Last night I found myself driving home very late from an evening of pleasure that wasn't completely unexpected.

About 3 years ago, during a particularly good year, I bought a mill and a lathe. They've been in storage till now, but I can't stand it any longer and I have to finish my own shop. This is one of several reasons why I still haven't raced this year.

Moving the equipment posed practical and financial problems. A machinery rigging company would run around $1000 to move it. My friend Bill insisted that we do it ourselves with a collection of borrowed hardware. After a bit of screwing around and a couple of false starts I wound up borrowing my friend Joe's ragged 20 foot flatbed and praying nothing would happen in front of me requiring less time than I needed for 3 pumps of the brake pedal.

Then I found myself with a borrowed forklift at the loading end that wouldn't start and was spewing fluid. But we got the equipment loaded and tied down, and the borrowed forklift held on just long enough to return it - it died 4 feet from where I was aiming.

Well, yada-yada-yada, the rest of it went really well and everything is in it's place, though it will be a while before it's all operational - got some car prep and racing to do first. And Ka-ching, with the money I saved I could buy more tires, brakes, spares, and entries if the money I saved was money I had. Whatever - those are just GFCP details. (just remembered, saw an NSX the other day with an NSX-Prime license frame that said "My other car...is irrelevant".

So, around just past dark I was running Joe's truck back. As I was approaching his place I couldn't see any lights though he was supposed to be home, but as I drove up the driveway I could - he told me he'd be up late.

So he invites me in and we sit down and start talking. We talked and talked and talked. As Friday night dates go you might not think an 80 year old guy would be that great - but you'd be wrong.

You may recall that Joe was a competitive Trans-Am privateer in the 60's and 70's and an IMSA regular in the late 70's, and has been a great friend to my father and me.

The best laugh we had was when he was describing a period in the 60's when Triumph was sponsoring alot of racers in TR4's. I guess I never really knew how unreliabe they were - though my Dad described them as being the only car he knew of that was already worn out when it rolled of the assembly line (and he sold them!) But when I innocently asked Joe "so were they really that bad?", his response was like eye's up, hands up "oh, gawd, were they bad!"

So this one day at a National or something on the west coast there was a factory guy helping out the Triumph racers, John Leland (who invited my friend Denny to Goodwood a couple of years ago to do wrench duty on any of the antiques that needed help) wound up doing a field rebuild on a broken TR4 motor. He was changing out rods and was needing the last assembly when he hollered up to Joe to hand him one. Joe said he looked around where he was and seeing only the ones in the garbage can he handed him one. Later after the bottom end was buttoned up and John found that last rod/piston assembly sitting on the passenger side floor, he asked Joe what he'd given him, so Joe told him. He responded with a laugh and said something like "oh, well, it probably stands as good a chance as any of them." Joe said that rod lived, but the car broke in the race anyway.

Gack! My Dad's dealership dropped Triumph a few years later after things went from bad to worse, and one day he was dropping off a new car for a customer and the exhaust simply fell off in the guys driveway.

Other stories were the usual kind of thing - how Joe needled Peter Gregg when for a few races Peter was driving a Mustang instead of a Porsche, design features of the last IMSA Corvette - they built a huge differential mount that did double duty as a heat conductor, and how they'd melt Muncies and break Nashes with the twin turbo Hatch Chev, and what a bottomless pit awaits your money when you get hooked on racing (and how high the percentage of bullshit was on parts that were supposed to make you go faster). Found out that back in the day those guys all played with karts too.

As I was driving away there was nothing visible in the darkness except the lights at Joe's, and it occured to me that Joe is one of the lights in my life and how much he means to me. It also occured to me that that light won't keep shining in my life forever. Young or old, we gotta take good care of our good friends while we got em.

Got the Houseman gear set. Jaime does the mainshaft gears as welded two piece, unlike how Alfa does it with a mating spline, and my friend Dave does it on VW's with nothing but a press fit.

