One year ago today: October 27, 2014, if I was Mexico . . .
Five years ago today: October 27, 2010, feeding a horse.
Six years ago today: October 27, 2009, hospital food, it’s okay.
MORNING
A lovely day for motorcycle work, and that’s what you get. The surplus store has much of what I need, but that is not a cheap place to shop. Everything is twice what you thought you’d pay. But at least it is real gear, not Chinese knock-offs. Here are $45 worth of ammo cans, the larger is the battery can, the smaller is to solve the problem of there being no convenient place to keep anything dry on the sidecar. What? The trunk and saddlebags, some ask? I said “convenient”. It isn’t convenient when you have to pull over and dismount to get a road map. And I’ve wrecked $60 in road maps in the rain already.
They are ready to go, except I’ve decided to purchase some special chromed bolts and proper gasket material. As mentioned, they are mounted with drill holes. When done, these will triple my cargo capacity and double the road range. Part of the cargo space is freed up by no longer having to carry a plastic gas can in the trunk. I talked to JZ this morning, if he is not prepared to make a trip within the next two weeks, I may fire up the batbike and go on my own. Whether the cPod camper is ready or not.
However, that is not a commitment to go anywhere. I may stay put and save money because I’m curious about the housing market. Why are prices rising when the economy does not have jobs that pay enough for people to mortgage the houses? And there are no low-end houses on the market at all. I’m used to the supply drying up like that, it usually means a glut later on. And that is why I may save money. I’d be taking a chance that higher interest rates will discourage borrowing, which is the opposite of what the government intended. That’s how governments work. Always producing the unwanted result. It’s called short-sightedness.
NOON
This is the surplus store, with the famous “dollar store” sign that cannot be seen except by a passenger in a car turned directly to the side when passing on the street. A combination of city by-laws and other signs blocking the street view and this poor guy wasted thousands on this sign. It is seriously hard to read or see, even walking past on the sidewalk. I’m also planning on not repairing the broken sidecar windscreen. Instead, I may replace the frame as part of a rain canopy.
Back to the pending trip, JZ is a fan of old architecture, myself, I like museums. I’ve got the trip mapped out to cost us only $220 over four days, not including accommodation. That’s total, not each. JZ always remembers us as spending much more money than we actually do, but I write that off as influence from his travels with his family, where everything is first class. I’ve done first class. It isn’t as much fun as the way I go about things.
Batteries. I know you wanted to talk about those. You are acquainted with how I married up marine batteries, solar panels, and controllers to fortify my motorcycles. Time for a quick lesson on those batteries, in case anybody has already taken those for granted. Nope, there are two types: “marine starting” and “deep charge”. They are different animals. Here is how.
Marine starting units deliver peak cranking power. But, like your car motor, the engine alternator setup is expected to take over once she’s running, with a tiny trickle charge to keep the battery topped off. That’s the 13.7 volts you see on your alternator. The battery cannot sustain a long, slow steady discharge. If it drops below 10.9 volts, it cannot hold a recharge and is considered “dead”.
The Deep charge battery is designed to put up with that long slow discharge, as in running lights or trolling motors. It can drop to 5 volts repeatedly (depending on brand) and still be charged back to full overnight. The easy way to tell the difference is, if the battery is heavy, it is marine starting. If it is friggen heavy, it is deep charge. Today, I bought a deep charge, and it cost me $100. Um, I would not actually take the deep charge down to 5 volts unless I had no choice.
Shown here is the label designation. Why the two different types? Well, think about it for a second. The scooter was eating a starter battery every few months. Thus, I need a batter that is going to reliably start that puppy. The more so because the kick starter has been non-functioning for years now. Not worth repairing. So the scooter has the marine starting battery, and as you can attest, it is kep at full charge by a controller, not by the scooter magnetic thingee.
There is hard-bitten experience at work here as well. That marine starter battery I purchased in Louisiana in 2012, I think. I was on the road and it was on sale for $88 (?). That’s the battery now in the scooter. Back to the motorcycle, the deep discharge is wired to stay charged totally by solar power. It never draws anything off the Honda. (The reverse is not true, if the Honda fails, it will tap into the marine power.)
This is where the two sets of solar panels come into play. One is a small top-off panel, like the one on the scooter. It keeps things robust all the time. But when the trailer is hitched up, that changes the game. Now, the big solar panels come into play. After the first night, they go to work next day charging the deep cycle battery. The specs are theoretical, numbers I figured out on a hand calculator. I’ll be watching performance really closely regardless that the system worked surprisingly well in 2013 to Seattle and back. I even ran an electric blanket overnight in Sonora, Texas, without ever draining the starting battery, although it was showing signs of drain.
