I just finished doing the annual Spring head-shaving in the back yard partially in preparation for a trip to my PCP tomorrow to have that lump on the back of my neck taken care of. The other part is I leave the hair removed so the local birds can use it as nesting material. This was one of the years I take the porn-stache off to make sure there is nothing growing on my upper lip that shouldn’t be there.
The trip to the PCP is because the lump is between tennis ball and baseball size, and severely restricting my range of movement moving my head back and left to right. Also, I can’t even get my helmet all the way over my head because it hits that lump. So, the lump has to go, and the first step in that is tomorrow’s doctor visit. This is one of the downsides of my insurance, having to go through the PCP before getting anything that he (they) can’t do. And I’m pretty sure this is going to take a surgeon to deal with because it was originally a lipoma about the size of a walnut and now well just go back and read that first sentence in the paragraph again.
My cheap gene has been kicking in on the powertrain for the Sprint-T. I got a link to a $7500 conversion from ICE to EV and as this conversion is less than the cost of the engine and transmission… And this does not violate Mrs. the Poet’s decree against donor vehicles. The down side is there will be a major performance and range hit unless I drop the SLA and go LiFePO4. But then we are looking at thousands of dollars more, or roughly the same cost as the ICE installation and still not anywhere near the daily range of the ICE. Actually I just finished checking on the cost to get the same range as a 10 gallon gas tank and I am looking at $32K just for the batteries, so green is not as fast as brown or grey. The batteries for the same range as the SLA are about 3 times as much money and less than 1/3 the weight, so a slightly greater range on the same amount of electrical power. And I would need a truck to trailer the car for transport to races, so there is nothing to gain there. So, unless I want to totally abandon the major reason I’m building a T bucket rather than buying something like a Kia Rio, I will stick to the ICE. But the intellectual exercise of packaging the EV components in a T bucket was a brief entertainment for me.
I’m currently watching the Sprint Cup race out in Fontana CA, and it has been all JGR and SHR up front. I would call this one a good race anyway, because those are both 4 car teams, and they both seem to have 2 or 3 cars that can run up front at some point in the race. The last segment seems to have degenerated into a fuel economy contest at 190 MPH, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a nail-biter. To the contrary, now it’s a question of who will still be running at the end. This has been a fairly wreck-free race with most of the cautions being for debris. And just now they had a debris caution with 15 laps to go, so that means back to charging for all they’re worth to the end of the race. Unfortunately Matt Kenseth broke an axle leaving his pit box, taking his car out of contention if not out of the race. 😦 And they just had another caution with two to go, which put Kenseth back on the lead lap. Kevin Harvick decided to only take two right side tires… It’s a Green, White, Checker finish. And now we have another caution for a second GWC attempt to finish (they get three tries) but at least Kenseth got the Lucky Dog to be on the lead lap. And Brad Keslowski won after starting back in the pack from getting 4 tires on the caution that brought out the first GWC. Harvick keeps his string of top-2 finishes alive at eight.
And I’m out of things to say, so I’ll stop writing now.
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 