Mermaid inspires decade long tryst with sports car.

Like these things do, it all started with a mermaid named Tina.

(I swear I am not making any of this up... I can provide photographic or reliable corroborating whitnesses for all of it.)

Like I said, a mermaid named Tina... When I lived in Great Falls, Montana (some of you might remember that as when I used to update this blog more than once a fiscal year...) Anyways, I got to Montana and soon met a girl named Tina.  As it turned out Tina was actually a mermaid and found work at the Sip-N-Dip Lounge slinging mer-drinks. (The Sip-N-Dip was actually an underwater bar in the O'Hare Motor Inn.)

This is a typical mer-drink! It is 5ish gallons... mer-people drink like fish!  ...obviously.

Tina the mermaid.

Though, now that I think about it, the Sip-N-Dip is probably most known for "Piano Pat."  She is pretty much the Eric Clapton of the piano... unfortunately she only has an organ in the bar to play, but she more than pulls it off!

I am sure you can find better clips on youtube of Piano Pat... but this was on my computer somehow so you get this clip.  I think someone was playing with my phone while I was in the pool.  Also, note how she syncopated musical phrases to keep the riffraff from singing along with her! Genius!

One day, Tina and I got talking about cars.  This is obviously true because that is one of the two subjects that I ever talk about.  I showed her a picture of my old Triumph and she told me that she drove a car just like that in high school.  (well it turned out she drove a Fiat Spider not a Triumph Spitfire... but close enough for females! In her defense, she knew she drove a Fiat, she just didn't know the Spitfire wasn't a Fiat also.) She told me it ran when she parked it and was currently sitting in her parent's driveway as we spoke... just it was in Cut Bank, Montana!  After a short amount of negotiations, the promise of five hundred bucks, and a drive to the edge of the world. (Cut Bank, MT) I now had a Fiat Spider to call my own!

The reason I needed such a car was because my friend Dirty Timmy had just gotten me into SCCA racing.  Just so you know, SCCA stands for Sports Car Club of America... and the only thing I had to race at the time was my 76 Buick Electra, "The Millennium Falcon!"  (I'll get into that name in another post.)  Short story... a 76 Buick is not a sports car in any sense of the word so I needed something to race that had at least half a chance of being fast when turning was required. (Buick is plenty fast when curves are not involved.)

One of the early Fiat races.  Not bad, but don't click it if you have a short attention span. Like I said, it wasn't that fast yet.

So now I had a Fiat.  I don't actually have any pictures of her in her original configuration because the first thing I did was pull off two hundred plus pounds of bumper and change out the terrible 13 inch wheels for some decent rims and rubber.

An early pic.

These are some of the oldest pictures I can find of her... Still with new rims and sans bumpers... and not all that fast.

In fact one of my early races, I ended up ripping off the left front wheel in slow motion and didn't drive it for a year while artisans in Italy made a new front cross member out of goat cheese and iron mined by virgin nymphs.  Pretty sure the blog-archaeologists can find the post about all that. 

Still the Fiat in Montana had many adventures.

Like the time she decided to not work any more in the middle of winter on the Great Plains.

Luckily I fashioned a new fuel pump out of ice and we were soon on our way!

Then there was the time I tried to learn electrical theory by reverse engineering an Italian electrical system.  (As far as I can tell, there are five wires required for any electrical device and four of the wires are labled "Cazzo!"

And when I had to use my trendy downtown Great Falls loft apartment as a garage before I had a downtown Portales, NM garage to use as an apartment!  Either way, bath tubs and solvent tanks are pretty much the same thing as far as I can tell!

Also there was some SCIENCE!  like when we learned about air temperature, density, and horse power!  Basically the fiat is like a motherly science teacher. Half Mother, half test mule! 

But the Montana adventure couldn't last for ever. so eventually I had to put her in storage in Gladstone, Michigan.  The bad part was having to drive her across the country in winter.

Here she is on her frozen trip across the continent. Just looking at this picture you can see her Mediterranean heart freezing and her perfect italian teeth chattering with cold!

Only to find herself stuffed into storage for years awaiting a hopeful future adventure.  This was her home for nearly 4 years!

Actually I brought her back to Gladstone and gave my Mom the keys hoping that my mom would take her out every once in a while. I think I ruined that when I was showing my mom the quirks of the Fiat by taking her through an intersection sideways Tokyo drift style.  She never touched it again.  

