mobilene

niiiiiiice! Both cars were sweet. jim

Bring on the 225 movies!!

Of course your Buick had no shift points -- it had a Dynaflow (aka Dynaslush) gearbox! That 401 engine had to make up for in power what the Dynaflow took away in acceleration! Sounds like this is one car you wouldn't mind having today, if it were in good nick. This links to a page with a couple photos of a blue '62. http://www.oldride.com/library/1962_buick_electra_225.html jim

I had a Pinto once. I loved that stupid car, but my girlfriend didn't, since two of the three bolts holding the passenger seat had rusted out.

I'm with you, Dave, that there's a lot of joy in a tight little sporty machine when it's you and the road. I wish I (a) had the money right now and ( could find some modern analog to that '83 RX-7 my friend bought used in the early '90s. It was in decent shape -- still looked great, still ran well enough. And it was such a joy on the road. I'll bet I would have enjoyed riding in your Spyder. I wouldn't mind having something more babe-magnety than my little station wagon, too. But at least I can take my two large dogs along on road trips in the wagon. Can't do that in an RX-7. I'd like to have something like that RX, a compact pickup, and my daily driver. My driveway would look like a used-car lot.

15 years ago a friend bought an old, high-mileage, first-gen Mazda RX-7 and was hooning around in it. He let me drive it some as we explored the roads. That car would be my choice. It was nimble and fast, just a delight to drive. jim

Put a smile on my face!

I drove home from work last night in the storm. At one point, it rained/hailed so hard I couldn't see the road. But I got home okay. This morning, I get to deal with frozen pipes, whee. jim

I found this blog post today, considering the rise, fall, rise, and fall of the National Road around Wheeling. http://ryan4gopackgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/...l-and-rise.html

Good stories! I must say, every time I've ever driven in Pennsylvania, it's been in a snowstorm. I was on the Turnpike once in a snowstorm, foot aching on the clutch, going 15 mph for probably 50 miles in a friend's '85 Civic HF. A faint breeze was enough to toss that car out of its lane on a slick road. I believe I left grip marks in the steering wheel. jim

I took my sons up north to visit Grandma and Grandpa this weekend (for one son's 11th birthday). As often happens, it started snowing north of Rochester, which is about 45 minutes south of South Bend. The road wasn't particularly slippery, but it quickly became snow-covered and, thus, impossible to see. There were stretches where you couldn't even tell where the edges of the road were; everything was blanketed in white. A moron driver in a semi barreled past me, which blinded me for quite some time. That was the only white-knuckle moment on the road, however; slow but steady going was enough otherwise. Nothing has yet to touch a drive I made from Indianapolis to Terre Haute about 15 years ago. It had been raining, but while I was in Indy the temps dropped to below freezing. I didn't know this until I was on I-70 going home that night. It was a skating rink all the way. It took me 4 hours to drive the 68 miles. Any faster than I was going, and my car would drift in its lane. I watched other cars whiz past me only to slide into one guardrail, bounce off, hit the other one, bounce off, and hit the first one again. It was like they were bumper cars. What's the most dangerous driving situation you've been in? jim

Chris, you rock!! Let's start in Rochester. First, I find it interesting that the city changed its named streets to numbered streets somewhere along the way. I wish I could see what happens to Peru St. in your old map south of where it cuts off, but yes, it looks like it would be the road to Peru. Today, that street, called College St., ends three blocks south at 17th St. Then in Bunker Hill, clearly I would have benefited from using the mileages, because I would then have noticed the jog on Elm St. And, as sometimes happens with me on online maps, I turned my right, not "map" right. When I use paper maps, I always turn them the direction I'm giong to avoid that problem, but that's hard to do with my monitor. I'll remember to follow the mileages when I try this in the future -- they really do seem to unlock some of the mystery. The updated map is here. jim

You know, I'll be US 31 itself messed up the ABB instructions. There may not have been a road there in 1916, and it going in may have truncated or bifurcated some roads. That's my guess, anyway. Did you notice that the Descriptive Outline in the ABB calls out the Apperson, as well as the Haynes? I think Kokomo has an Automotive Heritage Museum, might even be on current 31 IIRC. I might have to go look someday. You clearly know way more about military aircraft than I since you could identify that B-17. My ex-wife used to be in the Air Force at the time of the F-4 and the F-16 and I think I could maybe identify the 16 if I saw one today, but that's as far as my knowledge goes.

Actually, you hit the one reason I might like to have a GPS -- to record the location where I took a photo. I have a digital voice recorder into which I say, "A bit north of the intersection of US 40 and 400 S" or whatever, but I'd like to be more accurate. I have visions of uploading my road photos to Flickr and precisely tagging them on the map there. My old Nextel phone had GPS and could allegedly tell me my location, but I could never make it work. My current Sprint phone is not so feature-blessed.

I use Google and Live when I'm at the computer, but in the car I want paper, period.

