I also got covered with grease. Good old brake dust mixed with leaky oil grease. Let’s keep this going, I never want to be helpless again. Or at least not until it don’t make a difference any more. My blood pressure has been under control over a year and I know how to avoid stress now. But no cartwheels, I estimate I’ve got half the strength I did in 2003. That’s the year we drove the toothpicks to California.I’ve stayed in to watch “Geronimo” on Crackle. Not bad, it leaves out a lot, like how 23 Apaches gave the runaround to US Cavalry for years. Great scenery, some of which I may see shortly. The movie tends to show the Apache in greater numbers and better armed than was ever possible. It was probably a good thing for the Cavalry that Apache tradition prevented them from using tactics that would have worked much better.
The next outer space waste of time is the International Space Station. It’s another glorified shuttle boondoggle that will produce nothing of consequence. See addendum for my no-nonsense opinion. I’ve always said the intelligencia should head for Mars now when we are only outnumbered a thousand to one. Do you think the free riders on this planet are going to let us taxpayers just up and leave? They all want equality and rights, but only insofar as those things cost you money.
The Honda goes in the shop, probably Monday. By salting away a little for the last five months, both on my food budget and cash, there should be no problems with this trip being first class by my standards. To me, first class does not involve an extra sandwich or a chick flick but the option to stop and see everything that interests me.
A beam measurement shows that the eBike with the front tire released (it is designed for that) will fit across the back of the Honda. I will leave that decision until the last moment because I don’t yet know what else I will take, as in, can I live a month without my guitar? Don’t know, never done it in twenty years. I’ve cleared with the office to be late on my rental a few days. My last major trip was nine years ago to San Diego, and I flew back. Except for the side trip to Wilmington, NC, I have not left the state since.
That’s how Valdosta got chosen. The first place on the map out of Florida on a road I’ve never taken. And that is good enough for me. I’m have thoughts of taking the freeway on day one just to get out of here as quickly as possible. Not that I dislike the place, but I’ve been here too long without a break. And I’d like some assurance that the Honda can get me over the border in a day’s drive.
ADDENDUM
The newest lander, Curiosity, has reached Mars, forty years behind schedule (thanks to the useless shuttle program). I hope this is the trip that discovers life, not because I’m against religion, but I’m weary of listening to people who attribute religion to everything they don’t understand. I know nothing will ever shut these people up, but they’ll have to backpedal like crazy over the uniqueness of life issue for all time to come. I don’t respect people who do that instead of admit they were wrong and apologize and make amends and change their ways. I am not wishy-washy about my views on the direction of the American space program. NASA is a mess because they try to please everyone.
I believe the proof [of life] will be found at ground level, by one of these robots, and not by the expensive orbiting cameras like HiRISE. Orbital cameras discovered what, a wind devil? Whoopie. Part of the reason this rover might find life is that it is not designed to do so. It will try to land near a mountain and then climb it, with touchdown scheduled for Sunday morning (no links here, go get your own). The odds? Well, nearly 70% of all hardware sent to Mars has failed.
If this one makes it, it is a huge beast. Rugged and nearly 2,000 pounds, it is searching for “ancient” life-forms, showing that NASA still can’t get their bureaucratic heads on straight. Allow me: the plan is to find out of Mars in inhabitable and establish a human colony there. Of course, like Antarctica, the military, political, and religion people will reach this pristine environment and start parading, corrupting, and preaching like the primitive savages they are.
But this human colony is not intended for mass immigration. It is intended to leave certain types behind to stew in their own juice. The only question to be asked then is who gets picked for a seat on the last flight? Me, or shall I mention a few names here? I never did write that book premised on planets that got colonized by certain “types”. In fact, I don’t know where I stored the research. Let me recap that planned publication, or TV series, that I once planned to write.
The plot was that due to a profiling mix-up, flights to a newly a discovered solar system wound up depositing, for example, all the feminists on one planet, all the vegetarians on another, and so on. Then, a meteor strike wipes out NASA for sixty years. The book is about what the rescuers from Earth find when they return to these planets where each group was left to their own resources (to stew in their own juice).
I’d planned a series of 24 books. For instance, the planet that got all the welfare cases resorts to cannibalism rather than work. The planet that got all the queers decided that wasn’t such a great idea after all and banned it. The planet that got the people like me had enshrined privacy and private property, gossip became a capital offense, war was unknown and no taxes were ever collected because nobody would take the job. But there was a massive inheritance tax so nobody lived well without contributing work in their own lifetime. And to make it Utopia, everything was user-pay.
