Last day you heard about the thousand dollar coffee maker (at the bakery) that went kaput. The service shop is in Boca, around a fifty-odd mile round trip taking half a day on the freeway during the perpetual traffic jam. No, not rush hour, that’s a different animal, I mean the traffic jam. Because they’ll give anybody a Florida driver’s license.So, my dilemma was no coffee or haul the machine up there this morning. You shouldn’t get tired of me saying how there are no boring trips on the batbike and today was fun. I got out on the truck route they call I-95 and turned on the Glades, a road I’ve heard about but never been on. Why, there is a campus right there if I ever saw one. The shop said the repair could be affected in a couple hours whence I asked for directions to the nearest book store. A Barn, near the University.
This was a classic. I pulled up and it was like the whole place had never seen a sidecar before. (Probably because they hadn’t.) I walked in like I owned the place and there was a blonde lady in the coffee shop. Yes, you. When the fire alarm went off, I was the guy who looked up and said “Ah, Lady Gaga.” Ma’am, I saw you watching me and all you would have had to do was say, “Hi.”
[Author's note 2021: that's a lame joke. Get it, the fire alarm and Gaga's music?]
But, in case you hadn’t noticed, the place was also full of college babes. So I thought I’d wait to see if you had the moxie to make the first move. You see, Toots, you were sitting in the middle of the most ferocious competition a woman your age could find. I was there two hours and both times I spoke to you (and handed you plenty of queues, highly intellectual ones I might add) was because I saw you looking at me. You instantly went into Ann Landers mode. You stare at me but the moment I show any interest, despite the situation, you throw up the same barriers as you would to a common masher. If you expect to ever meet a man with my brains, you’d better lighten up considerably.
Then, a high-speed back to the bakery to get the coffee machine installed for tomorrow. Hey, my morning coffee is at stake so call me Mr. Motivated. Here is the machine squatting in the sidecar at day’s end. Just think, today this coffee machine had more adventure than that bump-on-the-log lady forever alone at Starbucks.
The Honda engine grumbled a couple times on the return leg. For the benefit on non-mechanics, this engine is not the polished fifth generation model on contemporary Goldwings. This 1,000cc unit is like a complicated car motor. It was one of Honda’s first tries at making these things and it is reflected in design characteristics like one carburetor per piston. There are no computer diagnostics and the one saving grace of such a contraption is when something goes wrong, it is usually just that one thing. And being empirically designed, it is more tolerant of minor fault conditions.
Back to the bookstore, once again you see the change in business philosophy from a few years back. They flood the place with what sold well last month rather than a broad assortment that was once their greatest appeal. This creates the old self-fulfilling prophecy. As you carry ever more self-help and baby-name books, those sales indeed go up, but at the cost of your long-term customers who eventually start shopping elsewhere.
I trust by now everyone here knows I’m plugging the 3D printers as something to learn or beware of. And today I saw the first ads for supplies of the plastic spools. That’s an incredible rise from obscurity just months ago. So listen up. These printers are going to flatten us like a nuclear steamroller.
