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Topic: Your today in pictures..
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Graham Ritchie
Film God
Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted August 24, 2018 03:42 PM
Our here some of those cars are now fetching good money in particular the old VW Kombi Camper. ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
Its funny how cars that I once worked on during the 60s and 70s are now considered classics, back then it was just another car. I was at the mall just lately, when I parked my car, got out and locked it, next to a car which had the bonnet/hood up. The owner asked me if I could give him a jump start he had the leads, which I did. When I disconnected the leads, I looked at the engine, stood back and said to him, this is a Datsun 260c, and that I have not seen one in around 40 years ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
I had a look at it, the car looked good with no rust etc. I said to him, that I once worked for Datsun agents as a mechanic in the past and told him to look after it, as these days it would be considered a classic and worth a bit of money, much more than an old bomb to go to the mall ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
All that from a quick visit to get a cup of coffee ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Going through my junk, I came across this little tin I have had since the late 60s. This is the stuff my old boss smoked, but in it are the range of shims needed to get he right valve clearance when working on cylinder heads. The last time any of those were used, would be around the 1972 mark ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) when I worked on a Jaguar XJ6 4.2 litre twin cam cylinder head. They are also used on Hillman Imp OHC engines.
Its amazing the stuff you accumulate over a lifetime as a mechanic either on cars or on aircraft, but never to be used again ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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Graham Ritchie
Film God
Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted August 26, 2018 01:32 PM
Brian
Glad you hear all is ok, it also shows the importance of having smoke detectors in the house. There has been many tragic cases of loss of life in the past without them.
Janice
I only came across the 240z in Scotland, when I came to NZ I did work for a Datsun agent, however never had much to do with the 240z mostly they imported the other Datsun models, I worked there until I moved to AVIS in late 1975, there it was all British or Australian cars.
I did a check on google and it does appear the production run for the 260z only lasted a couple of years. Compared to the 240z the 260z performance was reduced to meet the US emissions regulations that came into effect at the time. If I have read it right, the 260z was replaced by the 280z around 1975, and to boost its performance, a Bosch designed electronic fuel injection was added.
For me "Datsun" fell of my radar as I moved to Aviation from AVIS around the 1976 mark. In saying that, it would be great to once again have a drive of the 240z that's if I could handle its impressive performance.
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted September 04, 2018 03:17 PM
Local Adventure! (One item OFF the bucket list!)
Well, after many years we finally pulled of a local canoe camping trip last week. The deed itself is no big deal: simply paddle to a campsite with a bunch of camping gear and set up house overnight. It’s done this way all over the world: people often travel for days on end this way. It’s just a smidge of pioneer living you can enjoy and then put away until next time. It’s commonly done in upstate New York, Maine and Minnesota and throughout Canada, it’s done in Europe and Australia too, it’s just not often (or ever) done here.
Long Island is a place with a lot of variety: the West End is Brooklyn and Queens and very much part of the City of New York, along with subways to Manhattan and bridges and tunnels to the Mainland, high-rises, sports stadiums and city parks. 120 miles away the East End is the Hamptons and farms and vineyards and boating, fishing and beaches. In between you have almost eight million people doing anything and everything you can imagine in modern American life, whether for better or worse.
-just not canoe camping.
I grew up camping. My parents started taking us when I was 5 years old. Most of the time, we are what are called “RVers”. We have a folding camper and a couple of times a year we go to a campground somewhere and relax around the campfire for an evening. We belonged to a camping club for decades and some of my best friends and best memories came from those weekends away. Today when we camp it helps me celebrate those days and my parents too.
This is low level adventure: there is running water and electric power if you want it. Many commercial campgrounds these days have cable TV hookups and WiFi! There are sometimes swimming pools. This is just fine for the typical family adventure, especially when there are small kids involved or when you want to do it for more than a few days, yet is it possible to take it further.
The next level is up there with back packing and canoe camping: basically living with what you can bring under your own power. There must be less stuff and it must be compact and lightweight.
I’ve been doing what can be called canoeing with camping: a car towing a camper, with canoe(s) on the roof rack. I camp near a lake, carry the boat down to the water and paddle around for a while, yet still sleep on a mattress not down at ground level.
I like doing things other people aren’t doing. For example, I like the idea that when I light up a screen with a movie on film, there’s a decent chance that among the tens of thousands of people living around me, exactly nobody is doing what I’m doing. That makes it MY thing! I’ve done canoe camping a little up in Maine, just maybe if I managed locally I’d get that same satisfaction.