I'll run the Rose Cups without any aero changes, so it will be interesting to see what the Mugen Diff and the gears alone do. At TCO the other night Chris said something about Greg Bell and how he did last week at Pacific Raceways, to which I responded dryly that "Greg will be no problem." Chris said he was going to tell Greg what I said, and I asked him not to. He probably will anyway, and while I think a little friendly psychery is fun, I don't feel I can take anything for granted. Race weekends are full of people who've done everything right and have everything going for them, and who come home with nothing. I think I have a healthy self image, but I'm sure I'm not that special that it can't happen to me.

Spent today a Denny's garage sale. Lots of old Alfa parts - luckily I've sworn that stuff off (except for the occassional thought of building a Milano Verde for ITS). I did "discover" this particular Alfa 6C2500 variant on a poster
http://www.barchetta.cc/All.Fe....html

My Dad had a more boringly bodied 49 Cab, and I've always ignored the Alfa's from this era in part because of how unimpressed I was with that car, but I think I missed something.

The late pre-war cars are fantastic, and there's a particularly beautiful 39 that I've seen very often and the owner has the right attitude - he drives the wheels off it. I've told people that even it's oil leaks are beautiful.
http://users.skynet.be/alfarom...1.jpg
http://users.skynet.be/alfarom...2.jpg

It's so funny to me when I reflect on life and it's meaning that I orbit this idea that we are each fundamentally alone, and that our family, spouses, and friends get us over/past that limitation in important if fleeting ways. I think of cars at their best as expressions of vision and passion, though I understand the role of economic neccessity - but after the men who built them are gone and forgotten all we know is that somebody put heart and soul into their creation, and this reminds us of what we feel, and then we feel like we're not alone somehow in this one particular way. Does that make any sense? Even a car as modern as my ITR conveys something of this to me.

Denny gave me a cowl panel from my Dad's Duetto, and it gave me an idea for my racing identity / logo. I had considered having a giant Gomez graphic made to go on the roof of my car, but I'm not so sure that's what I want to do.

Scott, who stayed up too late last night and is still rummy...and who's up too late tonite too...on H-T!...

 

You really should gather up some of your writings and submit them to a publisher. It's such good stuff. I can see a chapter break, or even a " - - - " , right before you talk about the houseman gears. Regardless...thanks for putting it here.

BTW, I heard a Milano won an ITS race around here at LMS. Getsw a guy who likes "cars with character" to thinking, doesn't it...

 

There is in fact an ITS Milano in the SE division.
It was last seen under water off of turn 1 at VIR. Its typically pretty fast, but it doesn't float all that well.

I wish I could remember where that pic was... anybody?

 

 

That's the car. Not slow...unless you drive it into a swamp.

 

Last year about this time I wrote a little about one of the guys on Joe's crew - Ed. Ed was in bad shape a year ago after a stroke or two. Ed's still hanging on, and it was just a few weeks ago that Joe saw him last.

Ed was by profession a machinist at Tektronix, the company that led the high tech development in Portland in the 60's and 70's. As a little kid I was told that people like Ed and my now departed friend Orville made machines that made machines that men couldn't make. You'd expect that any decent race team at that level would have a decent collection of talent - and this one had alot.

Nowadays Joe can only get a word or two out of Ed - his brain is riddled with clots and he's just about completely incapacitated. Joe says that you can see on his face or in his eyes that he wants to get something out, but he can only force out one or two words at best and then it's gone. When I saw Ed last year I couldn't see this, but Joe knows Ed well and I don't doubt that he sees what he says he sees.

This last time Ed got out the whole phrase "I..will...come." This may not have had anything to do with what Joe had been talking about, and it's not possible to know what Ed was thinking when he said it. I think though that what Ed was trying to say was that he wants to go racing with Joe again. Soon Ed...soon.

Scott, who thinks that racing can be as good for the soul as it can be bad for the bank...

 

Strokes are bad news. My long-time friend just had a stroke last week. He's 37. Stay in shape people, watch your blood pressure and stop smoking (if you do).