Reduce, reuse, recycle… your food

I’m dead sure the more squeamish among you just had shudders of nausea at the thought of applying any of the 3 “R”s to food, but I have discovered a way of getting healthy salty snacks cheap. There is a method to my madness.

You might notice that this jar of “Polish dill Spears” looks a little too orange for Polish dills. That’s because I reused the pickle juice to make more “pickles” by draining a can of sliced carrots and dumping the drained slices into the jar.

I have been eating these for a few days now after leaving them to marinate for a week. Now instead of having pretzels or tortilla chips when I crave a salty snack I stab a few slices of pickled carrots. Salty cravings satisfied, healthy snack eaten and money saved, all in one operation.

I used a can of carrots from the pantry that had been sitting around “for an emergency” about a year. I think they cost from $0.50 to $0.60, anyway cheap. The pickle spears had likewise been around a while before I finished them off and put the jar pack in the fridge to save the pickle juice. Mrs. the Poet and I had been discussing low calorie options for my salty snacks to alleviate leg cramps. Mrs. the Poet is a good cook but she tends to under-salt the food. I prefer this to over-salting, but it does cause me to sometimes need to eat something very salty to keep from getting cramps. The “recipe” is super simple. The lazy way is to buy a big jar of pickles and save the juice after you finish eating them, then drain and dump a small can of sliced carrots and allow to sit. The slightly more ambitious way is to buy a big jar of pickles and drain them into a separate container that contains the can of drained sliced carrots. I’m doing the lazy way first because that’s the way it worked out. I had the jar of pickles I finished and so on.

But are they any good? Well I think the quality of the pickled carrots is highly dependant on the quality of the pickle juice, and Vlasic is pretty good stuff. The texture of the carrots is basically what came out of the can, so you might want to try different brands of carrots to see which one works better. I think that all in all we can count this experiment a success that should be expanded upon.

Now if you will excuse me there is una cerveza with my name on it. Really the guy at this party knows I will probably be late so he put my name on one of the bottles so I will at least get one beer.

Opus the Unkillable

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May the Fourth be with you! Happy Star Wars Day

And a belated happy Beltain as well. There is a bawdy couplet that is both inappropriate and inaccurate for TX to mark Beltain: “Hurrah, hurrah the First of May! Outdoor (fornication) begins today!” There’s a different word that goes inside the parentheses, as even married couples can take part in this activity. And we’ve been doing it outdoors (or could if we wanted to) since the middle of February around here. Twenty-first century TX is much warmer this time of year than England in the Dark Ages. But once it got warmed up outdoor sexual activity was much easier to hide what with it being dark all the time. [ba-dum tssshh]

Also with today being Star Wars Day, that makes tomorrow national Get Drunk on Mexican Beer And Mangle Spanish Day, AKA Cinco de Mayo. I suppose we could add Insult the French Military to that as what is being celebrated was the defeat of the French by the Mexican Army. Thus beginning the poor reputation of the French in the US.

And I have a bunch of things I need to take care of, so I’ll see you later.

Opus the Unkillable

It’s hard to tell sometimes where inspiration will strike

This is an extreme example of bigs and littles, but I think I’m going to steal the name anyway.

There are some major differences, first and foremost being that my car is real and not a pen-and-ink animation from the 1960s. Another major difference is the OG TGS was front-engine and mine is mid-engine. Then there was the matter of kind of racing. Tom’s day he raced the TGS in everything from drag races to rallies to balloon races (yes really, with oars no less). You can do that when your car only exists as a series of drawings and xerox copies. Mine is a bit more specialized for a single competition as an autocrosser/Solo Racer (same racing just different tire rules). I mean besides actually existing IRL, I’ll have to change wheels, tires, shocks, and springs and maybe an anti-roll bar to go from one competition to the other. This is actually much less involved than it sounds because I’m designing for making the change as easy as possible.

But the official name of the Mid-Bucket as put on the entry forms is Thunderbolt Grease Slapper 2. Or maybe 2000? Nope just 2, not even going to get fancy with II.

All of this is because I spent hours trying to find 16 X 12 rear wheels for the 5 X 4½ bolt circle on my car. I decided to look at pictures of cars to relax a bit while still staying on-point, and Tom Slick came up somehow. The images brought back pleasant memories from childhood, which I’m now going to destroy with new memories from adulthood… 😈

I have to go take my walk now and think some more.

