28-Oct-13 36th Birthday

 
     

Also this year the more or less traditional Birthday cake is made to celebrate the fact that today October 28th exactly 36 years ago my Giardinetta was manufactured in the Pomigliano d’Arco factory. Regarding the restoration project for this year the welding activities for the trunk lid were started and finished in the usual high quality of “the surgeon”. That's the progress since the previous Birthday. The trunk lid however is not with the car at the moment therefore the vehicle status of this year’s Birthday picture doesn’t differ from the one of last year. I hope the next Birthday will show some significant progress again. The original timing plan I had in mind for this project is completely out of the window. I won’t set any deadline anymore because when I set one it always appears unrealistic anyway. There are still many obstacles on the way, not the least ones being finding the parts that are missing from my car like the dashboard, door cards, front seats and other miscellaneous stuff.

 

This year like the majority of the previous years the Tokyo based bakery made a Birthday cake with an eatable picture again. I really wonder what the people in this bakery are thinking of the “strange” person who’s ordering a Birthday cake for his car every year. I suppose I’m the only customer doing that, but then again you never know what kind of weird people are roaming this city. On the first cake in 2008 at least there was the appearance of a car. Throughout the years it has become one big “work in progress” car of which the majority of people might be wondering what I’m doing.

 

This year's Birthday cake with eatable picture.

 

The misses prepared a nice meal and decorated the dining table in the colours of the Italian flag, what else can you ask for? Even though I don't drink any alcohol there was sparkling Alfa Romeo spumante with the dinner so I had to make an exception to my own rule. Yow Ito, the owner of the renowned scale model manufacturer YOW MODELLINI joined the dinner together with his partner. The special evening was like always enjoyable and as a grand finale the cake was eaten. The taste of my Giardinetta is sweeter than I expected ;-) Hopefully that’s a hint of what it will feel like to drive the car once it’s finished at some point in time in the distant future.

The "traditional" cake on its way to be eaten.