When you are the hammer, strike. When you are the anvil, bear.
Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you. --Russian proverbs.
"If you are not aimed in the direction you want to go, what's your hurry?" --BMW Club Driver's School
"Everyone is doing the best that they can at all times, according to their perceived awareness." --Barksdale Theory.
MADS -- Money, Addiction, Driving, and Sex -- sounds like a playboy's life. Wrong. These are four challanges that a person must master in order to be happy. The main object is to identify these four vital areas, so that you can learn about them.
You are in a store and you see something that is normally $120 and you buy it for $100. You have just saved $20. Wrong. You have spent $100 that you probably can't afford.
Driving. Driving is the most dangerous thing you will do. It does not care if you are a millionaire or a high school boy, or whether you are cool. The rules of physics are the rules. It is vital that you learn these rules.
Every driver, especially a teenager should take a car control clinic. You need to experience an all-out emergency stop. Sometime in your life you age going to have to make one.The entire control of the car is all through four small patches where the tires are in contact with the pavement. You would be amazed at how small these patches are and what you are asking them to do. All turning and braking forces are transmitted through the tire patches. The ability of the tires to control the car is influenced by three things at once, the amount of braking, the sideway force, and the condition of the surface of the road.
You should not drive while engaged in any of the other three things in this article. Including maxing out your credit card.
Some parents think that their teenager should not go to car control training and learn to do wild manouvers. They think he will try it out on the road. But, everyone, especially a teenager, needs to know how to avoid an accident. With ABS, a driver can steer while braking hard. Never relinquish control of the car. Never give up. Keep steering down to a complete stop.
It is important to wear sun glasses when the sun is in your eyes.
There needs to be enough air in the tires. A car is less controlable with low tire pressure.
I don't need to mention supporting yourself as one of the vital things in life.
I only mention this to ensure your happiness.
photo by Eric Presten |
The F-24 has gentle flying qualities and a smooth control feel. This
F24R46 is one of the 300 F-24s built by Temco in Dallas in 1946-47
before production was terminated. This type was called an Argus light
transport in WWII in England and Canada.
The other planes I had were a PT-26 that I flew for 45 hours. The next airplane I had was an open cockpit PT-19, which I flew for 400 hours.
I have a total of more than 4000 hours. I've soloed in 19 models of airplane and six of gliders. I have a private single engine land and seaplane license and a commercial glider license. I have 10 hours of helicopter instruction.
I've soloed in each of the PT primary trainers of WWII, including the PT-17 Stearman and PT-22 Ryan. Now a days, soloing a Stearman is considered a great feat, but a lot of 18 year olds soloed with no problem during the war.
A larger version of the picture on the right. If you can name the airport at which it was taken, you get your dessert first.
Here are some personally interesting things I remember, but don't seem to be on the web. Please reply if you know where to find any of these.
What is the name of the 1950s science fiction story in which an orbiting rock flys down the middle of the main street of a town? A local guy jerks the main character aside to keep him from being hit by the low orbiting stone. The rock has worn grooves in the mountains in its low orbit around an asteroid. It is impossible, but makes a great vision in the reader's mind.
On Sunday April 23, 1939 I sneaked up to the fence at the Santa Rosa county fairgrounds to see a race of old Ford Model T cars. Suddenly, there was a huge pile-up of cars. I wriggled through the fence and ran across to see what happened. It was amazing. The pile-up was pictured in "The Nation" section of Time Magazine on Monday, May 1, 1939. It showed many cars piled two deep. Not shown in the photo were large piles of Model T wooden wheel spokes from the wreckage. I managed to find the TIME article and photo (below), but it is not the picture I remember. Do you rememeber a larger panaroma of the scene of this wreck? Here is the article:
At pretty little Santa Rosa, Calif, last week, 8,000 fun-loving rustics sat in the grandstand of the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, watched 46 local jalopies rattling round & round the trotting track in a 100-mile "Tin Lizzie Derby."
On the 80th lap, in front of the grandstand, two cars traveling at 50 m.p.h. locked wheels. A third car, trying to avoid them, caromed into a fourth. Before the crowd could let out a collective scream, 19 cars had piled up (see cut). Eight of the drivers were rushed to a hospital. None died.
I once heard a "Cowboy Poem" about a guy named Joe, who shot and ate an endangered bird. Before the Judge he said how it tasted. "Much like any fowl, half way between a Marbled Murrelet and a Spotted Owl." How can I find this poem?
There is a movie, in which a bad guy terrorizes a small midwest town. At the end, he gets into his Ford pickup truck and starts the engine. A shot rings out, killing the bad guy. His foot goes down on the petal and the movie ends with the big V8 going wide open until it blows up. This takes more than a minute. What movie is it?
Write to me care of my son. The first part of his email address is ted-pb and the second part is legenda.com.Back to Ted Kaehler's Homepage.