HRPT Day 4 - A Day With All Sunshine Is Hot!

A Day With All Sunshine Is Hot!

Today's update is boring. Nothing broke. In the evenings tour participants walk around the motel parking lot looking at the the cars and telling lies about how fast their cars are. The consensus of parking lot wisdom is that I have a defective temperature sending sensor and that that is causing a false temperature gauge reading. The gauge ran pegged on Hot all day today but the car displayed none of the symptoms of a Hot motor. So, I'm more comfortable. Except for one time today when I glanced at the gauge and panicked. I had forgotten momentarily about the gauge problem.

We drove 310 miles today. We must have driven through 20 places on the highway in Alabama where tornados tore up the trees back in April. They've been cleaning up the damage, but it still looks bad.

Our venue today was the parking lot of the Tennessee Titan's football stadium. According to the TV weather tonight, Nashville set a new record high temperature of 96 this afternoon. It felt like 126 on the asphalt parking lot. The venue highlight was an Autocross course where tour participants did their best to drive very quickly around a circuit marked with orange cones. It was great fun to watch.

Tomorrow morning we're off for Indianapolis. As of tonight, we've driven 1600 miles since last Wednesday.

Tom

HRPT Day 3 - It Just Keeps Getting Better.

It Just Keeps Getting Better.

Last night we went to bed without 1st and 2nd gears. The plan was to get up this morning at daybreak and head for Gulf Shores and swap cars.

When I turned the ignition switch this morning, nothing happened. Upon closer examination we found that the back of the original 1951 switch had separated from the part the key slips into. Inside the switch are three contacts which are supported by small springs. Apparently, one of the springs had burned up from the heat of the electricity passing through the switch. 

Since I am traveling with McGiver, this was no big problem. After an hour, Harold "McGiver" had carved a metal post from an electrical butt splice part and substituted it for the missing part. Bobbie Sue cranked and we began a day of driving without 1st or second gear. Which is pretty good except when you have to start from a stop at a light or stop sign. I confess the rolling Hollywood style stop was used many times.

We made it to Gulf Shores and discovered that the belt squeal we had heard intermittently for the last couple of hours wasn't the power steering pump as we had guessed. It was our alternator on its last legs. We probably couldn't have driven another 50 miles before it locked up.

At the shop, we prepped the '84 Mustang GT350, "Sally John", for the road. She had not been driven on the road in a year so her air conditioner had to be charged and the fluids checked.

While we were in the process of charging the air conditioner, the Mustang stopped starting. After 30 minutes we found a broken wire to the coil. We re-attached it and now it starts just fine. We are now scratching our heads and wondering if this is cause of the intermittent starting problem we've seen over the past couple of years. We were really glad to find this at the shop before we hit the road. The shop is air conditioned and working on a car in the cool is much better than on the side of the road in the heat.

This trip is a shakedown trip for the Mustang. Although its restoration was completed more than four years ago. Its longest previous trip was less than 100 miles. Today we stopped along the way and added more Freon. It's finally cooling tburn up the engine? Is it just a gauge problem?he interior like it should. We're hoping that the temperature gauge is not working properly. It pegged Hot most of the trip. But, the radiator was cool enough you could put your hand on the cap and the burp jug did not indicate that any coolant was boiling over. I'm worried. Harold says don't worry. Its just a sick gauge. The suspense continues. Will we burn the motor up?

Tonight we are in Prattville, AL. We are two tired puppies. We've been on the road or swapping cars for over 13 hours today. We never made it to the venue site which was a drag racing track on the outskirts of Montgomery. We're off again tomorrow. The destination is Nashville.

Tom

HRPT Day 2 - Drive Till It Breaks Redux

Sunday, 5 June, Hot Rod Power Tour 2011 - “Drive Till It Breaks Redux” - We've been having a blast driving my ’51 Chevrolet. It has a really choppy exhaust and we've been running it unmuffled through the side pipes. I sounds awesome, like an 8 cylinder Harley. It is a favorite with the crowds; so Harold and I spend a lot of time grinning. The a/c went on the blink on the way to FL. Then we got it working again so we weren't dying in the heat. The Cocoa Beach, FL venue was great, lots of good seafood. 

Today, we stopped twice on the way to Valdosta, GA to help others who had broken down. We're carrying enough tools for a small garage. They didn't have the right tools.

Then at the last exit of the day, I reached for 1st gear on the off ramp and it wasn't there. I grabbed for 2nd and it wasn't there either. We jacked the '51 Chevy up in the parking lot, crawled under and checked for a broken shift linkage. But, the problem is inside the 4 Speed Muncie. So as we go to bed tonight we’ve driven 800 miles and have reverse, 3rd & 4^th gears. L

We can't make it to Detroit with only 3rd and 4th so we're up at daybreak tomorrow taking Bobbie Sue back to the garage and swap for my '84 Mustang - "Sally John". Then we are driving to Montgomery, AL to rejoin the Power Tour. J

I hope Detroit or Bust is just a slogan.

