What will I do without tiny b&w photos with no surrounding visual context??

Yes, I'm still alive, thanks for checking @jminer and @CarsOfFortLangley. Thrilled to hear about the JL!

Some quarantine websites for your time that I've found recently. Possibly one or two (or all!) have been shared here, haven't been watching.

Travel the world. The local radio stations are a nice touch.
https://driveandlisten.herokuapp.com

The ambience without the viral load.
http://imissmybar.com

https://standardebooks.org and https://joinpageturner.com/ go well together

http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/ for the young at heart.

And for the overly ambitious: https://qntm.org/destroy

I'll be back. Be safe.

Somewhat short day, because the NVH on the yellow Jeep is rough on an old man. No old car/truck pics captured today, sadly, although there is an automotive tie-in to a couple of the photos and some older car pics below.

Bridges

I was surprised there was such a low height limit on the Geneva Ford bridge over Sand Creek; I'm guessing that anything taller is likely to be either be overweight or so tall that it's probably going to bump against the girders.

Another low bridge that I found photogenic.

Roads

Once again, pure dumb luck led me to a curvy river road, this time along Sand Creek, near North Vernon (and very close to the bridge shown above).

At 1.1 miles, the road below is (sadly) one of the longest forest roads in Indiana, ironically in one of the smallest state forests, Selmier. (No idea how to pronounce that like the locals do.)

Muscatatuck

The name Muscatatuck pops up everywhere in this area: the photo below was taken along the Vernon Fork of the Muscatatuck River, which borders Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge (one of my favorite places to visit) and flows through Muscatatuck Park, formerly an Indiana state park.

Some of my favorite older photos from Muscatatuck NWR.

Crosley

These photos were taken in the Crosley Fish & Wildlife Area, named after the previous owner of the land, none other than Powel Crosley, founder of Crosley Motors Incorporated.

Fortunately hunting season is over, so I could enjoy the scenery without annoying hunters. Sadly the waterfowl were pretty skittish.

Just because: some Crosleys I've stumbled upon at car shows near my house.

Missed photos

I regret I couldn't stop to take a photo, but I was surprised to spot an International Harvester flag exactly like the one below along Highway 9.

Also missed was a beautiful teal TJ (rather, "bright jade satin glow") on the highway.

My only regret is that I didn’t do this last week, so I could go to an off-road park today like I’d planned.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in last night.

You’re making the right call. You have to make smart choices to protect yourself and your loved ones, and your mother is making a terrible one.

Regrettably I don’t have any words of wisdom on how to make this easier. Good luck.

Won't spend $400 on a short-shifter kit.

Will go through the hassle of selling the car to buy an S2000, which even in rough shape couldn't have been cheap.

I don't get it. I'm hesitant to drop $5k on a new transmission for my LJ, but that's 5 grand. $400 for a car I love to keep loving it, instead of going through all that?

All day every day.

This...this is a drone pilot.

https://kottke.org/21/03/a-drones-eye-view-of-a-bowling-alley

Completely unrelated bonus content: a fascinating look at bog oak.

https://blog.lostartpress.com/2021/02/21/adamson-low-treasure-out-of-the-bog/

Speedos.

Next time you see that with a Jeep, put a note on/in it that says "my Jeep friend says stop making us look like assholes".

Within a few weeks of buying my first Jeep in the summer of 2014, I stumbled upon a new club, the Hoosier Wranglers, that was forming near me. I attended the first planning session in a sandwich shop on the north side of Indy.

There were, as best as I can recall, about 5 people, including the founder, Mike. We talked about logistics, and what our off-roading interests were, and Mike expressed the core values he wanted the group to embody:

• Family-friendly
• Beginner-friendly

Those may seem self-evident, but we all know how much enthusiasts love to gatekeep, and we wanted to make sure we didn't encourage reckless behavior.

(As a counter-example: there's a very popular off-road park in a neighboring state that allows both alcohol and guns. More power to them, but combining alcohol with inherently risky off-roading and/or guns is not my cup of tea.)

Anyway, we were off to the (strictly metaphorical) races. Mike and I started organizing events, and we quickly assembled a core group of responsible people who (thankfully, unlike Mike and me) actually knew what they were doing off-road and were interested in helping.

The Meetup group grew steadily for a year or two, but at some point the other organizers decided, inevitably, that it should move to Facebook. I unsuccessfully argued against it, preferring to keep the club relatively small (and away from the toxicity that pervades FB).

So our membership jumped from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand people, and of course then the real fun began: dealing with troublemakers, trolls, and over-enthusiastic Jeepers who loved reckless off-roading.

I caved and created a Facebook account after a few months of being mostly left out of what was going on; I am grateful I did, because in the two years or so that I was active on FB I had a few very positive experiences that would not have happened without it, but I'm also glad I finally disabled my account.

The club is still there, although they haven't had an event since 2019 thanks to the pandemic and a general lack of organizer activity. I don't know if they'll hold events again, but I'm fairly confident my time as an organizer and member is over.

Tonight I disbanded the original Meetup group, so I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. I suspect when the world is sane again I'll create a Hoosier Backroader club on some Meetup alternative, but it'll be very small and probably will die off after a year or two.

But that's ok. As I said when Kinja prepared to kick us off, it's not necessary for everything to last forever. I am, however, extremely grateful to @jminer for having more ambition than me and making sure we maintained the community. I never would have lasted on DriveTribe.

Some pics and videos from Hoosier Wrangler events over the years follow.

So close and yet so very, very far.

@darkbrador But Dame Mirren!

@wrong-wheel-drive I didn't have a toaster oven as a kid, and I've been slow to discover its joys as an adult. Such a great device.

My cousin's family simply doesn't do leftovers. I never understood that: if nothing else, pizza was practically invented for leftovers.

I prepared for my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine by buying a large pizza the evening before, so I'd have easy meals if I felt too crappy to fix anything.

@facw It amazes me that after a 5-day, 1200°F fire, there’s anything left to help them figure out what happened.

Or maybe that’s why the investigations haven’t concluded yet.

@hammerheadfistpunch Once more can’t hurt, right?

@ttyymmnn said in My f**king back:

doing sit ups

FWIW, the personal trainer I enlisted (shortly before the pandemic, so much for that experience) said she'd never have me do sit ups because of my back.

It presumably will vary depending on the back problem, but make sure you get professional advice.

I first knew I was in real trouble when I injured myself rolling over in bed.

Backs absolutely suck. I met an older gentleman in a nature preserve last year who was walking very slowly; he said he'd just undergone back surgery, and despite the recovery process he was going through, it sounded really appealing.

@facw Thanks for the pics. The article mentioned that incident as well, but collectively between the two surgeries there were zero photographs.

A French nuclear-powered submarine severely damaged by fire last year has been saved from the scrapyard — by cutting it in two and welding the salvageable half to part of another decommissioned sub.

https://abc17news.com/news/national-world/2021/04/14/france-cuts-two-nuclear-powered-submarines-in-half-to-make-one-new-one/