In Search of: Food!

There will be talk of flying in this post, so stay tuned during the early digression.

It occurred to me recently that one of the most common themes when I travel to new places is the search for new places to eat. I have by no means come anywhere near exhausting the opportunities at home, mind you. Far from it, in fact. The truth of the matter is that it is too disruptive of the routine grind to 1) find a restaurant that all interested parties agree on (even though that is precisely two of us), 2) agree to turn around and head right back out on the busy rush hour roads to get to an interesting feeding hole, and 3) wait for forty-five minutes to be seated, prior to a half hour wait for foodstuffs to be delivered to our table. 'Tis far more simple to throw something together from the supplies stored in our pantry, assuming we have any palatable comestibles in there, or to go to one of our usual spots, be that drive-thru fast (that's a misnomer!) food or a chain sit-down.

And so it is that we only ever try new places when we take vacations or, in my case, when I fly out somewhere for breakfast or lunch.

Vacations, as it happens, are nearly impossible for us to take these days due to the familial obligations incumbent with caring for elderly parents, or in my case, in-laws. We really can't go any further than a two or three hour drive for fear of receiving one of the dreaded yet not uncommon 'We called the squad, meet us at the Emergency Room" calls. As you may recall from last year, we made a brief weekend trip to the city of my origin, Cincinnati.  Last week we went off in a different direction and found ourselves in another river town, this one being Pittsburgh.

I had only ever been to Pittsburgh on business travel, and even those were short stays filled mostly with, well.... business. The Co-owner had been there even less frequently, with the distant past nature of that visit being lengthy enough to nearly equate to "never."

I'll spare you all of the details, but as always I reserve the right to display pictures and make pithy comments about them.

Our first dinner was at The Grand Concourse, which is a fancy restaurant now inhabiting what used to be a train station:

We had reservations (didn't need them, as it turned out, as there were very few diners) for dinner, but arrived early enough to have a drink at the attached Gandy Dancer bar. I doubt if the bar surface itself has been around for a century or so, but the devices used to hold the bar rail certainly have:

The Co-owner had some kind of Mango-based drink, while I went with a pomegranate martini, which is not shown due to it being a 'pink drink,' which is something I don't like to advertise out of some form of latent gender programming.  

The Mango drink was reportedly quite tasty.

The main dining room is situated in the heart of the old train station. We wondered why there were no other patrons, but later figured out that most people prefer to sit in the area that fronts the river, probably because of the great view of the downtown skyline. We had that same view from our hotel room, so we didn't feel like we were missing anything by dining in the main room.

Not only was it quieter, but the waiters were relaxed enough to provide extra services like breaking up the Co-owners lobster and extracting the meaty parts for her.

The cost of her lobster being roughly equal to the defense budget of a typical NATO country, I went with a more affordable blackened Grouper, a fish and preparation style that I had very much enjoyed when we stayed in Florida for a week many years ago.

I was intrigued with the ceiling:

And dessert, which was wonderful!

As I said, the waiters had time on their hands. When they came to collect the dishes, one of them looked at me and asked if I "had ever been in the food service industry."

My blank stare was answer enough.

It seems that I had placed the silverware on the plate in " a weave," which is something professional food service people do to keep the utensils from slipping off of the plate.

Who knew??

That was a fitting end to our Friday.

Our only plans for Saturday were to visit the Strip District (which, while interesting and enjoyable, was not precisely what I had hoped for from a place called The Strip District) and to ride the incline located just behind our hotel up to Mt. Washington.

Figuring that there would certainly be interesting breakfast places in the so-called Strip District, I consulted the internet and found a diner. And as we all know, I love diners!

I selected a place called Kelly O's Diner, pretty much by random choice. It turned out to be a fine choice, and it was a very good thing I hadn't done a lot of research or I would have never gone anywhere near the place.

