Two white Jaguars in San Francisco

Radwood San Francisco 2023 photo dump

The boy and I went to the show. To be frank, the magic is gone. Too corporate. There were a lot of cool cars, but the soul of the earlier shows was MIA. Too bad.

We parked across the street from Pier 30/32, next to this old E-Class.

Let's get started!

These Mondials are just so rad. I think even mainstream car enthusiasts like them now.

I swear I thought this 550 was much newer than it actually was.

Ever since I saw Derek Tam-Scott's yellow Miura at Berkeley Cars & Coffee, I have been listening to the Carmudgeon podcast. The Rover and Citroen have been discussed in detail on the show.

This Maserati made the trip worth it. I've seen every Quattroporte generation except the fourth. And here's the QP IV!

I spotted this Alpina a few days before the show near the Caldecott Tunnel and tweeted about it. Turned out, one of my followers was riding in the Alpina at the time!

Rchen was kind enough to let J sit in the back of his taxi. On the armrest was a Tomica version of the same taxi.

I had not seen an Excel in over twenty years. This was a Boyz N the Hood tribute.

Previa with swiveling captain's chairs.

This 1993 Wrangler was identical to mine, other than the engine size.

J has been obsessed with Humvees lately. Look how excited he was.

And finally, this X90 in the parking lot should have been in the show!

I got a brand new car!

Behold! A 2023 BMW M550i xDrive. I got the mother of all deals on it yesterday. It had been sitting on the dealer lot for 137 days.

It is a lot of car. I've only driven it back home and to pick up dry cleaning so far. The car is big. It's six inches longer than my wagon and the proportions take time to get used to. There are so many gizmos and gadgets, it's ridiculous. I have to lock the doors even when I'm in the garage, or else the various gadgets will drain the battery. Some random features include:

• head-up display that shows speed limit, my speed, and distance to closest speed camera;
• auto start-stop that will restart your engine not when you take your foot off the brake pedal, but when it notices the vehicle immediately in front of you has started moving away from you;
• interior ambient lighting comes in ten different colors.

Once I get used to it, I will have more fun driving it.

Highlights from last 14 months

It's been a while. Obviously, the highlights are mostly kids-centered. But with the end of the pandemic, I've also done some serious revenge traveling.

May 2022: Drove down to San Luis Obispo along PCH.

June 2022: Road trip to Seattle. Attended a Mariners game.

July 2022: Basketball camp.

August 2022: I took the boy to Monterey to see a bunch of old cars.

Also August 2022: I flew to Tacoma for Radwood and met the PNW contingent of Weird Car Twitter.

Also August 2022: I took a day trip down to San Diego and caught a Padres game.

September 2022: Portuguese dinner followed by opera.

October 2022: Pumpkin patch.

November 2022: Cuba!

December 2022: Got stuck in Kansas City thanks to Southwest and we had to drive 2,200 miles back home.

January 2023: Checked out a Carvana store.

February 2023: Bowling. (It was a slow month.)

March 2023: Got to check out a Hummer H2 up close.

April 2023: Legoland for the boy's birthday.

May 2023: French Guiana!

June 2023: A good friend got sworn in to be a judge and I made a side trip to a Channel Island.

My French Guiana adventure: Day 3

I wake up in French Guiana! I heard my business hotel has free breakfast, so I zoom downstairs. The hot cops are still here, flirting with the restaurant staff, who are all young Brazilian women. 

I love free hotel breakfasts in America. It's usually platters of scrambled eggs, sausages, and bacon. The French make a valiant effort at a facsimile, but it's just different. The cook is in no hurry so the eggs never arrive, no matter how hard I use my psychic abilities to will them into existence. The baguettes, however, are fantastic. I make two sausage sandwiches for myself.

I go back to my room and this is my view. I have to go back to my original hotel, clarify the mess, and move there. 

I go back to Hotel des Palmistes. The hotel staff apologizes profusely and shows me to my suite. I come to realize that I have the best room at the best located hotel in all of Cayenne. I really dig that old timey airline poster in my bedroom. That's the town square my room is facing.

My living room. I do all of my trip planning and napping in this room.

Not bad for 106 euros a night. The toilet is kind of weak and the shower is like a coffin. But that's France for ya.

Other than my wife's bout with cancer, I really don't have any fears, living a privileged life in America. So these oddball trips to faraway lands give me thrills. My original plan was to travel throughout French Guiana in cabs and vans, but that was going to be difficult logistically and expensive. My best decision was to rent a car. I was fearful of driving in a foreign country. I was fearful of getting carried away by flood waters. I was fearful of getting lost without GPS. It all worked out.

I rented a manual transmissioned Peugeot 208 with 61,000 kilometers from Sixt. It cost 260 euros for the entire week-- a bargain. It was a lot of fun to drive, although I got passed by other cars constantly. It has a three cylinder engine, after all. My biggest weakness was traffic circles. They are everywhere. It was never clear if they had one or two lanes. And the GPS on my phone gave terrible instructions when I was driving in them, But again, everything worked out great.

ETA: Two more things gave me pause about the car. It has a lane centering system that tugs at the steering wheel. But because the lines here are so poorly marked, the car yanks the steering wheel at inopportune times. Finally, the car did not come with a spare tire because it had been used by the previous customer. I was given a tire repair kit. That scared me a little. I was going to some remote places.

I got the car in the late morning and head out for Cacao. It's a tiny jungle village populated by Hmong refugees. They produce 90% of the vegetables the country consumes. The Sunday market is a huge attraction. I am there on a Monday so everything is closed, save for one restaurant.

A young, tall, chubby Asian guy takes my order. We can't communicate so I point at a photo of a big bowl of noodle soup. It is so hot and humid, my eyebrows can't hold back my forehead sweat. As I wait, it starts pouring rain, albeit briefly.

I look at the condiments. They are either from China or Thailand.

What a meal. This reminds me of my favorite meal of all time. After a long bus ride in the Atacama, I got off in the port town of Iquique in the Christmas heat and ordered a seafood stew at La Surena II. Something about hot soups on hot days after long journeys.

After the meal, I head to the spaceport. I have a 7am tour the next day and I want to check out the rendezvous point today so I don't get lost tomorrow and miss the tour. Ahead of me on the windy road out of Cacao, I see some kind of buzzard eating a big ass lizard. The yellow Peugeot scares off the bird. I just had to take a picture of the victim.

There's a turnoff where you get a nice view of the jungle canopy.

Though the town of Kourou is tiny, I get lost finding the spaceport. I finally had to turn on my phone to get GPS. The Ariane 5 replica (1:1 scale) in the parking lot is a good marker.

Now that I know where to go, I drive back to Cayenne.

I walk to the highest rated Chinese joint in Cayenne. The owners tell me it's closed on Mondays. I go to a different restaurant and order mapo tofu. The drinks here must be subsidized. Beer is 2 euros a bottle at restaurants. A one-liter bottle of water in markets is 1 euro.

The restaurant is empty of customers. A Chinese couple are eating, but I suspect they are the owners' friends or relatives and eating for free. The large table is taken up by five girls, all under the age of eleven. They are sisters and cousins and are dressed in Chinese costumes. They probably just came back from Chinese school where they had rehearsals. 

I briefly talk to the owners. They've been here for ten years, later than most of the immigrants. But they admit they are still able to make good money here. Apparently the Chinese here are all from Zhejiang province (near Shanghai). That's where my dad's side of the family is from. In the 1930s, they left China for Japan in search of riches.