How The Mind Works

 I had to drive the coach three and a half hours to Mayfield Kentucky on Sunday.  I had an appointment to have some things fixed early Monday morning.  The drive is beautiful and fun in the coach, once I pass Elizabethtown and get on the Western Kentucky Parkway.  The pavement is smooth and the traffic is light.

Temperatures were working their way up into the 90s.  The outside air temperature indicators on the coach were indicating 93degrees when I arrived there at about 8 PM.  I had to disconnect the Jeep and back the coach between a small RV and a large mobile dwelling that I am not going to waste too much time trying to describe.  The space was wide enough for someone who was good at backing coaches, but that ain't me.  Furthermore, the rear tv camera system wasn't working.

It took me 3 attempts to back in from one direction and 3 more from the other, to finally get it in there.  Because the tv wasn't working, I had to stop the coach, set the parking brake and jump out to go back and check my distance from the large garage type door I was backing toward.  I had to do that 3 times.  I say jump, because the stairs were one of the things I was getting fixed there.  I don't jump so well anymore.  Then I had to step up to the bottom level of the coach entry door, which is about hip high to this geezer, then hold the hand rails and pull myself up and it.  Guess who was overheated and sweating profusely in this 93 degree heat.

The drive out there had been easy and fun, but it had become progressively warm in the driver's seat.  There are 4 air conditioning systems in my coach, Enigma.  Three ACs are in the roof and they are the ones that cool the house part of the bus.  The other system is similar to those you are familiar with on automobiles.  It has an engine driven compressor and creates cool air that comes at you from openings in the dash.  The problem is that the Enigma's engine is in the back of this 43 feet long beast and the air has to be ducted to the dash, which is all the way to the front.  It can become inadequate in very hot ambient air situations.  

It is possible to supplement the dash AC, by running one or more of the house ACs, but that requires running the generator, which uses very small amounts of the diesel fuel, because of the high electrical load.  The batteries and engine generator just can't carry that load.  

I didn't start feeling hot until I was almost at my destination and didn't feel like taking the time to stop and do what was necessary to run one of the house ACs.  I wanted to disconnect and park before dark and find a place to eat dinner before 9 PM.  Mayfield rolls up the sidewalks early.

After I finally got the coach parked, I was able to plug in 50 amp shore power from the dealership's building.  When I saw that it was providing power to the coach, I turned on the minimum number of circuit breakers that I would need to spend a comfortable night sleeping, after I had eaten dinner.  I wouldn't be needing the electric, fake fireplace or washer and dryer, for example.  I did close the CBs for all 3 house ACs.  I turned them on and got in the car to drive to the nearby Cracker Barrel.  I walked in the door at 8:45 PM, thinking the coach would be nice and cool by the time I returned.

I like Cracker Barrel, because you know what you are going to get.  It may not be fancy, but it is good and you can stuff yourself for $15.  

When I climbed back into the coach, it was not cool and comfy.  I knew there was something wrong.  I went to the panel that controls the cooling and heating of the interior and saw that the front unit was running, but the middle and rear units had E7 faults.  This indicates a circuit breaker fault.  I went to the CB panel and surprisingly, the CBs were not in the tripped position, they were full on.  Strange.  Nonetheless, I turned them off and back on and went back to turn the ACs on again.  E7 times 2.  I must have done this 3 times totally, because my mind was fuzzy from the drive, the heat, and the hour.  Mayfield is in the Central Time Zone, so it was after 1030 on my body clock.  The temperature inside the coach was indicating 88 degrees.

At this point, I had enough knowledge and information to figure out what was wrong, but I was tired and hot and soon started thinking about the alternative to sleeping in the coach.  I knew it would not cool down enough for me to fall asleep for hours.  I would have to go to a hotel to get enough sleep to deal with the things I would be facing in the morning.  That is what I did.  Cracker Barrel opened an hour before the dealership, so I was the last customer one day and the first the next. 