I feel like the best thing to do when ordering food in a new city is to look for regional things that I can't get at home. As an example, consider the kielbasa sausage, egg, and pepper jack cheese sandwich:

  

Consider also the home fries with peppers and onions. Nothing all that special with regards to the ingredients, but the way they were cooked to crispy perfection is sadly something that is pretty rare:

I had a chance to look at some of the non-breakfast stuff too, and was caught unawares by a thing called 'Haluski' - I had never heard of it.  This is also where I caught the first hint of why I would not have chosen this place had I done deeper research.

First things first, I attempted to get a definition of 'Haluski' from Wikipedia, but found their entry to be a virtually useless collection of gibberish.  Fortunately, I found a much better alternative:

Kelly O’s Pittsburgh Haluski

Tammy Baker

There’s a Diner in Pittsburgh, PA which was featured on Diner’s, Drive-In’s, & Dive’s. Makes home style grub. Yummy Polish Haluski!!

You can find the recipe at this link.

If you can't be bothered, here is the list of ingredients:

Ingredients

• 3 T butter, melted
• 1 large, diced onion
• 3 T garlic salt
• 1 head shredded cabbage
• A squirt of water to help steam cabbage before caramelization with onions
• Black pepper
• 1 lb cooked, diced bacon
• 1 lb cooked, strained curly noodles

You may not have noticed, but the intro to the recipe also contained a reference to the reason I would have avoided the place: anything that has been "featured on Diner's, Drive-Ins, & Dives" is likely to have become something of a tourist attraction, and those are places I try to avoid if at all possible. Fortunately, the brief moment of fame (well, just shy of three minutes, if you can get the video to work) doesn't seem to have gone to their heads. It's not a touristy-looking clientele:

We were also very, very impressed with the orange juice. Her, because it was especially tasty, and me because I was fascinated by the machine that squeezed it:

Along those same lines, it's a good thing we approached from this side of the building....

... because I would have turned tail and run if we had seen this first:

With an extremely satisfying breakfast out of the way, we wandered down the Strip District. Note that I have been unable to track down the reason for that name, but there is a bit of a historical description of the area itself available from the usual source:

The Strip District is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is a one-half square mile area of land northeast of the central business district bordered to the north by the Allegheny River and to the south by portions of the Hill District.

In the early 19th century, the Strip District was home to many mills and factories as its location along the Allegheny River made for easy transportation of goods and shipping of raw materials. It was the home of the Fort Pitt Foundry, source of large cannon before and during the American Civil War, including a 20-inch bore Rodman Gun. Early tenants of the Strip District included U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, The Pittsburgh Reduction Company (ALCOA), and later The H.J. Heinz Company, famous ketchup and condiment manufacturer. 

The shipping infrastructure built around the manufacturing companies naturally lead to an increase in other types of merchants setting up shop in the Strip. By the early 20th century the Strip District became a vibrant network of wholesalers—mostly fresh produce, meat, and poultry dealers. Soon, auction houses rose around the wholesale warehouses and many restaurants and grocery stores were built to feed hungry shift workers at any hour of the day. By the 1920s, the Strip District was the economic center of Pittsburgh.

Yeah, well, okay. There were a few specialty stores mixed in with the T-Shirt/souvenir stores you would expect. This one sold nothing but various varieties of Balsamic vinegar. I was surprised at the incredible variety of Balsamic vinegar available as only a non-veteran of the Food Service Industry can be.

Speaking of The Food Service Industry, there was at least one gift shop that carried products that would appeal to veterans of that profession:

It's hard to discern what those are at first glance - they're little statues made out of (non-woven) silverware. The one on the left is a snow skier, and the two on the right are hockey players.

They also had these, for which I have no comment, other than the fact that I haven't often (well, never) seen 'CRAP' spelled as 'COPR':

There was a kind of general market as well, where the butcher shop was just getting set up for the day's business:

I was tempted by the fresh brats and pastas:

I even took an interest in the spice selection, albeit mostly because of the presentation:

This, however, was completely unappealing to me, regional specialty or not:

Grass Fed hot dogs are good, but Free Range Grass Fed hot dogs are better. They're so much leaner than those poor hot dogs that are kept in tiny little pens....

