In the process of shedding my Winter Fur

And unlike other mammals that grow a winter coat, mine requires clippers and a razor to remove. It’s still a work in progress, but I did take pictures of the major stages along the way. I’ll post them in the next post. So far I’m at the “needs a haircut” stage but I’m clean-shaven. And like any partially complete renovation, I look goofy.

The trek to buy the clippers was a slog, because after I bought the clippers I decided to get a massage because the massage place was in walking distance of the Harbor Freight where I bought the clippers. Checking Google Maps, it’s about 0.6 miles or almost exactly 1 km. And as it was 95°F Tuesday, April 5th, I was hot and tired after making that walk as I haven’t had time to acclimate to heat, but I had a good rest and cool down at the massage place’s hot room. I know that seems like a paradox, to cool off in a hot room, but that’s in reference to the normal temperature of the establishment at about 72°F and this room is roughly 78-80°F. And 15°F is plenty of differential for cooling off from getting hot outside, without getting chilled by cooling off too rapidly.

The massage was a good one with a lot of work on my injuries from Before Times, and man do I have a lot of old injuries. Both knees, both hips, ankles and left foot and calf muscle from where the truck hit me. I still have the bump on the back of the tibia where the bumper of that truck hit me. My calf is a mesh of old surgical scars and missing bits from other wrecks, which is odd because the parts on a bike that take bites out of calf skin are on the opposite side of the bike from the calf with all the scars while the calf that lived in close proximity to the things that chew up legs for decades are pristine (except for the shaving scars).

And I have run out of things to write about because I still haven’t checked my lottery tickets from Wednesday night (it’s Thursday morning as I write this). So Imma put this to bed now.

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I was busy yesterday

I went and did stuff yesterday in the heat. By Texas standards it was a bit on the warm side as we hit 101°F while I was out walking around. I did some banking for Mrs. the Poet, got a haircut from someone who knows how to do a flat top, and then got a good massage from a little slip of a woman.

Anyway, I got started on doing stuff about 1530 and got home about 1930. Now part of that is because it takes time to get places even if you go by Lyft, and part of that is because it takes time to do things. Banking took a while because I had to deposit a paper check, get cash, and check balances. That took a bit of time, because it just does.

The next thing I did was walk to the barbershop in the 101° heat, as one does in TX. That was a few minutes to walk the 0.85 miles to the barbershop because I was too cheap to pay a Lyft and didn’t feel like waiting for the bus that may or might not stop at the bus stop. The closest stop to the bank is right in front of the Community College and for some reason the bus route I needed tends to go right by that stop. Anywho after walking most of a mile in 100+° heat I was hot and thirsty when I got to the barbershop and needed to take a break before I got covered by the barber’s apron. So after I cooled off enough I got the haircut, which included an eyebrow trim, all the way down my nose. I think I mentioned I have a monobrow that goes all the way down my nose and ends right above the tip, and also my eyebrows above my eyes were bushy and needed a trim.

Next part of the trip was via Lyft to the massage place. I found a new place closer to home and only a couple of miles from the barbershop, which was too far to walk, and the Lyft driver was initially sent to the wrong side of the strip mall that went in next to the barber’s, and it took a few minutes to guide him to the place to pick me up. Then it took a few minutes to find the massage place in another strip mall. Strip malls appear to be this guy’s Achilles heel, especially if they go around a corner like both of the ones at either end of this trip. The massage tech at this place was a slip of a woman who looked like a tween girl, but was actually a full-grown woman and managed to give a decent massage despite her minimal mass. My hips haven’t felt this good in ages. Usually a massage doesn’t last long in the hip area because of the nature of what the muscles do, but this one has managed to feel good-ish for almost than 24 hours and still feels not-bad.

