Property Lines

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We built our home 30 years ago so I sort of forgot the shape of our 3 acres. Technology being what it is, one can now go online and obtain nice aerial views with lots of County Assessor info to boot.

The placement of our house looks a little odd unless you know we are at the top of hill. Siting our house closer to the middle of the property would have meant going up and down the hill every time we came and went. No, the guy that designed our house knew what he was doing. Still, it seems strange to see the property lines from above.

1979 Series III Land Rover

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[Updates at bottom of post]

Before I tell you about my new Land Rover, let’s recap how we got here. I’ve been admiring vintage Land Rovers for years but the idea of owning one never occurred to me. In May I spotted another one on the Cool & Vintage website. A beautiful frame-off restoration of a Defender 90 Land Rover. I clicked the “more information” link and, following a brief email exchange, learned I could buy the vehicle for about $60,000. I decided I had to have it and spent a week or two begging the folks in Lisbon, Portugal (where the company is located) to take my money. They were too busy with their latest photo shoot.

A friend of a friend told me about a UK company called Arkonik that specializes in frame-off restorations of Land Rovers. I called and learned they’d be happy to build me one for $100,000 but there was a 13 month waiting list. I strongly considered it.

At this point a friend put me in touch with a “concierge buyer” in the Bay Area. I call him Mr. Wolf and he’s an expert in vintage Land Rovers. For a finder’s fee of 10%, he agreed to find the Land Rover of my dreams. And he did. It took him a bit more than a month.

We started searching for a Defender 90 but along the way Mr. Wolf suggested I consider a Land Rover Series (I,II,III) model. These are more truck-like (loud and slow). I loved the look so we expanded the search. Last week Mr. Wolf located a 1979 Series 3 Land Rover in San Diego. The restoration was still underway and the vehicle hadn’t been spoken for.

Mr. Wolf looked at  a few hundred photos and talked at length with Luke Richards, the man in charge of the restoration. He was impressed. This was it. I wired the deposit and the Land Rover was mine.

When the restoration is complete, probably by August September October. Mr. Wolf will take it back to his facility in the Bay Area and drive it for 1,000 miles to find and fix any problems (that can occur with the most perfect restoration). Then he’ll put it on a truck and send it to me. I plan to visit Mr. Wolf during the shakeout period.

I love the idea of frame-off restoration. I love the look and charm of the older Land Rover… but I want it to be “new.” In the absence of time travel, that means taking the old car apart and rebuilding it bolt-by-bolt, nut-by-nut. I find it amazing anyone can do this, for any amount of money. Clearly a labor of love.

I don’t know the full story behind Luke Richards but at one time (perhaps still) he designed and built high-performance cars. Watch the video on his website. Somewhere along the way he and his team started restoring vintage Land Rovers.

I’ll have more photos of my Land Rover as it nears completion and I’ll share them here. The color (Stone Gray) is not a Land Rover color, it’s by Mercedes. I love it.

If you had asked me yesterday how long I’ve been working on this I would have said six months. It’s been less than two. Some serious time distortion at work. I’m eager to climb in this rascal and chug up my hill but I’m enjoying the anticipation, too. Watch this space for updates.

UPDATE (August 21, 2017): The pieces that make up the hardtop have been painted. In the home stretch.

UPDATE (August 12, 2017): Back from visit to Lucra Cars in San Marcos, CA. Met Luke Richards and some of this staff. Got to put my hands on The Truck.

UPDATE: (July 19, 2017): Starting to get a few more photos of the restoration. Will update this gallery as more come in.

UPDATE (July 17, 2017): Best estimate now October 1 on the short side; November 1 on the long side. Looks like an early Christmas present.

UPDATE (July 7, 2017): We’re sticking with the new drum brakes. This truck is small and light enough that front-wheel discs won’t be necessary. The restoration was going to be a soft top but they have a hardtop in stock so that’s the plan. Will had some dollars and time to the project and I can always order a soft top down the road.

UPDATE (July 1, 2017): Brief chat with Mr. Wolf as we enter what I believe is the final phase of the restoration. I had a question about the gearbox in my truck. Some of the older Series trucks did not have synchro in all gears and that is not a good thing. I believe the Series III gearbox is synchronized. He suggested converting the front wheels from drum brakes to disc, adding that drum brakes probably wouldn’t be a problem since the truck goes so slow. I like the idea of disc brakes up front.

Mr. Wolf finds the truck

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1979 Series III Land Rover Santana. Mr. Wolf sees the truck in the background of photo on Craig’s List/SF.

“Pending a visit to San Diego to visit this guy, I think this might be the one. I am very impressed with the quality of this build. Not only does the work look beautiful, but he has done lots of invisible upgrades to improve the overall look and reliability.”

“After looking through probably 500 of Luke’s pictures I haven’t seen a single thing that I don’t like, and talking with Luke has been nice, he really knows his stuff. Let’s do it! I’ll call him in a little while to get all the info.”

