4.26.08

Today is an exciting day. My collection of "Toys" has just grown a little bit. As most of you know, when my Scion was being fixed after my accident I was left with my Harley as my only form of transportation (as the Porsche needs a good going over before being put on the road again). This got me thinking, "I really need another drivable car." So I was thinking it sure would be handy to have a truck or 4wd vehicle. So I have been keeping my eyes out for something. Then just such a vehicle caught my attention on eBay. And so I did a little research and decided this would fit the bill just right as it is both a truck and has probably the best 4wd on the planet. So here it is my new "Toy", a 1948 Willys Jeep Truck.

It has a freshly rebuilt engine, new clutch, and a fully working 4wd with low and medium speed gears. I say medium as it has a top speed of , in said medium speed gears. It doesn't have a bed on it, which I kind of prefer at the moment. My intention is to build a nice wood stake side flatbed for it.

Now I know many of you are probably thinking, "where are you going to put this new truck." Well I just finished taking care of that. I have reorganized my garage and moved the Porsche to the front of the garage as it is extra deep and opened up the second stall for it.

Now, I am not going to deny that it will be a tight fit in there along with my other "toys". But it will be a welcome addition to the garage.

My other excuse for getting this truck is I figure I need to have a parts truck for when I start restoring the Porsche. And don't worry I have not forgotten about the Porsche. I started it up today to attempt to move it to it's new home in my garage. It started right up with no problem. But unfortunately when I pressed in the clutch it went to the floor with little resistance. And sure enough the clutch didn't disengage. So it had to find it's new home by my power alone, which only took 2 hours. I will make sure to provide updates after I pick up the truck and build the bed for it.

4.06.08

Life has been extremely busy lately. Many events have happened since my last post that deserve comment. There are a few good and one bad. So I have decided to start with the bad.

A few weeks back I went up to Michigan for a visit and got stuck in a winter storm and got in a fender bender. Or should I say bumper remover. I was driving through the freezing rain/snow, and the roads were horrible. There were cars in the ditch everywhere. As I was going by a car that had slid off the road into the median it started to come out and into my lane. So I attempted to slow down and move to the right to avoid contact with this car. I succeeded in avoiding them only to have my car spin and slide towards the shoulder where I semi-truck was parked helping another car that was in the ditch. As luck would have it my bumper just caught it's front bumper and tore both bumpers off. My car was drivable and I did some zip tie repairs in Holland to get it back to Peoria.

It took a week in the body shop to get my car repaired. So for that week I used the Harley as my only form of transportation. Alot of people thought I was nuts, but it got the job done and I didn't freeze all that much. And I managed to stay dry.

But lets move on to some better news. My flight lessons are progressing quite well. I had my first solo flight on March 20th. It was uneventful, which is a good thing. My first solo consisted of doing a normal takeoff, two touch and gos, and one full stop landing. It was a nice day and I managed to not crash. The most exciting part of the flight was how quickly the plane became airborne. When you are flying in such a small plane eliminating the weight of one person makes a huge difference in the performance of the plane.

I am now working on my cross country flights. Yesterday I flew from Peoria, IL to Champagne, IL and back. The flight took about 2 hours. The flight was done the old fashioned way of plotting it out and aviation charts factoring in wind speeds and determining the magnetic heading to fly to arrive at the location you intend to fly to. So on the way you constantly look out the window to try and identify landmarks to make sure you are on course. If it wasn't for the radio communication with the airports on the way, it well could have been like flying back in the 1940s. It is a very valuable skill to have in case the plane's radios and navigation equipment stop working.

Now that I am flying I have been watching many videos on YouTube of planes I would like to fly. And yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting video of a gentleman from Great Britain who has flown a old WWII Piper J-3 L-4 cub, named "Liberty Girl", all over the world. He is quite the character, and is very entertaining to watch his videos. Unfortunately on a recent flight from Florida to the Bahamas his engine failed and he ditched in the sea. He was rescued by the Coast Guard. But to listen to him explain the ordeal is very entertaining. He currently is back in the Caribbean trying to find Liberty Girl in a Piper Pacer. He had filled the tail of Liberty Girl with packing peanuts just incase it had to be ditched in the water. So he is hoping to find her still floating around somewhere or washed up on some beach. You can watch the videos on his website kirkflyingvet.com. Here is a video of him on his flight from the UK to Australia.

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