5/8/09

Did I mention Barbara is coming home? For those with short attention spans, Barbara is a 1978 Datsun B-210 I had for a while and sold to Kevin’s daughter’s boyfriend. Well, the clutch has failed and he doesn’t want to do the work to replace it so he’s going to buy one of Kevin’s trucks and sell Barbara back to me. Tomorrow, John and I are meeting Kevin at Lexutech, where the car currently waits, and we’re going to slap a clutch in it. Wednesday John and I stopped by to have a look at it and it is as I remembered. I'm kind of excited about it. From there we went to the shop and rounded up a flywheel, the lightened one from the engine currently residing twixt the frame rails of Shichi, a dog-leg five-speed, and the zorst system from George. The plan was to swap in the five-speed while doing the clutch and look at using the zorst to replace the rusted-out system on the car now. However, I spoke to Ray yesterday and when I told him of Barbara’s return to the fold, he asked if it were for sale. I said it might be. He wants to come to DLR after we have it going so he can test drive it and see if he might be interested. Of course if it is going away I don’t really want to put the five-speed in it. I also told him it needed an exhaust system immediately so he’s already primed to go have one built. If I keep it, it is getting a 45° bend after the header and will have one of those stainless Supertrapps poking out in front of the rear tire. Oh yeah, if I keep it she’ll get that single DCOE and the Nissan Motorsports header as well. I'm also thinking I'll finally build that faux rally car I've always wanted. I'm thinking we’ll put spacers between the strut tops and chassis to raise the front a bit, along with losing the megaton bumpers, and then I'll use shackles to raise the rear to match. John has a set of 15” Kumho rally tires we’ll put on either the aluminum or steel Versa wheels we have. I'd prefer the aluminum but Gregg has them in storage somewhere, if he hasn’t sold them for beer money. Ok, the more I think about it the less I want to sell that car. I think I might go ahead and install the five-speed and ask $1,000.00 for the car. I still owe Ray $250.00 from all that stuff I bought from him some time ago so if he’s willing to drop $750.00 for Barbara, I guess I'll reluctantly let her go. We’ll see. So, after we stopped in to visit Barbara Wednesday, John and I headed to the shop. Wait, I told y'all that already. So, after John and I rounded up the stuff to work on Barbara, we also packed up three bags of trash. Oh, Pat joined us as well and helped. Gregg called while we were working but I let it go to voice mail because my hands were full. When I tried to dump the bags in the dumpster, I found there were locks on it. I took the bags back to the shop again and we headed out. I had a hankerin’ for the cheese sauce at Campo Verde and suggested, nay, insisted on that for dinner. The plan we came up with was to drop Fifi off at Pancho’s and carpool to CV in Pat’s Jeep. I returned Gregg’s call while driving to Pancho’s. I hopped in the Jeep and proceeded to pull every muscle in my neck and shoulder trying to roll up the window through the baby seat. John or Pat, one of them, suggested we could just eat at Pancho’s but I hollered through my pain, “NO! I WANT THE CHEESE SAUCE AT CAMPO VERDE!” so we headed to Arlington. Eventually I finished talking to Gregg and hung up. We ate our Meskin food but they had already closed the kitchen so we could only have one bowl of cheese sauce each. I wasn’t too happy about that but by ordering fajitas so late I did get about a double portion of meat so it worked out ok. John and I paid our portions of the bill and went outside to wait for Pat. I began to walk over to the Hookah store to look through the window at the water pipes and noticed a little middle-eastern lady backing her van out of the parking spot in front of the store. When she saw us headed towards her store, she parked again and got out. “You smoke hookah?” she asked. I replied, “It has been a few years. I just wanted to look at what you had.” She tried to open the store up for me. “No no no!” I said. “Don’t open up again.” “Come in come in!” she said. John finally told her we’d come back and convinced her. She really wanted to make a sale I think. They did have some really cool looking pipes in there. Oh yeah, there were some nice looking bongs as well. Yes, I know that a hookah is technically a bong, but… well… ok, I have no defense for claiming they are anything different. Shut up. I probably wouldn’t use it for smoking anything but tobacco, very often. I'll probably go back and peruse her selection someday, especially if I get another cheese sauce craving. Well, I think I've just about had all I can take of this place for the week. I'll let y'all know what happened with Barbara, Ray, Shichi, John, Pat, the hookah lady, and any one or thing else I happen across this weekend. Toodles.