also means that next time you go to do this, you might not need the extension handle.  It's worth the trouble.

Reconnect everything, check for leaks like before.  Job's done.  Sit back and relax and enjoy a new lease on water heater life, and the satisfaction of making a device that's expected to last only a few years, way more years than anyone ever expected.

Clouded Thoughts

Steve Jobs has talked about keeping a lot of your next computer's software and storage "in the cloud."  Amazon offers five gigabytes of free "cloud drive" storage.  Five gigs isn't a lot compared to some things, but it's a thousand songs, too.  Approximately the equivalent of 80 CDs, that's not chicken feed if you compress them to MP3 format.  Looked at another way, it's only 20 minutes of video, or just enough time to save a brief recording of chicken feeding.

Dig a little deeper into Amazon's "cloud drive" offerings and you find 1000 gigabytes - 1 terabyte (one million kilobytes for you old farts that remember when the standard 64k of memory was where "real" computers set themselves apart from the kiddie units) - costs $1000 per year.

You read that right.  One terabyte of storage, one kilodollar, one year.  What happens to your data if you don't pay up?  In an admittedly brief search, no word on what happens, but at a guess I'd say you can't access it.  Instead, you get a sternly-worded message saying your data is held hostage until you pony up.

Elsewhere on Amazon you can find a one terabyte hard drive, $80.  Instead of $83 per month, that's $80 one time and you own it.  No sternly worded messages at all.  I'm not seeing a lot of advantage here, but let's explore that a bit.

What's the single largest advantage?  Portability.  Anywhere there's a computer with a working web browser, you have access to your storage.  Log in and there it is, boom.  When you're done with whatever you're working on, save it, boom again.  Get back to the house or office and there it is, all the changes saved just like you left them.

You can achieve similar results with a USB drive.  You can't carry as much information on your person, USB drives only go up to about 32G, but really unless you're editing video on the run you don't need that much storage.  There's the obvious risk of losing the USB drive, but there's the risk of losing your cell phone, too - that doesn't stop anybody from putting their personal information on there, family phone numbers and addresses.  All very risky behavior, from a security standpoint.  But they do it.  I daresay a USB drive is even a little more secure, since it rides down in a pocket, not on a belt carrier.  Less likely to get dropped.  And mine is on my key ring.  In order to drop and lose it, I'd have to not hear it, and that's really unlikely.  I don't leave it behind when I go somewhere, since I can't leave without my car keys.  It's not a terrible system.  Perfect, of course not.  But how perfect is the "cloud?"

When's the last time you heard of this database or that network, supposedly a very secure one owned and administered by some large company, falling prey to hackers or other infiltrators?  Not that long ago, was it?  Sony, eggheads par excellence, got some serious egghead on their face when their Playstation user network was compromised.  You'd expect that Sony would be up to the task of keeping one of their big cash cows safe and secure, but no.  If they can't do it, how safe is your data at Amazon?

If you answered, "no safer than at home," bingo.  You won the booby prize.  No location is completely safe, no storage is completely impermeable.  It appears the hackers are slightly more imaginative than the security purveyors.  Maybe there's just more of them.  Whatever the case, your data can be found.  The beauty of the external drive sitting on your desk is that you can unhook it, physically separate it from the rest of the world.  That's old-school wireless as in "off the grid," and it is absolutely 100% proof against hackers.  If they want at your data, they have to come to your house and get it.

Sorry.  My half-witted novel drafts just aren't worth the risk.  Do I have a pit bull terrier?  A Taurus Judge? A battered Louisville Slugger?  Any hacker worth his password crackers knows better than to find out the hard way.  So I unplug and relax.  My unassuming home and unassuming town are better security than any software I might load onto the computer.  Can't sneak a peek at a DVD that isn't in the drive, can't dig through files on a hard drive that isn't hooked up to the 'net.  Can't be done.  It might as well not be there.

If a hacker looks through your data stored in Amazon's "Cloud Drive," will you even know?  My security program keeps a sniffer going all the time, it'll probably put up some kind of alarm if it detects something, but would I get such a notice from Amazon?  Hard to say.

