Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Santa Fe Fence

If you're a regular reader, you know that we spent the month of June in a condo in Santa Fe.  The weather was pleasant throughout our stay and we spent a lot of time on the backyard patio.  The patio and a portion of the backyard was enclosed with a cedar fence, which was likely the same vintage as the condo itself, 30 years give or take.


The fence has aged beautifully, has interesting grain patterns and faded areas.  
The last few days of our stay, I was admiring that fence a lot, thinking:
 that would make a great painting.



  Besides the fence, our Canyon Road art walk and the paintings of Barbara Meikle (My Idol, posted 6/28/13) helped get the creative juices flowing.  Ultimately, those juices morphed into a whole mess of acrylic paint that looks like this:



Santa Fe Fence
Acrylic on hardboard, 32'' x 42"
October, 2013

Friday, October 18, 2013

Sidewinder

In this case, Sidewinder is a premium 5th wheel pin box, rather than a snake, guided missile or old western scoundrel.  It's the device that makes it possible for us to get the Cougar in and out of our yard easily, and to pull it with a 'short bed' pickup.


Note that the pin arm is at a slight angle to the the mounting box and the RV itself.
That angle can be increased, up to 90 degrees if need be.  
It can be turned manually, using a length of 2x4 as a lever.  I didn't have to turn it manually all summer but always have to do so when I move the RV out of our yard.

The pin is the 2" cylindrical piece of steel that protrudes down from the pin box and locks into the 5th wheel hitch mounted in the pickup bed.  In conventional pin boxes, the pin is the swivel point when turning, serving the same function as the bumper-level steel ball used in towing boat trailers and such.  The Sidewinder pin connects to the hitch in the traditional manner but the similarity ends there: the pin is not the swivel point.


This is the conventional 5W hitch that is bolted to the pickup bed.
The pin fits into the round hole at the front of the slot and is held there by the jaws, which are in the closed position in this picture.

Located immediately behind the Sidewinder pin is a steel wedge that fits snugly into the slot on the hitch.  It 'freezes' the pin in place so it can't swivel.  Further back on the pin box, 22" behind the pin itself, is the new swivel point, which is called a turret.  Having the swivel point so far rearward means you can hook/unhook with the pickup up to a 90 degree angle to the RV.  Conventional pin boxes lack that flexibility: the pickup must be directly in line with the trailer; and you can't make 90 degree turns because the front corner of the RV will hit the rear corner of the pickup cab, damaging both.


Close up of the pin box, showing the pin at very front.   
The flat piece of steel right behind the pin is the wedge, which fits snugly into the slot on the 5W hitch, locking the pin in place so it can't swivel.  Several inches behind the wedge, you see the round collar of the turret, which is the new swivel point. 

My explanation may be confusing.  Use this link to see the setup in action:
You can fast-forward through the hype at the beginning. 

Those are the pros; here are the cons.  First, cost: about $1400 to purchase and install the Sidewinder, and, although a new conventional pin box costs $500 or more, there was absolutely no market for the nearly new one that was removed from the Cougar.  We ended up tossing it into the dumpster.

The other downside is the pickup-to-pin box alignment.  Since conventional pin boxes don't have Sidewinder wedges, there's a bit of wiggle room: alignment doesn't have to be spot-on perfect when you back the pickup to connect pin to hitch.  Not so with the Sidewinder.  That wedge must fit snugly into its slot on the hitch, no wiggle room allowed.  

The Cougar has a mirror panel above the pin box, which is there so the driver can use the rear view mirror and RV mirror to line up the pin with the hitch as he backs into place.  But guess what: that RV mirror is totally worthless when the Sidewinder pin arm is angled one way or the other - which it virtually always is.  You can't see either the pin or the hitch with only the rear view mirror: they're too low.  So, aligning the pickup with the pin is a matter of dead reckoning, luck, and hopping in and out of the truck several times to check on alignment progress.  I'm getting better at the dead reckoning but it's a challenge.




Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Jump Pete, Jump!

Ever watch Mad Men, the TV series about advertising companies in New York in the 60s?  Trish and I watched the entire series via Netflix streaming, viewed the finale just a few days ago.  It was time it ended, was getting dark, heavy, depressing.  I thought the series was well done overall but was extremely disappointed by the last episode.

