I played golf for a few years in my youth. At one time or another I played most of the courses around the Guelph area, but my go-to place was Victoria Road West, owned by the DeCorso family. One of the DeCorso kids actually played some minor pro golf for a few years; I played a round with him when he was about thirteen. He beat me handily.
I drive out Victoria Road from time to time to this day. Victoria Road East appears to yet be in business, but the West course has long been subdivided into residential development. That's kinda what's happened to the sport of golf; it's become the plaything of real estate developers.
Had breakfast today with my old pal Kipling at the Teviotdale Truck Stop. As usual, we traded notes on what it's like getting old. We are in agreement that it ain't fucking great.
But what can you do?
Kipling is an accomplished herbalist, and at the conclusion of our get-together we transferred a couple of plants from his van into my Toyota. Although the back windows of my car are heavily tinted, when you looked in the back you could see the unmistakable profile of the weed 'o wisdom. Although the shit is allegedly legal now, I figured that profile was just asking for a hassle in the event that an OPP cruiser happened to pull up behind me.
So we rigged up a little curtain out of my lumberjack shirt, and I stuck to the back roads as much as I could on the drive home.
Once you get up into the Grey-Bruce area, it's home turf for me. It's an interesting part of the country. We have a lot of poverty, but we also have reasonable real estate prices and a lot of interesting folks living on those back roads.
There's a guy on the 24th Concession who recently put up a home shop big enough to park a Greyhound bus in. While he doesn't seem to have one, he does have a vintage AMC AMX parked in there, as well as a couple of Harleys. I owned a AMC Rebel Machine once in one of my past lives, so eventually I'm gonna have to stop in and get the downlow on what makes this guy bother with an AMC hi-performance car. That's a pretty small club.
A concession north of that lives a guy who used to be an economist at a big-shot US university. He packed it all in to live up here with his aging mother. He rides a bicycle into Wiarton to pick up his necessities. That's got to be a good seven or eight miles, but its gotta seem a lot farther when he's riding his bike into town in the winter. That's another character I'll have to get acquainted with.
My journey passed through a goodly swath of Amish country, and it being Sunday, I passed a lot of Amish folks in their Sunday best and their black buggies. Seems the young lads in that cult get to ride their bicycles to the Sunday meeting, so the shoulder of the road had a whole lotta guys who looked like they were pedalling to a Blues Brothers reunion. Black fedoras, white shirts, ties... and dark glasses of course.
Don't laugh. That's a culture that'll survive after the assholes who run the planet succeed in destroying what we think of as "civilization." I'm keen on staying on good terms with them.
Nearly home, I thought I'd take a meander through Cobble Beach. I drive by it all the time, but I don't often drive through it. Cobble Beach is a high-end golf resort/ real estate play by the McLeese family.
The McLeese family have extraordinarily deep pockets, but you never hear a thing about them. I suspect that's because they're the opposite of the kind of people who lobby Forbes to get put on the Forbes "rich list." These folks are more likely to threaten Forbes with legal action if they were to be put on it.
As near as I can tell, and it's really hard to get solid info, McLeese the elder was an engineer who specialised in coal-plant construction. He at some point branched out into financial engineering, and made a fortune selling turn-key coal-fired electricity generating plants to American cities on a no-money-down basis. No money down, but you can pay for this with municipal bonds for the next hundred years, etc.
Cobble Beach became a retirement project for McLeese the elder, may he rest in peace. He got all the approvals for a high end golf course, designed by Doug Carrick, and a couple of thousand housing units around it. He spent a fortune putting in the infrastructure and building the clubhouse and the golf course, and then the 2007 recession hit.
By my estimation, at least $50 million had been dropped into this project by that time.
From what I surmise, and I've got some pretty good feelers into the business, aside from jettisoning some peripheral properties, McLeese never ever offered discounts or had fire sales for any Cobble Beach properties. They went years without having more than one or two new homes built on the development.
It takes very deep pockets to sustain that.
Now the place has exploded. Cobble Beach is a thing. They host by far the best car show in all of Canada every September. Where else have you ever seen an authentic, first edition Bugatti?
