Routines

I watch routine traffic stops through a thin veil of smoke. The bank is telling me that it is only 25 degrees. A warm spell in the storm, which brings snow, lots of snow and lets me still see my condensing breath. Red and blue are reflecting from all of the nearby windows. I am content.

Another car pulls in behind the first. They are all facing south on the avenue. Cars roll silently by, tire noise and loose exhaust systems are muffled by the white stillness. All of the drivers are going slowly, maybe because the blue and red are flashing or maybe because at any moment they could lose control.

I smell it. Jerked meat is getting a final treatment of mesquite and hickory. There is no wind. Sharp teeth and large eyes peer out through the blinds. Maybe he can smell the smoke as well.

Maybe the poor sap who is now filled with regret sitting in the backseat can smell it too.

I am content for this moment.

Winter and Folly

The snow is falling lately. Every morning seems to bring a bit more accumulation on the lawn, the cars, the rooftops. I'm already weary of the sight. I crave two wheeled transportation, or at least four wheeled movement on something besides these manicured streets.

Yesterday I finished Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales and I was impressed. He writes intensely in depth on the very specific traits of people who survive adverse situations and those that die pitifully. The book strongly reinforced my belief that cities are inherently false environments and create weak people. Although not an exclusive trend in his research, Gonzales does make note of cities' shortcomings. The expectations for a particular environment that an individual learns, simply does not apply when in most other environments. These expectations coupled with ignorance of powerful forces (i.e. lightening, wind, gravity, freight trains, rushing water, etc.) lead seemingly competent people to make outright wrong decisions and get themselves killed in swift fashion. Just as I would probably walk into a Chicago ghetto and look at the wrong person and die in a blaze of gunfire and ignorance (hopefully taking a few with me), the yuppie walks into the woods of Yellowstone, leaves the trail to take a picture and is found the next morning sitting at the base of a tree with no pulse. Despite the widely different causes (human gangbangers vs. exposure to elements), the underlying cause and result is the same, misjudgement of forces = death. I've never been to a ghetto in Chicago, I only have a vague idea and understanding of such a place. The yuppie may not have either, but certainly the yuppie never expected a simple day hike in one of the most travelled National Parks to end in his demise. I however, have been lost in the woods with no compass, an overcast sky, in the middle of winter, with the sun going down. I understood the forces at work against me and although I didn't make the best choices, I made enough correct choices to remedy the situation without incident.

In any case, the book is a good read. It has a suspenseful and tragic way about it that is difficult to put down. Even when you know how it ends, Gonzales does a good job of making you want to read. Many of the survival anecdotes he draws from are quite famous (Shakelton's crew, Jon Krakauer's Everest disaster) but many are small lesser known examples, many that are ironic and humorous in a dark way. However, the core of the book revolves around Gonzales' father who has an impossible survival story all his own. One that Gonzales pieces together as the book goes along. As a narrative and well researched account, Gonzales does an excellent job with this book, but most impressive is his isolation of exactly the internal traits a person posesses in order to survive where others cannot.

Helicoils: Why You Should Be Careful When Changing Sparkplugs.

I learned something new the other day. I generally try if I can to learn a new thing every once in awhile whether it be a skill or craft or maybe just a snippet of useful knowledge. However, this most recent thing I learned was almost a little of all three.

I would like to say that this story all started with a little problem that just happened to appear one day, however that was not the case. My truck has been a mess for some time and through my own limited abilities I have been trying in good faith to keep her running well. Of course my skills are meager and as I've been finding I have the apt tendency to do more harm than good. So the other day I thought I could perhaps take a more careful look at some maintenance I had performed several months ago to see if I could find reasons for the rough nature of my beloved truck. My first thought went to the spark plugs. I had replaced plugs, wires, and distributor cap all around the same time and this had improved the truck a great deal in some respects, but had not solved all issues. However, at the time I was satisfied with the results and so left well enough alone. Well as I learned upon inspecting the plugs, all was not well. My number 4 cylinder's plug was not screwed in very far. In fact, it took about two full rotations to bring the plug out. Something was very wrong. Upon further inspection, I couldn't turn the plug back in nearly all the way. Obviously I must have been rushing the job last time I changed plugs, cross threaded this one and left it as good thinking it was in all the way.

