I'm stoked! This May 1st and 2nd, there's going to be an AHRMA (American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association) National event at Portland International Raceway. Check out the event site: www.portlandahrmaclassic.com

In addition to roadracing (that's what I'm the most wound up about...), there's going to be trials, motocross, a bike show, and ascooter exhibition race(!) and a few other things...

Should be a heck of a lot of fun. Here's hoping the weather cooperates, people realize it's going on, and Portland becomes a fixture on the AHRMA schedule!

Thou shalt not use junkyard parts on any job with a fairly high pain-in-the-ass/parts-cost ratio.

Seriously. I finally got around to installing a new heater core in the 325is on Sunday. In that car it's not as bad as some other cars, but with my futzing around and trying to figure out if there was a good way to avoid dumping coolant all over the interior, it took a couple of hours. But when I pulled the old one out, even as I rushed to get it outside the car and the coolant ports pointed a direction that didn't have it gushing propylene glycol all over my floor mats, I saw the telltale blue paint pen indicating that this heater core had come from a junkyard. BMW heater cores aren't dirt cheap, running a bit over $125 for this car, but if the previous owner or whoever worked on this car had installed a new heater core last time, I would've gotten back a few precious weekend hours, not to mention having to buy the core all over again...

A small price for them to have paid for my happiness, methinks.

I had three significant car-related items I hoped to get to today, and they all panned out. Unheard of.

1. I wanted to get my car inspected for the season tech program for the Oregon Region SCCA solo season.
2. I wanted to make it to opening day at PIR, where they were doing instructor-driven laps of the track for a donation to Friends of PIR.
3. I wanted to install the replacement upper spring perches Trent sent me so I could stop the drag on my steering.

I can't believe they all panned out.

Regarding season tech, I forgot my helmet, so I'll have to have that stickered at the first Portland autocross, and they asked me to add some insulation to my battery's positive terminal, but that's fine. Now I can sleep for another ten minutes on autocross days, or at least be somewhat less discombobulated getting ready for my first run. Getting actual magnetic numbers is also going to reduce my stress level, as mucking about with printed numbers on paper taped in the rear windows never goes all that smoothly.

The ride around PIR was great. I got three laps in the passenger seat of the same type of car as mine, a mid-'80s BMW 3-series. But this one was gutted of interior items for weight, and the "surprise under the hood" the owner mentioned became clear as soon as we pulled off, as the serious thrust was accompanied by the whistle of a turbocharger. It was also neat to see how an instructor gets around PIR after having done one driving school there myself.

The spring perches, I'm getting quicker at swapping. I've had my newly obtained camber plates out twice since installing them, but it's still a bit of a chore. I was delighted that perches got rid of the drag I had going, and now the steering centers much more nicely, and has better feel. Having any drag on the steering is a Bad Bad Thing. Not nice, not safe. This is a short-term thing, as I'm switching to smaller-diameter coil springs shortly to make room for even more negative camber, but I think I probably won't have time to make those modifications until after the Icebreaker autocross in Eugene.

I even managed to pull the interior far enough apart to confirm what kind of heater core I've got so I could order a replacement. Getting the driver's side window regulator fixed a couple of weeks ago didn't do much to reduce the interior condensation, and there have been some other indicators that my heater core's dead, so here we go...

It was a satisfying day, and now R's made piroshkis, we've watched some Monty Python, and I'm enjoying a bottle of BrewDog's Chaos Theory. Lovely.

I was looking for a movie filmed during the 1976 running of the Paris Roubaix bicycle race, and this is what Netflix came up with.

I got by for a long time on having written the code for this blog myself (no applause, please: After a few years of doing this on a regular basis, I'm only embarrassed when I revisit it and see how little I knew). As a result, the miscellaneous spam-bots out there didn't seem to know how to spam my comments.

That day is over. I don't know whether it's more adaptable automation or crowdsourcing of spam operations, but the upshot is that I just spent some very tedious time deleting several thousand spam comments, and even had a moment where I realized I needed to shut down comments before I went any further, as they were being entered as fast as I was deleting them...

So, until I get a couple of hours to ponder how I want to secure/authorize/authenticate comments, that feature is shut down. I know you were all just waiting for me to post something so you could all comment on it...

In the name of all that is cheesy and delicious, don't ever get Fred Meyer's fake White Castle burgers...

To my motorcycling delight, bridges (like the Broadway bridge here in Portland) are having their steel grate decks replaced with textured board of some variety.

How about if progress marches on to help cyclists with trolley/metro tracks at intersections? I have it in my head that light rail type trains don't really make firm contact with the whole width of the rail. What if the top surfaces of the rails away from the groove were coated with a rubber mat, or even something a bit like a stiff weatherstripping of the hollow, flexible variety. Perhaps intersections could even be covered in hard rubber/composition mats that had slits where the railcars run, and tracks a few inches below that; the railcars would go through the slots like car windows against seals, and the slits would seal back up after the railcars pass, leaving a groove but nothing as dicey as the slick, slick steel rails...

And spatially, too.

It's 6:00 pm where I got up this morning at 5:30. It's 1:00 pm where I am now. And it's 10:00 am where I'll be when I land a while after 9:00 pm.

