Thunder Mountain Indian Monument IV
Thunder Mountain Indian Monument IV Read More »
Transportation
Their Buddies’ Broken-Down Trailer Camper
I had an interesting experience in Baker, OK. It's really a town of only 20 houses or so. I was being chased by storms and saw a sign for a methodist church. I decided to see if they'd be willing to put me up for the night. The place was locked but I met a lady across the street. She asked me ''how particular'' I was about where I slept. I should have known what I was getting myself into then. These were the poor of the poor, although still very nice people. I ate dinner in a junkyard garage with them, and slept in their buddies broken down trailer camper. It smelled worse than I did. They were very nice people with lots of character though, and I had to thank them for helping me. It was probably a better place to stay than my bivy since it rained a little that night. I have more details for later, but it was quite the experience. This trip has me much more open to a lot of things I normally would do; including certain dirty habits to clean myself.
-- Matthew Will
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Tom Swift
No one seemed to realize that any of several Swift inventions would have changed the shape of human history. In Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts, Tom casually invents a gravity concentrator after repairing a kite for some younger kids in an empty lot, and in Tom Swift and His Space Solartron, he implements a gadget that converts solar energy directly to matter in the form of any chosen element or simple compound. . . . The Repelatron alone would have changed the shape of technological society, as hinted but never fully explored in Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway.
The author or authors seemed incapable of grasping the implications of what they wrote. In that title, Tom Swift lays "down" a floating superhighway in mid-air, to be supported on Repelatron beams, with a helicopter. Tom's creators didn't seem to hit upon the truth (as we all did, and discussed endlessly on Boy Scout campouts) that Repelatrons made all other forms of flying obsolete. We also realized that if the Space Solartron could convert solar energy to oxygen for breathing, to water for drinking, and even to sugar for eating, it could make gold as well. But Tom never hit on that. I guess he was rich already and wasn't ruled by crass financial motives.
Bicycle
Classic Rendezvous: “lightweight vintage bicycles.” Work bikes: Workcycles.com, Xtracycle (and Xtracycle weblog, The Pleasant Revolution). Mail-order bicycle: Bicycle Classics, Bicycle Revolution, Bikemania.biz, Sportsbay, Global Bikes, BikePartsUSA. Amazon’s Cycling and Wheel Sports category. Nycewheels: electronic bicycles. Schizoblog: Italian bike weblog. Roma Pedala: “Ovvero un punto di incontro virtuale per i ciclisti della capitale per promuovere l’uso della bicicletta sia come salutare pratica sportiva sia come efficace strumento per una diversa mobilità urbana, svincolata dalle automobili inquinanti e rumorose.” Ciclystica.it. The New England Musclebike Museum. Enigmatic small-wheeled bicycles. Martino’s Bike Lane Diary. Re-Cycle.org: Collects unused bicycles in Britain and donates them to people who need them in Africa. Recycle-a-Bicycle collects unused bikes and helps kids fix them up for themselves. Velorution. Pedaling.com collects North American ride descriptions and turn sheets. Moulton bicycles.