Driving slowly in circles is something I do a lot of. From May through October I spend about 3 hours per week mowing the lawn. Yesterday I managed to get about 3/4 of the lawn done before it started raining too hard. Sometimes mowing the lawn can be sort of relaxing in a meditative sort of way. Yesterday I took some sort of sick pleasure in annihilating about a million dandelions. (This pictures is not from our house, but nearby.)
Last weekend, besides mowing the lawn, we did some driving in circles of a different kind. We went cruising. One evening every year, hundreds of cars and even more car lovers gather in a town about an hour from here. Most of the cars are vintage American cars which are incredibly popular in Sweden. For example, there are more 1959 Cadillacs in Sweden than anywhere else in the world. We had been planning on cruising in the Cadilac that my husband and daughter had been working on all winter, but we were thwarted by a really ridiculous bureaucracy.
The Caddy was originally imported to Denmark from the US, but it was never registered in Denmark because it was way too expensive to do so. It sat in a field for several years, then it was sold to somebody in Sweden from whom my husband bought it. My husband filed the registration papers for personal use when he bought the car last summer, and everything went through as normal. When he showed up for the safety inspection a couple weeks ago, they refused to take in the car because it did not have "personal use" status. Some bureaucrat had changed the status without informing us. We could not appeal that change because the appeal period had expired (without us ever knowing about it). In order to register the car without the "personal use" status, we'd have to remove the catalytic converter and other environmentally friendly features because they weren't available in Sweden in 1976 when the car was made. Besides being stupid, that would be a lot of work. Eventually a solution was found: export the car to Denmark, sell it to somebody there, buy it back, reimport it to Sweden, and file the registration paperwork again. We jumped through all these hoops, but we couldn't get a new safety inpsection appointment in time for cruising. Thus we ended up taking the Suburban. It's not nearly as cool, but we had a good view, and not being a convertable, we didn't freeze too much.
Driving slowly in circles is something I do a lot of. From May through October I spend about 3 hours per week mowing the lawn. Yesterday I managed to get about 3/4 of the lawn done before it started raining too hard. Sometimes mowing the lawn can be sort of relaxing in a meditative sort of way. Yesterday I took some sort of sick pleasure in annihilating about a million dandelions. (This pictures is not from our house, but nearby.)
Last weekend, besides mowing the lawn, we did some driving in circles of a different kind. We went cruising. One evening every year, hundreds of cars and even more car lovers gather in a town about an hour from here. Most of the cars are vintage American cars which are incredibly popular in Sweden. For example, there are more 1959 Cadillacs in Sweden than anywhere else in the world. We had been planning on cruising in the Cadilac that my husband and daughter had been working on all winter, but we were thwarted by a really ridiculous bureaucracy.
The Caddy was originally imported to Denmark from the US, but it was never registered in Denmark because it was way too expensive to do so. It sat in a field for several years, then it was sold to somebody in Sweden from whom my husband bought it. My husband filed the registration papers for personal use when he bought the car last summer, and everything went through as normal. When he showed up for the safety inspection a couple weeks ago, they refused to take in the car because it did not have "personal use" status. Some bureaucrat had changed the status without informing us. We could not appeal that change because the appeal period had expired (without us ever knowing about it). In order to register the car without the "personal use" status, we'd have to remove the catalytic converter and other environmentally friendly features because they weren't available in Sweden in 1976 when the car was made. Besides being stupid, that would be a lot of work. Eventually a solution was found: export the car to Denmark, sell it to somebody there, buy it back, reimport it to Sweden, and file the registration paperwork again. We jumped through all these hoops, but we couldn't get a new safety inpsection appointment in time for cruising. Thus we ended up taking the Suburban. It's not nearly as cool, but we had a good view, and not being a convertable, we didn't freeze too much.
2 comments:
1) I think the chances of us fiinding a house in SO Cal with a REAL lawn are slim. That's both a blessing and a curse. I remember having a big yard in Ohio (where I was born) and my family owned the empty lot next door. My Dad & older siblings would have to mow it and I used to ride on the mower with them.
Ahhh... Summer in Ohio...
2) I never developed the car thing that is supposed to be bundled with the Y chromosome. I don't know why. But when I see a classic car, I wish I had one. wow sounds like a lot that you had to do... I guess there's always next year.
Hmm that is something to consider: A Suburban convertible!!!
Great seeing you Yesterday.
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