Finally, the blog is nearly up to date. There was an equipment incompatibility that needed working out, maybe I’ll mention it later. It was an idyllic prairie day, slightly over 80 degrees, cloudless and dry. I rode the eBike miles along the Cherry Creek Spillway, shown nearby. The checkerboard structure in the background is like a small waterfall to enhance the scenery. In keeping with the climate, I’ve noticed increased interest in adobe housing. (I invented the tongue-twister “adobe abode” over a song I never wrote about ten years ago. Or is it an eye-twister?)
This found me in the library, looking into these structures. I’d once heard that adobe walls required a new layer of mud every year, but apparently new brick-making technique does away with that, or the walls are simply covered with a layer of stucco.During this study, I encountered a new term “embodied energy quotient”, which refers to the total energy needed to create a finished product. This made instant sense to me, as I separately developed a similar concept in the 80s, which I called “desert island accounting” (it’s in this blog somewhere, but I’m too lazy to hunt for it). An adobe brick has an energy quotient of 5,000 BTUs, which compares to red building bricks of the same dimensions at 189,900 BTUs. A major savings with adobe is that it is usually manufactured within 47 miles of where it is used.
Today’s trivia is log cabin statistic. When you build a log cabin, allow for 5 to 7 hours per log. Like the energy quotient idea, that includes the time to chop, trim, haul, shape, lift, and secure each log. More trivia, did you know in the old days, the carnival sideshow booths used to make a chalk mark on the backs easy-to-cheat chumps so the other shysters would take him. That is why the dupe became known as the mark.
I’m totally enjoying Colorado. For the afternoon, I drove down the reputedly longest city street in the USA, Colfax. All I can say is they should pave it. Around halfway between here and Denver, I finally saw the mountains, if only distantly through the smog and haze. I got right into the downtown area, then through it past some stadium, whence I turned around. Colfax goes to Golden, I’m told, but maybe another time. I stopped at a BK for coffee, my traditional manner of saying a town is okay by me.
Good, because I missed rush hour. I saw some kind of electric train system across the street, where there was some kind of protest going on. A small crowd carried signs demanding justice for Ryan Craig (?) but I could not get a decent photo. The police were showing lots of the usual unnecessary muscle for such a small crowd of teens. Shown here is a gang of SWAT types riding the buckboards. I’ll attempt to find out more, but I was inside the restaurant reading. I’m absorbed in an English mystery novel called “The Twelfth Juror”, an enjoyable departure from the American style which is wearing thin.The book portrays the backgrounds of the jurors as a murder trial progresses, unbeknownst to the court that the daughter of the accused is crashing at the house of one of them. She had befriended some buskers and moved in to hide from testifying against her father. The prose seems quaint, as the people visit in the drawing room, and points on your driver’s license are called endorsements. I also borrowed one of those junk mail catalogs for my morning coffee read, and those have changed.
You know the mail order catalogs I mean. The ones that show a tempting table of food until you find out they are selling the tablecloth. It’s full of the kind of things I never buy and I see that the average pricing of this junk is now something close to $30. There are always all manner of gadgets to keep you essentials organized. Hey, there’s few things I like better than to have all my essentials organized, especially when I get up too early.
Second last, don’t let me forget to record Marion’s dog, Ben, drinking water. I picked up that he does it with a very constant, distinct rhythm, and I need an unusual percussion sound for my take of on “La Bamba”. Johnny Cash made fistfuls of cash with a song directed at inmates. I figure I can target a similar sized audience with the first music directed at illegal immigrants from the American vantage point. Then I could claim that if not for migrant farm workers, your music would cost $5.00 a pound.
Last, and this is the minimum I must report according to blog rules. I got that warning twinge of numbness down my left arm into my ring finger, a telltale sign of heart trouble. By now, I know the onset takes a week, so what was I doing a week ago that triggered this? I had to figure it out, then it hit me. When the sidecar was towed, I rode to town with the driver in the truck cab. I should have known better, but I wasn’t thinking. And now, stupid me, I’ll be in [very gradually diminishing] pain the next two months.
ADDENDUM
This part is totally for amusement of the more cerebral types. Marion and I had a conversation about fingertip numbness and I afterward thought it might be of some interest to the reader to present the scope of that talk. The intent here is to show we are a far cry from two codgers discussing who is worse off.
There are five definable prehensile grips, the ones that use the human opposable thumb. Marion now picks up most objects using the lateral grip, recognized as the way you would take or replace a book from a shelf. My condition favors the opposing, or pencil grip, and the palmar, the way you hold a sponge or sanding block. The least used by we both has become the cylindrical or spear-thrower grip, and the spherical, used when you screw in a light bulb.
Walk your imagination through these five hand patterns. I learned this from studying robots, not medicine. If you found that interesting, consider the two non-prehensile grips or how you would manage without a thumb. They are the spread grip, like how you open a drawstring bag or try to put on a glove with one hand. And the chimp grip, like when you pull open a drawer handle.
I dunno. How would you rate this dialogue on a scale of one to ten? Carefulabout whom your answer says the most.
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