2/14/07:
Snow-wheelin' season has begun in Ithaca, NY: overnight and today we got like 24 inches! I went out to spin some donuts last night when it started coming down real heavy around midnight but it was a limited experience because cops and plow-trucks were out in force (killjoys). At one point I was ripping up my favorite parking lot and an IPD Cherokee that was cruising by came to a stop and put his spotlight on me. I had to proceed calmly to the exit.
Today was fantastic: the roads were a mess! There weren't a lot of cars out driving, which was a big plus: Ithaca drivers are incompetent enough even when the roads are clear, and I hate having to deal with them in the snow. Check out my "extreme wheeling" pics below, taken on Cornell campus:
I kept trying to get the car articulated up on the snowbanks, but mostly it'd just sink in. The only thing it wouldn't do: get stuck!
Above: extreme wheeling, Ivy League style.
The only casualty today was my passenger-side wiper, which got stuck and came off. Fortunately, it instantly froze to the cowl and rode with us for the remainder of the adventure.
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2/15/07:
My landlord was a little slow to plow the parking lot. No problem! I felt sorry for all my neighbors' non-4wd cars though.
Score! My favorite parking lot for doing donuts in, right next door to a business that shall remain unnamed, didn't get the plow yesterday. Better yet, the snow has piled up in drifts from the wind. Note here that while it's almost up to the tops of the wheels, the Eagle still isn't stuck.
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2/23/07
All our snow is melting, but there are still a few plow-glaciers in some of the parking lots. The Eagle never misses a chance to get even a little bit articulated.
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3/5/07:
This is the time of year when I always begin to feel a bit of despair about the state of my car's interior, specifically the pools of coffee-colored water that gather in the footwells as a result of all the snow and sludge tracked in on people's boots. This train of thought tends to lead to a lot of daydreaming about gutting the whole interior and installing new underpadding and carpet, and while I'm at it I might as well fix the holes in the rockers, hell, why not take the whole car apart and send it to Redistrip so I can start over with bare metal, yeah, then smooth out the door-dings, and do those custom fenders and paint it all a nice shade of... you know what I'm talking about. Since funding constraints remove all of these things from the realm of immediate possibility, I instead had to rely on a more modest interior makeover to lift my spirits.
Great product: Dri-Clean Plus by Blue Coral. It's a foam and it comes with a little scrubbing brush on the nozzle. It'll restore your carpeting to like-new, even if it's a bit shabby and beat like mine. Works fine on large areas. It even took out some axle grease that I'd tracked in from the garage. I also used it to spot-clean my fuzzy dice.
Since nothing ever really evaporates here in the winter, I had to run a space heater and dehumidifier in my Eagle to dry out the carpets. Do not leave unattended!
I've never been a huge fan of clear plastic floormats, but saw some in someone's ride recently that looked pretty trick and decided to copy. I'm still a little ambivalent about how these Rubbermaid ones look, but my carpet sure isn't going to be getting wet anymore.
Also, here's a rare peek at my monstrous speaker box, normally concealed under a theft-deterrent Hawaiian-print sarong.
It's the old smorgasboard-style box: 12" subs, tweeters and mids (one removed after it blew). All speakers are several years old, off-brand, or both (thieves, take note: there's nothing here for you). My system is cheap and loud and to my undiscerning ear it sounds pretty good; it makes my rear-view mirror blurry, and that's the important thing.
We're continuing to lose our snow...
...and today (3/28/07) it feels like June. Glad this whole global-warming thing is beginning to pay off.
I love my bold new CarDomain window clingie. Now I can represent wherever I go.
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4/09/07:
Road-trip season hasn't even really started yet and already the Eagle's going city to city! On April 3 we set out for NYC, where I was
covering the New York International Auto Show for CarDomain April 4-6 (see all my pics from the show on
Page 4). Then I had to haul tail to Boston to give a talk at a conference on April 7. Then to Rochester to pick up the cats, then back to Ithaca. Altogether, 800 new miles on the odometer.
This was some weirdo parking jockey at one of NYC's seedy parking lots, and I thought he was going to stall and bunny-hop my Eagle right into the concrete barrier. Read
my blog on this harrowing experience.
Only in NYC...
Traffic on FDR Way
The Eagle made the entire trip on comfy snow tires. The only problems were occasional hard shifting as a result of an air bubble in the clutch fluid; and a couple of instances of glitchy headlights, most likely due to the switch or the relay going bad. Overall, another safe and easy trip in my 26-year-old battle wagon.
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01/20/08:
Had to make some rainy-weather visibility upgrades since moving to Seattle. Installed lamps and RainX wipers.
From the switch in the dash...
Follow the black and white wires through the firewall...
...and over the shock tower to the power source
The results?
Not bad for $17.99. I'll have to see how well they hold up.
That's all for now! Check back soon for more adventures.
In the meantime, check out my PROJECT CAR here.
And visit me on
myspace.
