I need a temperature thingy

It’s supposed to be Spring, and yet I’m sitting here typing this instead of riding the Aprilia or flying the Acro Sport, both being activities I have planned for today.

I have never liked cold weather, and the older I get the less tolerant of it I am. I don’t even like chilly and come to think of it, cool kinda sucks, too. While it is supposed to get up to an official 69 degrees today, it’s now just barely 50.

So here I sit - waiting.

I’ve been driving BMWs for ten or twelve years, and all seem to have an annoying feature in the onboard computer that sounds a “ding” alarm when the outside temperature drops below 38 degrees. You start out in the morning and just about the time you get on the high way, this loud bell goes off - scaring the crap out of you while inspiring a mad search of the dash to see what has blown up. The warning bell on the new car is a little softer than the old one, but still . . .

I am convinced that this will shock you into a heart attack long before an icy road gets you.

What I really need is the same feature, but one that will jumpstart me when the temperature gets up to 70 degrees.

“Ding!”

Warm enough to come out and play.

*Sigh*

Serious Thought For The Week

If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

I’m worried about my lifestyle

I used to get a lot of input into my daily life, feeding blog-posts ranging from flying aerobatics or rescue missions to pit lane experiences at Daytona, diving under the ice, winter mountaineering, etc., etc.

The highlights of this Easter weekend began with accompanying my wife over to our daughter’s to drop off some leftover pasta for her dinner at work. On the way we passed another of those small subdivisions that everyone with more than an acre of yard is building. This one was adorned with a sign advertising it as Forrest Hills - even though it’s being transformed from a flat bean field. This was followed in reasonably close succession by other bean fields and graded off strip-mine hills magically turned into Timber Creek, Arbor Lane Estates, Cottonwood Terrace and Aspen Acres.

I only know of one Aspen tree ever surviving our dry, hot August’s.

I thought I’d do an article comparing the overly pretentious naming of these track-housing developments to the mundane naming of the towns; Colp, Hurst, Hafer, Stiritz and street names; County Line Road, West End Road, North Street - all named prior to the infestation of our society with the Name-of-My-Thing’s-Bigger-Than-Yours-Syndrome.

However, a quick search for sample subdivision names indicated that this has all been done before. In fact there are even “name calculators” floating around out there.

Pick one from each column.

Dropping off the leftovers, we passed the Catholic Church where it was difficult not to notice a huge fire burning in an equally large caldron on the church steps. As this is the evening of Good Friday, I could only hope it had something to do with the celebration of the Easter Story and not the resurrection of witch burning or the return of the Inquisition - both past church related recreational activities.

And -

The feature story in this morning’s local (I need to stress this -LOCAL) newspaper was about bicycles as transportation in Uganda.

There was a note on a following page that the movie “Horton Hires a Ho” had grossed $25 mil.

<sigh>

Serious Thought For The Week

Radios will fail as soon as you need fire support.

Is an Ark an Ark If. . . ?

Good grief! If it doesn’t stop soon, I’m gonna have to find out what a cubit is. . .

After some 15 hours of steady rain (now extended to 38 and continuing) I emailed this photo to my brother.

He responded with a brief narrative of his own rain-induced woes of a failed basement sump-pump, but included some helpful ark building information regarding the cubit, “For your information a cubit is a length measurement of the Egyptians and equal to the distance from your hand to your elbow, which is about 1-1/2 feet (18 inches) on a normal sized man. I just checked my arm length and it was only about 14 inches so my ark will be a little smaller.“

As the rain continued, I figured it was time to get scurrying on this ark construction thing so in a best Fantasy Football League effort, I began to put together a crew and loft some construction drawings.

However, I immediately ran into some rather intimidating snags . . .

First off, while my brother was correct in his explanation of the Egyptian cubit being hand - elbow measurement, there doesn’t appear to be a definitive description of where on the hand the measurement ends. While the accepted belief was the tip of the middle finger (was that raised in defiance?) some cultures designated mid-palm and others the base of the hand - creating as much as a 38% error right off the get-go.

And I’m certain Michael Jordan’s cubit is much larger that mine.

Additionally, we will find several other instructions for cubit defining, all from Noah’s era. One such just lists it as the forearm distance - much shorter. This measurement splits the biblical scholar geeks into two schools of thought on the much maligned old Testament Cage Fighter, Goliath. Using one school of thought, he would have been 6 ft 9 inches tall, and the other method gives him a 1^st round NBA draft pick at 10 ft. 9-1/2 in. The second was accepted and has now been standardized as 45.72 centimeters (18 inches - having been reduced for some reason from the original 20-inches) but this wasn’t done until centuries after Noah jotted down his instructions.

As a sad indictment of our highly skewed powers of deduction, this (not universal) acceptance of the 18-inch standard was done just because - had Goliath been only six-foot-nine, he wouldn’t have been much of a giant.