I'm not at all what you could call a film buff. And I'm not generally interested in celebrity births or deaths. Particularly births. What has this person done? I think the last famous death that had any impact on me was Douglas Adams. After all, however much we might know the names and faces, these people aren't generally part of our lives in any meaningful way.

And I guess that's why I'm struck by John Hughes' death, even though I knew less about him outside of his work than I've heard about lot of people. I'd never seen an interview with him, never heard a quote that I recall. But of my favorite movies, the ones which I always enjoy, and which especially resonated with me when I was a bit younger (and perhaps more resonant), a disproportionate number are movies that John Hughes wrote, directed, produced, or some combination thereof.

Which I think makes me the same as millions of other folks who were finishing high school as the '80s became the '90s. And for so many of us, there are so many really evocative scenes, moments, and quotes in these films. I'd bet a lot of money that I'm not the only one who, hanging out with friends, geeking out on some shared interest, described our little group as "...social. Demented and sad, but social." I'm going to fight the natural tendency to run down a bunch of quotes in hopes of hitting your favorite, but I suspect you know what I mean.

I still don't really know much about John Hughes the person. And I think John Hughes the director and I had taken separate paths well before now. That is, I don't think I'm bummed because I thought he was going to make another movie I liked as much as his earlier stuff. I guess if there's something that's sticking in my head, it's that I hope that this person who I know so little about, and who managed to provide for us these touchstones of a generation (or so), had a full and happy life by his own measure.

It felt weird to write that, but I think it's true. I think perhaps it's because I never had news about John Hughes rammed down my throat that I can care at all about the person. I guess even though we all know the name, he wasn't a normal celebrity. He was a guy who made a bunch of really neat stuff, with enough character that one feels that if he hadn't done it that there might have been a void where his films should have been. I have to hope that paid off for him as well as us.

It's funny to me that it seems when reading a bit of biographical information about somebody who's gone on to do interesting things, one tends to attribute all the steps along the way to some purposefulness and/or plan.

I was just reading the Wikipedia entry on Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, and thinking what an interesting choice it was to go to Israel for a year, then return to England to study drama at the University of Birmingham.

Then it hit me. I know this sort of story. That wasn't an interesting decision as part of a laser-guided master plan to achieve fame and fortune. Like as not, it was a symptom of spectacular aimlessness. Or not. I can't know for sure, but the part that struck me was just that until I had that moment, I was reading the bio as though a 20-year-old Simon Le Bon was just working along, ticking off the tasks needed to become the front man for Duran Duran and a spectacularly famous rock star, as if he had a magic to-do list.

I think the reality's probably much more interesting, as well as less demoralizing for those of us without a copy of The Plan.

... one of those weeks where you just suffered high-school-grade awkwardness at every turn? Where not only did you not know how to accept a compliment, you couldn't even fathom how to accept a statement about the weather? Where you couldn't even introduce people to one another on one of those delightful occasions that you actually remembered everyone's names?

D'oh.

Snuff. I can't possibly live without Snuff. They rock, they roll, they have hilarious and poignant insights into feeling like a drunken loser in a remarkably succinct package.

In any case, you can't go too far wrong with Snuff

It's not the sort of thing you can usefully ask most people. But major kudos to Dr. Science, who, even though he was out of town, was able to lend me a bottle of CO₂, to get me rolling with the welder even though I failed to shut off the gas the last time I had it out. Somehow (ahem), over last ~four months, all the CO₂/Argon mix I had managed to escape through the welder's valve, leaving me attempting "MMMMMM" welding, instead of "MIG" welding, since Metal was still in effect, but the Inert Gas was nowhere to be found.

Of course, that kindness can't undo the damage I've just inflicted on another part of the 325is' seat which I'd just welded back together. Cross your fingers for me. I'm going to try doing delicate work with vice grips, which can hardly be called an auspicious beginning to the end of the seat repair project...

This, I thought, was a brilliant summary, related in a tone of celebration. It was provided by Trent when I texted to tell him that the in-tank transfer fuel pump on the 325is was making no sound and drawing no current.

This underscores one of those wacky things about playing with cars... And perhaps something to keep in mind when you're getting a car fixed. In some cases, the fix is the labor-intensive part. If you need your engine rebuilt, that's going to use a lot of time. On the other hand, if your car (like mine recently) is performing a sporadic hiccup which isn't obviously attributable to a particular item, then the big time-eater is diagnosis. In some cases, the actual fix can be trivial. But I've spent dozens of hours (multiply that by $90/hr if you're having a shop do it) trying to locate problems. Keep that in mind the next time you go to a shop and are hoping they can "just figure out what it is." It may be that they can, but if it's something a little tricky, don't be too put off if they can't do it on the spot or cheap/free.

In my case, it's going to be a relatively easy and neither cheap nor end-of-the world-costly fix. I need a new fuel pump, at about $190. Of course, Murphy is never too far away, and I'll only be certain this is my problem when I replace the pump and the car behaves itself.

In any case, I'm just super-excited about the hope that this week-long mysterious (stumble on acceleration) problem will hopefully be remedied in time to try out my new race tires at the first Portland autocross on the 22nd... Woohoo! [For those who are playing along diagnostically, and wondering how a completely dead fuel pump could result in only a driveability issue, this car has two fuel pumps, and it's the low-pressure in-tank pump that's failed. I guess the high-pressure pump's been able to draw enough fuel to keep it running, sort-of.]