So spending this last day of the year on mundane news. The new kitty that adopted us a number of months ago had gotten into some kind of altercation a bit before Thanksgiving. Her injury became ugly just before I left for my Whistler trip, so there was a bit of last second rushing as we wrangled her into a box and I dropped her off at the vet barely an hour before I left for the airport. It turns out the injury was a bit more serious and she required some surgery, but she’s now been back home for a few weeks and doing fine. She has this funny pom-pom tail from having her butt shaved. She’s up to her lizard (& one dove) hunting. And just recently looks like now using the litter box I bought when I brought her home. I’m glad for that. I’ll be atempting the next task of giving her a worm (or rather de-worm) pill in a few weeks. Vet gave her one a week ago when I stopped by after seeing an oogie wormy thing on her butt. Ah the wonders of pet ownership. Continue reading ‘Closing out the year’
Monthly Archive for December, 2010
After hearing mention of this, happened to be going past the second location of the Japanese Market Nijiya (a California francise, I believe) and saw that it was open, and I needed stuff for NewYears. It’s in that small collection of stores at the corner of Piikoi and Kona, where Blockbuster used to be. It’s a fair amount more condensed than the University location, and a large portion I thought was wasted on a eating/lounge area. Anyway, it a pretty convenient location and parking is free and easy, although their dedicated lot is not huge and can get congested when there is some lady in a Mercedes waiting to pick up friend blocking three people trying to get out of stalls and leave. You can always park in Ala Moana in the Sears corner and its a short walk over. I didn’t think they were so successful to warrant a second location, but we shall see! Oh, and a good amount of interesting JDM goodness to see.
Man, I just saw some old dude on a moped with a Chang Beer T-shirt! Where’d he get that? I want one!
(0)
Ah yes, good ol plywood on floor of drivers, and tongue and groove planking on passenger floor. You know it, there’s rust. Pulled the stuff out and pulled the carpet, fuzzy stuff, and that asphaltish sheet stuff off the floors. Oh yeah, Flintstone grade rot going here! Driver side is marginally better than passenger, but thats not saying much. Passenger side rot starts to extend into rear floor area also. Fab brought up good point of if I plan to use different seats, if so then don’t need to worry about the original seat cross bar.
Not worrying about rebuilding this as it was floating on rot would be a good thing. Anyway, the good news is I got in touch with a guy on the East coast fabricating 510 floors so hopefully this should be a somewhat less daunting task, something within our capabilities, to fix.
Also found someone else fabricating rocker panels. There is hope!
So it’s done, I’m now the proud owner of a brand old Datsun 510. I have yet to get it home, but check out this old school government form.
The hunger…
The Ba-Le sandwich I had for lunch wasn’t enough to carry me through to tonight’s late dinner, so I grabbed a snack when I got into McBike. I didn’t want to eat something big and spoil my appetite, so this smaller bar looked like the ticket. At about half the physical size and caloric count as most standard energy bars, this snack-sized bar had the added benefit of being made from recognizable whole grains and fruits – more like a Clif Bar rather than the weird extruded robot food I’ve come to expect inside a PowerBar wrapper. The flavor was mild and easy to take, sort-of like a lower-sugar version of the more common mass-marketed cereal/whole grain bars. The packaging was easy to open, and the bar was gone in about four bites. These would probably be pretty good as ride food, since I have the tendency to eat only half of a standard bar per break. On the negative side though, you’d be generating more trash to keep track of, and the dollar value is a bit lack – it’s about half of a standard bar in content, but not at half the price! That’s the price of convenience and healthy content. Continue reading ‘PowerBar Pure & Simple Cranberry Oatmeal Cookie Energy Bar’
Dammit, they tricked me! Last time I was at Ninja Market (Nijiya Market) I was happy to see they brought in the grape flavor Qoo drink, it was one of my favorites when i was in Japan. The flavor brought back memories of when I was a small kid living in Japan and popping these tiny little purple grapes during summer. So I bought a bottle and was savoring having it and just busted it out this Friday evening. Took a sip. WTH? This doesn’t taste right?! I look at the translated nutrition label, ack, sucralose! Now I notice the katakana 1/2 calorie thing on the label, curses!
Almost everyday on my drive from or to home, I’d look for it. In the garage down the street a few blocks down, the original baby blue, original hub capped, original owner, Datsun 510 Bluebird. This particular one harkens back from 1969, only a couple years younger than me! I laugh when the kids nowadays call my ’85 Corolla old school, now THIS is true Nippon old school. I had always toyed with the idea of stopping by and talking to the old guy about it and if he’d thought of selling it, but I know he’s been pestered by other people already. He does take it to the 76 station right around the corner for servicing, and I’ve talked to the head man there about it. I take my vehicles for safety check there. I’d noticed it has been at the station for the past weeks, longer than usual. And then this past Saturday when I saw it out front with for sale signs on it, I had to pull a quick U-ey to make sure. Oh man, he’s finally parting with it!
This is a cool car. It was often called the poor man’s BMW, comparing it to the BMW 2002. A similar size, shape and also having independant rear suspension, something you didn’t see on many cars of that vintage. Heck, my racer boy 1985 Corolla doesn’t have that. The 510 was actually quite successful in the autosport arena, and still is. Just a few years back there was a race prepped Datsun 510 at the SCCA auto-crosses that posted blazing times. Continue reading ‘Old School’
The last dirt ride of 2010!
Sunday, 05 December 2010
The weather on Sunday was too nice to not ride, so the few of us that were able to ride met out at the Ditch for a little exploration. I saw some new tracks when we were out there several weeks ago during the muddy weekend, so this was a good opportunity to do some exploring. For a while, I had been thinking that it would be nice to cut a gentle new fully-rideable switchback trail from the Ditch up to the plateau so we didn’t have to bust our nuts going up the cardiac climb. When I saw the lines in the rain, I figured someone had beat me to the punch. Continue reading ‘Meander’