Bourgemobiles on Parade

A Ferrari California T and a 991-era Porsche 911 Targa 4 GTS trolling southbound on College Avenue the other day, taking advantage of a break in the heat wave.

For those keeping track at home, that's 977 horsepower, fourteen cylinders, 7.7 liters of displacement, and two turbos (both on the Ferrari).

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One Last Blast

They're calling for a high of ninety degrees today, although it won't be as sticky as it was on Saturday (or is predicted to be tomorrow) which feels appropriate for the unofficial Last Day of Summer*.

Sometime Wednesday a front is due to push through and get us back to more normal temps and I, for one, can't wait.

Much more so than either Knoxville or Atlanta, Indianapolis has four fully fleshed-out seasons. Summers are hot and sticky and winters are, well, cold and wintry. By the end of either season I'm well sick of the heat or the cold, no matter how I'd been looking forward to it at the start of the season (I'm ready for some snow now, actually, but it's still months away.)

The payoff though, is the weather in spring and fall is generally glorious and there's a good stretch of it in both seasons, unlike the abbreviated versions found in more extreme climates. I'm gonna bask in it while it's here.

*Man, when'd summer get so short for the kiddos? I seem to remember that summer vacation ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day when I was a kid, but nowadays they've been back to school for weeks already.

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Pedaling to Protein

Saturday afternoon Bobbi and I saddled up the bicycles and pedaled down the Monon Trail to the intersection of 46th & College for an early dinner on the patio at Root & Bone.

I had the carpaccio mac, described on the menu as "thin sliced beef, soft egg remoulade, herb crouton, crunchy iceberg, pickled shallot & crunch capers", and it was absolutely delicious.

Bobbi ordered the Fried Green Tomato "BLT", which was basically a BLT sammich, sans the bread. It, too, looked yummy and I made a note to get back there and try it myself some time.

On the way home, we pulled off the Monon at Half Liter BBQ because Sunday was the last day of Devour Indy Summerfest 2023 and I wanted Bobbi to try one of the special desserts that Half Liter was featuring for the event. Knowing how much she likes bread pudding, she didn't want to miss out on the Buffalo Trace bread pudding (Homemade bread baked with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla and topped with a Buffalo Trace bourbon cream sauce.)

From there we pedaled home and chilled out and read for the remainder of Saturday evening.

(Well, I tried to watch Frankenstein on MeTV's Svengoolie, but I was too full of good chow and kept dozing off.)

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In search of America's Gun Cultures...

David & Sandy Yamane are taking a leisurely cross-country vacation to Yellowstone by camper trailer and, ever the sociologist, the good professor is taking some side trips along the way to look in on the various gun cultures of America.

For instance, on Monday they stopped in Broad Ripple for lunch!

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Season of the Snake

As summer gets under way, the bright midwestern sun heats the asphalt and all the snakes come out to bask on the warm pavement, apparently...

It's like we're experiencing a Cobra outbreak here in SoBro lately or something.

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Sex on Wheels

I was sitting there at Twenty Tap enjoying a leisurely lunch on Saturday afternoon, catching up with email and reading LikeWar, when I heard it.

The unmistakeable rumble of a big Detroit V-8 through side pipes was audible before the low-slung  roadster that was trailing it was visible among the dull transportation pods rolling up to the traffic light there at 54th and College Avenue.

I about fell over the railing and onto the sidewalk as I contorted myself into position to get a good shot or three as it went by...

Those safety-wired spinners on the Hallibrands are just...*chef's kiss*

The Cobra's certainly a replica, a kit car. They only made a few hundred of the originals. Of course, if you want to be philosophical about it, even the originals were kit cars, cobbled together from hand-built English bodywork and American driveline components; they were all slightly different and hardly any remained stock after delivery.

As it motored off, side pipes bouncing to the big block backbeat, the older lady at the table next to mine shook her head and said aloud "I just don't understand cars like that."

"That's okay," I replied, to nobody in particular, "Fortunately you don't have to."

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Because the internet loves dog pictures...

Bobbi is still getting over the 'Rona and wasn't feeling up to cooking last night, so I picked up some carryout from Fat Dan's for dinner: a brisket sandwich with a side of slaw for her and a BLT for me.

While I was waiting out on the patio for the food, I got to meet this handsome fella. His name is Doc, "as in Holliday", his people informed me.

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV & EF 24-105mm f/4L IS

Brrr!

Did I say it was going to get down to 49°F this morning? I was mistaken, or rather the weatherdude was. It was 47°F when the alarm clock went off here at Roseholme Cottage. Summer has officially ended.

Yesterday it was 67 degrees and breezy and in the shade, wearing my summer attire of blue jeans, a short-sleeve t-shirt, cotton socks, and a very lightweight gun burkha, it actually felt a little chilly. Understandable, since it had been 94 the day before and the indoor temperature at the house was hovering around 75.

Not quite time to drag out the wool socks, long-sleeve t-shirts, and heavier gun burkhas, but that's probably less than a month away. Call it three or four lawn mowings to go before lawn care involves rakes and leaf vacs.

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Change of pace...

It was too hot out at high noon for a heavy meal, especially since Bobbi was planning to grill steaks for dinner, which we'd eat while watching the latest ep of Rings of Power.

Twenty Tap has a great smoked turkey Cobb salad. The smoked turkey is from Fischer Farms which means that it hasn't even entered interstate commerce except in the vaguest and most hand-wavey Wickard v. Filburn sense.

Thing is, I've really gotta be in the mood for turkey, even the smoked locavore kind, and I wasn't yesterday, so I asked them to hold the turkey...and I think they went heavy on the bacon just to make up for it.

