Peter Behrens's Blog, page 556
November 13, 2012
Marfa Wildlife
Missing WTX blue sky & had to put up a bunch of photos of local wildlife.
1964 El Camino
I saw this machine parked on the street in Wassennar NL a while back and met the owner today. He does the work himself and has a couple of different carburetors that he swaps in and out depending on the season. It has a 350 motor and a 4-speed out of a Corvette. I like the flat black which he says is a special euro-truck paint.
November 12, 2012
Dutch bikes
Spending a season here in The Netherlands, we have grown very fond of our bikes. They are our main--only-- local transportation mode. Bike paths are everywhere, within and between towns. This is the route I ride every morning, between home and my office at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study-NIAS.
Dutch bikes are designed for urban life, and sturdy. It's common to see parents wheeling along with one kid mounted on a seat on the handlebars, another sitting on a seat over the rear fender. No one except visiting Americans wears helmets. The Dutch were serious cyclists long before the helmet thing started. Bikes are just a way of life here, and motorists know how to deal with them. (And beyond the reach of American liability lawyers, life usually does become a little less...restrictive, does it not?) The threat to ordinary vernacular bikers is not vehicle traffic, but hordes of road bikers moving at speed, silently, and very often in packs. (None of them have bells either, which is usually how Dutch bikers signal they are coming up behind; I guess the road racers figure that with all the expensive form-fitting suits and aerodynamic helmets, a bell on the handlebar would...what? Disrupt the airflow?)
This my aged Batavus machine, a girl-bike, loaded up outside the grocery store.
This (below) is the NIAS campus. Lots of beeches. And beaches--ten minutes by bike, on paths over the dunes.
Dutch bikes are designed for urban life, and sturdy. It's common to see parents wheeling along with one kid mounted on a seat on the handlebars, another sitting on a seat over the rear fender. No one except visiting Americans wears helmets. The Dutch were serious cyclists long before the helmet thing started. Bikes are just a way of life here, and motorists know how to deal with them. (And beyond the reach of American liability lawyers, life usually does become a little less...restrictive, does it not?) The threat to ordinary vernacular bikers is not vehicle traffic, but hordes of road bikers moving at speed, silently, and very often in packs. (None of them have bells either, which is usually how Dutch bikers signal they are coming up behind; I guess the road racers figure that with all the expensive form-fitting suits and aerodynamic helmets, a bell on the handlebar would...what? Disrupt the airflow?)
This my aged Batavus machine, a girl-bike, loaded up outside the grocery store.
This (below) is the NIAS campus. Lots of beeches. And beaches--ten minutes by bike, on paths over the dunes.
November 11, 2012
c. 1976 Eldorado? Largest car in Holland?
The Netherlands is not the place to have convertible top issues, which this car has. But a pretty clean machine, otherwise. Gas is @ $10 per US gallon in NL.
[image error]
[image error]
Land Rover Defender 110, at the beach, Wassenaar
Always admired this machine, owned by the guy who runs the ice cream shack at Wassenaar beach. Is it the constant rain that keeps cars so clean in The Netherlands? Today was an amazing break--a blue sky day, and warm enough for the beach.
Annals of Them That Got Away (i): the 1969 F250
this from our man in L.A.:
"a student in the department just sold this without telling me it was for sale! '69 Ford F250 Camper Special"--CM 
"a student in the department just sold this without telling me it was for sale! '69 Ford F250 Camper Special"--CM
California Borgwards
From our correspondent in No. Calif., Michael S Moore:
"I don't know what it is about the Benicia Yacht Club but every once in a while something [like that Model A a week or so ago] curious shows up in the parking lot around the time I take my afternoon bike ride. A couple of days ago it was this little 1959 Borgward "Isabella", about which you may well know more than I do...
"The Borgward guy was at the yacht club today with yet another specimen...
"Meanwhile, up at the local muffler shop, where I'm having the pipes on the '45 redone before asphyxiation triumphs...a 1950 Hudson, Commander, I think he said, runs and drives; $3500...I'm not tempted, but it would make some crazy person very happy I'm sure..."-MSM
"I don't know what it is about the Benicia Yacht Club but every once in a while something [like that Model A a week or so ago] curious shows up in the parking lot around the time I take my afternoon bike ride. A couple of days ago it was this little 1959 Borgward "Isabella", about which you may well know more than I do...
"The Borgward guy was at the yacht club today with yet another specimen...
"Meanwhile, up at the local muffler shop, where I'm having the pipes on the '45 redone before asphyxiation triumphs...a 1950 Hudson, Commander, I think he said, runs and drives; $3500...I'm not tempted, but it would make some crazy person very happy I'm sure..."-MSM