And if this confusing, long-winded interpretation isn’t enough, I’ll have to deal with all the politically correct hiring standards of ethnicity to put my ark-building crew together. It is usually accepted that Noah’s cubit was the Egyptian measurement, but I’ll have to also consider the Roman cubit, Greek cubit, Arabic, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Pergamon, Salamis, Persian, Jewish, etc., etc. - all different. Also keep in mind that most of these included dual standards such as our own ounce - can be either avoirdupois or apothecary (troy). For example, the Greek cubit included both the Greek kyrenaika cubit measured about 463.1 mm (18.23223 inches) and the Greek metrios cubit about 474.2 mm (18.66924 inches.)

Any wonder that there was only one ark built?

Letter To Wife

As you know, my family has been in Costa Rica for two weeks. Thought I’d share an email or two that I sent her - gives you a rough idea of what I’ve been up to.

Saturday -

In my living alone research, I find it rather odd that most household appliance/convenience items are not correctly sized. First comes to mind the ratio of dirty laundry to hamper/basket and floor space. Having far exceeded my previous record of clothes-pile height in and on the hamper (eye level - if standing on tip toes) I began to load available baskets for the trip downstairs to actually wash some of these. However, there were so many that they spilled over onto the floor in the corner, which began a pile at that location, opening up a whole new thing. Sophie seems to approve, as she can root in for a nap, surrounded by family scents.

Speaking of Sophie, she has augmented her following my every step with the practice of carrying a squeaky-toy and dropping it at my feet in supplication when I stop. The house has taken on the appearance of one of those terribly drawn Sunday cartoons of the little kid who runs around the yard and his progress is followed by a dotted line. Never liked or understood that completely, and assumed the cartoonist didn’t have much talent, however, I am beginning to understand the concept.

Back to the original thought about the dishwasher thingy. I have found that one can completely fill the dishwasher, sink and most available counter top space with dirty dishes and still have clean ones in the cabinet. We either have too many dishes or not enough countertop-sink-dishwasher space. Knowing how this would really grate on you, I have began a conservative program where I eat and cook (or cook and eat) with the same dishes; for example last night I had a one dish dinner that I ate right from the saucepan. Which I thought was pretty efficient. Not only did I save clean dishes, but the pan handle made a very nice way to hold the stuff while spooning it into my face, avoiding the spills on the sofa from attempting to balance a soup bowl on one’s knee while rooting for Ducati in the World Superbike Race on TV. Sophie was a little miffed as there wasn’t a lot of overspill to lick up. But I gave her an extra treat to make up for it - a mint one to take the mud taste out of her mouth as she had just came in and was licking her feet on the white carpet.

I had originally thought I might do a little laundry and maybe one of the sinks of dishes today - however, I just noted that Speed TV has five hours of coverage of Daytona - Superbike practice and race as well as the 200 for Formula Extreme, etc. And you know how the dish or clothes washer noise seems to resonate with the sound of those Ducati twins.

Don’t worry, I still haven’t misplaced my “to do” list, although the snow and ice has caused a rather upsetting setback. I had planned to go to the post office, pay water bill and something else yesterday, but what with the latest from mommy-nature I’m now in a slight dilemma. Planning for the semi-annual clock resetting tonight, while attempting to balance the chores of re-batterying your toothbrush, and finding that yesterday’s issue of Cycle-World was the last in my subscription has pretty well got me down.

So much to do . . .

Sunday-

It’s a bittersweet time with you not here. Last night I set the alarm for 2 AM so I could set the clocks ahead, as per instructions published in the paper for dealing with the time change and augmented by one of those annoying phone messages that begins with, “This is a message from the Herrin Church of Christ” urging the 2 AM change so I would not be late (or early) for Sunday morning worship.

When the alarm went off (at 2 AM) I set my clock ahead to 3 AM as per instructed, but then noted that it was 3 AM instead of the required 2 o’clock time for changing the setting. What to do? Too late to set the rest of them so I have left that for you do straighten out on your return.

Another “missing you” moment is the kitchen table which is covered with a 1 foot square cardboard box, several wads of packing paper, two boxes containing front and rear, dust-free BMW brake pads, and a liter can of Blue Racing Brake Fluid. Which leaves very little room to eat, let alone read the newspaper that’s never here as you aren’t walking down in the snow, sleet, rain and gloom of night to pick it up.

You do understand that most of this is your fault - if you were here you would have long ago made me get it the hell out off the table, and I wouldn’t be dealing with this problem.

Sheesh!

Thank Ryan for the “single life” tips, however I did note that most of them involved going down to the beach and watching girls. Living in California and vacationing in such exotic paradises (we’ll overlook the snake thing for political correctness) as Costa Rica has done some irreparable damage to his reality meter. I took a look yesterday and there is no way I could have gotten the motorcycle down the ice encrusted driveway, and it was certainly marginal walking, as I discovered when I went down to pick up that poor excuse for a newspaper which I couldn’t read at the table due to the aforementioned items cluttering it up, therefore missing out on Bradley’s latest bill.

And who in their right minds would even want to look at the type of girls who end up on the beach in this kind of weather?

