Joey Logano is the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Champion

It was a heck of a race with the 4 Chase drivers in the top 10 almost all of the race and top 5 most of the race. It basically came down to the last pit stop, and who had the best setup at the end of the race. When they lined up after the last pit stops I honestly thought Kyle Busch was going to win, but they missed the setup, and Martin Truex took the lead, then after a few laps Logano passed for the lead, Harvick poked his nose in and Busch faded to 6th but recovered so that the Final Four finished 1-4. I was really pulling for Truex to win the championship in the last Cup race for the Furniture Row Racing team but he couldn’t catch Logano and wound up 2nd.

And I’m still recovering, the flap is still alive and has some sensation, and typing is still heck with the bandaid over my fingertip. I have been thinking that just like I’m doing for the Mini Sprint-T, I could at least start the frame for the Sprint-T before I know what engine and transmission I’m going to use, because there are just a few pieces that change depending on the powertrain. Basically there are two verticals in the front hoop internal bracing, and the transmission crossmember that change position depending on what turns the rear wheels. So if I get a good payment from one gig I get the raw stock for the frame and start cutting and tack welding.

And I need to get to bed. My neck hurts and I’m trying to not faceplant in the keyboard of my new laptop.

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Still trying to get my sleep schedule worked out

I went to bed noon Thursday and got up about 1700 so I’m a bit tired and sleepy at 0100 Friday. My mind is a bit foggy too. In fact I’m just going to post this and go to bed.

Didn’t sleep last night and I’m crashing big time

For some reason (brain wouldn’t shut down) I didn’t get to sleep last night and I’m paying the price for it now. When I got out of bed this morning I had my typical halo around lights I get when I don’t have enough sleep, but by the time I finished my first cup of coffee that went away. I just finished my third cup and the halo is coming back and I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open. I have managed to avoid face-planting on the keyboard so farbut I don’t know for how much longer if I continue to sit here.

Since discretion, valor etc. I’m outta here.

The hone is here, and I’m exhausted

I’m watching the 24 Hours of Le Mans since shortly after the start at 0700, when I couldn’t get to sleep until after 0530. I keep falling asleep and faceplanting in the keyboard. And I just got back from my Father’s Day dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, where I had a Bacon Cheeseburger that must have weighed at least a pound total, 1020 Calories plus 400 Calories of steak fries. So besides being tired I’m dealing with a Food Coma.

So now Imma go have another lie-down. I get my present tomorrow.

I went to the lab rat keeper and now I have a headache

I think the headache is because Mrs. the Poet has really bad allergies this year and couldn’t breathe last night. She was making these awful noises like she was dying and I couldn’t sleep until about 0600 and then the alarm went off at 0715. I mean it is really hard to sleep when your wife sounds like she’s dying next to you even when you know it’s just allergies making her head stopped up.

Remember when I wrote how nice it was to have the actual parts in hand to mock up an assembly? Well this time I remembered to take pictures (actually only one).

I have the bracket centered on the spindle approximating the caster angle of the axle and you can see how the tie-rod is just above where the upper bar goes? That’s because at that point the upper bar moves less than 1mm between full droop and full bump so it doesn’t have to clear by much to clear all the time, and the tie-rod likewise doesn’t move much during its travel left to right, and is closest to the bar at straight ahead. So the closest the two will come is at full bump and straight ahead. And there are enough shims in the kit to keep the tie-rod high enough to never touch that upper bar.

And the drag link? It will ride roughly parallel to the axle right behind the axle centerline never getting anywhere near anything except the pitman arm and the passenger side steering arm that it is attached to. And if I really want to get crazy I can put everything up top and nothing will ever run into anything except maybe some cones. As little as the front end of this car will weigh I don’t think there will be enough flex for anyone to notice.

And that lack of sleep has caught up with me as I’m having problems with seeing what I typed on the screen (and I probably need new glasses).

So Knighty-night.

So much done, so little accomplished

I was out of the house almost 7 hours today. I had a 20 minute procedure done in Lewisville and spent just over 6.5 hours getting to and from it. And I had to skip lunch because I was constantly running around to catch a bus or train with never enough time to stop to buy food. So, I had a lot of time to sit and think about things, and when I wasn’t thinking about things I was thinking about my second-favorite subject, the Mid-Bucket.

The big thing weighing on my mind about the bucket is getting rid of its inherent oversteer. There’s just way too much weight on the rear axle for 4 equal-size tires, and not enough tire selection in 15″ rims any more to be able to correct it with bigs and littles without giving up a ton of front grip. While I realize that excessive front grip is the problem, my philosophy is don’t give away what you have too much of in relation, get more of what you don’t have enough of. So, while I’m willing to find larger rear tires to get more rear grip, I’m completely unwilling to get smaller front tires to get less front grip. This is a race car, you always, always, ALWAYS want more, especially more grip. It may be a race car that I’m going to drive to the race and (hopefully) drive home, but it’s still intended to race and win.

