It didn’t work

My trip to the massage place failed to get my neck massaged. That’s because in spite of what Google and their web site said, they were not open for business. There are (were?) three massage places in close proximity including the one I normally go to and in spite of what their web sites said none of them were open for business.

So I still have a neck that locks up at random and hurts pretty much constantly, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.

In an attempt to distract myself from the pain I was still thinking about the steering and radiator mount for the Sprint-T. And yes because of proximity they will be a single thing for the frame the mount for the steering box will be welded to the lower mount for the radiator and also to the front bulkhead and the rest of the frame so it won’t move when the steering moves. There will be a bunch of light tubes running from the mount to the frame to triangulate everything. The frame is very narrow at the point where the radiator crosses it, but the front bulkhead provides lots of places for triangulation. One of the definite things I’m doing is tying the steering mount into the panhard bar mount to keep everything in sync and keep the tires pointed in the right direction.

And I apologize for the lack of coherence in those earlier paragraphs but I’m starting to lose it because of the pain from the neck spasms. Seriously, I can barely think straight from the pain, much less type coherent words. I really need to get that massage. As in really, really need. Not quite foaming at the mouth “in pain” like the old Mad Magazine Anacin parody ad, but in enough pain to get really short-tempered even for people who haven’t earned it.

Advertisement

I can’t wait any longer

As much as I do not want to expose my massage tech to infection, I’m to the point that if I don’t get a massage very soon I won’t be able to function. I had to take a break from dinner tonight because I was having problems getting food into my mouth, which is a sure sign I have something wrong with me. The neck problem is making it hard to use my phone, my laptop, watch TV, fool around with my wife. Basically everything but use the toilet, so far. I don’t want to jinx it because I know I’m going to have problems using the toilet at some point because of this neck problem, I just don’t know how at the moment. And right now it HURTS all the time.

No kidding, every once in a while I move my head just the wrong way and I get tears running down my face. It’s really sudden, I’m just tootling along minding my own business and WHAM! it feels like I just took a 2 by 4 across the back of my neck and everything locks up for a second and tears are running down my face. While the pain is going it’s like I can’t move because it might make things worse or something, like my fight, flight, or freeze kicks in and sets everything to freeze.

On more pleasant fronts, I got another package from Speedway Motors containing the seat mount I have been waiting on. Now I have something to bolt the seat to and mount to the inside of the car. And I will have a way for other skinny-assed people like me to sit in the car and it won’t matter if they have long or short legs because the seat can move forward or back so they can reach the pedals. The package also had the gas pedal, taillights, mounting pads for same, and some stickers and a Street Rod parts catalog. The gas pedal is really neat with a clockable arm to connect to the throttle cable and everything works smooth as butter and the whole thing costs less than the local cost of buying the raw stock locally and that doesn’t even count the bushings. Now if you’re wondering how they can do this, a big part of it is they buy raw stock in ton lots, while I have to pay retail prices for a few pounds of stock at a time and because of minimum purchases I wind up with a lot of scrap left over that may or may not be usable in another project down the road. Anyway for the Sprint-T the arm has to be on the right and the pedal on the left of the bracket to keep the pedal from hitting the transmission tunnel and also leave room for the throttle arm to not hit the steering column or the brake pedal bracket because there is just that little room between the transmission tunnel and the inside of the driver’s side of the body, even with the engine moved to the right for balance.

The taillights I’ve linked in the past, but basically they’re round and red with chrome bezels and a black mounting gasket and enough bulge to have some function as sidemarker lights. Obviously I need to install a red marker on the rear fenders and an amber marker in the fronts, but these have a little more for a little extra margin of visibility.

I’m still thinking about DRL and fog lights (which are allowed to be the same thing under the regs) but my Scrooge Genes kick in every time I look ones up that meet the regs for dual use. Seriously they’re like $60 a pair, which is more than I spent on all 4 headlights, which can also be used as DRL on the high beam circuit. So that one is still up in the air. I can buy a headlight controller that only lights the high beam part of the headlight while still leaving the rest of the headlight off, but the thing is I don’t know if the headlights I bought have that ability until I can get a 12V power supply/battery charger to test them. The web page didn’t make that explicit when I bought them, just that all 4 lights were high-low beam.