This caught my eye, but to understand it you will need a little backstory.

I had always heard that the best thing about cooking with Tofu is its ability to absorb just about any flavor (which is good, considering that it really has no flavor of its own), and when I realized that every type of "fake" seafood (crab, mostly) is made of Pollack, I thought it would be helpful if I were to provide The Pollack PR Marketing Group (before I realized that they have nothing at all to do with Pollack the fish, which is correctly spelled as 'Pollock') with a catchy catch phrase:

"Pollock, the Tofu of the Seas!"

Now, I realize that I am pretty much alone in the wilderness on this, but I find that to be uproariously funny!

With that in mind, I present you with Boiled Baby Clams, or what I choose to call "The Veal of the Seas!"

Funny store (maybe - depends on how you felt about the Tofu of the Seas thing): Co-pilot Egg asked me once at what point a calf becomes veal. My answer: "The moment you decide to eat it."

Yes, well, onward.  The next stop was the Oriental Market. Being as I am a huge fan of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cooking, I just love the Asian markets. That said, many of the things on display are not all that appealing to me.

For example:

That's just a bit too much duck for me. Actually, any duck is too much duck for me.

I was immediately repelled by the very idea of this, but soon realized that I was simply mentally replacing the 'S' with a 'D', a problem of mine that has caused no end of confusion.

Ah, The Potato Chips of the Sea:

Oh, good, premium quality! I've had a lot of problems with the lesser brands:

Moving on to not-quite-dry-yet seafood, I came across these poor little nobodies.  Oops, that was meant to be "no bodies," for what is hopefully an obvious reason:

There were aisles of noodles and sauces, all of which were festive looking:

I would have avoided this diner too. I looked it up when we got back to the room and apparently no matter when you try to go there, you're going to stand out in the cold waiting for at least half an hour:

This store had everything!  Except macaroni. Odd, that.

We rode the incline to the top of the hill later in the day. There isn't much to say about Mt. Washington, except that it's worth the trip solely due to the means of transport, similar to almost all airport restaurants:

And the view, I suppose:

And so, at long last, we get to the flying portion of this epic posting. Thank you for your patience.

After a full month of not flying, we finally got a suitable patch of weather just good enough for a series of touch & goes. The rust was apparent; my first approach ended in a not-quite-just-practice go-around as I found myself 400' above the numbers. I had lapsed back into an RV-6 flying style. The next two were fine, so I called it good enough. 

Just a few days later we were blessed with a fine, if slightly windy, Sunday forecast. I pinged Kyle, Chief Caterer for The Jackson Two, to gauge his interest in flying out somewhere for lunch. I even had a place picked out: The Wounded Goose in Bidwell, Ohio. 

Why The Wounded Goose?  

Really, who wouldn't want to eat at a place called The Wounded Goose?

There's not much to Bidwell, OH. I think it's something like Population 12, but can't say for sure because no one has bothered to count. It does have some history, though:

The community of Bidwell was founded in 1881 under the name Heatly, after the arrival of the Columbus, Hocking Valley, and Toledo Railroad. Charles Heatly (1809-1888) owned the property where the new station was located. His home still stands nearby. 

Porter Station was built in Heatly as a means of transportation of passengers and freight, which led to its later expansion and the source of the name of the neighboring village of Porter. Circa 1900, Heatly changed its name to Bidwell in honor of John Bidwell, the Prohibition Party's presidential candidate in 1892.

[Booo! Hissssss!  Down with Prohibition!!]

The easiest way to get there would be to land in Gallipolis and grab the courtesy car for the fifteen minute drive back in time to Bidwell. Schedules were coordinated and the plan was in place. The only thing that could go wrong would be if someone else snagged the car before we got there - that's always the risk with depending on a courtesy car.

The weather was as nice as promised - there were only a few clouds down low, but I ended up climbing to 5,500' to get above the choppy air down low. It was glass smooth up there at 5,500, though.

The other benefit of climbing up there was a hella good tailwind.

As was evidenced by RV-6-like ground speeds.

