Pilot's Log

I know I've been much quieter than normal lately. I guess I'm under a more covert, sublime form of depression as opposed to the usual demoralization. At this point, I'm of a mind that just letting it run its course, and not fighting it with self-medication, is the best of my few and far-between options.

I'm loathe to plunge into clearing out Mum's desk, even though it's been a month already. Is it understandable that I don't necessarily want to make that hole in my life that much bigger right away? I'll get it done...but I want to get it done right. I guess I said that before.

I took the battery pack out of Mum's 1999-vintage Rocket e-book reader; it hadn't held a charge for years and it's likely becoming a fire hazard. I'll have to see if it could function without the battery, and if the data is safe on it. If so, I'll replace the battery when I've got the money for one. (If not I'll probably salvage the screen for my flight simulation cockpit dashboard.)

Dad sold his Buick to my niece for $1 yesterday. He's got his Nissan truck now, so that may be his last motor vehicle. Depends on if he can still see well enough to drive after his eye surgery, which is still yet to be scheduled.

I was disappointed with the Indy 500 and the NASCAR race in Charlotte yesterday, even though the latter was the better of the two. Didn't get to see anything from Monaco, but I hear that the Red Bull team is being a bunch of sore winners.

Action shots from the St. Petersburg Grand Prix over the weekend:


Sebastien Bourdais


Katherine Legge


Oriol Servia


Simona DeSilvestro


Alex Tagliani

I'm going heavily into Lotus this year.

Simona De Silvestro is about to take the new Lotus Judd Dallara Indycar out on the Palm Beach track and put it through its paces. (Courtesy HVM Racing on Facebook.)

( Rusty Is Back In Town )

Since the current version of the "Nacy L. Courey's Age-Dated" beer can is in a Black and Gold color scheme, any race car livery based upon it would likely resemble the livery seen in this commercial for Miller Genuine Draft and Rusty Wallace's NASCAR Cup campaign. Bobby Rahal was the parallel contender in CART/IRL at the time.

The ABC network overdid the hype...and put commercials on at times when the action on the track was too much to justify them doing so.

At least the two-wide restarts weren't as disasterous as I feared.

But I'm not going to say more because there might be some of you who haven't seen it yet and don't want it spoiled.

*) On the Super Bowl--for the first time ever I saw Peyton Manning's dark side. At a few times when he was on the sidelines watching his team try to hold the Saints, the looks on his face reminded me of Tony Perkins in Psycho and Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. For all his "nice guy" image it wouldn't surprise me if somebody cast him as a villain in a horror movie after his football career is over.

Meanwhile, nobody can say the Saints didn't earn their victory. Yes, they DID have "something to prove"...and now we'll have to get used to them being called "defending NFL champions".

I didn't watch the Who's halftime show or more than a few commercials. I get my sister's point about the Denny's commercial with the screaming chickens. I can't remember the last time I ate at a Denny's anyway.

*) I'm starting a Google account. I used to have one, but then I shuffled it to Mum for reasons that aren't worth explaining.

*) The weather is typical February lousy. Tonight is cold...not enough to freeze the water pipes, but enough to make us miserable. I've been hitting the coffee and cocoa very hard but wish I didn't have to.

*) I'm waiting for three things in the coming mail: a package of scale model parts to review; a check from the State of Tennessee to pay me for three days of jury duty; a response from the IRS to my return. Which one would you think I'd get first?

Yesterday was a very busy day for big-time motorsports. Vettel won at Silverstone, Franchitti at Newton Iowa, and Kahne at Sonoma. And again, I spent the evening afterward doing donuts on Wikipedia trying to sort out where motorsports is going.

Basically I started because I was trying to answer some of Dad's questions (we watched the tape-delayed Fox coverage of Silverstone). F1 versus Indy, for example.

F1 has gone through many changes, and quite a number of them in recent years. The current engines are the tried-and-true V8s, but now with displacements less than half that of NASCAR Nextel Cup's cars--and a third smaller than Indy's. In fact, the displacement is equal to the more popular ranges of inline four-cylinder powerplants for passenger cars. But nobody is thinking of actually using these to power F1. (This class of engine is actually used by the Formula Atlantic league here Stateside!) Whereas none of the engines currently used in F1 are based on those of passenger cars.

Meanwhile, the FIA (beyond its current brouhaha with the F1 teams and drivers) is in the process of redefining the "feeder leagues", the lower Formula circuits. The current feeder leagues actually allow cars with bigger engines than are legal for F1, which seems upside down to me.

The lower Formulas are conceptually like the NASCAR-variety "late-models" in that most of the circuits use the same basic chassis layout but the main differences from one circuit to another are the actual setup and what engines are used. The same chassis kit could be built for any of half a dozen leagues.

So where IS motorsports going? I suppose we'll find out in a few laps.

FP

Good news...I'm back at the house from GenCon, and the trip was relatively pleasant, fruitful and successful.

Bad news...my computer won't boot and I'm using my mother's at the moment.

More to come.

FP

My brother is working Sunday, so I won't be going to his place to watch the Indy 500 and/or the Monaco Grand Prix.

We almost always used to manage the effort to watch the race(s) together. Either that or watch a movie together, in those dark days when the race wasn't televised live, it was taped and then edited together and shown on Prime Time. Auto races were often done that way till well into the Eighties. Now, only the races overseas are tape-delayed.

I'm going to miss not getting together with him. At least I can console myself that I'm not going to burn 200 miles worth of gas on the round trip to his house.

FP