Christmas eve we took a long walk around the park, and noticed even more crazy lights put up. Here’s a sampling:
Christmas day our friends Dave and Marlene came to celebrate with us, and help us eat a fantastic meal. Marlene brought some great dishes, and all together we had more than enough wonderful food. I had tried the pies this year… a pecan and a pumpkin. The pecan ended up rather runny, but was still fabulous. (In my not so humble opinion.) The pumpkin was rather bland, and Cherryl said she’d overworked the crust so it was pretty hard. But the pecan was wonderful, and together with Marlene’s tasty apple strudel, we managed quite well. As usual, I forgot to take pictures of our friends and the feast. Sigh.
I did manage to get a picture of a Cactus Wren we saw on a walk that afternoon:
If you read this blog somewhat regularly, you will know that I’m volunteering at the Tucson Auto Museum. I’ve tried to feature one of my favorite cars each week. Well, as awesome as this weeks’ car is, it’s not really on my fav list. But we had it outside, so I could get a few nicer pictures of it… so here it is:
2012 McLaren MP4-12C
McLaren is one of the longest running Formula 1 racing teams, and has done fabulously well since 1966. When McLaren introduced this model, as their first production road car designed entirely in-house, it took the supercar class by storm. They were produced from early 2011 through April 2014. McLaren never published production numbers, but it is understood that only 3,400 have been built.
This car features a “Triple Black” option: Exterior, interior and wheels all black. Its twin turbocharged V8 develops 592 horsepower… enough to zoom to 60mph in the low 3 second range.
I’m not sure what this black beauty sold for originally, but there are several on the market now for around $130,000. I’m just going to enjoy the museum’s car.
The doors literally have no handles. If you have the key in your pocket, you just pull up under the flair on the door and it swings up and out of the way.
I didn’t get to drive it (Obviously!) but mechanic Lukas had it running, and I enjoyed the muscular sound it produces even at idle.
Below is just 8 seconds of a McLaren MP4=12C at idle. Pretty cool even when not moving!
As this will be my last post of 2023, I thought I’d share an interesting bit of data the web hosting system shared with me: As of today, we have had 6,361 pages read from my little blog! Thank you for reading it! And if you are reading now (How else could you see this?) you might be 6,362! Or more! Wow!
One last event that was super fun… this blog is always a week behind the actual date, so I have time to put them together. But this following event happened today, just a few hours ago.
I often ask museum visitors which is their favorite car of the collection. I get a very wide range of answers, from somewhat current muscle cars, to Italian exotics, to tiny mini-cars. So today, I was polishing my very favorite, the 1929 Duesenberg. All the cars were perfectly dust-free, so I was polishing chrome and looking for any tiny spots. A little lady and her grown daughter came over and asked me about the car. She said this was by far her favorite! I said she was the FIRST person who had answered the favorite car question correctly! Ha! Ok, I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion of what is their favorite… but it really should be this magnificent Duesy! She talked about how, as an artist, she appreciates the beautiful lines and Art Deco styling. She asked if she could go under the ropes and look in the window. She was very appreciative and lots of fun! The best was when she said she thought I was the owner! I said “I wish!!” She said “Well you look like a guy who could own a car like that!” I will always treasure this little lady and her comments!
So Florine, (I sure hope I got the spelling correct!) this pix’s for you!
