Adaptive Curmudgeon

I tried an impact wrench. Nope.

I soaked everything with Liquid Wrench, left it overnight, and then tried my impact wrench. Nope.

I started having doubts about the tire. The bike is 37 years old, has < 20,000 miles, and I bought it used in 2023. By mileage alone it could, conceivably, be on its second tire. That’s terrifying! No motorcycle tire that old is remotely safe. But why was it so hard to break free? Every time the tire is changed, the axle nut has to be removed. It absolutely can’t have more rust and corrosion than accumulated since that most recent tire was installed and God I hope it wasn’t decades ago! When I bought it, 3 years and several thousand miles ago, I’d checked the tread was adequate, but not if the tire dated to the Paleozoic! I was having excess drama and I started having dark fears.

What the hell had I been riding on?

The only way out was through so I decided to go to town and buy whatever size impact wrench I need no matter how much it cost (mine is pretty weak). Many of YouTube videos (including for more common Shadows) show people attacking their rear hub with beefy torque wrenches. So, that’s the next step I supposed. I’d either twist the nut off through pure brawn or simply tear the bike in half. It is what it is.

But I’d also lurked in on-line forums. And their information was entirely different. Lots of people have trouble just like I’d encountered. They all uniformly said “no” to torque wrenches. That was not the way. Instead they talked about breaker bars and their favorite “cheater” to put on the handle to get more leverage.

I don’t know why but that’s how it was. Videos had impact wrenches, text was all about breaker bars. A clear binary choice; as if the various forms of media had a secret meeting 10 years ago.

Reluctantly, I went to town and bought a Craftsman 1/2″ breaker bar. This pissed me off because I’d dropped well over $40 on a crude hunk of metal made by a company that had its heyday a generation ago. I was sure it wouldn’t work. I also bought an extension so the breaker bar wouldn’t swing loose and hit the plastic “bedonkadonk” if it suddenly broke free. That’s another few bucks.

I asked everyone if the low quality impact socket I had was loose tolerance. I thought maybe I should get a regular 6 point socket meant as a hand tool instead of the deep socket impact from some Chinese factory? Nobody seemed to know what “tolerance” meant. They didn’t really understand my question. The problem was solved in that there wasn’t a single 6 point 27 mm socket in the county. Can’t buy what ain’t there.

Back at my garage I tossed down my wife’s yoga mat on the hard cement. I was going to give this a serious try, the floor was hard, and she hasn’t done yoga in a while. (Side note: to my surprise she wasn’t mad when she saw it. She’s awesome like that!)

I got the lever in the optimal position and pulled as hard as I could. Nothing. I tried several times, with and without taps from a hammer. Nothing is what I expected and it’s what happened.

Damn. Obviously the tire had last been mounted when Clinton was president. It was rusted on so hard I’d need Thor to move it.

But the text stories had all been clear. This can be done.

Steady Curmudgeon. Breathe. Try again.

I gave it another go. I strained everything I had. “Something’s going to give” I thought, “and it’ll probably be my shoulders”. But life is hard and you gotta’ try as hard as you can.

There was an almost imperceptible shift. At first I was like “that’s it, my arm is fucked”. I stopped immediately. But my arm was still in its socket… so that’s nice.

Time to inspect what had happened. The nut hadn’t loosened. The whole damn axle had spun!

There’s a pinch bolt on the opposite side of the nut. It’s specifically there to pinch the axle so it doesn’t spin willy nilly. I hadn’t loosened it because I wanted it to hold. It had moved. Just a smidge.

See that hole on the end of the axle? When I took this, and the axle was still practically welded in place, it was vertical. It had moved a fraction of a degree.

I got out the “emergency toolkit” wrench and tightened the pinch bolt. There wasn’t much give, but I tightened to the full strength of my hands on the smaller wrench.

Then back on the other side of the bike, I pushed on that breaker bar. Bit by agonizing bit, the nut freed. Finally I could spin it off.

I was completely exhausted.

I slapped the bike’s bedonkadonk from the yoga mat; “was it as good for you as it was for me?”

After I got the nut completely off, I went back to the pinch bolt and loosened it. In fact I fully removed it, and just threaded it on a little to store it (so I wouldn’t lose it). You don’t have to do that but I wanted to be sure.

Then back to the yoga mat. I threaded the nut on to protect the threads and tapped the nut with a mallet. This drove the axle out the other side of the bike. After the He Man battle of torque death everything went smoothly. The axle slid out with hardly any drama at all.

I did it! Look at that axle, sliding out smooth as butter!

Once you get that axle out, the wheel hub slides off the splines of the shaft and there’s nothing left to do but muscle the tire out of the tight confines of the swingarm / bedonkadonk.

The brake mechanism popped right off so I could inspect the brake drum (on the hub) and pads (on the mechanism).

Carefully, I set it down. I was bushed. Sometimes breaking a single 27 mm nut free is all a man’s got in him.

I inspected the old tire. I compared it to the tire I’d bought. Remember, this particular model is very finicky about tires and this particular year is the most finicky of that model.

I’d bought the wrong size!

Mother fu*****!

Breathe Curmudgeon, you’ve gotten pretty far for a dumbass, you’ll get the rest of the way there.

But not today. I closed the garage door and went into the house for an ibuprofen.

This is what it looked like when I left. Note the brake pads in their assembly with the axle jammed in it so I don’t lose it; lower right. Note my wife’s yoga mat, which more or less gave its life for the project, on the bottom left.

