I’ve been having strange dreams

Strange but not disturbing dreams. Dreams about flying cars, cars I almost owned, dreams about flying bikes, dreams about just flying. Before the wreck I used to fly, things. Mostly airplanes, some hang gliders, some ultralights, a helicopter for about 5 seconds before I gave the stick back to the guy really flying it. Helicopters are not flying machines, they are contraptions that somehow remain airborne. And this was about how the dream went, flitting from one scene to another, taking in a red Honda Civic for an oil change, flying a car over a bridge to an island that was extremely urban with lots of tall buildings (not the red Honda, it was dark silver) I was just sitting in the car someone else was flying, just flying between the buildings of the city without the car no segue, just went from flying in the car to just me by myself without anything except some insulated jumpsuit and harness and maybe a helmet? Then I was flying a bicycle somehow that hovered while I was looking for a place to park, and was just a regular crank-forward bicycle when it wasn’t flying.

I woke up about 0445 because Mrs. the Poet was pushing me out of the bed. I should have taken a picture where she was in the bed when I got out. Her head was barely on her pillows and the rest of her body was angled towards my side of the bed so that her feet were almost sticking out of the covers on my side. I also woke up because my bladder was full, and standing over the toilet was almost like the scene in “A League of Their Own” where Tom Hanks drained the main vein for over a minute of screen time. Yay visuals!

Somehow we seem to have a pantry full of ants again, and we lost a full, new box of crackers to the pesky beasts. Not the small box, the “family size” box of Cheezeits that we had just bought and Mrs. the Poet didn’t get to eat even one of them. She was very mad about throwing away food we had just bought yesterday. She was hollering about the “stupiDANTS” and that was exactly how she pronounced it, with the “d” appended to the “ants” and emphasized “DANTS”, making it all one word. When I look at it from an emotional distance it’s funny, but I know it isn’t funny for her. “StupiDANTS!”

We have come to grips with the fact that the kittens have either died or just ran away. We last saw Clint in late July when he stopped coming back after we changed food in an attempt to do something about his digestive issues, and Clyde left a couple weeks later when Mrs. the Poet declared him “feline non grata” for his digestive issues leaving little poops everywhere and we had to move his food and water dishes outside. After we moved the dishes outside he refused to come back in for petting, even though he really wanted to be petted. So we are looking for another cat, older and calmer that doesn’t scratch the furniture that has its shots and already neutered. Mrs. the Poet says this time we need to start with all new cat stuff, not leftover from 2 previous generations of cats. She thinks this might result in a cat that’s more comfortable with where it lives and doesn’t need to mark everything as “mine”.

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I have other things to think about than the Sprint-T

I sometimes try to not think about the Sprint-T, and think about other things I want to make, like bicycles and furniture (I have a plan for a bed stand/storage thing to put a mattress on that has been rattling around my head for years ever since the last repair to the futon frame), but for some reason I always seem to keep coming back to race cars for SCCA Solo Racing A/MOD class. The rules are simple, minimum wheelbase of 72″, minimum tread of 42″ and minimum weight of 900 pounds with driver. A few safety rules to protect the driver in case of a rollover, and that about covers it. Oh and a maximum of 20 ft² total wing surface and unlimited underbody downforce developers, bodywork covering tires optional, that kind of thing.