Occasionally...

I would take her out when I was home on leave... you know, just to keep the top end lubed up and what not.  That was usually a Christmas Treat.  

If I came home in the summer I would do some little improvement!

Like adding this rattle can Abarth carbon fiber hood and trunk!

Eventually, I came home from Afghanistan... again, and washed the storage dust off her, (Not washed yet in picture.) and dragged her to New Mexico in an epic road trip.

Turns out the road trip was detrimental to the rear end... once I got to New Mexico, the rear end had catastrophically failed.  She couldn't be driven without the risk of iron shrapnel going through your kidneys.  Sure I drove it to work and sometimes to impress floozies at Club-B's but the impending death really took the pleasure out of driving it for me.

So, for about three years, she sat in my garage never going down the road. However I did get drunk one night and built a 60's Ferrari style driver-only roll bar for her. 

The only real difference in my mind is that the fiat is left hand drive and this is right.  Otherwise, this really is what the fiat looks like in my mind's imagination! 

I won't go into the details of 79 Fiat rear ends... but put it this way... it takes years and three-to-make-one to finally get a working fiat spider rear end together.

Well, happy days!  I finally have the Fiat complete and back on the road!  She is about to become the daily driver as I am putting the Buick into dry dock for a few weeks to change out the fuel system.  

Here is the Fiat in her new fastest and most awesome configuration ever!

Fully back together and road worthy!

For aerodynamics and coolness, I decked over the rear of the cockpit with aluminum sheeting and then made a tonneau cover with marine vinyl.  

custom tonneau cover... look at that sweet steering wheel bump... and the snazzy snaps! 

Then I used a sleeping bag zipper to basically make driving it down the road as close as possible to flying a ww1 figher plane!

Look at that forced smile!  I haven't seen such a happy fake smile since I quit stalking sorority girls on facebook!  (The only time she smiles for real is when she is wasting 5.0 Mustangs off the line in street races! The rest of the time, it is just for the camera.)

This is the pigeon's view.  Just incase any of you fecalpheliacs need like to imagine what a bird sees when he is pooping!

Last of all, now that there is an open space in my garage.  The Buick Electra, Pride of the Fleet!  She is going in for dry dock.  It has been a lot of years at sea.  She just passed her hundred thousand mile mark, the Florida salt air is developing her "patina" a lot faster than I would prefer, so she is getting to celebrate with a whole new fuel system. I pulled the fuel injection system off a 89 chevy truck and plan on installing it in the next few weeks.  The internet says it should practically bolt right up!

(I know what you are all thinking... damn... that guy takes a lot of pictures of his cars... Well true... but only because submarines are not as photogenic!)

Life saved... Drive shafts are mindblowingly awesome!

Happy 4th of July!

"So there I was," in the passenger seat of my GF's Miata rolling home after wings and an ordering mistake that left me on the far end of buzzing (some might call it drunk)...  Anyways, we are driving home and about two blocks from our house we spot a little sparrow (or maybe a finch) hyperventilating in the middle of the road.  We are on Old Scenic 98.  It is the road right along the Gulf of Mexico so on the 4th of July it is pretty much the busiest road on earth.  That little bird was right there in the lane basically lined up to be hit with tires.  Lindsay pulls up next to the little bird, stops the car, opens the door and grabs the little bird and runs off toward the side of the road.  I am sitting there, the world is happy and blurry, my GF is off saving the life of a little bird... when I look at the rear veiw mirror... and pretty much there was about a billion cars all backed up behind us.  This is a two lane road.  One lane for each direction. There was a backup about two miles to the east behind this miata with the door open, right in the middle of the road.

In super slow motion, the Sheriff rolls up from the opposite direction.  He is also stuck in traffic, just in the opposite direction.  He looks at me with a face that says, "What the fuck dude?  You are going to sit there and block traffic today on this road, in this place, at this time, in my county?"  (he was very eloquent with his facial expressions...)  Either way, I knew he wanted an answer even though he didn't ask a question.  Though by this time, he had turned on his lights.  I shout across the traffic... "There was an injured bird in the road, my GF is saving him right now!"

This seemed to satisfy the sheriff to the point he turned off his lights and started rolling slowly away.