I'm gonna regret this tomorrow, but I'm up way past my bedtime tracing the 1916 ABB route on Google Maps. I got everything but the stretch between Miami and Kokomo. The roads between the two points just don't seem to do anymore what the ABB claimed they did in 1916. Click the link below to see it. You can zoom in to see the route at whatever level you want -- actually, at the initial magnification it's not very interesting at all, so zoom in, already. Look for the blue placemarkers, which note the endpoints and places where I had to make judgment calls as I interpreted the ABB. Google Maps trace of 1916 ABB route And for the hardcore amongst us, here's the 1924 ABB route between the same points. I'm too tired to trace it on Google Maps tonight. jim

Dave, you have no idea how badly I wanted to spend the entire morning trying to compare TIB to ABB to Google Maps. As it was, I sunk a half hour into figuring out the roads between Peru and Kokomo. I was able to trace the route okay to just north of Kokomo. The road along the Wabash River just south of Peru doesn't go through anymore by where the railroad track appears -- that's about where the Old 31 bridge is now. But otherwise it's all there. IIRC, the ABB sends the driver through Bunker Hill, and then back west across where US 31 would eventually be, just as TIB does. Anyway, one of these days I'll compare TIB to ABB. When I have a minute, I'll scan and post the 1916 and 1924 ABB routes here so you can look, too (or do you already have these ABBs?). Makes me wonder what happened to the rail beds. Are they still there (trackless probably) and I just don't notice them? My experience with the online map sites is that old rail beds look like scars on the land. If you look at where the rail crossing at US 31 in Lakeville used to be, the map clearly shows the scar except for where they made it all pretty at US 31. I'm not noticing much more modern evidence of the old railroads, other than that. Perhaps serious railfans could fill in some blanks. Yeah, in the years the auto industry was getting its feet and then kind of shaking itself out, Indiana was pretty active. But as the industry increasingly centered around Detroit, Indiana turned to supplying the industry. Kokomo was huge with Chrysler and GM; the Chrysler plant(s?) are on current US 31. Fort Wayne actually assembled GM trucks for a long time. Indy had GM plants too, and I think Ford. But these have increasingly closed or been spun off. In modern times, there is still a good amount of industry in Indiana that supports the big-three auto industry, but a lot of it is private. For example, in the late 80s and early 90s my dad was plant manager for a company in Goshen that made mufflers and catalytic converters, and one customer was Ford. But it's not like the big manufacturing jobs are gone. We make Toyota trucks and Subarus here, and we will soon make Hondas here as well. But I'd never heard of the Model before! Peace, jim

The lady across the street when I was a boy had a midnight blue '68 Impala hardtop sedan. That car was huge, but she could park it anywhere. It wallowed a bit on the road but was plenty comfy. I'll never forget that car. I almost bought a partially restored '68 hardtop coupe about 5 years ago from a guy around the corner. It was that goldish green. The exterior was excellent but the interior needed work. But while I spent a couple days in internal debate, he smacked the front end pretty good, and that was the end of it. If I ever find another '68 in good nick I'll do whatever I can to buy it.

I would be sunk at night without the edge lines. I rely on them. My first couple years driving I was all white-knuckled at night because I couldn't tell whether I was about to go off the road. Then someone said, "Always look at the white edge line as you drive at night; it tells you what's happening with the road," and it was as though I had been blind but then I could see. I'm not sure why I'm like this -- clearly, people drove without the edge lines for years; I've seen photos along state highways from 30-40 years ago that had only a center line. But without edge lines, I'd be restricted to lighted city driving at night. If I had known about that, I certainly would have gone to see it! I just looked it up on Google Maps, which of course shows LaPorte St. going through over that foot bridge .

When I revisited the brick sections of old US 40 in Illinois in November, I spoke with a man who lived on the road. The guy was probably 75 or 80 and remembered when the brick road was US 40. He said that it had more rises and curves than the current road, and it was of course a lot narrower. He said that if you got stuck behind a truck that had trouble maintaining speed on the rises, you could get mighty impatient in a hurry and try to pass when you couldn't really see what was coming. He said that he remembered many awful accidents, and that to him the new US 40 was a blessing because it was a safer road. jim

Closest I've seen to a suicide lane in Indiana is along Fall Creek Pkwy in Indianapolis, where there's lane control; the middle lane is NB in the morning and SB in the aftrnoon. I find it anxiety-provoking when I drive it, but I imagine you get used to it if you do it every day. In southern Indiana some two-lane highways expand to three when going up a steep hill. Traffic is to move right, but those who want to pass do so in the left lane. It can be tricky sometimes to do it before the right lane disappears and that traffic merges into what had been the passing lane.

The Morris is really something, isn't it? Thanks for solving the mystery of Green Oak. I can't imagine it was ever much to begin with. jim

I started focusing more on roadside architecture and attractions after I started coming here, because so many here are into it, and I know it's wise to play to the audience . But then I realized I can often learn a lot about a road by what buildings are on it, especially if the buildings are old. Moreover, the older alignments tend to have the older buildings. Except in your hometown, apparently. What a mess that must have been. Paying attention to the architecture did prompt me to join the Indiana Historic Preservation Society, however. Last time I took the Michigan Road north of here, a large house had clearly been moved to a new location on the road in, I think, Michigantown. One of my Society newsletters talked about it, so I knew something about it. It's cold and grey here, my dogs are asleep on their beds in the garage 12 miles away, and I continue to encounter silly roadblocks while testing this infernal loan-origination application. The answer to the question you posed, as applied to my situation, is left as an exercise for the reader. Three guesses and the first two don't count.

Dave, I wonder if the businesses along the strip south of the MI line are stable, or whether they've changed hands a lot, because I don't think much has changed along that strip in 20 years. It's different when you go down into Roseland, however, which has gone somewhat upscale. If you want to live in South Bend, north is where you want to be these days, and so you get the "better" businesses. While I don't know the stories of the proprietors along the strip, I do know that the situation in Roseland is well covered by the local media, and a Google search on "Roseland Snyder" will bring up everything you never wanted to know. I will bet that the Otel is primarily a weekly place today. Thanks for commenting. jim

Thanks guys. Part of the fun is posting my trip and getting the feedback. It takes me about 2 hours on average to do each page of a report. This report was 14 pages -- 28 hours, yikes. The big time sink is processing the photos. But anyway, point is I could have made this trip 2 1/2 times in the time it took me to write it up! jim