More to go… the bike ain’t rolling yet!

Pics or it didn’t happen!

The bedonkadonk (trunk) of a PC800 is unique among motorcycles. The cargo area is under the seat like a scooter’s but it’s larger. Scooters can have that storage because they have entirely different engines and drivetrains. I don’t know of any “normal engine” motorcycle with anything like the PC800’s bedonkadonk.

It makes me happy. It’s weird yet practical. Why have hard saddlebags, when you can let engineers off the leash to come up with something entirely new?

In the photo below, I leaned the new tire (shipped in plastic wrap) against the bike. The old rear tire is still on the bike. It’s tucked under and behind the license plate. I’m not sure Yoda could fit in there!

BTW: The old tire isn’t super bald, I expected this whole “new tire” situation to go on forever and started early. I could’ve maybe run it a bit longer. On the other hand, the bike was used and I’ve no idea how old the tires actually are. Better to swap early than wreck trying to squeeze out a few more miles.

Gaze on the glory of the bedonkadonk! The lid (the rear passenger’s seat) is huge. There’s awesome access to the whole storage compartment. It seals out water perfectly. The bedonkadonk is said to be so good you can dump ice in it and use it as a cooler. (There’s a drain if you want to do that. Of course they thought to include a drain!)

Someone added a mirror. I don’t like it. What am I going to do, use it to adjust my eyeshadow? I leave it there because it’s not taking up space and I don’t want to rip it off and create an adhesive cleaning issue.

The bedonkadonk has a little “dome light”. I can even have it automatically turn on when I open the lid. It’s amazingly civilized. Usually I leave the “auto on” switch off, but it’s a pretty neat feature.

Accessing the tire seems hopeless. But don’t despair. Honda engineers are clever. They gave you all you’ll need. See those four screws on the rear edge of the trunk? Remove just two of them and the whole thing is accessible. It’s diabolically effective.

I’m not sure about vocabulary. Some of the things you find on a PC800 just don’t exist on motorcycles. Anyway, two hex screws is enough to loosen the rear bumper / license plate holder / tail & brake light… um… “assembly”. From there you pop out two friction fit tabs….. GENTLY! It’s very solid but also old plastic that’s irreplaceable. Once it’s free, unplug three lights, wiggle the wiring free and Bob’s your Uncle.

If you knew what you were doing, it would be a 5 minute job to get that far. The biggest risk is setting the removed assembly down on your garage floor and accidentally stepping on it.

I zip tied the wiring out of the way just to be safe. Out of curiosity, I compared the dreaded and feared PC800’s body panels to my very traditional 1999 Honda Shadow ACE. With the assembly popped off, there’s more access to the PC800’s tire than the Shadow. (Also the Shadow lacks a center stand.)

I want to repeat this because everyone loses their shit about “plastics”; after 5 minutes of fiddling, the PC800’s access is actually better than reaching under the metal fender of a “normal” cruiser.

I’m as surprised as you.

I really liked what I saw with the rest of the rear hub too. The rear drum brake linkage (with the spring) is held with a wingbolt! (The bolt also adjusts the brake position. You can tweak your brakes without even needing a tool.) To remove the linkage, just spin the wingnut off! (This is the exact same linkage design as my Yamaha TW200 dirt bike.) Drum brakes aren’t sexy but any brake you can adjust with a wingnut is super practical.

The bar below the brake linkage links the hub to the swingarm. I presume this is so the hub doesn’t spin around. I had to pull a cotter pin and loosen a 10mm (or 12mm, I forget) bolt. I got this far with tools from the bike’s “emergency tool kit”. (How better to test if you’re travelling with adequate tools?)

Nice!

The 27 mm axle bolt on the other side of the wheel was a different story. I tried the wrench from the emergency kit. I didn’t expect it to work. It didn’t work. “Emergency kits” have their limitations.

I drove to town and bought a 27mm impact socket from Horror Freight. I tried that with my impact wrench. Nope!

I began to wonder how old that tire really was? Would I be fighting 10 years of corrosion? 20?

It was time to walk away and ponder. (Actually I lurked on more online forums. I can’t be the first guy who’s encountered this. And I wasn’t.)

This is the exact point where Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance would go off on a three chapter discussion the Ancient Greek concept of “Arete“. It means the quality of excellence or “full realization of potential or inherent function”.

Whoa? Where did that come from? Apparently, I remember more of the book that I thought. Huh?

I like the word Arete. It inspires me to think of greater meanings in the things around me. The ancient Greeks were not perfect but they diligently explored thinking; and how to properly live. They had words for degrees and types of virtue and excellence; with a whole consideration of “fulfillment of purpose”. Smart dudes like Plato and Socrates were pondering virtue, knowledge, self-restraint, and justice 2,500 years ago.

What have we done with our time? Our half ass existence is embarrassing. In all that time, we should have mapped the contours of wisdom. But no! We’re absolute dumbasses.

How did that happen?

Consider arete and then consider what we think about. The debate of the day is what to do about a woman who killed her three children. Regardless of what I say about it, I’ll piss off roughly half the populace. A couple millennia should have been enough to suss out a general policy for infanticide. Nah, we just freak out when it happens and then line up in a circular firing squad. Our families are broken. Our words obfuscate. We’re forced to refer to bums as “unhoused”, illegal aliens as “undocumented”, and lies as “disinformation”. A jurist on our highest court cannot define “woman” and neither can an organization of Women’s Basketball. Our movies are propaganda. And it’s not even good propaganda. The richest nation on earth amassed the largest national debt to ever exist in the entirety of human civilization. We invented Pop Tarts, stare at screens, and got fat.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Diogenes would know what to do. Half naked, living in a barrel, and whacking off when he felt like it, he still worked hard trying to live correctly. He’d bitch slap every damn one of us, fling a plucked chicken at Congress, and then go back to his barrel. A lunatic talked smack to Alexander the Great because what he had to say was wise. Murderous violent conqueror Alexander listened, because he too was wise.

