Saturday Morning Cartoons & coffee with the Bear Family!
Now don’t get me wrong, dear readers: I’m not complaining! But it is weird; the entire Rocky Mountain region has just experienced the most weatherless winter I’ve seen in my 26 years here. The Denver area where your humble blogger resides got maybe 5 days of snow the entire season, and 2 of those days were little more than a light dusting…but then again, if you happen to reside on the East Coast, you probably don’t want to hear that! Seems the eastern seaboard got all our snow this year…
Any casual golfers out there? You might want to consider a new hobby…like, slot car racing, for example!
That’s going to make this summer definitely not fun for the entire Southwest: CO, AZ, NV and CA are all facing down strict water rationing this summer-probably UT and NM as well, so get ready for brown yards and short showers…and I’d hate to be a golfer in a western state right now! But it could be worse; at least we’re not getting death rained down upon us from A-10’s and F-35s.
This scene on the track perimeter looks good, even though the Corvette is a wee bit too big in comparison to the old Lesney Matchbox #18 Field Car (aka IH Scout) towing it…
So, on this unsneasonably warm Saturday, I find myself enjoying my morning coffee and Saturday Morning Cartoons (that’s capitalized because it’s a thing) and awaiting the arrival of one of my oldest friends, who’s winging his way in from CA to visit me for the weekend…that is, if he can get a flight…circumstances there are being affected-as is everything, it seems-by the topic I broached in my previous post, which is probably why I’m feeling extra nostalgic today!
So, on this “Not Much To Say Satur-day,” join me as we head back to what CA was like in 1987-a different time, a different world-and mess around with some of the “chess pieces” to see if I can’t keep things interesting on the diorama, adding some more cars and changing up some of the tableaus! Its a fun, low-cost, low-consequence way to pass the time, and its reminiscent of how a lot of us spent our boyhoods in our rooms, basements, or back yards in those days when we were more concerned about our toys than about water rationing or the economic fallout of the latest war in the middle east…
The latest “Tableau Shuffle” at Drag City started out of a desire to find a good place for Roxy’s tan Toyota FJ-60 Land Cruiser, represented here by this excellent Hot Wheels Premium “Car Culture” model. Though she’s currently in the passenger’s seat of your HB’s Chevy K-5 Blazer in the parking lot, her ute is at the track filled with her camera and recording gear as your intrepid team of track reporters make their way around town gathering images, data and stories for your enjoyment here @ thunderjetheaven.com. I decided that the infield area right behind the local San Diego station news van was the perfect pitch, but it meant moving that cool Hurst “Trackside Service” ’59 Chevy Sedan Delivery, which-as always-started a chain reaction…The biggest changes are to the inspection area, where another “tightening up” of vehicles has been done to add the Hurst “Trackside Service” sdn delivery to the row of service trucks unloading parts for the racers; this allowed one of the layout’s coolest cars, this highly detailed Cobra Daytona coupe, to migrate to the busy area around Turn 11, “Station East,” where a row of extremely awesome cars of varying styles are frantically having last-minute fixes and improvements done (or, perhaps, cheats removed or obscured!) right before inspection on race day! The red Ferrari 250LM is a migration from the inspection station parking area.And wouldn’t you know it, that “tightening up” made room for another car! I’ve been wanting to add this Treasure Hunt Riley & Scott Mk III racer to the layout since I got it, and here it is, complete with its driver maybe a little too eager to go, already fully suited up with helmet before even leaving the inspection station for the paddock!Aaaand since moving the Ferrari 250LM opened up that end parking space at the inspection station for the Jaguar XJ12C racer, its place was taken by the addition of this super-cool Hot Wheels Honda CR-X, a car that represents what would have been the “new blood” at DCR in this era!And last in the chain reaction: those earlier moves shuffled some things around in the paddock as well, so the flared racing Mini now sits next to the red Porsche 356 in the paddock, although I’m not super pleased with the scale comparison here; the theme is good, but I may move some more things around here to improve the “forced perspective.” Better in scale is the Ford Lotus Cortina in the conga line moving from the inspection station to the paddock, which looks right at home between an alloy 300SL and a Ferrari P4
And so again, a slow and lazy weekend day without much to report, but I enjoy these slow days because I get precious few of them anymore. No racing this weekend, since I’ve got guests to “entertain,” but the track will be roaring again soon enough, because racing reports and other updates are always just around the bend at Drag City!
One thought on “DIORAMA DETAILS: Warm Saturday Morning Vibes”
I hope you and John have a great visit and he has safe travels. These are some cool changes. Roxy’s Land Cruiser is a nice touch. All the cars, the peeps interacting with them, and the stories unfolding is awesome!!!
I hope you and John have a great visit and he has safe travels. These are some cool changes. Roxy’s Land Cruiser is a nice touch. All the cars, the peeps interacting with them, and the stories unfolding is awesome!!!