When I leave it parked in the driveway, she will sit by the truck to make it clear she wants to go for a ride. This is our ritual end-of-day drive.
Forty Great Years
And we dated for six years before getting married. By my account, we never had a serious argument. (To her credit) If you’re only going to get one thing right in life, finding the right partner is at the top of the list.
Land Rover Santana
The history of Land Rover is rich and long and you can read about it here but the video above tells you all you need to know. My truck was assembled in Spain by the Santana Motor Company (which makes it something of a bastard to Land Rover purists). Over the last 18 months I’ve come across the abbreviation “CKD” but never knew what it meant until I found the following reference in the latest issue of Rovers Magazine:
Santana, or more formally, “Metalurgica de Santa Ana, SA,” started in 1956, and by 1958, had signed an agreement with Land Rover for CKD [Completely Knocked Down] kits; literally, a shipment of parts from Solihull that when assembled at their Lenares factory, avoided steep tariffs. Given their contemporary road conditions and weaker economy, the “Land Rover Santanas” provided the country with a workhorse that could tackle the challenging environment.
As Land Rover wound down Series III production, it chose to end its CKD agreement with Santana in 1983, just prior to the introduction of the 90/110 coil sprung models. Santana continued to manufacture its own version of the Series III with worthwhile enhancements. Santana introduced comfort features, such as better seats and a more stylish fascia, and by the 1980s, had created more contemporary styling than just the plastic grille and “safety dashboard” of the Series III. As Spain attracted more ex-pats and vacationers, Santanas became more lifestyle vehicles, although the Spanish police forces retained them for their use.
Ed Starr, the owner/operator of Resurrected Rovers, Chocorua, MM, has worked on them and become a fan. “Santana made some needed modifications to the Series Land Rovers to make them even better,” Ed noted. “They put an oil cooler on the base models before Land Rover introduced them on the MoD ones. A different sized oil bath filter made it easier to service. And, of course, they went to parabolic springs to improve the ride over the standard leaf spring. They’re just as easy to work on as a UK Series Rover.”
If your truck wasn’t one of the first hundred to roll off the assembly line in jolly old Solihull, England, well, it ain’t a real Rover, mate (to The Purists). You’d have to sneak in to the Tri Delt house to find a snobbier bunch of ladies.
TextGrabber
I’ve been using this app for years and thought I had posted on it previously but didn’t find anything. Pretty sure there’s an old screencast on YouTube but they’ve made numerous improvements. And I wanted to try out the screen recording feature in the new iPhone. More on that in a moment.
When I come across a long-ish passage in a book or magazine that I’d like to save, rather than just snap a photo, TextGrabber does some kind of OCR (optical character recognition) magic and gives you editable (and searchable) text.
As an aside, the screen recording above was done on the iPhone XS. Making screen recordings has gotten easier over the years but it was still a minor hassle to capture the screen on your phone. No longer. This feature is built right into the iPhone and it works great.
1977 F150
I’m hoping I have the self-discipline to not buy this truck. I don’t need this truck. I don’t have a place to put this truck. But this is just sort of clunker I’ve been dreaming about. The idea was Barb and I could use this to haul mulch and rocks and shit for her yard and gardens. (Uh, our yard and garden) And on the rare occasion when The Truck is in the shop, I could fire this thing up for a few days. Lord, I hope someone buys it fast.
