Joey Logano is the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Champion

It was a heck of a race with the 4 Chase drivers in the top 10 almost all of the race and top 5 most of the race. It basically came down to the last pit stop, and who had the best setup at the end of the race. When they lined up after the last pit stops I honestly thought Kyle Busch was going to win, but they missed the setup, and Martin Truex took the lead, then after a few laps Logano passed for the lead, Harvick poked his nose in and Busch faded to 6th but recovered so that the Final Four finished 1-4. I was really pulling for Truex to win the championship in the last Cup race for the Furniture Row Racing team but he couldn’t catch Logano and wound up 2nd.

And I’m still recovering, the flap is still alive and has some sensation, and typing is still heck with the bandaid over my fingertip. I have been thinking that just like I’m doing for the Mini Sprint-T, I could at least start the frame for the Sprint-T before I know what engine and transmission I’m going to use, because there are just a few pieces that change depending on the powertrain. Basically there are two verticals in the front hoop internal bracing, and the transmission crossmember that change position depending on what turns the rear wheels. So if I get a good payment from one gig I get the raw stock for the frame and start cutting and tack welding.

And I need to get to bed. My neck hurts and I’m trying to not faceplant in the keyboard of my new laptop.

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A good day role playing…

Beats something or other.

The toxic shaman went after us, we didn’t need to go hunting her. Yes, her. She’s a 12YO girl with terminal cancer caused by a radioactive waste dump too close to her village, which triggered her going toxic as a shaman.

And I just faceplanted in the keyboard, after falling asleep on the toilet a few minutes ago. I can take a hint that I need to go to bed. I don’t think I damaged the laptop any further than I had already, but I definitely need to get to sleep. I have errands to run tomorrow, and need to be rested in the morning.

Good news and bad news at the Lab Rat Keeper

The good news is I weighed in at 210 again, and my BP is slightly high but still “under control”. The bad news is while they are scrambling for a drug that can replace Valsartan, it will be more than a year before human trials can begin. This is what happens when you put too many of your eggs in one basket, and somebody drops the basket. In this case the basket was a Chinese pharmacy company with questionable safety practices that managed to corner almost 80% of the world market for Valsartan, and dropping the basket was not properly controlling the process and allowing known human carcinogens to get made as part of the drug. Now there are several ways this could happen, but the most likely would be contaminated feedstocks, the chemicals they use to make the drug. My guess is that more than one was contaminated, and probably with chemicals that individually are not problems so they were allowed through, which then reacted with each other and the actual chemicals that were supposed to be there to form the carcinogen(s). But then again I’m just a technical writer with a background in chemistry and making explosives from “indigenous materials” for my first enlistment, not a trained chemist.

In other news, it wasn’t beastly hot today. I don’t think we even broke 90°F thanks to a cold front and heavy morning cloud cover. And I can’t remember the last time we had a morning low that close to 60. And that was a very noisy cold front that came through at 0500 and woke me up, so I’m trying to not faceplant into the keyboard right now and mostly succeeding. And when I don’t it isn’t a real faceplant, more of “my nose brushes the keyboard and I wake up with a start” so my laptop doesn’t take any more damage than it already has.

The hone is here, and I’m exhausted

I’m watching the 24 Hours of Le Mans since shortly after the start at 0700, when I couldn’t get to sleep until after 0530. I keep falling asleep and faceplanting in the keyboard. And I just got back from my Father’s Day dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, where I had a Bacon Cheeseburger that must have weighed at least a pound total, 1020 Calories plus 400 Calories of steak fries. So besides being tired I’m dealing with a Food Coma.

So now Imma go have another lie-down. I get my present tomorrow.

I went to the lab rat keeper and now I have a headache

I think the headache is because Mrs. the Poet has really bad allergies this year and couldn’t breathe last night. She was making these awful noises like she was dying and I couldn’t sleep until about 0600 and then the alarm went off at 0715. I mean it is really hard to sleep when your wife sounds like she’s dying next to you even when you know it’s just allergies making her head stopped up.

