Pictures of my family doing cool stuff

The ruins of a local mill

Toyman01 (Generally Supportive Dude) said:

Tuna, You win the internet for the day. Thanks!

Thanks!

I say to Tunakid 2 "you put the fitted sheet on the bed and I'll do the rest", because I want him to figure it out. He's a bit literal though. Maybe too much like his father and his father before him.

The ruins of a different local mill. There are lots to explore!!

My wife posts this to FB "This is coffee with a view"

I replied "no, this is coffee with a view"

This one looks like an artistically posed shot. What it actually depicts is a sister trying to take the Kindle from her brother (look closely, you can see her hands are on the screen)

My boys and I think turtles are pretty much the best thing

I am not a food-picture-taker, but this again was made by a kid, and I think that's cool.

Tunakid 2 being crazy

"Boys, clean your room!"

"it is clean!"

The room:

Last picture, 100 of them, because eventually I have to do some work today.

Awesome thread, thank you for sharing!

z31maniac said:

Awesome thread, thank you for sharing!

Thanks dude, more to come tomorrow.

Lots of fun on both sides of the web browser (your family, and me reading though!)

RossD said:

Lots of fun on both sides of the web browser (your family, and me reading though!)

Thanks dude! It is fun. Trying at times, but fun. This is the highlight of my day

Thank you! This thread made me smile and think of the adventures we've been having during our quarantine.

dj06482 said:

Thank you! This thread made me smile and think of the adventures we've been having during our quarantine.

So glad!! It has been really really hard, but we have done well to take some adventures. To be fair, some of those were pre quarantine. I really love spending time with my kids though. 

I could write for a few hours about this guy. This is Gramps. He's an inspiration to me and many others. This was taken two years ago. I just got word that he's back at home after a scary event where he was found on the ground at home confused. He didn't know how long, when he last ate, or that he was in a puddle of his own urine. He had a few really bad infections that went undiagnosed. He's falling apart a bit lately, because at the same visit that we got this picture, we got this one:

She died a year ago March. She had the same name as my daughter in that picture, Antoinette. He isn't the same without her to take care of. I'm glad he's okay, but it won't be for long. I miss her. They were like parents to me when my own parents were not. 

Sorry about the grammar there. Everytime I go to proofread it the room gets really dusty. 

You've got some thoughtful and talented young humans there. Well done dad!

STM317 said:

You've got some thoughtful and talented young humans there. Well done dad!

Thanks dude!!

I'm just wholesale crying here after posting that last picture, so I appreciate the kudos!!

Awesome thread Tuna. How’d you get the name Tuna anyways? 

I think we have the same shoes (will check on Saturday, left them at my parents since they were wet) and the same oven. 

I enjoyed this thread. 

Thanks. 

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

Awesome thread Tuna. How’d you get the name Tuna anyways? 

 

I think we have the same shoes (will check on Saturday, left them at my parents since they were wet) and the same oven. 

 

 

This is a long and pretty delightful story to tell, if not necessarily logical and easy to understand. In high school my buddy and I built a car together. It was fun, but painful. FriendsDad let us use the unheated barn to put it together in the winter of 1998 in Syracuse. The best quote I remember from my buddy when we were taking turns to go and pee outside in the middle of the night one time "It's worth it, but it's gonna hurt". Later on, FriendsDad got pissed at us for taking too long, and we moved to TunaDad's garage. He was also pissed, but this time before we ever got there. It was a wrench throwing, Dad screaming kind of time, but we finished the car. Then TunaDad helped us back it out of the garage... and drove off. He kept coming back and taunting us and then driving away over and over. We finally got to drive the stupid thing like 20 minutes later. We romped all over with no exhaust. It had a very unprofessionally ported set of cylinder heads (by yours truly) on an otherwise virgin 400 with a moderate cam, good converter and a great transmission. We were driving all over and then decided to park it, no insurance and whatnot. Well we pulled it in the garage and a police car drove by, then again in the opposite direction, then again, then a heli. It was probably unrelated, but it my adolescent mind I just dodged a big one.