Of course, that could have been luck. There is always a limit. I’m watching for it.
AFTERNOON
If anybody asks how much does a deep discharge marine batter weigh in real life, show them this picture. I finally checked for myself and it is 50 pounds on the dot. Or on the line. Tell then I said so. This battery is inside for now, as I don’t have a spare controller for it yet and I hesitate to use the separate wagon controller. For clarity, I don’t like to use one controller on two separate types of solar panels. The panel design is still too finicky.
A car trip more than a few miles for me would entail at least the same degree of planning, simple as that. One can no more travel 150 miles up the road than 200 years ago, it is just the immediate low, low outlay of cash when travel is by car that fools so many. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. When you can get that far in a few hours instead of a few days, there is a trade-off. Each technological “advance” gains much of its effect by not considering the time.
Put another way, it is moot whether somebody zips up to Deland in half the time I can on the batbike is really deriving more enjoyment. In fact, I should take the batbike up to Deland just for the fun of it. Have not you and I made test runs like that before? Only up to Okeechobee, mind you, yet that still counts. Holopaw, now that is deep distance for a day in the saddle. I’ve made it to Gainesville in a day before. Wait for what comes along, I often feel like just driving.
But as for the people who start driving without a plan and claim they have experienced “freedom”. Ha, when they’re back home and the credit card statements arrive, they realize all they did was displace their worries for a few days. I’m the opposite. I plan ahead and have returned from trips richer than I started. Or at least with the resources to make $400 side trips to Memphis on the City of New Orleans.
EVENING
Here is a NASA-spec wire splice. At one time, they did not require the solder over the joint, but now they do. I’m curious how they propose that the type of humans with only two hands actually make this splice. Even the number of wire turns, and the fact they must touch is part of the connection. Same with the angle at which the wire ends are trimmed. That’s also your trivia for today.
I may also be over-concerned with how the cPod looks, at least sub-consciously. Outward, why should I care less, but when I run the numbers. I’m concerned enough to pay extra so it looks like a small tow-trailer. I’ve even considered paint color, which otherwise makes not a lick of difference. I went downtown for coffee, where for lack of decent women, I pondered about all the topics above. Then I stopped for a brew at the club and planned out a tape dispenser. What? A tape dispenser? Yep, no decent women in their either.
Remember, I’m not looking for a woman. I’m looking for a decent women. Which would include one that is decent-looking by definition. I can sweet-talk the ladies with the best of them, but I don’t. And my standards are low enough already, thank you, but certainly not as low as anyone who would think saying such a thing is good advice. Or clever. Never that low.
ADDENDUM
I’ve made plans to drop in to see the duo that plays at my old gig, the Walkabout. The club tends to hire for a month at a time, say, a month of Sundays. Four gigs, same band every Sunday. This is that gal who, like myself, seems to go through a guitar player every year. You get the guy up to speed, but then he figures he now owns the band and will dictate it play only his personal favorites, all other tunes representing “shitty” taste in music. You know the drill.
I’m somewhat certain I’ve already met this lady, but we didn’t jive. For example, her ads and letters show she tends to over-focus on odd instruments or beats. This is normally more a result of never meeting proper musicians than any eclectic taste in music. And it is usually coupled with some pretty whacked-out ideas of what bass playing is all about. They’ll express a preference for “stand up bass”, not because they don’t realize what a limited instrument it is, but because they think, wrongly, that it is classy. Or something. Like I said, whacked-out.
This electric or stand up thing is a decision I made forty years ago. To me, the standup bass is a goofy instrument that has no advantages except to the small-minded who really don’t know the proper role of the bass. Or they would not choose such a limited instrument. These are the same people who think 5-string or 10-string bass must be better than 4-string. Duh. Or dopes that are hung up on the “acoustic” thing. They don’t make an acoustic bass loud enough to perform in most venues. Nor would I invest in and acoustic bass unless the band in question was definitely worth it financially.
But that is the challenge of playing in a group in south Florida. I’ve met dozens of tard guitar players who tell me they can play bass, but can’t get through a single verse-chorus passage. These people have no real idea of what bass is all about, yet they have opinions on what is the right way to do it. What? Oh, well that is different for me because I can and have played rhythm guitar before. I learned what I did of it specially to improve my bass playing, so I could look at bass as a more integral musical part. “YUGE” difference there.
Last Laugh
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