March 4, 2015
Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 4, 2014, electronics and frankenfood.
Five years ago today: March 4, 2010, Alberta Summer Games.
Ten years ago today: March 4, 2005, I was taking
a computer class at the time.
MORNING
We have a tank tread. Of sorts. Yep, I learned a lot more than I bargained for. It is, if you consider it so, merely a type of rigid chain. A chain with all the links oriented in one plane. Studying these things on paper is a considerable help before you start. Despite carefully marking and scoring the pieces in advance, I still managed to make wrong cuts and ruin around eight links.
The first tradeoff is the size of the links. The smaller the links, the smoother your “ride” but the weaker the individual piece. It comes out looking like those toy snakes. Did you know they actually used to put neat toys like that in the popcorn box? Now you get a sticker or a corporate logo tattoo. It doesn’t take much to buy off the millennium crowd. Did you know they consider themselves the greatest generation ever? That’s crazy, all boomers know it was us.
These are the six links of the tread that fit without further machining. At least I now know where the tolerances can be a little looser. Sorry for the rough look of things, but I do carpentry the way most guitar players play bass. Not worth a shit. But seriously, I sincerely feel I missed out on an important part of life not having this kind of “shop” experience in my background. They say there is nothing in the system holding you back. That is just not true. The system is not forgiving where it needs to be.
I got to the bakery late. The nice part of early retirement is you still have some energy to enjoy life. And travel takes it out of me, when I return I traditionally need a few days to recover. Not from exhaustion, but to just kick back and ponder the trip. Don’t tell me I travel differently than most people, I already know that. I would not bother leaving home if I had to be another tourist. Here’s one example.
It was as perfect a motorcycle day as I said, no exaggeration. So on the southbound leg, along the east shore of Okeechobee, I passed probably 80 motorcycles heading the opposite way. Most of them had an old lady on the back. Just my luck, can you see what this looked like. All the bikers are packing their momma, and what do I have in my rumble seat? A band saw. What, did I trade my woman for some shop gear?
Explanation: the band saw kind of looked like a fat girlfriend in the passenger seat until you went zipping past. By nightfall, there was a biker bar in some central swamp township laughing their faces off at me. “Did you see that guy’s ugly girlfriend? The teeth on her!”
NOON
“Will somebody tell me what kind of world we live in when somebody dressed up like a bat gets all my press?” --The Joker (Batman)
Here is the damage to the front brake. You can just make out the fleck of bare metal where the disk rubs into the housing. The clearances on this type of brake are not that great to begin with and early Goldwings are notorious for uneven pad wear. It’s my understanding that is what causes this brand of problem. Should I fix this now or next month? After Okeechobee, I’m not really planning any more excursions until at least April. Let me sleep on it. As in really sleep. (It later transpires the brake damage was due to a bad axle bearing.)
Still fascinated by the caterpillar tread technology, I spent a few hours examining the “rejects”, tread pieces that were slightly off center or otherwise not within specs. It turns out if you are not too fussy about certain spacings, most of the links can be made to work. So this afternoon it was just me and the drill press. The work requires an amazing amount of very careful drilling.
Or maybe I should say patient drilling, the kind that would drive Agt. M around the bend. His approach is the opposite of mine. Oh, he'll make it fit if it doesn't. But fine or delicate saw work--right around the band. Twice. But it [the saw] works and I believe I may devote some time in the coffee shop designing something that looks nice. Enough with this functionality, already. And because there is no coffee around here. In fact I’m down to one tea bag and no soy sauce. What kind of operation am I running?
I bothered to read the shop manual for the bandsaw and it is clear why the former owner gave up. There are a series of blade adjustments that he didn’t bother with. The blade, a 9” model, has to track fairly accurately and that was never set according to the rule book. I’m looking at it now. Also, he used the tension lever to grab the blade rather than the correct knob. I found it the first time the blade slipped.
And that is how a budding robot-builder type of old guy spends his afternoon. Oh, did I mention the seamstress lady came over to chat last time I stopped for a brewski? She has, by now, spotted me at the market with the motorcycle and heard about my trip around the lake already. She informs me she has a cabin in Buckhead Ridge. By pure coincidence, that is only a few miles from the $200 per month rental spots I mentioned y’day. I said that was nice, but thought, “You stupid broad. Now you tell me?”
I know what some of you are thinking. But I also know myself, and no relationship where I ever had to work at it ever goes anywhere with me. And this is the gal that never called back. In fact, she was a real dud on the phone when I called her the following afternoon after we met. There is a narrow window, gals, to letting me know you are interested. I’m ex-phone company. None of this bullshit that you finally get around to me when the heroes don’t work out for you.
Before I continue, here’s a picture of the mini-recording studio. Almost. The studio is to the right side, but what’s a studio without the capability to play old Roy Rogers movies? Them’s the stampeding horses of the “Double R” ranch, “Under California Stars”. Isn’t it quaint how he plays the progressive cowboy, with trucks, telephones, and running water?
