Tuesday, September 6, 2016

250.366 - 2016 project and 250 and more mind

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

250 and more mind

DoY 250.  250.  my first real motorcycle was a 250, a BSA 250.   BSA, Birmingham Small Arms.  what the hell was a gun manufacturer doing building a motorcycle?  what the hell was a gun manufacturer doing building a motorcycle out of pot metal?  well, it wasn't all pot metal, the frame was iron.  yes, iron, not steel.  but the engine had pot metal wherever BSA thought they could get away with it.  thank goodness the pistons and cylinders were steel!  but the advance, the little plate which controlled where the ignition started, degrees before or after the maximum compression, was pot metal.  which meant that on Saturday, before you went for a ride, you'd open the engine, set the advance properly, then go for your ride, and by that time, the advance had drifted and you needed to reset it.  and of course, once you opened the engine, you couldn't help but notice that two or three other things besides the advance needed resetting.  I used to swear - and I mean swear - that damned motorcycle took more hours maintenance than it gave hours of riding time!  I didn't remember then - while I was swearing - that it was an English motorcycle.  the English would never have expected hours of riding time.  they had no desert!  they had no desert highways.  they had no mountains nearby - they had those little bitty things a giant could step over that they called mountains - so they had no mountain highways.  so many people lived so close together in England that they could barely get a motorcycle up to speed before they had to slow for a cart or a lorry or stop for an intersection, whatever they call intersections.  you understand, I had never been to England, but I had read about it, so I knew nothing, but never let that stop me from opining.  but I did have the evidence of my BSA 250.  250?  wasn't that where this started?  yes, 250.  5 cubed times 2.  why in the world did they use cubic centimeters to measure displacement?  why not cylindrical centimeters?  but then what would a cylindrical centimeter mean?  whatever it meant, the English would probably measure it with a tool made of pot metal so you could never trust their measurements.  how did we trust their measurements made in physics?  yet we did!  they were the ones who discovered the electron, the proton, then the neutron even!  they must use different tools in physics.  Holy Toledo!  how did I get from my BSA to physics?  you just can't trust a human who dabbles in the mind!  dabble!  what an interesting sound!  what a curious verb!  dabble....

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