Category Archives: Vehicles

Seems everything is a commodity these days, especially tires

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I suspect this is a common sight these days. Like metal, petroleum products, and everything else, rubber is in short supply. Perhaps this piece of equipment’s trip sans tires is similar to a story I heard a while back.

I was videotaping at a mining operation (not local) and one of the guys mentioned that they had placed a huge equipment order. When the time came for delivery, the manufacturer called to say that the equipment was ready to ship, but that there were no tires. No tires? Yes, the industrialization of other parts of the world had put a strain on the supply of tires for heavy equipment.

To my recollection, they had to cancel the order; you can’t have millions of dollars of big equipment show up and not be able to put it into service; at that point it’s costing money, not making money. I talked to another fella at a different mining operation who said that they have to try to stretch the tires on their big haulers a little further, and try to buy in advance, because they’re hard to come by. If they can’t operate their equipment, they can’t produce their product.

I don’t know if that’s the case with this loader. I don’t think they ship them without tires normally, but perhaps that’s the case. I used to have a desk facing the dock where Caterpillar equipment would come off the train cars, and I don’t recall seeing any without tires; of course, this is a truck, and it has to fit under the overpasses.

Whether this loader being hauled without tires is an illustration or not, I’m told the problem exists. I found out more anecdotal evidence when I replaced the tires on my truck. The model of truck I drive came stock with oversized tires, so that’s the kind of replacements I have to buy. Tires that cost $400 a few years ago cost $700 now. Ouch!

Race tires for the motorcycle were around $350-400 when I last raced, ($300 EACH if you order from the catalog) and they’re good for a couple of days if ridden hard. When it comes to the cost of tires and fuel, that’s the only reason I am glad haven’t gone racing lately!

Spot something goofy in this “antique” picture

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I took my wife and boys on a walk along the Mandan side of the river, taking the Missouri River Natural Area trail. We hopped on from the trailhead in the Captain Leach area north of the Memorial Bridge, and I spotted this scene in one of the many backyards bordering the trail. As I framed the shot, I caught something. Do you know what it is?
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How many times does “ar” appear in “Bismarck?” I suppose I can’t call it a typo, since this lettering wasn’t typed! I wonder if the artist got a phone call halfway through the word Bismarck or something. Maybe it was painted on International Talk Like a Pirate Day! It never fails…everywhere I look, I find typos. It’s a disorder, I think.

Case in point: we just got our first fancy new high-definition video camera last week. I opened up the operations manual from Sony and…yep! Typo! I guess it’s a good thing that my spelling and grammatical “spider sense” still works.

I experimented with giving this photo the faded look of an old print by desaturating it and giving it a slightly different gamma curve. I love playing in Photoshop and haven’t really had much to do with it lately. Time to step it up, I think…those skills can get rusty when not used!

Tractor row

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I see these tractors every time I head toward Lincoln on south 66th Street. They’re parked in such a way that a photo of them is a little tricky; there’s other stuff in the background, there are trees interfering with the light, and their arrangement is set. Nevertheless, I stop on occasion to try a new idea when I’m on the way to visit friends living in Lincoln. Sometimes, like this example, I play with the light in Photoshop. A challenge is usually a good thing, especially in photography!

One of the coolest things I saw all weekend, because I’m a geek

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I took too many photos this holiday weekend to sort out right now…about 1,800 of them, in fact. Why? Two reasons: first, I love cameras and motorcycles. Second, I was getting paid to. Gotta pay off this camera gear some day. Until I get the rest of my holiday photos sorted out, here’s a treat I’d like to share…

If you were born in the 60s, which I was (depending on which time zone you were in), you probably drooled all over one of these. This is an all-original 1971 Schwinn “Pea Picker” bicycle. It was ridden by my friend Justin this weekend at the Cycle Hutt extravaganza, and I was blown away when I saw him come wheelie-ing out with it.

The SPEED Channel guys and I were taking a break and appreciating this relic. I suspect it’d be a very popular eBay item, if one was silly enough to part with it. One of the cameramen had just bought his replica a silver version of this bike, called the Grey Ghost. Schwinn started making the replicas in 2004.

I don’t know what would be cooler…the banana seat with sprung rear sissy-bar, the slick rear tire, or this: the Stik Shift. Ah, the 70’s. Who says they were all cheese?