Lindsay got into the car, sweared at me for talking to the cop... and started driving the last two blocks home.  Over the course of these two blocks she went from happily satisfied that she had helped this little bird to she hadn't done enough and the bird was probably dehydrated and going to die imidiately and it needed to be collected, brought home, and taken to a shelter.  Despite what I thought was logical arguments that the bird was either a goner anyways, or you saved it's life already... she was still quite distraught about the little bird.

I decided "ok, I''ll go bring back the bird and we can take him to the vet."  So when we got home, I got a shoe box out, Lindsay filled up a glass of water for him... (I pulled out some tuber-ware and filled that with water and left the glass of water.)  The plan was, I'll go find the injured bird, put him in the box, give him some water if he wants... then when I get him home we will take him to the vet or the wild life rehabilitation center that she is a volunteer at.

(she had to get ready for work)

I walk back to the tree where she left the bird.  When I got there, the bird scampers away... I turn to get the shoe box to put him.  When I turn back I can't find him.

Some old couple start shouting at me from the balcony of a condo, "Hey, that baby bird flew away!"

After some shouty discussion, it was ascertained that the bird was safe up in a tree, they saw my GF running across the road and putting the bird in the grass under the tree, but now it flew away.

Good enough for me...  Good work Lindsay!

Also, the old blue buick has been having some vibration problems for the last year or so.  I have been ignoring it because it didn't seem to much life threatening.  Well it has gotten worse in the last few months and a few days ago I desided it was to scary to drive the buick to work anymore.

Not to get to deep into the details, there is a magical spring with a ball bearing in my drive shaft.  When they get worn out, the buick shakes enough to change radio stations on you.  That was where I was.

The AMATEUR SOPHIST always complains that i don't have any tools...I always disagree, but if I am honest, I basically have a welder and a few rocks as all of my tools.

So there I was, looking in the repair manual and it tells me that I need a bench vise to press the U-joints out of the drive shaft. As crazy as it is, I have never owned a bench vise.  So, I decide to take this opportunity to buy a new tool.  Still cheaper than taking it to a shop.

So I buy a bench vise.

As I am rebuilding this driveshaft, I discover that it is much easier to just pound out the U-joints out rather than press them out with the vise. So... imagine me, in the garage... dimly lit like a cave, pounding on my driveshaft with a mini sledge hammer.  (I would have used a bone or rock, but it is florida and the bones rot to fast and there are no rocks here.)

Turns out bench vises are still useless.  I wasted my money.  I should always stick to my favorite tools.  Hammers and rocks!

Also, in my trying to figure out how to rebuild my drive shaft, I watched the following video.  I know it might be a little nerdy, but think about the fact that shafts that are solidly coupled can spin at different speeds at the same time!




Yea... I am right with you... I can't wait till I can smoke pot and watch old high school shop instructional videos too!

Until then... gin.

So, I guess what I am getting at is that, "Lindsay doesn't give a fuck, she will inconvenience the shit out of thousands of people for a swallow... and driveshafts are much more complicated than one would expect."

Also... I have the buick drive shaft back together and is is so smooth... (I forgot how smooth the buick electra can be...)  basically driving the buick is like drinking Malibu Rum with a straw looking at a freshly exfoliated stripper's ass.

That's right... the Buick Electra is that smooth!

Maybe we should go easy on the radio waves...

I have made the paper again...

I got posed this way... I don't really just stand on the flightline looking into the distance.

The article was on the second page of the print version.  Ironically the first page had an article about an F-35 catching fire on take off... and an article about algae.

Also, another great post from XKCD.com  I have to admit that my gut got a little tight when I read it.  

Sort of like my body knew it was true.  Creepy

Is this thunderstorm put together backwards?

So... there I was... watching Top Gear on youtube when I heard the distant rumbles of a thunderstorm.

I decided to take my excellent atmospheric-scientist-in-training with me, Mijo the Dog, to "observe" this incoming thunderstorm.  He's a grad student so mostly I make him carry the gear and take notes.

He is half dachshund, half chiwawa, and half wolf. Look at the steely blue eyes!

Anyways...

As we are walking out to the beach to look at the incoming thunderstorm, some old lady yells down to me from her condo balcony.

"Hey... do you know how TVs work?"  while I think I can answer a solid yes to the question she asked, I was a little worried that she actually meant, "can you make my TV work?"  Which is a solid "probably not."