Huge day today - as I MAY go to the post office. But it’s early yet, and given the time to think about it. . .

P.S. Bye the way, that parchment paper stuff you get for cooking will definitely burn if encouraged enough. Don’t ask me how I know, but I did get the cheese scraped off the pizza pan thing. I’m sure the burnt paper smell will dissipate before you return.

Kiss Quinton Jackson Goodbye!

Ultimate Cage Fighting light heavyweight champ, Quinton Jackson’s reign is about to come to a screeching halt. I am about to take his place.

Following in the footsteps of Daniel Larusso, I have just completed the grueling training regime as prescribed by the master himself, Noriyuki Morita.

Wax On! Wax Off!

As my family spent the last two weeks at Grandma’s house in Costa Rica, I was left with no supervision and Nan’s car to drive. What to do - well, I put my “new” Bimmer in the workshop, left the heat on, and completed a 14 step process of applying Zano Brother’s Show Polish & Wax. This included washing, clay bar-ing, wash again, polish lock sealer, coat of swirl-free wax, gloss enhancer, high shine polish, 2^nd gloss enhancer, 2^nd coat of swirl-free wax, 3^rd gloss enhancer, 2^nd high shine polish, 4^th gloss enhancer, 3^rd high shine polish and final (5^th) gloss enhancer.

And after 10 days of the Wax on . . . wax off thing - I am ready for a title shot.

I be bad!

But every silver lining seems to have it’s cloud. One of the things I tried to do, immediately after pulling the car out was to get a picture for the header on my web site - as my brother keeps harping about the red BMW being out of date. Unfortunately, the shine on the car seems to reflect all the mud, rocks, dead grass, etc. that mommy-nature left scattered around after her winter tantrum. All making the car seem dirty or something, so I’ll have to wait until things green up a little and attempt to duplicate the photo of the red one with a shot of the black one.

Or maybe just Photo Shop the color of the old one?

Serious Thought For The Week

There are certain aircraft sounds that can only be heard at night.

Random Thinkies

Man this has been a slow winter. The older I get, the less I tolerate this cold stuff, so let’s keep using those aerosols and get this global warming thing going.

Computer magic- Just when I was contemplating the doom of daytime TV watching, Brett came through with a copy of the software he uses to program his CNC machines. It’s not as difficult as Cad-Cam, but still takes a bit of effort to learn. I sat down the other day and programmed in a rear-set for the bike. (For non-bike people, this is the mount for the foot pegs that lets you adjust the peg position.) I have it all laid out and now need to have Brett show me how to set up the tooling. Once this is done the program will actually show an animated 3D sequence of the machining of the object. It’s fun to watch this and a great reward for the programming effort. Maybe he’ll let me design some parts for the race bikes when I get a little better with this.

Mini Flight -Yesterday warmed enough that almost all the snow was gone from the roads - other than our long driveway. I got the Bimmer out and after a few moments of concern getting those wide, low profile tires down that slippery slope, headed for the airport. Preflight of the Acro showed I hadn’t flown since October, so naturally I expected it to be a little slow to start, but it fired up as usual. I had planned to just warm it up and then top off the fuel, but the sun was shining pretty well by then so I exchanged my sock hat for the Dave Clark helmet and taxied for takeoff.

Liftoff was accompanied with a rush of cold air when the canopy popped open an inch. Lately this has been a problem, especially when pulling any G’s, but I have a bungee on each side to act as a safety and it restricts the opening to less than an inch. I returned to the hangar and replaced the bungees with new ones and off again for a short flight over to Carterville where I made a couple of passes over the house and then began climbing out to the south. I noticed an extremely low cloud layer moving in and headed back before said layer could reach the airport.

Went back over to the airport this morning with the plan of finally replacing the canopy latch, but found I had failed to bring all the tools I would need so I’ll reserve that chore for tomorrow.

Bike Show - Speaking of winter, it’s supposed to get up to 68 today, but with continued and increasingly stronger thunderstorms as this cold front moves through, dropping the temperature back into the 30s and 40s. I would like to go to the motorcycle show in Chicago this weekend, but can’t work up a lot of enthusiasm with the unpredictability of the weather this time of year. Unfortunately, Ryan and I found out that the show was in San Mateo, CA the same weekend that I was at his place in November - about 5 miles from his apartment. Of course we didn’t find out about it until I was back home.

Racing - Just when I thought the thing was over, it appears that a racing resurrection is imminent. Rule changes in Moto-ST, renewed and increased sponsorship as well as an opportunity to compete in additional series has Brett and company chasing the dangled carrot once more. Three new Aprilias are expected soon; increased involvement by those wonderful EBC brake people and the possibility of Pirelli bailing out as the series spec tire after the March Daytona race may open up some much needed tire sponsorship. Anyway, it looks as if we’ll be running a few of the Moto-ST races and getting into some hotly contested WERA and CCS races, campaigning a wild new 550 Aprilia screamer.

Back to bike building.