Still in Alexandria

I wrote this wednesday 3/10/2010: If you can sing the lyrics "Sittin on the deck by the train" to the melody of "Sittin on the dock by the bay" then you'll understand where I am right now mentally :)

Monday and Tuesday's free time have been spent doing a bunch of housekeeping while at my aunts.

I have attempted 2 car projects.
Vacuming out all the leaves and feathers from my cabin airbox was a pain. But my homemade air filters do work.  Its another way that the car website/forum I follow (http://www.genvibe.com/) has paid of.  The dealer wants 40 bucks per filter, 70 installed. I go to home depot and cut a $17 high end furnace filter down to the same size (acually, I can get 4 car filters out of one furnace filters) and voila! It's easy, but you need to look online for instructions.  I recommend that everyone al least be an occasional lurker on your own cars fan site.  You will learn so much, save alot of money and enjoy your car alot more.  I wouldn't be as comfortable with my car without it, and as you can imagine based on the last two videos (car tour), I am comfortable with and in my car.

The second project was to get rid of (install) these two air horn looking things I bought on sale.  Now I know this is controversial with some, but I hate my factory tweet horn.  It sounds like I'm joking when I honk it.  I don't joke around with cars and I dont want to sound like it either.  More importantly though, they are taking up space in the cabin right now and space is at a premium.  I had a spot all picked out and bought the hardware to attach them before I left NYC, but on my back yesterday, I found out the hard way that they are not going to fit where I wanted them. Or at least with the harware I have. Its a crazy smal space that is too hard to take a picture of and impossible to describe, so I'll leave it at that. This was a failure becaus eof the amount of work it took taking the car apart, etc. to then find out it was pointless.  So they are going to have to endure the ride a little longer with my tweet.  Aftermarket horns are awsome, as long as you are willing to replace them every 2 years. LOL

It's looking like my next destination is going to be Shenondoah National Park.  I'm not sure why, but everyone says its a "Don't Miss", so that's that. I'm going.  The problem is that I enjoyed the weather so much here in the DC area, I now am facing rain for the next three to four days and that sucks.  I'm realistic of course, but I just feel like I have so much ahead of me right now, that I can't afford or just don't want to have a crappy first camping side trip.  The last time I struck a tent in the rain it was with my good friend Tim in the Finger Lakes National Forest.  It was afterdark when we arrived, raining and our map sucked, but there wasn't room to sleep in the car for both of us and we both agreed to hit the trail and find a place to camp.  Having told that story, I just have to say, that I know for myself, I want to avoid rain htis first outing (especially day 1 and 2).

After that, my sister is reccomending the outer/shore areas of North Carolina and South Carolina.  I'm considering the outerbanks.  Nothing is decided yet and the more and quicker I get feedback from all of you, the more likely I am to visit it.

I also want to visit the ancestral land I mentioned before in Farmville, VA.  I've been there before, but I wouldnt mind exporing it with Max for a few days.  That could have been a good first camping trip but it is way south of Shenondoah so to save fuel and time, I should stick with the natural southerbound order I've been trying to follow.

I also has a nice namesake project...
Who can tell the difference in the before and after photos below?