Canoe camping is simply not done locally. Yes: there is camping. Yes: there is canoeing. There is even camping with canoeing, but camping from a boat is simply NOT a thing here. There are no (official) wilderness campsites, because there is not a lot in the way of true wilderness. You might say it’s just not part of the local culture: the idea of “Let’s do this” or “Let’s promote this” just isn’t there. It’s more “What IS this?” and “Go Upstate!”.
Years ago I decided I wanted to be the exception here, so I took my boat and started looking at islands in the local rivers. One day I struck gold: a clearing inside a wooded island. Somebody, maybe years before had the same idea I (eventually) did: the entrance was fairly hard to find and there was a fire ring in there made from stones obviously from someplace else. I forgot about it while my son was very little, but went there again a few years ago and found it was being reclaimed by the forest. Since then we’ve brought some saws and shears over and made it a campsite again. We named it “Camp Mason” in honor of Bill Mason, one of my favorite filmmakers. Last week we finally got around to really camping there, not just having lunch or building a fire and hanging out for a while.
Oddly enough: the biggest barrier was what to do with the car. If some local official finds a car with empty canoe racks at the launch after dark, their last thought will be “someone’s camping.”, more like “someone’s drowning!” and we didn’t want to have to pay for a Police helicopter Search and Rescue! (”YOU DOWN THERE IN THE SLEEPING BAG!...DON’T MOVE!”)
My wife stepped in here: she dropped us off, went home and then picked us up the next day: in honor of Neil Armstrong we called her and the car “the Command Module”.
Here’s the ground rules for what I’d accept as a real canoe camping trip:
-There must be an overnight stay. Without that it’s basically a picnic!
-Everything we need we bring with us and take away too: stash no supplies and leave no mess!
-There must be meals cooked and served there: no delivered pizza or sneaking off to McDonald’s!
-Bonus for a campfire. For me the fire is kind of defining here. Even in a fire pit out on our back patio, this is just a little bit “camping”. (It’s what popcorn is at the Movies!)
-and so we began!
The first impression here is how sluggish a 33-pound boat becomes when you add in maybe 50 pounds of gear (Firewood is SO heavy!), but we paddled about a mile and a half and hauled out.
Then comes the setup. Based on his 15 years camping with us and years in Scouting, Steven did a great job setting his own tent up, even though this one was brand new to him.
The two of us have a tradition going back to when he was in Kindergarten. I have a decent sized Thermos that holds two cans of Spaghettios and keeps them hot for many hours. When he was little and we went on a hike, I’d pack this along with some spoons and bowls and we’d have a trailside meal. Years later, be it a hike or a long bike ride or a canoe trip, the thermos, spoons and bowls still come along. If someday, years from now you hear about a middle-aged man showing up at a nursing home with a Thermos full of Spaghettios, you just may understand why!
This is how we started out that night: just some quick chow after the trip over. Soon the sun set. We got a campfire going and the evening meal continued!
There’s just something about hotdogs over a fire. The wood smoke adds a little more flavor, but I think more than anything it’s the ritual!
We do grilled-cheese sandwiches on the fire too. This involves the use of a pie iron: basically a cast iron clamshell mounted on two long handles. This is put directly on the hot coals. At night it’s a two-man operation: one has to operate the pie iron, taking it out of the fire often to see how the sandwich is coming along and the second one to operate the flashlight and have the plate ready for the end results.
The major safety tip here is to remember that “pie iron” sounds a lot like “branding iron”, and that’s no coincidence! Unless you want to explain a really weird scar for the rest of your life (“ROME PIE IRON”, mirror imaged), you should learn to respect this thing!
What’s a slight injustice is the iron is meant for square bread, but I like rye bread! My sandwich looked like this!
-but this IS roughing it, so I suffered mightily through a badly squared-off sandwich! (Someday they’ll write ballades about it for sure!)
(-note to self: find square rye bread before next time…or bring a better knife!)
By the fire, we talked a lot: he’s a teenage boy and for him life is going by at a crazy blur. I’m well along in middle age: Ditto!
How does your evening usually end? Maybe there’s nothing good on the ‘tube or maybe you’re going to have a long day at work tomorrow and need to rest up. Maybe you just can’t keep your eyes open anymore. In this case it’s simpler than any of that: we ran out of firewood around 11:00PM and called it a night.(-less weight for the trip home…) We’d brought a collapsible bucket with us to keep the fire from getting out of hand, so we poured river water over the coals and headed off to the tents for a well-earned night’s sleep
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Good Night!
(More to come!)
[ September 04, 2018, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Steve Klare ]
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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