I got some really amazing photos over the holiday weekend, all of them centered around the Cycle Hutt event and Jason Britton’s visit. Jason told me he didn’t mind how close I got when he was stuntin’, so I got some really sweet angles of him and Tony doing their thang. I’ll post pics from the weekend down the road as I sort through them.

This is one act that really bombed

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I took some time this week to visit the B-17 bomber that was parked near Executive Air for the better part of the work week. It’s cool to see such a piece of history, especially since it’s a piece of technology and military hardware at the same time. As usual, I took a lot of photos…but, in an unusual move, I’m actually going to post a large number of them right away instead of saying I’ll do it later! Have a great weekend.

It wouldn’t be a truly nostalgic WW2 era plane without some 1930’s – shaped woman painted on the side. I couldn’t help but think of the old 1980s video game “B-17 Bomber” on the Mattel Intellivision game console. A friend of mine had that game and the expensive Speech Synthesis module, which allowed many of its games to “talk. B-17 Bomber was one such game. Thanks to the Internet, you can listen to the introductory sound from that game by clicking here (mp3 format).

What a big machine, don’t you think? When the news of possible hail or a tornado came in last night, this plane was moved into the BP hangar on site. It barely fit; it had to be rolled in by hand, with four guys on each wheel to move its weight, and its gun almost touched the hangar doors once closed. There were “little planes” tucked under each wing as well, but the mighty Flying Fortress fit. Say that three times fast.

Payload. One of the types of bombs dropped by these planes was called a Thunderbug. That’s just one of the fun nicknames that military folks came up with for various hardware and ordinance, and it shows they have a sense of humor. These obviously aren’t real, otherwise I’d be trying to strap one onto my motorcycle for use on a tailgater! Now let’s take a walk through this majestic aircraft…

This is the forward gun turret. Note the picture of someone’s lady on the left side wall. This would be a pretty crazy place to be when the fighting got hectic! I can’t even imagine. I think the fella who did the calculations for the bomb trajectories was located up here as well as the forward gunners.

This is the cockpit, one of the few places with windows that don’t have a gun sticking out of them. It must be a challenge to taxi a “tail-dragger” aircraft like this one…in fact, a friend of mine was near an accident at Oshkosh a few years ago where a little plane cut in front of a big plane on the tarmac. The propeller of the big plane sliced right through the little one. Messy. The pilots of planes like this have to zig-zag when they taxi so they can look out the side windows; the front windows point at the sky until they take off.

The bomb bay with doors open. That rail down the middle is the “walkway” for the plane’s crew. It’s about six inches wide. I had fun sneaking through there with my camera bag! It would be best to be skinny to be on a B-17 crew. I had that part covered, but then I decided to lug my gear with me.

This is where the radio operator sat, and there are a couple of jump seats as well. It’s pretty amazing to see how many crew positions are actually on this aircraft. I may have to hunt down a book about these guys…

I would have thought there’d be more bomb space and less crew space, but I really don’t know much about aircraft. Here you can see side guns as well as bunks for crew members, who I suppose rotated resting periods. This photo is somewhat out of sequence as it was taken from the rear of the aircraft, facing forward.

Firepower. The guys manning these guns were responsible for keeping this aircraft safe from enemy fighters. To do so requires some big guns, and there are big guns all over the B-17.

For $425 or so, you can take a ride on this plane, and even sit up in the nose turret. For $425, I think they should make these guns operational. Now that would be worth running to an ATM!

The aforementioned bunks. At the end of the fuselage is where the rear landing gear is stowed, and of course another gun position.

Thus endeth the tour. This was truly an amazing way to spend my lunch hour. It’s one thing to leisurely poke around this aircraft, looking at the old technology and trying to grasp a bit of history. It would have been another world entirely to dodge German or Japanese AA fire, fend off enemy fighters from a gun turret, and hopefully make it to the intended target and back safely. Oh yeah, and deliver the bomb payload on target. The people who fight for our country are incredible, but I think of World War Two stories and am in total awe.

The plane will have left Bismarck by now, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to see it before it departed. I’m told there will be a B-17 bomber at the Jamestown air show this year, but I’m not sure if it’s this one. I also don’t know if a curious blogger would get the chance to climb around on it with his camera! This may have been my only opportunity to see a piece of aviation history. Thankfully I was able to seize it.

