We’ve all had days like this, haven’t we? Everybody makes mistakes, it’s just that the guys with the CDLs (Commercial Drivers Licenses) that tend to make the really big ones. After all, they drive the biggest vehicles!
There are lots of other engines, planes, and memorabilia to explore at this museum, including a library of aviation books and periodicals. There are plenty of aviation geeks on hand, too. I use the term “geek” in a good sense…there are motorcycle geeks, photography or video geeks, and many other kinds of geeks. We can spot each other a mile away. Geeks tend to know as much about their field of interest as an avid sports fan, and can rattle off airplane facts as if they were quarterback stats.
I’ve wanted to visit this museum forever and never took the opportunity. So, when the TV station I was working for got me a hotel room for an extra night, we ran around Fargo and played for an extra day. Yes, I took my wife with so she could hang out with other TV wives while we were broadcasting college football. That made the weekend into a paid vacation of sorts!
Of course, even driving around in the truck with my open camera bag on the passenger seat can’t prepare me for every picture. There was a time in Sibley Park where I glanced over to see an owl taking off with a snake in its claws…there just wasn’t time to get the camera steady before he’d flown off. The same situation happened with this Italian machine.
I bet that local motorheads all miss Perman’s for a variety of reasons, the most recent of which is the fact that they sold VP race fuel right at the pump. A guy could whip into the station with a trailer of bikes and gas ’em up right there, fill the spare cans, and put normal gas into the truck as well. And it was at a very nice price…of course, even regular street gas was priced pretty low the last time I was able to fill up at Perman’s.
Nowadays the options for race fuel are more expensive, and a guy can’t do it himself. I don’t know of many other store operators that would be willing to allocate one of their tanks to VP, Power 110, or the Turbo Blue that I use. The next nearest that comes to mind is in Brainerd, right outside the track.
I have a friend / former coworker who’s an old motorhead from way back… I suppose I can say the 1960’s if I don’t mention his name. He remembers the station from a long time back as well. While I don’t have the long chain of memories of the place, I share his sentiment in missing an establishment that provided a service for us performance-minded types that few would.
Say…if there are any Wannenbergs reading this post… does it give you any ideas? Please?
Anyway, they have a couple of trucks hold highway traffic from either direction, inch this thing across the road, and pull the mats back over to the side until they’re needed again. The whole process takes several minutes…a machine that large still moves very slowly.
I would have loved to have seen them take the big dragline crane across Highway 83 when they did that a while back…those don’t have tracks, they have giant feet that “walk” from one place to the next. Oh, and the cord is a lot bigger, too! They have a tractor dedicated just to tugging that cord around behind the dragline as it moves. Someday I’ll get pictures of that, too.
Riding to work always seems so easy to do, yet so hard to get motivated for. I like to run around with my camera or run errands after work, so it’s better to be on my motorcycle or in my truck. But that bike isn’t riding itself; I’ve gotta start doing it. I’ve got just under 2,800 miles on this bike and a little over 2,000 on my other one…let’s just say that under a hundred of those miles have taken place in the past year. So perhaps riding to work would help me get back in the swing of things!
The week is organized by Activate Bismarck-Mandan, a program run by the YMCA. You can find read their announcement and browse their website by clicking here.
In the past I’m sure you’ve seen my posts about the 4×4 Mercedes :
and of course, the 4×4 Firebird :
And the acquisition of the Cadillac photo completes the trifecta. Or the hat trick, if you happen to be a UND Fighting Sioux Hockey fan. I know we’ve got a bunch of those out there!
On my way to east Bismarck on Wednesday, I came over the hill by the Coke plant to see the whole area awash in a foggy haze. I thought it truly was fog until I saw this:
The DMVW railroad was warming up a couple of diesel-electric locomotives. There were actually two pairs but only this pair was smoking. I wonder who checked the oil? You could check it by sticking a finger in the air. It smelled like it was synthetic, too…that can’t be cheap. Or environmentally friendly!