Top billing today is one of the strangest sights I’ve seen. It is a closed down tombstone plant. Whatever happened was sudden enough that half-finished gravestones were left strewn in the front yard, where the weeds have taken over. Are you thinking the same thing, a “tombstone graveyard”. I should submit this to one of those captioning contests. My submission is, “I guess business wasn’t dead enough.”
The performance of the batbike is recorded more accurately now. On the freeway, the best mileage I got was 35.02 mpg, and in town, it falls to 28.35 mpg. This is comparable to my 1985 Cadillac. But I would not trade, that is where the comparison ends. There is nothing like the sidecar.And the sidecar is going to get better, I stopped in at Extreme Hitch to get a quote for a trailer hitch. A top notch job estimate of $319 is to my liking. The last hitch I had cost me $220 nine years ago. The proprietor was impressed by the sidecar setup and said he welcomed the custom job.
Next, I was at the library reading up on some intermediate level robotics, a lot of egghead stuff on the how and why of robot behavior, tracks versus wheels, and finer elements such as today’s trivia. On average, your robot wheel can climb over objects that are a third the total height of the wheel. It can go over at the sacrifice of battery power. Tracks, both in complexity and price, are not being considered. I found a fascinating robot built without a microchip, you’ll want to know this.
It was a tail-dragger, that means two wheels on an axle and a non-powered caster that followed along. Each wheel had its own motor, which turned at the same speed until a relay sensor detected an obstacle. Then, both wheels would reverse, but using ordinary resistor capacitor pairs, one wheel ran a little longer, thus turning the robot. Then after a stop, it would move forward again and repeat this process. I also found out that robots that turn in an arc rather than at right angles will navigate by a shorter path.
As a reward for this study (around four hours and twelve different books), I went to Harbor Freight, and in an astonishing aberration, got out of there spending less than $20. I kept the receipt, but I have no idea how I managed that. All kinds of neat stuff was on sale and that is like a candy store for men.
On the way back, I stopped at Sheabeen’s to discover they don’t have entertainment on Labor Day weekend, the only time in the year they don’t. They say business is so bad, and the place was empty. Actually, the whole town was quiet for a holiday weekend. There must be some explanation, maybe a fair or who knows. I took the evening off and read real estate material. There’s a forty acre farm for sale for $68,000 not too far away. The operation is bankrupt, but I have no intention of farming, I would let the forty acres be and get myself a log cabin. A pre-built I mean.
Another book caught my eye, an extensive work on “people without a history”, referring to the countless masses that went to work for wages as the world, led by Britain, became industrialized. It’s a new perspective, as it looks at how the function of the new factories and transportation caused the disruption of traditional family activities. Before the changes, they say and I had never thought much about it, that every community was a self-sufficient as possible. That makes sense, because travel was so difficult.
The example given is the American south. Due to cotton, railroads, and steamships, it became precariously dependent on outside support. Food came from the west, the cotton went out to factories in the north by rail, or to the English mills. Thus, a strike, a drought, a storm long distances away could impact the local labor market. Business became dominated by large industrial concerns and commodities could not be cheaply moved to distant factories or markets. The book covers cocoa, palm oil, cotton, opium, coffee, tea, and the plantation system needed to operate these elaborate farms, as profits can only be made when these products are moved in huge volumes. Here's a dude I met walking a mountain road as I skirted past Boulder. He was going to meet up his girlfriend for a trip to Yosemite. For the lift, he bought me a coffee in the "Pioneer Inn" in a little mountain town I forget already. Nederlands, that's it. I can now say I drove through the Nederlands on my sidecar. He's lived through a few of the winters and we talked about real estate. Prices are still outrageous. He reports last winter was so cold he burned eleven and a half cords of wood. At least like me, he didn't have to go chop it himself. He's a food server and never rode a sidecar before. Yeah, pal, that goes for lots, so here you are, immortalized in print.
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