Motorsports, mechanical work, and a complete waste of time.

"A man is no less a slave because he allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years" - Lysander Spooner

Happy Thursday y’all.

Here is the sunrise the other morning.

It’s been a bit dark out at the bus stop the last few weeks. Its pretty though. Luckily time changes in a few days. Boy Number Two is looking forward to an extra hours’ sleep.

Guess what?

The Boy decided to cut off his hair. I know

Sellout. Next thing you know, he’ll be looking for a three piece suit and a stock broker. Insert a comment about “seeing a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” here.

So…as my readers in the mid-west know, it’s been pretty darn dry around here. ‘Round hear in our little section of the Ozarks, I understand this is a record for days without rain. I guess they had a “OMG” fire over at the Glade Top Trail about 25 miles north of here. I understand its about 1200 acres. I’m betting it’s out tomorrow, as we are supposed to get some rain tonight and there is no duff here to maintain an actual fire. No offense to the fire crew on this one, but these guys don’t know what a forest fire looks like. I mean when you can fight it with a leaf blower……….but I digress…

So….

We had yet another unscheduled mechanical breakdown over the weekend.

You ain’t goin nowhere when that happens. Dead right there. Luckily this happened on a side street in West Plains, so I wasn’t blocking traffic.

If we look closely at the picture, it should be obvious that only about 30% of the bolt end of the ball-joint on the steering arm was actually there. I guess the rest of the bolt stress fractured over twenty years. That’s totally reasonable. As it turns out, we were one big ass pothole away from snapping off the steering. There was much hammering and cursing involved in getting this little guy out of the Pittman arm. That guy was dug in there worse than an Alabama tick…….

Two and a half hours later we were back in business. On a Saturday. Not bad huh? I could have done this at home, but not on the side of the road in front of some old lady’s driveway an hour away from my tools. Oh well.

To continue the streak of mechanical issues, The Wife had to replace the battery in her bike. Again. As a matter of fact, we picked up the battery for her bike about an hour before the truck needed parts. Yay.

The gorram Germans can over-engineer just about anything. Of course it has a computer….because……why wouldn’t it. You know the “muffler” on the left side is actually a catalytic converter. There is an old joke that says that if you throw an Audi engineer into a hole and give him a ladder, he will take the ladder apart and build a shovel. Just saying…..

So both of those vehicles are up and running again. We actually went for a ride yesterday. It’s nice to live in a place where we can ride 12 months out of the year. I think there were maybe two or three weeks last year where it was too cold / icy to ride. This is what we do on a random Tuesday.

That was fun.

You know fall has actually been really nice this year. We have had quite a bit of fun this season.

Now….

On to the final topic of this weeks blog, and the elephant in the room. Before we continue: if you are easily offended, now is the time to click off.

I’m sure we all know that there is going to be a super important Presidential election before we meet again. As many of you know, I don’t vote. Before you ask me to explain it again, please listen to the philosopher poet, George Carlin. He explains this better than I can.

I’m sure that I’m probably wrong. What do I know. I’m sure that as soon as this little show is over, your lives and the country will improve immediately. I mean look how well it’s been working out for the last few cycles - am I right?

It’s not possible that the “elected officials” really don’t control shit, with the system really being ran by an army of unelected bureaucrats who will do whatever they want, regardless of voters. That’s a conspiracy theory.

I mean…remember this guy?

He totally killed himself.

I promise I have tried to be gentle, but some folks will find this last little part very offensive. People don’t like it when deeply held beliefs are questioned. I do it in love. Seriously. Enjoy your life and ignore the politicians, like your Forefathers did. I want you all to worry about what you can control and be happy. Life is short and one day you will die. Spend time with your family. Do cool stuff. Enjoy life.

For those of you brave enough to make it to the end, here are your memes.