My Maternal Grandmother’s 80th Birthday is coming up in September. As a part of the preparations, my parents have been going through boxes and albums of photos and scanning them. They sent a couple of them last night, and I thought I’d share, as we all like photos of old cars.
The first is my Grandmother pumping water in front of her parent’s house. The house was torn down back in the 80’s; the land it was on was purchased by a concrete and paving company, and is now a gravel pit.
The second photo is of my Grandparents together. I think the girl in the background is one of my Grandfather’s 12 siblings.
The final photo is of my Mother and her younger brother, along with their dog Sam. I’m not sure what car is in the background… a Galaxy, perhaps?
Anyways, I was just excited to see the photos, and thought I’d share.
I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been busy working, working on website side-projects, and looking for a motorcycle. With gas prices being close to four dollars a gallon, the Jeep is really not the thing to be commuting with! So, we pretty much right off the bat liked the Buell Lightnings. We looked at V-Stroms, V-Stars, VTX1300s, GSXR1000s, and many other bikes, but kept coming back to the Buells.
Through the whole process, Michelle has been 110% on board, and seems to be as excited as I am about it. We just need to get her some safety gear now (Jacket, Helmet and Gloves, she bought new boots already), and we’ll be ready to go two-up across country… well, at least cross county for now.
We ran up to Duluth last weekend in search of a 2003 XB9S, but it had sold the night before. So, I found this 2005 on Craigslist.org, and so we loaded up, and went to Cumberland, WI yesterday about noon to meet the owner, and take it for a spin.
The first thing I found out was that Emmett did NOT like the noise when I started it up… he started crying immediately! Poor kid! The next thing was that it’s very torque-y, and has far more power than any bike I’ve ridden before. Because of the short wheelbase and my height, I have to look down to see the gauges, or any part of the bike for that matter! It feels as though you are floating out in front of the bike.
Here are some photos of it, I’m sure I’ll post more about it soon, but Emmett is starting to fuss…
It appears that every song for every user account on Muxtape has been replaced with the song “Aim (with Stephen Jones) - Good Disease [Babybird does a Prince thing]” including my own bcarlson.muxtape.com
Was it hacked?
UPDATE:
According to the blog, yes, it was. From the blog: “This afternoon, someone gained access to our server and caused some problems. We are investigating and will have more information soon. I’ve taken the site down temporarily as a precaution. Thanks for your understanding, watch this space for an update.”
We bought a 2008 Chevrolet Trailblazer on Tuesday evening. I had stayed home from work, sick (I am still sick three days later), but Michelle REALLY wanted to go look at this one. We bought it from Rick Schwab at Central Motors in North Branch, MN. Rick was the best salesman ever! No pressure, no rigmarole, no trying to sell us extra crap we didn’t need.
It’s a pretty basic truck/car/suv/whatever you want to call it, cloth seats, manual climate control, etc. but it’s pretty much perfect for our use. Lots of headroom (the sunroof model does NOT have headroom, FYI), and leg room, and should be able to tow a pretty good load. We’re really enjoying it even on our short trips to work, and to Emmett’s daycare. It’s much quieter than the Volvo as far as road noise is concerned, and has plenty of power.
This past Sunday, Michelle, Emmett and I took the stroller down to Blacksmith’s in Hugo, to Emmett’s first swap meet.
We put him in the stroller, and he slept most of the morning, doing a little looking around. We ran into Titus from the HAMB, and he had a nice GM Tilt & Telescoping Steering column for cheap, so we bought it, and on the way back to the car, we found a cool old three gauge cluster with three generic gauges in it. It’s cast aluminum, and chromed, and kinda 60’s-ish, so we’ll use it in the truck.
Sometimes a fun experience turns sour. This is what happened to us during the last few days of car shopping.
We’ve been shopping for a new vehicle, and have pretty much settled on the Chevrolet Trailblazer. This past Saturday, we asked a salesman at a local dealer to watch for one that met our specs and price range, as we were having a tough time finding what we were looking for.
So, Monday, I receive an email from him stating he had found a 2007 Trailblazer for $20,500 and gave us a few specs on it, but no photos or details. He wanted to know if we would like him to have it brought to their dealership (it was at another dealer in the Denny Hecker group of dealerships). I asked for more info first, photos, etc. He said he would get them to me once his internet manager came in, Tuesday morning.
In the meantime, I was thinking…. “hrm… I think I’ve seen a Trailblazer with the same specs on another website…” so I went to the Denny Hecker site, and found one that matched pretty closely, except the price was $18,969. It had the VIN displayed, so I asked the salesman for the VIN of the one he was looking to sell me. You guessed it… the VINs matched!!
I was livid… for about five minutes. Then I realized I could potentially use this to get a lower price on the SUV. Fast forward to yesterday around noon. I get an email from the salesman saying the Trailblazer is now online (”oh, really?”), and do I want them to bring it up for me to see.
I checked it out on the site where it had been priced $18,969, and now it was priced $21,995!!! What the heck?!??!! Can this be legal? I proceeded to call the Minnesota Attorney Generals office to query them about this. They said it sounded very suspicious, and that I should pursue the vehicle letting the dealer know what I found, and if I was not satisfied with their response that I should file a complaint which could possibly result in their dealer license being revoked.
Needless to say, I’m going to file that complaint in the morning.
