Volvo Brakes

I swapped new rotors, pads, and hardware onto the 244 this weekend, replacing the old stuff which was pretty well frozen. This is actually a common problem with the 240 and 740 series cars, due to the exposed slider pins that Volvo saw fit to design into the calipers. Over time, the pins get bombarded by road debris and moisture, they rust, and then the tops of the brake pads are stuck.

For those of you who drive these cars, you’ll notice (aside from a gradual inability to stop) that the shiny swept area on the rotors gets progressively skinnier. Because the brake pistons are still shoving on the backs of the pads, the frozen pins act like hinges and force the pads to swing slightly when you apply the brakes, moving the swept area farther and farther down the rotor towards the center of the hub.

Catch it quickly enough, and you can probably get away with just yanking out the old pins (hammer, vice grips, and drifts) and putting in new hardware. They come as kits, four pins and four retaining clips, which is enough for both front brakes. I ordered mine from FCP Groton for about $7.

On a related note, the overwhelming majority of 240s have Girling brakes. The ATE systems were mainly for the diesel models.

Hardware replacement is easy, and changing pads is fairly simple if they’re not rusted in place (whistling…). But if you want to put on new rotors, there’s a catch: you need to disconnect the calipers from the HARD LINES that plug into them. Volvo, seriously, WTF?

Most manufacturers have flexible lines running from the body of the car to the brake calipers. This allows you to unbolt the calipers and hang them up out of the way while you change to new rotors. Volvo, however, has flexible lines running from the body to the suspension, then hard lines from the strut to the caliper. All of a sudden, a rotor change means that you unhook the brake lines, which means you have to bleed them. That’s a two-person job.

Oi. If anybody has a logical reason for doing that, I would love to hear it.

California Alignment Shops Report Increased Business

…After the Democratic party throws civil rights under the bus.

Oh, the irony! A group of people who, only 40 years ago, worked and sweated and fought for equal legal recognition (that would be “civil rights”) come to deny those same rights to another group.

Seriously? Is some bigotry less despicable than others?

I’m floored by the CNN exit polls which show that, in regards to the California proposition that would take away the equal rights of gays/homosexuals/queers, black voters overwhelmingly supported the summary pilfering of other people’s rights.

In case the link above goes dead, the notable racial and age data is such:
(A vote for prop 8 is against civil rights for gays/homosexuals/queers)

Black voters for/against prop 8 – 70/30
Voters aged 18-29 for/against prop 8 – 39/61

I know that exit polls are not the most accurate data sets in the world, and if you want to dismiss the numbers on that basis, I can’t blame you too much.

Still, 70% of black voters chose to throw out the gays? The white, asian, and latino votes were split close to 50/50. The youth vote was definitely for making gays equal to straights, with the numbers predictably decreasing with increasing age. But the young ones couldn’t cancel the black ones.

This breakdown of choices on the proposition was predicted long before the election. Why would the predictions be important? Because it means that the Democratic party and its presidential candidate, both of which court the youth and minority voting blocks, decided that winning the presidency was more important than civil rights for everyone.

I should make it abundantly clear, before any leftists decide that I’m set on burning them at the stake, and before any rightists decided that they should burn leftists at the stake, that I can’t condemn all Democrats. The only thing that anyone can say for certain about all registered Democrats is that they are all… registered Democrats. That’s it.

Sigh.

So the fight goes on for the civil rights movement. I wonder if the fighters will be pissed at the party and the candidate that used them, then abandoned them? I am.

Working Stiff - Hard Cider

For you weightlifters: a case of 12 bottles of hard cider, 750ml each, weighs in at around 40lbs. Today we bottled a hair over 200 cases, and I packed and stacked about half of those, so let’s call it a 4,000lb day of lifting. Should I be proud?

