“Enjoying” the company of my in-laws on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I’m typing this as I watch the rain delay at the postponed Firecracker 400 (I refuse to refer to races by sponsor names, for the most part the races existed long before the sponsor even thought about “sports marketing”). So, watching nothing going on and listening to screaming children running around.

Going back to the race, the expected wrecks have led to unexpected drivers being in contention for the win today. The current leader during the rain delay is Aric Almirola in the Richard Petty Motorsports 43, the King’s number. And NASCAR just declared the race official making the 43 the winner. Yay King!

So I switched to the IndyCar race where they are dicing back and forth around the Tricky Triangle at Pocono. While there is dicing going on up front there is strategy taking place at the back with drivers running the full lean fuel map with as little throttle opening as possible to maintain position on the lead lap so that they will be in front when the leaders have to stop for more E-85. And it didn’t work, as the fuel warning light came on with 4 laps to go, putting Juan Pablo Montoya in the lead and winning the race in his first season back in IndyCar. The race was done way early because they only had a single caution period for what appears to be an engine failure for Graham Rahal. He was moving right along and then all of a sudden there was no engine noise and the car was going backwards with the back tires not turning. So with only the one caution they ran a record speed for a 500 mile IndyCar series race of just over 202 MPH. They have an extra hour of TV time to kill before the next show, so I get to see the Indy Lights race from Pocono several hours early. After this the rebroadcast of the British Grand Prix will be shown.

And I read in the paper that Mark Cavendish was involved in the pack wreck on the first stage of the Tour de France, separating his shoulder and probably ending his Tour. I haven’t seen any news from this morning’s stage yet because honestly, I’m just not interested enough in the Tour this year to turn the TV on that early. I probably won’t turn it on this evening either.

I have a new CAD program for this laptop that I’m trying to figure out so that I can make a drawing of the 20/20 crank forward bike with full suspension that will upload to the media center for this blog. I really want you guys to be able to see what I see in my mind’s eye when I write about things I want to build. To that I managed to grab a working USB 3 button mouse from a yard sale “take this free” box, which will prevent the spurious clicks I get with the touch pad on my laptop from causing false data points in the drawings. The touch pad is not that big of a problem when web browsing and blogging, or using the dice app playing RPG sessions, but it was a major pain in the butt trying to draw using the CAD app. The CAD app is based on AutoCAD, so after I learn the commands and shortcuts for the app I’ll have a leg up on installing the Linux version on my desktop computer. Now to show what the Sprint-T looks like in my mind’s eye I will need to figure out how to transfer the pictures I have of the Speedway T Bucket body to the program.

Most of my immediate family came up to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th natal anniversary, including the elder daughter all the way over from Scotland. We last saw her back when my Dad died back in 2012 when she came to share Thanksgiving and ended up going to a funeral. I’m very glad to have her with us.

And the hardest thing we have had to do this weekend is find vegan dishes that Elder Daughter can eat. This part of NY is not rife with vegan options, there are some sure, but not a lot. She’s rather militant about her diet, for good reasons. Her diet is about the only way she can fight global climate change and factory farming, so breaking it has political overtones that are not good in her eyes.

And I think it’s time to put this post to bed and get on with my vacation (and life). Y’all have fun tonight.

PSA, Opus

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Running ridonkulously late after visits to the Lab Rat Keeper and a potential source of income, and the Feed

Yep, I had another visit to the LRK for more meds to control my BP (which is V good, average under 116/75) and record my weight (holding just under 206). I also visited the local plasma center to find out how much I could get selling my blood plasma ($50/month) until my job reviewing road and highway projects for not killing bicyclists comes through. Another reason I was late today was because the Daytona 500 ran into Tuesday morning after Juan Pablo Montoya’s car broke at the exact wrong time while passing one of the jet dryers and ran into the trailer with the jet engine and 200 gallons of jet fuel and then hit the truck towing it breaking the 50 gallon tank of diesel fuel, causing a fire that burned for quite a while until trackside firefighters could get it under control and then out. I have been watching NASCAR racing since I was tiny (OK tiny-er much smaller than I am now) and this is the first time I can remember seeing or hearing about a race car hitting a safety vehicle during a caution. I recall there were a couple of incidents in F1 back about 20 or 30 years ago that led to changes in yellow flag rules to prevent such things from happening again, and a tow truck was hit during an SCCA race back in the late pleistocene when someone was passing the car being towed and didn’t see the truck actually towing it.

