Safe, Flat, and Bland.

So here I am in the land of 'fromage l'orange': Wisconsin. I was in New Mexico and while I might not have stayed there forever I did LOVE the state. Vast, varied, vicious and sometimes voluptuous. I liked NM for all the reasons that I am struggling with Wisconsin. NM is extreme. It is still the Wild, Wild, West and you have to stay awake some of the time if you want to stay alive. The traffic is nuts but one thing they don't have in NM is lots of white folks driving around looking for an excuse to self righteously honk the horn and flip you the bird. There are lots of idiots driving in NM and some of them are white folks but mostly people just don't seem to ask for trouble on the roads. The streets are a mixing board and you cannot tell where someone is from and what there predisposition to using a vulgar display of force might be. Which is to say if you honk your horn at every person that acts like an ass on the streets sooner or later you will attract the attention of someone who is seriously having a bad day and now they have someone to blame it on: you.  This is not true in Wisconsin/Madison. Lots of self righteous white folks here looking for trouble which is typical for people who have never really found it.  It is not something you go looking for. I think in general folks in Albuquerque have enough REAL trouble and on some level they know better. 

Generally what I have described about the human culture of Albuquerque is true for the food and the ... topography and climate of New Mexico. The food is interesting and spicy and not bland with many different contributing influences. It won't get you killed but it might make you turn bright red. The landscape and climate is extreme and this was my favorite part. I loved disappearing into the 'wild' and having to manage energy, water, food, daylight, temperature and judgment to keep from getting killed or hurt. It wasn't safe; like most things that are VERY challenging and VERY interesting. I felt alive and beautiful out in the desert, I felt a sense of place and appropriate size: which means that I felt really small, not without any meaning or importance but I had left the world that humankind has created and the sense that we are the most important thing in it. This was and is predominantly the feeling and the phenomenon about being outside 'in it'that keeps me feeling alive gives me sense that I fit in to the world.  : be it paddling big water in a sea kayak or riding a mountain bike in the desert 20 feet from a 200 foot dropoff or skiing up a mountain and then down: your skills and your brain and your experience are the safety net. Sometimes you have to just grit it out and the ability to do that comes from doing it.  New Mexico is hard in the way that Wisconsin is soft, soft like someone who uses the AC in their car a lot and always finds the parking space closest to the entrance and drives to the store when it is a ten minute walk. Wisconsin is relatively flat and there is no 'wild' very close. Even if it is rural it is cultivated and tilled and rolled flat in neat, ordered rows and the only trees are between your land and mine or where the boggy spots are.

It feels like the entire city of Madison is one big, sprawled out mall: car dealerships, OfficeMax, nail salons, supermarkets etc. The worst neighborhoods aren't that bad the pretense that Madison is a 'cool, trendy, and happening' place is thick.  Don't get me wrong, if I had to live here (and in a way I do) I could be in a worse place but ... crazy as it sounds I would rather have to be in Milwaukee or Chicago because they are both places that unlike Madison require some experience and skills to survive and this makes them interesting, not always pleasant but too much even pleasantness and this kid starts to look for trouble.

A Project Too Far ... ?

After I finished the MAD New System install I decided to start installing some of the stuff that I bought right after I got the truck. Notably I had put off installing the Mallory Unilite distributor because I was unsure about wiring, ballast resistors and the like and wanted to wait until the New System was in.  It was classically anticlimactic and aside from having to find TDC (Top Dead Center) a few times it was almost too easy.  The new distributor dropped right in, after a little fiddling the truck started and I advanced the timing a bit and set it with the timing gun and then I replaced the copper core wires with carbon core wires as recommended in the Mallory Unilite instructions. The truck seemed to run just fine with copper core wires but ... what the hell. Yearwood Performance wanted $85 bucks for carbon wires, Napa wanted $16. Guess who got the business?

(an aside on Yearwood Performance and their equivalent in the auto industry: Yearwood sells all types of 'gofast' for cars and trucks, typically marketed for the V8 crowd they have all sorts of generally overpriced bits some of which are purely esthetic and some is good solid perfomance equipment.  The thing is ... you have to know what you want before you walk in there because 9 times out of 10 the guys working there don't know what the hell they are doing and are too proud to say 'I don't know, let me find out." I am no expert but more than once I have gone in and asked a question about a piece of equipment armed only with information that I have learned from a website or instructions I seem to know more about it than they do ... which is frustrating when I am trying to make up my mind about what to buy.  I have run special orders for an outdoor store and I devised my own system of keeping track of who ordered what, on what day and who to call THE DAY it came in, our store became known for special orders partially because I kept track of them in a way that the customer could be kept in the loop and knew who to talk to and was informed very quickly when their order arrived.  I didn't think it was that extraordinary as far as service goes but given my experience at Yearwood and their equivalents it WAS extraordinary service.

After I got the Unilite installed using the resistance wire that the truck was equipped with and a surge protector that plugged inline to prevent electrical surges from burning up the electric eye I didn't have anything else that HAD to happen before moving from Albuquerque to Madison, WI.. Of course I did have time to kill and too much free time is problematic for me and really bad when your two year old daughter is being kept from you by the vindictive ex so ... I decided to replace the solid mounted, belt driven fan with thermostatically controlled, shrouded Derale fans. I measured, I searched around (at Yearwood where I was laughably misinformed) and finally I found some fans that looked like they would be a close fit on Amazon.  The fans came and tried to place them in the space available and there was not enough room between the radiator and the bolts on the fan pulley.  At first I said the hell with it and got an RA (return authorization) from Amazon. Then I reconsidered and decided to move the radiator forward a couple of inches, which I did, which was a big ol' pain in the ass but I eventually succeeded ... but not without putting another hole in the engine side of the radiator which I fixed with solder just like the first hole.  Once I got the radiator in I had to mount the shroud and fans against the radiator in a way that would render it stable and removable if the need arose. This too was a pain in the ass, lots of fiddling and eyeballing. Then I had to wire it and bear in mind that this unit has two fans each of which draws 25 amps for a potential 50 amp draw which is considerable. Each fan has it's own relay so in the end there are quite a few wires that all need to be going the right place. Ultimately I wanted to have switches on the dash that contolled fan functions such that I could turn the fans off (for highway driving),or have them controlled by thermostats or have them both on regardless of temperature.  Sounds great right? Well let me tell you what a complete PITA getting all that to happen was ... Good grief.

"New System" installed!! (finally, 15 months after I bought it)

So 15 months ago I bought MAD Enterprises 'New System' which is basically instructions, wiring and hardware to not only rewire the starting system, the ignition system, the charging system and the headlights but reconfigure it to minimize voltage drop (which causes the classicly dim headlights in these old vehicles).  I had the box and had read the instructions many times but never got up the gumption to dive in to the project because the truck would not run while it was being rewired.  I broke up with my girlfriend, got a job, found a place to live and am now in the middle of a typically awful legal battle over our child so I have had plenty of excuses NOT to do this project. However, about two months ago I just said fuck it.  "I will just take it a step at a time and see what happens."

Well it took me roughly 5 weeks working on Thursdays after I dropped Gracie at day care.  June in New Mexico is hot and dry and this year it is so dry that all the local forests have been closed due to risk of fire. So working on the truck on a gravel parking lot in the full NM sun was challenging.  I would work four hours and drink 3 liters of water just to keep from passing out. Over a year ago I wrote an entry titled 'Boogered Up Electrics' and took a picture of the kit laid out on the floor.  In short there are a lot of little pieces that need to be put together in by crimping, soldering and shrinking tubing over the joint.  I won't go on ad nauseum but even for someone that has lots of automotive experience (I don't) this might take an entire weekend if you didn't make any mistakes and had a nice shop. But in the end after a few 'redo's' and noodling about how to fix my goofs I got it done. When I started I did the starter rewire first and I did something wrong and couldn't get it to start when I had finished that piece of the project. I kept going: replacing the alternator with a more powerful 3 wire internally regulated unit and lots of other wiring, relays etc.All the while knowing that I still had to go back and figure out what I had done wrong wiring the starter. There was a great 'moment of truth' when I got in the truck and put the key in the ignition and crossed my fingers that I had not crossed any wires. At this point it had been weeks since the truck had run and life had been a little rocky so I really wanted it to work for more than just the obvious reasons.  So I turned the key and the motor turned over (a good sign) three times and Vroooom! I was sooooo excited!. This sort of performance improvement doesn't necessarily translate into torque or horsepower but I have noticed the following: Before when the truck was running at idle the headlights were dim and yellow and brightened up noticeably when engine rpm increased as did the gauge lights on the dash.  After the headlights are bright and white and do not get brighter with an increase in engine rpm. The gauges are bright and do not get brighter when the engine is revved up. The intent driving this project was to provide a solid electical system platform upon which to build with air conditioning or electric fans etc. It is clear that at first glance I have achieved this, checking output with a multimeter is the next step but the change is very noticeable. 