We are either idiots, or we mimic their behavior; functionally the same damn thing.

Which is to say, I couldn’t fix the bike until I got that 27mm nut loose.

The next post will ensue when I get my ass in gear and type it.

The Pacific Coast is very picky about tires. In 1989, the first year of the model’s existence, clearances were extra tight. This is the kind of detail only the true aficionado knows. Both the Honda Pacific Coast 800 and the Yamaha TW200 are odd duck machines. Both have cultlike followers that do a great job compiling all sorts of technical errata. I own both… this may say more about me than the machines.

I dove into an online forum. They discussed tires like some people discuss religion. I selected what I think was the right size, and placed an order with Amazon. It was going to take 16 days but delivery was free. I could stop thinking about it for a couple weeks. Win!

Four days later the tire arrived. “Ball is back in my court. Damn!”

The PC800’s fairings are a Rubik’s Cube. They’re ingenious. They can be solved but you ain’t doing it yourself. You need to know what Honda’s engineers intended. You can’t just puzzle it out. (I test drove a PC800 where someone had used a Sawzall to cut his way to the battery! I didn’t buy that bike!)

Everything’s hidden and overlapping. The guys at Honda wanted the bike covered and by God that’s what they did. In fact, not only do you need to know what hidden screw(s) or panel(s) to remove but in what order. The only thing that saves your sanity is that you know it is absolutely possible. It’s not unsolvable, just confusing. Nor is it for the impatient or faint of heart. Did I mention that 37 year old plastic is delicate and irreplaceable?

You can do this Curmudgeon. Steady. One step at a time. Deep breath.

I approached it slowly, as if it was a cobra. I consulted my huge 300 +/- page manual. (At least a year ago I purchased a download. I paid to have it printed and bound. I knew I’d eventually need it.) Alas, it didn’t help. Maybe, it assumed I’d be smart enough to do a tire. I’m not! I’m just well below Honda’s expectations. (Also the manual is from 1989, expectations of a mechanic in 1989 is way higher than expectations in 2026; not that I’m a mechanic.)

Lowering my sights, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos. They were almost comical. The Honda PC800 is built basically from a Honda Shadow which are as common as pigeons on a statue. Also, there’s no such thing as a bike designed such that you can’t change a tire. It has to be do-able! Yet the crazy redneck shit people do to get at that mostly hidden rear tire is without bounds.

I’m not saying they don’t work, I’m just saying Honda had an approach in mind. “Strap the bike into your truck and hang the rear tire off the tailgate” is not the intended solution!

Finally I found a guy who seemed to have it together. He showed how to patiently and intelligently approach the plastics. Ah ha!

In the same video, he pulled the tire, complete with explanation and commentary about his wife’s lawnmowing, in 15 minutes flat. When I grow up I want to be like him!

All hail this guy!(1)

I eventually tried it myself. Everything that guy said was true. Every part was obvious when you knew where to look. Everything was right where it made sense to be. I felt like I was learning!

I might someday be able to change a flat on the side of the road without divine intervention!

That day had not yet come.

I couldn’t loosen the 27mm axle nut. I started with the wrench in the emergency tool kit. It didn’t work and I didn’t expect it to. I drove to town and bought a cheap 27 mm impact socket. I have a cheap old battery operated impact wrench… it did absolutely nothing. I feared I might round off the nut and be utterly doomed!

So. There. I. Was.

Robert M. Pirsig had a lot to say about such a situation:

“Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn’t just irritating and minor. You’re stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It’s absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle. This isn’t a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck.”

Stuck!

Pirsig went off on a tangent about the value of a bike with a stuck bolt being $0 until you unstuck the thing and something something… Phaedrus… mental breakdown… quality… and other shit.

Young Curmudgeon didn’t grok it then. And I was stumped by an axle nut in 2026.

Wisdom includes knowing when to step away from the challenge. I slathered the nut with liquid wrench and stepped away from the garage. I had no idea what I’d do next. Probably more procrastination.

A.C.

(1) Just for the record, that guy’s 1989 Honda PC800 is cleaner than a dinner plate. Under my bike, I found 40 years of dirt. He pops off the axle nut cool as a cucumber. I call shenanigans! I’ll bet he’s done it a dozen times and it’s smooth as butter on his bike. On my bike, I’m starting to wonder if my tire is way older than I thought. It’s probably a good thing I’m not riding on it.

(2) I can sense hands moving towards the keyboard to instruct me on what to do next. I appreciate the impulse but it’s OK. I got it. By the time I typed this, I’d already removed that infernal axle bolt. I’m taking y’all on a journey I’ve already finished.

I already mentioned I’m a lousy (inexperienced) mechanic. You already knew I bought a 1989 Honda Pacific Coast… which no mechanic will touch. I knew damn well what I was getting into. I did it anyway. Such hubris!

