WAYNE CHIRNSIDE wrote to JAMES BRADLEY, "Tap tap tap..."

 -> How about Edwards, and Billy Mitchel. Both Canadians if
 -> memory serves me. 

 WC> Not as familiar with them but Billy Mitchel's name rings a
 WC> bell.

As in Edwards Air Force Base... Heard of it now? 

Mitchel [Might have spelt it wrong.] was court-marshaled for insubordination,
for his views on airborne threats. Post WWI, he predicted Japan would attack
either Hawaii, or continental N. America. He was highly disgraced for his views
on airborne attacks on war ships, and had his hands tied whenever he tried to
prove his theories. A real story of injustice toward a visionary. There's a B+W
movie out there about him. Historically accurate too, except for a love tryst
IIRC.
 WC> I'm down to one meal a day due to lack of activity, some days I
 WC> skip entirely as the pain is so bad it makes me suffer nausea.

Been there: Done that! Because of these meds, I have to eat something twice a
day. (You just reminded me that I was about to miss a dose.) Not as hard as it
used to be to get up, and to keep it down either. 
 -> We had a local from a town just East of us who seemed to savour the
 -> fist-ta-cuffs. Last I saw, he was becoming old fast, and
 -> getting thrown out of a house party.

 WC> That reminds me of a funny incident.
 WC> Three commercial fisherman who were non-regulars stopped into
 WC> the place one night.
 WC> The largest of the ( my size) slammed the bartender Lisa up
 WC> against the bar.

When I say, "Big man." I mean it sarcastically, and with no
reference to size.
An acquaintance said it this way, before the "L" hand expression
was popular.
"Little man: Big (...Ah, appendage.) Big man: Little appendage."
All the while,
forming a "L" with his thumb and forefinger. Either way, he was
indicating him
as a loser.
 WC> These three jerks were completely out of control.
 WC> Confronting them the largest got in my face.
 WC> I sat on the edge of the pool table, crossed my arms on my
 WC> chest and said HIT ME.

 WC> Guy says "what."
 WC> I YELL at him "HIT ME."
 WC> He backs down and he and the 2 clowns with him left.

Thought so!
 WC> Psychology can work :-)

How does that saying go? "Know thy enemy."
 WC> Here's the funy part.
 WC> At closing another guy came up to me saying he'd drank his
 WC> cab money and if I could give him a ride home.
 WC> He apologized for his friends behavior saying he'd come in with
 WC> them but didn't involve himself in their stupidity.
 WC> I gave him a ride home on my motorcycle.
 WC> Arriving in Madeira Beach what should we see but his three
 WC> buddies getting arrested at a 7-11 service station 
 WC> Made my night.

"There's always one in a crowd." But they didn't mean it that
way.  
 -> I'm no tea-toddler, but I sure developed
 -> a distaste for drunk belligerents.

 WC> I get introverted and quiet when drunk.

Ditto. The potential in-laws were perplexed by it. One of the reasons I second
guessed her for a wife... Well, that and her character. 
 ->  -> Shoot... That wouldn't bother me a bit! Akaido is a
 ->  -> discipline that hadn't been
 ->  -> popularized when I was growing up. Wish I knew more of it.

 ->  WC> Heh, well it wasn't _just_ the humiliation.
 ->  WC> I was strained and exhasted after my go-rounds with those
 ->  WC> women. Asleep 1/2 hour after returning home evenings.

 -> That I can see.

 WC> Strength avails one not against Akaido 

I smell a tagline comin' on!
 ->  WC> Yeah, brudder in law a bit badder than you might imagine, his
 ->  WC> unit had some horrific missions and mission protocols.
 ->  WC> 22 percent of his unit left Vietnam alive.

 -> Odds like that will open your eyes. ...Well, they should.

 WC> Yeah, the little bit I got out of him was pretty frightening
 WC> both as to their casualties and what type of orders
 WC> they were under.

You have to respect their unwillingness to talk about it. You hear all the time
about grand-kids knowing nothing about their grandfathers exploits, until a
camera crew comes over to pry it out of them.

 WC> AFAIK the black box in the Yamaha didn't learn parameters it
 WC> just powered up and off you go.
 WC> No noticable performance loss at all.

Unless in a luxury car where weight is no object... I couldn't see even a PROM
burner going into the 3-cylinder. Budget constraints, et al.
 ->  WC> I was fortunately two blocks from home as once there's not
 ->  WC> enough juice for the puter to say GO there's no roll starting
 ->  WC> such a bike as there's no fire to be had.

 -> I had a chip, or a contact there-of, give on me. No matter how much
 -> carb-starter my buddy pumped into it... <-;

 WC> Yeah, no spark, that's what I meant.

I was in an underground parking lot. A push-start would have needed a pull-out
first. 

Spark was there for me, but that and opening up the air-cleaner was the extent
of my troubleshooting at the time. Either the timing was so brain-dead without
the full logic, or the fuel was flooding the cylinders without regulation... 

Mitsubishi uses a magnet-proximity switch for the distributer, so maybe firing
the plugs isn't that much a function of the logic. 
 ->  WC> I could bump start or kick my TX-650 vertical twin over with an
 ->  WC> indicated battery voltage of 7 volts out of 12 under load when
 ->  WC> the charging system failed.

 ->  WC> Rewired the entire bike myself making up m,y own wiring harness
 ->  WC> too so it'd NEVER fail again.

 ->  WC> The Japanese wiring was so complex and convoluted
 ->  WC> I merely wired it like a friend's TR-650 Triumph
 ->  WC> and it worked like a charm.

 -> Probably saved half a lb. of copper along the way.

 WC> More like three times that figure.
 WC> Automotive style bullet connectors and I used some thick wall
 WC> plastic flexible tubing throughout the harness I made.
 WC> Weatherproof to the max and simplified to the point
 WC> no electrical problem would never hassle me again.

 WC> I like talking about the old days, today as most days
 WC> will suck :-(

I can listen all day to your stories about vehicle repairs, but I can't do much
to stimulate conversations. From what I've seen of you on ELECTRONICS, you
could make my head swim in that area too. Again, I have some simple
troubleshooting skills there, but nothing to write home about.

I have to keep my eyes open for a replacement for my ageing ride, and much of
what you are saying is a real concern for me. If I find something without all
the electronics in it, EVERYTHING with a spring or rubber on it will be due for
the scrap heap. With modern machines, unless I'm prepared to disassemble the
front end to do a tune up... (They're not ALL that bad, but...)

A bike is out of the question, as I doubt I could sit like that for any length
of time, an because of our weather. Heck, even an electric car would be
expensive to replace the batteries on. This disposable society we live in is a
bitch. ...And that's an insult to female dogs!

... I couldn't care less about apathy.
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