From our previous post and comments about funny signs, here's the one Ashley and her sisters used to giggle about as kids (yes, it's been there 30+ years now!):

The "funny" here is that a "chapel" already is a "church" in this sense. So the girls would apparently spend the next little while saying things like "look, there goes an automobile car" and "cool, check out that gravel rock" and such redundant nonsense. I'm sure there was much giggling involved, too.

Submitted by my friend John, we have this little gem:


I'm pretty sure this little maneuver is not OSHA approved.

You might notice some new posts intermingled with original ones on my blog today. Those are the content from my now-defunct "Don't Bring a Trailer" blog. That site was a bit of a parody on the very popular Bring a Trailer website, but those guys felt there were some trademark issues there, so they are buying us out. I can't disclose the financial terms of the deal, but let's just say they are substantial. They have to be, since I can't disclose them. And the coolest thing is I can still keep blogging with those interesting vehicle finds, I just can't associate them with that name any more, so I probably will and just post them here. You'll find all the past content under the "dbat" label. Enjoy.

Thanks to my friend Mr. Blizzard who posted this on Facebook. If you've got kids, fire this video up in full screen mode and let them check it out. Adults who ever cared about any classic video games and/or Legos will enjoy it, too. It's done with stop animation, which is also called "claymation" when the animation is done with clay (so maybe we should call this legomation!). It's basically the process of moving things tiny amounts and taking a new picture each time and stringing the pictures together to produce animation. They claim 1500 hours of moving lego pieces and taking pictures to make this, and frankly, that number seems low to me! Kudos to the author of this one, especially since it's nice to find kid-safe videos on Youtube!

We might be going out on a limb by putting this absolute beauty into our collection, but what the heck:


It's got an opening price of $499. We've seen some working examples of this early 1980's electric car on eBay in the past and we're not sure there's any parts on this thing that are worth $499. It's mostly toast from the sound of things, and these weren't worth much when they were new, let alone now. You can find a lot more scary pictures here. And in case you were wondering, the Electric Boogie by Marcia Griffiths actually came nearly ten years AFTER this lovely beauty above. That makes this thing nearly THIRTY years old. We're not sure which is more annoying, looking at the above car, or playing this video:



But, much like coming to this site day after day, you'll watch the video. We know you will. And somewhere deep down inside, you'll be dancing to it.

...this one just doesn't cut it:


Let's see. Last ran when parked seven years ago, most lights missing, interior is sparse at best, tires look scary, and, well, it's just ugly. We wouldn't have spent eBay listing fees on it, we would have had a scrap yard pick it up and thanked them for doing it (assuming they didn't CHARGE us for the privilege!). But maybe we can help this poor seller out by finding him the perfect buyer. If that's you, by all means, go get yourself a deal. On the plus side, you still Don't [need to] Bring a Trailer because it does have that handy tow-bar built in!

Through a strange twist of fate Ashley and I found ourselves doing a hike today with Ashley's sister, Hilary, and some folks from the Conservation Trust for NC. The hike was around five and a half miles and almost all downhill (they left shuttle vans at the downhill end of the trail which was quite awesome). I'll post my GPS track from it soon, but can't tonight. The above was one of many beautiful waterfalls along the hike.

Anyway, the highlight of the trip was Thunder Hole waterfall (which is not the one pictured above). A very pretty little waterfall and swimming hole that I and a few of the others on the hike decided to take advantage of. Here's a short video of me going behind the waterfall and then through it back out:



And here is another video of me sliding off the top of the waterfall and into the water:



A huge thanks to John Bell and Johnny Wilson for working so hard to put on this event, and it was great meeting a lot of awesome new folks today. We look forward to seeing you all at future events. And for those of you reading my blog who weren't there, please consider donating to CTNC! They are doing some great work to help conserve NC's beauty. They not only buy land to conserve it, but they fight to stop the forest service from logging land already owned by the government. Thunder Hole won't be the same if they lose their current battle to stop the Globe logging project, for example. Visit their site and help if you can!

My friend Dave sent me a link to this article by a friend of John Mackey's. Folks might recall that John Mackey is the CEO of Whole Foods and recent wrote an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal speaking out against ObamaCare. That resulted in a fairly large backlash of folks starting all sorts of different movements to boycott shopping at Whole Foods.

The whole thing is quite funny, but if you're at all interested in the issue of ObamaCare, this article is a good read. My personal opinion is that this author (Michael Strong) and John Mackey are both a little too far down the Libertarian path for my tastes, but they are a lot closer to good ideas than the Democrats currently, too. What do I want? Reasonable regulation that protects consumers and preserves fair markets. You know, the kind of thing Elizabeth Warren is harping on.

Okay, we admit that we want it. And we want it bad:


So why does it make our list here at DBaT? Simple. It's a rocket and it's sold as-is and looks like that. Seriously. Who in their right mind would jump into a rocket that someone else built that they bought off of eBay and think "oh, I can't wait to fire this puppy up!" It's called a death wish, and we don't have one. But if you do, hey, knock yourself out. Literally. Or just use it to do your own tribute to the great Hal Needham and one of his classic movies, like this scene from Hooper (yeah, we're showing our age here):

This just wasn't well executed at all:


Reminds us of a Pontiac Fiero in the front, and we're not really sure in the back. We started to post a picture of a Pontiac Fiero for comparison, but then we realized we just don't want to do that to our blog. Anyway, the concept of the reverse trike with side-by-side seating isn't new, and can be done fairly well as evidenced by the Campagna T-Rex:


Now, we admit that even the T-Rex isn't great looking, but it's a lot better (especially without the saddle bags pictured above, which are removable) than the "Trigger Y150" (where did they come up with that jewel of a name?) above. Outperforms it, too, and they're available already in the US for about the same money if you look around. But if you just have to get the Fiero-wannabe, find it here.