Just trying to be better than particle physicists 🙄😵‍💫🥴⚛️

 I am currently reading Sabine Hossenfelder's new book "Existential Physics", and it is great. The whole subject has been my mental foil for the past month while I have been making necessary repairs to one of the most important parts of my moving castle...the part that could put me in prison for vehicular homicide if something goes wrong....the running gear.

 This is my 3rd time's the charm assembly. I am tasking myself with taking full responsibility, and giving myself enough time to do so.

 The 1st assembly was done by the 2 people I was working with at the time. They put it together while I was at work, as a nice surprise, but they didn't measure twice.😑 The distance between the center to front and center to rear shackle hangers was not the same, 1 was 28" from center, 1 was 29" from center, which caused them to hang unbalanced as I kept building and weight was added. At least they were equally wrong on both sides.😕

A few years later I also needed more clearance for the tires.  I wasn't parked on level ground at the time, in more ways than one. I was working for a non-profit environmental organization, and one of the board members offered to let me park at the back of his property....where I discovered in closer quarters he is an alcoholic who started sexually harassing me. I was hit by a car for the 1st if two times while riding my bike out there, then I fell off a waterfall quite by accident. I over estimated my physical strength while climbing near one and fell into and down it. After recovering enough from all this to be able to address the issues that kept me trapped with that creep I was more than anxious to get my house out of there.

The 2nd time this was built (1st time by me) I was in a hurry and made the faulty assumption that the current position was basically right, just kinked due to the ground. I was very wrong.

This is the near conjunction of the moon, Venus and Jupiter of February 22nd, 2023. 

Now, under more auspicious stars, and with the conviction that my years of experience in construction and as an over the road trucker I am competent to fix this right. At the very least I am holding myself to a higher standard than apparently most particle physicists. Maybe because I know if I get it wrong, and something goes wrong, my liberty is at stake. I deeply value my freedom, including the freedom to learn from these past mistakes in trust, discernment of others, and fabrication.

Step 1: jack up the house and under the axles, and remove the tires. Disconnect the leaf springs from the shackle hangers.  

Step 2: Cut off the taller shackle hangers I had welding on in fix #2.

Step 3: Cut prep a piece of 2"x 4" tubing to allow space for it to fit around the remaining plates of steel welded to the chassis. I double and tripple checked my measurements as I positioned the new shackle hangers, screwed them and then welded them to the new tubing. The tubing will add some height for clearance. 

Step 4: I made some holes large enough to allow me to attach the tubing to the chassis, and then I double and triple checked the position and measurements in place. The most light weight non-stretchy material I found to use was gift wrapping ribbon. 

 

This guys came out from under the house and gave me the stink eye so hard I thought he was going to burn a hole right through me. 

"Heck ma lyfe! I NEED PETS! If I gets no pets I'm gonna PAWYER UP! C U in Court & then puppy jail for U lady!"

So we went downtown to a cafe and he literally sat in the middle of the sidewalk looking cute so people would pet him.

 

Step 5: With the tubing anchored mechanically I also rented a 250 LP stick welder and welded the tubing in place for some extra security. 

It took a few practice lines:

These are just my practice passes. Not anything that anybody would be like 🤯 about but solid technique...will hold and not have my wheels come popping off...and that's my goal. No vehicular homicide charges. I doesn't have to be pretty.. just No prison.👍