Something else I’m thinking about is getting the steering around the radiator and getting the radiator cap under the bulge in the nose so it can be filled without removing the nose by opening a flap in that bulge, and putting a funnel into the radiator neck… Woo. (Tom Slick unenthused crowd noise) If I have the numbers right I can sneak the pittman arm out in front of the radiator from the side without having to do anything that interferes with either cooling or steering, by putting the steering box right beside the radiator so the steering column is clear. Still thinking, still planning, still working…

Still getting frustrated

Foot still hurts. Tires still look like something out of a cartoon. Cat still talking to ghosts. Office AC still just works on fan setting. Dent still in brick wall from beating my head against it. So, not much has changed.

One thing that has changed is Mrs. the Poet’s attitude about buying an engine hoist. After getting rental rates for 3 places around Garland that were within a dollar of each other and 2 rentals are 60% more than buying and several rental sessions needed just to move the engine out of the donor vehicle and set up for placing the mounts. Now all we need is the $108.24 before the coupon expires (hint, hint).

Watching the truck race from down the road outside Ft. Worth. Some good close racing but so far the only wrecks seem to be equipment failure, not drivers using the Braille system to find the track. I do love a good race, like the ARCA race from Pocono this afternoon.

One thing I have been doing is tracking down upgrade maintenance parts, like spark plugs and filters. Well oil filters, the air filter is already going to be an upgrade. I’m also considering changing the top half of the intake manifold just to relocate the throttle body for using ram air to make more power and fuel economy, because why not? I can use carved foam as a core and wrap fiberglass or carbon fiber around the foam to build the manifold. Probably won’t happen, but it could.

Truck race ended under yellow as there was a wreck after the white flag. One truck ended upside down with only 3 wheels just past the start-finish line. Driver unhurt, but when they turned the truck back up all the dirt and grass that the roof collected while sliding through the grass between the front stretch and pit lane at Texas Motor Speedway pelted the driver.

And I’m getting neck and shoulder problems again, to the point that I want to have a lie-down to stretch my neck out. Serious typing issues, ouch.

Weather doesn’t stop to enquire about your plans before happening

Well, plans were to wrap my workout around getting my toes done down the street, but the weather has other ideas. There has been a line of thundershowers going over since shortly after noon, when I got to sleep about 0600 after putting the previous blog post to bed about 0430. That post took extra long because I would write a little bit, go crawl around in the bucket body for a while, run some numbers on the calculator, crawl around the body again, run some more numbers on the calculator, write a bit, rinse and repeat. I spent about 3 times as much time with a tape measure inside the body as I did sitting at the keyboard. And I still need to get my toes done, the nails are getting a bit on the long side, while it is still raining with occasional lightning and thunder over Casa de El Poeta preventing my walk.

On the TGS2, the mind kept going after the post was put to bed. I considered saddle tanks as well as wrap-around tanks with luggage space on top of the tank. I genuinely think the best option would be putting the Jaz Products 892-032-01 32 gallon bare cell on edge so that it would be 17″ tall, 14″ wide, and 33″ across, behind the seat and using the space beside the seat for carrying things. Unfortunately nobody I have contacted sells them, so I might have to get it directly from Jaz, which makes the price a mystery. But it is possible to interpolate a price by comparing the costs of bare cells that I can get to the costs with cap and fittings for the same size cell, then applying that difference to the 32 gallon cell with cap and fittings. I think I’m looking at $143 plus shipping. Compared to a custom tank that’s cheap. I would still need to fabricate a firewall and fuel filler, but that would be true for any tank inside the bucket body. Jaz even makes a fuel gauge sending unit to fit this configuration.

