It has occurred to me that there is a difference between being on the front of the storm surge when a band/artist breaks, and discovering someone years latter. I was too young to have bought Hüsker Dü's or Seven Second's debuts, I back tracked to them after Listening to The Youth Of Today and Underdog. And when I listen to them out of context, Hüsker Dü and Seven Seconds seem oddly fresher but the angst of Sick of It All feels more familiar. It's probably a temporal thing, same reason I like Lou Reed's New York more than anything else he did. And oddly the reason I despise Nirvana, Bleach was just after my formative years, and I hated it. So i guess timing is everything

Look way far ahead, closing speeds are a bitch when the other side of a buck and a half is your chosen medium. Crosswind damn near killed me twice before I clear Prince Gallitzin, and now the long pull up hill. Driving angry, 10 fingered death grip on the leather wrapped wheel, ask myself why I'm doing this. Wringing it out, that's what I tell myself, 850 Barry Grant fresh out of the box is all the reason I need. Or is it, this is insane, there has to be another reason. C3's lift, don't they? feels light.

it's pure disdain. she hates my car. she hates my carbs. my hands are mostly clean most of the time, don't know why that matters.

i push it out of the garage late at night, gravity it down the driveway, flick on the lights as i whip the front end down the street. building up speed, clutch in, 2nd gear, ignition on, sidestep and she's alive. it's an illicit late night love affair, a rendezvous of mechanical mayhem.

glide out of the subdivision, lights out in all the bedroom windows, slumber for the rest of them, but its time for me to come alive, to live my secret life. far enough away now to get the right foot working. she's less than a liter, but no muffler makes the glorified tractor motor sound nasty. I floor it, vacuum increases, fuel flow increase, rpm's increase, noise increases. air buffets over the brooklands. i engage 3rd with out touching the clutch, just because. It's the long gear, the do it all gear, ive picked a route just for it, i wont shift till i need to pull into the garage. 45 feels like 90 as i carve through rural pennsyltucky. lever shocks in bad need of a rebuild making the float seem even greater. contact patch, suddenly forefront in my mind. why? yeah right, i have almost none, 13x3. the drums scrub a modicum of speed when needed. Lift instead, the burble and pop is glorious. tonight Lucas is my friend, just enough lumens escaping to know I'm still on the ribbon of asphalt.

We soldier on, lean far out over the door, fingertips nearly brushing the crown of the road. Too soon I see the end of the jaunt, too much of a good thing and all that shit, whatever. Home. Park. Shut off the engine, sit there and listen to the cooling of metal. It's a meditative state, everything went well, now bask in it, the almost silence is the post script. I just walk over the door, look back at the car, I really need to put the passenger sear back in.

Everything has become so disconnected. No contact, life by wires, isolation we choose and you seem happy with it. Not me, I want to feel the friction of the cable sliding in its housing, the play of the ball and socket, I want to hear the creak of the spring and pivot. All the minutia, learn it, drink in it, enjoy it, it's the experience, it's the god in the machine the devil in the details. Tune in brah, all you need to do is slow yourself down and see what is right there in your face. But do it balls to the wall, back end on the verge of walking around, 44IDFs spitting and singing, feel that dead spot in the old rack and drive around the flat spot in the carbs.  Embrace it as some sort of asylum from the soul crushing furry of your mundane existence. Peg the apex and skate out of the bend. Toes fight the unnatural pivot of the long pedal, heel lifts slightly tracking the last degrees of push. Hear the valves? Out of balance, too many heat cycles, to many rpm's? who knows, but you've noticed it now.  Left ear hears this, right that. The needles advance clockwise, time advances slower as pilot and machine become symbiotic. Sympathetic too, now you know what is really going on, feel the pleas of the bearings, the pulse of the middle pedal telling you all is not well on a corner. 

