Big Texas Toy I-Wussed-Out-Run

This morning was the Big Texas Toy Run. It’s a motorcycle run that is held every year in N. Texas. Bikers show up in downtown Dallas, downtown FT. Worth and downtown Grapevine. Everyone who shows up must have a toy or donate $10.00. Then everyone leaves and parades to the Arlington Convention Center to donate their toys.

One year, there were approximately 50,000 bikers that participated and we raised about $750,000 in cash and toys for the kids. The turnout this year was expected to be about 70,000 bikes!!!!

Unfortunately, I was not one of them. I don’t always get to ride in the Toy Run because most of the time I am out of town. When that happens I usually buy a toy or give someone some cash that I know will be out there.

This year, though, I was home and ready to go. I had my toy, and got it all strapped to the back of the bike.

But a cold front moved in and dropped the temps. My friends were leaving out at 9:00am, which I thought was too freaking early considering how cold it was. I checked the temps and it was 22 degrees.

I put on some gear to try to stay warm – thermal undies, a wind-suit, sock, jacket liner, jacket, heavy gloves, etc. But it wasn’t enough.

I took off to meet up with my friends and made it about ½-way there before I turned back around for reinforcements. At that point my body was OK even though I was still a tad cool. The problem was that my chin and neck were seriously hurting from little exposure they had to the cold and my finger tips were stinging from being too cold.

I got back to the house and checked out my snowboard gloves, but realized I wouldn’t be able to have control of the bike so that was out. I thought to myself….I can still make it if I just take care of my face.

I got out my balaclava that I wear when I am snowboarding and it’s brutally cold. I was able to get my helmet on, but just barely and I could feel my circulation getting cut off at my neck and face from it being too tight. That wasn’t going to work.

Then I looked for a “chin skirt” – a little piece of spandex that clips on under the helmet to keep the wind off you. I know I have one, but I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere. I even found my helmet’s instruction manuals, warranty cards, etc. No chin-skirt.

Between my neck and fingers it just wasn’t conducive to me riding and either risking frost-bite, or risking not being in control of my bike because I was too distracted, too uncomfortable, or too bundled up – take your pick.

That really put me in a foul mood because I had it all done and ready, but I just didn’t feel safe riding like that. And of course, I was now sweating profusely from being in the house and being mad.

My friend was going out that way to meet up with some other friends. He was caging it so I asked him to take my toy.

I am not having a good Christmas experience.

Spreading the Christmas Cheer!

I'm on vacation from now until the end of the year. I don't have any major plans, but I may get busy. I am guessing that you will probably be busy, too...

So just in case we don't get to catch up between now and Christmas I thought I'd spread the Christmas cheer a bit with this tasty morsel.

Excess

Sometimes I just don’t get it.

Kind of like the Americanized Sushi thing. I like sushi and am fortunate enough to travel around a bit and find some good sushi places. But more and more, these formerly good sushi places have been turning into an exercise in them figuring out a creative way to serve you something fried with mayonnaise.

About a month ago Bling! and I went to a decent sushi place with his wife. I got frustrated looking over the menu because unless I went with sashimi (fish – no rice) or nagiri (fish over rice) there pretty much wasn’t anything on the menu that wasn’t fried, had mayonnaise on it…or both. Bling! asked what was wrong and I told him. I didn’t get much sympathy from him or Mrs. Bling!

I’ve never been to Japan….yet. But I am pretty sure that their sushi rolls aren’t all fried, contain avocado and have mayonnaise. Some traditional places in CA that I found hardly have any of those things and the sushi is fantastic. Why do we have to Americanize it?

Then, last night I went to go see Transporter 3. I wasn’t expecting a great flick, so I wasn’t too disappointed when it was a bit of a let down. It’s an action film like you would expect but movies are going so far over the top now that you have to really make an effort to suspend disbelief.

That wasn’t what got me, though. What got me was the excessive amount of bass throughout the entire film. I don’t know if this was from the mix of the movie, or because the theater had the bass cranked up. Either way, it was very annoying.

Don’t get me wrong….I love a good subwoofer and when something blows up I want to hear it and feel it as if my hair was about to be singed off. But people walking around or shutting a car door should not elicit concern that my testicles are going to be vibrated into a pulpy mess because the subs were turned up too loud.

