recent odds & ends

Spring's finally coming around despite the 41° water temps. Mid week last week was especially fun.

Special J Creations

Like amazing handmade jewelry? go to Special J Creations. Great and super talented friend Johna Klebenov makes locally, ocean-sourced jewelry. On top of all that she's about as core a surfer you'll find anywhere, period.

super satisfying Ipswich ride

fun afternoon cleanup

The surfcams for the New Hampshire breaks showed clean waves and loads of wetsuit-hooded surfers bobbing about. Discouraged by this, I loaded up the pintail (more on this later) and hit the old standby. Well, the old standby paid out loyalty rewards liberally on a nice Saturday afternoon.

Musclecar Monday: 1966 Shelby Mustang GT350 H

H is for Hertz rent-a-car

The Shelby Mustangs weren't for everyone, they rode kinda harsh, the clutch was heavy and tricky, and $4,547 was a princely sum in 1966!. Only select Ford dealers sold Shelby's, and you had to beg on your knees for them to put an order in. And that's after putting almost 100% down. Around here, Atamian Ford in Worcester And Tasca Ford down in Rhody were Shelby dealers, not sure of any others in New England.

Behold the '66 - with a small block 289 setup for the Trans Am series - the big block Shelby Mustangs from '67-'69 were gorgeous and certainly fast, but they weren't the raw race machines shown here.

But you could rent one from the good folks at Hertz.

Hertz rented them in their own corporate colors of black & gold. Folks would rent on Saturday, weld in rollbars, drive to the track or strip on Sunday, race, win, then return on Monday. Hertz would check under the carpeting for the weld marks. Also - before renting, you had to drive it around the block just to show the agent you could handle the clutch. Later on Hertz had automatic transmissions available before phasing out the project entirely.

They could never get away with this today!