I can make TVs that I set up work, but the madness that some other clown cobbled together out of DVD players, VCR's, cable, and maybe even antennae... probably not.

Needless to say, my assistant and I were invited into the old people's condo to unfuck their TV.  Granted, I really know jack shit about making TV's work but I think it might be bad luck to not help old people.  Sort of like telling off a nun... it just isn't done! The knight in me wanted to be chivalrous and help the old people with their TV... the Viking in me hoped they would have a hot daughter.  (that was impressed with me making a TV work and walking my girlfriend's dog...)

So there I am in the living room of this condo on the beach when I can hear the mating calls of the thunderstorm that I actually want to be hanging out with rumbling in the background.  I eventually figured out which of the ten remotes in the place made the TV turn on... and called it a success. I explained how the guide button worked and how to scroll up and down. DONE!  I am out!  As thanks they gave me a pocket full of dog treats and a coors light.  Also, they had no daughter.

Finally SCIENCE!

We get to the beach and look out to the gulf.  There is literally a wall of rain on the horizon from as far as I can see to the south to as far as I can see to the north.  All about 5 miles to the east.  AND THE LIGHTENING IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!  There are old men leaning on railings talking about how this one is going to be a real "humm dingger" and thirty year old women still wearing their sorority letters commenting how if it wasn't Florida they wouldn't feel safe with their kids so close to a natural disaster... all watching this storm move across the horizon.

God damn I love thunderstorms...

I spot what looks like a wall cloud! but I think to myself, "that is on the wrong side of the storm..."

(There are three things that pilots must always keep on the tip of their awareness. First of all, the wind direction.  Second... the fuel in the tanks as measured in Time x Speed = Distance. And by far the most important, the nearest bar that it wouldn't embarrass your mother if you died in it.)

Being a pilot and all, I realize that the wind direction tonight is backward from normal, and in fact nature got this one right again.  She put the wall cloud on the correct side of the super cell thunderstorm. I think I was probably the only one surprised by the wind direction tonight but, you know, that is how I feel alive and stuff.

Anyways... disappointingly there was no Tornado.

Luckily it is still hurricane season!

Goodnight.

Easter at the grocery store... Dad needs a cat for Christmas

So, my folks came down to visit.  This is the first time that they have both come together to see me since I graduated pilot training.  Not that I think they were opposed to visiting, but I think a trip to eastern New Mexico to stay in a dusty workshop is less likely to make the schedule...

Anyways, it was kind of like taking your vacation with Italians. Most of their time down here was spent in grocery stores, discussing going to the grocery store, and the various merits of all nearby grocery stores...  As it turns out, dinner is an excellent time to discuss what to have for breakfast. Also, my dad is now friends and comrades with the butcher at the Winn-Dixie down the street.  They became superfriends when they got into a discussion about how it helps now days to grunt when you get up.

As it happens, this was the first time that my parents and I had really discussed my going to Mars in person. My mother was not a fan!  Her first protest, was that she would miss me to much.  Though it made me feel bad, she could see it wouldn't sway me.  It made her even more opposed when I told her that skype doesn't work because of the distance.  Her second objection was that I would never give her any grandchildren if I go to Mars.  I told her I would try to make some there for her... also, no good... to far to visit.  Though after a few moments, she reconsidered.  After asking a few questions about how long it would take to get there, what living conditions would be, the possibilities of ever returning to earth... she decided that she would stay in shape and healthy long enough so that she can come visit and maybe even move to Mars too.  This caused Dad to look up from the third book he was finishing this weekend and comment that "she will probably do it too." Grandmothers have been dragging their husbands "downstate" for years to be near their grandkids so I guess this is just a bigger version of that.

Dad mostly thought it was a good idea, especially while watching the news.  Actually he thought it was a great idea when ever the news featured a politician talking.

Also, in other news, it turns out my Dad likes cats!

 It started with Amaretto the cat coming up and tricking him with happy fuzzy purrs... 

Soon they lured him onto the floor by offering to share their favorite cat game.

After a while they were discussing politics and how much the authorities are over reaching into honest hard working people's lives.  Though dad is talking about the taxes and the cats are referring to me not letting them out to kill lizards.  Either way they all agreed... too much government!

