You and your iPhone might need to enter a 12-step program if, during one of the rare occasions in which you are listening to FM radio, you hear Rock ‘N Roll All Night by KISS.
That’s not really a problem until your first thought is to “share” the song on Facebook. And then you remember you can’t because you are listening to the radio instead of listening to Spotify on your phone.
I both worship and curse you, Steve Jobs.
This mid-1970s Ford Gran Torino was spotted Sunday in downtown Muscatine.
Some things will always catch my eye. And one of the things on that list is the mid 1970s-era Ford Gran Torino — the car made famous by the TV show, “Starsky & Hutch.”
Replica of the Gran Torino driven by TV cops Starsky and Hutch.
This partially explains why the Gran Torino pictured above caught my eye when I saw it parked Sunday afternoon in downtown Muscatine. It’s not that I was a huge fan of the TV show, which was broadcast from 1975-79 on ABC. It starred Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul as David Michael Starsky and Kenneth ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, respectively.
Nope. The real story is that the second car I ever owned — with my younger brothers, Scott and Doug — was a 1976 red Ford Torino. (Note: I had to share this car with my brothers because my parents were somewhat stingy and also really smart; they knew better than to let us each have a car. The first car Scott and I owned, for those of you keeping score, was a really ugly 1972 Ford Galaxy 500 that we bought from a neighbor for $300. He had kept it in his barn, but hey, it was a car.)
This was not my car, but it looked a little like this.
Sadly, I don’t have any photos of the Torino. If either of my brothers have one and share it with me, I’ll post it here later. But it looked sort of like this one when we bought it. This would have been in 1983 or ’84. We bought the car from a couple in Des Moines. They were about to have a baby and wanted to sell the Torino before getting the new minivan they had ordered. We paid them $1,800 for the car, which had about 50,000 miles.
It also had the quarter vinyl top like the one on the car shown here. But the vinyl was ripped and shredded. It looked like someone had dragged a tomcat across it. We wanted a hardtop anyway, so the first thing we did, once we got the money, was take the car to an auto-body shop in our hometown and BEG the owner to take off the vinyl, fill in hundreds of tiny holes and repaint the roof. It looked great when he was done.
He was a good guy and he made us a good deal on four used aluminum wheels. As I recall, we paid him $100 for the four of them. We took those wheels home, polished ‘em up and saved some more money until we could buy four new Kelly Springfield tires. We topped it all off with one of the better car stereo systems you could buy in 1984 and a dual straight-pipe exhaust with Cherry Bomb/Glass Pack mufflers. Aw, now there’s a sound. When I hear it, I’m instantly 17 again. (You have to click on the link to give it a listen. I insist. We’ll wait for you to come back.)
The Bronco
Some of my friends had newer — and, I suppose, — nicer cars. And there were faster cars. Our Torino had a Ford 351 V8 Cleveland motor that Scott built and an automatic transmission. But you could easily top 100 mph in it and we all did. More than once.
But none of my friends’ cars were any cooler than that Torino. I wish I still had it, which is one of the reasons for this blog post. On my Facebook page Sunday, I posted the photo above of the car I spotted in Muscatine. A friend asked if I was planning to trade in my old Ford Bronco.
All I could say is: I wish.
The problem is, I don’t know whatever happened to the Torino. It’s probably in a junkyard somewhere. When I left for college, my brothers got to keep the Torino, and they more or less ran the wheels off of it. None of us were old enough to know better even though we all thought we knew everything.
And I bought a 1974 AMC Matador for $600 from a widow in my hometown. It was actually a faster car than the Ford even though it looked funny. Sadly, I didn’t keep it either. Nor do I have any photos of it. But the Matador is a story for another day.
This was not my Matador, but it looked kind of like this — on a good day.
This phone booth in New Boston, Ill., came in handy Sunday at the end of a 20-mile windy ride from Muscatine. Of course the picture was taken with an iPhone, which has helped make phone booths obsolete.
After awhile, these blog posts tend to take on the feel of public journal entries. And I’m OK with that, because a lot happens in my life that I don’t write about here.
Such has been the case in the past few days. Friends and others have said things — sometimes just simple offhanded comments — that have really made me think. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve processed it all yet, but it ought to make for some interesting blogging if — and when — I figure it all out.
In the meantime, Dear Diary, it’s time to catch up on the simpler stuff.
A week or so ago, I wrote about some ongoing efforts at self-improvement that included scheduling visits with my doctor and dentist. Well, I’m supposed to meet with Nate Olson, my new dentist, on May 28, unless he can get me in sooner.
But I met Friday with Dr. Mike Maharry, who, for the purposes of full disclosure, is a Facebook friend and reader of this blog. Over the past few years, I’ve come to think of Mike as a friend — Facebook or otherwise. It made for an interesting and, I thought, pretty honest visit. (For what it’s worth, it gives me confidence for the dental appointment because Nate is someone else I’ve come to regard as a friend.)
But let me get to the point: I was worried mainly about my blood pressure and other issues I thought might be related. On Friday anyway, my BP was 134/90, which, maybe isn’t the greatest, but it could have been worse, too. According to the doctor, it wasn’t bad enough to put me on BP medication. At least not for now.
Instead he:
As I mentioned, he sometimes reads this blog, so he said: “I know you’re a reader. You might benefit from reading this.”
It’s too soon to tell, but so far I think the book teaches a valuable lesson — one I’d have to agree with May is astonishingly simple, but definitely isn’t easy.
I’ll keep you posted, Dear Diary.
More follow-ups: Nearly two months ago, I blogged about my goal to start lifting heavier weights at the Muscatine Community Y. Then, I farted around for the better part of a month before I got serious. But in the past month, I’ve been a regular. And Saturday, I did the same workout I did on March 12, when I really started hitting the weights at the Y.
Even I have to admit I’ve made some progress — enough to keep me coming back to the weight room.
This particular workout consists of three sets of five repetitions of the bench press, squats and dead lifts. The total amounts I lifted for each were:
Lift March 30 March 12 % increase
Squats 735 lbs 575 lbs 27.8
Bench press 635 lbs 525 lbs 20.9
Dead lift 675 lbs 450 lbs 50
And that brings me to this …
Saturday, I thought it was pretty cool to lift heavier-for-me weights. I was especially pleased with my efforts in the Muscatine Community Y’s Kevin Garrison Squat Rack and at the dead lifts.
But then came Sunday and my first real outdoor bike ride of the year — a 20-miler to New Boston, Ill., in some challenging 20-25 mph crosswinds. It gives me just a little apprehension to realize RAGBRAI is only 111 days away.
Yikes. Someone, please pass the Icy Hot and the ibuprofen. I’ve got to get ready to ride again and soon.
A sure sign that summer is finally just around the corner. This was taken Friday at The Brew in Muscatine. I didn’t get to ride with them, but I did show up in time to take the photo.
Please note, I neither framed the wall nor put up the drywall. I merely helped carry the supplies.
Stuart Smalley crept on to my Facebook page today.
Stuart Smalley
For too many reasons to list here, I’ve been dealing with more than the normal volume of critical inner thoughts. So, I figured, some Stuart-like positive self-affirmation couldn’t hurt and I posted this on my Facebook page:
Having said all of the above, here is my positive thought for the day: My new job at MCSA appears to be the right fit for me at the right time because it utilizes the only skills at which I have excelled through the years, including:
There you go, Stuart — my short list of positive thoughts. May they help to silence the negative inner critics — at least for a while.