Remember when I wrote how nice it was to have the actual parts in hand to mock up an assembly? Well this time I remembered to take pictures (actually only one).

I have the bracket centered on the spindle approximating the caster angle of the axle and you can see how the tie-rod is just above where the upper bar goes? That’s because at that point the upper bar moves less than 1mm between full droop and full bump so it doesn’t have to clear by much to clear all the time, and the tie-rod likewise doesn’t move much during its travel left to right, and is closest to the bar at straight ahead. So the closest the two will come is at full bump and straight ahead. And there are enough shims in the kit to keep the tie-rod high enough to never touch that upper bar.

And the drag link? It will ride roughly parallel to the axle right behind the axle centerline never getting anywhere near anything except the pitman arm and the passenger side steering arm that it is attached to. And if I really want to get crazy I can put everything up top and nothing will ever run into anything except maybe some cones. As little as the front end of this car will weigh I don’t think there will be enough flex for anyone to notice.

And that lack of sleep has caught up with me as I’m having problems with seeing what I typed on the screen (and I probably need new glasses).

So Knighty-night.

I survived the trip to the Lab Rat Keeper

I had a hard time getting out of the house for the trip to the LRK because Clint was “helping” me get dressed and out the door then decided he wanted back in right after I locked the door on my way out. I was on the wrong side of the street when the bus went by while I was trying to get across. That led to me walking about a mile and a half to catch the crosstown bus I wanted to catch at the station, after it was already en route. I got there in time and I even managed to check in to a bonus check-in 4 times while I was going to and from the LRK and breakfast.

So anyway, I was supposed to catch the bus that went by the main road at 0658 so I got up at 0600 to shower and dress and leave in time to catch the bus, but between Clint “helping” me get dressed and his deciding to turn around right after I locked the door I got going 5 minutes later than planned, resulting in my watching the bus go by from the wrong side of the street instead of riding it to the transit station for the crosstown bus. So I hoofed it to the bus stop where the crosstown bus turned on Beltline about another mile and a half from that stop. Then I sat and waited a few minutes for the bus and for my left foot to stop hurting. Part of the reason I missed the bus is my normal bed time is 0400 or so, usually later rather than earlier, and I get up about 1200 or 1300 instead of 0600. This meant I was running on very little sleep which means I was running slow, and still am. I have caffeinated to the limits, but I’m still having problems putting two coherent sentnces together in a row.

I’m gonna take that as a sign to hang it up and hit the sack.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable

The meds are working

My antidepressant in particular. My body is starting to get acclimated to not being depressed which is reinforcing. As I get used to not being depressed I feel less depressed, which makes me feel better so I feel less depressed… A virtuous circle rather than the vicious circle. And I’m actually getting other emotions that aren’t depression or anger. Some of them seem unusual to me, like fear, real compassion instead of the intellectual compassion I felt in the past.

Speaking of my body becoming used to not being depressed, my BP has changed. The systolic is still up there, but the diastolic, the measurement of how much my heart relaxes between beats, is the lowest it has been in over a decade. My body is remembering how to relax again. Even when I’m upset and there has been a litany of things to be upset about the last two weeks at Casa de El Poeta, I’m still mostly relaxed now. My heart is working more efficiently, it is having to beat less because every beat moves more blood with a more complete relaxation phase between beats. That is one of the big things happening as my body adapts to not being run by a depressed brain.

On the bike pump front I have been approved for a refund, contingent on my returning the broken pump by 3/31/17. Here’s where the problem is on that: I have to print a return label for the box they shipped it to me, and I don’t have access to a working printer. I have a printer but it doesn’t have any cables to connect it to my laptop. Some time between my youngest getting the printer for herself and putting it in her garage because she never had to print anything with it and giving the printer and a bag full of printer cables to me for my birthday the cables for that printer went bye-bye. So I’ll take any assistance I can get on that one.