My design philosophy has been lots of tire and suspension built to keep it square to the road, lots of brakes and an engine that can motivate without adding too much weight. Usually I come up with motorcycle or go kart powered things that have all the weight in the center of the wheelbase and as close to the centerline of the car as possible, but the latest fantasy was an LS7 coupled to a shorty Powerglide mounted to the right of the chassis and the driver seat to the left just enough to balance left-to-right, and a chain coupled transfer case to get the power to the center of the chassis to line up to the input of the rear, and front, axles. That’s right AWD traction to get 505 HP to hook up on a sub 1000 pound car. Of course I’ll never have the funds or facility to build this mini-monster, but it’s fun to think about. Given that there is scant difference in weight between the various naturally-aspirated LS engines but huge differences in low-end torque it makes sense to go for the 7 liter big dog, and the shorty Powerglide is the lightest transmission capable of handling a standing start that will bolt to the LS family bellhousing pattern (which it shares with the venerable SBC first sold in 1955), and the possibility of 4 smoking tires when the loud pedal is used too enthusiastically were just too much for my fevered imagination to bypass, so I didn’t. Estimated weight is 900 pounds without driver making it weigh about 1100 with my lard ass in the driver’s seat, or about 2 pounds per HP on 93 octane pump gas. The number of cars with this power-to-weight that are intended to make right and left turns on the regular in competition can be enumerated on the fingers of one foot. I think there are a few sprint cars in the same ballpark, but they are literal grenades, and there were some F1 turbo cars back in the 3-liter formula days that might be in the same power range, but again those were literal bombs on wheels with 1499.9 cc turbocharged engines putting out about 900 HP in qualifying trim and good for maybe 3 laps at full chat and very little time at rated output before exposing the inner works to the world. And if you think I’m exaggerating look up some YouTube videos of late ’70s to mid ’80s F1 qualifying sessions especially the Renault powered cars. In comparison the LS7 is an anvil used as a paperweight

So anywho, you have insight on my fantasies of power and glory, enjoy!

Slightly sad today

This afternoon I cashed my last gift card from that mobile app I used to play. I checked last month and there were no more gift cards I could buy with my points, meaning I could only collect $1 every 3 weeks entering sweeps once a day instead of the more than $100 I used to get in a year collecting big points and cashing them in for $5 and $10 gift cards. And then I deleted the app from my phone. That means I no longer have an excuse to take my evening walk to collect check-ins.

And next week I’m leaving for the eclipse watching party in TN and spending a week with old friends. With the problems I have been having with my old laptop I’m leaving it at home and just taking my phone for whatever electronic contact I get. And since that phone is also not reliable I’m biting the bullet and getting a newer phone that has all its buttons working. Having a reliable phone when I’m on the go is a must.

I have troubleshot the problems with the laptop and isolated it to a bad battery. Unfortunately there don’t appear to be any available locally so I’ll have to go on the Internet to get one after I get back from eclipse watching. They are not too expensive, just not in local stores. But that means I won’t be able to update the blog until I get back.

On the TGS2 front I have been working on the new frame design and trying to find places to put everything. Moving the engine inside the body tidies things up but it also makes things cramped for things like batteries and gas tanks, mostly because I took 12″ out of the wheelbase when I moved the engine forward. If I put that back in I have tons of room for a gas tank and a battery. Heck 5″ would solve the packaging problems without making the car all that long. It would still be shorter than a Fiat 500 with less weight and more HP from a relatively slow-revving engine. I know a Fiat 500 is a low performance bar to top, especially when I’m looking at Caterhams and Corvettes as benchmarks, but with a stock 3.8l V6 pushrod engine producing 168 HP @4200 RPM I can’t get my hopes too high. But with the ongoing redesign I’m getting the polar moment (resistance to changing direction) even lower than my benchmarks, so given equal grip from the big tires on the flyweight car I should do pretty well at Goodguys autocross. And that is the goal for this car, winning Goodguys autocrosses, while being competitive at SCCA solo racing. And also capable of picking up groceries, and driving thousands of miles to and from the races without destroying the driver in the process.

Now I have to get to bed because I have to go grocery shopping tomorrow.

Still working on the Sprint-T on a wreck-free Sunday

Yeah, the guy that has a bike safety blog that mostly blames cars is building a hot-rod. Let’s just say that “irony-poor blood” is not a big problem around Casa de El Poeta.

Anywho, I have been working on the adaptor design to run Wide 5 hubs on early Ford spindles so that I can use less expensive and easier to find commercial street rod or hot rod parts instead of custom fabricated axles to use what is essentially pure race spindles on the street. The Wide 5 hubs I’m using are rated for 5000 pound off-road racing trucks, so street use on a sub-1700 pound car is going to be extremely under-stressed. Ditto just about every suspension part on the car being under-stressed for street use at this weight, unlike the race spindles I mentioned earlier that are designed for a “heavy” pavement sprint car that comes in at about 1500 pounds because pavement sprinters use a lot more front brakes than dirt track sprinters that don’t even have a right front brake.