Where is this cloud?  The concept delivers software as a service, rather than you owning an issue of the software and using that on your own equipment.  So what your little tablet computer is, is essentially an input/output terminal.  The computing hardware isn't in your computer anymore, but somewhere else.  There are efficiencies to be exploited there, a typical tablet computer simply isn't big enough to carry much computational horsepower, but when all it has to be is a display and keyboard, then that's really all most people want.  I think this is speaking more to what most users really want in a computer: they want to have used the computer.

I found a video by a guy named David S. Platt, and he wrapped up the video with this one great truism.  "People don't want to use your software.  They want to have used your software."  In other words, what people want are results, not processes.  Typical users aren't interested in having a computer, they're interested in having what the computer does.  That's a completely different thing.

In effect, they want a TV that does more than just project shows, they want one that also picks up newspapers, does word processing, spreadsheets and video telephony.  In short, they want all the functions of the computer and don't care two hoots about how it happens.  For these people, cloud computing is perfect.

For the rest of us, who store our thoughts and release them in a measured way, who plan and daydream and philosophize, the cloud is rather too nebulous, diaphanous, insecure.  I'm not ready to release this blog post yet, so I'll retain it until 1:00am tomorrow morning, thankyouverymuch.  No hackers need interfere.  My Great American Novel which I will never finish writing must languish without electronic sneak thieves getting their grubby mitts on it.

I don't mind using the computer.  I enjoy shifting my car by hand, making my own sandwich and knowing exactly which piece of software I'm going to use next.  I don't mind being actively involved in the processes of my day-to-day activities.

I don't want the cloud.

Escapist Moments

Sweetie has a few things she waits for, saves up for, to make a tiny little mini-vacation in her day.  I don't do this as much but I have a few of my own, too.

Car washes.  Sweetie guards her trips to the automatic car washes jealously.  If she can have it, she'll go by herself, and find the ones where the machinery grabs the car and gently pulls it through from one end to the other.

I asked her about this.  "I imagine myself at the beach, as a grain of sand.  I'm looking up at the foaming water, the spray and slosh and the sounds and it's very relaxing."  She expanded too, adding that the last time we went to a beach, she couldn't really relax because every few minutes a young child or other would come running up, demanding she run along behind him to see what he'd found, make him a snack, help him get sand out of his swimsuit.  She'd have to pause to get sand out of her own swimsuit, for that matter.

We all know my solution to that particular problem.

And then of course there's the fact that when you're a parent of young kids at the beach, you really can't relax, not ever.  You look around to spot one kid, he's okay, look around for the other.  Check on him.  Check on the first one.  And so on and on and you can't lay back and imagine being a sand grain on the beach, washed by waves.  You don't dare.  But locked in the car with the machinery pulling you through, for a few minutes nothing can happen.  You can simply set all the burdens down and not think about them for a brief little span.

In the morning, Sweetie likes to get up, turn off the ceiling fan, and come back to bed to watch as it slowly spins down.  I still don't know entirely what that's all about and I'm not certain she could articulate it.  But that's a few minutes of the morning she spends in quiet contemplation, watching the blades come to rest.

I like to draw.  Unfortunately what I draw isn't very artistic and sometimes not that very imaginative.  I tend to draw the same thing over and over.  I draw my dream car, exactly how I would build it if I simply could produce the perfect parts, arrange them in just-so order and not have to learn panel beating to make the body curve this way and that way to match my imagination.  I draw floor plans for houses, again, often the same one.  You'd think I could rip one of those out in no time flat, having drawn a few of them, literally, dozens of times.  But no, every time I start to find myself wandering through the house in my mind.  I'm not sure now if what I'm doing is drawing a floor plan or simply providing a somewhat more concrete framework for a daydream.  Because sometimes when I get out the trusty quad rule paper and ruler and pencil, I sit for many many long minutes before drawing a single line.  Sometimes all I accomplish is a couple of lines, the rest of the time spent thinking and wandering.