No, I didn’t think so. I guess I won’t be winning any bodybuilding contests anytime soon…

This, in essence, is the life of small business. The great deciders and conceptualizers, the people with the great ideas and the business plan (you do have a plan, right?), also happen to be the ones who pull off 16 hour days of lifting and carrying and stacking, while soaked to the skin in a 40F bottling room. Since I’m neither a great decider nor a business planner, I get to do the same physical labor without the same reward. And by reward, I mean the threat of knowing that your personal life’s savings and second mortgage are tied into the business, and if one little thing goes wrong you’ll end up homeless.

Good lord, I sound like I’m trying to kill off entrepreneurship.

In any case, I’ve been working at Bellwether Hard Cider Co. for several years now, and I’m getting awfully involved in the business. Surprising? Yeah, it was to me. But there is something uniquely invigorating about being part of a tiny team of people, all working their butts off to scratch out a piece of the market. No slackers, no drones, and certainly no boredom. I would never call it a high-speed low-drag operation, but it’s a fucking blast.

Of course, it helps that I’m making a product that I actually believe in. It’s hard to be motivated when your job is to make and sell crap. Cider, though… damn I love that stuff. It’s good booze, and it’s an old American tradition.

Hard cider making in the US was demolished during Prohibition, which makes it a long time in coming back. Incidentally, the economy went biblically pear-shaped less than ten years after the feds banned alcohol… coincidence? In the New England/Northeast states, hard cider was particularly targeted by law enforcement, probably because it was so easy to make that everyone could (and did) ferment a few barrels every year. So, the fed.gov did what any moralizing government entity would do: deceive and destroy.

The destruction side was fairly simple. Booze was confiscated and poured out, cider presses and fermentation tanks were smashed, and apple orchards were razed. Wait, WTF? Orchards, those tree-fields that supply edible fruit to the people? Yep. In order to keep people from drinking (prohibition = bad idea), the feds sent in crews to cut down the apple trees (destroying food crops = fucking terrible idea). In the years I’ve worked at Bellwether, I’ve had a handful of people who remember watching the destruction with their own eyes.

One old man was part of the logging crews. He told me of his part in the destruction, still ashamed after all these years, especially once the Depression was in full swing and he realized that those old apple trees he had chopped down could have fed a lot of people…

The deception side of the war on hard cider was equally cruel. In the years before the ban on alcohol was enacted, newspapers started running stories about the health problems associated with drinking hard cider. The source of those stories? Not doctors, but temperance believers and their supporters in government. After hundreds of years of making and drinking cider, the feds had apparently discovered that cider would make a man blind, lazy, and impotent. I thought the impotence was a nice touch (oh noes, not the testicles!). There was also an apparent outbreak of a disease known as “cider palsy”, in which cider drinkers would develop brain damage and tremors. Blame it on their alcoholism? Naw, it must be the apples.

Hence prohibition, and the clear-cutting of the orchards.

The rural people in the Finger Lakes, of course, told the feds to get off their lawns, after which they continued to make cider. But the urban markets had dried up, mainly due to the supposed medical problems from cider drinking. So the farmers and the folk had a look-around, decided that they had an abundance of fruit, hills, rainfall, and bodies of water. You know what goes well with all of those? Distilling!

Oddly enough, the land and climate haven’t changed much in the last hundred years. So, even though the ban on making your own distilled spirits is still in place, you can sometimes hear of the pot stills hidden in the hills and woods, passed down through the generations since prohibition.

Good job, feddies. You cocked it up, as usual.

Hard cider is still easy to make, of course. And it’s legal. So now I make a ton of the stuff (yes, I know, many tons), along with the business owners and a couple other hardcore cider lovers. It’s hard work and long hours, just like any other small business. But everybody gets to do a bit of everything, and I’m part of that everybody, so I’m learning a hell of a lot. It’s fun, I get paid, and I bust my ass to make the business grow.

I also get free booze. You can be jealous now.