Getting back to that adaptor I have found a few things out by inference rather than by direct description. For instance I found out the inner bearing has a 2″ I.D. which means that the spindle adaptor has to be 2″ from the seal race out to the outer bearing which is 4.6″ from the outside of the seal race to the outside of the outer bearing. Somewhere along the line I need to gradually taper the adaptor from the 2″ inner bearing to the 1.813″ I.D. of the outer bearing, actually the 1 ¹³/₁₆” diameter of the spindle. The outer bearing is about .68″ wide, so the “landing area” for this bearing will extend from 4.6″ from the outside edge of the seal race (I know I’m using the wrong terms for these but I can’t find an article on the web describing the actual names of the various parts of the part of the spindle the hub runs on), to 3.85″ from the seal race and taper up to the 2″ diameter of the inner bearing over the next 3.1″ to 0.75″ from the bearing race, so there is a nice broad landing area for both bearings to slide in on. I also know the seal race is 2.375″ O.D. and at least 0.437″ wide, and that the entire adaptor is 5.687″ from the seal race (described as the “inner bearing shoulder” in this particular diagram) to the end of the piece, which will end up being 7.125″ long over all from where it bottoms against the Ford spindle to the end of the piece.

That’s the outside, the inside is much more fun from the designer’s (me!) standpoint. First of all the two main design parameters were to not introduce failure-inducing stress points into the design, and to have as little flex as possible. Fortunately the seal race on a Ford spindle is 1.5″ O.D. (edit: 1⁵/₈“) while the landing area for the inner bearing is 2″, meaning there will be a 0.250+/-” (edit: 0.1875″) wall thickness under the bearing if the I.D. cut is made straight across from the seal race to the end of the inner bearing landing area. This is acceptable if I use a high-strength aluminum alloy. Then the bearing shoulder on the Ford spindle for the outer bearing is 3″ from the bearing shoulder for the inner bearing, and 3.5″ from the face on the Ford spindle where the adaptor will be bottomed out. This will be the inside face of the bulkhead that runs from the Ford spindle outer bearing landing area to the landing area for the Wide 5 outer bearing, with generous radii where the bulkhead meets the I.D. of the adaptor after subtracting the 0.250″ (edit: 0.1875″) wall thickness from the bearing I.D.’s.

So basically there will be a Wide 5 spindle from aluminum on the outside, with a bulkhead the same I.D. as an early Ford outer bearing then and I.D. the same as an early Ford grease seal. The adaptor will have a shoulder on the bulkhead slightly larger than the O.D. of the washer of the early Ford spindle nut before going out to the end of the threaded area and the beginning of the Wide 5 outer bearing landing area on the adaptor. There should only be a tiny bit of added flex over machining the adaptor to rest against the Ford spindle solidly full length, but the adaptor will be much lighter and considerably easier to install than fitting against the spindle as a solid piece.

And it’s time for me to get ready for evening services now.

PSA, Opus

No racing today and no RPG yesterday, so what to write about on Wreck-Free Sunday?

There is a pause in the racing until next week, and I had another social obligation that prevented my attending the RPG Group meeting. In fact I think I’ll do that social obligation first, because it is kinda special. The youngest and eldest of my kids were born 4 days shy of being exactly 3 years apart. There are two other strong parallels between the births. First and foremost is that both kids were a little early and ended up being born at home, second was that both kids got me a lot of attention at the hospital. The eldest got me a lot of attention because the birth preceded the wedding by a few days and I was not allowed to see my kid or the mother by the hospital initially and they were not nice about it, but eventually I got to see the kid and be with my soon-to-be wife. The youngest kid was kind of a “difficult” delivery, what is known as a “compound breech” delivery. This can be fatal to either the baby or the mother unless handled with care, and the sum total of my Ob/Gyn training was a couple of hours of training in Battlefield First Aid 6 years previous as a senior in HS during the class on guerilla warfare. Yes, back then delivering babies was considered part of “battlefield” first aid because sometimes the battle tends to overrun civilians, and the stress of getting caught in a firefight causes pregnant women to go into labor at the drop of a hat if they are anywhere close to term. The working theory at the time was that everyone should be able to do first aid under fire to civilians caught in a crossfire or inside a battle area. So I had the bare bones of what I needed to do to deliver a baby in the “comfort” of my own home. This also got me a lot of attention in the hospital, but of an entirely different nature… Because obviously I made it through without killing or injuring either my kid or my wife. This was unexpected by the people in the hospital.