With a 34 knot difference between my speed over the ground and my speed through the air, I knew that the flight back was going to be as slow as a wound goose.

I always enjoy the approach into Gallipolis - I just love the river.

Even with the great tailwind, I landed a few minutes behind a Cessna.  They grabbed the courtesy car, so lunch at The Wound Goose would have to wait for another day.

There was a bit of activity at the airport, though. One of the hangar tenants had pulled a small Experimental helicopter out of the hangar and it was attracting a small crowd of interested spectators. Always eager to please an audience. I quipped that "Big Boy Toys" in my house referred to anything that isn't women's shoes.

The group fully understood that and I was rewarded with a fairly decent group chuckle.

This is a Hirth engine, and it makes much less than 100 horsepower. It's pretty amazing that a helicopter can fly on such low power.

The takeoff out of Gallipolis is always interesting - I have to head pretty far west before making my turn to the north.

I didn't want to climb up into the huge headwind, but there was a price to be paid in staying down in the choppy air, too.  Some of the bumps were pretty extreme - one of them register 2.2 Gs on the Richter Scale.

There's a lot of mining in Southern Ohio.

The chop made for an uncomfortable wide, but trying to climb over it put me right in the teeth of the strong winds headed south.

Right. On. The. Nose.

Headwinds or not, it was great to be back in the air!!

The Bug, Part Trois: Let's Plan a Trip!

Yes yes yes, it's better to have road-clogging, motivation-sapping ice and snow storms on a weekend when I don't have to drive, but still... it's getting repetitive.

I'm stuck in the house again, playing with flight sims. I tried my hand at making a short Discovery Channel type of documentary, but I'm not super enthusiastic about the results. If nothing else, I found pretty good resource for researching this particular aircraft: the PDF manual that came with the download of the simulated plane. It continues to amaze me that they run regular sales on these things, so I typically get them for $15 each. Amazing!

So, here are some snippets regarding the plane that I selected for my first (and perhaps only) documentary: the Messerschmitt Bf 109 K-4:

One of the most well-known fighters of WWII had humble beginnings. When first imagined in 1933, just as a new political party rose to power in Germany, few people could have imagined that this early interceptor research project would result in over 30,000 production examples serving throughout Europe in roles ranging from ground attack to reconnaissance, and providing a mount to most of the world's leading fighter aces. 

The German air arm had already been secretly working on military aviation throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Bomber and fighter designs were disguised as civilian aircraft. The earliest plans that eventually resulted in the Bf 109 were shrouded in the same secrecy. Hermann Goering, freshly appointed Reichsminister of Aviation, in an October 1933 letter to Theo Croneiss, a man recently appointed to lead a little-known aircraft manufacturer Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (Bavarian Aicraft Works), wrote of an impending design competition for a “high-speed courier plane which does not need to be anything more than a single seater”. BFW began preparing to build a fast civilian single-seater that could be converted into a fighter when needed.

These sims are typically developed overseas, where there seems to be some reluctance to provide certain details. I'm going to hazard a guess that it was the Nazi party that rose to power in Germany. Aircraft design in the 20's and early 30's was done in secret because the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany from having an Air Force. Obviously, it happened anyway while a war-weary world averted its attention in favor of policies of appeasement. As is often the case, the wages of appeasement were harsh as the vacuum of leadership was filled by those with differing agendas. This is a lesson that is forgotten generation after generation, and to a frightening degree it appears that it has been forgotten again.

Time will tell.

The "courier plane" needed to have a top speed of 400 km/h (250 mph) at 6,000 m (19,690 ft), to be maintained for 20 minutes, while having a total flight duration of 90 minutes. The critical altitude of 6,000 meters was to be reached in no more than 17 minutes, and the "courier plane" was to have an operational ceiling of 10,000 metres. The powerplant was to be the new Junkers Jumo 210, but the proviso was made that it would be interchangeable with the more powerful, but less developed Daimler-Benz DB 600 powerplant. 

