Getting down to it 2

So that last post took forever to post because of technology. This further cements my desire for things that are supposed to make life easier and more enjoyable to do just that.

I live in a fairly rural area. Rural enough that we don't get cable out here and the cost to get one of those line of sight jobbies is excruciatingly prohibitive. So I'm stuck with dial-up. Not high speed just plain, old, don't expect to download that anytime soon, dial-up. This is also one of the reasons no pictures will be posted on this blog until I get some pictures on disc and find a better connection somewhere.

Anyhoo, I figured I might as well explain to you, imagined reader, why this site is called what it is. The original Timid Turtle is not a person really, it is a thing. Or was a thing, but I'll get to that. It was a 1958 Chevy two-door that had a 302 cu. in. (that's inches cubed or cubic inches) and ran a respectable 11.5 in the quarter mile. So you can compare, in 1999 a Viper could only manage high twelves. Not bad for an old tub running in the late '60's.

The car was owned by my father and his friend. It provided my Old Man with lots of stories of fun and failure.

One of my favourite pictures of the Old Man is of him standing over that engine while they were at Cayuga raceway. He was getting on for my age now and you could see the bald spot just barely starting. He hadn't grown a beard yet so he still looked real young, he still had a Greaser kind of hair style, white shirt, blue jeans, very fifties. He was fiddling around with the fuel injection trumpets and someone snapped the photo. He looks calm and confident in that photo. They raced that car before he and my mom got married. My oldest sister was born around six years after that car and I wouldn't be around for another four after her.

I think I like that car, the idea of it, that photo of my dad because I get to see small portions of what kind of life he had before my siblings and I were born. There was an entire lifetime of events between the day that photo was taken to the day I was born. It's the same man but two completely different worlds. I guess life is like that for everyone.

Nobody knows exactly what happened to the car. Well, I shouldn't say that, they know what happened. The Old Man and his buddy decided to sell the car. My mom showed it to some guy while my dad was at work and the next day the car was gone. So, nobody knows what happened to the car, after that.

So that's why I named the blog what I did. I don't know if I'll keep the name forever, but it seemed more real than trying to be clever. Well, more real than trying to be "super" clever!