So, we were going to go to one of my son’s favorite burger places “Burger Fi”, but there was a “problem” with this. The restaurant wasn’t there anymore. Sometime between my last trip to the “mall” and yesterday they folded shop and disappeared. Quick conference call between Eldest Son and Youngest Daughter to find someplace to eat within walking distance of where we were when we discovered the target restaurant was no longer in existence. We settled on the TGIFriday’s just up the street. For some reason everyone was in a “sandwich on a kaiser roll” vibe (prolly because we had all been talking about how great the burgers at Burger Fi were) except the grandkid, who got chicken fingers.

Speaking of the grandkid, he finally made it to the house to get his Christmas present from Grandma and Grandpa. Photographic proof of this event is in existence, because that is what Grandpas do, take pictures of the grandkid for Grandma. And now you get to see a 2YO driving his first car.

The flames are staying in the protective pouch until Grandkid learns what a steering wheel is for. At the moment he acts as if steering is a game where you “win” if you go from stop to stop fast enough. It’s cute when the driver is driving a pedal car, not so much when driving a real car. So the electric motor that propels the car at 20 MPH is a few years into the future. Oh, yeah, I’m definitely building a subframe with an electric motor to go under the seat in place of the original rear axle assembly. And I know where to get motor controllers that can limit the speed to any speed I desire, so that I can keep Grandkid from going faster than he can keep up with things to not run into. I hope so anyway.

Progress on the Sprint T is continuing but not as visible as before, because I’m doing compare and contrast between various choices in engines and transmissions. What I have been working on is using the restriction placed by Mrs. the Poet (no donor vehicle(s)) and trying to get the best balance between power, low-end torque, and powertrain weight balanced against total system cost. So far the “winner” is a 383 Chevy small block connected to a Turbo Hydromatic 350 transmission with a manual valve body so that I can quickly change gears on the autocross course. And for those of you who are not “up” on the various permutations of the small block Chevrolet engine, a 383 is the crank out of a 400 small block with the bearings ground undersized to fit in a 350 block bored .030″ over to clean up the cylinder bores (or more probably one of the many reproduction 400 stroke cranks made from the beginning with 350 engine sized bearings). I subscribe to the sentiment “There is no replacement for displacement” when there is little to no weight penalty for increasing the displacement of an engine. The 383 is an economical way to add 33 cubic inches to the basic Chevy 350 with only a 4 lb. increase in weight over the 350, and since this particular 383 comes with aluminum heads that take over 50 pounds off the engine that 4 pounds gets covered up by the diet at the top of the engine. The other good thing about this engine is it makes almost the same power and torque as the LS3 crate engine, only about 100 pounds heavier but at half the price. If price were no object I would run an Aluminator 5.7 liter 4-cam Ford with the matched 4-speed automatic transmission, just so I could keep my Ford all Ford including the engine and transmission, but I don’t have the tens of thousands of dollars needed to buy that engine/transmission combination. The 383/TH350 combo financially weighs in at about $9K, which is a large chunk of change, but the LS3/4LE70 runs about $13K, and the last time I priced out the Aluminator/whatever they called the 4 speed OD autoshifting box I was looking at about $22K. I can get 90% of what I would have with the Aluminator on the autocross course with the 383/TH350. I will lose some MPG on the highway (unless I score a cheaper 4LE70 somewhere), but since the Sprint T is not meant as a long-distance cruiser except to get to the next race I can accept that limitation.

And I could write more but it is getting late and I might have a paying gig tomorrow, so I need to wrap this baby up and deliver it.