The new airplane was to be armed with either a single 20 mm MG C/30 engine-mounted cannon firing through the propeller hub as a Motorkanone or, alternatively, either two engine cowl-mounted 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine guns, or one lightweight, engine-mounted 20 mm MG FF cannon with two 7.92 mm MG 17s. It was also specified that the wing loading should be kept below 100 kg/m2. The performance was to be evaluated based on the fighter's level speed, rate of climb, and maneuverability, in that order.

That's a lot of fire power for a "courier plane," no?

The history goes on, with the end result being the K-4 variant. While there were many revisions made during the war years, there was one that remains to plague me today:

As with the earlier Bf 108 transport plane, the new design was based on Messerschmitt's "lightweight construction" principle, which aimed to minimize the number of separate parts in the aircraft. Examples of this could be found in the use of two large, complex brackets which were fitted to the firewall. These brackets incorporated the lower engine mounts and landing gear pivot point into one unit. A large forging attached to the firewall housed the main spar pick-up points, and carried most of the wing loads. Contemporary design practice was usually to have these main load-bearing structures mounted on different parts of the airframe, with the loads being distributed through the structure via a series of strong-points. By concentrating the loads in the firewall, the structure of the Bf 109 could be made relatively light and uncomplicated. 

An advantage of this design was that the main landing gear, which retracted through an 85-degree angle, was attached to the fuselage, making it possible to completely remove the wings for servicing without additional equipment to support the fuselage. It also allowed simplification of the wing structure, since it did not have to bear the loads imposed during takeoff or landing. The one major drawback of this landing gear arrangement was its narrow wheel track, making the aircraft unstable while on the ground. To increase stability, the legs were splayed outward somewhat, creating another problem in that the loads imposed during takeoff and landing were transferred up through the legs at an angle.

The manual contains another 100 pages of in-depth detail about the history, design, and operational aspects of the plane, but perhaps you would rather just watch my efforts to fly it. If you know how to do it, this is really spectacular in full screen HD:



Note that the only way I was able to get it off of the ground was to enable a pair of "cheats" in the simulator. They didn't help with the landing, of course.

While that filled a couple of morning hours quite well, my thoughts soon turned to "real" flying. It's March now, so I can start to allow myself to think about the upcoming flying season. I've pretty much decided not to do Oshkosh this year, so I will have a few days that I can use for a lengthy trip, something I keep promising myself that I will do pretty much every time March rolls around.

For the first on what may or may not become a list of potential trip itineraries, I sketched out a trip down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. This is intended to be a leisurely trip of 5 - 8 days, depending on weather issues.

Here is the first sketch:

Leg One is Columbus to Owensboro, Kentucky for a fuel and lunch stop. Note that any actual airports named as enroute stops are really placeholders until such time as I did in and research things like fuel prices and restaurant options. I may also be on the lookout for interesting touristy things.

The zig-zags are precise - they are intended to make sure the total mileage allows for some periods of detouring to follow the river.

Leg 1 mileage: 282 nm.
Total mileage: 282 nm.

Leg 2 is the afternoon flight, and the goal is to reach Memphis, Tennessee. I'm thinking this is an overnight stay, and potentially a two-night stay, depending on the forecast.

Leg 2 mileage: 261 nm.
Total mileage: 543 nm.

There is an interesting photo op about halfway through leg 2: right around Cairo, Missouri, the Ohio River merges with the Mississippi River:

I will be much lower than this, but this is what it is likely to look like:

I have West Memphis selected as the overnight, but that could change as I hunt around for a cheap place to stay and determine the need for a rental car.

Leg 4 is a straight shot down the river. I don't have any real goals for that leg, other than to get a few pictures of Natchez, Mississippi. I have no other reason for that than having read a bunch of Greg Iles' novels, but if I'm flying down the river anyway... might as well. He goes on about the river front and the Antebellum houses, so maybe those would be worth seeing from the air.

Leg 4 ends with a fuel stop at (randomly selected) False River.

Leg 3 mileage: 288 nm.
Total mileage: 631 nm.

Leg 4 gets us to New Orleans.

