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ford hot rod

saw a couple of these hot rods down the street earlier. the lady directing staging made them move before i could set up a shot, then they moved again.

found them here on my way back up the street. not my typical car to shoot, but sometimes, i just do. maybe it was just the light.

do you think this looks ok? i think the last few pictures might need to be reworked. i've been experimenting with my process, and they've been a little too dark for my taste. pushed this one more toward what i used to do, and i like it a bit better.

less than an hour until game of thrones...eeeeee!

i wandered uptown to get lunch. figured if i got too out of it, i could just uber back the few blocks to the house. i was ok. hardly coughed at all. sun came out on the way back, so had to take off my jacket.

figured i'd get the work out before i play. got something ready for work, washed some laundry. watched some videos...educational, and youtube...wasting time. better half and his mom got home.

better half treating me like i'm deathly ill, but i feel fine, just sound like i'm possessed just a tad. now i'm slathered with icky sticky vicks goo. smells great, but it makes you chilly, like a cool breeze blowing across my chest, and my shirt is stuck to me. so gross.

havana house

1948 chevy fleetline

i used a couple of new camera bodies at this show. still judging how they perform. the pictures seem a little dark to me, but that could just be my eyes or my monitors.

i've posted a couple of the promised pic already today, so i'll throw up one that i just like. shocker it's a fleetline, right?

guys seem to like parking anywhere near the cigar shop here. it's a popular hangout any night of the week. i think it just stanks—i'm not a smoker—but i'd equivalate it to the smell of starbucks too—i'm not a coffee drinker either.

in this case, i just like how the colors in the morning light all play well together.

i really meant to go to a carshow this morning. i was going to get up and go to rialto at five in the morning. or any of the other shows that were closer, whose flyers i had started seeing pop up yesterday on other photographers' instagrams.

i had an alarm set for four-thirty. thing of it is, i think i may have brought home a cold from san diego, and after arriving home thursday, rapidly got ill, and have been a bit wobbly since then. it's evolved through having a sore throat, runny nose, and sneezing. the usual. but no fever. hardly ever get a fever anymore.

about one in the morning, i woke up and just shut off the alarm. i know my better half; while he would not prevent me from going out, would strongly discourage me from going anywhere this weekend. and i have a busy week waiting for me at work, to make up for being out of the office for a week.

just as well i didn't get up early, since when i did wake up, it was lightly raining outside, which continued most of the morning. so most likely, it would have rained on my parade at any show i might have chosen to go to. so i'm kinda disappointed, but i do like the overcast and the rain.

mother-in-law said there had been a storm off the coast, that unexpectedly decided to blow inland. 

if this cold progresses any further, i'll have to leave this house, and go stay at my mother's, lock myself in the back bedroom, or hide out in a hotel. apart from a stuffy nose, i feel fine, but i shouldn't stay here, with my elderly mother-in-law too much longer. just have to decide when to leave, or wait to be told to get out...

better leather

harley davidson heritage softail

ahem. let's get to last week's whirlwind through the whittier uptown carshow. i've got several to prepare for those few people who asked me to post pictures of their cars.

as i mentioned before, i only had six hours out there, and i still didn't get around to everything. had to get to the train station, and i've been gone most of the week.

it seemed mostly organized this year, though i don't remember checking what time they started rolling the cars in from staging. i was busy, going from flower to flower to flower...i mean car to car to car, trying to shoot as many as i could in my short amount of time.

was out there at five-thirtyish a.m. where were you?

found this motorcycle down in the rick's parking lot, the owner nearby keeping an eye on his bike. he offered to move it, nah, i'd find it later for other shots. this is how i found it, so leave it be.

there was so much detail on this bike, that it seems to be less about the harley itself—which is pretty nice, shiny and pinstriped—and more about the leather.

everything decorated in an aztec theme, with the usual characters and patterns you'd expect. skillfully done and fitted, i asked the owner about it. 

