Saturday 5th December 2020....stuff!

It is hard to believe it is December even with Covid 

I think this year has gone by very quickly!

It is only a few days till my surgery so I have been doing some last minute shopping and ordered crutches and a raised toilet seat......then Gracie came over with the dogs and we walked a little bit around my hood.

My broken rib is healing every day and I judge my improvement by the parts of my body that I can reach with a towel after my shower especially on my back and shoulders......the road rashes are healing really well.....I just hope by Wednesday when I will have to use crutches my rib will be ok and I do believe it will.

So there is a prize for the first to identify what this is???

I had what I thought was a brain wave....as you know I live way up there on the top floor and there are two sets of locked gates to get into the building, very secure.

So I was thinking when I get back after the surgery I am going to be house bound for maybe six weeks and there is no way I can go down the steps....what do I do if someone comes to visit or if I order take away food??.

Even  though Jane downstairs is offering her services 24 hours a day for me I cannot call on her all the time.

Then  I remember  watching workmen working  on second floors of buildings ..they have a bucket with a rope attached and hoist up bricks and cement that way.....so I thought that would work for me.

If I get a food delivery I lower the bucket with the money in and they take it and put the food in the bucket and I hoist it up and if someone comes to visit I throw the keys down they let themselves in and when they leave they lock the gate and put the key in the bucket and there you have it!!!

This is where I shall be sitting a lot...Gracie has loaned me the chair until the lounger that I have ordered arrives....I get to see the hummingbirds, my plants, a view of the mountains and very private..

I like the way the lavender I bought is sprinting up!!

My friend Sherry put this on FB and I like it..

Why 4 FEET 8.5 Inches is Very Important.

Fascinating Stuff . . ...

Railroad Tracks

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England,

and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used

for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. 

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match

for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome,

they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches

is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder,

'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough

to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad,

you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. 

 The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger,

but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains

and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know,

is about as wide as two horses' behinds. 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature

of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system

was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!

Now you know, Horses' Asses control almost everything.

Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it.

Time for me to watch a soccer game from England!

Stay safe and healthy!!

Yashi Kochi!!