As much I have tried to avoid Class B airspace because of the unpredictable nature of air traffic controllers, there is no choice at the destination. There is, however, a 'get out of jail free' card in the form of an aerial crosswalk for getting through without having to be subjected to a lot of routing, etc.

This corridor will more than likely show up on my Skyview screen, but I want to plan it as a waypoint anyway. Prior to the most recent release of the Skyview firmware, this would have been difficult. Now, though, I can just set up a virtual VOR waypoint right at the entrance of the corridor. That will be cool!

Leg 4 mileage: 51 nm.
Total mileage: 682 nm.

The snow is still falling, so it's still too soon to go out and let the snowblower bully me around in the driveway, so I guess I will start researching the airports that I have select thus far, or.... I could do a documentary on the other infamous German WWII fighter: the Focke-Wulf FW-190.

I can actually land that one,

The Bug, Part Deux

Still February, still the worst month of my life, the nasty cold/flu gone but for a residual cough that past experience tells me that I can count on as a roommate for the next five to eight weeks, and snowed in on a weekend, again.  It could be worse, of course: travel is optional on weekends, so I can console myself with the thought that at least I didn't have to deal with a seventy mile round trip to and from work. To be honest, I leave so early in the morning that there typically aren't a lot of cars on the road (but plenty off of it!!) when the weather is bad, but it is slow going and that is not something that I enjoy. I've racer's blood coursing through my veins, intermingled with the elements that draw me to flying.

Speaking of, it has always seemed to me that people drawn to the types of airplanes that I most enjoy, that being small, nimble, and efficiently simple, are also drawn to the types of cars that I tend to seek out. I don't have statistics to back this up, but I believe that the car most often owned or pined for by people that own/fly Van's two-seat airplanes is the Mazda Miata. Much as Van's defined the homebuilt airplane market (or if "defined" is too strong for you, try on "enabled Van's to dominate" for size) with a realistic compromise between a sport plane and a travel plane, Miata can be credited with returning the two-seat roadster to mainstream acceptance for the same reasons.  Affordable, tremendous fun that isn't entirely dependent on a great deal of (expensive) horsepower, primarily because handling comes first.

Horsepower is fun in a straight line, I suppose, but give me a light road-hugging car and a desolate twisty road any day of the week.

As I continue the search for my next project, I'm finding the ground to be sparse when it comes to anything that can equal, far less surpass, the RV-12. It can be difficult indeed to find something to do if you started my climbing Everest.  Regular readers will be shaking their heads and/or rolling their eyes: "Didn't we just slog through a lengthy essay on the benefits of open-cockpit biplanes?"

Well, yes. Yes we did. Here's the thing with that, though. Or to be more precises, things:

  - Need another hangar, both for build and storage.
  - Need more insurance, and for a plane of that nature, it would come at a premium (heh!) cost.
  - The nature of the engine that would be used and the strength of the airframe would increase risk to your's truly.
  - Much more latitude in how it's built, which equates to a much harder build than the 12, which had the not inconsiderable benefit of having detailed instruction from the very first rivet to the completion of the first flight.
  - I've already built a plane.

Those are not necessarily showstoppers, but they weigh heavily enough that the mental gears are still grinding in a quest for other ideas.

I keep coming back to building a car.

This is nothing new - I have been looking at building a car since the day I became aware of Factory Five. Factory Five is to kit cars what Van's is to kit airplanes, which is to say "the most dominant manufacturer in the industry."  There is great value in this for any number of reasons, but the most obvious are:

  - long-term viability. Anything can happen, of course, but the chances of them being around to support the product are pretty good.
  - Proven product. Hundreds, yes HUNDREDS of their kits are successfully built. I have have an old high school friend that built one.
  - Refined product. They're on something like version 5 of their top seller, which is a Shelby Cobra replica.

They are not the only game in town, though. There are plenty of others that don't have the same scale but are still viable alternatives.

