markmarchesi.com

After a pretty long dry spell, during which my wetsuit hung next to the furnace getting crustier and crustier, I finally got some waves last Sunday afternoon, then some more this morning.  This morning was particularly good, with a stiff (and bitterly cold) offshore wind and consistent sets in the head high range.

Worth mentioning is my very last wave this morning.  I knew my time was up.  The 9 o’clock hour was approaching and I had to get to work.  A large set had came through and lured me outside.  It was breaking better on the inside, so I was about to turn and paddle in a little ways when another good sized wave showed on the horizon.  So I held my position and waited.  When the time came I turned and paddled and made the almost vertical drop.  It was a right so I turned backside and looked over my shoulder to see the lip feathering perfectly just above my head.

From there on out it was a lazy but fast ride with five or six top to bottom turns and one full on cutback - dodging a few surfers along the way.  On the inside I finally met up with a section that was closing out so I took one more turn at the lip and then pointed it straight for the beach.  Crouching down, then falling onto my stomach, I was able to stay in front of it and ride that same wave all the way to dry sand.  That just doesn’t happen very often.

The new www.markmarchesi.com is now live.  I’ve been working on the redesign for the last few weeks.  I made my old site in Dreamweaver which allows you to create web pages by simply adding images, typing, and moving elements around a canvas, generating the code automatically as you go.  I created my site with no almost no knowledge of what was actually happening in the back end.  This time around I decided to delve a little further.

For about a week I devoured html, css, and javascript tutorials on lynda.com, cssplay.com, and adobe labs.  In the end I decided to leave the fancier techniques like javascript and ajax up to the experts and set out to create something simple and to the point.  I’m pretty happy with the results.  On the back end the new markmarchesi.com couldn’t be simpler.  That means faster, easier update and less cross browser support issues.  And its not to shabby from the front end either if I do say so myself.

Its hard to believe, but until recently I had never grown a beard.  I’ve always preferred a hairless face.  Even though I am way too lazy and care way too little about personal hygiene to shave daily, I usually manage to get the razor out at least a couple times a week.  Growing it out only solidified the fact that I am not a beard guy.  I felt like my beard started to take on an identity of its own.  I didn’t feel like myself.  Not to mention it got in my mouth, food got stuck in it, and it felt really weird when I was swimming.

Just felt like posting some pics of Old Orchard Beach that I shot this fall…

Let’s call this an ongoing project.  I’ve been wanting to shoot more but haven’t found myself in the area too much lately.  It’s not going anywhere though.  A few big projects have been completed over the last few years - like the brand new hotel and retail complex at the foot of The Pier, and the complete renovation of The Ballpark.  But all in all it is the same old OOB.

Frenzied reporters getting the scoop at Sundance 2010.  Gives a good impression of the festival atmosphere.

The Sundance Film Festival 2010 began yesterday.  That means it has been ten long years since I wandered the streets of Park City during that famed week where independent filmmakers from around the globe vie for their shot at super stardom.

Sundance is arguably the largest and most influential showcase in the world for independent film.  Low budget films that are well received by audiences at Sundance regularly get bought by the large movie houses and released later in the year to become smash hits.  It attracts a hugely diverse crowd made up of everyone from A-list celebrities and top Hollywood film executives, to starving writers, actors, and filmmakers, to innocent film buffs like myself.

My Sundance experience began in Eloy, Arizona.  I was staying with my friend Jeff Provenzano in his trailer at Skydive Arizona.  Winter had set in and I was growing tired of blue skies and dry heat.  I wanted to get into the mountains and do some snowboarding.  I became aware that my desire to leave the desert and the start of Sundance were coinciding, and when the idea of attending the festival set in there was no other destination worth considering.

My only problem was lack of funds.  I had been working at a golf course near Eloy but quit when I decided to head north, and my final paycheck had all gone to a mechanic for necessary repairs on my Blazer.  So I borrowed fifty dollars from Jeff’s girlfriend Amy and hit the road.  The plan was to arrive in Park City a week before the festival and find a job making enough money to eat, see some films, buy a couple lift tickets, and pay Amy back.  And it worked More on Sundance 2010

Last weekend was our annual road trip to New York to visit family for the holidays.  In typical whirlwind fashion we left Maine Saturday morning arriving at my dad’s house in Northern Westchester County late in the afternoon.  Then spent Sunday afternoon at my wife’s brother’s apartment in Queens, leaving after dinner and arriving home around midnight.