High School Civics

In the middle of dinner, during a discussion of the house Ways and Means committee, it occurred to me that I know jack and shit about how my government works. And jack left town. Now, I know the basic structure of the .gov, and I paid a fair amount of attention during Government and Economics class during high school (although I’ll blame my imperfect grade on the combination of Bethany’s thin tank top and my hormones) so I know how everything is supposed to work.

But honestly, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what the Ways and Means committee does. For the purposes of dinnertime debate, I made an educated guess and came within grenade distance, but I didn’t know precisely what the committee was for, who serves on it, when it was formed, or what it’s not allowed to do. I can go look it up online (and, yep, I did), but there are a lot of committees.

So, essentially, I know the concept of my government, but not the details. I’m not sure anybody does. It’s just too damn big. I wonder if that’s the point…

Damnitalltohell, I'm growing more and more convinced that the federal government is just the greedy leading the blind.

Amateur Lumberjack

I woke up stiff and sore today. Yesterday, incidentally, I spent several hours breaking up the apple tree that was cut down in this post. I have a sneaking suspicion that the one led to the other…

Ibuprofen it is, then.

This old apple tree wasn’t huge, but it was vaguely tree-like, with the size that implies. So it was with some dismay that I observed my father returning from renting a chainsaw having found a tiny electric Husquevarna that seemed more appropriate for slicing bushes than full-on trees. Four hours later, we were left with this:



And an impressive pile of sawdust and shavings which smelled great, but managed to get under every layer of clothing that I had on.

My father, after the first hour of running that little Husky at full chat through hardwood, gamely brought out the splitting axe and took a whack at one of the quarters that I had sawn down. No joy, the wood was too hard and too wet to do anything other than bounce the axe straight back into the air. He set it aside for later.

We went out in the afternoon to stack the apple wood and bring in some of last year’s maple to make room for it. I touched off a fire in the fireplace tonight for the first time this winter, so the house smells a bit smoky and very rich. I can’t wait for the apple to be dry enough to get thrown in.

In any case, I was happily splitting the larger chunks of maple when the neighbor kids came home. With the maple as dry as it was, I was taking huge swings and sending the splits flying across the yard with the most perfectly sharp CRACK you could ever wish to hear. Inefficient, I know, because then you have walk farther to pick up the splits, but I was having fun. I don’t get to chop wood very often.

The neighbor kids, apparently, had never even seen it. Well then. If there’s one thing that twelve year old boys should learn and love, it’s the experience of splitting logs. It’s just a big manly thing to do, and the neighbor’s two boys seemed to really enjoy it. Suburban kids don’t get to play with axes often, if at all, but they figured out darn quickly that it’s fun to watch the wood go walking end-over-end across the lawn, and that children are particularly good at picking up the kindling around the chopping block.

While both boys are a little small now, it won’t be too many years before they’ll get their chance to hit things with an axe.

Warning: Rum and Coke

Yep, unsatisfactory cheap rum and gen-you-wine Coke bring you this important message from our sponsors.

EXPRESS TELEGRAM
FROM: RETAXIS
TO: THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH

MESSAGE BEGINS

REGARDS TO OBAMA FROM THE PRINCE OF EARTH STOP RETAXIS WELCOMES HIS NEW SOCIALIST OVERLORD STOP WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA STOP RUNNING OUT OF COKE BEFORE RUM IS A BAD SIGN STOP ESPECIALLY WHEN I HAD A LOT OF COKE STOP

MESSAGE ENDS

Seriously, though, Orwell's "1984" was not an instruction manual. There are a lot of people who seem willing enough to trade freedom for safety, and then trade both for bread and circuses. In my experience, most of those people have simply never been taught about freedom and responsibility in a sense greater than their grinding daily lives.

My freedom has no price. I will not trade it.

Fuck you. Stay off my lawn.

I done gone and voted

A few minutes ago I walked two minutes up to my polling place, signed my name, and cranked a lever for my particular choices of politicians. There was no problem, no wait (it took me longer to tie my shoes to walk up than it did to vote), and I used what must be one of the last mechanical voting machines in this country. As much as I distrust the no-paper-trail electronic machines, I especially love the big old mechanical contraptions where I get to flip down little paddles with arrows on them to choose the candidates, and then grab the big red handle and sweep it left, listening to the ratchets and cogs click my vote.