Now I did know that there was a way to re-thread spark plug holes, but I had never investigated the methods, nor had I thought that it could be something within the confines of my abilities. A little internet searching turned up a few different companies that made "kits" for thread repair. The first one I found was prohibitively expensive and other was reviewed with much skepticism by a Toyota internet forum. In turn, I decided to simply check the local "O'Reilly's" for what they might have to offer.
$31.50 later, I walked out of the store with a simple kit comprised of a step die of appropriate diameter, a stick of metal used to "seat" the insert, and three different lengths of insert to fit the most common spark plugs. The only additional materials I needed was some high temp RTV silicone, which I had left over from a motorcycle engine rebuild project.

I should step back for a second and say that I was not optimistic about this repair. It seemed like something I could really screw up. Images of metal chips from the die falling into the cylinder and doing some serious internal damage were on my mind. However the instructions for this little kit were very simple and straightforward and made no mention of this danger except to say that chips should be cleared from around the hole prior to withdrawing the cutting die. Upon reading this I sought out an old vacuum cleaner with hose attachment and a pack of q-tips. I promised myself that I would not do this job in haste and if at any point I felt myself rushing, I would stop immeadietly and come back to it later.

Equipped with the proper tools and mental state I began work. The process was simple enough. The step die was able to grab enough of the original threads to get started and the vertical alignment was satisfactory to my eye. After cranking away for something like 15 minutes, the die finally bound up and stopped, telling me I had gone as far as I could. Then the vacuum came into play and I methodically sucked up every chip I could manage. The q-tips were moderately helpful, but the vacuum was certainly invaluable. When I was satisfied, I withdrew the die slowly, and upon freeing it from the shiny new threads I realized the die was magnetized and doing a wonderful job of hanging on to a ton of chips. One last job with the vacuum and the hole was clear. Now began the tricky job of properly seating the insert to the desired depth without damaging any threads. I screwed a new spark plug lightly into the insert, coated the outside threads of the insert with RTV and placed the whole package on the end of a sparkplug socket and extension. The threads matched well and I didn't make too much of a mess with the RTV, but the one dilemma I faced was how to remove the sparkplug without simply pulling the insert out with it. Through trial and error and a quick snap of the wrist to break the spark plug free, I found I could tighten the package down and then the friction of the RTV held the insert while allowing the sparkplug to be withdrawn. Now I was looking at a brand new set of threads for a previously ruined spark plug hole. Per instructions I used the "seating" tool and a hammer to mush the top of the insert just a little bit. I didn't really understand what this did, but I'm guessing it helps to prevent the insert from loosening in some way.

I stepped back. Was that it? Nothing failed so far. No obvious screw ups on my part. However, the RTV required 12 to 24 hours to fully cure before I could run the vehicle. The morning came, I walked outside, slipped the key in the ignition, turned, and the truck lept to life. I heard a sound I had never heard before that I think came from the starter. I was unable to replicate the sound and wrote it off. After the truck warmed up, my idle was steady and the truck had a bit less shake. After a short drive without any ugly sounds or failures I proclaimed the repair a success. It was certainly a portion of my troubles, but the truck will still need some tweaking. I have yet to check the other bank of cylinders for spark plug issues, deciding instead to focus on one problem at a time. That will be my next area of focus, one that I actually look forward to now that I've gotten to experience a little bit of satisfaction in my work.

Inconvenience for All: Amen

I was writing a brief email to a friend this morning, when I made a small realization about the nature of our governmental laws. It's nothing profound, but the simplicity in explanation works well to understand the rationale behind our laws. This is by no means saying that laws are being made for the right reasons, but they are being made for some reason and that's important to know.

Essentially, the basis of a law is to protect citizens from harm. A law that is designed in good faith should be able to demonstrate its value through positive effects. If a law, like say, the straw purchase law preventing the purchase of a firearm intended for another, is to be valid. The law should actually have a given, measurable effect. However, there's more than that. The intent behind the law is not to prevent law abiding parents from buying firearms for their law abiding children, but instead to prevent non-felons from purchasing firearms for their felon buddies. If the law is doing what it is intended for, then we should see a measurable impact on the felon population to ease the mind of the law abiding parent who is inconvenienced.

