Olga or Olaf or perhaps Sven, Lars??

Our friend's, Elliot, Oliver and their folks, Lloyd and Christie deserted us and moved to Minnesota. Lloyd is one of those fellers who can pretty much do anything. He has a PhD in some sort of economic businessie thingish stuff, and can build stuff and fix things and likes to buy old cars and houses, fix them and sell them. He started a project, a 1961 Volvo 122. He however found himself commuting from MN to Seattle and had no time for the ancient beast. So when they moved yesterday, I took possession of the car.

It has been very entertaining. I went to the Volvo Parts Nazis to see if I could get in the in-crowd. The story is, these guys have everything, but if they don't like you, they have nothing. I was nervous going in, but as it turns out, the owner, Ou, is a cambodian refugee who lived in the Thai camps for 4 years and speaks about as much Thai, or a bit more, than I do. So we chatted about the heat and food in SE Asia. Which, by the way, is exactly what I talked about when I lived in Thailand. I passed whatever test and out came the needed part for about 150 dollars less than I thought I was going to need to spend. The part, by the way, was a hood. It didn't have a hood. It does now.

I went up to Ballard, the Swedish neighborhood appropriately, and picked up the car. Starting the thing is a bit involved. There is a wrench that loosens the filter that exposes the...oh probably the carburetor, where one sprays starter fluid. Then one pulls out the choke, pumps the gas and inserts the key, easily recognized as a screwdriver, into the cable and Voila, the car sparks into life.

I drove to Wallingford. No tail lights, no indicators, one headlight, oh....and my license is expired.