One year ago today: July 14, 2016, seat-of-the-pants navigation.
Five years ago today: July 14, 2012, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: July 14, 2008, a definition of work.
Random years ago today: July 14, 2005, a ton of information.
Only modern America could both invent and screw up the Internet and the cell phone. I find out this morning a host of people have been calling me. Funny, I was sitting and reading books the last two days in Snapper Creek, reading books with the phone on the table beside me. I was waiting for the call about my motorcycle chain. There was talk that USPS and FedEx are somehow collaborating, which is precisely what I mean when I say ‘veneer of deniability’. Each can blame anything on the other and it is the customer who gets the shaft.
Shown here, at long last is the new chain being installed. It is lying on the ground at lower right, the front sprocket cover is removed. This took until 3:38PM, although I got out of Miami around 9:00AM. There’s a window of clear skies to the northwest, so I headed straight up Hwy 27 to Clewiston, Winter Haven, and Lake Placid. The new chain not only rides quieter and smoother, it makes changing gears slightly more efficient.
On the way out of town, I stopped for gas and got caught behind this pig woman who was blocking the line. Playing lottery tickets, she didn’t have the cash to pay a $10 tab when the credit card reader malfunctioned. I muttered if she was applying for a job or something and she blew up in my face. Well, indirecty, since I was wearing a helmet and goggles. If there is any reason I like Miami, it is because you can tell these screwy bitches off and never see them again. She went ballistic, flipping me the finger, so I egged her on. She’s not the only person who thinks that camera around my neck is just for decoration.
Why does this witch get mention? It’s because she didn’t like my outfit. I was wearing my frog suit innards. These are the baggy clothes worn inside a full rain suit, like the one I bought at Target. These are the heavy duty rain gear you’ll find over in the fishing department. All rain suits or even just rain jackets or ponchos get clammy on the inside, even Gore-tex. So wear your baggy clothes—and listen to bitchy women rag on about it. “Look at you.” She says several times, disdainfully. Well, lady, at least I don’t dress like my teenage kids, if you get my meaning.
Wildlife.
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I got to South Point, on the lake around 4:15PM and suited up. It rarely rains when you are ready for it, and this was no exception. Right through Clewiston without a red light, that was another amazing feat. Sad news. As I rode through Palmdale, it appears the Cracker store is gone. There’s a slim chance it’s there because I was not paying attention, but when I looked where I thought it was, there was just a few pieces of the foundation sticking out of the ground. I’ll check on that, since that was a bit of a landmark. If Florida wanted to rejuvenate those communities, they would build bypass around the towns, but raise the speed limit to 80 mph.
This 490 mile trip turned out to be 1,067 by the time I pulled into my driveway. You can also kiss the travel budget good-bye, since what should have been a $70 trip weighed in at $292. That’s not including the labor on the chain. I could have cut corners but my thinking was if I’m stranded in Miami for a week, make a mini-holiday of it.
I sprung $38 for ribs and fixings. The motive was simple, I have not eaten ribs for several years. It’s not a regular item on my home diet. There was enough leftovers for breakfast, so I only stopped for a V-8 juice on the way home, where I arrived at 7:15PM. You don’t need to tell anybody, but a trip this quick entails holding the needle at 75mph most of the trip. I tend to close up behind some other speeder, which could be why I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket since I was a teenager. And that ticket was in Mexico.
What’s more, my place is more comfortable than Snapper Creek, but then again, I spend a lot more on furniture. JZ is also a TV-watcher, though I should explain. Like many people, he leaves the TV on even when not watching it. He doesn’t have cable, but one of those antenna boxes that picks up all the Latino channels and news networks that repeat the same story all day, see photo nearby. Myself, if it is on, I’m waiting for the weather report. All this bunk is still flying about the Russians hacking the election. Or pardon me, they are now saying the Russians “influenced” the election. Define influence. Does that mean some Ruskie expressed an opinion? Well, let me express mine.
If the Russians can affect your elections, Hillary, you have one piss-poor election system and you should be fixing that instead of pointing fingers. Secondly, I don’t see anyone interviewing the voters to see if they were “influenced”. So unless somebody can find some proof that the Russians one way or another strong-armed or indoctrinated millions of voters, the electorate has spoken. This whole liberal reaction is a disgusting joke. Keep flinging poo, see if anything sticks. What a way to behave.
“I’ll take crazy over stupid any day.”
~ Jess Whedon
Another factor getting me home in a hurry was food. I cannot stress enough to the reader that my best pal in Florida and I are from totally different backgrounds and don’t share a lot of common interests at street level. For that matter, there are a lot of issues on which we are downright opposites. Examples would be: JZ smokes, likes fat women, gambles, drives recklessly, drinks are liquor, plays pool, and is shy around the ladies. It would be tough to find more social opposites, however, we are both highly educated and that is socializing enough for us. You don’t have to baby talk around JZ, and beyond that, we are a great team. I break the ice, the women feel motherly toward him (I kid you not), and when we go out on a hustle, you’ll find us at opposite ends of the club.
This brings up the topic of this Etch-a-Sketch, priced at $15. They are back on the market in a big way and if you account for inflation, the unit is cheaper that when it first hit the market. What’s happened, but don’t quote me on this, is the control knobs can be replaced with servo-motors. You may recall my article on the ingenious clock somebody made. The servos twirl the knobs to draw the time on-screen, then another motor rotates the screen to erase that time and start over.
It fascinates me because I see in it a poor man’s CNC or subtractive forming device. And we spend an hour discussing that possibility. However, don’t get the impression JZ and I are always talking on that plane. Nope, we share very few interests on that level either—but at least he follows what’s going on when we do talk technical matters. I see the toy as a two-dimensional display that can be used for more than meets the eye. Since the Arduino has 210 resolution, it is probably overdue that somebody should have programmed this to draw the Madonna, the Mona Lisa, and a bunch of Mandelbrot. True, you could draw them on a computer screen, but would that catch your eye in a store window?
ADDENDUM
Told ya, I hadn’t eaten and after driving in from the Miami jungle, I was hungry and thirsty. The trick is to find something open late on Fridays, and that did not work today. So I pulled past the club and noticed that dude whose daughter I jammed with was playing. In I went, to find a nice welcoming committee who had three sandwiches they wanted to give away. Good, after 9 days I was afraid to look in my fridge. Damn rights I stayed around for a set, though it was mostly blues.
The music instantly had me off balance. This is not the same band I saw just those few weeks back. The guitar player was the same overkill, but the bass player was only missing his Mickey Mouse ears. I finally approached the boss on the break and he stated the bass player “was not doing his homework”.
I gave a tough listen, and sure enough, the bassist was one of those left-over seventies types. As long as it was thump-a-thump fake it rock, he was on it. But anything with a distinct bass line, the kind that has to be learned, he flunked big time. Not up to par at all. The guitarist gave me his biz-card.
Last Laugh
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