Opus the Unkillable

I give up

I couldn’t do it. There was no way to get the oversteer out of the Mid-Bucket without going to bigs and not-so-bigs. The extreme rear weight bias just was too much for all my tricks and tweaks. I can’t fight physics and no matter what I did I still ended up with oversteer at the limit. Sometimes it was only hang the tail out and go slow oversteer, but most of the time it was understeer up to a point, balanced and then snapping loose and driving backwards off the road.

Now running racing slicks is no problem, bigs and littles is a common setup for mid-engine race cars. Lots of choices that would be balanced at the limit. Just-driving-around tires I also have solved as this is a common setup for hot rods. No, where this is a problem is street tire autocrossing, the thing I’m building this car for. Naturally.

If I stay with 15″ rims I’m pretty much boned as the 245/40 size is pretty much the widest tire I can get in ≥200 UTQG wear rating. I can use that in the rear and run a 195/50 front and get balance but not ultimate grip. My competition will be running 335 wide in the front, and even wider in the back. Granted I’m driving <1600 pounds and they're almost twice that, but still I'm going to be down on grip overall compared to the competition.

The next size up in rims with performance tires is 17", which gives me a whole lot more choice in sizes. The downside is I lose the automatic lowering for racing because the 17" rim increases the diameter of the tire by 2", it's just physics. For the same width and profile the 17" rim is always going to be 2" taller than a 15" rim. I'm still going to be a tiny bit shorter than my street tires on 15" rims, but not by much. And the thought comes to mind that if I'm going to have to use tall tires to race on why do I need to get just driving around tires? I'm not going to be driving a traditional Bucket so why run traditional street wheel and tire sizes? The treadwear requirements for the street tire autocross make the tires usable for daily driving, so why not drive them on the street?

And I'm starting to repeat myself while I type (I deleted 2 whole paragraphs) so this is a good time to quit.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable

Sometimes it is hard to stop thinking about a subject

But I manage anyway. 😀 Anyway while I was out for my walk I started thinking about if I wasn’t trying to make a T-Bucket what else could I do with the engine and transmission out of a FWD minivan, and of course I started thinking AWD autocross racer because hey, turn it sideways (back to longitudinal instead of transverse) and you have a permanent transfer case with driveshafts front and rear. Or AWD T-Bucket (except the driveshafts would eliminate even the possibility of a passenger seat). One real good reason not to is weight, the extra differentials would seriously jack the weight up to about 1900 pounds for the Bucket and not far from that for the autocross racer. The other reason was how hard it would be to get a reasonable final drive with so much reduction to the driveshafts from the transmission. But it was interesting to think about.

I also thought about using different length axle shafts to make a single-seat mid-engine A-Mod autocross car. Put a 3 gallon fuel cell between the engine and driver’s seat and it could be just about the right length and balance. The trick then becomes left to right balance, getting the CG of the engine on the CL of the vehicle, and then finding or making drive shafts to fit. The wheels and tires wouldn’t be as bad because there are lots of race cars with severe rear weight bias and tire sizes to compensate for that. The closest thing to difficulty with that would be getting wheels to fit the bolt pattern of my hubs.

Anyway, I think about stuff when I walk, and that was what I was thinking about Saturday on my walk.

Opus the Unkillable

The parts are here

A few hours after I posted yesterday the Big Brown Truck deposited a box of hot rod parts outside my front door. The axle and some support bits were sorta inside as the box was rapidly disintegrating from the stress of trying to contain the axle. The driver and I did an inventory and the only things missing were the complementary stickers.

These parts get me just that much closer to completing the Mid-Bucket. The axle brackets are a big help because now I know what size radius rods to order for the 4-bar. One thing I did notice was there is a lot of extra hardware in the steering arm kit. There are enough conical washers for 4 rod ends when there are only 3 places to put rod ends on the axle and two of those will not require that much articulation to need conical washers. There are also flat washers and spacers that are equally unlikely to get installed simply for lack of room. Seriously I put enough conical washers for one rod end on the driver’s side spindle and the rest of the spacers and washers barely fit on the passenger side, and that’s without the rod ends installed. So obviously some of the extra hardware is for the Pittman arm on the steering box. Or as options for fitting the tie rod around the leaf springs the kit would normally use if I was doing it like it was intended by the manufacturer . But I didn’t buy the full kit, just the axle and steering arms and steering hardware, because I’m building something unique. Most of this stuff would have also gone on the Sprint-T had I been given a different engine and transmission 😀

Sorry I didn’t post an unboxing video but because the box was falling apart when it got here the driver and I had to do a quick inventory to make sure nothing I paid for escaped. Everything was accounted for but it precluded doing an unboxing video.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable

Happy Marijuana Day

Somehow the date 4/20 has become associated with marijuana culture. I happen to be old enough to know how this happened.