The most popular 55 year old at Buggies ‘n’ Blues

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This is ‘Vette Number Three, if I remember correctly…the oldest Corvette in existence. Who better to own it than Corvette enthusiast Dave Ressler? I wonder if it resides at his Corvette Museum on east First Street.

I was excited to see this car, although I must say that I prefer the new Corvettes to the old. A friend of mine used to let me drive his ’64 Stingray convertible a lot, and that was nice because the car is such a classic, but the new ones are bristling with technology and far outperform the originals. It’s like comparing old and new Star Trek or old and new Van Halen…classic hot rods and modern sports cars are two different animals entirely.

I took a lot of pics during my walk around Buggies ‘n’ Blues, but haven’t had time to go through them. They may show up around here sometime down the road. I did see Governor Hoeven and his wife perusing the rows of cars, although I doubt he’s as much of a motorhead as his predecessor. I also drove out to the fly-in at the Mandan Airport, but didn’t see anything noteworthy going on out there. I suspect I was too late.

The cool, wet weather has somewhat masked the fact that this is the time of year when lots of really cool outdoor activities take place in North Dakota. According to Too Tall Tom, very warm weather is around the corner. For now I’ll just be thankful for the rain, and enjoy the outdoor stuff in the baking heat when it arrives.

I highly recommend picking one up…or picking up with one

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The call came early Tuesday morning. Five semi loads of steel beams had arrived! Our church’s new building project is about to take a huge leap forward. But someone has to unload and inventory this stuff, and they needed another guy.

Two of us got to run that shiny new turbo-diesel VersaHandler (it’s a rental). I have forklift experience from working in my parents’ warehouse, but that didn’t compare to unloading giant steel beams with this thing! It has all-wheel steering, a self-leveling adjuster via rocker switch, and a joystick control for all the boom and fork operations. Talk about a trip!

I have to admit, I was scared silly while running this thing. I was unloading really wide steel beams, several at a time, with my pastor and other close friends working below. I like those guys, including the truck driver sitting atop the steel giving me directions, so I’d hate to drop a beam on any of them! Plus it would be expensive to replace any damaged steel. Thankfully, I didn’t drop or bend anything.

This machine was fun in a number of ways. I have to admit that there was a stretch of time where I wanted nothing more than to get OUT of the cab and away from the stress of wielding those giant beams around on uneven ground! But as soon as I got out of the cab to return to work, I felt a longing to get back in and start white-knuckling my way around the truck again. Sadly, my time in the machine was over. I could spend a few hundred bucks and rent it myself, or $140,000 to get one of my own. Instead I’ll just wait for the next load of building materials to come and hope we rent it again!

A preacher said a while back that there will be two types of people that walk into our new church building when it’s completed. The first type will look around and say something like, “Wow! This sure is a nice place!” The second type will say something like, “I remember when we were up all night hanging that sheetrock over there” or “It sure looks different than when we first started framing out the walls” or even “I remember when so-and-so started painting this room with the wrong color!”

The point is, participation has its blessings. We get to feel some ownership in this new building if we choose. For instance, one of our church members works for the company pouring the concrete for this building. I can’t describe how happy he looked while out grooming the concrete of the slab on Tuesday! It was really encouraging to see. When I first typed up this post, I was excited about getting to run that fancy new loader. But what really sticks with me is the excitement of being part of something bigger. That kind of excitement sticks around a lot longer.

Bridge over solid water

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You know it’s cold when the bridge turns white! So did the weeds, the trees, and the air during our recent cold snap.

A bit of trivia: see that train coming across the bridge? He’s got a very precise maneuver ahead of him. He’s faced with the challenge of keeping just the right amount of speed as he comes across the bridge. Why’s that? I’ll elaborate.

As a train leaves Mandan and heads east, it begins an uphill journey. The track climbs as it runs parallel to “the Strip” and meets up with the Northern Pacific Bridge. As far as I know, the bridge is level…but the track takes a hard right turn almost as soon as it hits solid ground. That means that the train has to be going slowly enough to make the turn safely, but fast enough to keep momentum as it drags its load up the incline!

When I worked for the Harley-Davidson shop on the Strip (okay, so I still do) I would occasionally watch trains as they went past the back of our shop. Sometimes an especially long or heavy train would go by, slowly losing speed, until it was almost imperceptibly creeping up the incline. Then, as if that last little thread of traction finally broke, the cars would slam as they gave up their forward momentum. Then the train would creep slowly backward into Mandan and take another run at it. Sometimes they’d get a helpful push from the yard locomotive, other times they’d just try to carry a little more speed. This only happened on wet or snowy tracks, by the way.