On the hot rod front I found the actual weight of the Mopar 3.8L pushrod V6 – 413 pounds compared to the 545 pounds for an iron head SBC or 458 for the LS. The 41TE transaxle splits the difference between the TH350 and the 4T65E at just under 200 pounds by one source or between 150 and 200 from several sources. So for weight comparisons 3.8L/41te Mopar just over 600, 350/350 Chevy 675 plus 120 pounds of rear axle or just shy of 800 total, and the LS3/4L70E combo come to 625 plus that 120 pounds of rear axle for about 750 total. So assuming the 1700 pound dry weight for the Speedway kit is accurate my mid-Bucket will hit the scales right at 1500 dry.

And I’m running on 3.5 hours sleep because someone (coughmrsthepoetcough left the bedroom door open and Clint came in to snuggle about 90 minutes before I had my alarm set. I have been falling asleep all afternoon/evening even while I was trying to write this, which might explain the disjointedness of the composition as I was in a different frame of mind every time I woke up. I fell asleep 3 times typing the paragraph prior to this one.

Night-night, Opus the Unkillable

I just tweeted this but anyway

The anti-depressant works at keeping me from being depressed. What it doesn’t do is keep me awake, like at all. I have zero energy and can barely keep my eyes open, I’m yawning constantly and also keep doing that “wake up stretch” my body does when I’m fighting off sleep to get something done late at night. Except it is 1630 not 2330. I think my body is reacting to my efforts to put me back on a diurnal schedule rather than a nocturnal one. I keep getting up earlier each day but still end up staying awake until 0300 or 0400, even when I get up at 0800 or 0900 the day before. It’s just not fair, now that I’m not depressed I want to sleep like I am worse depressed than before I started taking the med…

Now I’m gonna force myself to take care of things around the house including myself and the cats. Write to you later.

PSA, Opus

I was on the road for 6 hours and my feet are killing me, and the Feed

I really should have gotten my toes done before doing all that walking, but one of the reasons I did all that walking was to deposit my check so I could get my toes done. At least this time I didn’t put any holes in my socks. So this put me back home starting filtering at 2030 instead of my normal 1430. Something else slowing me down is the almost 400 political campaign e-mails I got today in advance of the end-of-quarter deadline at midnight, because scattered amongst those money beggars are the online newsletters I check every day for an occasional bike story that doesn’t show in the Feed. I generally get on or two links a week out of that, sometimes way more, so it’s worth the effort.

OK finished filtering and it is 0322. For those not used to a 24 clock, that’s 22 minutes after Gigi loses her Internet every day, which happens at 3 AM here.

Up first is Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Former CM Rosendahl passes away, Calbike endorsements, and holding hands to stop texting

You have to start somewhere. HOUSE PANEL EXPLORES ROADSIDE SALIVA TESTING At the moment there is next to nothing known about weed and other legal or semi-legal drugs other than at some concentration they impair driving. Alcohol has a well-known effect on two critical aspects of driving, judgement and reaction time. What does pot effect? damifino.

We have one of these in the area I live and I was even a member of it at one time. Bike Advisory Committee Works for Better Bicycling in San Francisco You think anyone pays more attention to these guys than got paid to the Bike/Ped advisory committee at NCTCOG?

Infrastructure-related wreck in MD, no cars involved. Women injured in Crownsville bicycle crash There was not much coherent posted about this wreck, “they hit a bump and crashed” is the entirety of the report.

This is just sad. 7-year-old Cape Girardeau girl recovering from serious injuries after being hit while riding bike There is nothing blaming the victim here, perhps the driver of the suv that ran her over was (mostly) at fault. Nothing on the mode except that an intersection was involved.