I got a summary of my expenditures for Lyft for the day and it came out just under $30, which is a big chunk of my transportation budget. But $30 for 3 trips is not too bad, and I wouldn’t have even been able to do it on the bus because of the uncertainty of having a trip home. DART is so short of drivers that if someone gets sick their bus doesn’t go. And they don’t put out a notification that the bus isn’t running on their app. That’s what really annoys me, they have an app to take fares and alert riders, and they don’t alert riders when a bus isn’t running because of a sick driver. They give notices when the bus isn’t running because of no AC, or other mechanical issue, but staffing issues that shut a bus down don’t get notices on the app. This is stupid, and DART needs to fix it. Anything that interrupts bus service needs to be shown on the app. They don’t need to say why a bus is out of service, but they do need to let people know a bus is out of service. Especially if it’s a route that is last mile on the return to home. Transportation rant over.

AC is back again because the humidity is back down, so at least Casa de El Poeta is comfortable.

It happened again, but I managed to get something done

We didn’t have bus service again this evening, this time just after 1800. I only traveled a bit over a mile to get my toes done and a haircut, but I was also supposed to deposit a check and get some cash to pay the lawn guy, which I could have done if the bus had come so I could use the ATM at the bank. Now my toes are great, and my hairs are cut, but I had to walk almost a mile to get home because I walked for almost 40 minutes just to get to the bus stop I would have gotten off at. This was about ²/₃ of a mile from the nail place and barbershop and another 0.4 mile from home. This makes either 2 or 3 times I tried to catch the 513 after 1800 and no bus. And also no bus coming for the next schedule, because I would have seen it coming before I got off the main road for the 0.4 mile trip to the house.

And I should say that by the time this gets posted “this evening” will be “last evening”.

Happy Imbolc

OK people, today is Imbolc, the first celebration of Spring, actually Impending Spring. The name is derived from a word that means “first milk” when lambing ewes started lactating in preparation for the new lambs. Traditionally I get my first haircut sometime between today and Valentine’s Day because I don’t have any sheep to shear, and because after leaving it grow all winter I really needed a haircut by now. Well I still need a haircut, and I’ll probably get one “soon”.

Other news I really need to make a trip to the nail salon and get my toes done as I’m getting caught in the sheets again unless I wear socks to bed. We have an extra blanket on the foot of the bed to keep toes from getting cold so wearing socks to bed is just redundant.

And I found the path to get back to my old comfortable composing page, so I don’t have to jump through multiple hoops just to create a post. Seriously, what they are doing is not unlike reinventing the hammer and saw every few years and expecting carpenters to know how to build houses in spite of not knowing how the new tools work. Seriously, all I want is to be able to type what I want into the page and be able to do italics, underline, and strikethrough as tools to lend emotional context to my text. and be able to edit the width of the pictures to match the width of the columns of text. Let me test that one.

Well everything works the way it did before, as you can see. So nice to not have to learn how to use a hammer-saw-brush to make posts, and have tools that do what I want them to do. I just wish someone would ask before changing and getting rid of the tools I have been using, especially since there was no notice of how these new tools worked, or how to use them to do what the old tools did.

I was up to something today

And if you looked down the post you might have an idea what it was, but unless you look real close you won’t understand what it was.

The haircut is easy to see, but unless you spend lots of time with me or go back to the downloaded image and blow it up until you can count the pores on my nose, you won’t be able to tell what else I did. Or you could just get a clue from the title text. I’m not that mean.

The other thing I did you wouldn’t know about unless I told you that I walked about 2 miles total today between getting to and from the bus and walking from the barbershop to the post office to pick up a roll of stamps for Mrs. the Poet. The walk to and from the bus stop is 0.82 miles total, and I walked 1.58 miles from the barber shop to the post office and from the post office to the bus station. I did have a small problem with my feet swelling and my shoes pinching after I got home, but that happens even when I stay home.

And I’m still thinking about how to mount the steering box to the frame of the Sprint-T. I’m leaning towards a small piece of barstock from the left side extension from the front bulkhead to the bottom frame tube up to the bottom of the plate mount, and a small tube from the bottom tube on the right to the top of the mount on the left. But I also want to run a small tube from the middle tube on the right to the top of the steering box mount, making a triangulated structure that is pretty much guaranteed to not flex when the front wheels are suddenly moved to change direction. And I retain the right to run a tube from the left frame rail to the extension tube running from the front bulkhead to the frame rail. It’s hard to describe in words, but easy to show when I do it.

