It is an odd thing, you try to give people money and they ignore you. If anyone knows Rowan or the person behind the persona of Rowan IRL please inform her (?) that she has $500 looking for her, for her winning entry in the tattoo contest. I really love that green man she did for the contest. She has not responded to the e-mail I sent her last week which was a reply to her entry e-mail.
Programming note: I will be off-line during transit while I’m on vacation with Mrs. the Poet. I will be taking the bus and while many of Greyhound’s buses have satellite WiFi, most still don’t. This means that most likely all my laptop will be good for is playing Angry Birds and listening to some music while I’m on the bus. If I have WiFi I will do a little live-blogging of the trip, but not a full-blown update with wrecks and dead cyclists and snarky comments about the “report”. I will do snarky comments about the trip, which will take anywhere from 13 hours to a day and a half depending on the leg of the trip. I will put my last regular post on the 27th of this month as I head up to my in-laws in Upstate NY, staying there until the 15th of July when I leave to visit Nashville, and returning home 26th of July. So spotty updates from the end of June until near the end of July. The aggravating thing about my vacation schedule Is I somehow managed to place myself at both the places I’m going during dead time in their racing schedules for the local tracks that I can get to. The tracks in NY will be having mid-season maintenance while Nashville will be having their mid-summer break because of the heat.
One of the things I have noticed about working with Hephaestus as my male deity, if I don’t actually get busy building things I get flooded with “things I could build” ideas, ranging from cute bicycles to “evil” race cars, the word “evil” not denoting any particular degree of good or bad or anything on the D&D alignment spectrum, just an attempt to maximize performance within the parameters of the rules. For instance the rules for the A/MOD class of the SCCA SoloII rule book require a minimum wheelbase of 72″ and tread of 42″ and a minimum weight of 900 pounds. I was piddling around with a design that used the required roll cage as the upper frame rails, similar to a downtube sprint car frame only with an automatic transmission and a fully independent suspension in place of a sprint car’s in-and-out box and beam axles. With the driver sitting over a double U-joint connecting the transmission to the third member of the rear end I could get right at that 72″ wheelbase and 900 pound weight (empty) with a fairly low CG (slightly higher than a Formula V) with 500-800 reliable and tractable horsepower and a very rigid frame in both torsion and beaming strength. Even if the car was only mediocre in handling the light weight and high power combined with putting enough rear tire to hook that much power to the pavement between turns would make for a very competitive combination. That is the kind of “evil” I mean.
Other projects have ranged from that cargo trike I mentioned earlier this week to a ’27T hot rod that could be used as a daily driver by making a few minor body mods. I have mentioned that one in the blog as well. Well I have a few bucks to buy materials and tools so maybe after I get back from vacation I will have the time to build something and get Hephaestus off my neck.
The race in Pocono just finished, and Jimmy Johnson won (yawn). I’m not a big fan of JJ, obviously. I am a big fan of Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth, one of whom did good and the other not-so-good.
Whatever was bothering my eye seems to be clearing up as I was able to wake up and see out of that eye without needing to manually open the lids with my fingers. I just woke up and opened my eye and looked out of it. The eye still waters more than it should but things are trending more towards normal. Still on the health news, my HRT seems to be working as I woke up this morning with fewer aches and pains and a bit more mobility in my shoulder.
And that’s basically all I have to say today, on Wreck-Free Sunday.
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 