I had a very hard tie understanding this when I first filtered it. Legislation would steer bicycle safety in right direction It’s still word salad in need of editing, but I think it says that bicycles would always have right of way over motor vehicles. That sounds very much like a presumed liability law, assuming that cyclists are not going to put themselves deliberately out there to get hit, because that really hurts and getting hit by a car takes a long time to recover from.

One new wreck and one old wreck from a NC. Cyclists struck by motorists Another left cross in NC, followed by a rehash of the Belize wreck.

Hmmm, drivers may not know they are driving virtually blind. Study illuminates big performance gap for car headlights Just like for bike lights, it’s not just the amount of light put out, it’s putting the light where it will do the most good.

Infrastructure from far West Canuckistan. Victoria Mayor says fatal collision involving cyclist was preventable The mayor is blaming the wreck on the lack of a barrier between the truck and the cyclist. Since the wreck was a right cross I have my doubts about that, but if they can do protected intersections like the Dutch… Maybe?

One of the strongest memes of this blog is don’t hit the pedestrians! Cyclist breaks little boy’s leg – then rides off: Can you help find the culprit? Especially don’t hit-and-run the pedestrians, even if they walk into the side of the bike as you are passing them. And watch out for little kids!

“Oh, the horrors I saw as I held the hand of the woman I ran over with my truck!” Lorry driver tells court how he pleaded with injured cyclist to ‘hold on’ This should not have been allowed to be presented to the jury. Remorse after the fact has no bearing on if an unlawful act occurred. But it seemed to have the desired effect on the jury. Husband of cyclist killed by London lorry cries as driver is acquitted and Family “devastated” as London lorry driver cleared of killing cyclist

Another UK cycling death. Tributes to ‘gentle giant’ cyclist Steve Wand who was killed in Westerham Good Friday collision The wreck appears to be due to human error on the part of the cyclist who died.

More UK infrastructure. ‘More imagination’ called for to combat thousands of extra cars coming into West Cambridge

More infrastructure, this time from the Emerald Isle. Petition for lights after cyclist death

Another one dies in Oz. Perth cyclist dies after being knocked off bike in Gosnells Did someone declare an open season on Oz cyclists?

Seriously, is there an open season on Oz cyclists? Three WA cyclists in car collisions

And it’s now 0457, and I can barely see the screen to type. I will come back to suffer some more after a few hours of sleep, blessed sleep.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

Another late night coming, and the Feed

Yep, I know this one won’t get out until after Gigi loses her Internet access (sorry Gigi) at 0300 CDT. I don’t know what time of day that is for her, but that is a strange time of day to lose Internet access, you know what I mean? And I’m still puzzled over how she’s getting on the Information Superhighway, seeing as how she lacks fingers and thumbs to use a standard device, and had serious difficulty expressing herself verbally without resorting to certain 4,7, and 13 letter words that are generally not used in polite company (some that I didn’t use around her, I don’t swear in Yiddish). So how she gets online is a question that may never get answered.

Up first is Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Bike collisions down across LA, hit-and-runs up in IE, and special offer on a new lighted backpack That’s a nice backpack, shame I hove zero chance at it.

Still in CA. PUBLIC SAFETY: Number of Inland area hit-and-run accidents soaring Make hit-and-run fatalities equivalent in punishment to murder and raise the budget to investigate the deaths so that it would be highly unlikely that you would not get arrested, and require that all vehicles used to commit hit-and-run be destroyed in the most public way possible, and in short order you would get people deciding that staying and taking the lower punishment and keeping your car would be the wisest course of action.

I still say this person was riding in the inside lane in preparation to make a left turn when she was hit from behind. Cyclist killed by car was loved by many

Also still in CA. Two die in separate gang-related shootings in Santa Ana Avoiding this is about as easy as avoiding a flat-black car running without headlights at night and at high speed from behind you. You literally can’t see this coming.