I drive to this dealership, because there are not acceptable RV repair places for me closer to Louisville.  There is one in Nashville, but that is a drive of about 3 hours and is just not as easy for me to deal with.  At the one in Mayfield, I actually get to talk to the guys who are working on the coach.  There is so much lost in the transfer of information, when you have to talk to someone between the technician and yourself.  

After a good night's sleep in air conditioning and breakfast with coffee, I was probably able to break the code on my AC problem, but I left it in the capable hands of Cody, the guy who works on Enigma there.  He told me he found there was a mix up with the CBs for the 2 problematic units.  The middle unit was actually on the CB labeled Washer and the rear unit on the CB labeled Fire Place.  When Cody told me that, a cartoon frame of me would have had a lightbulb above my head.

During our previous stay in Florida, over the winter, we had a short on the CB panel, nearly causing a fire.  We went without total power for several days, waiting for parts and for our mobile technician to be able to rebuild the panel.  He must have gotten the position of the CBs switched in those two cases.  The ACs had worked fine after that, but we had all the CBs on, and had not left some of them off selectively, assuming we wouldn't need them, as I had done the night before. 

Now, to get back to the title of the post.  The whole time I was working on figuring out why the ACs weren't working, there was something in the back of my mind telling me I had all the information I needed to solve this problem, if I only worked on it and calmly thought my way through it.  My subconscious mind knew the answer to the problem, but my emotions were getting the best of me, due to fatigue and discomfort.  I kept going back to the CB panel, knowing it held the answer, but just allowed frustration to prevent me from working it out. 

Unusual In The Extreme

Early in this video, you will see a Burghboy say nice things about Ohio.  That is Unusual In The Extreme.  That is because there is a somewhat friendly rivalry between people from Pittsburgh and the state of Ohio.  There are decades old rivalries in professional sports and just the natural antagonisms of living close together.

However, there are truths that cannot be denied.  Ohio had some very important people, Grant and Sherman, Wilbur and Orville would be just a few and Pittsburgh has a football team that can win Super Bowls.

Early in my life, I became interested in the way humans always give names to everything. When I talk to one of my doctors and they ask me about prescriptions, I am always impressed by their ability to remember the names. 

I have decided to name an upcoming, bike ride with my friends The Quest.  In the immediately preceding post, I gave you the story that is the partial inspiration for that name.

We call the series of rides we have been doing for more than a decade the Tour De Nbo.  This is a clever play on words our riding pal, Ed Quigley, came up with based on the Tour De France and the nickname they all call me, Denbo.

I may have blogged about how I acquired that name, but I will now provide a refresher.  When I was a gradeschooler, my dad would take my brother, Jim, and me to visit his parents, Pap and Gram.  Jim was always a more gregarious kid than I was and as we walked into the big room where Pap was always sitting in his lounge chair, doing crossword puzzles and spitting tobacco juice in his spitoon,  Jim would always give him a big, cheerful hello.  Pap would return the enthusiasm with a big, "Hey Jimbo".  There was much less enthusiasm in my exchange with Pap.  I was just a shy kid.  This happened several times and finally, one time I guess Pap must have seen the look on my face and broken the code that I was just not as outgoing as Jim and was disappointed in not having a nickname.  Pap always came up with the family nicknames.  He said, "Hey Denbo". 

Years later, as I was sitting in an office, just off the showroom floor of the car dealership, where I worked as a salesman, I was engaged in a discussion about nicknames.  The discussion was with one of my favorite people of all time, Eddy Link.  Eddy liked to give people nicknames also.  He had named the parts manager Towhead, because he had blonde hair.  He asked me if I had a nickname and I said a good friend had always called me Denny The Weasel.  Ed didn't like that one, so I related the story about Jimbo and Pap.  He liked that and started calling me Denbo on a regular basis.

