One More Time

Have you ever noticed how - when you get down to the end - you can just keep on squeezin' a toothpaste tube harder and harder 'til enough paste comes out to let you brush your teeth one more time? It seems like the tube never really empties. It's like there's some sort of toothpaste asymptote or something. Eventually you have to throw the damn thing away; but you can't help wondering, "Was there one more day's worth left inside?" It's not just toothpaste tubes either; take for instance: White Out. No matter how old and crusty it gets, it seems like there's always enough left in the bottle to fix one more mistake. Don't even get me started on High-liters. This same observation - made thousands of years ago - provides us with the foundation of a major religious holiday. You put one day's worth of oil in a lamp, and it keeps burning and burning for like six or seven days! Oil can be a funny thing like that.

I don't care if you believe oil was placed here by God, or that it's recycled dinosaur juice, or even that it's abiotic and really is being replenished by the earth; intuitively, we all know that it has to run out ... someday; but we just keep on using it like it has some kind of magical power to replenish itself forever. I guess we all believe that the oil will last long enough for us; and maybe that's all anyone can really care about. A thousand - no, make that a hundred - years from now, I wonder what people will think when they look back on the age of oil.

I'm old enough to remember the first two oil crisis (is that plural?) under Nixon/Ford and Carter, and we all lived through the Bush oil crisis last year. There is a big difference between a Democratic oil crisis - where everyone gets 10 gallons every other day - and a Republican oil crisis - where you can burn all the oil you want at $4.25 a gallon. I don't really want to get into the politics of it, but I think it worth remembering that an energy crisis is non-partisan. There are those alive today who were born and raised before the age of oil - back in the days of king coal. My parents burned coal to heat their homes when they were young. The coal came from a coal yard in a big truck and was dumped - or worse, shoveled - into a bin in the cellar. It's a dirty, time consuming form of energy compared to oil - at least for the consumer. Could we ever go back to living like that?

And so it is that we live with oil. It's the best thing going ... and at least it will last a lifetime ... we hope. Have you considered laying in a personal petroleum reserve? I'm not talking about a lifetime supply; I'm thinking more along the lines of a tactical petroleum reserve: Eight 5 gallon cans - enough to get from here to, say, Canada. In the future, there's every possibility of another oil crisis. If one believes the rumors of water cut in Saudi oil wells, it seems that future shortages are all but guaranteed. Wouldn't it be nice to know you have enough fuel on hand to make a journey somewhere - even when no fuel is available? It's not like you're ever going to need it, but doesn't it seem prudent?

Perspective

Sometimes - when you're down in the trenches - you can't really see what's going on. All you can do is follow orders, keep your head down, do your job to the best of your abilities, and try to stay alive. You have to trust the people above you - the ones who give the orders. You have to believe that they know what they are doing. You have to believe that they understand the big picture; that the orders they give will advance you toward your goal. But what do you do when those orders call for your sacrifice? What if their objective has no merit? What if it runs counter to your own convictions? How can you gain any perspective when you spend all of your time down in the trenches?

Sometimes ... yes sometimes you just have to stop! You have to take some time to rest. You have to climb up out of the trenches, hike to the top of the mountain, look out over the fields, and decide for yourself if the objective has any merit. You can't rely on the people above you; you need to verify the situation for yourself. Only you can decide, "Shall I go back down into the trenches and continue the fight, or should I turn my life in a new direction."

Sometimes the view from the mountain will be hazy; your vision will be less than clear. But the view from the top will be better than the view from the trenches - and a lot safer too. Make sure you take some time now and then to look at the big picture; make sure you can trust the judgment of the people that you follow; and make sure that the goal you're pursuing is one you believe in. Then - if you choose - crawl back into the trenches and fight the good fight. The strength of your convictions will see you through.

All In Good Time

A Bloggie posed the question: What is up with the times on your blog entries? They seem to be hours ahead. Or do you have some powers of time travel?

Although the content for Scarred Bark is created here in Maryland, the posting is handled through our affiliate in London. For those of you with a burning desire for more useless knowledge, here is a link to the history of time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time

It's easy to forget how much the Royal Navy influenced the shape of our modern world. Their mastery of timekeeping in the days of sail gave them dominance over their rivals. If you have the time, read Longitude by Dava Sobel

http://www.davasobel.com/

(The book was made into a PBS TV show - in case you don't like to read) It presents a fascinating technical problem and the struggle between competing groups to find an answer. There is a valuable lesson here about using government stimulus to bring about desired results: If you want to find a solution to a problem, stop handing out grants; instead, offer a 10 billion dollar prize to the person who finds the solution. Maybe that's too much money. How about 10 prizes of 1 billion each to solve 10 different problems all at once. Yeah, I know, again with the multitasking, but it's not my money so what do I care. In a country with an annual deficit exceeding one trillion dollars, you'd think we could scrape up a couple of billion in prize money from somewhere. Maybe we should offer a prize to the person who solves our budget deficit problem. We could always borrow the prize money from the Federal Reserve - they seem to have more than their fair share.