I’ve noticed this same trend in radio broadcasting. Broadcaster are turning up the bass on everything. Commercials are the worst, but I’ve even noticed talk radio having some kind of funky low-end tone playing for an unknown reason. Even music that I am very familiar with suddenly has the bass cranked up if it’s coming off the radio.

I don’t get it.

The Auto Bailout

I think this is bullshit. I'm not going to pontificate on why I think it's bullshit but we need to stop bailing everyone out, suck it up and move on. Businesses need to get their shit together and stop relying on the taxpayers money to "save them."

Putting Acceleration in Perspective

My friend John sent me this and I thought it was pretty interesting:

One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500.

Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 11.2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.

A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to merely drive the dragster's supercharger. With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle. At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F. Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.

Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. As Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.

If the spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.

Dragsters reach over 300 MPH before you have completed reading this sentence. In order to exceed 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4 G's. In order to reach 200 MPH well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8 G's.

Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. The redline is actually quite high at 9500 RPM.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, & for once, NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000 per second. The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter-mile (10/05/03, Tony Schumacher 3 times winner in the last four years). The top speed record is 333.00 MPH (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run (09/28/03, Doug Kalitta).

Putting this all into perspective: Here's the race.... You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter twin-turbo powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged & ready to launch down a quarter-mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the 'Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line & pass the dragster at an honest 200 MPH. The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches & starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums & within 3 seconds the dragster catches & passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter-mile away from where you just passed him.

Think about it - from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 MPH & not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race! That's acceleration! That's FAST!!

As a side-note:
Two new world speed records were set on motorcycles in 2008.

1 – the fastest bike in the world was a custom stream-lined motorcycle with 1200 horsepower and set a new record of 360.913mph.

2 – the quickest bike in the world was on the drag strip and set a new record of 250.97mph in the ¼-mile (5.95 seconds) with a 1400 horsepower engine!

Anyone got a Match?

One of the things I love about my job is going to new places, interfacing with new people, and getting to see things the average Joe probably never sees. Last week, my job took me to a power plant. Now, of course I can’t tell you which one but I can tell you that it is a coal fired power plant somewhere in the U.S.

Everyone was really nice and safety was of the utmost concern. As you can probably imagine the plant was very utilitarian in nature and there wasn’t a whole lot of frills and cushy offices to be found. That’s not to say it was a dirty mess, though. They were very good at keeping the plant clean at all times and I only noticed a little bit of coal dust in a few key areas.

One of the things we don’t think about is how big these plants are. I guess we always see them from the road at about a mile or so and we never get up close. One of the things I was impressed with was the sheer size of the facility. Many people had bicycles that the rode around the plant because the distances between key areas was pretty far.
The other thing we don’t think about is all of the logistics in keeping one of these places running. Let me give you some examples:

This particular power plant has four main areas that generate power. They are each identical in nature.

Each one houses numerous control and monitoring systems for all of the various functions of the plant. If any of these should become unreachable for a few seconds it is considered a failure. If a failure occurs they have to shut down production. For that unit, identify the failure, and fire (literally) things back up.

Powering the plant are these massive turbine generators. The turbines are driven by steam and in turn spin a generator. The turbine engines are approximately 900,000 horsepower (so much for the dragsters being impressive). The power generated by the entire plant is 500-megwatts.

The water used for the steam is piped in and ultra-purified. Think of the most bad-ass fish-tank filter and RO system you have ever seen in your life, and then make one that is even better. They even go to the extent of taking the extra oxygen molecules out of the water.

What is heating the water to make it steam? This is where it gets really interesting.

A unit will burn through 300 TONS of coal an hour. 24 hours a day, 7-days a week, 365-days a year. I wasn’t impressed with the fact they burn through that much as I was impressed with the fact that there is that much coal available for them to burn. This was only one plant and it consumes 1200 tons an hour.

But the absolute coolest thing is what burns the coal. I always had this vision of some furnace where a belt or something fed coal into the furnace and you’d have this nice bed of coals heating up the water to make the steam.

Well, let’s just say I was far off the mark. Try to imagine these coal hoppers that go up several stories and funnel coal into grinders. Think of a badass coffee grinder and just make it REALLY big. That’s step #1.

Then spin up some 5000-horsepower fans and use the fans to blow the ground up coal through ducts that are about 4 or five feet across. Where do the ducts go? To the furnace of course!! But the ducts are connected to the furnace at one-story intervals and at multiple vertices (angles) into the furnace.