Except for a clogged fuel filter in the Benz at the outset and a pee pee accident at the rest area in Massachusetts on the way home it was smooth sailing all the way.  It was good to get out of our normal routine for a couple days and spend a little time with everyone.

I love Forest Hills, Queens.  The network of meandering tree lined streets are home to some of the most amazing houses in all of NYC.  There are Tudor style wood frame mansions and enormous stone churches everywhere you look.

It was a planned community built for the wealthy and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead around a central cobble and brick square below an elevated (LIRR) railroad station.  On the square sits the Forest Hills Inn built in 1912 complete with a tower and a series of stone archways and English style gardens.  Someday I would love to do a detailed photo project on the community but for now these few snapshots will have to suffice.

My print Sea Dog Brewery; Topsham, Maine is up for auction right now on iGavel.com as part of an ongoing series of Emerging Artist Auctions through Daniel Cooney Fine Art in NYC.  Click Here for the direct link to the page with my print.

Every big storm has to have a catchy name.  That way the tv networks can refer back to it for years to come as a way of patting themselves on the back for their “award winning coverage”.  The truth is, we really don’t need the amount of dedicated airtime or the silly graphics that they employ for most serious weather events.  The amount of attention that gets redirected from real news to weather leading up to and during a big storm is disturbing.  And I think it is ridiculous when every available reporter has to put on their LL Bean parka and appear from a different part of the county to tell us how much snow each community is getting.  I would rather watch Judge Judy than see another interview with a city plow truck driver or a homeowner out shoveling his or her driveway.

This latest storm has now been dubbed the New Years Nor’easter because on January 2nd and 3rd 2010 a very large low pressure system came in from the Gulf of Maine via Nova Scotia and brought a fair amount of snow and high winds to the state.  It was a very unusual storm track, but after more than a week of intense media hype Portland didn’t quite see the twenty inch totals, major coastal flooding, or hurricane force winds heralded by local meteorologists.  To be fair, I think Bangor and points further Downeast did see worse conditions than us southerners.  The way they were telling it as of Monday night was that some communities are “still recovering”.

For my four year old daughter the excitement came not from how the storm was portrayed in the news, but because she looked out the window and saw the ground getting covered.  That meant a chance to finally go sledding, build the first snowman of the season, and try out the new snowball maker that my wife’s cousin got her for Christmas.  I also took her ice skating, so she was able to pack every outdoor winter activity in her repertoire into the holiday weekend.  It was a lot of fun for both of us.  And to cap it off I took a couple hours for myself and rode out to the beach for a late Sunday afternoon snowbound surf session.

Izzy building up her pile of ammo for the big snowball fight.

Driving down Sawyer Rd, warming my wetsuit gloves on the dash.

Higgins beach on January 3rd 2010 at 3pm.

When I first paddled out it was snowing pretty hard.  Snowing big fluffy white flakes.  Actually, they weren’t so much flakes as they were clusters.  Sometimes one would land on my wetsuit and stay frozen long enough for me to examine it’s intricate structure of sparkling ice crystals.  Between waves I sat and watched thousands of them float down from high above and disappear instantly into the dark and salty abyss.  The ocean’s surface was indifferent to their attack.  Unlike raindrops, these snowflakes were almost weightless and had no affect on the surface.

After a while the sky grew darker, the air got colder, wind picked up a little, and the form of precipitation changed into something more like freezing rain.  It made being in the forty degree water much less pleasant and stung my face when paddling.  Shortly thereafter I took a wave into the beach and headed for home - arriving just before dark.

Earlier this week my heater fan quit working.  It was old and tired and that’s that.  So instead of putting on thermal underwear just to commute to work I drove my wife’s car this week while I waited for the part to arrive from Camden.