Hollywood is just shitting on us, I walked out of the movie, 14 lighter but only 23 min older. I'll survive, the night beckons, the lights on the stalks growing from the black earth make me sad, got to escape. Pull up on the handle, slide over the door bars, all 5 points, its going to be of those nights, double check the the cam lock. Flip on the pumps, slow down, take a sec to marvel at the beauty of the rocker switch. The techno ubber buggy sitting 5 feet away has none, its got infotainment. I've got a red button with a knurled aluminum ring, a black Sharpie scrawled "START" right above it. Fingertip pressure brings the beast to life, the Hi-Torque spins like a maelstrom, and then bamm! It's alive, suddenly organic even if its mostly a block of metal. it moves, dances and sings, long gone are any rubber mounts, bolted hard to the frame. its better that way, you feel it in your bones, you feel it in your sack. Toes start to search out their perches, rolling on my heels, muscle memory, right down, left side step. wait, a little longer, rich, un-burnt gasoline assails the nostrils, almost time. slide the box into 1, slip the clutch, and ease it towards the gap in the curbs letting it lope along on its high idle. a few glances are thrown my way, christ, the cars older than me, we're older then most of the meat sacks standing around, not their cup of tea, but its hard to ignore the glorious cacophony that glides past them. yeah fuckers, stare, I know the front wheels ain't the same as the backs, I know the paint has seen more sun moons without a shine then I care to recollect. that's not what its about from where I'm sitting, temp to 195, time to go, roll the stop sign onto the over illuminated 4 wide , clutch in, clear the 4 barrels. Flames dump, the volume is painful, the vibrations luscious to my soul. drink it in fast, got to go, 4 1/2, hold it, smile, yeah, got to smile, side step the left pedal and start the fight. Look straight ahead, play the cards just right and warp speed, we are off. traction is at a premium, fight for it, grab 2 and try to stamp my right foot into the asphalt below. the red line goes vertical. Only one way to play this, right into 3, no footsie, nothing subtle will do, slam the lever front hard. lunge ahead with the furry of a thousand winged Valkyrie. I can feel the body screaming in glorious agony as its forced forward by the roller tipped demon under the hood. Redline again, traffic is almost not even, and a good thing for it, 4th. hard in. Concentration so hard spittle on my lips, 120 is gone, the lights in the mirror tell me someone has taken offense at my transgressions, its not over, 5 already needed, a second's hesitation, this is full fucking commitment time. I got a full tank of gas. city limits in site. its on, 5. speeds of death. this isn't going to end well, it only ends well in films. 

cliched, a 1/4 ass veiw of a red porsche, don't wory, it will be done agian. i made this one different allow me the folly of my mundane german car lust. i fall in an out of love with automobilia on a daily basis, comes with the territory. hands on, day in. day out. what do you expect? a fan boy who actually has to deal with all aspects of his desire? no son, it don't work like that. not round here. 

This is what I'm on about! Fuck RWB 911's, they aren't an homage to RSR's, most are just plastic bits on a 964. Let's get some 70's american iron, ton of it out there, no on else is really hunting it down.  Lets cage it, blow it, tub it, wide body with a purpose, box flare the fuck out of a 76 Nova, a 74 El Camino. So much Potential, tablula rasa. 

300+ pairs of wheels glided across the Philip J. Fahy Memorial Bridge, but sadly the memorial was for a local bicycle advocate who lost his life on the bridge.

Something better is. The details are all that we have, without them there is no whole. I strive to see the pieces in spite of the whole. I just work that way, only seeing the entirety would crush my being at its foundation. No way I will sit here and claim to be hardwired differently then you, its a choice.
I got board. I deconstructed it, maybe because that's what I do when I restore a car. Maybe because I discovered that I much prefer the simple things in life that are done right. A glass of Hendrick's, listening to Juliette Grecco, 37 pictures of a Blower Bentley, none of which show more then 1/10th of the car. It really doesn't get any simpler, I don't even speak French, maybe the whole is too much for a mere pleb like me. I don't need the vermouth, who cares what she is saying, but the Bentley, that glorious automobile. The whole is ok, no one who built it was worried bout the entirety excepting in how it would get from a to b. Now look at her, see the real beauty, there is more of it the less you can see.

Its not dead, not forgotten, some Magnesium shod in a radial is connected to more. I don't need to see more to know what it is, to love it on any and all levels. More cars should come into being with parts I am forced to love, not cars I look and and basically just say why.
When was the last time you stared at a door pull, ogled the facets on a gauge trim ring, or drooled at the machine patterned aluminum finish on a step plate? Yeah, some of you haven't ever, but try it, find something, find anything to behold. its worth the effort. Because if you can, when an honestly superb thing is placed in front of you, it will make seeing that whole exponentially better.

The ribbon was laid out to get people from the ever popular point A to the even more popular point B. Had any more thought gone into the venture, I'm sure the road would have had at least one toll booth.

The first time I drive it I'm amazed how well it works.
The second time I begin to suspect it's taunting me.
The third time, I come at it. Don't lift. Don't do anything but focus straight ahead, far ahead. 4th gear flat out, just the other side of three digits, riding the crown and doing everything and anything to keep it on the road. Every crest in the road looms and what lies on the far side is the million dollar question.
Don't lift.
Is it worth it in the end, does it even make sense? The fucking car had it's drivers license before I was born, why am I even even trying this? If it plays out, then what, what's next?
The answer, It's that moment.
If you've never experienced that four wheeled nirvana, don't try, it doest work that way. It just happens.
Like that road.