PSA, Opus the Poet

I shopped for home insurance and pants, and the Feed

Oh, the horrors! I went shopping for homeowner’s insurance today and then went and bought pants. I shall swoon soon! Actually I need a bit of a lay down because my foot started to swell and pinch inside my shoe and triggered a “phantom pain” incident. Basically my foot feels like I’m squishing it in a vice with the pain being all out of proportion to the swelling and any pressure it may have caused. I know this because I can feel that pain separately from the phantom pain, and it is just a minor pinch. The insurance shopping was about as enjoyable as root canal work and then having to pull the tooth anyway, but the worst thing about the pants shopping was going through pile after pile of nearly identical pants trying to find the right size. Once found a quick test fit showed them to be the correct size, thank [$DEITY] for accurate labelling of men’s clothing. Unlike women’s clothing, men’s sizes don’t get larger as the cost of the brand increases. /snark sorta

Up first Jaguar has a cyclist early warning system for drivers that does not require cyclists to have a cell phone with the required app loaded and running to warn drivers about cyclists in the area. Will Jaguar save lives? Firm unveils Bike Sense system that alerts drivers to oncoming cyclists and even brakes if they come too close and the same story with no Daily Mail bike haters filling the entire comment section. New Jaguar safety system will save lives of cyclists

A bit of good Infrastructure! news from CT. Malloy unveils more transportation projects for Connecticut Bicycle infrastructure creates jobs because bicycle riders spend their transportation dollars on things that stay in the local economy longer, and because bicycle projects use more labor and less materials than motor vehicle projects.

The wheels of American Justice grind exceedingly slowly. Trucker Who Killed Cyclist In Williamsburg & Fled Scene May Finally Lose His License and Family of slain cyclist fighting to get trucker off the road Almost 4 years it has taken and who knows how many more have come close to death… More Turning Traffic Grief Into Action

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Rolls Royce driver shot by bike rider, Times looks at North Fig politics, NFL bike victory lap

Bikes are back to being mere decorations at the Detroit Auto Show, with a few exceptions. The Bicycles of the 2015 Detroit Auto Show One of the more glaring exceptions was the Shinola company who make bicycles in Detroit.

And I have run out of links again so this is the end, my friend.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

Recovering from my Turkey Coma on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Well yesterday we went to my daughter’s house for round 2 of Thanksgiving dinner. This time the turkey was smoked instead of oven-baked. [old joke]Smoking a turkey is really difficult, do you know how hard it is to keep one lit?[/old joke]. We also had Loaded Baked Potato mashed potatoes, country-style green beans, stuffing, and they threw in a quart of gravy from the turkey vendor. So we had a pretty decent dinner.

I have been really enjoying my HD TV since I found the Velocity channel. Near as I can tell from the last three days this is an all-car-build channel. There have been several marathons for different build series like the one currently playing of Overhauling which is a program where they find some pretense to haul away a person’s car and completely restore it or complete an unfinished project. I also watched a Bitchin’ Rides marathon where they make show-quality cars…

Watching these car-build programs gets me fired up to work on the Sprint T. I have been considering possible donor vehicles for the drivetrain. Someone brought up Toyota full-size pickup trucks with the 5.0 and 5.7 DOHC V8 engines and automatic transmissions. The engines are a bit on the wide side and will probably hang out from underneath the sides of the hood, but the focus of a T-bucket is the engine. Most of the other potential donor vehicles are also V8 pickup trucks, or V8 luxury cars. One that also sounds interesting is the Hyundai Genesis sedan with the 5.0 liter V8 and 8-speed automatic and possible 4WD from the factory… And don’t forget Corvette, Camaro, Challenger, Charger, and Mustang late-model performance cars. And in addition to those are the plethora of crate engines and transmissions available. Decisions, decisions. I’m looking for something on the order of 600RWHP/ton with a weight around 1600 pounds wet. Obviously I’ll take lighter if I can get it, and more horsepower, but I don’t want to give up low-end torque for racing. Basically this is going to be a huge go-kart that will never get out of low gear on most autocross/Solo racing courses with instant throttle response, brakes that never give up, and tons of grip into, through and out of the corners.

