C-c-c-c-obra! Early April, 2008

Trout may travel with others sometimes and this was one of those occasions. As most of you know, he's been planning, anticipating, excited, crazy about building a Cobra Daytona Coupe similar to this one I found listed on eBay.

What you may not know is that for over a year now he's been gathering materials for it, ordering stuff online, getting to know the Cobra club guys here in town, considering colors to paint it, and generally obsssssesssssing about it. Even our trip to the east coast last June involved a visit to Factory 5 where he planned to get the kit.

ATAMO (and then a miracle occurred) -- a guy in CA had some family obligations that forced him to sell the kit he just got the end of December at a better price than Trout thought he would pay when the shop is actually ready to house the thing. It was an almost perfect fit for what Trout wanted, negotiations were conducted and plans were made for us to go to CA to get it.

At first I thought I would go, too, so we could visit family I have in Torrance and Placentia, but the car was actually in Agua Dulce, off Hwy 14 between Santa Clarita and Palmdale. That's north of LA. So the logistics with the trailer and truck were going to be challenging if we tried to go to the cousins' places south of LA -- parking especially. And I didn't particularly want to go if we didn't see them.

Kelly rode to the rescue because he was ready for a road trip and excited to go along on this adventure. You may remember that Trout helped him build his Super 7 clone, similar to this one.

He came over and spent Wednesday night so they could get an early start Thursday morning, April 3rd. They actually took off about 8:00 am and arrived in Palmdale about 12 hours later. After a good night's rest they drove the short distance to the soon-to-be-ex-Coupe-owner's house on Friday, inventoried the kit, loaded it up into Moby, and headed back east. They made it to Blythe before they both pooped out, spent Friday night there and drove on in to Tucson on Saturday, arriving in mid-afternoon.

While traveling to and from a local Cobra club event in Globe, AZ the following weekend, we decided to call the car Stella. That's not just plain Stella, but rather the long, drawn-out, Stelllllllllaaaaa of Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar Named Desire.

Well not exactly even that. Her name is more like the long, drawn-out Stewwwwaaa Robin Williams thinks Elmer Fudd would say if he played the part. We also like Elmer's singing in What's Opera, Doc? -- especially the refrain, "Kiww da Wabbit, Kiww da Wabbit!" he sang to the tune of the Ride of the Valkyries. We noted all the possible ways to express that in 7 letters so we hope it works out to use one of those options for the official AZ vanity plate and have the Stella option made into a front plate, or vice versa.

Enough talk. Here are the pictures of Trout, Kelly and Don unloading the car into the garage of the house we're now renting.

Trout planned the unloading process.


He and Kelly got most of the boxes unloaded before Don arrived.




Don crawled in to help.


Don, Kelly and Trout gently guided Stella out of Moby.


Easy does it.

Stella made it out safe and sound.

Hood bodywork went into the garage.


Her frame needed more inspection.

And even more.

Then it was time for her go settle into the garage.

As you may have noticed from an early picture, there are lots of boxes. Trout and Don packed Stella with some of her parts boxes.

All I asked is that we be able to easily get to the kitchen door...

... to the furnace to clean the filter and to the garbage can.

The guys left paths around Stella, but it's tight. The Toyota will be sitting outside until we move.

This is Trout's favorite picture of the unload. He likes Stella's curves.

I am so thrilled he was able to take advantage of this opportunity. He admitted recently that the bleeding incident he had in February was a big influence on his decision to go ahead and buy this particular kit. When he saw so much of his life's blood outside his body, he decided, "Time to buy the Cobra!"

Kelly's ASID Booth -- March 12, 2008

Many of you have been hearing for 3 years about Trout going to Kelly's to work on one thing or another. Kelly is the craftsman who is doing our cabinets, but his creativity and skill isn't limited to doing things like our little somewhat ordinary project. Trout helps him with the grunt work on his projects and Kelly does the creative part and the fine finishing.

They recently had to meet a deadline for a booth at the local ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) meeting at the convention center here in Tucson. The booth space was very small, just about 10'x10' but it was located right by the entry into the area of the meeting, so it was a great location.

This is the first thing like this that Kelly has done. I'm sure he will learn something new each time he does these shows. This time he learned that he didn't need to be so worried about some things as he was. He also learned that he needs to develop a good website.

To me the most exciting thing that happened was that some people from Tucson Lifestyle Magazine said that what he was doing was so different from everything they normally see that they want to do an article on his work for a summer issue. I think that may be the most important result from all the time, money and effort he put into doing the booth for the show.

Here are Kelly, his wife Lani and Trout posing for the camera after the booth was set up. I've been calling them the AFT (Arizona Furniture Theory -- Kelly's company name) Trinity. So blaphemous, I know, but before you assign roles, maybe their trinity is el maestro, el estudiante and la musa santa.

Here they are working on the booth.


Here Kelly and Trout are preparing to hang the mirror.

And here Trout is hanging it.


This is the wenge table that they used for "business" purposes -- flyers, business cards, etc. It also sort of formed the entry to the booth. Wenge is a very popular wood these days. I really like the legs of this table.


This is a table made of a slab of palo chino. Trout did the welding on the base of it. After thinking about a variety of bases to make, they just used what Kelly had around, largely due to time constraints I think. They added the balls on the feet. Many jokes were made about those.

Kelly loves doing furniture, but his bread and butter may turn out to be unique cabinet doors and drawer fronts. These are the ones that inspired the Tucson Lifestyle folks to want to write about him.

The ones on the left have conchos and distressed leather. The ones on the right have river rock set right into the space.


The ones on the left here have slate set in. The ones on the right have black leather but the inset is shaped.



This is Kelly taking a breather before the show starts. In this picture you can see the A-frames they built to show the doors and drawer fronts.



I took the first picture of the AFT Trinity because this one was good, but Trout's bald spot is in the mirror. Then I just couldn't get rid of it. His tonsure is so cute!


Trout has really been enjoying working with Kelly. He's learned a lot, improved his skills and gained some carpentry confidence.