Re: <OT> Father's Day 2005 - be green with envy...

At 08:22 PM 6/22/2005, Henning Wulff wrote:

About 10 years ago the BC Architectural Institute held their AGM in Whistler, and I offered to take a fellow architect, a woman with whom I've worked at times, back to Vancouver. After the ride along the lovely Sea to Sky Highway, she proceeded to tell everyone that she a) never would get in a car with me again and b) I was a danger to society.

Most architects in Vancouver have heard about this by now, and many were unsurprised when I told them I got a Porsche.

Tanya fortunately has a different take on my driving.

--
   *            Henning J. Wulff



A few weeks ago, Frank Filippone came up here (SFO Bay Area) from the LA area. Oliver Bryk, from SFO, picked him up, they drove to my house, they loaded their stuff into my car and we headed out for a day of photography at Point Lobos, particularly Weston Beach. We had a most marvelous day.

Speaking of cars and getting to places, here's what Frank wrote to the HUG, after our wonderful day of Photography. The reason I didn't give my report here is that it was a Hasselblad day.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"All true in factual content, but Jim left out some ... details....

Oliver picked me up at 6:15AM.  We left in Oliver's Jeep at a logical speed
heading south.  I was in charge of directions.

We get to Jim's where we are greeted warmly by Jim.  We pack into Jim's
Bright Red BMW 5 Series Wagon.  Looks pretty normal, except that it has a
"funny" exhaust pipe.  Says Dinan on it.... strange......I thought BMW used
a single exhaust pipe.  this one is a double.

Off we go.......  Jim hits the fist intersection and lets the car do a 4
wheel drift around the corner.... THEN he puts on his driving gloves so that
he can get a good handle on the wheel..... We are dealing with an automatic
transmission car here.... so Jim shifts through all the gears using the
shifter like he was Mario Andretti.....  The car bolts through and around
all traffic......  At which point I figure this car is NOT normal......a
wagon just does not behave this way....and Jim, well he was in his
element.......a really well tuned car being driven hard by an engineer with
a passion for driving.  I was sitting in the back seat.  Safer back there if
we have a head on... a tailgating accident is unlikely, as no one could
catch up with us.....  Much safer...  ( look up Dinan.. they are a high
performance BMW tweaker of great renown.)  The car was amazing."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I got my Brilliant Red Dinan-BMW V8 wagon new in 1994. A European version. She has 140k miles on her now and runs better today than ever before. I doubt if I'll ever let her go.

But she is my wagon and carries all my photo stuff, (LF, MF, and 35mm) plus suitcases, and gobs of other stuff, without hesitation. She has carried me, for the past eleven years, to all of the Leica workshops that I taught for Leica USA, and likewise for Hasselblad USA, and, of course, many personal photo excursions. This coming October will see us (she, me, and my wife) in Santa Barbara for the Brooks Institute of Photography 60th Anniversary (three days of stuff) followed by a drive up highway one from SB to Carmel. One of the most photogenic drives known to mankind.

Reading Hennings report reminds me of my wife. She's more like Henning's fellow architect woman in that she frequently threatens to never ride with me again. Even though when she's in the wagon, I drive in "wife mode." But it's still, sometimes, too much for her. HOWEVER... the last time we were in Germany (for Photokina) we traveled, one Sunday morning, from Heidelberg to Lucerne and AVERAGED 118 MPH (not KPH, MPH) some of which was in a torrential downpour. She was perfectly content. And yes, she knew exactly how fast we were traveling. Go figure!!!

So when I had fellow photography guys in the car, I could stretch her (the red wagon's) legs as she has v-e-r-y tall legs (gears) and like to see the asphalt rapidly disappear behind her. Turns out that Oliver and Frank are actually gearheads, so I believe that Frank's account of the trip was not in protest... :-)

Jim





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