Laying Tracks

The National Capital Trolley Museum closed last winter. The Inter-County Connector - a divided highway currently under construction across Montgomery County - runs right through the old museum site, so we had to move. The museum will reopen some time this fall - the exact date as yet unknown. The trolley cars were moved into the new car barns on flatbed trucks, and have been patiently waiting while construction continues on the rest of the system. Here's a recent picture of the car shops where we carry out routine maintenance and repairs. These cars form the backbone of our operating fleet. The rest of the cars reside in the adjacent display barn and they rarely see service; but the cars in this picture - along with #1329 at the back of the center track - see continuous duty hauling patrons along the line.

Reese has been at the museum for the last couple of weeks laying track. They still need to finish the yard ladder into the barns and the loop in front of the visitors center. If you look closely at this image, you can see that track #16 - the one on the right - has been finished. The New York City car is now connected with the main line. It will be a few more weeks before the overhead wire is installed, but we're getting close. Soon the clang of the trolley will return to Northwest Branch Park. I hope you all will stop in and visit the museum when we re-open and take a ride on one of our antique trolley cars.

The museum's website:

http://www.dctrolley.org

has pictures and information about the museum; and the official date for the resumption of service will be posted as soon as it's available.

An Obvious Choice

I've had a few people ask me how to join the Chicken Militia, like it's some kind of para-military organization or club. I wanted to take a minute to explain something: The Chicken Militia isn't an actual group with members and dues, it's more a state of mind. If you spend your work hours wondering what's happened to our country, and you spend your spare time learning how to do things for yourself ... well, that sort of sums it all up.

Have you ever needed to get something repaired, and - when you figured up the cost of the materials and tools you were going to need - found it would cost the same to:

a) hire a professional to do the job, or ...
b) throw it away and buy a new one?

If your answer to that dilemma was, "I'd better get started right away. When I'm done, at least I'll still have the tools." ... well, I think you understand where I'm coming from.

Consider this:

"What's the last thing a redneck says?"

"Hey, watch this!"

Most folks think that's funny. At the Chicken Militia, we post it as a reminder of what can happen when you become careless ... even for a moment. When you engage in hazardous activities, you must be willing to accept the possibility of injury ... even serious or fatal injury. It's no joke when you're working at the top of a telephone pole in 30 degree weather and it starts to snow, or when you're working around heavy equipment (in our neck of the woods, a metro rail worker was killed by a ballast spreader yesterday), or even when you're fixing your own car in your own driveway. The hazards are real, and you need to be careful; even so ... accidents happen. If you consider the reward of saying, "I did it myself" to be worth the risk ... well, then I guess you're one of us.

So open an ice cold beer when the job is well done. Here's how we do it at the Chicken Militia: Lineman's pliers, thank you very much. Yes, this works surprisingly well. Just hook the wire cutting part under the edge of the bottle cap and it pops right off.



I hope that clarifies matters for everyone.

Parts is Parts

We are standing in the plumbing isle of a major home improvements store looking for a pipe tap in the tool section. Of course we won't find one. They probably don't carry them ... and even if they do, there aren't any employees around to ask ... and even if there were, they probably wouldn't know a pipe tap from a horse's pituitary. Yeah ... they've got a big fancy pipe die machine for threading the ends of pipes; but nothin' for threadin' the freakin' holes. The only reason we are even looking for a pipe tap is because the guy at the auto parts store sold us the wrong water pump. They didn't have the right water pump, and we didn't want to wait for a special order. We just needed a pipe tap to thread the heater hose hole so we could use the wrong pump to fix the truck. It just wasn't meant to be.

While we were standing there in the plumbing isle, a guy walks up; and I can tell by the way he's digging through the fittings bins that he's one of us - a chicken militia kind of guy. I threw out the bait, "Come on Andy, let's go. We're not going to find a pipe tap here." The guy's eyes light up and he turns to ask, "What do you need a pipe tap for?" He didn't ask "What's a pipe tap?"; he knew. He just wanted to know what we were going to do with it. We had a ten minute discussion on parts modification, engine swaps, bio-diesel. I would have stayed and talked for an hour, but we were in a hurry. I still thought we might be able to find a tap ... somewhere ... at 6:30PM ... on a Sunday night (optimism knows no bounds).

On parting, he said, "If you find that tap, don't forget the Teflon tape ... it will probably leak."

I said, "I'll probably just JB Weld it."; and that started another discussion on the amazing repairs we'd done with the epoxy of the gods. It's nice to meet a kindred spirit when you're feeling a little down. I got to thinking about what it is that makes a successful home mechanic. None of us works in a vacuum. There's this underground network of knowledge, loaner tools, and junk parts. We feed off of each other; we inspire each other. But behind it all is a network of tool and parts suppliers; and a good parts guy is worth his weight in gold.

(Let's see: hundred seventy pounds, twelve troy oz to the pound, $950.00 an ounce. You do the math. Never mind, I'll do it myself: 170*12*$950.00 = $1,938,000.00. Hmmm, right in line with any wrongful death settlement. Maybe these parts guys aren't that different from the rest of us.)

