May 5, 2015

Yesteryear
One year ago today: WIP 2014, intense computer read.
Five years ago today: WIP 2010, my ex, again.
Six years ago today: WIP 2009, my 2nd most famous photo.

MORNING
           When weather makes top story, it’s really a slow day over here. What is going on out there [over the horizon]? I’d say things are more than a little wet. I’m all battened down here, everything is high and dry. The cooler days when it rains are okay but it sure turns things into a mess. Time to make a pot of stew. It is 5:30 AM and too early to zip over to the bakery.

           The next step with the pedal pub planning is to check the price of parts that could not be built in-house. That means steering and running gear. A brand new “steering mechanism” sells for $80 plus another equal amount for the wheel and column. Then the transmission, or whatever it’s called.
           I find ads like this picture, which I quickly spot is an 8:1 gear ratio. I’m looking, however, for a complete unit. How’s your morning going so far? Note the asymmetrical mounting holes. It is actually four in a square and I’ll bet the fifth is a type of keyway. Golf cart tires with names like “The Godfather” sell for up to $170 each (with 8-spoke hub).
           I’ve so far looked at lawn tractors, rickshaws, and pedal cars without results. The city of Rochester seems to be the bellwether for pedal pub complaints. The driver is called a “pilot” and they want to make him responsible for checking ID. There have been instances where all riders refused to pedal. The city passed an ordinance that all tours must begin and end on the same piece of private property, which must provide restrooms and off-street parking. Rides must end before 10:00 PM and there have been complaints of “bad behavior”.
           To date, all pedal pub operations begun in the nation are profitable and still in business. This is why I research. Otherwise nobody might consider that the entire rig has to stop when any one person has to go pee. I’d tend toward regular stops. But will the pub cooperate if nobody is buying their drinks? Or is this one of those ideas that only looks great from the outside looking in?

NOON

           “You can never have too many smart people in your life.” --Farm wisdom

           More incoming information on the pedal bar. The best unit made is called “Megacycle” and built in Minnesota. The scale of their rig is intimidating. They incorporate a stereo system, and hand-hold bar (clever), and a spray mist system for hot days. Maximum speed is 6 mph, seating is for 16 of which 10 minimum are necessary to move the vehicle. Shown here is the skeleton with the driver’s seat and one seat post installed. Made from aluminum, it is touted to be “500 pounds lighter” than the competition.
           Apparently full suspension is necessary, a subject of which I know little. And, of course, America being in the declining phases of credit-based “prosperity”, the vendor is very tight-lipped about pricing until they can get positive ID on you. That’s because you are so stupid you need them to determine if you “qualify”. This refers to purchasing the business, not going for a ride. For ride prices, see below.
           Eight locations already use their model, which is constructed to serve beer on tap. One is operating, according to the blurb, in Ft. Lauderdale. The other [seven] locations [operating this model of pub] are: (I have not checked out these links.)

                      Sacramento, CA
                      Minneapolis, MN
                      Savannah, GA
                      Sanford/Orland, FL
                      Daytona Beach, FL
                      San Diego, CA
                      Austin, TX

Ride prices, Ft. Lauderdale:
           The pedal pub rents for $175 per hour weekdays and $225 for peak periods, which they determine for you, the “you stupid” thing again. All is, of course, payable up front. Cancellation fee, including for rain, is a stiff 50%--the rain is your fault, not theirs. They got a business to run, you know. There are two established routes, down Los Olas and Himmarshee. The latter is where the idea first came up for us.
           The tours are two hours and individual tickets are $35 per seat. The staff are called “team members” and they are empowered to kick you off anywhere for “bad behavior”. Take that to mean stay docile unless you are a bulky middle-aged noisy adulterous jock hitting on the square-faced server half your age. Other than that, I think I should take a tour. Alas, Ft. Lauderdale, at nine miles distance, is too close to be eligible for my monthly “out-of-town” experience. (Must be overnight or over 60 mile round trip.)
           If anyone can remember how many years ago this idea was first brought up in this blog, let me know. Believe it or not, I still meet people who claim no way could this blog be first and right so many times. Um, I've been wrong, as well--but I'll accept a 1:100 loss rate, the way things go in this world.