What results has ruined camping for me for the rest of my life. Never again will I even attempt to make the largest campfire that I can. I will scoff at people who stack trees and make bonfires in their fields. The Texas A&M bonfire paled in comparison.

Imagine if you will; a giant ball of fire that is approximately four-stories high (and equally as wide). It’s spinning counter-clockwise and is suspended in the air by its own heat and by the air blowing the coal into it. We were allowed to view this fireball up-close and personal by opening a viewing portal that is about 6-inches across and wearing a welding hood to view the fire. You had to wear the hood because of the intense heat, brightness of the fireball, and the massive amount of ultra-violet light being generated. It would fry your eyes out. And, in the event that the 5000-horsepower fans lost power for a moment the fireball might blow-back through the viewing port.

It was entirely insane and surreal at the same time. Naturally being a fire-bug I wanted to throw something in and see how fast it was incinerated, but they quickly grabbed my right hand as I was trying to stuff my entire leather-bound executive notepad set through the view port. I’m not even sure I was aware I was doing it.

And that’s it. I saw the giant ball of fire and it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Next time I am taking marshmallows and a really long stick.

The Coming of the Barackalypse

This was a term I was recently introduced to and found it quite amusing. Part of the Barakalypse is going to be the dismantling of the constitution by selectively taking away our rights to things like free speech and guns.

Right after Obama’s election gun owners went crazy and started buying everything. I posted a quick article on this (see previous entry) and the carnage is still happening. I wanted to pick up a new gun, some ammo and a few other things but I can’t get my hands on them because dealers can’t keep anything in stock and everything is back ordered.

My friend believes that gun owners are over reacting to Obama being elected. To a large extent I completely agree. Nothing is going to happen until at least Jan 20th and right now he has bigger fish to fry.

But, I’ll also point out that it is not without warrant that gun owners are very nervous about having our second amendment rights stripped away from us. See this previous post to Obama’s position and record prior to election.

Now that he has been elected he has been selecting his cabinet members. Here is some more evidence of the potential Barackalypse. This is taken from an NRA newsletter that was recently sent out:

Obama's FIRST attack on YOU: Appointing Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel to be White House Chief of Staff. In Congress, Emanuel earned an "F" rating from NRA, and while working in the Clinton Administration, he was known as the "point man on gun control." He is an avowed enemy of the Second Amendment and will wield enormous power in the battle for the future of our firearm freedoms.

Obama's SECOND attack on YOU: If Hillary Clinton is confirmed as Secretary of State, she'll rip the Second Amendment right out of the Bill of Rights. She'll be our nation's top diplomat with the power to determine whether the United Nations will pass, and Obama will sign, a global gun ban treaty that will surrender our Second Amendment rights and our national sovereignty.

Obama's THIRD attack on YOU: Nominating ex-Senator and former Majority Leader Tom Daschle-an avowed enemy of NRA-to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. NRA was responsible for defeating Daschle when he ran in South Dakota for re-election to the Senate. If Daschle is confirmed, he could hold the ultimate power to declare guns a "public health menace" and regulate away our essential liberties.

Obama's FOURTH attack on YOU: Nominating Eric Holder to be Attorney General. As former Assistant Attorney General, Holder was a key architect and vocal advocate for the Clinton era's sweeping gun ban agenda. He supported national handgun licensing, mandatory trigger locks, and ending gun shows as we know them.Just recently, Holder opposed the District of Columbia's Heller decision that declared the Second Amendment an individual right. Holder also called for reviving the Clinton gun bans and, as Attorney General, would fight in court to prevent the landmark Heller decision from being made applicable to state and local governments.Worst of all, if Holder is confirmed as the nation's top law-enforcement officer, he would control BATFE and wield enormous power to harass gun owners and sue America's arms makers out of existence.

Obama's FIFTH attack on YOU: In the job application for the Obama Administration, he made it clear that gun owners are second-class citizens and told 80 million gun owners not to even bother applying for a job. In the "White House Personnel Data Questionnaire" he asked:

"Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage."

This chilling notice to gun owners-that they are not welcome to serve in his Administration-shows the deep hostility for Americans' Second Amendment Freedoms that Obama and his Administration have in their hearts.

And he’ll be “Working with a Congress dominated by gun haters like Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, John Conyers, Henry Waxman, and Charles Schumer!!!”

I’d say gun owners are very justifiable in their concerns about what is to come in the next four years.