Before magnetic recording tape

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I’m not sure I’ve shared this photo of my old man. I’m blessed with a lot of great pics. It’s clear from this one how much he enjoys what he’s doing. Note the disc on the turntable in the foreground: just one track cut into the center of the disc. Probably a commercial. You can see more of these to the right of the control board. This is before magnetic tape and they “cut” these discs in the adjacent studio. If you fucked up while cutting, you put a piece of cellophane tape over that track and cut another one. I can’t even imagine trying find and cue these while doing a live shift. But the alternative was reading everything live. That would get old fast, for the announcer and the listener. Must have been an exciting time.

Changed Skilled

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I expect to see more change and more dramatic, accelerated change in the next 10 to 15 years (yes, I expect to live that long) than I’ve seen in the previous 69 years. It will be tempting to characterize the changes as good or bad but if I’ve learned anything along the way, it’s those are meaningless terms.

I expect to say, “Whoa!” a lot in coming years. I mean, really, a car that fucking drives itself? Are you shitting me? Virtual realities that are indistinguishable from from “real realities.” (We’re gonna need new ways of talking)

I expect the pace and scope of these changes will kill some folks. Their heads will explode (but only on the inside). We’re seeing some of this now and the big stuff hasn’t started. As always, the young will adapt since they have less world to get rocked. But people my age? Baby Boomers? A lot of us will lose. their. shit.

My plan is to become changed skilled. A phrase I first heard 30 years ago at a management retreat. It’s stuck with me. What a great skill to possess. To adapt to change. You can not do that if you’re holding on tight. But “letting go” is now a tattered old bumper sticker. Real hard to do.

I WANT THINGS TO BE THE WAY I WANT THINGS TO BE!

When my shit was all lined up just the way I like it… don’t anybody move… this is perfect. And then everything changed.

And when things were going horribly…

COME ON! COME ON! COME ON! LET’S GET SOME CHANGE UP IN HERE. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE HOLD UP?!

How does one become change skilled, you ask? Easy. You just endure a lot of change and try to unclench your anus. (I also find meditation helps).

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

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I really wanted to like this book. Neal Stephenson has written some of the best stories I’ve ever read and I’ve read most of them two or three times. And how can I say I read 740 pages and didn’t enjoy the book? At least a little.

But it just did not work for me. Maybe it was the witches and time travel. Maybe it was writing with a co-author (Nicole Galland). I don’t think I’ve ever read a book written by two people that I really enjoyed. Wait! Not true! James S. A. Corey, the pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. I love the Expanse series. But I can’t think of any others off the top of my head.

I struggle with the paradoxes inherent in stories about time travel. I appreciated the premise of Memento and Loopers but my mind kept drifting as I tried to work out the time stuff. No such problem, however, with William Gibson’s The Peripheral.

On a scale of 1 to 5 (with Cryptonomicon and REAMDE being 5’s), I’d rate this latest book a 3. Maybe. I do hope you enjoy(ed) it more than I.

Photo descriptions

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I’m still thinking about photos. Specifically, the story behind photos. The ease of taking, sharing and storing photos has created a tsunami of digital photos. The moment (and the photo that captures it) passes through our hands so quickly, there’s no time to consider the story behind the photo (if there is one). Besides, I know who’s in the photo and where it was taken and I’ll be around forever so why bother with descriptions and such. And there’s something to that. I have dozens of photos of the beach near our place in Destin, FL. There might be a story but there might not. Sometimes the photo IS the story.

Our relationship with photos was very different when cameras used film. Days (weeks?) might pass between the time you took the photo and and when you held the print in your hands. It took some commitment to sit down with a stack of photos and make notes on the back about the people, the place, the event. Perhaps it comes down to who the photo is for. If it’s just for me, well, I know all that and when I’m gone, who cares. If you think of the photo as having a life longer than yours, the back story is priceless.

The photo of my mother and father kissing on a park bench (on their honeymoon) is a good example. What if my mom had written a few lines (on the back) describing where they were and what they had been doing?

I’m not going to write descriptions for the 1,900 photos in my collection. At least not all of them. But I have hit on a way to connect to the story behind the photos. My blog. I’ve been blogging for fifteen years and and have written (and tagged) 30 posts about Destin. I’ve added a link to those posts to the descriptions of the photos in my collection. I have a couple of hundred photos of KBOA and I’ll add http://www.kboa830.com to the description field of those photos. And so on. (If you’re a half-empty type, you’re thinking, “Yeah, but your blog will be gone when you die.” I’m working on that.)

This is all well and good if you’re retired with lots of time to manage your photos. True. But I think the case can be made that a photo that’s not worthy of a brief description might not be worth keeping. And a lot of them aren’t, in my opinion. Folks are fire-hosing photos to the cloud with little or no thought. Google Photos is an attempt to address this.

Fez pics from Gnomedex 2008

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The Order of the Fez was in full blossom in 2008 so my pal Jamie Nelson and I agreed to bring the sacred headgear to the Gnomedex geekfest that year. One of the attendees was a professional photographer and we have him to thank for these fine image.