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A sidebar advert on Facebook today claimed that the average person has been to 17 cities. So I took that as a challenge, got a very small scale map of the U.S. out of a date book, and will check off from my travel experiences.

I was born in Erie, but according to the map it's too small to count. From there:

Cleveland - Columbus - Cincinatti - Charleston, WV - Niagara Falls - Pittsburgh - Baltimore - Washington, DC - Richmond - Charleston, SC - Savannah - Jacksonville - Tampa - St. Petersburg - Orlando - Gainesville - Macon - Atlanta - Chattanooga - Knoxville - Asheville - Columbia - Lexington - Louisville - Indianapolis - Chicago - Madison - Minneapolis/St. Paul

That's 28. Which I suppose is fairly impressive for somebody who didn't get into sports and who never had a job that involved travel. But as far as I'm concerned, it's nowhere near enough.

FP
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I saw on Motorweek that Shell is adding compressed natural gas to its fuel offerings. So if I converted Moonshine to run on CNG, I wouldn't need to get a new credit card to pay for refills.

Must ruminate upon the plan. Need more technical information.
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The above is the corporate logo for the Chinese truck maker Shaanxi Automobile, whose Western doing-business-as name is Shacman. I was pointed in that direction by the China Defense Blog, which had a post yesterday about the military vehicles they are offering to the People's Liberation Army.

I got to do some Wiki-poking around and saw that Shacman is affiliated with MAN (which is connected to Volkswagen) and Steyr (which is aligned with GM Europe and Mercedes-Benz).

And so degrees to Moonshine? The Corolla/Prizm was also sold in Europe as the Opel/Vauxhall Astra, and Steyr did some of the engineering work on follow-up models of the Astra when Opel/Vauxhall evolved their own versions once the Toyota/Geo/Chevrolet/NUMMI partnership finished. In theory, even though Shacman doesn't make passenger cars at all, I could be in my rights to rebadge Moonshine as one, if only to get it "monogrammed" with my S.

I wonder from whom I could get parts...
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Dad's replacement for DodgePodge, which he sold to my Brother-In-Law last fall. It needs a lot of little fixes but is otherwise in splendid shape for its age.

It also needs a towel.
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This Virtual Petition at the White House website is about letting the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Customs Service relax their restrictions on importation of used cars from overseas.

Right now, unless the specific model is already being imported for the US Market, you can't buy a car overseas and bring it back to the US unless it already qualifies for Antique license plates. The petition would change the car age limit to 15 years, which wouldn't hurt the existing importers any, and allow safer and better cars to qualify for import (and match the laws on the books in Canada).
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I wonder if that will fit in her engine bay. Chevy's new 2.5 Liter EcoTec engine for the 2014 Malibu. More HERE!
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The Emaan had the right idea with their Glomaar hover carriers. It's an all-in-one caravan vehicle, with a factory/repair shop, sleeping berths, kitchen and dining halls, indoor tennis court, jacuzzi, and loads of other technical goodies. (The anime Super Dimensional Century Orguss, if you haven't guessed.)
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My car is Moonshine, dig?

Now, if my luck is ascendant and I win the OnStar Sweepstakes in June, that car will be dubbed Mariah the Younger. It's a long story.
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A Barrel of Oil is 31.5 Gallons (4032 ounces, or 56 six-packs). Don't ask me who decided this matter.

$97.88/Barrel equals $3.11/Gallon of Crude. Refine it, take stuff out of it, put more stuff in it, add sales taxes and maybe a nickle or two of profits to the individual gas station, and there you have it.

Told you it was useless.

FP
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How many times, since the Eighties, have I wanted to become a human-scale Veritech jet from Robotech/Macross/Mospeada/Southern Cross/Orguss so I could lose the crowds on the pavement and take off for somewhere at Mach 1?
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In the book "The Future of Flight", which was written at about the time I left High School, the writers Ing and Myrabo included designs of aircraft that could use laser light to generate thrust, giving them the capability of flying anywhere in the atmosphere, at nearly any airspeed--from hovering off the surface to orbit velocity. A single-stage to orbit vehicle has always been a dream of aerospace engineers--especially an efficient one that didn't need such a huge fuel tank. (And yes, a nice jetpack is possible from the technology...but remember, you'd still have to be pretty physically fit to use one!)

Now, the ideal machine? A flying ship, big enough to live in, with all the comforts of home and the massive operational envelope above. Capable of going everywhere worth going to. And not having to want of anything when you're there. That's the way to travel!

Till then, Moonshine (my Chevy Prizm) will have to do.

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Stephen R Bierce

March 2022

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