Before I get back to the bigs and littles there are ways to keep the tire size “square” (same on all 4 corners) and reduce oversteer without completely killing the front grip. That can be done with restricting wheel travel on the front while getting absurd amounts of travel on rebound on the rear with long travel shocks and bump stops that only allow the same amount of compression as the front suspension, so that as the car rolls over on the outer tires the inside rear tire is still carrying a lot of weight because it still hasn’t extended the spring fully.

Another way is aero loading the rear more. That one is a little more tricky as rear grip will vary as the square of speed, so the car will still be loose at low speeds but potentially plowing tight as the car goes faster. This is not the way to go. Obviously I’m going to go for as much downforce as I can get, but balanced, and after I get the mechanical grip balanced, not before and definitely not “instead of”.

And I keep falling asleep on the keyboard so Nighty-Night…

I survived the trip to the Lab Rat Keeper

I had a hard time getting out of the house for the trip to the LRK because Clint was “helping” me get dressed and out the door then decided he wanted back in right after I locked the door on my way out. I was on the wrong side of the street when the bus went by while I was trying to get across. That led to me walking about a mile and a half to catch the crosstown bus I wanted to catch at the station, after it was already en route. I got there in time and I even managed to check in to a bonus check-in 4 times while I was going to and from the LRK and breakfast.

So anyway, I was supposed to catch the bus that went by the main road at 0658 so I got up at 0600 to shower and dress and leave in time to catch the bus, but between Clint “helping” me get dressed and his deciding to turn around right after I locked the door I got going 5 minutes later than planned, resulting in my watching the bus go by from the wrong side of the street instead of riding it to the transit station for the crosstown bus. So I hoofed it to the bus stop where the crosstown bus turned on Beltline about another mile and a half from that stop. Then I sat and waited a few minutes for the bus and for my left foot to stop hurting. Part of the reason I missed the bus is my normal bed time is 0400 or so, usually later rather than earlier, and I get up about 1200 or 1300 instead of 0600. This meant I was running on very little sleep which means I was running slow, and still am. I have caffeinated to the limits, but I’m still having problems putting two coherent sentnces together in a row.

I’m gonna take that as a sign to hang it up and hit the sack.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable

The meds are working

My antidepressant in particular. My body is starting to get acclimated to not being depressed which is reinforcing. As I get used to not being depressed I feel less depressed, which makes me feel better so I feel less depressed… A virtuous circle rather than the vicious circle. And I’m actually getting other emotions that aren’t depression or anger. Some of them seem unusual to me, like fear, real compassion instead of the intellectual compassion I felt in the past.

Speaking of my body becoming used to not being depressed, my BP has changed. The systolic is still up there, but the diastolic, the measurement of how much my heart relaxes between beats, is the lowest it has been in over a decade. My body is remembering how to relax again. Even when I’m upset and there has been a litany of things to be upset about the last two weeks at Casa de El Poeta, I’m still mostly relaxed now. My heart is working more efficiently, it is having to beat less because every beat moves more blood with a more complete relaxation phase between beats. That is one of the big things happening as my body adapts to not being run by a depressed brain.

On the bike pump front I have been approved for a refund, contingent on my returning the broken pump by 3/31/17. Here’s where the problem is on that: I have to print a return label for the box they shipped it to me, and I don’t have access to a working printer. I have a printer but it doesn’t have any cables to connect it to my laptop. Some time between my youngest getting the printer for herself and putting it in her garage because she never had to print anything with it and giving the printer and a bag full of printer cables to me for my birthday the cables for that printer went bye-bye. So I’ll take any assistance I can get on that one.

On the hot rod front I found the actual weight of the Mopar 3.8L pushrod V6 – 413 pounds compared to the 545 pounds for an iron head SBC or 458 for the LS. The 41TE transaxle splits the difference between the TH350 and the 4T65E at just under 200 pounds by one source or between 150 and 200 from several sources. So for weight comparisons 3.8L/41te Mopar just over 600, 350/350 Chevy 675 plus 120 pounds of rear axle or just shy of 800 total, and the LS3/4L70E combo come to 625 plus that 120 pounds of rear axle for about 750 total. So assuming the 1700 pound dry weight for the Speedway kit is accurate my mid-Bucket will hit the scales right at 1500 dry.

And I’m running on 3.5 hours sleep because someone (coughmrsthepoetcough left the bedroom door open and Clint came in to snuggle about 90 minutes before I had my alarm set. I have been falling asleep all afternoon/evening even while I was trying to write this, which might explain the disjointedness of the composition as I was in a different frame of mind every time I woke up. I fell asleep 3 times typing the paragraph prior to this one.