Dealerships in my area don’t like to service… anything. They’ll barely touch the Goldwing their customers financed two years ago. A decade ago they started to get fidgety over brake pads and a tire for my dirt simple 1999 Honda Shadow; which is pathetic. Honda sold like a bajillion of them! Imagine a mechanic in 1973 saying “Volkswagen Beetle? I’d need metric sockets! Can’t work on that.”

So anyway, I bought a 37 year old bike knowing I’d someday face the learning curve I’m enduring right now. Fine. A man needs a challenge and besides Hondas are famously reliable. (When I bought it I secretly wondered if I’d be able to make PC800 body panels with my 3d printer. Answer back then? No! More detailed answer now that I’ve experimented with 3d printing a few years? Mostly no.)

Last year I changed the oil. For an inept dweeb it was a cracking good start. I can and do change oil but it feels like a challenge. What can I say? We all have shit at which we suck.

This year I finally got healthy enough to take my PC800 camping. It was great. That’s when I noticed the tire is running out of tread. These things turn into sagas so I started “working on it” right away. There may (will?) be months of grumpy drama and unavoidable setbacks. Best to start early.

What do I mean by “grumpy drama”. Well, here goes:

I went to the dealer. “Can you put a new tire on my bike?”

I knew the answer but you’ve got to ask. It’s like checking the fuel in a car that won’t start. You’ve got to check before you do whatever else will really fix it.

The parts guy lobbed grenades at me. “Tires that size are out of stock. It’ll take 2 months to get one. Plus I’m quoting a price $60 higher than Amazon.”

The parts guy tagged out and handed me to the service guy. “That ridiculous price is just for the tire. Installation will be a lot more.”

I could live with that. A ‘throw money at it’ situation implies the situation will get solved.

But the service guy wasn’t done yet. He looked at the calendar like it was a cancer diagnosis. “We will drag this out”, the service guy continued, “we’ll take so long your life will begin to ebb before your eyes. The bike will wind up abandoned in a garage full of snowmobiles. We won’t even look at it until January, at which time we’ll say ‘it’s not a snowmobile’ and put it off another six months.”

I expected this but he heaped on more despair.

“Also, did you say it has ‘plastic fairings’?” He’d Googled PC800 and was squinting at the images. He didn’t like what he saw. “Why don’t you fuck right off? In fact, keep fucking off until you cross the fuck off event horizon from which we will never see you again.”

They didn’t say it exactly like that. I exaggerate… a little. And, it’s about what I expected so I wasn’t upset.

Before leaving I tried an alternative. “What if I show up with a wheel in one hand and a tire in the other?”

This changed everything. They were on board. They like mounting tires! “$50 to mount it. Probably take a couple hours.”

My path was clear.

Stay tuned…

Decades ago I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig).

I was young but my mind wasn’t completely goo. I certainly wasn’t as clueless as many young woke dipshits of today. But I was definitely inexperienced. I have proof. At the time, I was tiptoeing into a career that would be a lifelong DEI minefield. I thought “I’m sure that’ll blow over“. I don’t think a man could have been more wrong than I was. I’d like to go back in time, say “bless your heart”, and smack my young self with a tire iron.

As for the book, I remember not “getting it”.

I had two theories. Theory 1: The book is deep and I’m too dumb to comprehend its lofty concepts. Theory 2: The book is bullshit and I’m too dumb to suss out that it’s crap.

I planned to “learn some shit and get smarter… then read it again.” I never did. But recently I thought about the book. Why? Because I was doing actual motorcycle maintenance, despite the certain knowledge I’m not a good mechanic. What would become of me?

It’s not the ideas, it’s the lack of hands on experience. I can usually conceptualize what needs to be done (not always). But it’s easy for the inexperienced to screw up implementation of even the simplest ideas. Experience matters. I know that of myself. That’s why I prefer to tinker with things that are cheap and/or won’t get me killed. Motorcycles? They’re my version of “the big leagues”. They can expensively beat you to death.

On the other hand, it’s incumbent on us all to avoid life too deeply bound to theory. It’s better to cautiously risk a blown real world implementation if one can “learn from it”. After all, a monkey can understand what a lug nut does, but a professor will cross thread, whip out the impact wrench, and nuke the wheel stud. (Some dudes at tire shops do the same.)

In my defense, I can at least change a car tire. This includes absurdly heavy duals on my 1 ton truck. It’s not something I was born with. Nor did anyone teach me. The good Lord saw fit to train me up with many flats. Um… thanks?

So this would be a step away from the purgatory of overconfident theorist. Every politician, CEO, commie economist, woke protester, or influencer has all sorts of theoretical knowledge but nothing practical. They’re a menace. Have you witnessed them driving the world into the ground? They try to force reality to match their theories. There should be a word for that; how about “Krugmaning”?

When the rubber meets the road you have to be right.

I began the week looking at my bike; pondering the vast gulf between “I get this in theory” and “I fixed the thing in real life”. I’m in good company. Socrates pondered the difference between knowledge and false certainty.

“I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.”

Noted fictional philosopher Dirty Harry, demonstrated a similar thought. “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Knowing that I know nothing, I picked up a huge service manual and a wrench. I was about to learn things…

More to come.

Forgive me for this post…

Increasingly, I avoid politics. Where I once participated, now I disengage. The madness is too much. I’ll get stupid on my shoes. Politics as practiced right now is unsuitable for the moral or the intelligent. The rational in search of answers find none. The emotional in search of enlightenment are misdirected.

It’s a shame to back away from the Monster. We are not Frankenstein. The Monster is not our creation. We’d like to help the Monster become something better. But the swamp is too intolerable and we’re wise to stay out. As for Frankenstein? Fuck that guy.

