Way down in Bowling Green

We drove south from Louisville early, stopping for breakfast at the Waffle House in Brooks, Kentucky, off I-65. Just about the perfect road-trip breakfast with two eggs and grits. Add sliced tomato. Yum. Note inverted ashtray - smoking permitted.

We went on the factory tour at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green. They assemble eighty Corvettes per ten-hour shift at this 1m-square foot plant, a former Chrysler air-conditioning factory. This was a rather grubby establishment which did not project a high-tech image. Seeing behind the scenes rather diminished the lustre.
On to the Corvette Museum where Roy Orbison's Vette, made in St Louis, was waiting.

Home via the backroads in search of vintage tin, past signs for Abe Lincoln's birthplace and the Jim Beam distillery.
Pics by Annette.

Letter from Kentucky

LOUISVILLE. Ky., We had a torrid trip on United Airlines down to Kentucky and a snafu with the shuttle bus on arrival. A complaint at the Brown Hotel elicited two free breakfast coupons which launched the day at J. Graham's Cafe this morning.
We then took a taxi to the Antique Automobile Club of America Kentuckiana Region Swap Meet at the Kentucky Expo Centre. Over 1,000 vendors in several halls. We scored a free copy of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car magazine, in which I had a short story published. I also bought two wrenches for $1 and 50 cents respectively, plus a motoring hardback book at $8. Back to town for a late bar lunch at the Seelbach Hotel, including a visit to the Rathskeller, haunt of Al Capone and F. Scott Fitgerald. We then scored some last minute tickets for Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt at the Brown Theatre. Outstanding. I have often wondered why I am condemned to roam the highways of North America. Now I know.

Pics by RLT.

Oil boom

We've been in the Bakken oil field on a couple of trips. You have the feeling of history in the making as folk rush to get a slice of this North Dakota, Montana, Manitoba, Saskatchewan phenomenon. We scored this old mug for a spendy $4 in an antique store in Valley City, ND. Riding along in the early morning when headed for Williston, ND, you are suddenly aware of these fireballs in the distance where they are flaring off gas from the wells.

Pics by RLT and Annette.

Eureka patina

Lots of old stuff has turned up lately. The auction preview where we spotted the vintage tractor was followed two weeks later, on Rogers Road, by a sale of old machine tools, NOS parts, oil cans, old signs and assorted junk. I managed to grab a picture of this old Eureka Radiator Cores sign, "since 1915," before it was knocked down to a collector and wrenched off the wall.

Pic by RLT.

Flathead tractor curiosity

We went to an auction preview on Rogers Road in Toronto where they were selling off the remains of an old garage. This tractor with 21-stud Flathead Ford V8 caught my eye. What could it possibly be? Maybe an old Funk conversion? The Massey Harris tank further muddied the water:

It has been a while since somebody sat here for work:

I hope it goes to a good home.
Pics by RLT.

Lakeshore loses lodges, gains cranes and condos

The changing face of Hogtown is nowhere more apparent than with the loss of the Lakeshore motel strip. We took these pictures before the motels are all gone.

Pics by Annette and RLT.

Raleigh wrenches remain nameless

These two Raleigh wrenches or spanners, similar but not the same, were made in quantity to fit the old Raleigh steel bicycles of our youth. Doubtless thousands of them have been discarded by folk puzzled by their function and having no further use for the strange sizes (in a metric world gone mad). Typically they have no branding to link them to Raleigh from an era lacking in marketing savvy.

Today they are a delightful reminder of when Nottingham boasted the biggest bicycle factory in the world and a Sturmey-Archer four-speed took this schoolboy to school.

Pic by RLT.