All newer cars isolate you from the road surface, something a motorcyclist must pay close attention to. I drive around bad patches where in a car you often don’t have that option. The car suspension was top notch, very smooth. Everything inside is power, though one gets the sensation none of this is built to last either in time or despite usage, but vehicle design has been heading that way for thirty years. Driving a motorcycle and never driving a car has noticeably changed my habits. I certainly brake harder and stay an extra few car-lengths behind—and I telegraph every turn, that is, I let the whole damn world know when I’m going to change lanes.
Medically, I felt the aftermath, or worded more accurately, after two hours I was barely just able to detect only the slightest of symptoms in my left arm. But like riding in the pickup, this was so mild as compared to what it can be that I’m again going to ask my physician to clear me for driving. (The answer will be, “No.”) I’ll try because the greater part of my driving is far less than two hours.
Let’s talk food, always a popular mention. Here is an item I found in Winn/Dixie. I don’t care to buy what I can make on my own. Here is a pack of sliced mushrooms and herbs to sauté in butter and pile on your steak. For those who still eat beef, I mean. I wasn’t sure what it was until I walked over and read the label. But I’d eat this right out of the box.
What woke me up was a craving for salt. Good thing I keep a big package of jumbo salted peanuts in the freezer, though jumbo in Florida means ordinary but priced higher. How’s the trailer camper coming? Wait until the weather clears for any progress there. Florida has weird weather reports, you know. In Texas, if they say 50% chance of rain, it means just that. In Florida, it means it will rain for twelve hours. Rain [generally] equals trivia around here. I don’t hunt for it [trivia], rather pick out what I think is good trivia from the bulk of what I read. But sometimes I will read trivia for the heck of it. Here are some tidbits from a single source, which I defy you to try and find:
Most often played radio song (as opposed to the most requested or highest selling or top hit) is “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” at eight million shots. The fifth most common shoplifted item is Preparation H, which contains shark oil that will shrink any tissue it is applied to. It is suspected that “many older women in Florida” use Prep H to reduce wrinkles. Madam Curie used her Nobel prize money to install indoor plumbing in her Paris house. And in case I’ve never mentioned it, the WD in WD-40 stands for “water displacement”
ADDENDUM
I watch youTube documentaries ("the spiritual successor to the History Channel"). One recurring myth is evidenced by all the military videos that go on about tank versus tank battles. The commentator does not know his history, neither do the scriptwriters. The embarrass themselves saying the wrong things about the scenes they splice together.
While there is some fine footage of tanks being shot up by other tanks, that is not how tank warfare takes place. Tanks are a mobile artillery piece meant to break through the enemy’s narrow front line and then mash up his rear and support system. This prevents the enemy from rushing troops forward to plug the gap.
You don’t need big guns or high speed to shoot up the other guy’s soup kitchens and railway locomotives. I can see how the idea of tanks slugging it out has an attraction to simple minds, but that concept is wrong. Rommel is the master of tank battles and I’ll tell you how it is done. You advance your tanks along with mobile infantry until you meet enemy resistance, then you probe for a weak spot. Should the enemy counterattack with tanks, you pull your own back over the nearest ridge, where you have hidden your anti-tank guns.
You sucker the enemy into throwing his armor against this artillery, which in Rommel’s case included the deadly 88mm anti-aircraft cannon. Then, when you’ve “brewed up” the enemy’s forces, you start your tanks up again and crash through the hole in his front line, with your infantry following on. Blitzkreig. The unsophisticated get this exactly backwards, as did many of the German generals until Guderian proved that drivers and tank mechanics were the war-winners of the future, not “professional soldiers”. That’s isn’t exactly something the boy-soldiers with their ribbons and sabers and fantasies like to hear.
So, it is pathetic how many newsreels are made comparing armor thicknesses and muzzle caliber. That is the juvenile’s fixation. Early German tanks were not much bigger than a Volkswagen and only armed with machine guns. They kicked butt because the Germans had the brains to understand the correct application of this machinery. The later, heavier tanks that came along were at their best hiding in ambush. They picked off enemy tanks at a distance, but that is not Blitzkreig. Other than Kursk, there was very little combat involving opposing tanks rushing at each other—because the Germans knew better.
This last item is my own thinking. I believe that the highly-rated T-34 was, in fact, built to this mistaken application. Like the US, the Soviets thought of tanks as a single weapon rather than part of a combined-arms system. They believed the answer to the panzers was masses of heavily-armored tanks and it cost them dearly in casualties until they learned the rules. The Germans replied in kind, but only after they were clearly losing the war and had little choice. That’s where the gun-armor-speed race began and it is still going on [among the lowest of IQs] today. Some people never learn.
Could I come up with a better solution? Definitely. Anybody could. But them generals and their flashing buttons and medals are not going to listen to you. What do you know about fighting a war? And $500 toilet seats? They need this information before you get an audience.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