Back when high schools in California had ash trays in the desks for smokers (yes for reals) and HS got out at 4:15 (1615) they would meet at 4:20 to pass a joint around before catching the bus home. The code for this became 4-20 as in “4-20?” “Yeah dude, 4-20.”

So now we celebrate World Marijuana Day April 20th every year because some kids in CA wanted a toke to take the edge off after school got out.

PSA, it’s a freebie, Opus the Unkillable

The weirdness continues

I woke up yesterday to let the cats out of their room and it looked like a crime scene. Blood everywhere and of course my first instinct is to assume the cats got into a fight with each other and look for injuries. Neither cat has so much as a scratch visible… So I’m taking a closer look at the clumps of hair that’s mixed in with the blood and it’s much darker than either of the cats’, not that they have any missing in those amounts. But hey, don’t take my word for it, I took pictures.

All that blood and there’s not a mark on the cats, either of them. It’s a for-real locked room murder mystery, only in this case we have two suspects but no ID on the victim. I mean I know it was one or both of the cats, but what did they kill? There wasn’t enough blood for a human, so it has to be an animal of some kind, but how did it get in their room and WTF was it?!?

And I thought yesterday’s post was strange…

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable

I must have died again and didn’t notice

Today in the mail I got a frequent traveller card for the ferry on the river Styx. I tried to take a picture.

Now either I have lost count of the times I died, or I am the butt of an elaborate prank. Buuuuuut I don’t know of anyone who can make an object I can see but not photograph. I don’t know of any physical process that would allow me to see but not photograph an object I can hold in my hand.

Now as to why I have a frequent traveler card for Charon’s ferry (I had to translate from the Greek on the card) I have no real idea, but a couple of hypotheses. One is my next career is going to be a Psychopomp, a guide of souls to the afterlife. Since I don’t actually see dead people like the kid in Sixth Sense that’s not high on the list of probabilities. Another possibility is I am literally immortal but will sometimes get “knocked out” to be dead for a little while and this card is to identify me as “just visiting” the afterlife. That one is not good because getting killed hurt the last time I can remember. Well, not the being dead part, that was fine, and the actual getting killed was so quick I really didn’t notice. The coming back alive to a body that was badly broken, yeah that shit hurt like a [$UNPRINTABLE]. So yeah if you find yourself dead I strongly suggest staying dead because there is probably a pretty painful reason why you died.

So supposition time: why do I have a frequent traveller card for πορθμείο του Χάροντα, and why can’t I take a picture of it? Is it because of the number of round trips I have made or the number I will make in the future? If I have died more than once why can’t I remember? This whole line of thought is disturbing. BTW there are boxes on the back with marks in 3 of them and something in Greek on the tenth box, so I get a prize? What kind of prize do you get for dying 10 times? And does 3 marks mean I have died twice in such a way as to “not know” I’m dead? That’s even more disturbing than knowing I died once and came back.

So, what would you do with a frequent flyer card for the afterlife?

Opus the Unkillable

I get lots of ideas on my walks

On today’s walk I ruminated in background on 2 problems: enough room for fuel tanks, and getting as much surface as possible for downforce including the windshield. Also I’m not a fan of the pinched cowl of the ’23-’25 model T, it offends my aesthetic and aerodynamic senses (which may be the same thing).

So, what to do? Well obviously blend the cowl into the windshield and the sides of the body, so that the widened firewall and hood sides flow the air smoothly down the sides of the body while the transition from the hood top to the windshield deflects the air up and forces the car down into the road, complementing this downforce generating nose .

This is what I have to work with as shown with SAD (stick aided design). I literally duct-taped a thin stick to the side of the body to establish a smooth curve from the sides to the front axle past the firewall.

My idea is in side profile to roll the hood over from the nose to just below the base of the windshield and make a smooth transition to the 30° angled windshield with the hood sides making an equally smooth transition to the side of the body like the stick taped to the side does, only all the way down to the frame, including the tuck-under at the bottom like the rest of the body. I’m still debating whether or not to put the little side fences on the hood to keep the air on it or to roll the top similar to the bottom or the top contour of the firewall.

This will look cool with the Monoposto seating in the center of the car. BTW that body mod will be 36″ wide at the original firewall and taper down to 29″ at the front axle, compared to the 27″ wide firewall it has now.

And it’s getting late again.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the fat but Unkillable