And my feet really hurt so I’m going to have a lie-down so they don’t get any worse. Y’all stay frosty and check your six for idiots.

Still among the living for the nonce

Several things have happened since the last post, not the least of which is I managed to get back to the barber shop while they were still open. I present photographic proof that this happened.

I have eliminated the fin that had been on top of my head in preference to the flight deck of a (very small) aircraft carrier.

Earlier I managed to get to a massage, on Wednesday. I discovered I had many small cuts I didn’t know about before the massage lotion got into them, literally dozens of cuts from the hail and the debris in the wind and the flood waters. Since I took a shower after I got home after the flood I’m going to assume the brand of body wash I use is very non-irritating, because I know I washed my legs at least two more times before I went for the massage and never felt anything that would lead me to believe I had so many cuts on my legs. Fortunately I did not get any infections from the nasty flood waters.

After my massage I tried the Korean tofu place next door as it was coming up on dinner time and I had skipped lunch after a very light breakfast. I had a veggie tofu stew that was moderately spicy (although the kimchi had a definite bite) and very good and filling. And as I was in the neighborhood I stopped at the Harbor Freight to pick up some more basic tools I needed for the brake kit I got, SAE and 12-point sockets. I have been working on bikes for so long all my sockets were metric, and even then there weren’t any 12-point sockets. All the hardware in the kit was SAE except the Torx, and the SAE was a mix of hex and 12-point. Anywho, now I have sockets that fit the hardware so I can assemble the rest of the kit to the front axle.

And speaking of axles and whatnot I have another weight estimate on the Sprint-T based on actual parts I have in my possession instead of the catalog weight, which turned out to be about 10% optimistic. So, drumroll please, the new estimated weight with the race fuel tank full is 1800-1850 pounds. Some weights didn’t change, the weight of the transmission went up a lot because it is a different type of transmission (4l80 instead of the lighter but weaker 4l60/70) and I added that extra 10% to weight at the catalog or website for the rear axle, to the “110” pound rear axle assembly I figured at 121 instead, ditto for the fuel tank(s) and all other fuel system parts. When I figured the frame weight I just used the full length center-to-center for all the tubes because the material removed for the fish-mouth weighed more than the welding wire to weld the tubes together, so that weight is probably a bit over by maybe a pound or two for the entire frame. So this is probably a much more accurate estimate, with the 50 pound confidence window because there were a lot of things I couldn’t find a weight for and had to just guess because the product changed since the last posted weight.

And after the grocery shopping today the only kid still in town took me to Whataburger for Father’s Day and I had my favorite Bacon Cheese Whataburger with fries and what they laughingly call a “medium” sized drink (almost a full liter at 32 fl. oz.) and we had one of those Dr. Pepper shakes as a dessert. So today has been a good day.

I finally got my spring haircut, all the fur is gone

I had to deposit a check today so I also made the side-jaunt to the barbershop to get a haircut. It was annoying because the bus went right by the bus shelter I was trying to hide from the wind inside and I had to walk about a mile total from the bank to the barbershop and another 0.8 mile from the barbershop back to the bus station. The good part is I’m not even a little bit sore or tired because I have been practicing walking differently and trying to make my stride more equal. It was very tiring to walk that way at first because of the muscle damage making me use a shorter stride on my left leg, but now that I have been working on lengthening the stride on the left for a while it both quit hurting and wasn’t tiring.

Anyway, I now have a little bit of hair left on top and no beard or moustache.

As you can see, having a lot of hair to cut provided a better result for the flattop this year, and I’m hoping this holds for the rest of the year. And you can also see that the beard prevented me from exfoliating properly because of the huge flakes of dead skin on my face.

Well that sucked

Today I learned I can get a heat injury in an air-conditioned space if I get hot outside and get covered with something that resembles a blanket, like a barber’s apron.