A little closer to home, they found the lowlife who killed a cyclist and ran away in NOLA. Driver arrested in fatal hit-and-run that killed Monique Massey, NOPD says and Police make arrest in crash that killed bicyclist There is some dispute about the color of the weapon vehicle, but that is just an example of why eye-witness testimony is so unreliable, /especially when one of the witnesses was close to being another victim.

Just two days ride south of WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Cyclist injured in hit-and-run; police seek driver Left cross, minor traffic ticket. Leaving the scene of an injury wreck, felony with mandatory prison. Watching an idiot get abused by cops for being an idiot, priceless.

Another link to that story of the cyclist hit in WA that used an internet comment section to identify the weapon vehicle. Cyclist has life-threatening in hit-and-run crash Again, a hearty “Thanks” to the readers of Jalopnik for their outstanding contribution to solving this crime.

Down the coast a bit from that wreck, infrastructure news from America’s Copenhagen. Surprise! Gasoline sellers dominate funding of campaign to stop Portland gas tax

This is just soooo Portland. City preps for Bernie Sanders rally with extra bike parking Yep, Bernie’s coming, better get the bike valets ready… 😀

The DIY DoT in Portland calls itself the Portland “Transformation” Bureau, and they have been busy. Portland ‘Transformation’ bureau unveils a new trick: ’20 is Plenty’ signs

Somebody ran a stop sign in Casa Grande. Bicyclist struck by car in CG flown to hospital If I’m looking at the Street View of the wreck right. the cyclist was on the through street and the driver ran the stop sign.

On the other coast in CT. Cyclist clipped and injured on Route 107 The narrative suggests a buzz job or punishment pass, either way use the hit-from-behind protocols to prevent or reduce injury.

It isn’t even officially open yet, but it has been wrecked twice? Updated: Driver damage to bike lane barrier now at $15,000 You know bicycle infrastructure would be a lot cheaper if so much work wasn’t required to keep people from driving on it.

Flori-not-duh. Miami-Dade Merges Public Works, Transportation Into One Agency They both work basically the same place. I mean think of it, how many times have you seen street built and made perfectly smooth, and then 6 months to maybe 2 years later they tear it up to repair or replace the sewers or water mains or maybe the storm drains, when if they had done that while the streets were already torn up while they were replaced it would have cost less and when they got done the streets would stay smooth an in great shape for many years to come. When they patch the street after doing work months or years after the street was rebuilt the street is never as smooth and it jut keeps getting worse and worse at the edges of those patches until they have to get repatched and then potholes start forming and long before it should be the street needs to be rebuilt again.

Another LEO acts like bike helmets protect children from getting hit by cars. Trooper donates helmets after student’s bike accident Kids being kids there will probably be a few wrecks, and maybe one or two kids will not get hurt as bad because they had a helmet on. Also kids being kids a large number will get disgusted at wearing the helmets and stop riding bikes and develop some kind of disease caused by inactivity. And the number of kids who quit will greatly outnumber the kids who didn’t get hurt because they had a helmet on.

I had to look up where this was to figure out why a large group of Americans would be riding bikes there “Belize is a country on the eastern coast of Central America. It is the only country in Central America whose official language is English.” Wikipedia. Five Cyclist Injured on Highway in Western Belize

Humorous infrastructure from Jolly Olde. ‘This cyclist is mortal’: acerbic T-shirts warn drivers of their behaviour Dying is not so bad, it’s that bit between the injury that kills you and actually being dead that is a B*tch. And then the part where you come back alive after being dead? Mother %*$(#$ that hurts!

Oh come on! Hunt for Vic hit-run motorist and Do you know this car? Police release image of car wanted over Ballarat hit-run This was no “accident”, this was attempted murder. No way for a human cyclist to avoid a wreck like this.

Still in Oz. Two cyclist hurt in Vic hit-and-run crash This is another link to that 2 out of 3 wreck I posted on yesterday.

And I’m finally out of links. See you Sunday.

Billed @€0.02, Opus