![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA39.jpg)
At 7,300 feet on the Los Angeles Forest Highway, just down from a huge radio antenna/satellite dish totem pole, I repainted the sliding door hinge as it had gotten a nasty rock chip that was threatening to rust. I wanted to try out my new wheel paint combo. Rather than the old Dupicolor Aluminum 1615 and the corresponding Duplicolor Clearcoat, I am using VHT engine paint and VHT engine clearcoat. Duplicolor has raised the prices and dropped the quality one time too many for me. The VHT brand looks to be decent, the aluminum flakes are smaller and the paint lays down well. Behind me was most of California, well, Palmdale anyway:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA40.jpg)
A view like this makes me euphoric, perhaps from a lack of oxygen, lack of smog, gorgeous deep blue sky, and a sense that this really is a planet revolving under a close-by star:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA42p.jpg)
Note that you cannot see the newly painted hinge. Oopsies:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA43.jpg)
This was the view out the windshield. I love California for its geographic drama:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA44.jpg)
I hardly think The United States can just lay claim to a nice old tree. If it is not the tree, what is it that they are claiming, that dumb old can? :
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA45.jpg)
This was the view at 6,000 feet. I was sort of in line with the stratification layer of smog and clear skies above. I liked breathing above that:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA46.jpg)
After I left Barb and Elwood, I got to see the far below July 3rd celebrations from a mountain vantage point. Only the sharp bangers could heard. The time delay between the visual and the audible put them about a mile down the mountain, (a good 20 miles by road).
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA47.jpg)
I'd say my poor confused camera tried . . .
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA48.jpg)
Drove the desert all day. 110*. Experimented with AFRs trying to unlock the secrets of air-cooled engines in the heat. I can stabilize the CHTs at 409* at 70 mph in 110* ambient, but long hill pulls at highway speed still increase the temps up to 415-420* under moderate throttle. If I get to floor the accelerator because the hill demands it, the temps will lock in at whatever they were. If I have to lift off to keep my speed down, there seems to be a lean out that I have yet to figure out. I tried pig-rich 10.4-10.9 but at high speed, the temps still climb. Phooey. $4.29 per gallon says, "don't pig too much". 14.5 mpg for the last 70 mph section. Drove past a heavily guarded road that I had to check out. It lead to this Metroplitan Water Authority pumping station. Los Angeles relies on these little concrete and steel straws drilled right through a mountain for its water:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2014%2005/06CA49.jpg)
Tonight is so hot that I am posting from the tailgate with tired legs and a sore back. I cannot sit in the car. I beg for a breeze. Perhaps I should get out my paint cans. That'll call forth a hurricane. The moon is to my left. The twinkling lights of Needles are far to the horizon. The stars shall be bright at moondown. I adore the spare landscape and the brutal heat. I walk in the night (used to run) and exult in the billions of light-years BigUniverse just above us, safely unaware of how cold it is mere miles above the still-hot sands under my feet.
Colin