On January 9, National Balloon Ascension Day commemorates the first balloon flight in the United States that occurred in 1793. The French aeronaut, Jean Pierre Blanchard, took flight over the Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia above a large crowd that included George Washington, who witnessed the launch of the balloon, too.

There are always a one or two cars that we’ve owned during our automotive life that we really miss and, for reasons we can’t remember, sold. Today begins a series of posts about cars I’ve loved and cars that I’ve owned.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. —John Steinbeck

The Colorado Railroad Museum is a non-profit railroad museum. The museum is located on 15 acres at a point where Clear Creek flows between North and South Table Mountains in Golden, Colorado.

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself.”― Oscar Wilde