I hope you enjoy this photo of the frost-glazed NP bridge and the railroad story. If you have the opportunity to watch a train come across in wet or snowy weather, watch and see if they make it on the first try!

Out at the boneyard

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In what was perhaps Jonathan’s first photographic trip with his daddy, I captured a photo of the boneyard out at the Mandan Airport on a cold, windy day. Obviously it wasn’t during the super-cold snap we’re experiencing this weekend; I wouldn’t take a baby out in such weather. I think this was about a week ago, when little PJ was visiting his cousins and Jonathan and I took mommy’s new SUV out for a spin.

As you can see by the horizon, it was a pretty bleak and dreary day. I figured that would be a good time to capture this pile of aircraft parts. I took some of the color out of the shot in Photoshop to help the effect.

I’m adding to a boneyard of sorts myself this weekend, one of computer parts. My system drive on my video/graphics workstation in my home office is full, and I have a new stompin’ video card to put in it. That involves prying my computer tower out of its niche in my work area, blowing dust out of it, removing the old system drive and video card, putting in the new ones, and installing EVERYTHING from scratch. Fun.

So far I’ve got the new hard drive and video card installed, a couple of cooling fans replaced as well, and everything blown dust-free. I’ve got Windows re-installed along with the networking essentials: Firefox, Thunderbird, and iTunes. Sunday I’ll start working on my application software.

I have a computer tower with room for lots of hard drives, and I just about have drives A: through Z: now! My workstation has three 200GB drives, one 300GB drive, a 40GB “temporary files” drive, two 300GB external drives, and a 250GB external drive. I have a big server tower in my basement that helps heat the laundry room, too. One can never have too much hard drive space! When working with video and high-resolution photos, most days it’s hard to have enough.

Buggies ‘n’ Blues 2007 – a few notable cars

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I took my boy to walk the Buggies ‘n’ Blues last weekend and peruse all the cars and trucks on display. He’s only five months old, so I’m not sure what he gets out of it, but he sure was rubbernecking the entire time! So I guess it was a worthwhile effort. I can’t wait until he gets old enough to appreciate this stuff, because I’m going to take him EVERYWHERE.

There were a lot of vehicles on display this year. Everything from unremarkable Hondas whose owner had taken the time to Krylon the brake calipers to painstakingly restored works of automotive art. There were even some “motorcycles” there as well. I’m not a car guy…I mean, I never met a Corvette I didn’t like, but I’d be the last one in the world to sink a ton of money into something with four wheels. High performance motorcycles, though? That’s another matter. Anyway, here are a few vehicles that caught my eye over the weekend:

This 1930 Ford Model A has been given a bit of a hooligan treatment, so I thought it had a lot of character. It isn’t bristling with chrome or a high-dollar paint job, but it looks like it would be a blast to get in and drive it like I stole it! Nice work.

I want a convertible for some reason, and this Fairlane really stood out. My wife thought it looked like fun as well, and I think she’s right. I think it’s that gigantic mechanical hard top that does it. Sweet!

The orange and cream color of this Pontiac instantly won our hearts, especially because I grew up scarfing Dreamsicles back in the Rocky Mountains in the 70’s. Do they still call them Dreamsicles? I think they quit doing that in the late 70’s. The paint job on this car made the difference for us; if it had been any other color, I don’t think we’d have stopped.

Despite years of ridiculing all things Chrysler, I must admit my respect for the Cuda. Especially one that’s Kawasaki Green! Mom didn’t say anything as my boy and I were magnetically drawn to the shiny green car, but this wasn’t just about paint. This is a mean machine that just happens to be green. Just like Kawasaki, it takes a bit of boldness to make something such a blazing, in-your-face color, and I like it. There are only three cars in the history of Chrysler that I’d even give a second glance, and this is at the top of the list. And it’s in my color, too!

There you have it. An extremely unscientific and pretty much random look at Buggies ‘n’ Blues. A guy could put up a whole website about the event; the lime snow cones we had, the cars which represent thousands of dollars and hundreds of restoration hours on the part of the passionate folks who brought them, or even just the idea of getting out and walking around Mandan for an afternoon. It was a blast, and I like to see that many people pour into Mandan for a weekend. I’m really glad we were able to attend, and we look forward to next year’s show!