They've had more new builds this year than in the last ten combined. And prices are going up. A 1200 foot townhouse clocks in at $400k plus, and things only go up from there.
As much as I applaud McLeese and his deep pockets, here's what bothers me. I drive through the place in the middle of a sunny Sunday afternoon, and nowhere in this very pretty community do I see a single soul sitting on their porch with a drink in their hand.
What is wrong with those people? Is this a place I'd want to live?
NO!!!
Then again, maybe the reason I'm not seeing them on the front porch is because they're all on their back decks. Either way, having a front porch and/or a back deck is rapidly becoming something of an unattainable dream for a lot of our next generation.
Best moment of the day; I'm barrelling down Wellington Road 6 on my way to Teviotdale at a good turn of speed. There's a Amish black buggy on the shoulder with an Amish family aboard on their way to their Sunday meeting. I veer wide to give them lots of room, and just as I'm passing, a little girl about three years old sticks herself out the back window and waves at me.
There is hope for humanity.
Showing posts with label Rebel Machine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rebel Machine. Show all posts
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
The DA ratio
As in the Dinking Around ratio.
As in the ratio between the amount of time you spend dinking around with a car, a boat, or a motorcycle, and the amount of time you actually spend driving it.
First car I ever bought with my own money, twenty dollars of my own money, was an early sixties Vauxhall with leather seats and a four cylinder motor. I bought it from an old pipe-smoking wretch of an Anglophile who I believe was the first person my dear daddy hired on at his nascent real estate brokerage.
Wallace Nodwell may have been an old pipe-smoking wretch, but it was through his connections that we got tickets to the football finals at the Montreal Olympic Games.
The DA ratio on that car was 100:0. That means I spent a hundred hours dinking around with it for every hour I spent driving it, which was zero. I was fourteen years old at the time.
Next up was a Chrysler Windsor with a 383. I believe it was a 1964 model. I didn't have any plans for the Chrysler, but I had great plans for the 383. The DA factor on that one may have been 100:1, because I actually tooled it around the block a couple of times before I pulled out that 383.
Those were optimistic days. Somewhere in my voluminous archives I still have a photo of that 383 hanging from an engine hoist and me posing in front of it, in all my dorkshit 15 year old glory, the way you would in front of a twelve point buck.
Once I got a driving licence, that 100:1 DA ratio didn't cut it anymore. I mean, you bought a vehicle because you had people to see and things to do, and dinking around under the hood wasn't one of them.
Possibly this is because I was always notoriously inept at dinking around under the hood. I was reasonably adept at taking stuff apart, but woefully inept at putting it back together, at least in such a way that it worked. I couldn't do a brake job without having a few odds and ends left over.
That's not a good thing when you did a brake job.
And that's why I've always had such a ferocious allegiance to those guys who can take shit apart and put it back together and HAVE IT WORK!
That's just absolutely priceless!
My old pal Lippert, may he rest in peace, was one of those guys.
I recall when I was testing out an old fourteen foot Arkansas Traveller with a 35 horse Johnson on the Chepstow mill pond. I'd been dinking around with that puppy for months, and now that I actually had it in the water, I wasn't getting nothing.
Jimmy lived ten minutes away. A phone call was made, and twenty minutes later that old girl was on plane!
My dear Uncle Fridolin was another guy who had the gift. I remember when me and cousin Johnny towed a Rebel Machine back to Guelph behind one of my 340 Darts. I'd picked it up at a Toronto dealership for a pittance, because even though it was an immaculate low-mileage car, it didn't actually run.
That was a very rare car. Me and Johnny spent hours dinking around under the hood. Finally his daddy Fridol came out, re-arranged some plug wires, and we were off to the races!
And my old pal Kipling is another guy who has the DA gift. Kipling makes his paycheque doing expedite deliveries with a VW diesel van that has two million miles on it. Aside from the body panels, there's probably nothing on that van that he hasn't repaired or replaced at least once in the course of two million miles.
It's a gift I never cease to marvel at!
As I get older, I'm more inclined to look for vehicles that have at least a 1:1 DA ratio. That Kawasaki 500 Ninja I bought last year has probably been 1:1, or close to it. An hour of fiddling rewards you with an hour of riding.