he said he'd save himself a buttload (he didn't exactly use that word, my edit) of cash by taking it down to mexico himself versus paying a guy here, to basically do the same thing.

he had to point out that there was a little felix the cat medal/figure on the side. probably thought i'd appreciate that since i was wearing my felix the cat chevrolet shirt. if he hadn't mentioned it, i wouldn't have noticed it, it was low, on the side next to the wall, and there was so much other detail to look at.

anyway, really nice work here.

sucks

we just got back from a walk uptown. passed the whittier community association office, where they post flyers for all the local activities going on, up on their windows.

this year, the annual uptown car show has been moved up from mid august to june fourth.

in a normal world, i'd have said that's great, since it's always hotter than hell in august. but it's not perfect, and my world has been a bit of a crazy whirlwind lately. so, checking my calendar, i've just noticed that i have to catch a train to san diego that same day. perfect.

i can make it work, though, since the show is physically, just up the street. i'll just have to be sure to be all packed and ready to go the night before.

we're usually up and out by five-thirty in the morning anyway. organizers are up and telling vendors where to set up, and cars are stuck in purgatory, i mean, staging.

we'll just get up and out, shoot the cars for a few hours, as usual, but then i'll go home, download the pictures, and head to the station, instead of back to the show. just sucks that i won't be able to do anything with them until i get back a week later.

------

shot this car before, at a different show, from the back end. even sold the file for cheap, to an unnamed shop not too far away, with their idea of putting it on tshirts. perhaps they didn't have a shop to do it, or the cost prevented it.

i suspect, the more likely scenario is that they just gave the owner a nice print of the car. enjoy, i guess.

walkabout

my better half has gotten it in his head to make a concerted effort to do ten thousand steps a day. for the last couple of weeks, he has hit that goal or exceeded it every day.

i started it, i think i even wrote about wanting to do it, but i just don't have the time. except on weekends. i did the three mile round trip out to jersey mike's on beverly blvd one day. the thing about beverly, is there isn't enough sidewalk, and at some point, you have to walk on people's yards or on the street. stupid, really. so walking back, i decided to walk through a neighborhood i was unfamiliar with, and stumbled upon the bike path that cuts through whittier.

pretty lonely on some parts, but bike riders were frequent enough not to get too paranoid.

anyway, told my better half about it, and the next weekend, we were both walking over to jersey mike's. on the way back, we talked about how far the trail went. he said it's the same one that snakes down lambert, down past the two felons skate shop, one of his favorite stores to shop for boards at.

the next day he wanted to go try out some stuff with his camera over at the bridge above five points. instead of walking back on the path, we cut back up the street toward uptown, on greenleaf.

he was slightly ahead of me, when i hear him say, "i'll just wait over there." not knowing what he meant, until i passed a building, and saw this chevy, sitting in front of a repair shop.

i had taken my camera and little gorillapod to shoot pictures of the wind sculptures on the trail, but i was too shy to go over to the car, and just shot with my phone from the sidewalk. knowing i would do that, my better half, walked right on over to the owner and asked if he minded if i took a few shots. no problem.

he chatted the guy up, while i had to change all the settings on the camera, and then shoot. turned out, the car shop guys called the owner over to bring his car in for his smog or whatever, so i only had time for this one picture.

better than nuthin. always like shooting the random car i come across out and about. they just usually aren't this nice.

in the burbs

i should say, burb.

saw this one back at the whittier uptown show last summer. shiny, isn't it?

waiting by the hotel, in the staging area. they always seem to open the show for entries late, so people get out of their cars in staging, leaving the cars alone, and i take advantage of the opportunity.

slept in, instead of going to pomona, my bad. apparently, my better half was really looking forward to going; but then i said i wasn't, he didn't want to go by himself.

he then felt inspired to go climb that big hill that i stare at from the window, while here playing with my pictures. i've been here eight years, and it was the first time up there. nice view.

then, my younger brother is town for a couple of weeks, so we went to take my parents and him out for lunch. fun time.

