Happy Mardi Gras!

It's Mardi Gras, Rex and Zulu are parading down Canal Street, and I'm still not in New Orleans but in this frozen Hell that is Pennsylvania.  At least it snowed enough last night to get my first snow day for the year.  I had this King Cake delivered from Nonna Randazzo's Italian Bakery in New Orleans to share with my class which was scheduled for today.  Since we got a snow day we will have to have the King Cake on Thursday, already into the Lenten Season but I don't care.  I'm not going to let this taste of New Orleans go to waste over some religious observances.

The temps have been brutal lately, yesterday the thermometer on the car read 0 on the way to work.  Human beings are not meant to live in this kind of environment.  I feel bad for my son who is living in Minneapolis where temps below zero seem to be the norm.  The only hope is that we have eleven days left in February and twenty-one days in March before the equinox.  No guarantee that it will be warm after that but we know that Spring is coming.

Rex King of the Mardi Gras

Zulu Maid

Le Beouf Gras

The Obligatory Topless Girl on Bourbon Street

See my Mardi Gras photos on Flickr here, here, and here.

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One Last California Car

In the afternoon of our last day in San Francisco we took a drive out towards the Marin Headlands and on the way there we stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge Vista Point on the northern end of the bridge.  The day was still warm, probably in the low 70s, but there was quite a bit more haze than there had been in the previous days.

Parked in the lot we found a beautiful old Mustang.  It looked like an older restoration but the car was in great shape and certainly attracted a lot of attention from everyone there.  It even had the old black and gold plates on it.  The passenger compartment was full of over-sized teddy bears and Giants paraphernalia, not sure what that was about but it certainly was interesting.

I will definitely miss California for the rest of this winter but I got New Orleans in sight for early March and soon after that it should be motorcycle season again! 

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Only in California

Last Saturday we went to San Francisco for a short break from the Frozen Hell that is the Northeast.  As soon as we landed in SFO we headed towards Millbrae to hit the In-N-Out and after a delicious lunch of a Double-Double and fries Animal Style we had to find an AT&T store because my cell was acting up. The nearest AT&T store was in downtown Burlingame and after taking care of the cell issue we strolled around the downtown area.

Only in California can you still see classics being used as everyday drivers.  We spotted a soft-top split window and an old bus parked on the street.  I also spotted a gold Studebaker Avanti pulling a U-turn in front of us but was not fast enough on the draw to get a shot of it.

If you want to see the rest of my photos from this trip, please, check out my California album on Flickr.

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The Streets of San Francisco

This morning tried to go to Mama's on Washington Square but the line to get in was all the way down the block.  However, spotted a beat-up white MGA parked across the street.  California is full of survivors like this.  I hope someone has this on a restoration project, it would be a shame to lose this beautiful car.  When I get home and have time to process the pics from this trip I will post about the split window, the Studebaker Avanti, and the bus I saw yesterday in Burlingame.

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Monogram MG-TC 1/24 Model

Monogram MG TC model

I saw one of the guys in the MGTD Replica Forum building a vintage 1977 Monogram die-cast and plastic 1/24 model of an MG TC and I thought that since there won't be much riding any time soon it would be nice to spend sometime building one as well.

Locating one wasn't hard.  A search on ebay turned up several examples at around $10.00 so I choose the best sounding one and used the buy it now feature.  The model arrived last Friday and I finally got around to opening the box today.  Surprising as it may be, everything that was supposed to be included was in the box.  That is rather amazing considering this box has probably been rolling around opened for almost 38 years.

It looks like a pretty straight forward build and I'm looking forward to starting it soon.  The pics below are an inventory of the parts.  The wheels are there but Lucifer decided he wanted to play with them and I could not take a picture for fear of having them damaged or lost.

Contents of the box

Interior, top, and engine parts

Lights, rear window, and windshield

Chrome

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Gogoro Scooters

The Tesla of scooters, claiming 0 to 30 in 4.2 seconds and a top speed of almost 60 mph this scooter would be the ticket for urban types.  It is powered by batteries that are supposed to be able to be swapped at refill stations that Gogoro plans to set up in urban centers around the world.  Sounds like a fun scooter but who knows what the initial cost will be.  

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Royal Enfield Bobber

Never been a big fan of bobbers but this is, at least, interesting.

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