The Mustang 50 has been virtually no dinking around at all. It's a 25 year old car. You get in and turn the key and it runs and drives like it came off the dealer's lot last week.
So I'm a little concerned about my current boat hunt. There's a lot of stuff out there with low prices and high numbers on the hour meter. That sounds like a recipe for lots of dinking around.
I've got a canoe in the barn that requires no dinking around whatsoever. Also gives you a decent workout when you circumnavigate Lake Charles. Ya, it doesn't have the adrenaline rush of forty feet of fibreglass coming on plane in five seconds, but maybe I'm gonna have to let that go.
As in the ratio between the amount of time you spend dinking around with a car, a boat, or a motorcycle, and the amount of time you actually spend driving it.
First car I ever bought with my own money, twenty dollars of my own money, was an early sixties Vauxhall with leather seats and a four cylinder motor. I bought it from an old pipe-smoking wretch of an Anglophile who I believe was the first person my dear daddy hired on at his nascent real estate brokerage.
Wallace Nodwell may have been an old pipe-smoking wretch, but it was through his connections that we got tickets to the football finals at the Montreal Olympic Games.
The DA ratio on that car was 100:0. That means I spent a hundred hours dinking around with it for every hour I spent driving it, which was zero. I was fourteen years old at the time.
Next up was a Chrysler Windsor with a 383. I believe it was a 1964 model. I didn't have any plans for the Chrysler, but I had great plans for the 383. The DA factor on that one may have been 100:1, because I actually tooled it around the block a couple of times before I pulled out that 383.
Those were optimistic days. Somewhere in my voluminous archives I still have a photo of that 383 hanging from an engine hoist and me posing in front of it, in all my dorkshit 15 year old glory, the way you would in front of a twelve point buck.
Once I got a driving licence, that 100:1 DA ratio didn't cut it anymore. I mean, you bought a vehicle because you had people to see and things to do, and dinking around under the hood wasn't one of them.
Possibly this is because I was always notoriously inept at dinking around under the hood. I was reasonably adept at taking stuff apart, but woefully inept at putting it back together, at least in such a way that it worked. I couldn't do a brake job without having a few odds and ends left over.
That's not a good thing when you did a brake job.
And that's why I've always had such a ferocious allegiance to those guys who can take shit apart and put it back together and HAVE IT WORK!
That's just absolutely priceless!
My old pal Lippert, may he rest in peace, was one of those guys.
I recall when I was testing out an old fourteen foot Arkansas Traveller with a 35 horse Johnson on the Chepstow mill pond. I'd been dinking around with that puppy for months, and now that I actually had it in the water, I wasn't getting nothing.
Jimmy lived ten minutes away. A phone call was made, and twenty minutes later that old girl was on plane!
My dear Uncle Fridolin was another guy who had the gift. I remember when me and cousin Johnny towed a Rebel Machine back to Guelph behind one of my 340 Darts. I'd picked it up at a Toronto dealership for a pittance, because even though it was an immaculate low-mileage car, it didn't actually run.
That was a very rare car. Me and Johnny spent hours dinking around under the hood. Finally his daddy Fridol came out, re-arranged some plug wires, and we were off to the races!
And my old pal Kipling is another guy who has the DA gift. Kipling makes his paycheque doing expedite deliveries with a VW diesel van that has two million miles on it. Aside from the body panels, there's probably nothing on that van that he hasn't repaired or replaced at least once in the course of two million miles.
It's a gift I never cease to marvel at!
As I get older, I'm more inclined to look for vehicles that have at least a 1:1 DA ratio. That Kawasaki 500 Ninja I bought last year has probably been 1:1, or close to it. An hour of fiddling rewards you with an hour of riding.
The Mustang 50 has been virtually no dinking around at all. It's a 25 year old car. You get in and turn the key and it runs and drives like it came off the dealer's lot last week.
So I'm a little concerned about my current boat hunt. There's a lot of stuff out there with low prices and high numbers on the hour meter. That sounds like a recipe for lots of dinking around.