Night-night, Opus the Unkillable

I just tweeted this but anyway

The anti-depressant works at keeping me from being depressed. What it doesn’t do is keep me awake, like at all. I have zero energy and can barely keep my eyes open, I’m yawning constantly and also keep doing that “wake up stretch” my body does when I’m fighting off sleep to get something done late at night. Except it is 1630 not 2330. I think my body is reacting to my efforts to put me back on a diurnal schedule rather than a nocturnal one. I keep getting up earlier each day but still end up staying awake until 0300 or 0400, even when I get up at 0800 or 0900 the day before. It’s just not fair, now that I’m not depressed I want to sleep like I am worse depressed than before I started taking the med…

Now I’m gonna force myself to take care of things around the house including myself and the cats. Write to you later.

PSA, Opus

I was on the road for 6 hours and my feet are killing me, and the Feed

I really should have gotten my toes done before doing all that walking, but one of the reasons I did all that walking was to deposit my check so I could get my toes done. At least this time I didn’t put any holes in my socks. So this put me back home starting filtering at 2030 instead of my normal 1430. Something else slowing me down is the almost 400 political campaign e-mails I got today in advance of the end-of-quarter deadline at midnight, because scattered amongst those money beggars are the online newsletters I check every day for an occasional bike story that doesn’t show in the Feed. I generally get on or two links a week out of that, sometimes way more, so it’s worth the effort.

OK finished filtering and it is 0322. For those not used to a 24 clock, that’s 22 minutes after Gigi loses her Internet every day, which happens at 3 AM here.

Up first is Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Former CM Rosendahl passes away, Calbike endorsements, and holding hands to stop texting

You have to start somewhere. HOUSE PANEL EXPLORES ROADSIDE SALIVA TESTING At the moment there is next to nothing known about weed and other legal or semi-legal drugs other than at some concentration they impair driving. Alcohol has a well-known effect on two critical aspects of driving, judgement and reaction time. What does pot effect? damifino.

We have one of these in the area I live and I was even a member of it at one time. Bike Advisory Committee Works for Better Bicycling in San Francisco You think anyone pays more attention to these guys than got paid to the Bike/Ped advisory committee at NCTCOG?

Infrastructure-related wreck in MD, no cars involved. Women injured in Crownsville bicycle crash There was not much coherent posted about this wreck, “they hit a bump and crashed” is the entirety of the report.

This is just sad. 7-year-old Cape Girardeau girl recovering from serious injuries after being hit while riding bike There is nothing blaming the victim here, perhps the driver of the suv that ran her over was (mostly) at fault. Nothing on the mode except that an intersection was involved.

I had a very hard tie understanding this when I first filtered it. Legislation would steer bicycle safety in right direction It’s still word salad in need of editing, but I think it says that bicycles would always have right of way over motor vehicles. That sounds very much like a presumed liability law, assuming that cyclists are not going to put themselves deliberately out there to get hit, because that really hurts and getting hit by a car takes a long time to recover from.

One new wreck and one old wreck from a NC. Cyclists struck by motorists Another left cross in NC, followed by a rehash of the Belize wreck.

Hmmm, drivers may not know they are driving virtually blind. Study illuminates big performance gap for car headlights Just like for bike lights, it’s not just the amount of light put out, it’s putting the light where it will do the most good.

Infrastructure from far West Canuckistan. Victoria Mayor says fatal collision involving cyclist was preventable The mayor is blaming the wreck on the lack of a barrier between the truck and the cyclist. Since the wreck was a right cross I have my doubts about that, but if they can do protected intersections like the Dutch… Maybe?

One of the strongest memes of this blog is don’t hit the pedestrians! Cyclist breaks little boy’s leg – then rides off: Can you help find the culprit? Especially don’t hit-and-run the pedestrians, even if they walk into the side of the bike as you are passing them. And watch out for little kids!

“Oh, the horrors I saw as I held the hand of the woman I ran over with my truck!” Lorry driver tells court how he pleaded with injured cyclist to ‘hold on’ This should not have been allowed to be presented to the jury. Remorse after the fact has no bearing on if an unlawful act occurred. But it seemed to have the desired effect on the jury. Husband of cyclist killed by London lorry cries as driver is acquitted and Family “devastated” as London lorry driver cleared of killing cyclist

Another UK cycling death. Tributes to ‘gentle giant’ cyclist Steve Wand who was killed in Westerham Good Friday collision The wreck appears to be due to human error on the part of the cyclist who died.

More UK infrastructure. ‘More imagination’ called for to combat thousands of extra cars coming into West Cambridge

More infrastructure, this time from the Emerald Isle. Petition for lights after cyclist death

Another one dies in Oz. Perth cyclist dies after being knocked off bike in Gosnells Did someone declare an open season on Oz cyclists?

Seriously, is there an open season on Oz cyclists? Three WA cyclists in car collisions

And it’s now 0457, and I can barely see the screen to type. I will come back to suffer some more after a few hours of sleep, blessed sleep.

Billed @€0.02, Opus