I haven’t given up on building a computer model to run in GT4, but I have hit a brick wall on the formatting for the car file. Nobody that is willing to tell me knows, and nobody that knows is willing to tell me how. All I need is the file format and the variables, I can do the car performance programming myself, and I have someone who can build the graphic model. I really want to drive the Sprint T at the Nürburgring, but there ain’t no way I will be able to ship the car there to do it IRL, so it will have to be simulated on the PlayStation. And I have several variations of the car I want to program in, the full street version with the soft springs and shocks and the skinny hard compound tires, the Goodguys version with the high performance street tires and tuned springs and shocks, and the SCCA Solo version with the 14″ wide wheels and the soft, wide slicks and the tuned springs and shocks. The SCCA version also runs tires that drop the car by 2″ in ride height without changing the suspension settings, so the CG also drops by 2″ and has to be entered into the performance programming.

Getting back to that new TV, you would not believe the difference in enjoyment going from the dinky SD TV to the 32″ HD TV I bought Wednesday… which I think I might have mentioned a time or two already. I mean it ain’t as cool as a good bike ride, but watching TV without bands of purple and orange going up the screen is pretty cool. I don’t know what was dying in the old TV, but it was worse running through the tuner than it was going through the composite in with the audio jacks. We had a couple of days without AC a few years back that took the stuffings out of the old TV.

We are having our annual post-Thanksgiving potluck at church this evening and I have to shower and get ready, so this looks like a great place to stop, proofread, and edit the post before hitting “publish”.

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

Watching the race in Phoenix on a Wreck-Free Sunday

As I sit and type this the penultimate Race for the Chase has just started with a minimum of 3 drivers making it through to the final round on points instead of wins. Unlike the previous 2 rounds which had all three races won by Chase contenders, no Chase racers have won in the first two races of this round. That means that everyone is trying to get in the top 5 so they can get as many points as possible. I will come back to the race later in the blog post.

Yesterday was a fun day for the RPG group, we destroyed civilization and brought balance back to the world… in-game. There were 10 trees that represented the forces of nature that had been bound by a massive spell at the beginning of Egyptian civilization. Binding those trees somehow allowed our civilization to develop and flourish, and unbinding them has caused civilization to collapse, partially because unbinding the trees at the north and south poles caused a massive melt of the polar ice caps and a 300 foot rise in sea level… 😉 Can you say “Houston, you have a problem?” 😀

Sad news as “The Devil” of the Tour de France hangs up the horns. Tour de France Devil Hangs Up the Trident I first saw Didi back in 2002 when I was stuck at the house in July and got my first chance to see the TdF live on what was then the Outdoor Life Network, now NBCSN.

I forgot to leave a link to the steering wheel I bought Friday . Let me correct that Standard Aluminum Steering Wheel, 13 Inch I chose this wheel because it will clear the inside edge of the body when I place the column on the ¼ centerline that gives the driver and passenger equal space in the car. I would like to add this pad to the wheel to protect my chest and arms should I get hit head-on. That would be a great Christmas present (kids, that’s a hint).

Back in Phoenix things are getting exciting as Bad Brad is running second to Happy Harvick with a win making either one go on to the next round, but both on the outside looking in if they finish second. They keep going back and forth with who is in and who is out, and the situation changes with every lap. There are a minimum of 3 drivers that make it on points unless nobody in the Chase wins and in that case all 4 drivers will get in on points. And on the last lap with Happy winning (and getting really happy) Ryan Newman (AKA the Rocket Man for all those poles he won) passed Kyle Larson on the last corner of the lap to knock out Jeff Gordon from the Chase. The four competing for the Cup are Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, and Ryan Newman. Whoever of those 4 who finishes in front of the other 3 will win the Sprint Cup. Needless to say I will be live-blogging next Sunday.

Now it’s time for me to get ready for evening services, so I’ll leave you with this historic note: 25 years ago today East Germany allowed the citizens of West Berlin to take hammers and chisels to the Berlin Wall. I watched it live on CNN, the only 24 hour news channel at the time…

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

When there are no more wreck reports is there anything significant about Wreck-Free Sunday?