But that's getting a bit ahead of the game, so let me circle back.  Step one in building an airplane kit is deciding what airplane you want to end up with. For me, the decision was a small, light, efficient plane that would work just as well for short-ish trips as it would for a half hour of throwing it around the sky. For that one I took a short cut and bought an already-flying RV-6. It was a great airplane, but it obviously didn't quench the thirst to build something. When I through "attainable assembly" into the mix, and found that I hadn't done any aerobatics for a couple of years, my choice of plane to build came down to the RV-12.

This is the stage I am at if I am considering a kit car. It has to be reasonably approachable to the first time builder, and it has to be something that I want to drive.

It is that second attribute that I have been thinking about, although the "is there even a kit available, and is it reasonably build-able" question is never far afield.

This discussion came up yesterday during my every-now-and-then visit with the CEO.

As a bit of background, he is a big fan of Netflix in the same way I am: 99% of their offerings are dreck (I grant that this is very much an "eye of the beholder" thing), but there is great value in the number of high quality BBC shows on offer. One of the things I like most about some of the older shows, or at least shows staged in older times, is looking at the cars. You Downton Abbey aficionados may be doing something similar.  I'm not talking about the fancy Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts and the big Cadillacs, mind you, but more along the lines of the famous two-seat roadsters from the golden days of the 20's and 30's.

Here are a few representative samples:

These (and to be honest, my own roadster that I use as my daily driver) are, with the possible exception of the last one, very refined cars that provide more than a modicum of comfort in addition to their sportiness. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but....

I want to be very clear about something. I love my SLK. It is probably the best car that I will ever own, and the day I found it sitting on a used car lot with five years but only 14,800 miles under its belt will always be considered one of my luckiest finds. But...

That refinement and comfort comes at a cost in the same way the modern, capable RV-12 does when compared with the RV-6. I suppose the best way to say this is to just come out with it (at the risk of sounding like a spoiled child): there are days when I miss the Miata.

I love the SLK in the very same places I disliked the Miata: on the highway and in traffic.

I miss the Miata when I get out into the rural areas and find roads that would reward a light, nimble car, and where horsepower doesn't bring much to the table.

We're about to take a major change in direction here, and I would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to watch this video before reading on. No, really, you'll thank me for it.



Can you see where I'm headed with this? It's the racing heritage that compels. The long, storied history of the Lotus 7 pulls much harder than the playboy nature of the MG TD (the top three photos above) and seems to be a worthy stable mate to my SLK (which has plenty of playboy nature in it, thank you very much) for those days when I just want to drive for the sake of driving.

Having come to this conclusion, I am happy to report that, unlike the MG TD, there actually is a kit manufacturer that can supply just what I need.  The name of the place is Westfield, and they are located in Britain. That would normally be a giant pain to deal with, but fortunately it is simply an expensive thing to deal with. There is, you see, and American dealer that resells their kit in the US. The expense comes from shipping the kit across the Atlantic, which costs a princely $4,200.

(All of you RV-12 builders in Australia, Europe, etc. are currently drying your tears for my plight, right??)

Of course, I think I probably paid at least half of that to have my -12 kits shipped from Oregon, so it's not quite the tax that it appears to be.

In any event, I give you the FM Westfield:

Impressed?? I am!

But being the cagey little twerp that I am, I kept the best part for last:

It's build on a single donor car, which just happens to be.... A MIATA!

You can visit their web site here.

So, what would be the logistics of something like this?

  - Small enough to build in the back of my hangar.
  - No need to go out and find/strip a donor car. I would buy a pallet. I would opt for the higher-end 1997 parts, and that would cost around $4,000.
  - The kit itself, including the $4,200 shipping, would come in at around $21,000.
  - The body parts are already finish coated with Gel Coat, so no painting required, although I'd probably find someone to paint a nice yellow racing stripe on the British Racing Green body.

Open question: where to store it when done. It would actually fit in the hangar, but I would have to find a new home for my canoe and its trailer. I'd probably get a tarp to cover it and park in the back of my yard.

So, can I get you to watch another video? This is a Westfield Lotus, albeit with a different engine and non-English narration:


Can you see the appeal? I swear I saw some RV smiles in there!!