On the bike-riding front, I’m still not riding. I do the PT that is supposed to make my neck more flexible but all it seems to be doing is keeping me from getting any worse. It doesn’t hurt to hold my head back or turn to the right, it just doesn’t go back or to the right. And I’m still getting the pain and tingling in my neck and shoulder, especially after I do my exercises. It’s almost like they never took Chris Christie off of my neck, except I have a little more range of motion especially tilting my head back. I still notice it there, and the improvement without a useless lump of fat on my neck. Every few days I check the tires on the bikes to see if they need pumping and once in a while I pump them up.

And now I think I’ll have dessert and a big cup of covefefe (CO-vay-Fay-fay). If Trump can make up words, I can make up the pronunciations.

Still thinking

One of the things that has been gnawing on me a little is I missed another Ride of Silence this year. For those new to my blog since I dropped the bike wrecks click on the tag RoS or Ride of Silence to see previous posts about it. I started missing the RoS when the tumor on my neck got so big that I couldn’t ride any bikes. But after Chris Christie was removed from my neck I got to the point I could ride bikes with a very upright riding position or recumbents, but not very far. Well now I can’t ride anything except a bus or car because Arthur Dent is causing troubles. I have a pain that starts in the middle of the dent and radiates to the end of the trapezius in one direction and up the back of my neck in the other, and makes my deltoid and rotator cuff tingle like they are trying to go to sleep. It’s very annoying but not much of an impediment except to bike riding at the moment, but it feels like it is trying to get worse.

I’m stalled on the Mid-Bucket (aka the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper 2) ATM because I lack cash for parts or raw stock. I still haven’t replaced my ID since the last time I lost my wallet, because I needed my ATM card to get the cash to pay for it. ATM card should finally get here this week and I will renew my ID early so I can go to Nashville and see the eclipse this August. When I get stalled on one project my mind starts on a new project immediately, in this case a lighter weight version of the Sprint-T with the Pentastar V6. Basically it is just the same as the V8 version with lighter components because of less weight and lower power. Remember the vicious circle of too heavy so other parts have to be stronger and heavier making the car heavier so other things need to be stronger…? Well this is the benign circle of less weight allowing for less heavy supporting and connecting parts. And the weight came to under 1400 pounds with the balance almost 50-50 I can use all the same size wheels and tires on each corner. If I could have gotten one of those free things would have been a lot easier.

Pole Day for the Indy 500 is on the idiot box so this is time to wrap this up. Congrats to Kyle Busch on winning the All-Star race last night in a masterful performance. Condolences to Sebastien Bourdais on that wreck at Indy yesterday and wishes for a quick recovery.

Opus the Unkillable

Happy Father’s Day on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Happy day to all you (other) fathers and dads out there. I will be going out to have a late lunch/early dinner with the kids who still remain in this country after I do the blog, so I will probably be cutting this short.

On the Wide 5 to early Ford spindle adaptor, I did some preliminary stress calculations and the only Al alloy that would not fail in use after a couple of years costs like $200 each for a hunk of billet big enough to use for the adaptor, or I can change the design so that instead of being structural the adaptor just fills space between the bearings in the Wide 5 hub and the Ford spindle and the cost of the billets goes down to $50 for the pair or $25 each. That’s a huge cost saving at a weight increase of about 2 ounces or just over 0.1 pounds. So, the inside diameter of the new design adaptor goes from the OD of the grease seal run with a step to the ID of the Ford inner bearing (1.189″) that runs cylindrical to the shoulder for the Ford outer bearing (about 3″ in length) then a step down to the ID of the Ford outer bearing (0.75″) that runs two threads up the threaded area of the Ford spindle (another 1″ for a total of 4″ from the inner bearing shoulder) and goes straight out to the size of the spindle washer on the spindle nut kit, then it tapers out to the outside of the outside bearing of the Wide 5 hub next to the washer and lock nut on the adaptor (4.6″ from the inner bearing shoulder) then straight out to the end of the adaptor at 0.250″ wall thickness so it doesn’t fail at the threads (1.375″ ID). I have been looking at other Wide 5 spindles on the market and not all of them are the nearly 7″ from spindle face to the end of the threads that the initial drawing I looked at implied. The original design was from the late 1930s/early ’40s and used double locknuts to retain the bearings on the spindle, while modern usage is to use a single nut that locks to a tabbed washer via machine screws in the outer face of the nut. So on these hubs from the inside out you got outer bearing, then a tabbed washer to keep any torques from the bearing trying to undo the spindle nut, then the spindle nut, then another tabbed washer with slots that small screws go through that screw into the spindle nut to prevent the spindle nut from coming loose. The older design was bearing, tabbed washer, spindle nut, tabbed washer, second spindle nut, then enough clean threads so that you got a good accurate torque value on that second nut. Now I only have to leave enough threads that the one nut has a good torque value. So shorter adaptor and I made up the couple of ounces I added by reducing the ID of the adaptor so that it only acts as a spacer rather than a structural member. I win (for some values of “win”).

