As I sat down to do the post for today Mrs. the Poet asked if I could find things in the closet we could donate to the whoever it is that asked for a bag of clothes this time. I managed to find several pairs of pants that I could remove without unfastening whatever mode of closure they used, so those went as well as all the “I ❤ Golf" t-shirts someone gave me back about 7 years ago because I was watching the Golf Channel once.
As we were closing the closet back up after divesting myself of the unwearable clothing Mrs. the Poet managed to see ants on some of her clothes because she had something sticky stuck in her backpack until she could find a garbage can and the ants found her before she found a garbage can. So now I'm surrounded by clouds of ant spray (which we buy by the case lot) as Mrs. the Poet starts hauling stuff out of the closet hand over fist to throw it back in the wash screaming "Ants, ants, ants!" at the top of her lungs. I'm still not sure how she's able to spray ant spray, and haul stuff out of the closet while screaming all at the same time. There should be an extra pair of hands hiding somewhere, or she has access to hammerspace… (That dimension where cartoon women are able to access big hammers for hitting men acting stupid, without having to carry said hammer with them at all times.)
The Sprint Cup race at Richmond was enjoyable as drama-in-real-life last night. Talk about your "reality TV", this beats those contrived "Reality" shows all to heck. The real battle was for the 10th spot in points and the two wildcard spots based on wins. Joey Logano is a fantastically talented driver that has not been getting results commensurate with his talent since moving from what was then the Busch series to Cup to replace Tony Stewart in the Home Depot #20 for JGR. Now driving for Penske Racing Joey has made the Chase for the first time in his career, showing it's not just a matter of having a great driver in the best equipment with a good crew, but getting all the personalities to mesh to get results. The JGR crew took Tony to a Cup championship and made the Chase nearly every time with Tony at the wheel, and JGR had other Cup champions in the #18 car, so the cars and crew were of Championship caliber, but just didn't meld well with Joey "Sliced Bread" Logano, as in the "Best thing since". Interestingly enough the #20 car with Matt Kenseth at the wheel is #1 going into the Chase, proving what I said about the mix of driver and crew having to be right to win (or have a chance at winning) a championship at this level.
I was also glad to see MWR get another car in the Chase with Martin Truex, Jr. on a tiebreaker with Ryan Newman for the final wild card slot. I'm happy that Kurt Busch made the chase driving for a single-car independent team working out of Colorado. I'm not happy, nor sad that Jeff Gordon did not make the chase, I just like Logano better than Jeff. Joey beat Jeff for tenth by a single point. There were other stories in the race last night, those are just the ones that caught or were brought to my attention.
So, locally-sourced steel for the cargo bike project. I have simplified the BOM for the bike by dropping the 1" round from the build in favor of more 1" square. This does 2 things for me, the first is eliminating a size tubing I can't get locally that I would have to get on the Internets. Second thing it does is bring the amount of tubing in a single size up to the point that I can buy from local suppliers in my job lots. I'll have to buy more 1¼" than I need, but I'll end up saving money overall. I need to find the thinnest wall thickness of 1" square I can buy from this shop to keep the weight down, especially since I had to use the 0.120 wall 1¼" to be the seat tube to telescope the 1" seat post into. The good thing about that is I can cantilever the seat tube a fair distance to reduce the amount of 1" I need to use. And as I was typing that it also occurred to me that I could use a short section as the top tube and eliminate even more tubes from the frame. The fact that the seat tube has so much angle (45° compared to 73° for a "normal" diamond frame) is the reason why I need square tube to prevent the seat post from rotating in normal use. But by using the same size material in the top tube as the seat tube I can cantilever from the shock mount all the way to the cargo rack and make for a visually lighter bike (not that all that wall thickness is going to help much in the actual weight department).
And now I need to shower and get dressed to go to the local home supply store to purchase a water heater and window AC to replace defunct and unrepairable items that are now cluttering the house. It will be nice to be able to take a hot shower again, but the temperature of the local water supply makes the "cold" showers not all that cold. So as I don't need to go from the local home supply directly to church for services I need to get that cold shower and dressed and on the road again.
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 