Rock 'n Roll done rocked and rolled

7/23/25:

 

Rain was in the forecast yesterday, so no go on a trip. Today, I ran it around the place a bit. Still worried more about ME than the machine. This may take awhile to get in enough shape to really try it out like I want to. Cut it short because of fatigue.

 

7/20/25:

 

The scooter is now prepared for a real trip, but I am not... I want to practice with it some more, but I woke up with a sore foot. I will take it easy today, and hopefully the foot will stop bothering me.

 

I'm not as sure about its range as I should be. The last thing I want is for this thing to run out of juice before I get back. I may have decided to get an e-bike instead. It would've cost more, but I would have the option to use muscle power to get back to the comforts of home. Water under the bridge, as it is said.

 

7/18/25:

 

Things get disorganized around here sometimes. Focus gets lost, and things get started and not finished. Well, not this time. I re-read the manual, and I'm getting more familiar with the controls. Therefore, there's something to report. Most likely, I haven't used 20% of the battery, as earlier indicated. The readings "bounced" back up. It's a 36 volt set up, and there's a reading that shows 38.4 volts. My guess is that this is another way to read a discharged state.

 

The trip odometer reverts to zero on every new trip. There's a history odometer too. But you have to jump through a few hoops to find it. It doesn't show but 1 mile. I know I've done more, but since it doesn't show tenths of a mile, it could be close to 2.0 miles. Once it exceeds that, it will show 2 miles and no more. Still practicing with it. Until I feel a bit more confident with it, the trips will be short.

 

7/15/25; 1:47 PM:

 

Yesterday was rainy, so I stayed inside. Today is sunny and dry, so it was time for further tests. I made some adjustments to my ramp and to the scooter, and gave it another whirl.

 

This trip was longer. A total of 1.4 miles. It still has a good charge on it, according to the indicator. Very impressive. My adjustment made the speedometer too hard to see. Therefore, there's no speed to report. Seems like I got another comment from the locals. We met at an intersection at the same time, and he said, "go ahead, Bart". I got a kick out that, so I went on ahead.

 

It looks like it has discharged about 20% over about 2 miles on that last full charge. It may extrapolate out to 10 miles on a charge, which is a lot better than anticipated. It's already beyond my expectations as is.

 

7:38 PM; continued:

 

Some more adjustments were on tap, and now these are done. More adjustments to the ramp, but these are not yet done.

 

There's a chance I take her out for another spin tomorrow.

 

7/13/25:

 

That was so much fun I forgot to post about it. The ramp was completed, and off into the breeze did I go with my new scooter. I got a compliment on it as I breezed on by one house.

The seat may be hard on my achy breaky butt, but I may be able to tolerate it. I'm getting a little worried about a spill. I have enough trouble standing up. If I fall down, I may not be able to get back up. That would not be good.

Don't have any safety equipment. Shoot, I used to ride a bicycle all over the danged place, and never wore a helmet, but I did wear clothes.

These days, they may give you some shit about anything you do. Besides, it's probably good safety practice to have a helmet and guards for the elbows and knees.

The thing says it will go over 15 mph. That's faster than the electric scooter I had in the fairly recent past. When I rode that thing in Houston, there was a lady who went out of her way to laugh at me. I don't give a hoop. If I did, would I have bought another one of these things. I'm worried about other things.

Focus Fusion video

 

7/18/25:

 

There's another report out, and they're still making progress. It's a slow slog through all the problems and difficulties. If it was easy, anybody could do it.

 

Investing is easy, even a caveman can do it. Doesn't cost much, and the rewards could be revolutionary. It's a good way to put your money where your mouth is, if you believe in climate change. Even if you don't, as I most certainly DO NOT, it is still a good investment play. This thing will be worth some serious money if they're successful. Maybe the so-called greenie folks have something against making money.

I own a share.  It split so I really own two.  See, I made money already.

 

6/29/25:

Crazy idea has a certain charm to it

7/17/25:

 

My hometown is Houston, and there's an inland port that goes all the way into downtown. Or it once did. Back around the time the Panama Canal opened, the Houston Ship Channel was dredged out to within a few miles of downtown.

I recall seeing an old picture of a ship at dock in downtown Houston, with visible landmarks like the Harris County Courthouse in evidence. The pic I recall was about the time the Canal opened. If you go down to Allen's Landing, you can see where the ships tied up. It looks really different down there.

 

The Ship Channel is one of those interesting ideas that is somewhat like the outback sea idea. How so? You could use tides and such to keep it filled, and to replenish the water a bit so that it won't get so alkaline.

The idea is to dredge a very large pool, in which the tides can overflow, but can only channel back out through a narrow opening. In this way, large amounts of water can be impounded behind a type of dam that can be overflowed during high tide, and re-emerge during low tides, with the water rushing out through the channel.

 

Fresh water can be captured in dams as well in order to provide additional flushing. This is kind of the way the Houston Ship Channel Works. Houston is 50 feet above sea level. How do you get ships up stream, except some way to impound a lot of water to keep them afloat?

The outback sea will require a lot more water than the Houston Ship Channel. You would definitely need a LOT.

 

There are flood control dams in Houston. It rains a lot in Houston, and so I am to understand, does the Australian northern shores. Rainfall will help provide water, but there may need to be much, much more to make a really large lake so far inland.

 

7/15/25:

There's at least a couple videos like this one on the subject of the inland sea down under. Now they've got me thinking about it!

