Blogunity

The photo is by Paul Rioux, who does a lot of great truck photography on the net. If anyone comes across his actual site though, please message us so we can send some people over there.

Freightliner started out in 1942 and they have a CANADIAN connection (this blogger is Canadian himself). According to Wikipedia:

“In the 1930s, Consolidated Freightways (CF) decided to produce their own truck line from reconstructed Fageols, after finding most heavy trucks lacked sufficient power to climb the steep mountain grades in the western United States.”

Now note that Fageols were an early-20th century company founded to make farm tractors, as well as motor trucks and cars.

“The trucks were branded “Freightliners”, with the first units produced in Consolidated Freightways’ maintenance facility in Salt Lake City around 1942. After production was interrupted during WW II, manufacturing began again, in CF’s home of Portland, Oregon. In 1949, the first truck sold outside of Consolidated Freightways went to forklift manufacturer Hyster, also based in Portland.”

That first made truck from 1949 is still around. It’s in the Smithsonian collection for people to view it in Washington, DC.

The story continues:

“Lacking distribution capability, and seeking higher volume to reduce production costs, CF entered into an agreement in 1951 to sell their trucks through the White Motor Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, and their dealer network in the US and Canada. This relationship endured for the next quarter century, and the co-branded “White Freightliner” cab-over-engine models (COE) became a familiar sight on highways across the continent.”

These “White Freightliner” look like the square box COE you might be familiar with — just a box on a chassis. Picture

“Manufacturing began in Burnaby, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA, in 1961, to reduce the duty penalty on the complete vehicles sold in Canada. Assembly plants in Indianapolis and Chino, California complemented the main plant on Swan Island in Portland, serving the US market. In 1969, a new assembly plant was opened on North Basin St., which was then converted to parts production.”

Burnaby, for those not familiar with the Lower Mainland in BC, is the third-largest BC city (by population) today, and is immediately to the east of Vancouver. It became a “city” in 1992,” 100 years after incorporation of the town.

Big Rig Style

Long white big rig tractor and trailer from down under here.

This was a huge hit at some of the New Zealand big rig shows recently around Hamilton and Christchurch, reportedly.

It’s reported to be the biggest motorhome in New Zealand, with its impressive accommodation and on-board one car garage!

This tractor-trailer-garage was spotted by someone who described the Blenheim truck stop sighting this way, showing maybe that with the right truck, even non-truck lovers can get excited, and even act:

“I figuratively ran into this rig last week.. I was admiring its shiny paint job when all of a sudden a Smart car backed out of the trailer, taking the couple to breakfast.

“I’m not ‘into’ trucks or motor camping, but that was just so cool. I gather that around $250,000 will get you something similar!”

This is one of those great rigs that little is known about. I would love to be able to blog more about it, but even after extensive search I found only a few scant shreds of information. If anyone has more photos of this NZ phenom, or knows someone in New Zealand (around Christchurch it seems like), please get them to send us some more. Lets find out more about this big white mystery machine.

Ok Now, This Might Be The Biggest

These Mighty Machines Are Made In The Isle Of MAN!

Quite the side-out and fold-up unit here. That second level slides up and down on hydrolics, and it might be the biggest I’ve seen on the net of these massive luxury motorhomes (I’m talking ones that are built as motorhomes, not including massive trailers and things).

These machines are made by Man Motorhomes, a bodybuilder company located in Europe on the Isle of Man (which is an island south of England’s island).

This one is a 2010.

Man Motorhomes makes luxury offroad machines, and they’re tested extensivley in all kinds of terrains. You’ll see these ploughing through the sand dunes of Dakkar and other rallies.

Man also produces tough chassis and does certification for offroad and extreme motorhomes.

According to SLR Caravans, for example, “The MAN TGM 13.290 4×4 cab chassis, which is one of the most advanced off road trucks on the market. It features a 6.9L six cylinder twin turbo engine with 213kw and a massive 1150Nm of torque. With a 12 speed automated transmission, parabolic springs, airbag suspension and front and rear diff locks, it has all the electronic and mechanical technology on hand to traverse the most arduous terrain.”

Action Mobil and Commander use the MAN chassis.

For example, Action Mobil’s near-7-figureXRS 7200, which is said to be a motorhome up above the Earthroamer XV-LTS and Mercedes Zetros.

And they do military vehicles, camper vans, A and other class motorhomes, expedition trucks, busses (this is one of the most famous categories — these busses are used quite a bit).

Visit Man Trucks and Busses Ltd, but its kind a letdown if you’re looking for cool pics and motorhomes. It’s more like lists of specs pdfs. However, if you find anymore great pics of Mans — a type of machine we really don’t see a lot of — please share them on our Facebook page.