Rather than wait the hour until the next bus I walked the 0.9 mi (1.4 km) from the credit union ATM to the barbershop and it was only 87°F (31C) so I thought I was going to be fine getting a haircut inside an air-conditioned shop. I was adequately hydrated because I was sweating like pigs don’t, completely drenched. But because of the apron covering my torso no air could get in to evaporate that sweat to cool me down. I got nauseous and had to take a bathroom break which didn’t help much because there was no air flow in the bathroom, either. But I eventually got my haircut, and it was a great haircut, and I look great in it. I suffered for that haircut, so I had better look fan-freaking-tastic in it.

Anyway I was still feeling the effects of the heat and the lack of sleep when I finally got home so I skipped lunch in favor of a short nap and lots of water. And even so I’m still doing the sleepy-time bob and weave as I compose this, so time for another shower and hitting the bed before 2200. You guys get two blog posts today, I get a story to tell, and then I get two naps to recover from it. and then I get to get up before sunrise tomorrow so I can maybe have another story to write about.

Finally a positive message about self-worth

Something Positive “Someone” in my case is Mrs. the Poet and my credit union account. Yes, my credit union account is listed as the beneficiary of my credit union life insurance policy when Mrs. the Poet dies. That way I don’t have to update the paperwork as relatives die off, whoever gets control of my finances after I die gets the money. Whoo hoo! big money. I think I’m up to $10K now. After the cremation that leaves about $7K for the beer bash.

I got the locks sheared and am now sporting a fresh flat top haircut with the little bits of hair still going everywhere. I think I will need to take a quick rinse under the shower before bed tonight to get a good sleep. I was upset to find out the stylist who has been cutting my hair the last couple of years is quitting the end of this week. Now I have to find another stylist/barber that knows how to do a flat top. I tried the #1 all over and it makes me look like I’m on my last week on death row with the shape of my skull. Or that someone is getting ready to break the rack (cueball). I think between the flat top and my winter beard I do a pretty good job of disguising the shape of my head most of the time.

I was thinking about the front axle, that if I have the ability to make it I could have saved a bunch of weight. I ran the numbers and the 2″ X 0.25″ wall tube is massive overkill for my application. Emphasis on “massive”. The whole unit less brackets weighs 28 pounds, the bare tube just over 23 of that. With the coilovers mounting as close to the ends as I plan I could build a 6000 pound front end and it still wouldn’t overstress the axle. That’s about 4 of my whole car sitting on the front end and no damage. If I had the tooling to make an axle I could make mine from the same tubing as my roll bar and still not bend it. That would weigh right at half of the one I bought, but nobody else could use it if it didn’t get put in a Mid-Bucket. There would be plenty of safety margin for a car with only 500 pounds on the front end, considerably less for a front-engine bucket, and none at all for a fat-fender rod. Now if I really wanted to go light I would swap the 2″ steel tube for a same size one in a weldable aluminum alloy and get an 11 pound axle instead of 28 pounds. But it wouldn’t last long with the forged steel spindles because of dissimilar metals corrosion.

It has been a long day today, I’ll write more later.

I got caught in the rain coming home from my haircut, and the Feed

Trip to the bank, trip to the hardware store, and trip to the nearest haircut place when they said they knew how to do a flattop haircut. Unfortunately they had only a vague idea of what a “flattop” was and what I got was more of a high and tight than a flattop. What I was looking for was something close to this.

But what I got was this.

And I look a lot more unhappy in that picture than I intended to, wow. I guess that’s what getting caught in the rain and having to change all your clothes and put your shoes in the shoe dryer looks like. It wasn’t raining when I left the bus stop 0.4 miles away on the main road, but the water was running ankle-deep in the street by the time I got to the corner of my street less than 10 minutes later.

The Big Story today is a UK politician having a bike wreck because someone tampered with his brakes. Police open investigation after Labour councillor is injured after bicycle brakes cut and Cyclist seriously hurt after saboteurs cut brakes After years of anti-cyclist propaganda from the Murdoch media empire is anyone surprised about this? Seriously check your brakes after every stop where you leave your bike unsupervised, you never know what kind of sick sociopaths will take delight in your possible death or dismemberment.

Next biggest story was a tie between this Oz story and the next paragraph. Qld road safety push after cyclist death and Bike group calls for urgent review of inner city truck use The “shocking” news that there is a 25 foot (7 meter) blind spot in front of a conventional cab truck isn’t really news, but the fact that there has been nothing done about this blind spot to the passenger side of the truck in all the years since it was discovered is disturbing.

Back in the US we have another cyclist killed in gun violence. Witnesses: Man riding bike shot, killed on near north side and Man riding bike shot and killed on north side It appears the cyclist was killed by pedestrians on the sidewalk, rather than a drive-by shooting. So you’re dead if you do (ride in the street) and dead if you don’t.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Tragedy in Santa Clarita, LA announces Vision Zero, and too much racing news for one day

Wildfires in the PNW impact a treasured Portland bike event. County urges bikers to use TriMet as wildfire smoke fills Portland streets (updated) It came ][ this close to getting canceled, but the wind changed direction to push the smoke away from the city a bit.

Closer to home, another hit-and-run in Austin. Popular Austin cyclist falls victim to hit and run The good news is he’s alive and looks like he will recover without further disruption to his life after he heals.

I’m sure this MD cyclist wishes the driver had left the scene instead of what he did. SUV Driver Cited for Hitting Cyclist, Road Rage: Police He beat up on a man with a broken arm and rib and threw a wheel into the woods so the cyclist couldn’t follow him, and his bail was set at only $25K? TANJ!

A young cyclist in LA is killed when he fell over into a truck’s rear wheels. Young boy killed in bicycle accident in Opelousas Gee I wonder what would cause a bicycle to fall over into the rear wheels of a truck? A buzz job or punishment pass maybe? Or a horn blast just a few feet away from his head?

AZ cyclists are having problems with streetcar tracks. N4T Investigators: Another cyclist files lawsuit over streetcar tracks The problem is not the tracks alone, there is also a lot of traffic in the intersection and a cyclist has to have superhuman levels of multitasking to be able to watch for traffic as well as for road defects and streetcar tracks, and the costs for the cyclist could be extremely high, and I’m not just talking about the $300K lawsuit filed for medical expenses.

A NJ cyclist ran out of luck. Newark man, 23, killed in Granville crash Given that no information about the wreck is coming from LEO, and the driver is in jail, maybe a drunk hit the cyclist from behind semi-on-purpose?

How much does not having bike lanes cost your city? Bike-lane advocates cite new Albany County data on cost of injuries The direct, to-the-cyclist cost of a wreck can be higher than the median family income of the city. The average cost is almost the median income in the city, so it doesn’t take much worse than an average wreck to get way past the “average” cost for a wreck.

Back in AZ for encouragement to ride. Get out and ride, but be safe

Bad wreck in NYC. Chinese food delivery guy, 65, seriously injured after hit by truck in Brooklyn Remember the story from Oz about conventional cabs and their blind spots to the front passenger side? Same thing applies here.

Beautiful article from MO. Ghost bikes honor cyclists killed on road

Is “fell over in front of me” the new “I didn’t see him”? Cyclist killed in Rosemont La Petite-Patrie Québécois are more like Parisian French than your average Canadian, but still a lot better than the average N’Yawker. This just sounds so… suspicious.

And Rob Ford is casting a huge shadow on Toronto cyclists. Most cyclists are not considerate

This is what most of MY bike rides feel like. What Happens When A Tank Crashes A Bike Race

Last link, sometimes we can do great things. A Katrina hero: He hopped into a boat and became a one-man rescue squad He kept rescuing people for days, over a week. And he was One Of Us. Given that level of exertion he pretty much had to be, or some other kind of endurance athlete.

And I’m outta links again.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass Poet (only 6 more shopping days until my Deathday, be sure to hit your favorite liquor store so you can celebrate properly, at home)