On the way to the Solstice Service last night I had a stitch let loose from my neck rather suddenly, as in it felt like I had been hit on the back of my neck and I felt/heard a “thunk” when it let go. Now that I have had some sleep I have a smidge more range of motion in my neck and a tiny bit less discomfort at the end of my range of motion than I did before the stitch let loose. Still that was a disconcerting way for a stitch to go away. It was doubly so as I was crossing the street when it let go.

And my ride to Father’s Day dinner will be here shortly, so I have to quit running on at the keyboard now.

PSA, Opus the dad Poet

Too tired to make a full post, so I’m doing a post about the dent in my neck

Let’s just say that the trip to the surgeon’s office could have gone better. I had the time wrong for the appointment and got there 4½ hours early which meant that I got back to the house with just enough time to swallow a sandwich and a glass of tea before I had to leave again to get back for my actual appointment.

The actual appointment was peachy, mostly. The pathology report was the mass massed just over a pound, and was all fat and blood vessels, i.e. NO cancer. Now the bad news. in order to keep the dent from filling with fluid and getting infected they are leaving the skin sutures sticking up out of the back of my neck in the middle of “Arthur, Arthur Dent”. I would take a picture except you couldn’t see anything in one I could take and Mrs. the Poet is like the world’s worst cell phone photographer. She has other qualities that make up for this shortcoming by a wide margin. The deal with the sutures is they are keeping the dent compressed so it doesn’t fill with fluids by going down into the muscle under the dent and up over the skin with other sutures that wrap up the muscle and everything is made from various sizes and formulas of dissolving sutures so that it will take 2-3 months for everything to come loose and let the muscle expand.

That means I will still have limited range of motion in my neck (subject to my legendary pain tolerance) for the rest of the summer but that range will slowly expand week after week. Another thing that means is I will have some level of discomfort lower than with “Chris Christie” for the next 6-8 weeks. It will still hurt (a little) to lean my head back or turn all the way to the right, but it will be because the stitches are getting pulled on as the muscle contracts. Leaning my head slightly forwards and to the left will stop all the pain instantly.

And because I know you have been waiting for a long time for links, here’s Our Daily Ted. Update: 66-year old woman killed riding her bike in Laguna Hills

And now I want to go to bed.

PSA, Opus

Did lawnmowing things &tc, and the Feed

My contribution to the lawn mowing today was walking the mile and a quarter to buy the gas, and mowing the fence line and up beside the house where you need more upper-body strength than Mrs. the Poet can muster even on a good day. I still have problems with my back when I walk too much, and between getting the gas, mowing the fence lines and going to the bank to get grocery money without having to pay an ATM fee at the store I came real close to maxing out my available miles. I had a little lay-down after I got home from the bank and meditated for a bit, then pulled the steri-strips that had come off my back off of where they had gotten stuck to my shirt. There aren’t many of them left over the incision site, but I haven’t noticed any pain or leakage from the incision so I guess we are still good on that. Speaking of pain while the little sharp pains from the edge of the dent are still there they were less noticeable than even yesterday, so that is also good.

