Meeting new people

We’ve been sitting on the parking lot behind the Desert Diamond Casino at exit 80 south of Tucson for a couple of days now. There’s a converted coach rally here hosted by the Western GM bus group. I know Larry is disappointed by the low turnout but for our own selfish interests a small group like this is much better for meeting new people. In a large gathering like we were part of at Arcadia there are established groups of people who hang out together and it can be very hard or impossible for newbies to break into the social circles that have existed for years or even decades. In a small group like this everybody gets to know everybody else and some of those cliques that are so annoying in the larger gatherings no doubt get started in small gatherings like this one. So we are delighted that these GM guys let us crash their party. We did put temporary GM tags on the front of the parlez-vous bus but nobody seems to be fooled.

Today we toured Arasco’s open pit copper mine which is more or less directly across the interstate from where we are parked. They did an exceptional job on the tour. The guide managed to make a canned presentation sound fresh and wove a fascinating tale that conveyed a lot of information about mining in general, the history of copper mining in Arizona and the specifics of this particular mine. He did a particularly good job of reducing the complexities of the primary processing to language that we could understand. This mine uses a completely mechanical process to reduce the 0.6% ore to a 28% concentrate that is then further refined in other locations. Traditional primary refining processes would use acid to accomplish that same task.

The refining process was presented as a more environmentally friendly alternative to the conventional processes that some of Arasco’s competitors continue to employ. I would never profess to understand the environmental science well enough to agree or disagree with that opinion. On the surface the argument makes sense but there is far too much environmental junk science being practiced.

Too many people lack the intellectual discipline as well as the mental acuity to understand the core science but are nevertheless willing to hold strong opinions about environmental practices. It seems that every company has jumped on the green bandwagon and is trumpeting their environmental successes. I’m a firm believer that increasing gross domestic product is the best environmental defense any nation can hope for. I also don’t believe that man has had as negative an impact on the environment as the enviro-quacks would like us to believe. I’m therefore profoundly skeptical when anybody tells me that this process or this piece of technology is fundamentally better for the environment than whatever it is replacing. Nevertheless it was fascinating to see how the rock that comes out of the pit in chunks as big as a TV set gets inexorably and inevitably reduced to a greenish black scum floating on the surface of a settling pond. The “chemicals” involved in that transformation are pine oil, soybean oil and a small amount of lime used as a pH regulator.

We’ve been avoiding starting our generator because it is noisy, dirty and so far not essential but I am going to have to run it for a while tomorrow morning. Our little Kubota which was also noisy, dirty and hard to start hasn’t been with us for close to a year now. I pulled it out last spring while we sat on the pad in front of the garage and hauled it off to the Super Uke for a rebuild. Nipawin readers will know that Super Uke is a local legend for his ability to fix all things John Deere and Chev related. I wasn’t sure that he would even agree to work on a lowly Kubota but I phoned and begged. He agreed to work on it but that work of course progresses at Byron’s pace which has nothing whatsoever to do with my timetable. I assumed when I dropped the generator off that it would be gone for at least 6 months and it now looks like it will be slightly over a year from the time I took it out until I get it back. The consolation is that it will be perfect when it comes back.

I will however have to do some considerable reworking on the control systems for the generator once it comes back. I caught hell from the Super Uke about a month ago now because my generator starts and goes more or less immediately to governed RPMs. That’s pretty well standard operating practice for generators. They start and immediately go to work. That’s obviously not the best practice for a diesel engine but there are literally 100s of thousands of them in use across North America doing just that. Mine will no longer be allowed to do that.

The alternative to making some changes is that, if something goes wrong with my generator, I will have to explain why I didn’t change the control systems. And I’m not willing to have that conversation with Byron. Truth is – I’d be afraid to have that conversation. So sometime this spring I will pick up the generator which is now completely overhauled and I will then install it back into the bus in some kind of a soundproof box. Then I will redesign the control systems for the generator so that it can start and run for 10 minutes to warm up before I put it under load. I may even use some LEDs and resistors in that new control system.

In the absence of our Kubota we have been getting by with the CCC (Cheap Chinese Crap) generator that I bought at a Hodgins sale last spring. This thing while it is painted Honda red bears little resemblance to the Honda that it is obviously knocked off of. It is extremely loud and it has taken to puking oil smoke out in huge quantities. We ran it a lot while we were getting out of the Canadian deep freeze last winter and it apparently didn’t like that. I’m really dreading the stink and noise that it will make today but the alternative is running the 8-92 and that is even noisier and way less efficient so CCC it will be.

I just finished reading “The Max Ward Story” which is the autobiography of Max Ward’s aviation career. It is a depressing account of Canadian regulatory mismanagement and Liberal interference with private enterprise. It is obviously the world according to Max and has to be read with that caveat in mind but it is impossible to ignore the heavy handed bureaucratic meddling that it exposes. Canadian business labours under the weight of an omnipresent bureaucracy and western Canadian business is doubly hamstrung first by the overly regulated Canadian environment and second by eastern interference with and resentment of anything that comes from west of Toronto.

It is informative and not surprising to see that Don Mazankowski, the western “Minister of Everything” in the Mulroney cabinet, is the only politician in the book that comes out whole. Otto Lang, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien live up to their reputations for duplicity, lethargy and self aggrandizement. I’ve got a few books that I rescued from mom & dad’s library when they moved to Vic Park. This one was a frustrating read but well worth rescuing. It also reinforced my conviction to never again fly on an Air Canada flight.