After the rain stopped, I went out to see how they were doing, and noticed some leaves on the hood of my truck.  Turns out it was more than just a few leaves, but a large branch from high up in our neighbor’s tree:

Uh Oh

And it did a little damage on the way down:

Ouch

If it’s not obvious in the picture, it mashed the roof and broke out the back window, which is lying in the bed.  It left a dent in the left side of the bed somehow, right behind the door.  It also messed up one wiper pretty good, so I doubt I’ll be able to use them.  It’s still drivable, though, so I’ll find out how windy it is driving without a back window when I go to church in the morning.

Now I get to find out whether anyone’s insurance company will want to pay for any of this, and whether I can replace the window and fix the wiper for less than the cost of replacing the truck.  I kinda doubt it, but I’ll see what a glass place has to say.  Maybe I should apply for disaster relief.

Fortunately, that was the only damage we had.  It sounds like some people in Quincy were hit a lot worse.

In other news:

My wife Angel just started a blog of her own.  I don’t know what all she’ll be writing about, but she’s a good writer, so go check it out.  Her article on driving through the Alps in her tiny blue car (which you might have seen around Quincy) is both funny and interesting.

My RSS feed was getting hammered lately according to StatPress, going from 3-5 hits a day to 40+.  That didn’t jibe with the rest of my stats,  so I started looking at the raw logs.  Turns out it was all search engines that StatPress didn’t recognize as such.  Did some more research and found out StatPress has been superceded by StatPress Reloaded, so I installed that, and that corrected things, shifting lots of my supposed “visitor” traffic over to “seach engine” traffic.  It doesn’t look as impressive now, but at least it’s fairly accurate.

I tell clients not to watch their stats and rankings and all that, but it’s hard not to, especially when you’re just getting started and each viewer is a large percentage of the whole.  Too much stat-watching just makes a person crazy, though.  I probably should just check it weekly, or even monthly.

I had to change the starter in my truck today.  It’s been wanting to start less and less, and the last couple really cold mornings, I had to roll it downhill and pop the clutch to start it.  That’s okay in a pinch, but it’s not always convenient to park on a hill, so I figured I’d better get it done before I get stuck somewhere.  It was a fairly simple job except for breaking loose one stubborn bolt.  I finally put a pipe over the end of the ratchet and started pulling:  something had to give, either the bolt or my wrench.  Luckily the bolt gave first.

It sure is nice doing work like that in a garage on clean concrete.  It was a little chilly, but so much better than sliding around in dirt or gravel.  Lots easier to find a bolt when you drop one, too.

The darn County Market hasn’t put the nuts in the shell on sale yet.  It used to be: they put the nuts out when the Christmas shopping season started, then after Christmas, they chopped the price to get rid of them all before year-end inventory.  And I’d go stock up and eat them ’til spring, like a squirrel.  My theory is that, since the stores are so much bigger now, they really don’t need the space like they used to.  They can leave them at the regular price in a corner somewhere and let people pick at them until they’re gone.  I’ll keep watching and hoping, though.

Now that I’m set for transportation for a while, I can start saving up for the wheels I really want. I guess if I had to pick a “dream car,” it’d be the Buick Regal GNX. They only made 547 of these things in 1987, because 500 was the minimum number you could produce and call it a stock car for competition purposes. It had the turbo version of Buick’s 3800 V6 engine, which promptly started blowing all the V8 competitors of the time off the track. (The same engine was used in the 25th anniversary Pontiac TransAm and other high-performance GM cars.) With nothing more than a change of tires and a cutout in the exhaust, a GNX can go from street legal to the drag strip and put down a 13.4 second quarter-mile, going 0-60 in 4.7 seconds.

The GNX and Grand Nationals were all very black and very shiny, so it’s hard to find a good picture of them, but here are a couple.

Unfortunately, most GNX models are in the hands of collectors now, but a standard turbo Grand National would be just fine too. If I can’t get one of those, a Buick Reatta would be a nice substitute. This sports coupe was made from about 1988 to 1991, on a special GM production line where everything was hand-assembled. It was intended as a high-end performance car, but about that time, Buick decided to focus on the older, more traditional market. So the Reatta fell out of favor, and was scaled back considerably. For example, even though it had the same 3800 V6 engine as the Grand National, it had a much higher 0-60 time at around 8 seconds, and was electronically limited to a maximum speed of 125 mph.

Still, I rarely need to go over 125 mph these days, and I always liked the looks of the Reatta, so I’d love to have one.

And, if I ever want something older to restore, I’ll track down a Skylark GS, from 1970 or so. These beasts had a 455 cubic-inch engine — one cubic inch bigger than Chevy’s famous 454, but it also was a 90-degree V8 instead of Chevy’s 60-degree version, so it had ridiculous amounts of torque. The 1970-1/2 came from the factory without even a radio — it was pure muscle car, all the way. Here’s a pic, although mine wouldn’t be this color; it would be a deep blue with a white top.