Several times a week one person or another, they seem to be local, I've never met them, will stop and say something like, thank you for what you are trying to do here., thank you for all your good work here,.... today it was a little different, the white-haired lady apparently had been sitting behind me oh, I hadn't noticed her, in the all-you-can-eat salad bar that I frequent several times a week. I take good care of the staff, as best I can, and the amount of vegetables and fruit, tuna fish, potato salad, that I consume wood cost way more than I could afford in a grocery store. It is a godsend on many levels.
As she was walking from behind me toward the exit door she didn't turn but she said, nice shirt, God bless you. It is not a fundamentalist shirt. For Joy serve those poor souls in solidarity. At all times I mind my own business, I have way more everyday to do than I have time for, so minding my own business is easy and a necessity, I keep my eyes down, I don't look for eye contact or recognition. But when I am in town I do sit in a conspicuous spot and of course there's the signage on the vehicle but there's the signage on me. Front and back. And when I can I will choose a chair without arms to sit in so that I can turn it sideways and sit with my back exposed to the room so that anyone that cares to read the message can do so. She chose to do so. She liked what she saw.
Tonight James is feeling really satisfied. That's not important. But he is.
The last several days have been a lot of technical work as discussed yesterday, attempting to establish that the vehicle can, sustainably, reasonably, do the climb that we did tonight in preparation for doing three times more once the final three miles up to the Mount Whitney portal are cleared of the rocks and debris from the slides this winter. It is rated as one of the 12 most difficult climbs for cyclists in the country and indeed it is. The road is very very good. Just three years old. But it is very very steep. Very steep. Did I mention steep? Between 9 + 13% grade for just under five miles as I recall. Tonight we did the first mile and a half of that as we have done several times recently but on the prior trips overheating of the engines was extremely problematic.
And much time has been spent in recent days trying to figure out a combination of speed and which controller running which motor that did not require us to stop every two tenths of a mile, literally, to let the motors cool down.
Well I was aware that speed was a major issue and I know from years past that having a fan blowing on the motor can help a lot to keep it cool. Well, not cool, but to lengthen the time between stops by a factor of two or three or four.
Well, the hard work paid off much better than I anticipated tonight. The outside air temperature was cool but not cold, and the combination of the right speed, the motors are more efficient when I let them travel faster than I normally travel so that they allow for all my exercise. The one fan I had on the motor helped a lot and a second one is coming for the second motor. Well, it was really gratifying and as mentioned in the cycling log the body performed really really really really really well tonight. It started out kind of rough but boy it went to a higher level than in a long time towards the end.
So the Big Technical Preparatory physical projects I think they're behind us but there's still some small ones that tonight's Journey indicated really need to be done, the availability to switch between temperature sensors is 1 whereas now the switching require stopping the vehicle and changing some cables. The new seat situation seems to be a substantial Improvement, not a game-changer, but a much more sensible posture, more pronounced recumbent, and the work that was done needs to be tightened up a bit. There's a lot of force coming out of this old body. And a few other items. The very painful delay of the new graphics for the vehicle may continue for another day or so but almost certainly it will be executed by mid-week.
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