Dang! That popped oil seal really did a number on all my best clothes. I suppose I would have wanted it to happen that way. On an epic journey across America. The oil left stains that defy the orthodox methods of removal. I’m not ready to give up, as I know of too many instances where one more try, one more cycle, and the oil disappeared. Today I am going to try spraying the stains with WD-40.
Anyway, what do my notes reveal? That scooter wiring is basically 14 lights, 7 switches, and 9 gadgets. I define a gadget as a device whose primary role is some other function than lighting up. I believe the hour wasted documenting this was well spent. The numbers in front of each device are the number of wires needed to operate it. We are dealing with approximately 55 wires. That means we are getting somewhere—but using said different approach.
That somewhere we get won’t be at the new guy’s place. He never called so I dropped over to knock on his door last evening. Some skinny hag, who I took to be his girlfriend’s mother, stuck her head out, screech-owled at me that he “doesn’t live here” and bolted the door. See, isn’t it great to be back in Florida with all these nice people? It isn’t just guitarists who have attitudes that plain stink.
Trivia. The North American Indians viewed the original European explorers as gods because there were no women on the ships. The more I learn about these tribes, the less I view them as a great civilization. They were constantly at war with each other and torture of prisoners was expected. It now appears they never developed the skill to give place names to geographic features. Instead, they called them by such terms as “that river over there” or “the place where buffalo sleep”. Many of the Indian names on a modern map translate into meaningless phrases.
That was an onerous task, but all trip tools have been cleaned to a buff shine, tested, oiled, and properly put away for the winter. It requires four types of lubricant oil even for my small collection. Mineral oil (also used for shining metal), castor oil, three-in-one (a detergent gear oil), and drill press oil, which smells like it is silicon-based. The camper is in ventilation mode with both hatches wide open.
Today’s entry will be short, I have that callout on Adams that came in while I was in Portland (at the library) two weeks ago. Good, that will pay handsomely just when I need it most. I suppose I'm lucky, but the harder I work, the luckier I get. One must suppose if this client could possibly have found even one computer guru in Florida who could fix his software problem, he would not have waited for me to get back. That's why they pay me the big bucks even years after I got out of the field. Careful now, I may have said that for the benefit of the jerkface guitarist I just directed to this blog.
Let me get back for a moment to this guitar player dork I just traded words with. He is your Type 5 guitarist, the one who claims he wants to “join” or “form” a band, but his hidden agenda is to force the rest of the band to learn his whacked-out list and moan when they just will not cooperate. Here are the six types of guitar players:
Type 1: Can play isolated riffs, but can’t strum through entire songs
Type 2: Knows 10 to 12 songs, thinks that is enough to get into a band
Type 3: Plays the “Golden 22” all other guitarists play (“Hotel California”)
Type 4: Mr. Cool Jazz-Blues Dylan coffee-house writer of “originals”
Type 5: Mr. Obscure Flip-side Rock and Blues self-appointed aficionado
Type 6: A true musician.
ADDENDUM
Here is a transcript of the notes I hand-wrote before beginning to study the diagram about. I thought them to be revealing:
“All Chinese scooter electrical diagrams look the same to me. Tackling the wiring systematically, that is my goal this week. The diagrams are schematics, which don’t help as much as a chart of each component. I may have to create those, since they are the type of thing you can look for and not find until you have almost completed the task on your own. The first thing, I suppose, is to find each part that is grounded. That is usually a major step, since the ground is a shared component. That means I should first create a list of all the electrical parts. I have nothing to go on but what I’ve learned about confronting confusing new situations.”
