The simple life

After twenty years of sales decline, primarily caused by the appalling quality of their cars and dealers, Volkswagen has determined that it ...

These beautiful days, I'm trying to get out for a walk in the morning before work. Last week, I had a great view of the Boston skyline a...

So I love the Apple Safari 4 beta -- it is screamingly fast and it runs nicely on a PPC Mac (unlike Chrome, which only runs on Intel). One b...

They're all done for the season, but a week ago they were out in force:

... in my El Camino Super Sport .

If you're 2 metres tall (or more), finding shoes and clothing is tough! Here a couple of sources you might try: For hipster doofus style...

Yesterday's Boston Globe reports on a law before the Massachusetts legislature that would outlaw emploment (and some other) forms of di...

That's what our friend Maureen says anyway. It turned out that way for us, as we just traded in the grey BMW wagon for a 2007 Odyssey: H...

Well my 1988 non-sunroof coupe, naturally, but why? It has a galvanized body shell, which means that, in general, rust isn't a problem. ...

Not the boiling point of water (in Fahrenheit), but how much I weighed this morning. Maybe not a weight that would make most people happy, b...

As the seasons change, and temperatures start to fall, the air pressure in a car's tires begins to fall. Typically, about 1 PSI per 5 de...

I'm working my way through the componentry on the tall bike, replacing and upgrading things that are worn out or obsolete. I was unable ...

So I actually went so far to go to the local Saturn dealer to price out the Saturn-badged version of the Montana (the Saturn Relay). But the...

My older son is 3 1/2 years old, and for a while I've been taking him on little "adventures" in the woods. Mostly, these invol...

As discussed elsewhere , after a 25-year layoff, I've been doing some bike riding. When you're 6'9" tall setting up a bicyc...

A significant personal upheaval recently took me to Las Vegas for a week, and while there I rented a minivan from Hertz. The first car they ...

And now a word from the archivist: That's me on the bike in 1980 or so, in it's as-delivered state (except for the enormous, solid a...

A 1966 VW Bus: I think this had a claimed 60,000 miles on it when I bought it (for $1200). It powered me back and forth to Oberlin from New ...

I've been spending a lot of time working on my bike recently. After riding it for a short while with the upright MTB stem and riser bars...

I'm writing this in the waiting lounge at MINI of Peabody , while I'm waiting for my car to get its oil changed. I've had the ca...

Just a little arty shot of the Porsche and the Mini in the driveway. Can a car make you happy? Maybe not. But it doesn't hurt.

A nagging problem here has been that the wireless router, along with the backup file server, is located in a very inaccessible spot, tucked ...

The height site . Tallpeople.org . And (drum roll please) an actual tall blog . Kind of.

Unlike GM, Ford seems to be facing up to the reality that the age of the gas guzzler is finally gone. Also unlike GM, they have a reasonable...

A reference to Casual Male's target customers as tall but not fat .

In an attempt to reduce accidents followed by tailgating, Washington state DOT officials... ...painted dots 80 feet apart and posted signs t...

Hummer ads fight 'misconceptions' (or, if you don't have a Wall St. Journal subscription, see the original press release ). It...

I was going to write about the tremendous walk that I took on Friday morning. My neighbor's field was completely mown and cleared, a ful...

Over the past few days my neighbor's field has been hayed. The racket that the machinery makes is incredible, but when the grass is down...

My Alexander Technique teacher and I were talking cars the other day. She said that she owns the bestest car in all the world: a first-gene...

Yao Ming's Gunnar Rockhound: I'm not sure that Yao's bike is that much bigger than mine, even though he's 10 inches taller ...

Not that they were great posts, but I did it. And it's not even 9:00. Something simple that I like!

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting article ( subscription only) on the problems at Ford's Premier Automotive Group, Jag...

Twenty-five years ago, I used to ride a bike a fair amount. I had a Univega Viva Sport bike that I purchased around 1981. It was a low to mi...

After many years of weighing about 250 pounds, I recently decided to lose some weight. It was a lot easier than I thought, and now I'm d...

Because being tall is so incredibly boring? I mean there are scads of fat blogs , and I don't think being fat is any more interesting th...

Yesterday, late for a meeting, I found myself needing to travel from an outer suburb of Boston (Natick) to an inner suburb (Newtonville) in ...

I have a pretty good job, but just recently I was given a bunch of new responsibilities that entailed a lot of talking on the phone with fol...

As you can see by the list of cars I've owned (and that I now own), I like small cars. This is ironic, of course, since I am anything bu...

My son is just getting to be old enough to enjoy the circus. The last time we went, he was such a mass of fidgets that I didn't really e...

I'm visiting relatives today, and they have a normal refrigerator with the freezer on top and the refrigerator on the bottom. Bending ov...

My neighbor has a 20 acre field behind his house, which he uses to grow hay (and thus save money on his taxes, as the Commonwealth of Massac...

The BMW wagon is now almost six years old, five of those years with us. It has 54,000 miles on it, and I've spent this weekend fixing li...

The workload at my job fluctuates, like most jobs. It's been pretty intense lately, and last weekend (and on my vacation the week before...

The 99th percentile for the height of adult USA males might be 6' 3 5/8" (192 cm). So if you're 6' 4" tall, you'r...

Three oddball toy cars that my darling wife gave to me: Replica of a wind-up tin toy (even the tires are folded tin) loosely modeled Malcolm...

If you went through high school physics, you probably learned the cube rule: as you increase the size of an object, the surface area increas...

I received my "Motoring Welcome" kit in the mail from Mini yesterday. Truly some of the lamest swag ever: - "Buy a Mini"...

I have to say, I've really grown fond of blogger. It's so easy to create a reasonably good-looking blog, easy to add pictures and ot...

In a recent interview with the New York Times , Casual Male CEO David Levin displays the contempt with which he regards the customers of Ca...

Many (OK, ten) years ago, I lived in the small town of Maynard, MA. I lived at the edge of the town forest, which abutted a large, abandoned...

Well not really, but ever since I got the Mini, I only take the Porsche out for fun, and only on nice days.

The Porsche 911, especially the pre-964 cars (1965 through 1989, except the 1989 Carrera 4), have a bad reputation for handling, particularl...

When I need a simply sublime experience of the outdoors, I head for one of Mass Audubon 's sanctuaries . Mass Audubon sanctuaries are ma...

During their relatively short breeding season, four to five weeks in June and July, the deer fly ( Chrysops discalis ) can make life miserab...