-
The Old Volvo Chronicles: Origin Stories and Reckless Evading
My evolution as a car guy has taken some twists and turns over the last forty years. I went from being an uninterested teen, to an enthusiastic amateur, to a sometimes racer and then a grizzled old vintage racing mechanic. In the lead image above, I’m sitting in car number 18, on pole position for…
-
The Old Volvo Chronicles: Coast to Coast in ’89
I was in Detroit from the Fall of 1987 to Spring of 1989, a student at the Center for Creative Studies. I had decided on a college path I think when I was 16 or so, and I had to work hard to generate an art portfolio that could impress the admissions staff at CCS.…
-
The Old Volvo Chronicles: Coast Road
Coast Road, between Bixby Bridge on California Highway One and Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur. Google says that it is 10.1 miles of dirt, but in 1991, there were only paper maps and cell phones were practically still science fiction. Kennedy and I were out for a night run in my ‘71 Volvo.…
-
Teenage Dumb Stuff With Cars
When I was a young kid, I wasn’t interested in cars at all. My older sister got her license three years before me, and I saw her having to play chauffeur to her friends in Dad’s Chevy. It didn’t seem like a good time, crazy as that sounds. I remember being crammed in the back…
-
Get to Work Ya Bum!
There has been a notable drop in the rate of new content being posted here at travelingwithtools. That’s because I’ve been back at work for a few weeks, and despite thinking I would be able to do two things at once, I have not. I’ve landed at the same Northern California shop that I worked…
-
The More Things Change…
So I went and paid a visit to the SKUSA SuperNats at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Wednesday afternoon. It was the first day of practice and reports pegged the number of entries at nearly 500. The paddock was huge! I was last involved in 2002, when the event was run in downtown Vegas at…
-
SKUSA SuperNationals!
I bought my first shifterkart in 1997 when I lived in Newport, Rhode Island and I raced with Superkarts! USA in the Northeast division. In 1998, I loaded it into the back of my V-8 Volvo wagon and drove 2,700 miles to Las Vegas to race in the second edition of the SKUSA SuperNationals. The…
-
Volvos
Back in the ’80s, I was into Volvos, and I had this idea of IMSA GTU prepared 142E, which is the car I drove from 1989 to 1995 (not the racy one, of course). Note the telemetry antennas on the roof. I was way ahead of the Factory, as they didn’t go racing until 1994…