The timing couldn’t have been worse, because during the three days my twenty five year old vehicle sat in the driveway, Maine was hit with the coldest temperatures we’ve seen this season.  I was caught totally off guard with a quarter tank of a 50/50 blend of bio and petro diesel.  And as the above pics illustrate, that is not enough to keep the bio from gelling.

The heater fan arrived last night and the temps reached about 25 F this afternoon.  I left work a little early, filled a 5 gallon can with petrodiesel on my way home, and stopped at the auto parts store to pick up a couple varieties of anti-gelling additives.  In retrospect I probably didn’t need these to start he car (just putting the 5 gallons of petro in probably sufficed), but in case of a clogged filter they are good to have, and I wanted to pick some up for my pickle jar experiments anyway.

With very little daylight left I first plugged in the block warmer and then poured in the five gallons of petrodiesel with about a quarter of the bottle of Gunk Anti-Gel and Cetane Boost.  While that took effect I installed my new-used heater fan motor and tested it out.  To my delight it worked, meaning that the problem wasn’t more serious.  Then I went inside to warm up for a while, letting the block warmer continure to do it’s job.  A half hour later I came back out and the engine started right up.

With a diesel blend I am more confident in and heat that blows hard again I am back in business.  It feels good to be behind the wheel of the old TD again, but now I know that if I want to run a biodiesel blend all winter in Maine I need to keep and eye on the weather forecast and be prepared for the worst.

I’ve never been much of a car guy - never understood the appeal of one make over another or the allure of the newest models.  I agree that new cars smell nice, but no odor is worth that amount of depreciation.  I’ve always looked at cars in a utilitarian way.  A means of getting from here to there when Point A is too far from Point B to skateboard and there is no good mass transit option.

Most of the cars I’ve driven over the years have been hand me downs.  I’ve never owned one with less than 100K miles, and I usually drive them into the ground then donate them to charity for a tax write off.  That is not to say that I’ve never developed a bond with a car.  My old Blazer still holds a special place in my heart.  Mostly because it wasn’t just a car, it was my home for more than a year while I traveled the back roads of North America.  On long trips in unfamiliar lands the Blazer was my safe haven and I relied on it profoundly.  But I still never washed it or waxed it or swooned over it in any way, and driving it never gave me any particular pleasure.  The relationship between me and my 300TD is different.

When the rear view mirror fell off The Blazer going down a rutted dirt road I just tossed it under the seat and forgot about it.  When the sun roof was leaking I just sealed it with duct tape.  And when I hooked the rear bumper on an iron gate in La Jolla, CA I just backed into a concrete wall afterward to bend it back into shape.  So when I bought The Benz I told myself that little things like the passenger side mirror being cracked, or a missing wood panel on the console didn’t matter.  But a strange thing happened.  All those little things started to bother me and I found myself wanting them fixed.

Something about the turbo diesel brought out a new side of me that wanted to nurture it and restore it to it’s original grandeur.  Something about the turbo diesel had turned me into a car guy.  I started feverishly scouring the internet for parts.  I spent way too much time on sites like Mercedes Source and Performance Products and eBay Motors.  I even started reading forums.

One day I found myself standing in the aisle of a local auto parts and tire warehouse store.  My nostrils were burning from the overwhelming stench of rubber as I tried to decide between the myriad brands of wax and polish when it finally dawned on me.  The whole idea of waxing a twenty five year old car with over 250K miles is just plain silly.  And so is the idea of spending tons of money to replace worn out cosmetic parts.

So I made a compromise with myself.  I would only fix the most offensive and/or pressing issues, I would source the most inexpensive used parts, and I would try to do as much of the work myself as possible.

Cutting birch veneer to fit missing console section.

Before and after of veneer console panel replacement - not a perfect match, but good enough.

Thus far I have mended the missing wood panel on the console by fitting a $2.50 piece of veneer from Rockler, and replaced my cracked passenger side mirror with one I got from a guy named Terry in Camden, Maine parting out the exact same vehicle.  Incidentally, he also just sold me the fan motor which restored my heat and made it possible to drive my car again without dressing for a polar expedition - thanks a million Terry.