1990 Porsche 911 C2, A Story

In preparation for the 911 coming home I need to think about these guys.

For those of you unfamiliar with southern coastal wading birds, this is a yellow crested night heron. For some reason that I can't quite fathom, a group of these birds has chosen to make my yard their spring rookery. Sometime in the next few weeks, between 6 and 10 pairs of these birds will descend on my 1.5 acre lot and build nests. In their nests they will lay eggs and those eggs will hatch into these guys.

Yellow crested night herons suck as parents. They seem to lose between 25% and half of the babies that they hatch. Most of them die upon impact. Occasionally they survive the drop and I have the choice between letting them die, and raising them. If I let them die it hurts my soul. If I raise them then they eventually try to steal my scissors.

Which causes me to decide they are big enough to live outside where they decide that my cars are awesome places to hang out.

The huge downside to all of this avian wildlife is their diet. They eat bugs and worms and lots of things, but they prefer crawfish above all. For those of you unfamiliar with crawfish, they are delicious, but largely undigestable in their native form. The birds eat them, digest what they can, and deposit what's left on the cars. Like this.

Every morning for several months I will wake to several piles of semi digested crawfish on my cars. This is not an acceptable environment for the 911.

To protect the Porsche from avian poop missiles I had a few choices. I could have finished the 10 year old challenge car in the garage, moved it, and fixed the roof. As the car has been disassembled for a decade, inertia was against this. I could have gotten a car cover. Using these in the past has sucked. They may be fine for cars you drive on the weekends, but if you're getting into the car nearly ever day then I hate them. My final choice was to erect some sort of parking structure, either temporary or permanent. I ended up calling these guys.

For a bit more than what a fabric structure would have cost, they built me a nice steel carport. They were awesome. It was exactly an hour and twenty minutes from the time they pulled in the gate until they left. They did a spectacular job laying things out square plumb and level. My truck will have to go sit out in the open once the Porsche comes home.

Yeah... you really can't have cranes puking on it "just a car" or not.

It has an open air wing (well, SS mesh screen...) where crawfish laiden bird puke could fall in and get sucked into the engine fan creating a delicious aroma for people following you... but still... I'd cover it.

Interesting bird write up. I had no idea about the crawfish etoufee they leave on the cars. That's pretty gross!

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: but still... I'd cover it.

And cover it I will. The intention is for it to live in the garage all snug as a bug in a rug within the next 10 months or so. Not having the garage done yet seemed like a sucky reason to not get the car.

What dormant challenge car is sitting in the garage?

The challenge car is a 1988 four door K-car with a complete 2.5 t1 drivetrain/suspension swap from a 1989 Daytona CS. It was a great project and I got the car up and driving and even did a couple of shakedown auto crosses in it. Then I tore it back down to a shell for paint. At that time my wife was five months pregnant with our second and the challenge was scheduled to be something like three weeks before the due date. I could have finished the car and attended the challenge, but I wasn't sure I could do that and be the father/husband that I wanted to be. I put down my tools and concentrated on being a dad for the better part of a decade. I know that lots of guys can balance both, but I couldn't. Next fall the youngest of my four heads off to school full days, five days a week and I'll start to pull the junk off of the k-car.

Sounds like you had/have your priorities straight. I look forward to a build thread on that one when you finally get back to it!

That's almost the exact progress I've made on my MG in the past decade for the same reasons. Just getting back into it, and it feels good, but can't spend anywhere near the time on it that I could pre-kids.

Bumped my GRM subscription another year just to get a dork sticker for the Porsche. I'm a dork.

mazdeuce wrote: .

This is a great story.and those cars are nice. It looks like Morris would like to take care of your bird problem.

Winter storm Saturn is my concern. It looks like it should be all over but the shoveling by late Wednesday which gives all day Thursday and Friday morning for things to melt. I'm not excited about the potential for heavily salted roads, but I'll take that over snow and ice if it comes to that. I'm not a fun man to be around when I'm this excited. It feels like the week before Christmas.

I can only imagine Here's hoping for a heat wave!

mazeduece-

I just saw your story, and if you need anything in or around Knoxville, the Dragon, or east TN in general give me a shout. (I'll PM you my number in a minute) I've got tools a garage and a little bit of air cooled Porsche knowledge I can share.

Or if you just want to grab a bite and a photo op let me know.

In reply to octavious:

You're awesome. I'll send a message back to you with my information in a second. You have no idea how comforting it is to have a lifeboat out there.

Last piece of the puzzle fell into place today. I headed up to the court house to find a legal way to drive the car home to Texas. Originally I had been told that the proper thing to do was to obtain a point to point permit which would let me drive the car from it's point of origin to my house. Today when I went in, the really nice lady behind the counter said that a 30 day temp plate was really the way to go. I heartily agreed and she set me up with a paper plate that goes into effect one second after midnight on Friday morning.
So now that's it. I have a new road atlas, a Nexus7 tablet with two GPS programs on it, insurance, a temp plate, and two GRM stickers on magnets. I'm ready to load up my son and get on the plane.

Aww yeah. try to find the time to take a few pics!

mazeduece: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses.
mazeduece's son: Hit it.

Keep us updated!

We'll have two cameras and 20 gigs of pictures to be taken. Tragically my Nexus is kind of cranky about transferring pictures so I won't be able to post them until I get back and get them loaded. I will be able to post in the thread as we wind our way down the spine of the eastern US. If anyone is out and about over the weekend and sees a red 964 with GRM stickers on the door and a nine year old with a red afro riding shotgun, stop us and say hi.

Boarding passes are printed and we're ready to go. Sort of. My nine year old left both of his coats at school. Both of them. We're headed from Texas to Pennsylvania in 11 hours and he doesn't have a jacket of any sort. We'll sort it out, but seriously? Both of them?

mazdeuce wrote: Boarding passes are printed and we're ready to go. Sort of. My nine year old left both of his coats at school. Both of them. We're headed from Texas to Pennsylvania in 11 hours and he doesn't have a jacket of any sort. We'll sort it out, but seriously? Both of them?

What size is he? I have a 13yr old and a 10yr old so... lots of old coats.

My wife dug out an hooded sweatshirt that will work. I love the boy, I really do, but if I was like this at nine I'm surprised I wasn't abandoned.
Thanks for the offer though, GRM hospitality at it's finest.

Safe travels, man (and little man)! Looks like you got snowy/slushy weather at your destination. Are you wishing that was a C4 yet?

In reply to Winston:

On the ground in New Jersey and I'm wishing it was a jeep. Or a snowmobile. Yay! Adventure!

Just keep the adventure out of the ditches :)