Jay Leno — Tessa’s Toolbox — Stripping To Striping

Without a doubt I think the most famous and beloved gearhead in the world is Jay Leno. Sure, all the big time comedians have exstensive car collections, but Jay is the only guy that mingles amongst the car crazy masses and is frequently spotted driving his collection. The first time I ever saw Jay Leno in public was at a Christmastime gearhead get-together at a friend of a friend’s. That was Dean Hensley’s house in Pasadena. The year must have been around 1988, I was checking out a veteran era motorcycle amongst many displayed in the terraced hillside backyard when “Goofy”, my girlfriend at the time said “hey that guy looks just like Jay Leno.” I looked over at the In ‘N Out trailer that was handing out free hamburgers, and sure enough the guy reaching for a “double-double” at the front of the line was Jay Leno.

Via blog.eastwood.com

The next year at the Christmas party Goofy and I were at Dean’s front gate talking with my friends Greg, and Cal “Buzz” Naylor when Jay walked up and greeted us. Jay Leno doesn’t know me from Adam, but he’s friends with Greg and Cal. Hanging out there provided me a unique opportunity to stand in Jay’s shoes for a few minutes and experience what he has to put up with. By put up I mean almost every guy that greeted Jay seemed compelled to make some sort of attempt at being a stand-up comedian as he passed by. An endearing trait, Jay is always congenial to gearhead fans, no matter how many dumb jokes they tell him.

About 5 years later I was riding in a pack of six loud chopped Harley-Davidsons on the Ventura Freeway heading north to meet “Clean” Dean, David Mann, and a bunch of other ER employees when a louder, faster, noise approached from behind and passed us. The heavy rumbling was coming from a hot-rod Hispano-Suiza sort of contraption with Jay Leno behind the wheel. Jay was wearing a blue ball cap, and he looked over and nodded with a smile as he passed. Amongst our pack was John Morgan, then editor of Hot Bike. I’m mentioning this to illustrate it’s always been a friendly competition between the titles. At least for me, I’ve learned magazine editors are just hired guns. I started at Easyriders and then moved on to Hot Rod Bikes.

Sorry, I get off on a tangent sometimes. Anyways the explanation for these photos is these are from the time my fellow idiopathic idiot friend that owns a 1912 Buick, and I drove on the freeway to get to a horseless carriage event. Its an event where you can practically set your watch that Jay Leno will be showing up. At past occasions I’ve asked Jay serious questions about some of the cars he’s driven, but I’ve always gone out of my way not to bug him by taking his photo, or practice my comedy act. I did bring my trusty Canon to the event to shoot cars, and bikes that were there, but no paparazzi stuff.

Egad! the next thing I know Dave is charging towards Jay trying to beat some old ladies there that are getting ready to gang up on Jay with cameras to get their photos taken. So WTF, at Dave's request I slid in with my camera and took these photos of him standing next to Jay. And yes, of course we just had to tell Jay all about driving the 1912 Buick on the freeway. I'm not sure why, but for some reason Jay looked at us like we were both nuts.

Tooling Around With Tessa - Stripping Discs

Via eastwood.com

I’ve stripped more than a few cars down to the bare metal in my time and its really not my favorite thing to do. I think I’d rather kiss a provoked possum on the lips than have to deal with the discomfort stripping paint brings. That said, there is more than one way to skin a car, and Stripping Discs are one of the best ways I’ve found.