It’s a solid, manly feeling, like shucking a well-worn shotgun or running the bolt on a long-action rifle. And that, I think, is a good thing to be reminded of when voting. I know that when I step into that polling station in an elementary school gym that I’m doing my civic duty, I’m exercising my right as an American, and I’m lending credence to this republic. I know this because I’ve been told by many people, usually using those same clichéd phrases or barely rehashed versions.

For me, though, it’s a little bit different. I don’t get a sense of belonging, nor do I feel like a part of something bigger than me. It’s just my voice, my own little piece of political power. And, to be honest, it’s my nice voice, where I state my opinion and hope that the people in power play by the rules and listen to me. If they don’t, then I have to use my angry voice.

That's where the disenfranchised man says, “I am not happy with you” as he chambers another round.

So that big lever with the bright red handle… that’s really the hope that everyone will play nice, and that none of us will have to take up arms to vote from the rooftops.

And, of course, they gave me a sticker

Which I stuck onto my Nalgene because I am just too darn trendy for my own good.

Winter

While running errands this afternoon, I saw two things that gave me a strong urge to drink. First there was a salt truck, lights flashing and spitting salt all over the road (yes, I know it’s supposed to do that). A few hundred yards behind was a Chevy 1500 with about two inches of snow layered over the top of the cab and the tonneau cover.

The first inch of snow for Tinytown is supposed to come tonight. Pictures will be posted if I am awake and sober and if I remember to take them.

EXPRESS TELEGRAM
FROM: RETAXIS
TO: WINTER

MESSAGE BEGINS

DEAR WINTER STOP FUCK YOU STOP STAY OFF MY LAWN STOP

MESSAGE ENDS

Tree Down!

The apple tree in the backyard came down this afternoon. I understand the need to have it cut, because it was old and sick and the rot was slowly making its way down through the trunk. But I have a lot of memories of climbing that tree when I was little, or swinging on the tire swing hung from the strongest branch, and losing a fair number of balls and Frisbees and badminton shuttlecocks into the leaves.

This is what’s left of the tree:




The apples were generic New England glorified crabapples. Small, tart, kind of bitter, and usually with a worm or two wending its way through the interior. Which means, of course, that they were perfect for sauces and pies. Generally speaking, the best cooking apples are the ones that are almost too strong to eat raw. Something very tart (like a Tompkins King or a Northern Spy) and bitter (like a Brown Snout or a Sheepsnose variety) holds it flavor well when cooked up, leaving a pie that you know was made from apples. The complex sugars in the fruit are broken down, and the simple sugars gently caramelize, helping to balance out the acid content of those older varieties.

Of course, sometimes you want an apple that will hold its shape as much as you want the best flavor. Maybe you’re making a tart, or coring the fruit and stuffing them with nuts and bread and raisins and maple syrup before slowly cooking them in a 300 degree oven. I’m hungry right now, in case you couldn’t tell. For those duties, find yourself a nice bushel of Macs or Cortlands. They’ll hold their shape when they’re heated, and they’re not shabby in the taste department either.

Even the much-maligned Red Delicious has a role in the kitchen. No, seriously. That same apple that everyone loves to hate because it’s mealy and bred for perfection and has an insipid flavor… it’s a useful critter. Yes, I know it’s the apple equivalent of the bleach-blonde model with an IQ approaching her bra size. Any self-respecting pie maker must turn his nose up and snort derisively when somebody mentions the name “Red Delicious”. Right?

Nope.

There are two reasons to legitimately have Red Delicious (RD) in the kitchen. The pomologists in the audience already know the first one: The RD was not always grown in its current form. Originally, of course, it lived up to its name by being a damn good eating apple. Those original strains of RD can be found all over the East Coast, and probably elsewhere also, and they’re really worth trying if you find them somewhere.