I open the day’s link-fest with this bit of non-yogurt bicycle culture. Tiny Bike Shop Concert Returns Thursday If you are in the area drop in for a listen and/or watch. And a pretty picture, too

First up, a sentence that seemed to come from Bizarro World. Colorado Springs man sentenced to 8 years in prison in crash that killed cyclist Yes, you read that right, a halfway reasonable sentence for killing a cyclist, even when they couldn’t prove the driver was drunk. More Eight years in prison for driver in cyclist hit-and-run and Man gets prison time for crash that killed cyclist

Arrest in a fatal hit-and-run in the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike. Tampa police arrest man in deadly hit-and-run In the comments we find the victim had not exactly led a spotless life as a driver or as a cyclist, but that still doesn’t mean that he deserved to die at the hands of a drunk driver.

Another guilty driver gets a hefty sentence in SC. Man sentenced to 15 years in fatal hit-and-run I have to say that just a short couple of years since an off-duty firefighter shot a cyclist in the helmet and got away with it the fact that a driver in a fatal wreck with a bicycle was given such a harsh sentence surprizes me some. More Clover driver pleads guilty in crash that killed Rock Hill bicyclist So many of the comments were about the drunk driver being in the wrong in this case after the last link.

Another report on a NJ bike wreck. Bicyclist killed in Egg Harbor Township identified as Mays Landing teen, 2010 Mainland graduate AFAIK this was a hit-from-behind wreck which most likely would be the fault of the driver, but since the driver is LEO what will be decided is questionable.

A kid in IL gets trapped under a car that hit him while he was legally crossing a street in a crosswalk. UPDATED: Bicycling Teen Trapped Under Car, Seriously Injured in Darien From the report it appears the driver was seriously distracted by an impending court appearance. As for the cyclist he had no chance to avoid this wreck as he had committed to the crosswalk and was not going fast enough to be able to avoid a motor vehicle crossing his path.

A terrible situation in CT. Cops: Teens Beat Girl, Rob Bicycle A group of older children/young adults assaulted the girl in the road in broad daylight and beat her up after stealing her bicycle. Not something you can avoid except by looking “badder” than the punks, which is hard for a 14YO girl to do.

Cyclists in Oz share a common complaint with cyclists everywhere, LEO go after cyclists out of proportion to their numbers and their offenses because cyclists are easier to catch than any other vehicle. Bikes ‘the focus’ in cop road sting In spite of cyclists only being 2% of the traffic, and cyclists not breaking the law more than any other group on the road, the cyclists managed to rack up 10% of the tickets…

Infrastructure news from NYC. Bike, walk or run in Prospect Park? Big changes coming down the road Changes are made to reduce the exposure to the most dangerous thing in the park, the motor vehicles, Car time is reduced to a couple hours a day during the week and none at all during the park’s heaviest use during the weekend.

More infrastructure news from the Big Apple. Making Cities Safer for Cyclists and Pedestrians The trick is if you get enough people out of cars you automatically make life safer for everybody else, because the deadliest thing in a city is the motor vehicle. In NYC motor vehicles kill more people on the sidewalks in a week than bicycles kill anywhere in the city in a year. In Dallas we had a fatality in 2010 that was the first pedestrian killed by a cyclist in the entire state in this century, so the fewer cars you have on the roads and the more people you have riding bicycles and walking, the fewer people are going to get killed by any means or method of mobility.

Infrastructure news from the Great White North. Trail’s dangerous rail crossing to be fixed If they had bothered to build it right in the first place they wouldn’t have to be spending more money now to tear out the mistake and build it right.

And that’s all the news I can stand today (tonight?).

Billed @$0.02, Opus