 

What if you could use the natural tidal action and siphoning effect to move massive amounts of water for long distances?

Here's the other video:

Can you ride your motor scooter, Billy Boy, Billy Boy

7/12/25:

 

Making the ramp now. It's almost ready to be tested. If that test works, then I can get the scooter outside and try it out. I tried it inside a bit. Everything seems to be working, and I'm nearly ready to ROCK n' ROLL!

 

But do I ever get tired easy. Maybe if I am lucky, I can rebuild myself while I'm doing this. This is embarrassing.

 

By the way, did I mention that I found the missing bolt? However, the other wire basket between the seat and the handlebars, and is actually large enough to carry some cargo, is IN THE WAY. So, I had to take it off. The seat feels okay for now, but I'm not bouncing up and down on a bumpy road yet. We'll see.

 

7/11/25:

 

The scooter came, I saw, but it did not conquer me. Not yet, anyway. There was some assembly required--for the scooter, that is. The cursed thing arrived late afternoon. I got the bright idea to take it out of the box while outside in the sun. By the time I got it out of the box, I knew I was in for a battle.

 

I fought this thing for the rest of the day, and retired for the evening in a very tired state. In theory, the assembly should have been easy. Among the issues were that the handle bars "quick disconnect" mechanism would not go on properly. Fortunately, this feature is not necessary. The status of the assembly was mostly finished by bedtime. But I was still in the fight.

 

First thing this morning, the battle raged on. The parts of this scooter have a very annoying tendency to want to fall to the floor. I have a strong tendency not to want to bend over and pick things up off the friggin' floor all the time. So I battled this thing for another hour before finishing up the assembly. That is, what I could do of it. A part went missing when it hit the floor. I spent another hour looking for it with no luck.

 

The original idea was to build it outside because I wanted to store it in the van. But it is too hot to store it outside, says the manual. So I have to keep it in-friggin'-side. So that is the current state of this adventure. The question being, how to I store this thing inside, and move it outside where it can be useful when I want it to be? I will build a ramp. There's some stairs to traverse in order to get it back down to ground level.

 

More assembly required. I'm getting too old for this shit.

 

7/10/25:

 

Amazon and UPS needs to get their heads wired up to their asses. They are giving conflicting information. It's not a problem so far. We'll see.

 

7/9/25:

 

The scooter is still on its way. Not due for a couple more days.

 

I tested the battery by using it to power the weed eater. The weed eater pulls about 700-800 watts estimated. It will drain a battery of this type in a relatively short time. It will run a dehumidifier for 3 hours continuous if it is in as good a shape as last year. It has seen little use since I stopped that experiment. Now there's this experiment.

 

There's always something, said Rose Ann Rosanna Dana.

 

7/8/25:

 

The repairs are complete, but there may be some tweaking ahead. Still in testing phase, but it appears to be working as intended.

 

Still waiting on the scooter to arrive.

 

7/7/25:

 

The solar panel system has been acting up. When I moved the trailer recently, I may have pulled a wire loose. I forgot to unplug everything, and while pulling the trailer, I notice something was being dragged along behind me. Oopsie.

 

It's been a slog to figure out what got messed up. It's charging the battery again, so that's good. I want the switches to shut it off and on to work, but these aren't cooperating at the moment. No biggie. I'll figure it out.

 

7/5/25:

 

Awaiting my moto scooter, and it is no ring-tail tooter. (Ref: Slick Willy Update of the Rush Limbaugh show dating back to 1992's election campaign ) Getting my stuff ready, as preparations are needed.

 

The following video is a little closer to the update version, but it isn't quite there. I can't find it on YouTube.

 

 

 

 

07/03/2025:

 

Got an idea about buying a mobility scooter. The one that would seem most handy would cost over $3k, and can be obtained on Amazon.

 

It is electric, and would have a 30 mile range, or so it says.

 

Having experimented with an electric scooter before, the range would seem be inflated. It all depends upon battery capacity. This one has a 48 V, 20 AH electrical setup. That's about 1 Kwh. If it is anything like autos, it may get 4 miles.

 

Even so, it would be sufficient for ample mobility.

 

The price is high, but not beyond me. What about a golf cart?

 

07/04/2025:

 

Here's what I did: I got an electric scooter. It is pretty much the same thing I had before, so it won't cost much, and it can't do all that much, but it can do a few things ( I hope ).

 

Back in 2003, I bought one for $150. It is now $450 on Amazon. Now that is what I call "progress". Free delivery! Like wow, man.

 

I'll use my solar panels to provide electricity for charging the thing. Maybe this idea will actually work. Most of my ideas don't work worth a sheet, main.

 

 

Interesting concept to use nuclear pulse propulsion

It was studied for many years, and then abandoned after the adoption of the nuclear test ban treaty in 1963.

 

The idea is discussed in the following video.

Not all of the technical challenges could be overcome at that time. The sticking point seemed to be with the pusher plate. There wasn't any way to model it, so that it could be developed. In order to do the tests, real nuclear bombs would have to be used. Such a testing procedure was deemed to be infeasible. After the treaty, it became illegal.

 

A question: What if it were to be developed in deep space? It couldn't do much harm way out there. If such could be developed successfully, would it not be better to send large numbers of people to another planet, like Mars, using a few bombs? Such a system could be used instead of the Starship. Indeed, the Starship could be used to send up the large amount of mass needed to construct such an ark, and send it on its way.