Old Photos

I bought a digital camera in the spring of 2004 and started posting photos on this web site shortly thereafter. In March 2007 I scanned a few photographs from the pre-digital era and posted them below.

In February 2003 Ellen and I took a fantastic (and inexpensive) trip to Vienna, Austria. I loaded black-and-white film into our old camera; above is a self-portrait of us in the woods of the pretty town of Baden, at the end of a streetcar line.

In June 2002 we went to Nova Scotia and rented a Chrysler Sebring convertible for a driving holiday. Above is another self-portrait of us along one of the coast roads on Cape Breton Island.

On our first trip together, in April of 1995, Ellen and I flew to Green Bay, Wisconsin and rented an Oldsmobile to drive to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (we could not rent a car in Michigan because we were not 25 years old yet!). Above is a shot of Ellen along the icy shores of Lake Superior near Ontanogon.

In 1991 I bought a brand-new Honda Civic hatchback (above) for $7210. It had a 4-speed manual transmission, vinyl seats, no air conditioning, and no radio (until I had one installed a year later). I drove it flat-out at all times, and it lasted about 90,000 miles before the head gasket blew in 1998, leading me to inadvisedly trade it in for a Geo Tracker. The above shot was taken in 1995, when I briefly lived in Arlington, Virginia. I removed the headrests from the low-backed front bucket seats, which allowed me to pretend that I was driving a 1960s British sports car.

All through high school and college I worked in kitchens on Martha's Vineyard in the summer. Above is a shot of me in my whites at my line station at the Edgartown Yacht Club, probably in the summer of 1991. I still use my knives I bought at that time.

In 1988 I paid my dad $2500 for his 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI (above left, with Jon Ward and his late-70s Dodge Omni; photo taken in early spring, 1990). I drove this car for my last two years of high school and my freshman year in college before selling it in order to buy the Civic. This car is universally praised by automotive journalists, and while I usually agree with their assessments, I found the car to be expensive to maintain and not durable. I had to replace suspension components, the exhaust system, tires, and other parts in the few years I owned it. Perhaps that was due to the harsh conditions under which I drove, which included high-speed blasts down washboard dirt roads and full-throttle starts. It was a sharp car.

In the mid 1980s, while we were living back in Pittsburgh, my dad bought a mid-70s Porsche 911 Targa (above, with a pudgy version of myself ca. 1985 or 1986, wearing what look to be cast-off Gucci loafers [?!] from my old man) for what seemed to be a reasonable price. It certainly looked good, despite the aftermarket whale-tail spoiler, but it turned out to need quite a bit of engine work. He sold it a year or two later to a neighbor, before I was able to drive but not before my brother Bob took it out for a few surreptitious drives. The GTI is in the background.

We lived in England from January 1981 to the summer of 1983. When we arrived, my dad bought a 1979 MG Midget (above, foreground) from a salesman at the Selfridges department store. With the top up, I could squeeze in behind the front seats. It was a great car, and I remember riding at speeds of nearly 90 miles per hour on sunken narrow roads. Less great was our regular family car, a late-70s Peugot 504 sedan (above, background). None of us were very impressed with that car, but we didn't pay very much for it and it did have a sunroof and cloth seats in the back. I remember that the previous owner of our house (White House, Camp Road, Gerrards Cross, Bucks, SL9 7PD) had a Jensen Interceptor.