I managed to get Blue moved to a cleared space in the garage where I could get some tools on him which also cleared access to Francis/es to allow it to be used if needed. So far the only work I managed to get done was changing the seat cover on Blue, but as I wrote earlier I had things to do away from the house that kinda drained my energy, so maybe I’ll get more done tomorrow.

Up first, I have a link to the PDF version of the FHWA guide on segregated bike lanes. Federal Highway Administration SEPARATED BIKE LANE PLANNING AND DESIGN GUIDE WARNING, this is a gov’t document written by engineers who were paid by the word and it comes in just over 99MB.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: 3 important bike meetings, 1 last endorsement in WeHo, and what to do at CicLAvia Pasadena

Another example of why FL kills more cyclists than any other state in the US. UPDATE: Cyclist hit in Sanibel crosswalk listed in fair condition Note the response of the LEO representative: “Sanibel police chief William Tomlinson said bicyclists in Sanibel’s 25 miles of mixed-use pathways have the option of riding crosswalks, but suggested that walking a bike is safer.” The cyclist was hit crossing with the signal after one vehicle had stopped to let him pass but the weapon vehicle failed to stop. The driver that hit the cyclist did not obey a traffic control, but the cyclist should have walked his bike because… damned if I know.

Over in Jolly Olde while the infrastructure is sometimes truly awful, it is marginally safe if the drivers of large vehicles look out for and don’t run over the people on bicycles. Two lorry drivers face court over deaths of cyclists killed in separate crashes at City blackspot

And idiots with a badge are not limited to the state of Florida or even the US. CTC critical of police response to death of Merseyside cyclist Cyclist had a measurable amount of alcohol in his blood post-mortem so the other drunk that drove nearly 200 feet on the wrong side of the road to hit him was initially let off the hook.

And this guy walked away from what was initially believed to be a minor collision with a cyclist, then died a few days later. Peter Craig: Super fit newlywed killed after freak collision with cyclist while in marathon training DON’T HIT THE PEDESTRIANS! Seriously, do everything you can to not hit pedestrians, then exchange information after if you do hit one. Not saying that was what happened here, just general advice.

The cyclist video recorded “jumping” a red light and hitting a bus had equipment failure. Bus driver defends cyclist filmed crashing into his double-decker after jumping red light Broke the front brake and locked the rear on slick pavement and WHAM, there’s the bus.

There are still good people in the world, they are just sometimes hard to find. Members of public tried to lift vehicle off trapped cyclist Unfortunately there were either not enough people or too much SUV to get the car off the cyclist without heavy specialized lifting equipment. Fortunately the fire crew that showed up for the call was so equipped and the cyclist was extricated and sent to hospital.

More on that ride in the Great White North to protest cuts in Workman’s Comp. Injured Workers Stop in Kingston During 600 km Bike Ride to Draw Attention to a Compensation System Being Dismantled by the Liberal Government Are the Koch brothers active in Canada too?

And another wounded/injured veteran ride, this time in Jolly Olde. 100 wounded heroes lead cycle races Note to reporter/headline writer, these are social rides, not races. There are no winners except the people served by the money raised. There are no losers except the people who could but don’t choose to participate.

And I’m out of links again.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

OK now I’m pissed

Short post today while I’m not playing with my RPG group, which I bowed out from because I was supposed to work with the Wendy Davis campaign to GOTV, but the event was cancelled at the last minute without telling the workers. I don’t know why.

