14 aug 2022
Work in progress. Don't get stuck in a rut.
Roads and paths and trails are an ancient thing, a vertebrate thing. As a kid finding old worn paths in the woods was a deep pleasure. I remember following faint narrow trails and being puzzled when they disappeared into a briar patch.
Roads are great.
Yeah yeah city and suburban asphalt and traffic sucks, but those are roads perverted, corrupted by excess and corporatism. Slow down and travel a real road. They really do exist and humans make them, often along/on top of paths and trails, and for those roads in areas where the earth itself is relatively unmolested, a road can be a fine thing. Even animals can have benign relationships with human paved or improved roads, and the 'improved' has a quaint and specific meaning in road work.
Roads imaged from satellite photos are interesting to look at in an obvious way, but the perspective is useful for sometimes seeing what you can't when you are actually "on" the road.
2022, Simon and I drive the remaining length of the old Ridge Route. The Ridge Route as a road for automobiles was pretty terrible -- and a reminder that as a culture, we humans are just winging it, figuring it out as we go. Or not.
Pandemic road trip to Santa Fe, May 2020
Arizona, 2018, Chuck and Tina's drive to Grand Canyon Caverns
I've driven in a number of SoCal TT sports car events, and lately done most of the mapping and routing and cue sheet/route sheet production.
I arranged the 2019 Fool's Errand TT tour/drive in June 2019 when another customary event didn't happen.
Mount Baldy, Jan 2019, an improptu new year's day drive with HAMBers
the California Melee OMFGihadsomuchfun in 2018 damn right i'm going again if they'll have me. all that remains is this disorganized pile of photos. it's a three-day event, plus for me a day up and a day back.
LeMons Rally, not the
track races (those are fun too). I drove the 24 Hours of LeMons Hell on Wheels
Rally 2016 with David and Jim Forbes in their Edsel. here's a video ("Still
life with Edsel") of the entire four day drive reduced to one hour. starting
in Monterey, over the Sierras, to Fallon, Ely, Las Vegas, Death Valley,
Bakersfield, Central Valley, Santa Cruz, back to Monterey for "Car Weak". four
days, some 1200 miles.
same as below, on
youtube.
24 Hours of LeMons, the race: In May 2008 four of us raced our '93 Escort LX at Altamont. we had a blast.
My old travelogue, began in the 1990's as a Gopher site, then World Wide Web. Photos then were a big deal; originally my site was hosted on a home machine (a 386DX CPU running 386BSD, with a 2400 bits/sec modem connection to the internet, dialed in 24/7. Yup really. It is now tiny and insignificant-seeming but it was some effort in 1995. Those tiny photos, thumbnail sized now, took most of a minute to load.
Los Alamos CA (not NM), apr 2019, a "drive and tune" (carburetor) and scouting trip
Highway 39, sep 2018, to Falling Springs, up towards Angeles Crest Highway
the results of a desert dance party, aug 2018 that didn't work out as planned but ended up something interesting anyway.
southwest road trip, Jun 2017, long trip through AZ and NM
a research trip to Essex Army Airfield, December 2009 in the '63 Rambler Classic wagon.
Independence, CA camping trip, July 2005
Santa Fe, 2000, for Erika Wanenmacher's TERRIBLE BEAUTY show opening. drive photos only, the event photos are elsewhere.
Scans of a 1898 Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce brochure, complete with racist endorsements for exploiting locals for cheap labor. Interesting maps though. What's now Pasadena is "forestry area"; take the red line out to chop down your own xmas tree!
A to P Gypsy Trip