The popularity of my end of the year post has prompted a new feature, the week in review that will be posted every Sunday. Please let me know what you think as it is your opinion that drives this blog.

I started the week with a vicious cold that just wouldn’t let up. So, I had a three day weekend with a list of “to do” items that could easily have filled a year or two but accomplished almost nothing. This was not the direction I planned for the charting of a course in to the new year.

At work an odd trend continues. The majority of customers renting trucks are moving north and I mean north – Maine, Minnesota, New York. The birds and Canadians go south for the winter so I have trouble understanding this.

I have almost completed a new article for Cars & Parts and another for Old Cars Weekly. For book reviews I have finished a delightful work on the infant automotive industry and the subsequent societal changes, The Kalamazoo Automobilist.

On the home front all is chaotic or as we refer to it, situation normal. Now my dear wife is sick, the granddaughter is getting better, the recent hard rains made it quite clear it was time to replace the porch roof, the oil leak in the Ford continues unabated, Barny just clicks along as long as I pour the paycheck into the tank, and work is, well, work.

As an old boy told me once working like this is a sure death but a much slower one than starvation. There is a cheerful thought but what do you expect from someone who refers to himself as an optimistic pessimist.

Route 66 Backroads is finished with the exception of the final edit. So, its on to Ghost Towns of the Southwest. This is a pet project I have wanted to write since shortly after moving to arizona in the mid 1960s.

Until next week –