March 08 Musings

Can you believe we're almost half-way into March? Where does time go? Vanessa and I first started dating 8 years ago. 8 years have gone by since I started my job at Republic. In a month we'll have lived in our house for 7 years. In August we'll have been married 5 years. This summer Cole will be 8 and Ashley will be 5. Since 2000 Vanessa is on her third car. I'm on my fifth. In my vehicles alone I've driven over half a million kilometres in 8 years. Vanessa's truck has travelled nearly 125,000 km since we've owned it, and we've put 20,000+ miles on the VW's. The cost of gas has gone from $0.65 / L to $1.10 / L. We've cycled through 7 VW's, of which we still have three... We've been on countless trips both driving and flying. We've seen Sarah McLachlan perform almost 15 times in person, and Jann Arden and BNL about half as many times. I'm starting to understand why "older" people comment on how quickly time flies.

This winter, to be succinct, has been a bitch. Vanessa and I have wasted hours of our life on the highway stuck in weather-related traffic. One highlight was my neighbour giving me an old snowblower, which has made the monumental dumps a little less troubling. Here are some pictures from the weekend, as you can see, despite being March, we got over a foot of snow.

Other recent news is that we decided to sell our boat. We want to concentrate on land-based activities (the VW's, the Porsche replica, camping, etc.). As fun as the boat was, it really was more of a burden than anything. So, as they say, easy come, easy go. I made a deal with a young couple in St. Catherines. They paid most of my asking price and traded a 2 year-old canoe and a Reese Backpacker trailer for the boat package. Both of the traded items will fit really well with our camping activities. I know it'll be a little sad when the lakes open up, but it was the right decision for this year. I think our next boat will be either something considerably larger, or a smallish antique runabout with an outboard. For now, we'll stick to the canoe.

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Also, using some of the proceeds from the boat, I bought an original FI system from German Supply and installed it on the bus. We're now running stock fuel injection, with considerable gains in driveability and performance. There really aren't any pictures of this process, so you'll have to take my word for it.

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I've also started working on the Porsche kit, trying to have it ready for the Kit Car Nationals in Carlisle, PA on May 2-4 weekend... Driving there may be a pipe dream, though, being 8 hours each way, but we will definitely be taking it to the Michigan Vintage show in early June. Check the VW blog here: http://ad-libs-vw-technical.blogspot.com/ for some pictures of the progress.

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Finally, the best thing that's happened recently has been the (almost) completion of the long-standing basement project. Check the home reno blog here: http://ad-libs-home-reno.blogspot.com/ for pictures.