(Yes... that is FOX NEWS they are watching at full volume in the background)

Also, all my mom wanted to do was go to the beach and lay in the sun and maybe play just a little bit in the water.  Unfortunately it rained the whole time they were down here.  Except for about twenty minutes while we were here next to this lake.

She didn't get in...

EXPERIMENT UPDATE:  I have to start the rice mind manipulation experiment over.  I opened up the jars and set them on the porch to add a little contamination to move the experiment along. There was a massive storm right after I did that and the jars flooded out.  Stand by for round two.

Positive energy turns out just a reinvention of "Little House on the Prairie" style food preservation...

So, I know that many of you are waiting with baited breath for the results of my mind manipulation of physical matter experiments...

After a month and a half, here are the results so far:

Yea... so... it seems that there has been almost no change.  I have several hypothesizes on why all three jars of rice balls have had such little change so far.

First, that my diligent experimental methods have kept all contamination from the rice and thus the rice is sitting there in a totally sterile environment.  The positive and negative energy from my mind have not been able to have an effect on the rice because there is nothing to protect or preserve the rice from.  (I have just re-invented canning.)

or...

Second, is that my house has so much positive energy flowing through it that nothing bad can happen inside it to include the molding or rotting of food.  Even when I try to project negative energy into the bad rice ball, it is overwhelmed with such positive vibes from my being that it can't possibly be consumed by mold or rot in any way.  (Though I had a few bagels I threw away last week that punch a pretty big hole in that theory.)

or...

Third, maybe the sealed glass jar is keeping all my positive and negative energy away from the rice so that it has no way to be influenced and has thus stayed static.

Experiment Phase II:

So with no discernible change at all after a month and a half, I am going to change the experiment slightly.  The first hypothesis seems most likely so I am going to unseal the jars for a few days  (assuming they don't stink) and let the world interact with the contents.  I will still project positive and negative energy at the rice during this open to the environment few days.  After that, I expect some sort of natural contaminants to enter the jars.  If I can influence things...  all jars should be about the same amount contaminated and I will reseal the jars.  After that, my positive thoughts should protect the good rice ball and rot the bad and uncared about rice.

Stay tooned!

I will admit that this experiment has made me MUCH more conscience of when I am being positive and negative with the world around me.  What I have found is that I can very significantly effect the people and animals around me with my positive and negative energy and outlook.  I have been doing some experiments on people at work and I can change the entire mood in a room or my cockpit with just a few comments or a smile and a greeting.  It feels crazy powerful to do this... Like I am a puppet master or movie director or something.  I will of course continue to use my growing powers to try and make the world a better place, but I still want to be a wizard that can rot rice with my mind!  More practice obviously!

Manipulating the physical world with just my mind!

I just had the first article about my going to Mars published in the online version of Discover Magazine.  here!

So... I am doing an experiment, actually more repeating one.  It supposedly demonstrates the effects of human intentions and consciences on the physical world.  I have a lot of theories about how this might happen but will have to do more experiments myself.

This is a quick overview of the experiment.  There has been a lot published on these experiments.  We will see.  I want it to work!  It would make the universe a more interesting place, but this kind of thing needs verification!

If it works, I plan to get really really really good at blasting my intentions all over the place!  I'll be like a wizard or something!

So far, my own experiments have not progressed beyond the "Hmmm... they all still look the same" stage.

I started off sterilizing all the apparatus.  (Pasta sauce jars) Actually I guess I started off eating pasta, I had to eat it every meal for a week so I would have enough jars.  Not a hardship for me at all!  Anyways... I wanted to make sure that everything was done to stand up to any investigation of my methods. As little room for erroneous results as possible.

Boiling Jars and Lids.  (The sugar, flower, and frankincense containers on the right came with the place... don't think I have become so domesticated that I went out and bought them myself!)

Then I made some rice per the previous experiments, and placed them in labeled jars.


Now I send happy loving thoughts to the one with the smiley face on the left and all the negative energy I can muster into the unhappy one.  Also the control is there to see what happens with no human conscienceness involvement.  (I know the control jar is different... if the results of this experiment show potential, I'll do more and more rigorous experiments to include the same size jar for the control...)

It has been about 10 days since I started this experiment and so far all the rice looks the same in all of the jars.  I would post a second current picture, but it looks exactly like the one above.  I'll post anything as it develops.