The second reason applies to the modern “Baywatch” variety of RD. As crappy an eating apple as it is (and yep, it’s still crappy), the modern RD has replaced the traditional apple acids and tannins with sugars and aromatics. So the savvy pie baker (ask your great-great-grandmother at your next séance) will always cut in a couple of RDs, chopped into tiny bits, to sweeten the pie and make it smell fantastic, which is smart considering how closely our sense of taste is related to our sense of smell. No need for sugar in the filling, and certainly no vanilla, but a pair of Red Delicious instead.

Damn, I think I’ve developed a craving.

Things Your Child Will Do.

One of my co-workers in the cider making business was questioned by a group of mothers today. Specifically, they wanted to know why the Cayuga Wine Trail, as a rule, does not allow bus tours of college students into the various wineries and the solo cidery. Those perfectly raised, Ivy-League educated young ladies and gentlemen? Ahem. Surely, they can’t be the same as those students who show up on the buses at noon having brought a keg aboard at 10am with two hours of steady drinking under their belts. Or those smartly dressed young men who casually urinate onto the wheel of a family’s minivan in the parking lot. Or those charming young women who rut like animals in the unmown grass on the north side of the building, assuming that nobody can see them.

No, surely those can’t be your children.

Oi.

Here, then, is my short list garnered from my extensive experience on the (relatively) sober side of the bar, holding the attention and the confidence of innumerable students, of The Things Your Child Will Do:

You child will drink in college. And like it.

Your daughter will lie underneath some immature jerk-ass and have sex with him. And she will like it.

Your son will weigh down on top of some slut and have sex with her. And he will like it.

You child will have friends who casually use drugs that would land them in prison for years. Your kid will try some. And like it.

Your child will see somebody on a motorcycle and feel jealous.

Your child will listen to somebody whose political or social views you find repulsive. And they will think, “Huh, that makes sense”.

Your child will have several friends who drive drunk on a weekly basis. And your kid will stay friends with those people.

Your child will drive drunk. And do it again a week later.

Your child will go into a tattoo shop with a friend and feel jealous.

Your child will decide to become tattooed. And like it.

Your child will switch majors. Their new major will likely make them very, very poor.

You child will drink cheap beer.

Your child will have sexual fantasies about someone of another race.

Your child will have sexual fantasies in class.

Your child will listen to rap music. And like it.

Your child will listen to classical music. And like it.

Your child will consider, somberly and seriously, joining the military. And maybe join.

Your child will listen to the same music you listened to when you were their age.

Your child will fall in love. And love it.

Your son will find several people for whom he would proudly die.

Your daughter will find several men who would proudly die for her.

Your son will contemplate murder. And be okay with it.

Your daughter will contemplate murder to save her children. And be okay with it.

Your child, son or daughter, will seriously consider having children.
Your child will consider suicide. And not tell anyone.

Your child’s friend will commit suicide. And your child will think, “if only they had told me…”.

Your child, if in college, will look at somebody who did not go to college and feel jealous.

Your child, if not in college, will look at somebody who did go and feel jealous.

Your child will make bad decisions. And regret them.

Your child will make hard decisions. And stand by them.

Your child will come home on break and realize that you, too, have sex.

Your child will say something and think, “I sound like my parents…”.

Your child will say something and you will think, “they sound like me…”.

Your child will put on weight.

Your child will fail a test. And maybe a class.

Your child will ask you for advice. And follow it.

Your child will understand some hard decision you have made. And brutally defend you for it.

Your child will learn to respect some of your hard choices. And not tell you.

Your child will learn to despise some of your hard choices. And not tell you.

Your child will despise some of you. And respect you.

Your child will grow up. And realize it.

Your child will support you.

Your child will become an adult. And you will be rightfully proud.

Your child will become an adult. And they will rightfully thank you.

Thank you, mom.
Thank you, dad.