A Jaguar E-Type, a Nobel Playwright, and Kevin Durant

In today's episode, I attempt to answer a question I often get: "do you drive all your cars regularly?". The answer is yes, I try to rotate through them on a daily basis to keep them all exercised. Not every day is an epic drive, but usually something fun comes out of it.

So yesterday I took the 1969 E-type Roadster out on another sunny November afternoon. I had worked around the house all day, so I went for aa short drive before going to a basketball game with some friends (more on that in a sec). 

Ever since I put in a smaller Moto-Lita steering wheel (14" diameter vs 16" OEM), the Jaguar is much easier to get in and out of. And with the new Bell large-bore exhaust and recent tune up, the car is just a pleasure to tool around in. Just driving around our little town of Danville today, but the late afternoon sun was wonderful in the hills west of me. 







I ended up at the historic "Tao House", which was built by Eugene O'Neill in 1936. Eugene O'Neill is America's only Nobel-prize wining playwright, and he used his Nobel Prize money to build the Tao House right here in our little town of Danville, CA. It is now a National Historic site. At this home between 1937 and 1944, O'Neill wrote his last plays including "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night", for which he won a Pulitzer prize (one of 4 he received). I drove around the area and snapped a couple other photos along the way, and made myself a promise to come do teh full tour here at my first opportunity! O’Neill turns out to be a fascinating guy, a son of Irish immigrant actors, born literally in Times Square, NY, who went on to change the face of American playwriting. 











I put the car away as the sun descended and jumped into a Lyft (being anti-Uber today), and headed down to Oracle Arena to join some friends at the Golden State Warriors game. They have courtside season tickets, which gets you very close to the action, as well as access to the "BMW Club" for dinner and drinks pre-game. Being a few feet away from people like Kevin Durant makes me recall that I'm damned short (5'-9"). Steph gets all the love, but Durant has to be one of the best-ever acquisitions in the history of basketball. 









Also, the prices are so high for pro-sports tickets these days that the crowd is clearly "corporate", and it makes me sad for the average fan. Yet it was a super-fun evening, only my third time I’ve attended a Warriors game. The Memphis Grizzlies played hard the first half to break at halftime in a tie. But as often happens, they got tired by staying on pace with the Warriors’ deep bench and the Warriors pulled away by 20 in the 3rd quarter, giving the Warriors Dancers a reason to celebrate.



So that is how you tie together a Jag, a playwright, and a seven-foot millionaire.