Instead of the hurry-up concrete world in which I exist, where deadlines are very real and tangible results are the order of the day, it's nice to have these pauses where there is no agenda, just abstract possibilities.

Thinking About Cars: Junkyards

I have a Volvo 240.  Volvo built these things for about a thousand years and didn't change them much from one end of that span to the other.  Headlights changed a little, interior appointments changed a little.  At some point they stopped using Freon in the AC and started making the factory installed refrigerant R-134a.  Cassette players went away and CD players became the stock option.  But the car?  Same basic engine, same basic architecture for about 20 years.  Why mess with what works?

Why indeed.  I need a taillight lens, an expensive part on a lot of cars and no exception on my Swedish beauty.  $130 new from an online dealer; if I can find that at my favorite junkyard, that's about $120 saved.

I've learned from experience that you can find parts if you're willing to sweat a little for them.  But there's risk involved.  Junkyards are dangerous places where cars are sometimes stacked five high, wasps have built nests right under that beautifully unblemished stereo and so many things are sharp or filthy or heavy and might land on your foot.  But there's another, greater danger to watch out for.

At the junkyard is a whole 'nother world.  No one yells at you if you walk on the cars.  In fact, some of them are so haphazardly stuffed in there, walking on them is the only way to make progress.  But still, you try not to walk right in the middle of a broad, flat hood - someone might need that, no point in oilcanning it so it's no good.  So you step on fenders which are much more rigid due to their shape, and right over the hood latch.

There are amazing things to be found at the junkyard.  There's jacks out of trunks everywhere, including jacks that would fit my truck.  Some are in perfect condition.

There's a bus I recognize, a shorty model from the local city bus service, complete with its handicapped lift.  I recognize this bus.  Why do I recognize it?  Its owner tried to donate it to me.  I listened to it run and was seriously tempted by the absolutely perfect engine...but the dreadful condition of everything else stopped me.  I'm not surprised to see it on the hill at Lambert's Used Auto Parts.

In the front lot is a SAAB 96 sedan.  It's pre-1967 because it has the three-cylinder two-stroke engine under the hood, but it's not the Sport or Monte Carlo model.  No triple carbs.  Too bad.

Too bad in general, really.  It pains me to see such an interesting car parked in front of Lambert's.  It's probably doomed.  I'd love to own it, but I'd love to win the lottery too.  And neither one is going to happen, because I don't buy into them.

At the top of the hill with a little halo of open ground around it is a late-70s Jeep Grand Wagoneer.  It's a little rough but the woodgrain is all there on the sides.  The windows are sound, the seats aren't torn, even all four tires are still inflated.  It looks as if someone with incredibly bad judgment has driven it here and parked it.

One day, shopping for new control buttons for the fog lights and cruise control in my Forester, Son #1 and I found a Subaru Legacy Outback wagon that not only still had the battery in it, but it started right up.  We ran the radio and air conditioning while I harvested its two perfectly functional buttons.  They fit in my Forester like original equipment and unlike most junkyard finds, I didn't break a sweat getting them.  It made me feel good about my Subaru that a junked one fired right up, and it made me feel pretty bad that someone seemed to be trashing a car that had a lot of utility left in it.

At the top of the hill, just barely visible from next to the Wagoneer, is a Volvo 240.  It's one of only two up here, a little surprising when you think about it: Volvo built the 240 for so long, eventually nearly three million rolled off the line.  Some companies change body styles every three years, and here's one that looks remarkably unchanged from one end to the other.  The taillight lenses seem to be exactly the same as mine even though I can tell by the VIN the car is about ten years older...but the lens I need is broken here, too.  Great.  Only two out here?  The other one's a wagon, taillights are different.  I'll check around...

Huh.  Pull-a-Part has one on the yard now.  It wasn't there when I looked two weeks ago...yep, arrived the day after I looked.  Okay, three 240s in junkyards around my home.  That's precious few.

It makes you wonder whether people don't junk them because they're just so easy to fix - which is great for me - or because they simply don't break - which is also great for me.  But it still leaves me on the hook for a taillight lens.  I'll go out there on my lunch break tomorrow.

