Simeone Foudation Museum

“The first race was conceived when the second car was built.”
On Saturday September 26, 2009 Barbara and I went to the outskirts of Philadelphia to a warehouse with the sign that names it as The Simeone Foundation Museum ( http://www.simeonefoundation.org/ ). It is a museum that holds Racecars and Sports cars from as early as 1918 up to 1970. Now most of you will say that is not so special, but the cars in this Museum all had an important part in the history, development and advancements made in the car industry. Most all of the cars in this museum come under the category of Sports car not racecar. Some of you may not know the difference so if I may I will educate you. A racecar is just that a car you use to race, it does not need fenders, headlights, taillights, or a windshield. A sports car on the other hand must have fenders, headlights, taillights, a windshield, windshield wipers…. Under Le Mans rules the cars had to have everything they would need to run on the road legally. Of course over the years the rules have changed, some of these sports cars had covers over the rear seat that where required to compete others had luggage compartments. These cars where production cars and had to have everything a car needed to be a street car. Some cars where nothing more than racecars that the manufacturers had added fenders and all the other things needed to complete in Le Mans to, but in the end most of the cars in the museum where sports cars.
The highlight of the day was at noon when we went outside into the parking lot for the race. In 1959 the Le Mans race circuit was being fought over by the Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa and the Aston-Martin DBR1. First one would win the race for the day and get ahead in points and then the other would win and be ahead in points. In the last race for the title the Ferrari was ahead in points but even with suffering a fire in the Austin-Martin that was ahead of the others on the team the lead driver jumped into another Austin-Martin and slowly over took the Ferrari and won the race and with it the title of the best car in Le Mans. On that day in 2009 the same two cars (at least the Austin-Martin was the car that had caught fire that day) where to startup and run around the parking lot in the sun. After the race they took the hoods off of the two cars and let you get up close and get a good look.

Hagley and Longwood

Well we broke the cycle; we got an outing in with out either of us getting sick. Our first stop was Hagley Museum and Library (http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/). We bought a family membership for the year (this of course will get us into other museums around the country). We then went upstairs to the display of patent miniatures from the 19th century. The patent office of the United States required any person submitting an idea for a patent to submit a working scale model. There where some very interesting models on display. A few I liked are the combination fork, knife and dough crimper (see album). Then there was the coffin with the window built in, not sure why. One of the more bizarre was the duck boat, why they put the swans on the corners is beyond me. After having lunch outside by one of the mill races, Hagley is on the Brandywine river and had been used as a mill and later by the first DuPont to make gunpowder, we went over to Longwood Gardens.
While at Longwood we went on a behind the scenes tour under the conservatory. The tunnel system under the conservatory is massive. All the plumbing and electrical systems for watering, heating and lighting are under your feet as you walk through the conservatory. You can see two of the tunnels we were in, in the album. The other interesting thing was the electrical panel labeled with 2400 volts. The electrician showed us a sample of the cable used to transmit that much electricity and it was very impressive. Then after chasing Barbara around the garden for a few hours, she was on an electric cart, we started home. I am just joking about chasing Barbara, I would stop to take pictures and would have to catch up to her.
On the way home we got hungry for dinner and found a very nice Italian restaurant. We had a very nice dinner and had enough to take home for dinner tonight. All the deserts except one are imported from Italy, we shared a piece of Grandmothers cake. We will be going back to this restaurant.
All in all we had a great day out.

End of Summer

Well it is Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer. All the kids are getting ready to go back to school, or have already started. The lake by us will be taking down the ropes and putting the lifeguard stands away until next year, the same will be happening at all the beaches. It has been a very joyful summer for Barbara and I, well all but the last 2 weeks or so. Barbara had planned a trip to several of our favorite places for a three day getaway in the middle of August but then she got sick and was told by the doctor that it was pneumonia, so she cancelled that trip. Then after getting all better she put together a one night trip and the night before we where going to leave I started to not feel well. I woke with a fear of 100.5 so that trip was cancelled. At that point Barbara said, “No more trips”. I went to the doctor and he took a throat swab to check for strep and when that came up negative the doctor did a nose swab to check for H1N1 flu and put me on Tamiflu. Well I am all better but due to the holiday weekend we will not know the results of the test until Tuesday, oh well such is life. One good thing if it was the H1N1 flu I don’t think that I will not have to worry about catching it again in the fall.
One good thing to report is my driveway garden is doing great. We have had at least 7 or 8 meals of green beans and lots of grape and cherry tomatoes. We also had some very nice regular (and not so regular) tomatoes. The irregular tomato that is pictured in the album came from the tomato plant from mars I think because there is a second tomato on that same plant that has the same special feature (don’t want to call it a deformity and get called a bigot). Next year I may clear some more area under the tree behind the garden and put some lettuce in, the resident rabbits will love that so that will need to be fenced in.
We have also decided to try to simplify our lives. We will be cancelling our landline and DSL from Verizon and going to just using our cell phones and the MiFi device (that is what Verizon calls it) that we bought. It allows both of us to use the internet at the same time over Verizon’s 3G network. We will have internet anywhere we get a cell phone signal, we could even use it in the car. We are also going to cancel our cable package before we leave for Florida and just use the basic cable that comes with our house and the DVDs we get from Netflix (we pay for all those extra channels and there is nothing on anyway). We may get basic cable in Florida; we will see how much it costs after we get there. And by cancelling the landline phone, DSL and cable it costs a little less each month too.
That is all for now. I will be updating this as we start to get ready for the adventure of moving to Florida for a few months.