Sirens and traffic

For anyone who has never been to Los Angeles, living in the heart of big American city is certainly an experience. In the last 24 hours since we've been back from Solvang (which was blissfully quiet) I reckon we've heard sirens at least every 20 minutes throughout the whole day. A little less frequently at night, but still there nevertheless. Even one fire tender roared past me whilst I was driving today. In Perth, you're lucky to hear one a day and almost never encounter one while driving.

Talking about driving, the traffic here in L.A. has to be seen to be believed. We collected Augie from school today, it was nearly a two hour round trip for a 6.5 mile journey! The freeways clog up every morning and evening, so it is best only to use them in the middle of the day or late at night. However, the L.A. motorists are very obliging and let you in to their lane if you indicate, and nearly every road is much wider than back in WA and have this extra lane in the middle which you only use when turning left. Consequently the main lanes are never blocked by turning traffic, allowing traffic to keep flowing. Well that's the theory anyway, it can still back up for blocks at a time.

1901 Toledo

Anyway, yesterday Josh suggested we visit the Nethercutt Motor Museum near Luke's work place, so we went there yesterday afternoon. Well what a collection of old cars, all of them in absolute pristine condition. Ranging from this 1901 Toledo on the right. up to 1980's Rolls Royce's and everything in between. Mr Nethercutt started out by buying these old cars, and eventually his fame spread and many older owners of these sort of cars donated them to him because they knew they would be looked after.

Steering wheel controls

All the old vehicles of yesteryear have these steering wheel controls, one for the throttle and one for the spark advance. As the car and engine went faster the spark to ignite the fuel had to be "advanced" so the fuel had time to burn during the power stroke. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair to get the right settings so the engine didn't overheat or labour too much on hill climbs. And every car was different in how these controls were positioned on the steering wheel and how they were set.

Instrument panel

No standardisation in those days, if you got a new model car, you had to learn how to drive it all over again. Today's computerised automatic cars would have appeared magical to those early drivers. Nor were the instrument panels any better, often placed below the dashboard in the centre column so you had to take your eyes off the road to look at them. Looking at the complexity of the one on the right here, you can see why mostly men drove them in those days.

Mirror on tyre

Nowadays, anybody can get into any car and drive it straightaway due to the standardisation of controls and gauges. Even mirrors were attached differently - here we see a common way was to strap it to the spare tyre which was usually positioned just in front of the driver's door. But I also saw cars where the spare tyre was next to the driver's door making it impossible to open it and forcing the the poor driver to enter via the passenger door and slide over to the driver's side.

1930's caravan

You could also hitch up a 1930's caravan and tour the country. Caravan design has certainly changed since then.

De Lorean

Anybody who's a fan of the Back to the Future trilogy will no doubt recognise this car as the time machine used to catapult Marty McFly backwards and forwards in time. The car is finished in brushed stainless steel.

Unfortunately Mr De Lorean's design did not appeal to the greater motoring public and he quickly went bankrupt.

Edison jukebox

This museum doesn't only house cars though, here is something I have never seen and did not even know existed - an Edison phonograph jukebox using the original wax cylinders before flat records came into existence! Not sure how many plays each cylinder would produce as they were fairly soft.

Gas pump

My father's generation would recognise this early device - a gas (petrol) pump. The attendant would use the lever on the left side to pump the amount of fuel you requested up into the glass container at the top, then it would be gravity-fed into your tank. A labourious  and time consuming task compared to today's electric pumps, but electricity wasn't everywhere when these old pumps were around, so I guess they worked OK.

Futuristic design

Then there were car designers who tried to imagine what cars would look like in the future and here is one example of such a design, complete with central tail fin. I guess we've still got a little ways to go yet until we have these sort of designs.


After the museum closed at 4.30 pm, we joined Joshua in going to Ikea for one of their famous and cheap meals. I tried their tasty meatballs and sauce with green veggies and mashed potato, polished off with a hazelnut chocolate dessert. And it certainly was cheaper, about $US11.50 per person, far cheaper than some of the other eateries we have frequented. Josh also stocked up on food there as you can buy all the restaurant items frozen for consumption at home. With his busy lifestyle and long drives to and from L.A., these meals can be quickly knocked up when one is tired and hungry.