The existential question facing the blog today is now that I don’t do a thing, are days that I didn’t do that thing on purpose before still different from the rest of the week? Case in point, up until last week this was Wreck-Free Sunday, now every day is wreck free, does this make Sunday less special than it was before? Well I don’t know…

The NASCAR Sprint Cup race just ended with Junior Nation very happy about winning at Martinsville. I have to say that this was a drama-filled race that looked scripted with the parts failures, but it wasn’t. That was just the way the ball bounced this particular race. With Junior being knocked out of the chase after the last race at Talladega his win throws a monkey wrench in the chase standings, and with Keselowski and Harvick having problems that put them way down in the standings but nobody locked into the next round by winning today really scrambles things.

I got a link while I was doing the opening part of this post to a quote on infrastructure and education not really being separate in bicycle safety. I would include the link but it is to a post in a closed Facebook group I belong to. The gist is we have been treating infrastructure and education like they were 2 separate things when we should have been using them in tandem, good infrastructure takes education to use it properly. The Dutch have very little education compared to the amount of infrastructure they have, but that is be expected. After all how much education do we give on how to walk? Dutch children are exposed to bicycle infrastructure mostly used properly at about the same age as they start walking if not sooner. There is a little bit that has to be done to break any bad habits that some parents might instill but for the most part kids grow up knowing how to use Dutch infrastructure from watching their parents.

I’m almost recovered from the trip for happynakedpagancamping last week. And somebody pick up my jaw, because happynakedpagancamping is in my spell checker’s dictionary! 😮 Most of the bad effects of the camping were taken care of by a hot shower and sleeping in my own bed, but there were some small injuries that took until today to heal, mostly the bug bites. I still have to get the queen size air mattress for Mrs. the Poet to sleep on (mine is way too small for 2 people), but I think we will be able to camp pretty well next Spring for the Beltain celebration. The hard part will be putting up and taking down the tent, as it is a 2 person job to take down and fold up, unlike the pop-up pimple tent I used to use that I could put away practically in my sleep.

Still planning out the Sprint T frame(s). I added the (s) because I’m still not entirely sure about the donor vehicle yet, so I have a standard T-Bucket design going together for a front-engine RWD donor, and a different design for a FWD donor to build a mid-engine RWD hotrod. The biggest difference is the amount of foot room in the passenger compartment for the FWD donor vehicle, I mean besides the engines being on different ends of the car and all. With the mid-engine car there would be no transmission tunnel dominating the interior, especially at the front of the passenger compartment. With the front-engine version the front of the transmission combined with the narrowness of the firewall results in practically no space for feet between the side of the body and the transmission tunnel, especially on the passenger side with the engine offset for balance when the car is raced. With the 3.5″ offset to the right to balance out the solo driver weight with the engine weight that puts the transmission tunnel right up against the inside of the body at the firewall, making for interesting footrest designs. Speaking of that, I decided the seating position of the Sprint T is going to be very much like a sprint go-kart with the knees up as the feet are moved back away from the firewall to both give some lateral space for pedals and to allow bracing for G loading in turns. I may change that after doing some simulation runs involving sitting in the mockup interior for long periods of time to see if that position requires frequent breaks for stretching. As it is now the pedals are only going to be slightly lower than the seat cushion because I’m using the side of the body like a bolster for the seat. The mid-engine version would have room for a clutch pedal, the front engine version would have to have an automatic transmission. The kicker is that the mid-engine version is more likely to have a slush box for the transmission and the shift linkage for an automatic when using a FWD engine/transmission as a mid-engine RWD is much easier than running the linkage for a manual. Another “fun” thing is getting the balance right because it’s much harder to move a transverse engine/transmission left or right than a longitudinal engine/transmission, but at least as a RWD I don’t have to contend with torque steer from different length axle shafts and the outer CV joints won’t wear out as fast as they would connecting wheels that steered as well as moving up and down.

And I have been working on this one long enough, time to put it and me to bed.

