Vince's Stuff: Turning 50

50-year old dude

I haven't taken a lot of time to write in the blog lately, but that's mainly because car-wise, there is not much going on in winter. The most significant happening for me was that I turned 50 a few days ago. It feels weird... there is no definition of "still young" that includes 50-year olds (you could still sort of call yourself "young" in your forties!). I am happy and healthy, so it doesn't really matter that I'm 50. Alex and I planned a weekend away to celebrate my birthday and the boys stayed with my parents as we headed to Ogunquit. We walked around, ate and drank, and watched hours of HGTV. There was no snow on the ground there at all, which was strange, because we basically drove through a blizzard on our way out of Montreal.

The holiday season was also pretty relaxing. We had to cancel most of our social plans as three of us tested positive for Covid at some point during the 2-week break. None of us had any serious symptoms. We went skiing twice, since this did not involve spending time indoors with any of our friends. We spent time at the country house and one day in Vieux Quebec.

What's going on in the car world? Not much. The 535xi is working very well. I put on some newer used winter tires at the start of the season and the car has not needed any repairs of any kind. It's still a pleasure to drive on the highway, and very comfortable. Still, I miss the M3 with its manual transmission and lovely-sounding normally aspirated straight-6. I had a list of 4 things to do on the M3 before taking it out of the barn in the Spring. The easiest job is changing the battery, which I will do in the Spring. The second easiest job was changing an ignition coil, which I did just before putting the car away. The next job is replacing the cracked door card with a spare one I bought in the scrap yard and repainting the armrests. I disassembled everything and started the sanding, but haven't done the priming and painting yet. It will surely be a bit of a pain to get everything back together smoothly, but it's not a terribly messy job. The most difficult job was fixing the leather cover of the driver's seat that had become unstitched. What a lot of work it was to get the cover off the seat! Luckily, once I got everything apart, the shoe repair place near my house re-stitched the leather for only 30$. I reassembled the seat and putting it back in the car should be easy enough. So basically, the car should be drivable with 2 or 3 hours of work. As for the Civic, I haven't touched it since I stored it and have no plans for it over the winter. I have a few parts I bought a while ago which I never installed, the most important one being the limited-slip differential. Rather than miss out on the beginning of the season, I will probably have Choo do the work in July, while we are on our month-long trip to Italy. The car should be ready to roll as soon as the snow is gone, since, for once, I did not break anything near the end of the season. I am looking at the possibility of attending a GridLife event at Lime Rock Connecticut in late August. It would involve a lot of planning, but I'll see if there is a way to make it work.

I don't really have a car for navigation rallies any more, but Josée graciously offered me the use of her Subaru Impreza for the Grosse Ride coming up on February 11th. That should be a fun event as it's always memorable when Josée and I team up. Over all, life is good!

M3 seat with the cover back on