Why did it get like this? That’s the question of human society! Everyone from Ancient Greeks to Medieval Feudalism to a blowhard on a barstool has asked the question.

I formerly assumed humanity always strives to get its head out of its ass. Now I know this is sometimes true but sometimes not. Recently, it’s not.

When I sip the heady liquor of society’s ways of self organizing, someone has taken a shit in it. Ideas are served on a plate of emotional incontinence. Everything is AB tested slogans.

I can see why. It’s more fun for a monkey to fling poo that a man to become wise. I suspect the ancients knew. If they were here to teach me, what would the Greeks say about demos (the common people of their state)? Could they explain it in relation to Trump catching a bullet in PA? I wish I knew.

Despite a noble desire to learn, one’s first goal is self-preservation. You cannot learn from the irrational. But you can catch madness via contagion.

The human mind is easily hijacked. Right now it’s hijacked hard. We’ve weaponized mind control like spastic irresponsible monkeys. We humans move fast… and often blindly. The Wright Brothers flew in 1903. By 1945 we had mushroom clouds over Trinity. That’s a huge leap, and one from which you can’t go back. (Both for flight and bomb.)

The last few decades we’ve lived the biggest experiment in mental manipulation since the Gutenberg press. I encourage you to consider your place in history. What I said sounds trite and goofy. But am I wrong? Can you honestly tell me you haven’t felt it? People lost their shit in 2020 partly because monkeys couldn’t help obeying other monkeys on a screen. I’ve lived through that “progress”. So have you. I remember three channels of black and white networks and dial up party lines. I remember when nerds fine tuned 9600 baud modems. Within a decade Grandma was on Facebook. Shortly thereafter teenage girls were committing suicide over the number of “likes” on a “feed”. The Gutenberg press felled Kingdoms. This era has done the same.

I suspect the first few decades of everyone carrying a social manipulation device in their pocket was always going to get weird. It was in the cards.

The good news is I don’t think it’s as bad or irreversible as it seems. Leave the cell phone in your car’s glove box. Go fishing. Detox is pretty easy.

Plus, generations change and the younger ones are already adapting (or trying to). Young people have their own bullshit and they don’t care about yours. They find previous generation’s terrors quaint and silly; which is probably healthy. Ask a Millennial about Mutually Assured Destruction. Watch them shout back at the geezers. “Missiles are dumb. Global Warming is serious.”

One terror is substituted for the next; but there’s always a terror. It’s an endless cycle. They say only intervention by the elite, whether in lab coats or priestly robes, will save us. An Aztec priest cuts out a beating heart to pay debts owed to the gods. Paul R. Ehrlich says we’ll all starve over The Population Bomb. The UN invited Greta Thunberg to enlighten them on things about which she, a teenager, somehow has unique knowledge. The high priests demand sacrifice; monkeys looking at screens comply.

The tell is that disaster is always epic and looming but can only be addressed by giving the high caste what they want. And the finish line is always 30 years away.

I think that’s the way our minds are built. The end is never Tuesday, or March 11th; those are measurable. The end is always roughly half a generation out.

Forgive the paragraphs of hemming and hawing. I hoped to get you in the right mindset for one question:

Have you enjoyed the summer of 2026?

Have you noticed how gloriously boring it has been? Did you step away from hyperventilating media and actually look around? Have you been to a county fair?

Do you appreciate some measure of gaining stability? Do you complain that the corrupt are not hanging from light poles; when a few years ago they were running amok? Not long ago, your ass could be fired, cancelled, debanked, sued, or arrested at any moment. That can still happen but it’s less likely.

Have you noticed the lack of riots? Do you rejoice at cities not burning? What about the missing busses full of agitators? Did you savor the silence of Wall Street not being “occupied”? Have you gone all summer without bumping into a glowing green Fed encouraging you to do something stupid?

People in the business of colorful tantrums are temporarily out of business!

It’s not perfect. There’s still unrest. There are still people who think Trump will steal their lawnmower and rape the housecat. Some folks still wear masks (and maybe always will).

But bask in the lack of funding for nutjobs leading to less nuttery. “No Kings” geriatrics trying to relive 1968 was a faint echo. They toddled around cosplaying what it’s like to be oppressed. And there’s a subset of women who get off on Handmaid’s Tale and hunky murderers. That creeps me out! A few people got overclocked, did immensely stupid things, and got ventilated by law enforcement. Much like Neil Young wrote about in Ohio… except back then his music wasn’t half bad. Media reporting on opinions of Bruce Springsteen and Better Midler went nowhere. Why? Because nobody under 50 even knows who they are.

Lord help us, we’ve had some straight out assassinations. Evil walks among us. But it was worse just a few years ago!

All my life I wondered why people who hate anything “normal” have infinite money. All that cash turned the mild soup of human friction into a caldron of shit. How’d they do it?

Last year I heard about some government whatzit. A nerdy acronym like USAID should have nothing to do with me. Yet it did. And there were (are?) many like it. They used unimaginable funds (regardless of whether legit or graft) to annoy us. Just fucking shake us into frenzy.

A reduction in the money flood made a difference. It was immediate.

Remember our lives three or four years ago? Infinite cash meant some dweeb was bitching at you. Bitching about what? Everything! Drinking through a straw, buying a plane ticket, eating meat, choosing a lightbulb, flushing a toilet, seeking a car that wasn’t shit, listening to music, reading a book, or mowing your lawn. Parents had to hope their kid’s school would teach fractions and not cut his balls off!