This is the sort of mentality that is so wonderful about science and so woeful about law. There doesn't ever seem to be any follow up on the rationale for law making. I think of the rigor behind scientific study. The proposal, the IRB approval, the advisors' signatures, the oral defense, publishing in a peer reviewed journal, all of these measures are there to give accountability and to ensure careful, repeatable methods. However, with a law. It is certainly a rigorous process to pass laws, but once passed there is no system in place to repeal laws. Somehow nobody seems to value the complete removal of certain outdated, or inneffective laws. It's only amendments and in few very tiresome cases, judicial rulings that strike down a specific law.

In short, the more I learn about law, the more amazed I am at the cumbersome, top heavy system we adhere too. New laws are being passed everyday, and yet there are still some cities with old statutes dictating where a husband should walk in relation to his wife and some states that prohibit atheists from adopting a child. It'd be nice to see another governmental branch, maybe an offshoot of the judicial branch, the House of Repeals. It could be a full time job for an entire bench of justices to just filter through old ledgers all day and file motions to dismiss each and every worthless law. Heck, maybe it would even cause lawmakers to give more serious thought to what is being created if they risk repeal via hard nosed judges whose sole purpose is to ridicule pointless and counterproductive laws. A system of say, accountability? Well you don't say, in any case, inconvenience for all, amen.

Pooh Bear Loves Honey Too Much to Be a Buddhist

I recently read this curious little book called The Tao of Pooh. My thoughts over the past year or so have consistently settled on the idea of effortlessness. I've gained great respect for the illogical attitude that allows my will to be at the mercy of the natural world.

So in a sense, I didn't learn anything from this book that I wasn't already experiencing, but it was a lightly funny read on the basics behind Daoism. I still don't know if it's actually spelled with a "D" or a "T" but I think that might just be another one of those things that if asked, a Taoist would give you a stupid smile and totter off whistling to themselves. Eh, details are not the strong suit of the Daoist. Fair enough, it doesn't change anything anyhow.

The best and what I felt was the most valuable thing to be obtained from this book was the anecdote about the vinegar tasters. The image does a wonderful job of summing up the key differences between Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. To sum it up in a slightly more compact version than Benjamin Hoff gives us; basically there are three wise men tasting vinegar, and the look on each man's face explains how they view the world and their relation to it. The first man, Confucius, has a sour expression because to him, mankind was out of step with the ways of heaven. Thus the many rules and rituals of Confucianism seek to realign us. The second man, Buddha, wears a bitter expression because with his way of thinking, life is a series of traps which the world sets through desires and attachments. Therefore to reach Nirvana, you must distance yourself from all attachment. Now finally we come to the third man, Lao-tse who is smiling broadly. Lao-tse believed that natural laws and harmony were accesible to everyone at anytime and that the interference of mankind was all that brought unhappiness. In a sense, to be effortless, is to be happy and to find harmony with your environment.

I thought it was pretty obvious and clever that Winnie the Pooh was used as such a device. Pooh's simplemindedness and general disregard for stress make him the ideal Taoist. The rest of the book is spent giving examples of this and having the narrator argue with Pooh over everything. It seems pretty clear that Hoff is not a Daoist, if he is indeed portraying himself as the narrator, but he never really makes it clear how invested he is in his own work. Maybe that's all the evidence we need, but more importantly we probably shouldn't care.

More Than Survival: Proper Stress and Being Effortless

It interests me to determine a way to survive in any environment effortlessly. The effort that I'm thinking of is the emotional discomfort, the feelings of dread which accompany anticipation of things needing to be done throughout the course of the day. For example, I work a job that I dislike. A day off is like one big sigh of relief. I would rather wake up in the morning and feel positive anticipation for the things to come, instead of a sluggish presence of mind that stays throughout the day. In essence, I seek this "effortless" soundness of mind that motivates my body onward. Stress is not a bad things, but baggage is another matter.

I think of baggage as stressors that consume or preoccupy the mind. Stress that doesn't release properly or fully. It can be something very simple. An interpersonal example might be something like an argument with a friend that never resolves properly. The absence of resolution gnaws at the mind, preoccupying and distracting attention from matters more important.

The goal then is to minimize baggage and increase focus, which could conceivably improve overall functioning and satisfaction, or in a sense allow a sense of effortlessness to permeate mind.