Double Decker! Luxury Converted Horse Trailer

This is a double decker horse trailer from Holland. It’s made from one of those popular Volvo tractors and it looks like around an 80 foot horse trailer.

When the top slips down, the unit becomes regulation height (in Europe, the whole cabover thing is also based on size limits — length in that case).

These are one of the things people are doing with horse trailers. They take a horsetrailer and RV-ize it into a mobile home style RV. Some of them can become quite luxurious.

These Volvo FHs, Swedish made, were introduced in 1993 — “Forward Control High Entry” — and have been one of the most succesful truck series: 400,000 units worldwide. These horse trailers are to the order of around 80 feet.

So horseboxes aka horse trailers are meant practically for transporting horses on the road. A lot of horsebox conversions are done by custom semi or other vehicle conversion companies — there are ones that specialize in horse trailers, some are luxury, some more practical. Some people, though, don’t go to custom shops because they prefer to customize their horsetrailer themselves.

This can be done, of course.

Here’s some steps to do it, to give an idea:

• Get a good mattress and install it on the trailer’s bay.
• Carpet the floors
• Install some drawers — stackable storage drawers are one way
• Stock the drawers with utensils, clothing, office supplies, whatever you need to bring with you
• Install a bench or small couch
• Install a heater / AC with a thermostat (preferably) to control the temperature (although many heaters / ACs turn themselves on and off in response to a set temperature
• (option) Install insulation in/on the walls, floor and ceiling
• (option) Repaint or tile
• (option) Install electrical outlets (wires under insulation for appearance is a way many do it)
• Install TV, audio / video systems, fridge, stove
• Install water tank
• Build a store room for buckets, hoses, tools, etc.

10 Creative Projects For Mason Jars

Mason jars are very useful and you can repurpose them in a lot of ways. Of course, these classy jars are great for storing candies, sweets and cookies and they are also great for infusing water. Here are some uses that you might have not thought about:

Beautiful Flower Jar
Who said that mason jars are meant for foodies and drinks? You can also use them as a flower jar. It looks so lovely to see your colourful and fragrant gardenia with different sizes of mason jars. Just remember to place long stemmed floral into tall jars.

Liquid Hand Wash
Place a pump on the lid of the jar to create a ready-made liquid hand wash container. This will look so classy on your bathroom sink.

Oil Lamp
You can really do anything with mason jars. Use it as a nostalgic oil lamp by using a blue color jar. It will really bring some good memories when you light it up at night time. Just pour some oil in it and place a wick at the hole of the lid and you’re ready for a beautiful night.

Pen Holder
Isn’t nice to use your mason jar as a pen holder? Anything with a big mouth can be uses as a pen holder and your jar is perfect for this.

Bathroom Storage
Oragnize your bathroom essential with your mason jars. Use different colors for each – color pink for cotton balls and color yellow for cotton buds.

Baking Needs Storage
Mason Jars are perfect for storing baking needs. Your cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, baking soda, chocolate powder, sugar sprinkles and all other baking foodstuff can be stored properly with mason jars.

Sewing Kit in a Jar
Keep your small stuff neat and tidy. Small things are sometimes hard to spot when all your other stuff are hanging somewhere. But keeping them in a mason jar will make it easy and simple.

Glow in the Dark Jar
Nice and unique gifts are treasured dearly. Glow in the dark jars is one of them. Use highlighting markers for this glow in the dark jar.

Snow Globe in a Jar
This snow globe in a jar captures a beautiful winter memory that is nice as a keepsake for a birthday surprise.

Key storage
Attach your mason jar near the entry way so that it’s easy to store your keys.
These ten uses of your mason jar are just a few of the many uses. Widen your imagination and you’ll be glad how useful these beautiful jars!

Should Basketball Adopt the 4-Point Shot?

Antoine Walker once joked about it, the Harlem Globetrotters regularly use it as one of their gimmicks, and the NBA actually discussed the possibility of it last year in 2014. Is it possible for professional basketball, and especially the NBA, to adopt a 4-point shot in their game? Many basketball fans and historians would say that there is no need for a 4-point shot to exist in serious, competitive play, and I am personally on the fence when it comes to this idea, but for the sake of argument, why don’t we examine the case that supports the 4-point shot?

Today’s NBA has changed in many ways. While the 3-point shot has been around since the 1980s, high octane offenses on the court haven’t really taken off until these past couple decades. You can credit teams like the Phoenix Suns teams of the 2000s when Steve Nash led the way, or you can even refer to some Dallas Mavericks teams of the same decade when Dirk Nowitzki was almost unstoppable pulling up for 3. Ray Allen’s sharpshooting abilities saved the Miami Heat from despair in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals with a game-tying 3-point basket with 5.2 seconds to go in the 4th quarter. Just this past season, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, known as the Splash Brothers, led the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA Championship victory in 45 years, blazing past the competition with their lethal 3-point shooting being a main contributor.