Something that is really chapping my butt is my daughter took out student loans that my father cosigned because my credit rating did not exist as I have been on the cash-only economy for almost 20 years now. Now that the people that took over Sallie Mae finally noticed that my dad is dead (we sent a death certificate right after dad died but that was to Sallie Mae…) they want their money NOW. Now as in they are filing collection actions against ME, who didn’t take out the loans or cosign any of them. But they are demanding that I pay the loans in full in 30 days any way…

And tonight is Death High Court held by the Arms of Verity at my church, a kind of Day of the Dead celebration, using one of the 6 archetypes revered by Verity. Those archetypes are Builder, Nurturer, Healer, Trickster, Death, and Destroyer. I’m still trying to decide if I’m going tonight, but my neck is telling me it isn’t very likely.

Speaking of my neck, I think it’s a good time to go ahead and end this post, because my neck is killing me…

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

Riding Francis/es is a major pain in the neck, and the Feed

I wasn’t riding Francis/es very far yesterday, but I was riding long enough to place myself in pain. I always have a bit of neck pain after doing the blog post on the laptop, but yesterday was just beyond the pale for it. I mean lots of lying around waiting for the pain to subside so I could go type some more kind of pain. The only thing different was the trip to the laundromat on Francis/es with the new handlebar configuration, with about a mile spent total on the bike trying to bend my neck far enough back to be able to see forward. So here’s the score: change seat to move contact points out where they don’t hurt any more, but that moves me forward enough that my right knee bangs against the handlebars in the rear set configuration. So turn the handlebars back the normal direction and I’m back to the awful neck pains from being bent over too far to see where I’m going, even worse that previously because that thing on the back of my neck is even bigger than it was when I first got Francis/es. I’m cutting metal for that new stem tomorrow…

I’m opening up with a suicidal squirrel in CA. Squirrel’s final dash ends in disaster with cyclist injured and Renegade squirrel darts into cyclist’s path, causing strange crash, injury This is not so unusual, can’t these fools Google “squirrel test”? Squirrel test for carbon forks

Continuing with the theme of WTF!?! is this report. Charges in hit-run death of man who killed cyclist Yes, the man who killed a cyclist in a hit-and-run wreck was killed in a hit-and-run wreck before he could go to trial, by another drunk driver. Not-quite-instant karma but still pretty-quick karma. Now for his killer also.

And just down the road a piece from that wreck we get a hit-from-behind wreck between a cyclist and a blind driver. South Christian HS teacher killed in bicycle crash Cyclist was exceeding legal minimums for lighting and reflectivity and was riding in a conspicuous position when hit from behind on the only road that would take him to his workplace… This is one of those wrecks where the cyclist did everything possible to not get hit and still got hit because a driver did not pay adequate attention to speed and what was on the road in front of him.

Another FL cyclist is killed in the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike. Report: Santa Rosa County deputy strikes, kills bicyclist The cyclist may have been preparing to make a left turn in compliance with the laws requiring moving to the left side of the lane.

More on the NC wreck between a sidewalk cyclist and a driver going backwards across said sidewalk. Cyclist killed in Chapel Hill collision identified Nothing new here, just confirmation of the cyclist’s name which we already had last week.

Update on a CO cyclist injured in a right hook. Boulder weighs settlement of cyclist’s lawsuit In this case the cyclist has them over a barrel, the cop had not fully passed the cyclist when he made his right turn into the cyclist. I would say intersection protocols but those require warning to employ, which the evidence suggests was not available to the cyclist in this case.

Update on the victim of a CA wreck. Graduate Student Matthew O’Neill Killed In Cycling Accident

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: CicLAvia coverage, cyclist injured in bike-on-bike wreck, benefits of protected bike lanes

Someone call the Wah!-mbulance for this butt-hurt driver. Cycling vigilantes are doing more harm than good Cyclists are loading up on cameras for the same reason as Russian drivers loading up on dash cams: drivers are stupid and entitled.

National Infrastructure! news. Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety and Must Be Replaced Now If you apply highway standards to city streets you should not be surprised when people try to drive at highway speeds…

News about really dangerous infrastructure in NE. Lincoln cyclists anxious after uptick in accidents Three fatal or life-altering wrecks on one stretch of road in less than 2 months is bad infrastructure that does not meet current needs.

And those were all the links I had about bicycles today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet