Yesterday I watched a real live sporting event on regular TV. The first time ever NASCAR street race that took over some of Chicago’s major roadways was televised in the rain. For what ever reason I stopped watching sports on TV several decades ago., except for cage fighting which I fell in love with. There is nothing better than watching two muscle bound gladiators pounding, and kicking the hell out of one another usually to near death before the ref. stops the fight. For some reason this race caught my fancy and I turned it on. Seeing Chicago draped in low clouds and with the most scenic part of the city all blocked off to tourists, and from local traffic was definitely different. I had been reading the opinion pages about how the city lost it’s collective mind when it agreed to hold this race here. The actual race lasted about three hours, but between the planning, and preparation to construct safety barriers, grandstands, pits, and all the accoutrements of a race track began several months ago. Grant Park, which is where the race took place, is a popular place for people during the summer time with baseball leagues, tennis leagues, soccer, music fests, Taste of Chicago, and more being forbidden to the general population. The people were not happy campers to lose their sport in favor of a bunch of loud muffler-less race cars. People be damned, the City of Chicago comes first before the people. I watched the race in it’s entirely, and actually enjoyed it. I wished I had gone to be a part of history.
Rush Hour Traffic In Downtown Chicago
Many thoughts came to mind during the event. One was what will happen to NASCAR when the world turns electric in three to ten years, and there are only whisper quiet electric cars to use? How long will the races be? I read reports of people driving their cars across country who have to stop every two hundred miles for a charge. This tells me that all the races will be very short induration, like a hundred miles or so. What happens to the Indy 500? Will it become a memory or will it remain an event? How will racers cope with cars that erupt into flames as their batteries over heat? Will these cars have drivers? What happens to all the fans who pay extra to visit drivers in pit row to seek autographs when there are no drivers to be found? WiIl pit stops for fuel be replaced with garage stops for battery replacement? Perhaps it will be easier to change the driver to a new car than it would be to replace the battery during a fuel stop. How would NASCAR limit horsepower as they do now? Would they limit battery voltage? My personal experience with battery powered wood working tools is that higher voltage batteries take longer to discharge and are more powerful. The same holds true for electric motors. A famous slot car racing trick is to rewind the tiny motors with more wire in order to get more speed and power. Would NASCAR limit motor windings? My recommendation would be for NASCAR to stay the hell out of the technical aspects of electric car racing and let the back alley mechanics get creative with motor and battery modifications, much like they did with race cars in the fifties and sixties. Those were the days of real racing; team against team, manufacturer against manufacturer, drop the green flag and let the boys roll!
Today I explored several blogs from recently signed up followers. What amazes me is that most of them are selling something. Grumpajoesplace does not sell anything. My blog is a place where I can vent about almost anything or everything. For me writing is a cathartic drug. In times of grief writing allows me to express feelings I cannot express audibly. Writing relieves my stress when that is my issue. Writing allows me to communicate with bloggers who have become my friends over the internet, and whom I miss when they don’t comment or go missing.
I often thought about selling, but selling has never been my thing. In order to sell, I’d have to go back to work subscribing to blog sites for the simple reason of getting attention to my product. If I wanted a job, I would apply for one. Of course I am a hypocrite in this regard because I offer my books for sale on my site. In the twelve years I have done so I have sold two copies of my life story as told in games I played as a child. Today, if you actually click on the button that says “buy my book” it will lead you to Amazon Kindle books and the price is $0.00. So you will see that I can’t even give my book away, so why would I make a concerted effort (work) to subscribe to followers for the purpose of selling my free book?
On my to do list of big projects I have listed finishing a book I began writing when my wife Peggy was still alive and lucid about ten years ago. The working title is Space Rod. It is a story of a man who loses his wife and in his grief he buys an antique pick up truck which he intends to restore. Of course restoration is work, which he likes to avoid. He meets a man named Mort whose interest is also in street rods. They become friends, and before long Mort introduces the widower to Trey a man whose business it is to restore old cars. That is when the story finally gets interesting, and that is where I stopped writing to care for my wife full time. Peggy has been gone since 2019, and I am first now getting a tickle of an urge to finish this story. I picked up the manuscript a few months ago and read it to refresh my memory about the characters and the direction it was taking me. Throughout I kept mentally editing passages to clean up the grammar and to make it more readable. It occurred to me that this project is huge and will be considerable work. Do I really want to spend all that effort on something that no one will read?
There are many things in life that I am unsure of, but there is one thing I am certain of, and that is that there is one Supreme Being that initiated the universe. Be it by the big bang, or what ever other method human scientists can attribute to the argument to support the concept for the creation of the Universe. I strongly believe that a single Being existed before the universe. Believing in a Supreme Being is not a matter of religion even though it is often confused as that. In my mind the Supreme Being is a matter of common sense with which we are all endowed.
Planet Earth is merely a single tiny entity within a universe with billions of stars, Nova’s, black holes, comets, and planets spread throughout. What I do not know, nor does anyone, is if there are other planets with life on them. Common sense and the law of probability steer me toward believing there is. I also believe that our knowledge of the universe if infantile, and that the mathematical laws of physics postulated by Einstein are not etched in stone, and can be challenged even if not understood. The limit on the ability to travel faster than light is one of those laws. Life within the Universe is inconceivable without the ability to travel faster that light. Visits to Earth by unidentified peoples can only be possible if they can travel much faster than that the limit which we have calculated within our physics.
The Supreme Being populated planet Earth with humans, and many lifeforms. The Being allowed humans to evolve into their current form. The Supreme Being also made certain that humans would have the ability to survive in this environment. He gave us the resources and the growth of knowledge to extract from Earth all that we need to survive and thrive. Among these resources were air, water, animals, and plant life to provide sustenance. As man evolved he learned to make fire, and to use animal skins to clothe and protect himself from the elements. Man discovered metals within the planet from which he learned to make into tools and weapons. Man learned that he needed protection from predators larger than himself, and he invented weapons to do so.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century in which we live today. Realize how man has evolved and progressed using the Supreme Being’s gifts to us on this planet. We continue to discover new and exciting elements to add to the periodic table, and each one eventually is found to be an essential to life and human development. One resource with which we have learned to use wisely is biological matter. Man has used the resources of the forests and jungles and the sea to his benefit. Trees for wood to build his buildings, to make paper, and foliage to extract chemicals for medicines, and to recycle into compost to nourish the soil in which all these beneficial things grow. At the beginning of the twentieth century man discovered one of the planet’s most useful gifts, oil.
At first, oil was not considered very useful, but man used his mind to discover uses for this mysterious liquid. Initially, he learned that it was a great substitute for keeping his home lighted. Instead of hunting for whales to extract its oils for this purpose, he learned to use kerosene. At each step of man’s evolution, he used the gifts endowed by the Supreme Being to his purpose. Men tamed large animals to carry loads, to till fields, and to transport loads across distances. Then came oil. Man invented mechanical devices to help him with his work. At first, he used the energy derived from burning wood to convert water into steam. After he realized oil could also be burned to produce heat his mind turned to inventing mechanical devices that would use oil to power them.
Man’s genius was stimulated by the Supreme Being’s gift of oil. His invention and knowledge expanded exponentially by using chemistry to separate oil into many components. The process was called distillation, and has yielded fine lubricating oil, tar, kerosene, gasoline, and more. We all know that gasoline is one of the most beneficial gifts we have on the planet. From oil came more gifts as chemists invented new materials using oil as a feedstock for plastics. Plastics may be a bigger gift to humanity than is gasoline. The number of different plastics and their applications are nearly endless, and many have become indispensable in our lives.
Man has not stopped inventing new uses for the gifts bestowed to us by planet earth. Yet we do not seem to appreciate that these are gifts, as is our intellect to invent, and to use them for our benefit. Throughout the entire evolution of man, he has adapted his circumstances to the gifts bestowed upon him. We are but now beginning to learn how to harness the power of wind and the rays of the sun to power our lives. What man does not want to believe is that the knowledge to turn solar and wind power into useful tools may take a century to develop. Man is over-looking the existing gifts he has been bestowed and dumping them in favor of the under developed resources of solar, and wind before there is a crucial need for them to be used. True, we need to develop them, but we don’t need to panic by leaving our greatest resource in favor of an infantile industry that at this time is not essential nor ready to do the job.
No doubt, man is correctly thinking about developing replacements for our most essential power source, but the time table to do so is not urgent. We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels remaining to consume before wind and solar become an emergency. As the time draws nearer to the end of fossil fuel, man will put his brain into high gear to shift the source of power towards his emergent needs.
Assuming man will succeed in electrifying the planet to eliminate fossil fuels he will be left with the horrifying prospect of finding substitutes for making plastics. Man has not thought this problem through to its finality. Think of a world without plastic. Think of plastic within your own life. Your clothes, tools, shoes, packaging, furniture, housing components, just to name a few are all composed with plastics. Man will be forced to continue to refine fossil fuels to make these products.
The elimination of fossil fuels is a direct rejection of the gift endowed upon him by the Supreme Being. Who is man to be so forward as to reject a magnificent gift as this from the Being? In my statements above, I exposed my belief in a Supreme Being, and now I want to expose another belief which is that for every positive in our life there is an equal and opposite negative. What this leads to is an equally negative Being that counteracts the positive one. The current rejection of the positive Being’s gift may be the work of His negative counter-force. There has to be some explanation for why such a beautiful gift is being rejected by man in favor of the current pipe dream to abandon the gift of fossil fuels to that of under developed power sources.
Jumping into an electric world before we are ready to convert completely away from fossil fuels is a mistake that will condemn planet Earth to extinction. Will we have to retrogress away from forward evolution and increased knowledge to achieve the goal of purifying the air, water and earth of pollutants? Do we really want to evolve backward to the Cro-magnon man who lived on a pristine planet Earth, and feared for his life from other larger carnivores, but breathed only the air polluted only by the gasses of volcanic eruptions?
The conclusion I want to direct the reader toward is to re-examine his conclusions about electrifying Earth completely before it is necessary, or even possible.
One of the most amazing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime is the evolution of the automobile. I have memories galore about the difficulty my father went through to provide our family with transportation. I loved to listen to his stories about early adventures as a single man in a new country. One thing he did very early on was to buy automobiles the names of which have long disappeared, namely one he called a Hupmobile. His stories always entailed fixing problems on the side of the road with minimal tools and parts. Summer Sunday afternoons was the best time to hear him describe the many adventures he had. Usually with a buddy who was also involved. Dad loosened up quite a bit when alcohol flowed freely through his system. Oh how he laughed when he told the story, especially when telling us how the Hupmobile threw a rod half way to the farm in Michigan and they wound up overhauling the engine on the sandy shoulder of the highway.
1929 Buick1982 Chevy1968 Ford1959 Ford 1939 Buick1954 Plymouth1938 Plymouth1928 Hupmobile
The car I remember from my early childhood was his 1929 Buick Century. Oh what a splendid tank it was. He owned that car from 1942 – 1952. One of his daunting tasks was to find tires and gasoline. World-War-Two put a damper on auto ownership, but Dad used his car as an part-time insurance salesman. I specifically remember him taking Mom shopping one evening, and she took the three os us with her. He dropped us off at a store, and continued on to his client meeting. When he returned we had a surprise waiting for us. The running board on the side of the car was gone, and the back door was dented. He had to hoist us up one at a time to get us in. He told us he was broadsided by a car that blew a red light. The other car had to be towed away, we drove home.
Dad’s string of cars after the ’29 were a 1939 Buick Special, followed by a 1938 Dodge, a 1954 Plymouth, a 1959 Ford, 1968 Ford, and last a1982 Chevy. all were used cars except for the last three. Each one had it’s share of problems which he continued to fix. His favorite phrase was “Ford, Fix Or Repair Daily.” Just about all of his cars were sold or traded when they reached fifty thousand miles.
My experience with cars is much the same, with one exception. I kept my rides for eighty thousand miles, except for the one I own now. The odometer has 181,000 miles on it and (knock on wood0 everything still works and the only major expenses have been for tires, brakes and batteries.
There is a gremlin in my head that keeps poking me in the ribs to buy a new car because this one is 16 years old and everything still works, the interior is still in fine condition, and there is no sign of rust any where. One day, I will walk home from the roadside, having abandoned a car that died. Or, I will be involved in a minor fender bender that will total the car and force me to send it to the junk yard. I lose sleep over having to spend a fortune on a new car, most likely my last one. Then, this morning while scrolling my phone I found an article that made my day, “These Cars Have the Longest Lifespans Some cars last longer than others – a lot longer.”
Inside the article is a list of ten long life vehicles:
1. Toyota Sequoia 296,509
2. Toyota Land Cruiser 280,236
3. Chevy Suburban 265,732
4. Toyota Tundra 256,022
5. GMC Yukon XL 252,630
6. Toyota Prius 250,601
7. Chevy Tahoe 250,338
8. Honda Ridgeline 248,669
9. Toyota Avalon 245,710
10. Toyota Highlander Hybrid 244,994
there, at number nine is my car.
Wow! My car might last for another sixty thousand miles. At the current rate of driving that could be six more years. By then, the State of Illinois will most likely tell me I’m too old to be driving. On the other hand, my brother is ninety-one and he still drives back and forth a hundred miles to his summer home in Michigan.
The prospect of buying an electric vehicle at a time when gasoline powered cars are enjoying the best reliability in history is scary, I think I’ll just buy a slightly newer model from the same company that made the one I drive now.
My adventure yesterday was different from any I’ve had in recent times. I encountered a gremlin in the Death Star. I went to get something from the trunk and it wouldn’t open. Pushing the little black button on the tail light didn’t make anything happen, so I went to the dash board to push another button, nothing happened. Oh well, I’ll sleep on this one. I didn’t sleep, I went to Youtube and asked how to open a trunk without the key. Amazingly, a page full of video’s appeared. Many from Toyota experts. I had enough information to try the next day when it would be warmer and drier.
By mid-morning I was ready to open my trunk. I tried all the tricks I learned in the videos, but none of them worked. What next? I went on the prowl for tools that might help. I found a windshield ice scraper in the garage. That’s it, I thought to my self. I went outside and pushed the little black button on the tail light at the same time I had the scraper wedged into the trunkline space by the latch. I pushed the button and heard the latch cycle, at the same time I pried the trunk with the scrapper and wallah! the lid popped open. Nothing like a simple pry bar to break the ice seal that made the lid stick. I then found a dry rag to wipe down the seal around the trunk opening to help keep the lid from freezing shut again. I was happy again.