While power forwards and centers still have their place in the game by crashing the boards and playing under the rim in the paint, it is clear that the main focus of offensive attacks in basketball are revolving around the crafty 3-point shooters. More teams in the NBA are putting out smaller tandems of 5 players on the court, implementing more mobility, speed and opportunities for the 3-point shot. Perhaps it’s not totally out of the question that the 4-point shot could work in today’s NBA?

If a 4-point shot were to be accepted by the NBA, it wouldn’t necessarily be a new thing. The Harlem Globetrotters, as stated before, already use the 4-point shot as one of their gimmicks when they hit the floor and play their fun and exciting exhibition games. Once in a while the Globetrotters will bring out 4 circular pads that are known as “4-point zones” and everyone will just start shooting 4-point baskets from way downtown. The probability of a professional basketball player consistently making these kinds of 4-point shots is unclear because such an experiment hasn’t been tested yet, but I would be open to the idea of the NBA trying out the 4-point shot in upcoming exhibition games.

 

The “Chuck’s Pill”

I have a friend who I have known for over twenty years. Our relationship has grown from us being involved to partners in business to living four thousand miles apart. We don’t talk much; in fact our communications went from  him sending me a “hope everything goes well” email to virtually nil. Our relationship one could say is just a memory.

The memory I hold with him is complicated to say the least. When I think of him on any event or time of the day it makes me sad. Most of us would see him to be someone who has everything. He was a “Michael Angelo” when it came to creating art for business. Creativity seeped out of him without any energy it seemed. He’d picked up a drawing pencil and start sketching a design it was like you could see each individual pixel come together to form the design. The man had won several awards for his talent and was in the “Who’s Who” book. His personal life was just a flourish; beautiful wife, daughters and home with nice cars. He traveled to major cities from clients requesting him to create “Michael Angelo” pieces for them.

As his business partner a typical day with him started with him being 30 minutes late or more. He was always late but could not tolerate waiting on anyone. He would come in the office, either a person driving or wife made him late. And then say he did not want to talk about it only to go into great detail about the driver being stupid or his wife wanted to argue. Then he would go talking as he went to office expressing more of his frustration of a client or life.   Anytime we would go out to eat he complained either the waiter or the food or location; did not matter if it was a fast-food or fine dining place. Conversing with him was hard for perfection is the only thing he would accept, even though the reach of perfection he never found for nothing seemed good enough for him. It was as though his perception was the only way everyone should live. He had a temper. He was very educated and yet, when he got angry…suddenly it would be like a volcano erupting.

I love Chuck as friend and always will but his negative way of living life was a weight I could not carry. There are a lot people who seemed to wake-up in the morning and their perception of life is a grey cloud over them. They complain about everything it seems; traffic, construction, drivers, how a store is laid out, food, and…just life…no one seems to be doing anything right! It is though they took a “Chuck’s pill.” Maybe those complaints enlighten them toward positive feeling by releasing stress or perhaps things they cannot control just tick’s-them-off. How important is it to make everything function the way you want it too? Imagine everything working exactly like you want it. Now imagine all the people in the world doing the same thing exactly like you. What could we possibly learn from each other?  Why is it so important to control anyone or anything? Living one’s life with happiness and controlling yourself…being open to others perceptions is a continue tool to acquire knowledge.

 

A Leap of Faith

I was looking out my window this evening watching the sunset. The colors are always magnificent; with a variety of blue’s, oranges and reds. There are times when looking at the sunset it as though the colors are bursting out from earth, shooting into the sky before saying, “Goodnight.” I am not one that thinks about tomorrows…in the sense of is there going to be a sunrise. Maybe I have “A Leap of Faith.”

I always believed I have “faith” even in my dreams. And though it has been quite a while when I started believing in a specific dream…I had “faith” it would happen. There are times when the road was uncertain. The funny thing about “faith”; is you can say you have it…but it is another thing to practice having “faith.”

The last few years, I started to mold my life into the dream. And you know what happen…nothing was working. No matter how hard I tried to make the dream come true it seems everything was backfiring. Even my “faith” seemed it was not working.

So what does one do when everything you touch seemed to fail? You stop…do nothing. This does mean you sit down on the couch  with a bag of popcorn and watch television for the rest of your life. Instead, go on with life. Allow yourself to watch the dream unfold do not make it happen…let it happen. A flower does not make the petals unfold, the universe…God knows when and how it should unfold. I realized the same was with everything, including my dream…it would happen exactly the way it was suppose too.   Less than a year my dream came true and I watch the petal of my dream unfold before me.