Anyway fast forward to the spring/summer and the dragstrip finally thawed out. Our car ran terribly. We had a nasty bog that we couldn't figure out, likely because it was a 750 double pumper carb and a single plane intake on a very mild 400, but at the time I had nobody to ask. TunaDad would have just thrown wrenches at me. We bugged a few of our mutual friends at the dragstrip, and eventually got to make it go a bit faster. Anyway we ran a trap speed right around 100 in the 1/4, which is pretty quick for a couple of high school kids with burger kind and pizza delivery money and two grumpy Dad's that keep trying to injure us. I sold my half to my bud and went to college. He swapped carbs and eventually ran a mid 12 something. He went on to take over the family oxygen concentrator business and now makes way more money than me.

Anyway somewhere in there I recognized that the internet was going to be a real thing, and I needed some forms of identification for E-mail and such. Flashback: My Dad always ran car number 469 (he told me this story about why there were so many X69 cars at this dragstrip, there was a 69, a 169 and a 269 and a 469 etc.... but in the end he got a bit more modest with his teenage son and told me it was a really good year for cars.) and so when we went to the same track we naturally wanted to use his number (he had since moved on to Super Stock). The tower lady told me "Honey, you can't use your Dad's number without a number before it", so I got mad and told her I wanted 001. Then we found out that my buddy needed yet a different number, so he used 0001. Flashforward: I was a Chevy guy, and my race car number was 001, so my early screen names for everything were Bowtie001.

Fastforward to 2008 and I have a job, a kid, and this weird guy down the hall at work who wants to race in this Lemons thing. I'm in. We make a plan, submit some E-mails to Jay Lamm, and he sends us a letter back like "Too bad you guys are so lame though." so we regroup. We start searching the internet for interesting ideas which also have not been used, and names which sounded fun, but also were unique. We finally decide and send Jay a letter explaining that we are racing. [note, I have his original letter from 2008: "...if we get 200 different applications from teams who all say "we want to go fast and we're bringing a beat-up (whatever)," there's really nothing to make any of those entries stand out from the rest of the pack, and a bunch of them just won't make the cut. On the other hand, if we get 1 application amongst that pile that says "we will show up dressed head to toe as farmers, our pits will be filled with live cows, we'll give away 500 pounds of raw sorghum to the team of your choice, and our Buick Century will be covered completely in chicken feathers," guess who's going to get chosen?"] , inspired by that,and the amazing art car door another teammate had with "Charlie the Tuna" painted on it for some reason, we finally decide that we're going to drive through the pits throwing tuna fish sandwiches at everyone and some other stuff I cannot remember. Our team name: "Tunachuckers: Hey, we had to call ourselves something".

Some other guys had strong ideas about car number 55.

I was the first to say to everyone "Hey maybe we can get some suspension help from these GRM guys" and the team agreed, and I made the first post, answered, among others, by the late Curmudgeon, with the handle Tuna55.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/volvo-amazon-lemons-suspension-question/5859/page1/

There are other teammates here now, but they have chosen other names, and I did at one point ask if I should relinquish the name, seeing as I'm not even active anymore, but they let me keep it.

Here are some pictures:

Yes, in 1999 I had tons and tons of hair. I was much thinner, and therefore was always a few hundredths faster than my buddy.

The Tunachucker Volvo, as purchased. Our motto then was "Ran when parked, my ass". Yes, even in 2008 I had way more hair. Not as much as in 1998 though.

Our bribe for the first race (I think the first one) and we won an invented award "Best Moonshine" because everyone else brought terrible stuff.

Note the totally fake zoomies for the four cylinder engine

Better tires/wheels and a way cool bumper.

Then it got painted red. It was wrecked sometime, due in large part to a failing brake line, and replaced with a fine example of road course dominance

So that's why Tuna55. Thanks for not making me post more pics of my grandmother and crying again.

John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) said:

I enjoyed this thread. 

 

Thanks. 

Thanks bud! I appreciate that.

I also saw the pre-edit post, and I appreciate that as well.