yesterday, again

today we spent most of the day in boston again. we went up for tess to have her hair done, and also to get a new credit card. we spent the first part of the morning getting to know the best american tradition of yard sales. this is the most american thing, very prevailant in new england, and right about this time of year every weekend is a crazy fest of poeple cleaning out all their junk and putting it on their lawns so that maybe other poeple can buy them and perhaps use them or even better if they can in turn sell them in a yard sale next year. there is everything and any thing to be sold and bought from clothes to tables and computers and whathav u's... its not a bad idea to know what you are looking for and having a keen eye for knowing what might be a good investement, buy for cheap then sell on ebay... or buy somthing you would have bought in a store or on ebay for less at a yard sale. there are hundreds in each town, but mostly they are selling crap or stuff you dont really want any way for the same reasons they probably dont want them in the first place. like VCRs or old TVs broken tables and shelves. on the other hand you might find a cheapo wireless router and maybe some cool stuff you dont mind spending a dollar on... it is addictive. it used to be that i would go out shooting in the early morning and cruise the yard sales of the east side after shooting mostly finding poeple have packed up or there is nothing cool left. this time though this was the main thing i went out for... i found cool stuff, and couldent help noticing that stuff was much much cheaper in RI then it is in boston for the same used junk crap... while tess got her hair done i drive around JP and browsed 20 or so yard sales... not much gained but nothing lost, except for fuel. i keep seeing all these cars with bug v6 and more then that ridiculous V8 engines that make no power but use insane amounts of fuel. this came after jay bought a new van, with the biggest possible engine, its a 6.8L V8 regualr gasoline engine. and its automatic of course. i spent about 3 hours on fords and others websites tying to find the posted fuel economy for this van or this engine in any other car. when they are selling the new ford connect (here its called the transit connect) a small european ford model, only wiht a 2L gasoline engine, they have a huge banner that sais 30MPG and there is a little line in the engine specs "fuel economy - 30MPG", but there is no such banner for the van, nor is there the "fuel economy" line in  the specs, i guess its just not very economic at all. and after all they simply do not post the fuel consumption levels for any of these big engines. the theory being that if you are dumb enough to buy such a car you most likely dont give a shit about what kind of millage it gets in the city, or that you might an american supporting the "foreign fuel dependency", american big oil money companies and the rest of the american industry based and rooted on crudeness uselessness non efficient wasteful economy.
i see all those tail pipes with little droplets of fumes coming out of them on the highway and hear the gargelling growel of those stupid cars and think, who much fucking fuel is used and all i can see is clear smooth liquidy slooshy gasoline flowing endlessly through some pipe spraying out in to the air filling buckets and gas tanks smelling the alcohol in the gasoline and seeing it corrode everything. its insane. toyota has got it right - they make an all american made for american market only car with a stupid non turbo V8 6L automatic. it used to be that japanese cars had the worst fuel efficiency compared to froogle european cars, but compared to american card Japanese cars are incredible. so think how a turbo diesel 4 cylinder engine would compare to one of these american cars? it cant really there are not enough zeros in the equation to make it a worth while comparison.

'65 Chevy Corvair (stock image)

at one of the yard sales there was an old guy cleaning a chevy Corvair, a strange car, with one of the smartest ideas of engine placement ever, it has a rear mounted air cooled engine, that earned it the distinguished honor of being the subject mater of the great ralph nader book "Unsafe at any speed" as this car had no breaks no suspension and that along the rear mounted air cooled engine meant it overheated and tended to crash and burn, having no safety features like seatbelts or heard rests poeple would most liekly die when driving this car. they also made a Turbo charged version that was even worse. of course after a few years they fixed all the problems, but it was all dead in the public eye thanks to nader. even though they fixed the car in the end nader did show that the biggest car maker int he world would sell a car that goes on the public road with regualr poeple in it, that is so unbelievably dangerous. it did little good for GM had no effect on the future of car making as they re did all the wrong doings of the corvair on other cars later, and even today, and ultimatly made nader a persona non Grata at chevy vorvair club meetings. i was considering voting for him. the guy had alot of rage against nader for this book, i guess they all remember it as an awfull thing, he aso pointed out that his midel a 65 is better then what the book sais since they had improved it buy then and so on but that nader is full of shit. well.he drives it. he sais it over heats but handles "OK". he would recommend the turbo engine at all as that might not be a good idea for health reasons (yours, not the car). i guess he does know this is not the greatest of them all after all. i took a picture of him, i will post it when i can develop c-41.

Seekonk Speedway, Rt 6, Seekonk MA april 2009

i wanted to go to the Seekonk speedway to see the new racing season, but we dident make in time. ill go next week. we ended up being so tierd and just watched top gum and went to sleep.