Back then I wondered what life would be like if nuts left me alone. Imagine life without being attacked by infinite money. It turns out it was attainable, and fast. Without infinite funds to bus in a crowd of lunatics, you don’t have so many crowds of lunatics.

I like it! Peace is nice.

I’ve very much enjoyed this summer. We stopped paying for riots. We had fewer riots.

Savor it. It won’t last long.

Corruption will rise again. Whether now or five years from now, another group of misfits will have funded themselves with tax money or a gift from China or whatever. They’ll be wrecking a mall in Des Moines. They’ll do it in the name of gay dolphins or some other goofy (irrelevant!) reason. Sophists will download new arguments into their programmable brains. They’ll justify whatever they’re paid to justify. The newest Thunberg will be doing her Joan of Arc set piece. Whatever USAID was or is, will be back. It’ll have a new name but the same staff.

But don’t despair. At the moment, the sun is shining!

Enjoy peace while it lasts. Calm is self reinforcing. Good times last longer when you take time to enjoy them.

A.C.

A shew (presumably) had come at me. In self defense, I’d stomped his ass. It’s a drag things came to that. Sorry little guy. You had spunk but size wasn’t on your side. And what’s with the aggressive behavior? You can’t charge down the path like a monster if there’s a full sized human nearby. (That said, how often is there a human on this trail in the pitch black? Maybe he’s been using this path for months?)

Back in the house Mrs. Curmudgeon asked what I’d been doing:

Me: “I was messing with thread designs, and I checked for northern lights…”

Her: “That’s nice…”

Me: “…and some mammal got pretty close to me. I’m not sure what it was. I stomped him.”

That got her attention.

Her: “What? Did you kick our cat?”

Me: “No! I know what a cat looks like. This was smaller, and had non-retractable claws. Smaller than a mink or a fisher or a martin. A shrew I think? But it wasn’t tiny like a mouse, it was maybe 6″-8″ long. It’s a puzzle.”

Her: “If it wasn’t our cat, was it the neighbor’s cat?”

Me: “I don’t prowl the forest looking for cats. I know it wasn’t a cat. I like cats.”

Her: “But you said it was an unidentified mammal…”

It’s best to settle such things before they become legend. Rather than start a “there are many mammals that are not cats” discussion, I grabbed a flashlight and went back out there. I found the critter and took a few photos. Back in the house I handed the phone to Mrs. Curmudgeon.

Me: “See? I’m not sure what that thing is exactly, but it sure as hell ain’t a cat.”

Her: “Uh huh…” She’d already drifted off. She probably dreamed I was terrorizing cats.

Note: I’ve since checked references, it wasn’t a shrew. It was a gopher. Not a critter I’m familiar with. In fact, what I think of as a gopher is really a thirteen-lined ground squirrel. So I guess I was wrong about them too. Possibly it was a Plains Pocket Gopher (Geomys bursarius). Or maybe it was something else? Cut me some slack, I like nature but I’m not a mammalogist (or a trapper).

Further reflection: As soon as I deduced it was (probably) a gopher I began to wonder if my assessment of his aggressive behavior was false. But no. It happened as I wrote it. I have 2026 disease. We all do. We’ve been lied to and gaslit about every damn thing for so long it’s easy to distrust everything; even your own lyin’ eyes. But I observed carefully. Gopher or not, the little bastard was cranking down that trail in Gangster Mode.

I woke up later that night. I had further thoughts to process.

I wound up sitting on the porch, having a beer with our barn cat (which was very much not stomped!). I was thinking about those stupid HYF plot lines. I’d presumed they’re just harmless servings of confirmation bias. But also maybe they fill a need Hollywood and mainstream books refuse to address?

We’re a species evolved as cunning persistence hunters. Now we’ve chained our ass into cubicles for HR meetings. The villainous character of Dolores Umbridge resonates because we meet her every day… and society is such that we just have to take it. We can’t just smack her silly.

Something has to give. People in coddled society are desperate to feel tough. It’s probably part of being human. That’s why we like stories about space aliens shitting their space britches over the inexplicable danger/cool which is humanity. There’s even a sub-genera called “humans are space orcs”.

This hairy chested brawniness is hosted by the ultimate milquetoast media; YouTube AI. All this so a dork eating Cheetos on a couch can imagine himself a space badass.

Methinks they doth protest too much.

Then again, did I not just do the actual thing? Didn’t I live their little plot? I wandered around in the middle of the dark night just like a badass who ain’t afraid of shit. When a thing I couldn’t identify charged me in the dark, I didn’t hesitate or run away. I didn’t  make dramatic shrieking noises. “Eek a mouse!”

I kicked it dead. I did so wordlessly. I didn’t hesitate. It’s the kind of behavior featured in HFY stories. Admittedly I faced a dipshit gopher instead of a saber tooth space tiger; but is the story similar?

I don’t know how I feel about that. I didn’t hesitate and the critter was toast. So now I wonder if I’m even more removed from society than I already assumed. Also, is society healthy when spastic people publish videos of themselves crying during their morning commute?

The solution to wanting to be tough is to go do tough things. It’s not rocket science. But not everyone can be a dumbass like me who just walks around in nature encouraging dumb shit to happen. Then again why not? I was doing the cheapest thing there is, wandering. It costs nothing to walk without a flashlight. It’s free to leave your phone behind. Plus, random interesting challenges happen on their own. A month ago I fell off a tailgate so hard I thought I’d wrecked my whole summer.