I had a typical Homer Simpson 'Doh!' moment the last day when I was just securing the wiring with electrical tape and zip ties.  The system worked and as advertised it had improved things in various ways. But I realised that I had wired in a redundant circuit charging the battery which was superflous so I was in the process of pulling the redundant wire out across the front of the radiator when I remembered that I had not disconnected the ground on the battery which meant that this positve wire I was removing could ground on any part of truck, I thought it moments before it was too late and I heard a loud 'POP' and heard a hissing liquid sound only to see a small stream of coolant jetting out of the front of the radiator.  OOPS.  In the end it was a good thing because I drained the radiator and treated it with radiator flush to clean out some of the calcification.  I repaired the hole with a soldering gun and solder and it has held up for a few days of summer driving so ... cross your fingers. 

Reconsider ... ?

After having spoken with my friend Ally I feel a little differently about the role and responsibility of Midtown S&W mentioned in the last post.  Ally said that the responsibility for this should fall squarely on the shoulders of the parent/s that left their child unattended in a place where other adults had access to her.  I still think the gym should have a policy that no children should ever be left unsupervised in any part of the gym and the day care room etc. should be locked when there are no staff in it.  BUT I agree with Ally about the root of responsibility being in the parents not the gym.  The gym screwed up but not in a neglectful way in that they failed to provide supervision but in that they inadvertently provided an environment where this sort of thing could happen; a place where children get left basically unattended but there is a general feeling of safety. (in a gym, with lots of members/staff around etc).  Lesson learned.  I just hope that little girl gets what she needs from her parents and gets therapy and is the type of person (this most especially) that can recover and sort it out and move on to have healthy, happy romantic and sexual relationships when she grows up.

6 Year Old Molested at the Gym

WTF?  No shit.  Midtown Sports and Wellness (of which there are three in ABQ) is a big, well equipped gym near my home in ABQ.  They have day care (2 hour maximum) during the day and I took advantage this winter.  Gracie loves going and playing with the other kids and I get to blow off some steam and not turn into a lump of fat.  I stopped going a month ago cuz it warmed up enough that I can do things outside: my preference.  Yesterday my new friend Dan told that a six year old was molested/raped at Midtown S&W.

Usually I am pretty hard to bump out of groove.  Life is a winding road, just like the song says but this bumped me.  Dan's daughter, my daughter, lots of peoples daughters use the day care at MSW.  This happened when the day care room was not staffed but ... who fucking cares.  Unsupervised young kids at a gym while Mom or Dad are off working out?  Woman on the cleaning staff has a 20 year old son that is a member of the gym.  He spent a little time with the girl helping her get a video started and then went back and molested her: nasty details like holding his hand over her mouth and telling her he would hurt her if she yelled etc.  She left the room crying after he left and told staff what had happened.  Cops caught up with him and he freely admitted to having a problem 'touching little kids'.  WTF?

"Day Care".  Most day cares care for kids whose parents are not on site.  These day cares be licensed and inspected by a governing body.  MSW's day care is exempt because parents are still on site.  So the gym did not have any guidelines that they were required to follow and I think this is how this situation came about.  After gym day care staff has left people still bring in their kids (albeit older than my 17 month old daughter but still young) and let them hang out, watch videos, play with the toys and all of this is unsupervised.  I think adults know that the kids are doing this but noone is specifically dedicated to the task.

I googled it and found all sorts of hateful, vengeful chatter on various 'white power' and 'gun nut' sites.  Their focus was on the fact that this 20 year old was an illegal alien (and this of course explains why he did something so depraved and damaging to this girl).  I just don't get it ... the racist angle.  As though a US citizen would never do this sort of thing ... ?  Stupid people are everywhere I guess.  One guy on a 'white power' site went into grisly detail how he would torture and kill this illegal alien child molester: cutting off his fingers with tin snips etc.  WTF? How is that any different and somehow justifiable than molesting a six year old?  He had it all planned out in numbered steps.  Totally twisted.

Dan, the new friend that told me about the situation at MSW, started in about how what he would do if this happened to his daughter.  I told him I didn't want to hear it and explained that if you truly wanted to get away with killing someone having witnesses to your 'plan' before the crime was probably something you'd want to avoid.  I said "Don't tell anyone anything."  Silly really, but ... god forbid, you never know.

Here would be the appropriate spot to get on my 'irate, vengeful, soapbox' and detail my plan to rid the world of one more predator BUT : my official perspective on this is; I don't need to spend that amount of energy and focus on something so completely negative and poisonous.  The other side of the revenge coin would be love and healing for the injured child.  That's not going to happen if I am plotting a murder is it?

The world is a really fucked up place.  Shit like this sometimes intrudes into my tight, white, safe little world and while it is a distinctly scary reminder I appreciate it for what it is.  Most of the world is not safe and wonderful.  I think that in spite of this sort of heinous shit it is possible to raise kids without teaching them to be eternally afraid.  Nuf said.

MOAB

You have probably heard of Moab, Utah.  Most people have if they like the outdoors.  I heard about it about twenty years ago after my friends Jamie and Danielle went there for a trip.  So they rode the Slickrock Trail on Rigids (a bike with no suspension).  There was really no other choice in those days so it wasn't old school or hard core then but riding Moab today is a different story.  Full suspension is the only way to fly and you are considered hardcore if you ride it on a hardtail (bike with only front suspension).  Of course the distance you can cover on a nice XC (cross country) full suspension bike and the speed you can descend has increased since the old days.  Regardless of what you ride Moab is a punishing place and it does not suffer ill maintained equipment or stupid behavior.  Moab is also an almost ridiculously beautiful place that will boggle your mind the first time you see it.  Views so vast and wide and full of images of great power that you almost can't accept that it is real.  Thousand foot drops to distant valley floors in the midst of which great towers of red rock rise up and up and up with the Colorado River pushing through it's hard won canyon like a great majestic snake.  Difficult riding, punishing extended descents, remote (and therefore dangerous just for how far away from help you are) locations all make for serious fun.  No matter where you stop you are in for at least a decent view.  Sometimes you just gawk and wish you had wings.

I drove up with my next door neighbor and riding buddy Chris and upon arrival he realized that the allergies that had been plaguing him badly were really a nasty head cold.  He was awake coughing and sneezing the first night and ... so was I, not mine but his.  I know he felt pretty bad with the cold and pretty bad because here he was in riding nirvana with a brand new amazing full suspension bike and he was sick.  He rode the first day and showed considerable pluck but there was no hiding he was sick.  We shuttled up to Porcupine Rim and it was just great.  I tore it up on my Specialized Enduro which was basically built for this type of trail.  It was an epic ride down to the river from the rim.  The night following our first ride was worse then the first and Chris was in a major hurt.  He called his girlfriend in ABQ and she drove the 350 miles north to get him and then they drove home!  Wow.  I stayed on and rode for two more days and met some very nice folks from Fort Collins, Co. who were kind enough to invite me to dinner and ride with me the day following so the trip was very satisfying and I hope to return before we leave NM.

Job Done

I mentioned earlier that I had done 1/2 the job replacing the trailing arm bushings and painting  and cleaning up the rear brake drums. Well, I found the time and got it all done and let me tell you, it feels pretty darn good.  In fact, I had to pull the axles again after replacing the wheel bearings because like an idiot I reused the old oil seals (which were both all boogered up) and they both leaked quite a bit since the job. So, with a trip to Moab coming up I knew I had to replace the seals.  It went well, I got the axles pulled quickly and only had one brass pinion gear shim fall out which was easy putting back.

 The bitch was finding oil seals.  The whole reason I didn't have new seals was O'Reilly's carried the bearing but not the seal (which makes no sense) I went to Napa and they had to look all over the city and found 1 set and it took me over two hours just to find the part and get it home. I have to say that all auto parts stores are NOT created equal.  AutoZone is OK if you need something a retarded monkey could find. O'Reilly's is better but ... I still get the feeling that half the time it is just a job and they could care less. Napa seems to be focused on getting the parts you need and they job out to all sorts of automotive vendors who need better service and knowledge base then a store that primarily caters to the clueless auto enthusiast looking for a Betty Boop air freshener.  Once installed the oil seals seem to work fine and the brakes work as well as drum brakes work. I did drive to Moab and I had no problems whatsoever in 900 miles of driving.