Welcome to Stockholm

Fortunately upon arriving in Stockholm I was able to switch right over to the local time and schedule so when I arrived at 7am that morning I was up and ready for the day. I had planned on meeting up with my friends for some sight seeing once they arrived a few hours after my flight. Unfortunately due to some maintenance issues they had their flight canceled last minute and weren’t able to leave until the following day. So after working for a while in my hotel room I decided it was time to get to know the area since I’d be here for a little while. After I’d been walking for a bit I realized I hadn’t eaten all day so I stopped in a little cafe to have some food and of course a latte for dinner. As I sat watching people walk by I had a funny thought, Stockholm is a city of strollers, stilettos and coffee. This was especially noticeable in cafes where mothers of all ages had all 3 going on. This is quite impressive when you consider their walking around pushing a baby stroller on 300+ year old cobble stone roads. It was also quite interesting seeing mothers meet in the cafe with their friends then a short bit later (presumably after work) husbands and other friends would arrive have a coffee then everyone would leave together for dinner, this seemed to be the norm through out the trip despite the day of week.

While walking around I found a great museum I’ll need to look up the name. I walked around it a bit but didn’t pay the admission because I didn’t quite understand the conversion rates it was about 300kr (which ended up being about $50) to go through but aside from the price their only english tour wasn’t until Sunday when I would be at the conference. I did manage to take a photo of the inside, not great lighting but it was the only shot I could pull off before being told no photos and once you’ve been spotted with a large digital SLR it becomes really difficult to sneak in those covert photos. I did however take a fun shot of the interior courtyard of the museum.

For the most part the first day I stayed in the downtown area of Stockholm, fairly close to my hotel the Nordic Light. When asking for a nice local place to enjoy a pint with friendly locals it was suggested I go checkout Strouhof it was a little classier crowed where most the investment bankers hung out after work. I made quick friends with Michal the bartender who pointed me to all the great areas of Stockholm I needed to see, while avoiding any potential tourist traps.

Getting out of lock up after 2 years

So you have the back story now here's where we're at today. I drove out to Fremont today with Willie from Willies Place in Campbell. I met Willie at the Campbell farmers market where he had is Cadillac there for a little get together with some other car enthusiasts. Hands down he had the sweetest ride there so we got to talking, I told him about the van so we decided to go check up on it and see if it was a project he was up for. Personally I was beginning to wonder if it still exists it had been locked up now for over 2 years in a relocation companies warehouse.

I had a chance to take a look at some of Willy's other work before we left to look at the van and I was really beginning to wonder if it was a project he would actually be interested in working on. Well we arrived and there she was, just as I left her. Some shine, some rust and a couple cob-webs here and there. But all in all in better shape then I think either of us expected. We had a quick look at her. I snapped a few pictures and we chatted a bit on the way home about various ideas on the directions we could take the project. So now I just have to sit down and figure out what we're going to do and when we're going to start!

So I figured this might be a cool project to document from start to finish. I really wish I had pictures of the van when I first picked it up. While I try to track those down here are some pics from the trip today:

The mystery machine lives... and dies.

So a number of years ago I purchased a 1969 Dodge Sportsman Van also know as an A-108. I was the third owner of the van. The original owner bought it off a new car lot in '69/'70 and kept it in immaculate condition, always in cover storage, oil changes every 3,000 miles, did some restoration work to keep up with the times (captains chairs for the driver/front passenger, and kept every single receipt over the years to prove it. Well he and his wife decided to sell it for a number of reasons, lacked power steering, was a little over kill for a grocery runs, etc. So a friend of mine bought it... and wrecked it after owning it for less then a month. I literally think she crashed it the 3rd day she owned it. She totaled the front end and had no intention of fixing it, nor selling it (even after I offered exactly what she just paid for it pre-wreck).

About a year later I get random call from her asking if I was still interested in the van. I said sure and she told me I could have it for $100 if I picked it up that day, otherwise the city was impounding because it hadn't moved from the front of her house in over a year. So I called a tow truck, had him meet me at her place, picked up the van and parked it in front of my parents yard. I can't really remember how long it was there but I do recall the grass under it died (any botanist out there can comment on how long it might have been there).

At this point the front end was crushed, the wheels wouldn't even roll, it had sat for a year in the sun so the interior was getting crispy and the whole thing had a lovely 'new gasoline' smell. Yeah the one we all know and love. So the next steps were to [a] find a new front end to replace the old one with [2] find someone to cut off the wrecked part and replace it for cheap, it wasn't like I was working for some crazy company like Google so this was going to be super budget. I needed it to run so I could drive it.

Well It just so happened my wife (girlfriend at the time) has an uncle who ownes an auto body shop call Auto Art in Escondido. He agreed to do a little work on the van for me. Well actually he did a lot of work, removing and replacing the entire front end.

I still needed to have a smog check get license plate lights and some other random thing I can't recall. Well I did the smog, the random thing but could never find the license plate lights. So I kept driving it on a temp registration you know the paper kind that you have to tape in the back window (would they just make these things stickers???). After about a year the DMV stopped giving me these temp registration flyers and said I needed to fix the issues or stop driving the van... so I just decided to keep on driving. The temp registration was so faded no one could read when it actually expired so I figured I was fine. I never found the lights but I did learn that Escondido has a very lenient DMV and one of the nice women there said to bring my paper work in and she would take care of me. I thought how nice. So I ran home jumped in the van and drove to the DMV. I'm driving down the street in this huge unregister inconspicuous van and a friendly Five-O wants to chat. He gave me the usual lecture and told me he was impounding my van. Ugg. Well that was the final straw. I had to get the van out of the impound lot and parked in my garage. The city can tow unregistered vehicles from the street or your driveway at anytime so I had to hide the goods so to speak. In the garage it went and there it stayed. That is until I moved to Northern California at which point it came out of the garage, was loaded on a flat bed and taken to a storage facility in Fremont which was to become it's new home for the foreseeable future...

And here we go...

So this is my first ever post to a personal blog, a bit behind the times I know.