Anyway, back to the situation. That got me to thinking, I’ve never heard a country song on that theme. Or if I have, I don’t recall it at the moment. Close, but let me think about that. Lots of songs about lovers leaving and coming back, but whenever they first meet, it is always instant paradise. No country songs spring to mind about the situation where the gal hesitates a moment too long and loses the initiative because the guy will not take second choice.
Stay with me here, do you see what I’m pointing out? Except for love, because love has had no time to happen, every whining country element is present [in the situation]. Just not in the traditional order for another country love song. Cowgirl gets rejected, not because the cowboy is too fussy, but because cowgirl isn’t fussy enough.
With a guy like me, Toots, you do not wait until AFTER you find out I have a nice motorcycle to tell me you’ve got a cabin on the lake. Pig will fly before I fall for that one. I’m just arrogant enough to figure the difference between myself and ordinary men can be detected by a reasonably sharp gal. It has happened a lot more than once, you know. And I don’t mean late the following afternoon at the soonest. Am I ordinary myself? It depends. Can ordinary me write anything that people are still reading ten years later?
AFTERNOON
I know you all are dying to see the tank tread. Here you go. Warts and all. The yellow tint to the work area pictures is not a camera fault. The lighting in that area is purposely not neon. Here's my first tank tread or necklace or start of something great or not. Nice, huh?
So, there is a lady advertising “perfect harmonies” that would like to collaborate with a local band. I followed a couple of her links, that was enough. What got me was not her singing, because she had that unusual ability to leap from a chest voice to a head voice on a single note. Kind of like yodeling but with other vowels beside a, e and u. This can be marvelous for country, if done right. But the lady, name’s Tiffany, will never come close and I’ll tell you why.
She’s obviously 30-ish and still trying to get away with the giggling teeny-bopper act. It gets a little worse here because, now get this, she acts “blonde”. I’m saying there are certain ditzy mannerisms that only look right when a blonde does them. And Tiffany’s hair is jet black. I’m not going to describe it other than to say it looked so strangely idiotic to me that I actually watched her video in numb disbelief.
I might add something to the other 30-ish women out there. Shacking up is not shocking any more. It isn’t even anything special, so please cease trying to be cute about it. We may be wrong by the millions, but I believe the way it works is you are supposed to be famous
before you spread around the sordid details of your life. And even then, only when asked.
Next, I read some want ads for writers, to test the water. Be aware, aspiring beginners, that publishing is one of the most tightly controlled industries on the planet. You will fall into line or you will not earn a penny, ever. Unless you sell your self-bound booklets at the flea market. Also, it seems to take 100,000 readers to support one independent freelance writer. Fewer if you are a columnist, but like copywriting, writing newspaper articles won’t necessarily make you an author.
My favorite is still the agencies who will take you on if you write and sell your own book. It’s like music agents who want you to promote yourself. Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking myself. And you should read the ads, it’s not like they just want you to sign a few covers locally. They want you to pay for a national blitz. There was a day when I hoped the Internet would put those slackwits out of business.
NIGHT
I pored over the bandsaw manuals, I have the Ryobi BS-903 model, missing the fence and the lamp. That’s okay, I don’t really trust fences and the light I can get anywhere. One of the fussiest settings are the blade guides, the little rollers and pins directly above and below the section where you do the cutting. The pieces are sometimes set 1/64” and I have nothing to even measure that with.
Nonetheless, I can see how the last owner took it out of the box and started sawing. I won’t know the service interval of this saw until I wear out at least one blade. According to the book, that is really the only part that ever needs replacing so I’m not worried about any internal damage. But the instance I see set screws and tiny tolerances, I don’t let outsiders touch the equipment. I’ll cut it for you.
Next, I found a 1986 Goldwing with just 16,000 miles on it. And I was a hundred miles from it on Monday. It’s in Winter Haven and the asking price $1,500 for it. It’s a kind of purplish brown color, Honda did that back then. But I don’t care, I’m checking the frame dimensions. I believe ’86 was the year they changed the frame, but not until May. Up to that time, the frame was identical to my 1978. (I'm informed later this bike had the speedometer turned back 13,000 miles and had just been rolled.)
Except for two exceptionally strong and welded metal pegs, the sidecar can be removed and bolted onto the new frame in an hour. There are three attachment points. The front edge of the engine, the rail along the bottom, and the right passenger foot-peg post. I can certainly afford this and I could use the extra power. The Goldwing went from 1000cc to 1800cc in the same time.
It’s important to know I only think some of this stuff. It is as tricky as ever to get straight answers out of anybody. But I do know from four years ago when I first looked into a motorcycle as primary transportation that there are a lot of these Goldwings out there in pristine condition and the riders are, by and large, getting too old to do what I’m doing.
Now while on the topic, I’ve since heard a rumor that Honda continued on using the same frame for something called an Aspencade. Some say it is the same bike, others say not. If so, what year did they continue that until? The frame is the deal-breaker, and I don’t care Aspencade or Goldwing, as long as it fits. Face it, I’m sold on this sidecar enterprise until the day I die. But it has to be my Russian sidecar, not those custom builds with cupholders and A/C.
If I live that long, I plan to ride until I am 72, just so you’ll know I’m thinking ahead on that, as well.
Last Laugh
