Weekly Roundup: Cleaning Out My GMail Edition

As one of the first people to get a GMail invite, something like a decade ago, I have long struggled with the 15GB mailbox-size limit. At first, it was easy to trim the bush, so to speak; I just removed the multiple copies of 10MB videos I'd traded with people. Then I started removing press releases, photos that I could easily find on the Internet, and every spreadsheet I'd ever sent anyone, ever.

Over the past few days, I've been searching GMail using the string "size:1m older_than:5y" in order to find unwanted attachments from the last decade. I can't lie: it's made me really sad. I've seen a lot of pictures of pretty girls and fun trips and my son's first few years that I'm simply not prepared to throw away. I can archive them, and I can put them on a hard drive somewhere, but I'm not going to lie to myself: as soon as you take something and put it on a fragile storage device in a closet, you are rolling the dice on ever getting it back. I found that out years ago when I had both of the storage drives on my iMac fail within hours of each other, wiping out several years of video and music I'd created.

After the jump, I'll show you a few photos I found that are not underwear shots of attractive women in their late twenties or early thirties, along with the links to what was an absurdly prolific week for me and brother Bark.

Ah, those carefree, unemployed days of sandwich-shop music. That's my Gibson Custom ES-339, bought at the Beale Street factory during a particularly vivid long weekend. And that's my son, grabbing the microphone with authority!

Of the eight pieces we got out the door this week, Bark was responsible for three. He despised the Hyundai Veloster but he totally dug the Cadillac XTS. And he continues to taunt me with the Ask Bark series, which is far more popular than "Ask Jack".

For Road&Track, I wrote something about how I became the target of road rage after growing my hair past my shoulders. I hate to admit it, but this piece was a total bomb. It was just too long for the readers, and when it was edited down to size much of the humor and self-deprecation disappeared. As a result, many people thought I was trying to play tough guy, when in fact I'm trying to make the opposite case: that bullies in traffic will pick on women but won't confront any man, even a gentle fellow like your humble author.

Another piece, on trunk kits, got a better reception.

This shot has to be from the very first weekend I raced my original Neon ACR in April of 2008. The car didn't survive the season.

Also unlikely to last very long in anyone's hands: the fragile, but fascinating, BMW 640i Convertible. BMW bikes, on the other hand, tend to hold up, even if they're expensive to fix, which is why some fellow recently attempted a cross-country record on one.

Last but definitely not least, I upped the ante from my original promise and decided to give away all twenty of my TEXAS Edition badges. Some of them are going as far away as Japan, Germany, and Australia.

I can't remember who took this picture, or even what coast it's on --- from the weather, I'm thinking it's somewhere on the north side of the East Coast, but I couldn't tell you for sure. Sometimes you think you're in the middle of the greatest adventure of your life and it turns out to be something that fades from your memory without ceremony.

This next week should hold some further highs (a brand-new supercar on a fast West Coast track) and lows (a small-claims court over some medical bills) in my continuing (mis)adventure. There will be pictures --- there might even be a photographer. But nothing's worth doing just for the pictures. Does John Mayer have something to say about this? YES HE DOES.