I mock HFY yet wonder if it means something. I think they’re quite popular. Are those silly stories entertaining because of a need? Or because it’s truth? Do I think they’re dumb because I routinely encounter real critters in real life, and therefore get it out of my system?

Damn, who knows? The only thing I’m sure about is it’s good to have long warm dark nights and the time to ponder such things.

Having enjoyed my beer, and having pointed out five satellites in the sky to my cat, I went to bed. I slept like a baby.

A.C.

P.S. I went out the next day to clean it up before our dumbass dog finds and eats the carcass. Something had carried it off. I saw no tracks. There’s a lot of animals in my forest. Could be anything from a small owl (I hear owls hooting all the time) to (quite unlikely) a wolf. There’s even a bear hanging around lately. I’m going to pretend our barn cat ate it after our beer and one sided discussion. Whatever is cleaning up carcasses out there, I’m not going to overthink it. Lest I become one of those dudes who’s afraid to walk alone in the dark.

Just as I’ve spent many years exhausted during the workday because I was up all night building a boat or some shit, I also tend to mess up my sleep schedule by taking a “woods stroll” in the pitch dark.

I think most people are afraid of the dark, especially outdoors. I’m not. Full grown adults shouldn’t be afraid of the dark like the boogeyman is out there. I see it as a mind prone to emotion overriding a mind which knows damn well there’s no boogeyman.

But I’m alone in my opinions. For example, when I’m at a campground I notice people will walk to the outhouse at midnight in a gaggle, with a half dozen flashlights, and talking to each other… as if they’re afraid they’re extras in a horror movie. I do the opposite. Our planet has a moon and if your eyes fully adjust you can see… sorta’. Under most situations, you can get around in a lot less light than you’re used to.

My local environment has a dirt path I know well. I could feel the surface under my feet. I navigated by keeping my feet on the dirt path and not the weeds next to it. I don’t need a lantern or a team of Navy SEALS to protect me. It’s my planet goddamn it! I evolved to be here and I’m not going to be a chickenshit about the half of every day that’s Scooby-doo spooky.

There was almost no light pollution and the moon was just about out of sight. Thus, the skies were glorious! People live whole lifetimes without seeing the stars I’ve seen.

I kept pausing to look up; considering the glorious silent stars and juxtaposing that with the neato keen math thing I’d just figured out. The air was warm. In six months it’ll be cold enough to sear flesh. But not this night. I thought about the balance in all things such an observation implies. God had made an impressive world for us to enjoy but how many of us take time to do it?

I was in a good mood.

But… I was also wandering around in the dark like a lunatic vampire. You just know something weird was about to happen. And it did.

Ahead on the path where it was very hard to see, a mammal was approaching. Something small, about the volume of two tennis balls. It was coming my way and not being subtle about it! It wasn’t furtively scampering about like a mouse, it was charging down the dirt like a pint sized rhino. It was making tiny huffing noises. It had no idea I was there.

Huh, that’s weird! I know nature pretty well. It wasn’t moving like a weasel or a mink or a fisher. Maybe a rat or a muskrat? Except the little thing was acting like the meanest badass in the forest.

I travel the forest more or less silently, as one ought. You don’t know what’s there, so why broadcast your position? It just seems like good standard practice. This why a gaggle of chattering / whispering people waving cell phones and lamps en route to the campground outhouse seems weird to me. Being quiet, I see a lot more nature than most people. The bad news is I’ve occasionally surprised skunks or a campsite raccoon or whatever. I have to make a point to change my ways in Grizzly Country!

So this little… whatever it is… was charging down the path like it was ready to throw down with anything from an edible earthworm to a mastodon. It was closing fast.

Animals see at the scale of their life. (This applies to humans too.) A small thing sees small things at small distances. A bigger thing sees bigger things farther away. This is why you can approach a butterfly without spooking to distances that would give an elk a heart attack. It’s also why humans will walk right past dainty wildflowers and spiders and bugs engaged in outright warfare having seen nothing. (By the way, this “scaling of vision” is my personal opinion and not a scientifically proven fact.)

So the little thing got closer and closer. I sensed it perfectly. It had no idea I was there. I was just as unimportant in it’s world as a tree. (A tree that had been pondering the universe a few seconds ago.)

A shrew? That’s what it must be. Shrews are voracious predators. Absolute monsters when viewed within their own weight class.

I couldn’t back up off the trail because I was next to a tree. Nor did I relish stepping into the brush which would make noise and let the little beast know where I was. I felt like that would add an unknowable amount of drama to a scene that was already looking like it might get out of hand. For it’s part, the mystery critter was carrying on exactly like something that would give you nightmares if it wasn’t tiny. If that thing weighed 60 pounds I’d be reaching for my pistol!

I suspected it was looking for a fight, or food, or something equally dynamic and bitey. It still hadn’t noticed me (I stood still). Very soon it would be damn near at my feet.

I like nature but I’m not letting a shrew climb up my pantleg.

Kick!

I sent the little guy sprawling, flinging him back down the trail a few feet. I don’t have anything against shrews (if that’s what it was) but I’m not going to let anything get that close unless the situation is more controlled than it was. (That little shrew’s intentions didn’t seem friendly. He acted like he simply assumed anything he found would be bug or worm sized and he was ready to eat it without asking questions.)

