Petaluma, when the bars start closing Saturday night, can be a scary place. I was walking back up the hill after a pint at McNear's when a pickup truck of noisy drunk white guys hooted at me, "hey baby" and "how much for that Indian"? they crossed the intersection, but a few blocks later another car drove in behind me, on the wrong side of the road, with seemingly the same bunch of guys hollering "Indian". they followed me, harassing me for another block or two before they disappeared.
this morning I heard a quail doing its "wow! wow!" lookout call, then looked up the hill and saw two nice, plump quail waddling down the hill towards me. haven't seen the little buggers for 6 months. nice to be back among friends.
night before last I attempted to sleep in my little hideout on the hill. someone had taken my gravity chair, but left my luggage, saw, and jacket. I was able to stay reasonably warm for a while, but without the chair I couldn't get level so was too uncomfortable to sleep for long. I'll have to go look during the day sometime. I doubt it's gone from the hill, some schmuck probably took it to his own campsite.
yesterday I was poking around Friedman's and made a discovery: 5/8" threaded (and presumably unthreaded) rod fits almost perfectly into 1/2" galvanized (and black?) schedule 40 pipe. just requires some filing on the welds, for which I bought a rattail file. went out to the parking lot with a bunch of rod, pipe, and fittings like side outlet tees, side outlet elbows, and crosses (none of which I knew existed in threaded fittings), and 4 wheels with 5/8" bearing ID, and prototyped a simple vehicle in about an hour with no cutting. of course it doesn't steer, but it's indefinitely reconfigurable and I'll figure something out.
last updated 2015-06-02 21:20:48. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com