There's a few models you don't see at the junkyard.  Not at Lambert's, not at Pull-a-Part, not at all as far as I've been able to tell.  You see Jeep Cherokees, you see the not-a-Jeep other models of Jeep like the Liberty and Compass.  But you don't see the Wrangler or the CJ.  There aren't any.  None.

There's a Mustang, just one.  It looks like a late 80s model, very rough.

No Corvettes.

The Wagoneers are an oddity - not one but two on the same day.  One looks great, the other looks like its been abandoned and someone finally decided to drag it out of the woods.

An International Scout II Terra.  That almost makes me want to cry, I want an International Scout.  It's the only International up here.  But this isn't the style I want and I'd rather find a '67, so we'd be the same age.  I daydream about it just a little, and move on.

There are vans of every description, trucks, assorted anonymous cars, everyday cars, the kind of cars owned not by people who love to drive but people who want to already be where they want to be.  Cars owned by people who are interested only in the destination, not the journey.  Many Kias, many Geos and Toyota Camries and other even less noticeable models.  The majority of what's here is the faceless mass of every rush hour you've ever driven in.

  A couple of incredibly old and rudimentary  motorcycles.  Piles of transmissions and transfer cases that make me fantasize about building my own tractor from scratch...and right there is an already bare truck frame I could use to start that project.  And maybe I could wrestle that excellent diesel engine out of that bus, it's still here...

That's the other danger I mentioned.  In spite of the explosive heat, the distant but distinct danger of being squashed by a collapsing stack of wrecks or the much more immediate threat of picking up a wad of yellow jackets, you can get even more lost inside the daydream of what you might build if you had the money, time and materials to just cruise the yard, picking and putting until you've confabulated something entirely new.

The operable Subaru was a real eye opener for me.  It made me wish I owned a company that bought up "junked" cars and restored them to like new condition.  That Grabber Orange Ford Maverick back in the corner?  Save that.  The SAAB on the front apron?  Definitely save that - but maybe swap the engine for something less troublesome than a noisy, smoky two-stroke.  Maybe a two-liter turbo four from a later 900?  And swap in brakes for whoa to match the new go.  A total sleeper, a real junkyard racing dog.

There's a gigantic Cadillac hearse in the back, painted a lurid orange and white.  It is East Tennessee after all, and those are Volunteer colors.  I tried to use a landau bar from the side of the hearse to prop up a trunk lid to see if there were any useful bulbs, but the landau bar was surprisingly floppy and flexible - vinyl trim. If I could, I'd save that and make it into a new game day parade car.  Do I care about football, not a bit - but a snazzy parade car would be fun.  Don't forget, I used to drive a minivan that was covered with mermaids.

Well, the good news is that tomorrow I have an excuse to go to the junkyard.

Why Michele Bachmann Can't Be President: Part II

You'll recall we've taken a trip on this boat.already.  It apparently takes more than one route to get to the same place, however.

On Sunday Bachmann's people released a statement from her, a statement that says, among other things, "It was you that got us into this mess, and it was you who wanted a $2.4 trillion blank check to get you through the election."

Those would be fighting words if they had a larger grain of truth.  If we refer to a little data, we find that while we are indeed underwater with Obama's spending and taxation programs, we discover that we were already well beyond our depth when Bush sank the boat.

Complicating these facts is the Tea Party delegation that seems hellbound and determined to have their way or no way at all.  In a government that is supposed to be by and for the people, they tend to represent a pretty small group; it's one thing to represent your constituents and that's well and good, that's what you should do.  But when you insist on the wingnut platform your wingnut voters backed, in defiance of whatever else the rest of the country might want, well.  That's just being a bully.

If Michele Bachmann becomes President of the United States, we will have four of our worst years ever.  Mark my words.  You think the economy is rocky now, just you wait.  I'd vote for Dick Cheney before I voted for Bachmann, that's how loose a cannon I think she is.  Cheney actually defines loose cannon, accidentally blasting a hunting buddy - but he's way more rational than Bachmann is on her best day.  We can't afford Bachmann.