Tom

The Glamour of Grammar by Roy P. Clark

Today I finished reading The Glamour of Grammar by Roy P. Clark.

Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.  Period, comma, semi-colon, colon, dash, ellipse, parentheses, apostrophe, quotation mark, exclamation point, and question mark.  Dangling participle, and split infinitive.  Restrictive clause, non-restrictive clause.  Indicative mood, subjunctive mood, and interrogative mood.  Active and passive verbs.  Present, past and future tenses.  Sentence fragments, and simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.  Run-on sentences and comma splices.  So many rules.  So little memory.

I was never good at grammar.  My teachers recognized it.  When I was a freshman at Baylor, I tested into a Honors English program.  It was mostly luck.  The placement exam include an essay.  One of the topics we could write on was "Americans abroad ugly or beautiful?"  This was about the time that the novel The Ugly American was a best seller.  I had read the novel, and  I had lived in Japan the previous year.  I wrote an inspired essay drawing upon my personal knowledge.  They let me skip the basic, freshman English 101 and enroll in the Honors English 102 class.  Their mistake.  My professor, Mrs. Caskey, was a tough task master.  She demanded excellence.  One day in frustration she called me to her office and gave me her personal copy of a grammar book.  I don't remember its name but there was a drawing of Shakespeare on the front cover.  I used that book and made it through the course.  But the rules didn't stick.

The book is more than just rules.  It also speaks to what makes good writing and reading.

One of my favorite passages: "Writers must always remember that the sounds of language precede the symbols we use to represent those sounds on the page."

Clark's message to me is loud and clear.  Learning to write means more than premise, structure, characters and settings.  It's also means learning about the art of composing words, sentences and paragraphs.  Using language to make spoken music on paper.  I've got a very long way to go on this journey.

This is a good book.  I needed it.  I give the book three stars.

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Today I read Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane.

I read this book as a part of my Learn to Write by Reading Project.

I like reading Lehane.  He does a really good job blending narrative and dialogue.  He has a sense of humor, quirky characters and some unexpected twists.  Moonlight Mile is a good read.

Out Out Damned Plot!

Today I finished a week's worth of developing an outline for Bob Lee Rankin, the new official Bon Secour Protagonist and weaving it into the existing storylines of Matt Frazier, the new official Antagonist.

In my original story, Bob Lee was simply the most evil villain I could imagine.  Unfortunately, for Matt, my original protatonist, he was too much fun.  So, out went Matt's story and in comes Bob Lee's.  This involved creating fictive world for Bob Lee not just an interesting backstory.

Bob Lee's "A" story was fairly easy if his goal is to become a prosperous and powerful from smuggling.  The challenge was to come up with the obstacles that would prevent him from attaining his goal too easily.

Bob Lee's "B" story is the story of his fatal flaw.  His denial of culpability.  Something that will not be too difficult to show.

Bob Lee's relationship "C" story has been the most fun to develop.  I got as much fun twisting this storyline up as I did creating his "evil" character earlier.  The readers of Bon Secour are going to love this "C" story.

And with the adoption of my new theme and an effort to make Matt less boring, drastic changes were required in Matt's "C" relationship story and a new "B" internal (fatal flaw) story was created.

Writers Group Redux

Today, I took Chapters 2, 3 and 4 to the CITE Writers Group for critique.

I have really been motivated to write and since last week's meeting.  I finished drafting the next three chapters since last week's meeting.

We never got to my new chapters.  Instead, the Group wanted to work on Chapter 1 again. 

During the past week I had asked my friend, Jim, who is currently working in Iraq as a contractor, for help with a couple of military speak questions.  My edit of Chapter 1 incorporated those ideas and I shared the revised Chapter 1 with the Group. 

Jim also told me in response to a question that he wasn't hooked until the action on page two.  So, the Group told me to cut the first page of the story and start where Jim was hooked.

I lost my fantastic first paragraph at last week's meeting.  This week I lost the rest of the first page.  If they critique Chapter 1 again next week, I'll probably lose the first chapter.  Good grief! 

My problem is that I still don't like my opening hook, but, I don't know how to make it better.

The remainder of the group's comments and suggestions were excellent.  I am learning a lot from their input.  They just may make a writer out of me yet.

I am writing with very short sentences.  One of their suggestions involves combining short sentences to create longer more complicated sentences.  And they talked about literary techniques I've never heard or read of.  I complained that they were going to have me writing a literary thriller.  They responded what's wrong with that.  What did you mean to write?

I just wanted to write a thriller.  Period.