Several more years later, I was having a similar discussion about nicknames with good friend and another of my favorite people, Lloyd, who was called The Lloydster.  (I always call him the guy with the redundant L).  He liked Denbo also and that is what he called me on our many hiking and camping trips in western mountains.  One of those trips was our first hike to the summit of Mount Whitney and we were joined by a fellow UPS pilot who had been a fighter pilot and as you may know, they all have call signs, which is what they call nicknames.  This guy's call sign was Snake.  Snake began calling me Denbo also.  Snake and I are both active on a chat room that our union of UPS pilots established called the Bar And Grill.  He always referred to me as Denbo on the BnG and it caught on there.  Snake joined us on one of our Tour De Nbo rides, referring to me as Denbo, so it caught on there.  Sorry, I tried to make that as short as I could.

Whew!  Then I began naming each ride.  Smell The Roses, Zest For Life, Toxic Masculinity and The Phoenix are examples.  I am calling our next one The Quest.  The name was inspired by the story in the preceding post and the fact that I will be 80 years old on this ride.  It will be 9 days of riding from Washington DC to Pittsburgh on the Chesapeake And Ohio Canal Towpath and the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP), 335 trail miles.  The Quest will be to see if I can ride 40 miles a day, sleep on the ground and get up and do it again and again...

I have my new Category I ebike to provide an assist and I rode it 250 miles on the Katy Trail in Missouri last October, but I slept in a bed every night.

Hang around me long enough and you will hear me say, there is a thin line between genius and insanity.  I don't know if that is true, but I like to say it, because many of the really smart people I have known or observed are a little nutty.

The discussion in the video above is about the Wright Brothers and their signature accomplishment, First Flight.  I think it is ironic, that these 2 guys, who did not go to college, solved the mystery of human flight.  It was accomplished because they were both very smart, but more so because they were persistent and did not allow setbacks to discourage them.

Silent Cal is not considered one of our Rushmore worthy presidents, but I think he hit the accomplishment nail on the head with the above quote.  In an earlier blog post, titled Psycho Babble, I discussed a book, by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Psycho Cybernetics.  This book makes the case that we succeed by making mistakes, learning and then pressing on.

  

 

The Quest

When we study history, we often know the end of the story and fail to understand, that the outcome was not inevitable.  Take for example, the event that actually created the United States of America, the American Revolution.  The successful separation from England was in doubt until the very end of significant conflict at Yorktown, Virginia.  Early in the war, Washington was defeated and routed in the Battle of Brooklyn, by what was probably the first Hail Mary attack in America.  Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf is famous for his end around attack in the Kuwait War, but that is not the first involving Americans in conflict.  Another was the attack by Stonewall Jackson, on behalf of Robert E. Lee at Chancellorsville.  This attack was against General Fightin' Joe Hooker, who Lee referred to as Mr. F. J. Hooker.

Washington's American army was huddled on the shore of the East River, outnumbered and outclassed.  The Brits decided to wait until morning to finish the job, but a miraculous fog appeared on the river and Washington managed to escape Long Island for Manhattan Island in small boats and live to fight another day.  This is but one example of the battle losses and narrow escapes of Washington's ragtag army.  No one at that time gave the former colonies any hope of winning that war against the most powerful army on the planet at that time.  During the Civil War, World War II, just about every war our country has engaged in, there were points where victory was in doubt.

As I wrote my blog, Flexible Flyer, How Not To Build An Aviation Career, I knew how it ended, but while I was living it, there was always great uncertainty that I would achieve my goal of having a financially successful career as an airline pilot.  If you read the blog, you will see how it developed, step by step and see how bleak things looked at several points.  There were times when my resolve was nearly broken.  There are also many elements that helped build and rebuild that resolve.

I have been thinking about a small part of that process lately.  When I was in the army from October 1965 to October 1967, I spent most of my time as a drill sergeant at Fort Knox Kentucky.  My best friend and roommate was Howard "Ricky" Richter, a Jewish guy from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, near Camden and across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.  Ricky was fascinated by the 1965 musical, Man of La Mancha, which was based loosely on the 17th Century novel, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Ricky loved the principle song from the musical and he would sing it often as we drove from Fort Knox to Louisville, to do the things young men strive to do.  Ricky did not have a good voice and could not carry a tune, but he did not allow that to deter him. 

In recent years, I search the World Wide Web for Ricky and found his obituary.

  

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star