I've got a canoe in the barn that requires no dinking around whatsoever. Also gives you a decent workout when you circumnavigate Lake Charles. Ya, it doesn't have the adrenaline rush of forty feet of fibreglass coming on plane in five seconds, but maybe I'm gonna have to let that go.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Rebel Machine
In 1969 AMC introduced a little quarter-mile rocket called the Hurst S/C Rambler. It was the best they could do in the horsepower wars of the time. They plopped their 390 cube 340 horse big-block into the Rambler American, and with drag slicks and open headers you suddenly had a high 11 Rambler.
They painted it up red white and blue, and forty years later you still have a bona fide collectors item.
The next year the Hurst Rambler went to the dustbin of history, and the Rebel Machine took it's place. I was never a AMC fan but I have to admit I owned one of those.
The Rebel Machine was the result of putting the same power train into their mid-size Rebel body. So you made the same power in a car that weighed in at about 800 pounds more. With slicks and headers you'd be lucky to get the Machine to a mid-thirteen.
I bought my Machine when it was four or five years old off a lot in Toronto. It wasn't running. Me and cousin John towed it home behind my 340 Dart.
John's Dad was one of those old-school mechanical genius types who could hardly speak English, but he had this puppy purring in about ten minutes.
Whereupon we set about a campaign of delivering the greatest smoke-shows the local muscle-car crowd had ever seen.
That 390 was pretty much out of breath by fifty-two hundred, but if you dumped the clutch in second gear and then held it wide open you'd put up a most impressive mushroom cloud. I used to do this out on the '86 Dragway, and passing cars would put on their headlights to navigate the smoke field.
Alas, these massive smoke shows eventually caused the demise of this motor, and that's where I made a critical mistake. I towed the Machine into a local dealership and had them rebuild the motor.
The rebuild cost twice as much as what I'd paid for the car. And the shitheads at the dealership were quite obnoxious about it. Even though I'd bought a brand new car there (a factory-order 340 Duster) they came up with all kinds of reasons why the rebuild cost two times the estimate and why I had to pay the bill in full before driving the car off the lot.
The dealership was Guelph Chrysler Plymouth, and they were on the cusp of bankruptcy.
Not long after, some drug-crazed hooligan went wild in their back lot and wrecked half a dozen new cars they'd aready paid Crysler Corporation for. Served them right. Guess I got that Machine out of their shop in the nick of time.
They went tits-up weeks later.
They painted it up red white and blue, and forty years later you still have a bona fide collectors item.
The next year the Hurst Rambler went to the dustbin of history, and the Rebel Machine took it's place. I was never a AMC fan but I have to admit I owned one of those.
The Rebel Machine was the result of putting the same power train into their mid-size Rebel body. So you made the same power in a car that weighed in at about 800 pounds more. With slicks and headers you'd be lucky to get the Machine to a mid-thirteen.
I bought my Machine when it was four or five years old off a lot in Toronto. It wasn't running. Me and cousin John towed it home behind my 340 Dart.
John's Dad was one of those old-school mechanical genius types who could hardly speak English, but he had this puppy purring in about ten minutes.
Whereupon we set about a campaign of delivering the greatest smoke-shows the local muscle-car crowd had ever seen.
That 390 was pretty much out of breath by fifty-two hundred, but if you dumped the clutch in second gear and then held it wide open you'd put up a most impressive mushroom cloud. I used to do this out on the '86 Dragway, and passing cars would put on their headlights to navigate the smoke field.
Alas, these massive smoke shows eventually caused the demise of this motor, and that's where I made a critical mistake. I towed the Machine into a local dealership and had them rebuild the motor.
The rebuild cost twice as much as what I'd paid for the car. And the shitheads at the dealership were quite obnoxious about it. Even though I'd bought a brand new car there (a factory-order 340 Duster) they came up with all kinds of reasons why the rebuild cost two times the estimate and why I had to pay the bill in full before driving the car off the lot.
The dealership was Guelph Chrysler Plymouth, and they were on the cusp of bankruptcy.
Not long after, some drug-crazed hooligan went wild in their back lot and wrecked half a dozen new cars they'd aready paid Crysler Corporation for. Served them right. Guess I got that Machine out of their shop in the nick of time.
They went tits-up weeks later.
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