Ham, Cars, & Cars
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Day 15: January 2, 2010 Ham, Cars, & Cars |
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Looks like you can get to
Elliston Place Soda Shop on a trolley. Today, unlike
on my Thanksgiving weekend visit last year, I found the place open. I
recalled a picture of ham & eggs on the Roadfood site so
that's what I ordered. Quite good. The place is
certainly a classic but there are signs of inattention. The tops are
missing from two stools in my second picture. There is another missing
behind the camera. A check of a
through-the-door picture from
last year verifies that one of those tops was missing then. I plan on
coming back for a milkshake some day but I'm a little worried about the
Shop's future.
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After breakfast, I headed straight to the
Lane Motor
Museum. This was my second visit and one reason for returning was a
hoped for ride in a Tatra. Most cars in the museum are kept in running
condition. On many days, one is taken off the floor and museum attendees
offered a ride. On my first visit, I learned of this too late for a ride.
Today I asked on arrival and learned that the driver was off today and
that no cars would be going out. I'll come back for a ride on a warmer
day.
A hoped for ride was hardly the only reason for visiting the museum. The Lane has some very unusual cars, they are displayed without barriers (you can look in the windows!), and those displayed seem to change somewhat frequently. I definitely saw some new cars today but I've chosen pictures to show something unusual that is going on in the museum just now. Until April 26, the tops are raised on many of the displayed vehicles. The cars in that first picture are a 1940 American Bantam Roadster, a 1939 Crosley Transferable (the first year Crosleys were produced), and a 1951 Crosley Super Sport. A top-up Super Sport is not the prettiest car on the planet. Next is a 1966 Velorex 430 with body "panels" that, like the roof, are held in place by snaps. The top definitely doesn't improve the looks of the green 1951 Iota 350 Sport which doesn't look all that comfortable top or no top. The 1957 Messerschmitt KR 200 offered more foul weather protection than a motorcycle at half the price of a Volkswagen. In the next to last picture, the cars on the left and the dark green car on the right are all MGs. The light green 3-wheeler is a 1933 BSA TW33-9 Special Sports. The far car on the left is museum owner Jeff Lane's first car which he began restoring from a truck load of pieces when he was twelve. It's a 1955 MG TF. The 1938 BMW 320 cabriolet in the last picture shows that topless isn't the only way to look good. |
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The Lane Museum has plenty of motorcycles, too. Sorry to say, I failed to
record any information on the air cooled and air driven (and air headed?)
rear-engined bicycle. One of the bits I picked up on the 1998 McLean Wheel
is that "Learning to ride takes patience and practice." I
thought that might be the case.
This is the museum where I found a car from my past two years ago. The Renault 4CV is still there and today I found a pair of two-wheelers from my past. The first self-propelled vehicle I ever had was a Whizzer. I've no idea what model it was but it looked almost exactly like this 1947. I also once had a Honda 65 though I've no idea of its vintage, either. This one is a 1965. |
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I stopped yet again at the National Corvette Museum and pulled right up front to
the "Corvette Only" area. Nice looking tire, eh? The orange ZR1
is the very car that Jim Mero drove on a record setting lap of
Nürburgring in 2008. The record, for production cars, has since been
broken but the
video of Mero's lap still looks plenty fast. The pair
of white convertibles in the rotunda are a 1953 and a 2009. The 2009 is
the 1,500,000th Corvette to be produced. The new Corvette Cafe was open
when I was here for the museum's fifteenth anniversary in September but
was always full. Today I made it inside for a scoop of
Zora Arkus-Duntoffee ice cream.
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October 2 was the fiftieth anniversary of the Corvair and the date a
special display opened at the Corvette Museum. I'd hoped to get here
earlier but didn't make it until two days after its official closing but
several of the Corvairs were still in place. One, a 1964 Spyder, is almost
a car from my past. I had a 1964 4-speed convertible but it wasn't a
turbocharged Spyder and was yellow. I never owned a 1960 Corvair but the
green sedan still kind of qualifies as a car from my past. Remember that
guy who co-piloted that 4CV on our big road trip and who covered all of
Indiana's Lincoln Highway with me last March? He once owned a 1960 that,
as I recall, exactly matched this one in color. I believe Dale's 'Vair
was a 2-door and I'm pretty sure it was a 3-speed manual. This one's an
auto. Memories!
The NCM is almost home territory and the rest of the trip was a non-stop expressway run. I'm done. |
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