I was reminded of the importance of a good parts guy at the museum on Saturday when I received this package:


It might not look like much at first glance, but these are parts to repair an antique self-propelled rail crane. There isn't a local antique self-propelled rail crane parts store where you go and pick this stuff up. You need a good parts guy who's willing to take the time to search industrial suppliers' catalogs; a guy with a good working knowledge of the equipment you're working on; a guy with an idea of where you might be able to find the right stuff. At the museum, that guy is Bob Schnabel; and whenever I need oddball parts or supplies, he always knows where to go. In a pinch, he even knows people who can make the stuff that can't be bought. He's the guy behind the scenes providing the magic that gets things done. So here's a big Thank you! to Bob ... and all the other parts guys out there - the mechanics' unsung heroes. Without you, it would all come to a screeching halt ... and fast.

Fried

You never know what's going to do well in a garden. You can plant varieties you trust, tend them faithfully, and still end up with failure. This year we only planted one Jalapeño pepper plant. It was doing fine until a rabbit came along and ate it down to a stalk. Bummer! Why, oh why, did we only plant one? I should have pulled it out by its roots and planted something else in its place, but - time being what it is - I never got around to it. So imagine my surprise today when I found that plant was two feet tall and loaded with peppers. Like I said, you never know what's going to do well in a garden ... even when you're sure.

I picked a bunch of peppers and brought them inside. I cored them and stuffed them with cream cheese. Dipped them in raw egg, rolled them in flour, and tossed them in the mini-deep fryer. Mmmm ... Jalapeño Poppers fresh from the garden. And fried green tomatoes, and onion rings. Yeah the world tastes just a little better deep fried in a vat of oil.

There are some other surprises in this year's garden too: romaine lettuce that turned into collard greens, cantaloupes that became cucumbers, and a patch of okra that seems to be thriving. I should have done up some fried okra too, but I forgot it was even out there. The okra is all the way at the end of the last row; I never made it out that far. That's OK ... I can always fry again tomorrow.

Proper Planning

It takes a lot of careful planning to bring a project to conclusion, especially in a timely fashion. There are so many details that can fall through the cracks. Take for example this road widening near my home. There was a proposal, and public hearings, revision to the master plan, eminent domain proceedings, funding, moving of utilities, grading ... and a hundred other things I'm unfamiliar with. You know, like environmental impact studies, traffic pattern analysis, and storm water management to name a few. I don't really know anything about planning a big road construction project, but I do know it takes a lot of careful planning. If you have a problem, then the whole program can get set back for months ... or even years. In fact, this particular project has been in process for many years. Things have to be done in a certain order, each subsequent step waiting for completion of the one preceding it. After all, you can't start paving a road, before you finish moving the telephone poles can you? Well, maybe you can - as witnessed by the photo below. It seems that if you are in a big enough hurry, you can just pave around the telephone poles and leave them in the middle of the road. I like to call this new section of Rte 124 "The Slalom". It's so much fun to drive.

A Bloggie Contribution

Here is a link to some information about that crab ... sent in by a Bloggie of course:

http://www.bayweekly.com/year00/issue8_51/dock8_51.html

Thanks for the info. I had know idea the crab was so old.

Crabby

Art is where you find it. While waiting for a flight at Baltimore Washington International, I had a chance to wander around the terminal. There are flocks of geese, sculptures, tile mosaics ... art around every corner. Someone put a lot of time and money into the art at this airport. Usually, I'd be too busy to notice; what with tickets, baggage, full body scans. On this trip, however, I was only the chauffeur ... and we were early! So I had a chance to really look at the art. Generally, I don't like art. I don't understand it, and I don't like to think about it either. Why are some of the geese brown and the others white? Who keeps them clean and painted? How many are there anyway? They remind me of running greyhounds, but why are they all going the wrong direction?

There was one piece of art I found truly captivating: a giant blue crab made of stained glass. The stats were impressive: over 500 lbs, 5500 man hours to create, 8 feet across the points. This is the largest stained glass blue crab in the world; but how many more can there be? One of its claws has rounded points and the other has pyramid shaped spiky points; why aren't they both the same? Why is one of its swimmers raised? Who would think up such a thing in the first place? Is there a Stained Glass Crab Collector's Society of America?



Just for grins I ran a search on that exact phrase and the number one search result was:

http://baltimore.org/attractions/

I don't see anything there about a Stained Glass Crab Collector's Society of America. Maybe I just don't know how to interpret their site; but I don't have a lot of time to prove the negative - that there is no such society. Why doesn't the search engine just say "No", instead of 1 - 10 of 20,600 for Stained Glass Crab Collector's Society of America ?

A Bloggie Contribution

A Bloggie sent along this picture of the tomato tree at Epcot. If you enlarge the image, you can see the clusters of red and green tomatoes hanging from the branches. Disney supplies its restaurant with fresh tomatoes from here. Looking closely at the container, it appears there are really two vines - not one. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the tree is actually tall enough to walk under. This image is from November, 2008.