Although this project has taken as much time as I could possibly give it, there’s no way to know if you’re fully prepared when you aren’t sure what you’re doing; you can only show up.

I never liked Volvos. The older ones bring to mind either a plodding, smoky vehicle, or a hastily turbocharged vector for cute stickers, ponderously yawing into oversteer with some haircut behind the wheel. I’m aware there’s more to the spectrum of ownership than that, but besides the airborne wagons of BTCC and the odd rally…

Dave Suitor “You know, they do some ice racing around here when it freezes up.” “Oh yeah? Competitive?” “Yeah, I think so.” — Within days of this conversation, I’m driving someone else’s Honda onto a fairly large oval plowed into a frozen pond by the Lakes Region Ice Racing Club, as an unknown quantity, to…

Last Friday, Deutsche Grammophon released the CD Light Eternal—The Choral Music of Morten Lauridsen. Amazon’s pre-order price for the CD is $12.59, which is a truly excellent price. But this CD would be a bargain at full list. There is also a 24/88 hi-res PCM download from HDTracks, reasonably priced at nearly 90 minutes of…

In case you haven’t heard, the Mega Millions drawing is done and had your ticket had the numbers 05, 28, 62, 65, and 70 in combination with Mega Ball number 05, you would have netted a cool 1.6 billion dollars. Just to tell you the kind of luck I had, not a single one of…

For the first time in my life, I commute by train. Some of you, knowing that I have spent more than a decade living in Japan, are going to call bullshit on this statement, but it’s true. I do admit to riding the occasional train, of course, but at no point did I use Japan’s…

Despite the old adage, “If it works, don’t fix it,” I have never been able to keep my hands off of things that aren’t broken. That’s bit me in the ass more times than I’d like to admit, something I was well aware of when I decided to “improve” our new Nissan Versa. I’m not…

A few weeks ago, my wife and I bought a Nissan Versa Note. With our van still locked in a container somewhere on the high seas and my old Nissan Hardbody unable to transport our family of five, we were in a bit of a bind. We tried renting a van for a while but…

This article originally appeared at The Tannhauser Gate — JB Open Goldberg Variations, Werner Schweer, editor. Listening to “happy” music can make one feel happier. However, instead of always making people feel worse, listening to sad music often brings on a state of “paradoxical pleasure.” I am not saying that listening to sad music in…

Perhaps because I have done it so often, I sometimes forget that the great American road trip is a dying tradition. Some of my earliest memories are tied into those long drives from our home in the cool, tree covered hills of Western Washington to visit my grandparents on the hot, sun baked plains of…