That's a damn good salad.

"It's only a model!"

We've got a couple of real MG TD's you can occasionally spot flitting around the neighborhood on nice sunny days.

This isn't one of them.

The dead giveaway, other than the contours of the boot being slightly off, lurks underneath the rear bumper...

The lateral muffler and dual exhausts are dead giveaways of the Beetle chassis lurking under the roadster bodywork.

Other cars of the type don't require as much sleuthing.

For instance, if you see a vintage Bugatti Grand Prix car tootling around in traffic...

...you don't really need to take the time to closely examine the front suspension or exhaust. It's a lot safer to bet on a kit car than someone taking their million-dollar baby to the grocery store.

Besides, the whimsical front license plate lets us all in on the game.

The family that VROOOMs together...

It's the doggles on the pupper that make the photo...

click to embiggenate

Lights, Camera, Inaction

My favorite restaurant patios may be great places for spotting cool iron rolling by, but it's an intersection of a couple of flat, straight city streets, not the Esses at Road Atlanta or a gnarly turn on "The Dragon" through Deal's Gap. In other words, it's not like I'm the Killboy of Broad Ripple or anything.

Shots showing any kind of action are hard to get. This Harley rider gunned it around a car that was dawdling while making a right on 54th, so the panning shot conveys a little bit of motion.

Maybe the Yamaha pilot here felt sorry for me and decided to do some icy hot stuntin'...

On a sunny day like this I can use the little 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G zoom on the Nikon D700 and have ample reach to shoot anywhere around the intersection. That Harley is shot from the Twenty Tap patio, diagonally across the intersection, at 200mm and didn't even require much cropping. 

I love the lens because it's so compact; not much bigger than the 85mm f/1.8 AF-D prime. Part of the reason for its compactness is that it doesn't have a built-in autofocus motor, so it focuses too slow to be ideal for action photography (and is manual-focus only on the consumer-tier D3xxx and D5xxx bodies, which lack internal focus motors), but its optics are more than adequate for the 12MP sensors in my old D700 and D3.

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Springtime in SoBro...

A Baby Ducati and a Big Healey... 

The most Broad Ripple thing ever (so far).

The "Little Free Libraries" are actually fairly common around here, but this one had an addition I had not seen before...

There were Post-It notepads and pens in the library for leaving thank you notes or haikus or whatever.

Only a block or two away is this neighborhood fixture:

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Excitable Boy

You can be pretty sure your ride is cool when it gets this sort of reaction from little boys.

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Taste Sensation...

In all these years, I had never tried the Italian beef at Fat Dan's Chicago Deli before.

This past weekend, they had a French dip sandwich, and it was delicious. Today I went there for lunch and ordered an Italian beef, hold the giardiniera peppers and add Swiss cheese. The result was an excellent French dip!

Neighbor & Puppers

Spotted waiting these happy puppers keeping their hooman company outside the local Fresh Market the other day. Photographed with Ilford Pan F Plus 50 film in a Nikon N80 with a 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D.
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Cycling Daze Are Here Again...

After months of sitting idle, the Broad Ripple SUV's tires were dead flat. We aired them up and pedaled the not-quite-a-mile down to Next Door SoBro for lunch.

It was my idea because their loaded smashers are my kryptonite...

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The #loadedsmashers at @nextdooreatery are my kryptonite. 😮🤤

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 18, 2019 at 8:19pm PDT

Labor Day

I did my mile walk around the block this morning and returned home feeling like I'd gone for a swim. According to Siri, the dew point outside was 71° (Siri knows the dew point and barometric pressure; Alexa is stumped by those two.)

I walked over to Sam's Gyros for lunch and tipped extra because Sam was in there by hisself on Labor Day and it was hotter than dammit in that kitchen. Heat index was over 100 today in weather that was more Floridian than Hoosier.

I had a lager because lower in carbs, but then I had a Hoppopotamus IPA from Metazoa Brewing because Labor Day.

Sat at the counter at Fat Dan's for a couple pints and pecked away at the Glock 19X review while keeping half an eyeball on the Braves playing the Red Sox on the overhead TV screen.

The Logitech keyboard case I got bundled with the new iPad while I was up in New Hampshire has been super handy. Since I have Word on the iPad, I don't even bother dragging the MacBook Air with me around town now. The notebook is strictly a roadtrip productivity machine so that I can work on stuff in hotel rooms at gun school and such without dragging the beastly heavy Dell gaming laptop and its power brick (more like a power cinder block) along with me.

On the way home I spotted these beasties parked up in front of Moe & Johnny's, and so I crossed the street for a closer look.

Mmm-hmm. I could live with that Duc. I was sad I hadn't brought more camera; I just had the little Samsung TL350 with its twee little steam gauges in my shirt pocket. It acquitted itself okay, I guess.

The sidewalk in front of The Jazz Kitchen and a couple shops next to it was host to an outdoor jazz concert and al fresco dining.

I love my neighborhood!
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Sunny Day...

Bobbi and I walked over to Good Morning Mama's for brunch today.

The weather was positively gorgeous. High seventies and low humidity. Just enough clouds in the sky to look all fluffy and photogenic.

We sat on the patio, shaded by both the pergola and the umbrellas at each table. It was pretty idyllic. The breeze stayed tolerable until it was about leaving time, by which time I'd picked up a gnat that had decided that slaloming through my eyelashes was great sport. We'd finished up by then anyway.

I had the stuffed burrito Sonoma, which is just eggs, chorizo, peppers, onions, and cheese, wrapped in a flour tortilla. Bobbi had fried eggs over house-made corned beef hash.
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