I like it quiet

Sittin' on the dock of the Bay

Watchin' the tide roll away

sings a sign Linda had at The Old Place, that is now part of 7H porch.

Half an hour ago when I came out here with hot & black, the morning was still and quiet. In a few minutes I heard the first ripple come ashore, then more. Then steady, almost regular. Loud to me because I have my ears in, otherwise I'd hear nothing of it. First thing mornings, I put on a pair of eyeglasses, then contemplate whether to put in the ears - - a tough one, because I like it quiet. But ears this morning.

Not a ship or boat, the Bay is void of traffic, nothing moving but the sea itself, so the wave action I hear has got to be the incoming tide. Warm, feels a bit warm even for July, and muggy, the humidity is 87% and makes the dawning day feel like 90°

Life on 7H porch, life and Time, Time with a capital "T" because Time is all we have, an awareness that I've become more and more conscious of (split preposition, who cares), acutely cognizant in a bothering notion that's slightly annoying, especially since most people do not consciously think about their age. But then, most people are not this age. Been especially aware since the Time, feeling great like maybe eighty was the new fifty after all, I googled something about aging categories for humans and found out that it isn't, it's not, eighty is not the new fifty, in fact I'm nearly a decade into the category "extreme old age". Have another look in the mirror. Yep.

And sure enough, it isn't "just a number," what dope said that, it's trips around the sun, a long ways and taking a long Time. Wait, you'll see.

One more sip left in my first cup of coffee.

Yesterday Jay Leno showed us his 1930 Deusenberg J. He called it something, a Barrelside,

but it's a touring car, a four door open car with dual cowl and fold up windshield for rear seat passengers. He showed us all around it, the big straight eight engine, and underneath the car, telling us about all kinds of fascinating features, and then took us for a ride in it. The car's fabric top is folded back and down and covered with a boot, which Jay Leno said had been like that for, probably fifteen years, because he drives it a lot, and he always drives it open, with the top down.

The car is beyond a super classic, surely, at least for someone like me, one of the most beautiful things under the Sun. One interesting thing I learned was that its 1930 model year designation was not the year the car was made, but was assigned as the year the car was sold. Specifically, Duesenberg made some 500 of those cars in 1928 thinking they would sell quickly, but the Great Depression hit, and it took them ten years to sell that production run, such that an identical car that finally sold was designated a 1937 year model Duesenberg.

What else this morning? Yesterday I watched several other cars as well, an enormous 1938 Cadillac V16, a 1941 Cadillac Series Sixty-Seven, a 1935 Cadillac V12. Got to ride in several of them. Did you know that Cadillac's 1935 V12 was overhead valve, while the V16 at the Time was flat head? But Cadillac changed, and by the Time the 1938 V16 came along it was overhead valve, basically two straight eights leaning at an angle to each other and driving the same driveshaft. All this even though the baseline Cadillac V8 offering was flat head until they offered the OHV V8 in 1949, the same model year that the Olds 98 changed from a flat head straight eight to an OHV V8. You need to be keeping up with this stuff, you know, because, don't fool yourself, St Peter at the Pearly Gate will be asking questions, and I hope you'll be able to join us inside.

What? Daylight is beginning to show, and over the Bay the air is alphabet hazy with smoke from the Canadian wildfires. An offense of sorts, maybe Congress will pass their usual nonsense, condemning Canada for sending this and threatening to send in troops if it's not stopped. Fifty-four-forty or Fight and stuff, nomesane?

54-40 or Fight. Or was if forty-four-forty? No.

Bay is flat and quiet now, pretty soon the tide will roll away.

RSF&PTL