AFTERNOON
           Sit back for a long read. You won’t have to check a book out of the library on days like this, when I’m cooped up, I write. And the oddest topics rise to become the most curious of the day. What do you expect? This is an old blog and all the easy stuff is long gone. Yes, you can still come over and slap me if I ever start this blog with, “My cat had kittens.”

           What did make top story? Who remembers that tree in front of the bakery? Yep, that tree is now semi-immortal. I brought home a few branches for closer inspection. Although I regularly walked past this mango tree for years, I never watched it that closely. I notice a few of the sawn pieces were exceedingly light and brittle. At least as light as balsa.
           The wood also lacked grain, so I stained a sample with Minwax. At this point I casually mention that the quality of Minwax seems to have declined from ten years ago. Anyway, if you look here, even a good stain job did not reveal any real grain structure. Naturally, it hit me whether this could have commercial applications. You see, the wood is also nearly weightless. A gust of wind will take it off the table.
           I went back and sliced a series of samples near from the bark to the heartwood, you may have to wait for a picture of this. I found the same thing, the sap has been completely sucked out of the wood. And unlike balsa, it is very brittle. You can easily snap it between two fingers. This tree is about as dead as you can get.
           Hence, this morning I asked around for witnesses. Yes, the landlord killed the tree by trimming the upper branches wrongly. Ah, but here’s a gem of information. For several weeks before the tree actually succumbed, it was covered by hordes of caterpillars. I got out my field guide, “Insect Pests” (G.S. Fichter) but the chapter on fruit trees is focused on the fruit, not the tree. Still no accurate results.

           Thusforth, I hacked off a segment of the tree, now lying by the roadside close to, what, a month now? Shown here, the nicely-trimmed wood is already attacked by an advanced scale fungus. That’s the light splotches on the bark. There is no sign of any insect bore holes or tracks beneath the bark. Nothing but the lack of grain and sap to say why this tree died. And me with no microscope.
           The forensic determination of the fate of this mango tree is beyond my skill and resources. I will stain some of the slices as a preservative and soak others in various liquids like alcohol and vinegar to see if I can collect any spores or eggs, however I am discarding the bark with the visible lichen-like scale fungus.
           Meanwhile, I’m listening to NPR, the radio station that almost never takes the point of view I agree with. Lately they have been touching on the ills of colonialism. They don’t outright say the English, nor do they have to. They are way off the mark to say all the sins of the world were caused by Empire-builders. Many of these nations lived in squalor long before the English built a navy. Many nations that are no better off were not colonized by the English, look at South America.
           Hence, I was mildly diverted to find NPR and I are agreed that ruling foreign territories is wrong. The similarity ends right there, however. I cannot concur with their (unstated but evident) stance that the whites have an air of superiority. My experience is that you can sometimes often get an identical result by merely showing up.
           What on Earth am I talking about? Without any hint of a superior attitude, I’ve seen situations where, stay with me here, rather than one person think himself superior, the entire room adopts an attitude of inferiority. Same result; opposite causes. So don’t hand me any automatic stories about racism, it is human nature to take of advantage of any such circumstances—and human nature is instinct, which has nothing to do with acquired prejudice.
           There is even a third shade of this, where the person who presumed they were superior gets a rude awakening. I call it the “Mahatma Gandhi Syndrome”. I experience it with guitar players all the time. They presume they are the star of the show until somebody who can’t even play guitar proves otherwise. This is where you get the rise of the disgruntled. They don’t want freedom or independence or any such noble catch-words. They just want the situation to return to where it was before.
           The sad news for them is that I do have dollar for every time I’ve seen it.