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

It’s finally HERE!! and the Feed

Yeah, I am a little excited now, if I was physically capable I would be doing the Snoopy dance now. I’m in the process of uploading the pictures from my phone to my computer and thence to the media center for this blog as I’m composing this part of the post. Fortunately I’m near the end of my phone month so I won’t wipe out my data limit for too long. Not that I do anything with the data part of my plan except send pictures to myself to post on the blog anyway, but there are a lot of pictures this time. The main thing this does for me is I now have the ability to create an accurate 3D model of the body for the cosmetic portion of the sim file, and for the CAD program to use for planning the frame.

It’s here!!

All the best presents come strapped to a pallet.

In the driveway.

Fra-geel-eh, must be from Italy

First peek.

Freed from the box.

In the house

Everyone needs a car body in their living room.

What was in the other box, or the rest of my B-day present to myself.

How it fits. Mrs. the Poet is not the world’s best photographer.

The body was delivered covered in sanding dust and dried mold release, which I wiped off with a damp rag before sitting in it, after using the vacuum cleaner to suck up the piles of it in the various crevices of the body.

Up first is an update on a wreck a half-day’s ride east of WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Exclusive: Cyclist hit by SUV speaks out The article pretty much speaks for itself.

Hit-from-behind in AZ. Tucson hit-and-run kills cyclist; woman arrested Cyclist was hit from behind in a bike lane and then left for dead, charge that driver with murder. Obviously this is a serious infrastructure problem, because bicycle infrastructure done to the Dutch model keeps bikes away from motor vehicles as much as possible.

Wreck in CO is blamed on the victim. Denver Police: 10-year-old girl riding bike hit by car in Stapleton That’s interesting, the first version of the report blamed the cyclist for “swerving”, but the updated version doesn’t blame anybody and leaves the mode of the wreck out of the report.

A WY wreck has some interesting geometry. Man injured in car-bicycle crash early today in Riverton on Webbwood Road The narrative and the damages to the weapon vehicle suggest a hit-from-behind wreck, but the damages to the bike show more sideways damage than hit-from-behind damage, as do the resting points for the bike and the victim. They suggest the weapon vehicle was moving at an angle to the cyclist as if the driver swerved suddenly as he passed the cyclist. Notice the damage to the front wheel only with the rest of the bike looking pretty good, but the driver is claiming the sun was in his eyes so it will probably be an “accident”

Kill a cyclist, get a ticket? in OR. Pickup driver in Tillamook County crash that killed cyclist won’t face criminal charges So, only careless operation of a weapon of mass destruction?

Another hit-from-behind wreck in the Great White North. 62-year-old cyclist killed near Alexandria identified The shoulder of a road is not bicycle infrastructure. Protocols to avoid or reduce damages, and get the infrastructure “up to Dutch” to prevent.

Still in the GWN a wreck with no mode listed. Friends, neighbours mourn 62-year-old cyclist killed in South Glengarry Well, it has been established the cyclist knew what he was doing there, but the same can’t be said about the driver of the weapon vehicle.

Lots from the Great White North today as a cyclist left-crosses herself. Guelph cyclist injured and facing charges following a collision north of downtown Intersection protocols to avoid or reduce damages, and getting that infrastructure “up to Dutch” would prevent cyclists from sharing a traffic light phase with motor vehicles.

Our Daily Ted. Don’t miss this weekend’s most exciting bike event — the Huntington Park Gran Prix This looks like pure D fun.

Opening the Infrastructure! news with this tidbit from WA. Rules of the road: reducing stress for cyclists and drivers I like the bit about drivers needing to chill about things that are not only legal but required for cyclist safety.

And speaking about chilling out… Diane Savino: “Hey, Find a F—ing Bike Lane and Get in It” If I had Danny MacAskills’ skills I could ride in an NYC bike lane. Assuming I could tell it was there under all the parked cars…

Back to the left coast with this bit of infrastructure. Motorists ticketed if driving within 3 feet of cyclists

Infrastructure from the UK. Cycling deaths and serious injuries down in 2013, says DfT They’re running out of cyclists… 😛

Different part of the UK. Series of cyclist deaths spurs on road campaigners

And those are all the applicable links and pictures for today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet