I’m old

And I’ve been old for a very long time. Back when I was just 18 I could buy beer without getting carded, because I looked that old. I started getting unrequested senior citizen discounts when I was just 37 as in people just gave me the discount without even asking if I was old enough, they just assumed. That’s what depression can do to you. It ages you like nothing else but drugs can.

Speaking of drugs, game was cancelled today because of too few or the wrong kinds of drugs. The DM did not get his brain drugs on time and ran out leaving him unable to cope with game today, another player was on allergy meds that interfered with her narcolepsy drugs leaving her in a daze (and confused) and not functioning on an adult level. That left us a little short for game. So I watched the race from Atlanta today, which was pretty good even if Chase Elliott won instead of Cory Lajoie. Cory is another 2nd generation driver like Chase, only his dad was a Busch series driver, and is now a manufacturer of safety equipment used in almost every Cup car, the carbon composite containment seat. Cory’s dad Randy also makes seats from other materials for other series and other kinds of race cars than stock cars (The Joie Of Seating). For those who don’t remember that far back Chase’s dad is Bill Elliott, the driver of the fastest Cup car to qualify (212.809 MPH), and multiple winner of Most Popular Driver until he made them take his name off the ballot in 2002. Oh and Chase has already won a Cup championship (2020) with super team Hendrick Motorsports, while Lajoie has been driving for perpetually under-funded teams since his Xfinity series races. Anywho, the race was a barn-burner, I just wanted a different driver to win it.

And it’s getting late and I’m fading, time to put the post and me both to bed.

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Tried to buy shoes, found closed stores instead

I went to two places to find shoes, the Nike store and the Payless. The Nike store was locked with blacked-out windows, and the Payless was selling the shelves and countertops because they were closing that store forever, and even if they still had other stores those stores did not need more shelves or countertops. What I see on the ground does not jibe with the news from DC, our “booming economy” is mostly making booms as it creates craters. I’m going to keep trying to find shoes as the ones I have now start falling apart as the uppers are starting to crack and develop holes that will soon spread into gaping chasms and eventually that part of the shoe declaring independence from the oppressive rule of the sole and heel. I’m just trying to find some shoes that I can walk around in and not trip because the edge of the sole caught on a sidewalk crack or other foolishness, and it’s beginning to look like actual shoe stores are an endangered species. Sure I can still get shoes at big box stores, but those are mostly “find what fits in the pile” rather than actual knowledgeable sales people helping find what you need. And since I only buy shoes when the old ones wear out completely I’m not “up” on what is and more importantly isn’t available to fit my needs.

The “funny” thing is after the most recent therapy I stopped walking the way I used to with using my heel to stop the forward fall and then shoving off violently from my big toe, so the heels and soles are lasting pretty good, but the uppers are getting flexed pretty hard on the right foot so that fails from fatigue instead of friction. So I’m stuck with shoes that have pretty decent soles, but you can scratch my toes without having to untie my shoe on the right foot. And I have a stack of left shoes that still have a lot of wear left in them because even the old way I walked didn’t wear out shoes because of all the muscle and nerve damage from the wreck.

And the worst of it is I’m so “stove up” as my wife puts it, that a day out shopping and riding the bus takes at least a day to recover, if not two days. So doing things precludes doing more things until two or three days later. Some of it is because I’m getting old, but most of it is because I got hit with several trucks before I got old. I’m in better shape than most of the trucks but that isn’t saying much.

I hope you readers have a good day and I’m going to have a good day in spite of everything. Carpe noctem or however it is said, seize the night!

Weather is here, wish you were beautiful

It has turned cold and rainy today, after yesterday’s trek for nothing. I had originally planned on going downtown and depositing checks and Getting Stuff Done, but Bush41’s funeral caused all the offices to be closed, and apparently also the ATMs to not work, because it said I had money but then said I couldn’t have any. I got as much cash as they could give me at the register because I had to go buy stuff in the store where the ATM is located. Unfortunately I couldn’t get anywhere near the cash I needed to get because of the limits on how much cash they can give back. ☹️

And the Trump Tariffs are negatively affecting the Sprint-T build. Local steel prices are through the roof, and online prices that can deliver are only a tiny bit better. And I mean tiny, about 1% less. I thought the tariff was only 25% on steel, but it looks like more so maybe this was the one he slapped the 30% tariff on. And adding 30% to the cost of the raw stock does bad things to the build budget. I really try hard to keep politics out of the blog posts, but there are times when that’s just not feasible, like now. Tariffman has just totally screwed up two things I do/did, building bicycles and hot rods (and tumbrels, but those are just bicycle trailers with a handrail). So it’s not just the big car companies getting screwed, us individual hobbyists are feeling the pinch as well.

So, anyway, I have time to do the post because I walked over 2 miles yesterday and I’m getting pain on the scars from the surgery to put my hip together and then take the hardware out so I wouldn’t get strip searched every time I had to go through a security checkpoint and they didn’t believe the scars (only happened once, but once is one too many times). You would think that more than 15 years since the last operation would be enough to keep the scars from hurting, but you would be wrong, because when I woke up this morning I could barely move my leg for about an hour or so. I don’t know exactly how long because both phones were on the chargers and out of my reach and I can’t read the LCD digital clock from the bed. It felt like forever, but realistically it was less than an hour. Then I just didn’t want to get out from under the quilt because cozy, and things didn’t hurt as long as I stayed on the hot side of things. Staying too warm was pretty instrumental to alleviating a number of recent pains in my leg, hip and shoulder. Which is another roundabout way of saying I’m getting old but not in the good way. Which is another way of saying immortality without eternal youth is a curse, or that I wish I had access and the money to purchase the enhancements my character in Shadowrun has, replacing the damaged legs with ones that can be repaired or replaced, ditto the arm and bypassing the brain damage with cerebral enhancements, fixing my vision with “cateyes” that can see in almost no light without having to get recharged once a day… fixing everything that hurts or doesn’t work right. Then I can be immortal minus the pains of old age. Unlike my current situation of immortal with accelerated aging because healthcare in the US sucks unless you’re obscenely rich.

And that seems like a good place to stop for today.

Planning vacation for the summer on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Today is one of the days when I really feel my brain damage. Mrs. the Poet and I were working the itinerary for the trip to NY and TN to visit with friends and family, and deciding which order will cost us the least money (I may have gotten paid last week but that doesn’t mean we have unlimited funds for the trip). I had no problem planning the trip for least travel time and lowest cost, what I was having the problem with was explaining the schedule and cost differences to Mrs. the Poet. The idiot box was going and the distraction was playing Hell with my ability to form sentences and relay information to Mrs. the Poet, to the point that I had to stop and scream in frustration. Part of the problem was even when I managed to get the information out correctly the previous errors in transmission had Mrs. the Poet so confuzzled she didn’t know what I was trying to say. Eventually (after the scream) I was able to get the information across to her about the benefits and deficits of the various schedules with benefits being mostly confined to less time en route and preferred seating.

Yesterday I went to A-Kon for the first time in years, and I have to say I don’t think I’ll be going back again. It wasn’t an A-Kon problem it was an Opus problem. I can’t stay on my feet that long without things getting really painful, and there was a dearth of places to sit down in the really interesting parts of the layout. Add to that the distances between things (it was a very large venue) and I needed a place to sit down and rest after walking to the places that had no place to sit which compounded my distress. I really need either smaller cons or cons with more seating in the dealers’ room. The problem is none of the cons here in DFW can be considered “small”…

The spring NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Pocono just finished with everyone in Jr. Nation is happy, Brad Keselowski fans less so as Bad Brad mis-timed a move to get some trash off his grill and lost the lead to Dale Jr. and ended up finishing second (with the trash still on his grill). The thing that got me late in the race was the number of cars on the lead lap with less than 50 miles to go. When I was a lad watching the first races held over at Pocono, they had less than 30 cars finish the 400 miles of the race, today with less than 50 miles to go they had 30 cars on the lead lap. That’s orders of magnitude improvement in reliability in the 40 years since I was a kid, or PROGRESS! in the engineering of the cars. About 20 or so years ago NASCAR decided to drop building the cars with parts from production cars and allowed more and more parts that were pure race that had never seen a production car or a street. Now there is nothing on a “stock” car that is anything resembling stock. It makes for a better show, that’s for sure. One thing it doesn’t make for is better street cars.

I’m still frustrated in locating raw stock for my “other” bike. The seat tube is a standard size, but the metals dealers that sell lot sizes I can afford are not carrying the size, and the ones that are carrying the size require a half-ton lot size per size of tubing. I need 1.25″ 0.120″ wall square tubing which is strong enough that I can work with mild steel without worrying about bending or breaking on impacts. I redesigned the swing arm to get a better leverage arm and to move the pickup point for the coilover to a structurally better location on the frame. What I have done on the new swing arm was to extend it so that the pickup point for the pivot is roughly above the bottom bracket at the point where the chainwheel picks up the chain so the pogo is reduced. This was easier to do because of the 1X9 drivetrain I have chosen for this bike. I can get within a mm of the point where the chainwheel picks up that chain, and the stresses from the spring/shock unit are placed close to the seat instead of feeding from the seat to the pickup point through a lot of structure. This resulted in less structure and a lighter frame. Now if someone would just sell me some raw stock for that dadgum seat tube I would be set.

I’m still contemplating building a car, too. There is a Toyota Camry wagon for sale on the way to the bus stop that with only a little bit of work will make a perfect long-distance touring car for 2 people. Switch the stock gas tank for something like a 22 or 32 gallon safety fuel cell and we are talking some serious range between fillups. I mean the stock tank on this model is something like 16 gallons, putting in that 32 gallon tank will double the range. Now to put the big tank in there something has to give and that “something” in this case is the spare tire, and the back seat. Since the design passenger load is just me and Mrs. the Poet the back seat is not a big loss and a little more work where the floor pan and the bottom support structure of the seat went the spare tire will have a new home leaving a flat load floor from the rear hatch to the backs of the front seats for lots of luggage. Since the floor is getting worked on anyway, why not smooth out the structure for better underbody aero? So reduced drag and a touch better gas mileage extends the cruise range even more. This is the mission profile that Mrs. the Poet has emphasized over the one I prefer of handling and speed for short races around traffic cones (SCCA Solo racing). Both are totally valid mission profiles (mine’s better) but Mrs. the Poet’s profile has the slight advantage of being useful for getting around on our vacation (mine’s better).

And now I need to help in the kitchen with Sunday Dinner, making sure the roasted vegetables don’t stick to the pan and burn, so I’m cutting this off now.

PSA, Opus