my better half really enjoys when my brother and i are in the same room, says we both are cut from the same cloth. our sense of humor is twisted, and once we get going, everyone will be laughing. we enjoy making mother shake her head, and ask herself where she went wrong...

one more busy week, then i'm off work for two. so yay, and prepare to spike the football...

og cruzn

i haven't pulled my cameras out of the bag in a few weeks. been resting my side, like the doctor said. still hurts, so waiting on results of xrays. maybe monday.

got the batteries charged, getting up early for a show tomorrow. always somewhat nervous about going out after not shooting in a while. shouldn't be; it is sort of like riding a bike, and it doesn't take long to get back into a groove.

at least it will be cooler than the last few shows i went to, now that winter is moving in. weather people keep flip flopping on whether it will rain or not. now they've settled on a ten percent chance, so very doubtful.

so, old memories, we will be there early early. hoping for a decent parking place again.

saw this impala at the uptown show back in august. i like the back ends, with the wingspan out to there. didn't care much for the color and glitter, but it isn't my car to stare at all day, every day. 

shot early, still in the staging area...can tell because of location and how they are not parked in the spaces; just sitting in the middle of the street.

choppy waters

i've heard that to help keep your heart healthy, you should do ten thousand steps a day.

the internet says that adds up to about five miles. who the heck has time to walk or run five miles a day? says the girl chained to a computer ten plus hours a day...

i don't have a phone or an app to track steps, but i'm pretty sure i'd be lucky to do that many in a typical week. i think the only time i can is when i'm on vacation, when we have all day to casually walk as far as there are things to do and see. but alas, i'm not on vacation everyday.

today was sunday. i had some time. i walked about three miles. went the other way, from a where i'd take a typical walk, out and about in whittier.

sadly, i didn't see one old car. saw a guy on a harley, who waved to me. maybe i've seen his bike around, but he went by too fast to know for sure.

purposely headed back home down a particular street, hoping to see an old fleetline that used to sit in the same place, on the same road, all the time. i wanted to finally get a picture of it, since i was going to walk past it, but it was gone.

saw a porcelin throne, sitting randomly in the middle of an alley, and a sign in a window that said, "prepare to meet thy god." what the hell kind of message is that? would it be some kind of indiana jones dart blowing fun run, if i had chosen to take that alley path? freestyle target practice? strange way to express your religion, or maybe my mind just ran off on a tangent, and lost the message completely.

saw a few cars from crazy life car club, but didn't shoot them. maybe the one that was parked sitting there, on its highest hydraulics setting would have made a decent picture, but nah. didn't.

not sure when i'll take another long walk. still pretty warm out. i'll wait for the cold. or the rain. or even better, a big car show.

and cars like this one. all the way down at the end of uptown--that walk must have done my heart good, right?

junk in the trunk

it's been a crazy week. got back from my trip up north, home for a couple evenings, then out of town again. 

so, friday finally rolls around, when i finally make it home again, i'm too tired to head out to either of the car shows i wanted to go to. hung out with the better half instead, since i hadn't seen him much since last week.

then today, the annual running of the idiots, before six in the morning. i mean, <clearing throat>, the halloween 5k fun run. seriously, why do they need to shut down all the streets, and have idiots running past the house so early? mostly, the "serious" "marathon" runners. the people that just have to win the little trophy. followed later by all the average schlubbs dressed in anything from blue jeans and t-shirts to full on halloween costumes. aren't those costumes going to stink later, when you really need them? polyester 'breathes' so well, you hardly even sweat. actually, no, you're just glowing. pfft.

better half left me the driveway to park in, while he had to park a couple of blocks away. been too warm to hike back over to the plural zed alpha to retrieve it. maybe later.

all i have for halloween, is stuff from the day of the dead show.

figure a trunk full of skulls will do. not sure who the guy in the picture was, as no one was there to tell me about him. i'm sure he is missed.

©2025 kathy gonzalez