EVENING
           I am stepping out for a Budweiser, America’s favorite IQ suppressant since 1873. Check back tomorrow for the story behind this picture. I claim to be the only guy around who ever walked into a strange bar and gave the owner the gears and gave his wife the pickle and they still served me brews for the evening. Ha, did you see that one on the way?

           I was the only customer in the place the whole time. The rain had let up, but still, nobody except myself and a few cars on the streets. I watched streaming video, there was a recently made program about World War II and Hitler playing. It looks like the anti-German propaganda has been spoon-fed to another generation. Same old nonsense, that Hitler was once a corporal and this is supposed to be much more terrible than the fact that Churchill’s parents only bought him the rank of second lieutenant and Roosevelt never even made it to boot camp.
           Or how about Hitler’s supposed “obsession” with monster tanks? The public school system plainly regards this as much worse than Churchill and the Tortoise or Roosevelt and the T28. The Germans were the only ones who had something in action by war's end--which I suspect is what is really behind the animosity for German engineering. The Tortoise could barely move under its own weight and the T28, when it wasn’t catching fire, had no turret because that made it top-heavy. Both wound up fighting mainly rust in military museums.
           How I would like to see a series on the real facts of the that war minus the anti-German disinformation. Germany did not start the war, Germany did not invent the concentration camp, and Hitler was not a dictator, he was elected head of state and his soldiers stood by him to the end. But I doubt the media system in the USA would allow the widespread dissemination of such facts.
           Yep, I’d like to view an unbiased account, but the events are still too recent for those who control the system to let go of the half-truths. If Germany had won, it would be Churchill and Roosevelt on trial for war crimes such as the terror bombing of civilian population centers.

           Author's note: the over-inquisitive might be amused by the biggest US tank of that war, the T30. It weighed something like 160,000 pounds and had only a 700 h.p. motor. It now stands outside Fort Knox, Kentucky, guarding the gold that is no longer there.

ADDENDUM
           See, I do read my fan mail. But [I] only respond to the most inert and shallow of questions, as a habit. A bunch today wanted to know what I meant by “square-faced”. I didn’t mean an insult, but rather a certain look that, after my years in the corporate environment, I’ve learned not to prefer. Like being bald, there is nothing wrong with it, but I find those who have it can somehow present themselves in a certain way I just don’t care for. Here’s sample pic.

           This lady, while I’m sure she has just as much, or at least as much, of a personality as any other lady her own lower-middle-classed, lower-middle-aged self, has a square face. I guess it reminds me of what we used to call the “young marrieds”. The type of woman who considers herself the same party gal, except, well, you know, don’t touch but you damn well better her treat her like you would if she was available. It depends on if you see what I see. No offense to this lady, but she has that look about her.
           What’s a young married? You know the type. Loved her, hated him. She says, “He had fun. And I had fun. So we got married and now we have fun together.” Yes, she knows this is a single’s bar on lady’s night, but so what? She’s here stag so that makes it okay to waste your time. Now, how’s that for bitchin’ and moanin’. Keeps my ratings high.
           While discussing what I don’t like, there is no attempt made to disguise my distrust and dislike of certain business operations. Here is an explanation of one reason, that’s one of many, many reasons I have for this stance. In a capitalist system, there should be fair competition. But once the government begins to limit or protect, or even regulate a certain type operation, the formula is upset.
           One of the sneakiest ways to limit competition is for existing businesses to start enacting “safety features” that are plain too expensive for a startup to install. A close cousin is the limitation of the numbers of business licenses issued. Either of these practices quickly leads to a kick-back system, even if it is the perfectly legal “building inspector” or “code enforcement” schemes.
           Where things upset is that established businesses no longer need to compete with each other. They simply pass all and any cost on to the consumer. I usually go by the extrapolated monthly rate, such as hotel rooms at $7,500. Or car rentals at $5,250 per month. (These are based on randomly picked examples.) In my opinion, this is ten times what they are worth and therefore ten times what they could dare to charge in the free enterprise environment this country claims to be.


Last Laugh
Patsie as a child. Can't. Even.


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