The lead-in was always the same, showing simple sketches in silhouette, extremely cool, less is more.  One sketch showed a guy in a suit falling, falling, falling (slow-mo), still falling, with a lofty skyscraper in the background.  No clue was ever given about the who, what, why, when or how, but I always assumed the fall presaged an actual event.  I was expecting that event to take place in the final episode and I was enthusiastically cheering for my personal favorite, the most despicable person in the series, to be The Jumper.

There were any number of despicable characters and one might say the world would be a better place if any of them, or all of them for that matter, had taken the plunge.  If you watched the series, you already know from the post title who I was backing.  Yep, it was Pete Campbell.  That weasel had the ethics and morals of an alley cat and was a sucker-upper extraordinaire.  Mr Smarmy in the flesh, complete with smarmy smile that made you want to slap the living shit out of him every time he appeared on screen.

I thought The Jumper's silhouette resembled Pete, too.  It definitely didn't resemble Roger or Don or one of the other lead characters.  My second choice for The Jumper was Lane, that obnoxious, pretentious prick from England (in real life, the son of actor Richard Harris no less, never would have guessed).  Gotta give it to Lane, though.  He did the honorable thing: hung himself.  His first attempt, carbon monoxide poisoning via car exhaust, a more gentile and painless method by far, failed because he couldn't get the car started.  Silly bugger just couldn't do anything right.

So, nobody jumped.  We were misled.  Mr Smarmy's still out there somewhere.  Now that I think about it, he didn't really need to jump: his coworkers would have gladly thrown him out the window.

My favorite character was Joan.  She was no saint either, but it was great fun to watch her perform her velvet-hammer role, batting those beautiful eyes while demurely telling someone to piss off.  BTW, she was all padded up for the role; she's nowhere near that busty or butty.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Ender's Game

The movie, Ender's Game, is scheduled to hit cinemas and Imax next month.  Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley have lead roles; Gavin Hood (X Men) is the director and screenplay author.  It's a sci fi story based on the book of the same name by prolific author Orson Scott Card.  I stumbled onto Card a couple years ago while browsing the new fiction shelves at the local library.  One book and I was hooked, loved the writing, have read 6 now and looking forward to several more.

My favorite all-time sci fi author was Issac Asimov; the guy was a genius.  The genre itself isn't my favorite, but still I've read a lot of it, starting with H G Wells and Jules Verne way back when.  So, when I say Card ranks right up there with Asimov, it's high praise indeed.  Like Asimov, Card's main characters are human, and that appeals to me more than stories that involve only aliens.  Yes, Card uses aliens too, gotta have a few formidable antagonists in the mix.  Card delves deeply into emotions, motivations, loyalties and morality - and mixes in generous helpings of military and political strategy.  Thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff.

Star Wars (1977) was the most innovative and creative movie I've ever seen.  It blew me away.  The many groundbreaking special effects and techniques used in the Star Wars series, many of them computer-generated, are now ho-hum, passe', ancient history.  It'll be interesting to see if Ender's Game can break away from the pack of also-ran sci fi flicks of recent years.  I'm hoping it does.  I'm also hoping that it's the first of many Card movies.

If you like sci fi, I urge you to read the book before you see the movie.  The scope and depth of the writing can't be packed into 114 minutes of film no matter how clever the screenwriter.  If you do read it, let me know if you like Card's writing as much as I do.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Zota Unique

"Thanks to these new super-shoes, I can shovel the pavement while I walk!"

"I can flip pancakes with them!"

"Thanks to their amazing design, I just swam across the Atlantic in 2 days!"

"At last. Formal shoes for the well dressed clown."

The above excerpts are from actual reviews of the fantastic Zota Unique shoe.  Priced at only $119, a fraction of what you'd pay for Gucci or Prada, they are an incredible bargain!  Given their style, versatility and sex appeal (read the reviews) you'll want to get several pair - or at least 2: burgundy for casual wear and black for more formal occasions.

Be sure to check out the complete Zota Unique line of footwear.  It includes a really hot checkerboard design that's extremely popular with the masochistic crowd: they always find action when they wear these to tractor pulls and biker bars.

Don't forget to read all the reviews so you're up on all the wonderful features and uses of this fine product.  Here's the link:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mens-Zota-Unique-G803-10/13880079