Today will be a bit of a meander as I just let my mind wander without a leash.
First of all I still haven’t found anything on the person that was hit by the train on Friday night, it’s like the wreck never happened. I keep Googling with a variety of search strings, but apparently nobody covered this wreck because of the other wreck involving a DART train just one station down on the same day. The only report I have found online was the one I made right after I saw the wreck. Since I have no idea of what happened to cause the person to get hit by the train I find this turn of events frustrating to say the least.
I have been using the Clif Mojo bars as a recovery after a ride, and I find them tasty if a bit rough to chew for a guy with no molars. The bars that work for the tooth-impaired of us just taste like an old tire, so I think I will take good flavor and hard to chew over the alternative.
Not much to choose from as the racing seasons are coming to a close what with IndyCar coming to an end a couple of weeks ago, Grand Am ending yesterday, and SCCA winding up their season last week at The Runoffs and most other sanctioning bodies either already finished or down to the last race in a couple of weeks. All I have at the moment is the Sprint Cup race from Dover.
I went to the church RPG meeting last night in a light rain that was cool enough that I could wear rain gear without being wetter with the rain gear than without it. I got some incredulous looks when I rode up, including an “Opus, what are you doing?!” from a couple of people. I think it’s a bit sad really that some people just can’t comprehend not riding in a car when the weather isn’t absolutely perfect. Or even when it is absolutely perfect…
Speaking of the RPG, I got a few licks in with my 5th level warlock but still didn’t make my character very effective, but that was because there were mist spells and Utterly Obscuring Mist spells getting thrown around like candy at a Christmas parade. Of the three spells used, one was a permanent part of the landscape before the party came there, one was a temp spell that was used in the battle, and one was an “Oops!” when a spell cast by a monster we were fighting came up a Natural 1 AKA a Flub, creating a permanent Utterly Obscuring Mist around his character and mine, and I wasn’t even the object of the flubbed spell, just too close to the monster when the spell was flubbed. I still managed to get off a “shot in the dark” so to speak that did significant damage to the monster, and also took some damage when the monster did the same to me.
The contract has been put out for bid for the bike path from Mesquite to Richardson through Garland, that seems to have significant amounts of profit built in to it…
I have been doodling on an “ultimate” car for me. My last car was a Hyundai Excel, this time around I would want something with more range and power, and fewer seats. What I have been thinking about was a LS7 engine (505 HP) and a shortened C6 drive train on a T-bucket with my own particular design constraints. The constraint that causes the oddest appearance is the one that the car still has to be able to roll with no tires on the car, nothing can drag on smooth pavement, and nothing under the bottom of the main frame rail except rims, but the engine has to be right at the bottom of that with maybe a skid plate under it. Obviously the taller the wheels the more room there is to work with inside the car. The C6 has 18″ wheels which gives 9″ from the axle center to the bottom of the frame rail or tub. For this build I would have a cross between a tub and a rail chassis with a small rail to mount the roll cage to at the bottom of the tub and mounting the body to a flange on the top of the tub, making the “tub” a very deep frame rail through the cockpit area and a full monocoque ahead of the firewall and a full space frame behind the cockpit. Now just because I would be using a Corvette drive train doesn’t mean I would be using the C6 suspension geometry. I mean I have a computer, I designed a spreadsheet template back in the AppleII era that would do camber curves and bump steer as long as the pickup points were known, and I have a bit of a renegade in me (really!). Also this car would be lighter and shorter than a C6, so I would need to tweak the geometry in any case. But I would be using the C6 uprights and brakes, because these are sorted components with a known high reliability factor. Of course this assumes a budget with pretty much no restrictions, which is a total fantasy in my current situation. I don’t even have the budget to replace the flush arm on the toilet without dipping into my B-Day money. So this little project is something I do to keep my mind off how little money I actually have. You aren’t poor if you can still dream rich. I’m rich enough that I can dream about using a Corvette to build my “ultimate” car.
I also have a plan for something less expensive using a FWD engine and transmission as a mid-engine like the old Pontiac Fiero or the Toyota MR2 on my T-bucket more Home> T-Bucket
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 