The Useful Duck!

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Thursday, March 3, 2011

I go to the big city, my head nearly explodes, and I have BBQ

Yesterday I went to pick up the rebuilt Tachometer for the 2-155. Somehow in all the excitement I forgot to get the tach rebuilt and to find new insulation foam stuff for around the radiator and firewall. I didn't want to install the fuel tank without the tach cable housing as the fuel tank is kind of a pain to remove.
I found the old Speedometer repair shop which has relocated out of the hip industrial section to the new industrial section by the river and rail yards.  (I kept getting the urge to take photos which I know would have alerted the morons who would have loved to respond to an obviously not a terrorist event.)
I had to pick up clay for my wife's art class on the other side of town and then get the turntable base from the lady at Montgomery Park.
I tried to maximize the number of GoodWill stores along the route in the hopes of finding old stereo equipment. They were bare! I did find some reel to reel tapes at value village but they were in rough shape.
For having a slow economy there is a lot of construction going on it Portland. Mostly modern apartment units that are supposed to look hip and be better than the old box type buildings. They are probably also made from "sustainable" building materials with a preference given to minorities but they pretty much look like crap after five years in the cold rain. The modern earth tones really stand out from the old grey brick and broken neon signs along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Rosa Parks way.
I wonder if the minority business preference thing is not kind of a Joke in 2011. If you were a minority and owned a construction business and you were any good you would go on to compete city and state wide and not worry about being a minority cause you would be making money. On the other hand, a couple guys with a skidsteer and a ratty old pickup truck would either not be very good or they would just be starting out. I really have no clue, but if I were a minority I'd sure try to get a chunk of the change.
Of course the folks in Portland never got past Oppression 101 in college unless of course they went to U of O and then they were able to get up to 201.  "To the Barricades!"  "Whoop! Whoop!" (Nothing personal Collieguy)
The traffic was amazing. It was pouring down rain and everyone was driving 60 mph bumper to bumper. It was like a big old slotcar racing set. If someone would slow down to let another person in some idiot five cars back would start honking.
I saw a pneumatic girl getting her mail in front of her apartment complex in nothing but her brightly colored underwear. I am sure it was not the Maidenform girl.  There was a really impossibly attractive black lady in impossibly tight jeans and high heels outside a boarded up club. Judging from her height and the size of her high heels she was not really female. I did not stop and ask for directions. I had my GPS...
I got my turntable base. It is kind of a cheap flimsly wood thing. I'm becoming somewhat disillusioned with the whole vintage stereo thing. Perhaps I'll put it all on ebay.
But the day was saved!
On the way home I stopped at Huckabee's which has moved to Newberg and I picked up a BBQ pulled pork dinner to go and we had it for supper. I couldn't wait and shared some with my wife when she got home from school. Baked beans, coleslaw, pulled pork, and really good buns. I didn't ask them if I could substitute Nutria.
Now I'm hungry again. Perhaps I'll have BBQ for a late breakfast!

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