The little monster rolled a couple of times and came up in what can only be called “a fighting stance”. He had no idea what had kicked it or where it had come from so that makes sense. I don’t know if shrews are nearsighted like a mole but that’s what I’m guessing. He had big huge incisors. He pivoted around his landing place making an impressive show of teeth in every direction. He stood up like a tiny bear. His hind feet weren’t visible but his front paws had huge claws. I couldn’t tell if they were “digging like a mole” claws or “tearing a mole apart for dinner” claws. Whatever they were, he clearly wasn’t happy. To be honest, I wasn’t either. I’d been having a better night before he arrived.

He worked around in a circle while I stayed still. I figured there was a good chance he’d retreat. Then I’d just walk back toward my house. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

When his mystery kicker didn’t materialize as an owl or something he seemed to shake it off. He made a little huff sound and started right back down the center of the trail; right at me. Again! What a dumbass!

This time he knew something was going on so I couldn’t be sure how fast he’d react. Maybe I’d get another kick in or maybe I’d have a tiny bundle of teeth latched on my ankle. Then again, I ain’t afraid of rodents (or whatever it was). So I made it count. In my defense, I hadn’t advanced on him. My actions were purely defensive. Regardless, the mystery critter met his maker.

So that happened. It had been such a groovy evening too.

Last post coming up.

I was messing with 3d printed threads. I’ve already made some threaded objects that work great. But when I scaled up my recent project, the whole thing went to shit. I was postulating something like a bolt that’s as thick as a campstove; because it was really a campstove gadget and not a bolt at all.

Admittedly, that’s super huge. A bolt like that would only appear on weird shit like a bridge superstructure or an aircraft carrier or something. My assumption of scalability was naïve. My 3d printer told me all about my failures as a designer.

3d printers like to lay down layer after layer. They don’t like “overhang” where a layer sticks out into space without a supporting layer beneath. It seems the larger a bolt’s diameter gets the more the thread’s overhang goes from hassle to deal breaker. I’d experimented but had created naught but a series of print failures. Being the nerd that I am, I interpreted the whole thing as a fascinating intellectual puzzle.

Eventually I had a revelation.

There’s no reason threads have to be symmetrical.

Is your mind blown? It isn’t? Are you mad? It ought to be!

Using a way of thinking I’d never before imagined, I created threads with gradual slope on the downhill side (thus supporting the print and avoiding sag) and a flat surface on the top (which is good in a mating surface). I projected the shape as a helical inclined plane, just like a “normal” thread.

This asymmetric black magic would make a metal lathe burst out in hives. But it makes sense for a 3d printer. 3d printed objects are a whole different animal than lathe machined metal. That means 3d printed stuff doesn’t and shouldn’t play by the rules of the machined (or injection molded) parts we’ve always experienced. Every nut and bolt I’ve ever seen in my life, most of which are metal, has had symmetric thread. So what?

I’m not the first guy to think of this. They’re called “buttressed threads”. They exist in screw jacks or some other obscure shit. I’ve never encountered them. But they solve my 3d overhang issue. I drafted a trapezoidal cross section in a FreeCAD sketch, performed an additive helical rotation, and I think it’ll work. I was feeling pretty studly.

But it was late. A sane guy would be in bed hours ago. I’m deliberately and only partially successfully trying to adjust to being a retired semi-normal human being. Part of that is keeping my inner mad scientist in check. There will be time to tinker more on another day. I should get a good night’s sleep and take a break from playing with weird math. It was already 1:30 am!

I shut my computer down and started walking to my house. This is when I indulged in another of my idiosyncrasies. It was just shy of 2 am when I wandered into the forest.

More in my next post.

I was up late fiddling with my 3d printer and 3d models to drive it. I was having fun. I was “in the zone”.

For background noise, I played HFY fiction on YouTube. For those of you who don’t know, HFY stands for “Humanity, Fuck Yeah!” It’s a genera of science fiction. On YouTube it has been beaten to death by AI. (If that’s your thing, don’t take my cynicism personally, some is probably excellent. The junk I played as background noise wasn’t a thoughtful exploration of the genera.) Probably written by AI, the stories follow repetitive plot points as befits a machine’s storytelling.

Below, I recreate a basic plot:

“I’m Commander Zxnod, reptilian commander in a fearsome space armada. I was tasked by the supreme galactic hegemony to test the recently discovered and primitive weaklings which call themselves humans. I think a being without scales or poison will be no use to the military. However, for diplomatic purpose I must perform the test. Human volunteers, Chad Thundercock, Awesome MacSmith, and Busty Johnes transfer to the Deathworld training grounds and begin a three day immersion in harsh conditions. While they do this I monologue about the apex predators / dragons / space monsters which will surely kick their ass. Three days later I’m shocked to discover they’re not only alive but thriving. They’ve trained a nine foot tall wolf to play fetch! They captured a giant space constrictor, named it “Mikey”, are keeping it as a pet, discovered its sentience, and have started training it to draw letters on a chalkboard. They’re barbequing a freshly killed Tyrannosaurus Rex. They offered me a piece and I was grossed out. Space corporate management are all herbivorous species and they’ve collectively shit themselves in fear at the outlandishly primitives. The humans don’t notice or don’t care. They did all their feats with nothing but a Swiss Army Knife, two rocks, and a pointed stick. Humans are some scary shit! The end.”

Imagine that, but read in an AI generated voice.

Hm… I think I’ll stop here. Dumping on HFY was fun but the next post will move on to the most exciting topic ever; bolt thread geometry!