Christian Nonduality

[Asmodean]

Graphs are useful for visualising one variable in relation to another and can help visualise trends. What is y when x is a given value? If the value of x increases, what does y do? Is there a point where the function terminates/bottoms/tops out?

Pie charts... Yeah. They... Yeah. Better than nothing, I suppose, but by that point I personally prefer to just use the good old numerals with a percent sign behind. Bar graphs can be decent for comparing discrete values at specific points. Say, birth rates by country in 1924 and 2024. You could plot it on a line graph, but then there is not necessarily anything that connects birth rates in Argentina to those in Andorra. A bar graph (Well, a double bar graph since we are measuring two datapoints per country) can make it easier to visualise differences and similarities.

[billy rubin]

the most important thing about meriden is that it is where my motorcycle was built.

three of them actually

[zorkan]

Yep, Meriden is close to Coventry, the home of the Triumph motorcycle.
Also nearby is here.
https://www.nationalmotorcyclemuseum.co.uk/
 

[Icarus]

even further off original subject.............

one of the northeast's most difficult motorcycle enduros, was called the Meriden Run. That is Meriden Connecticut in the USA.

An Enduro is a contest staged in remote areas of forest, desert, water hazards and other non practical places to ride ones motor bike. The course is laid out with numerous check points. The whole idea is to maintain a perfect 24 miles per hour. The participants starting time is recorded. When the first checkpoint is reached the elapsed time is taken. If the first leg was say 12 miles from the start, then a perfect score is if the elapsed time was 30 minutes, etc.....

If the rider arrives early he/she is penalized two points for every minute early, if the contestant arrives later than the 30 minutes, he/she is penalized one point for each minute late. The difficult courses were almost impossible to keep a 24 MPH average.

The Meriden Run was famously difficult.  The participant begins with 1000 points, then early or late penalties are subtracted from the thousand points. The contestant who finishes with the highest score is the winner.

WAaaaay back in the day I punished my poor body many times in those damned Enduros. There were many of them being conducted across the whole US during the summers and sometimes in winter. The winter self induced tortures were innocently called "snow runs".

I apologize for helping hijack the thread. I did ride a Triumph motorcycle in some of the many events. Does that count?

[Asmodean]

So waitaminute... Also, The Asmo shalt help in keeping the thread hijacked, for He musteth knowest.

Would a valid strategy be to aim to arrive a wee bit early, then just slowing down to the apopropriate crawl on the home stretch? Doesn't seem very sportsman-like, but still... Is that not a alternative to proper speed management all along the way?

Or be there rules to address enterprising Asmos thusly cheating their way to victory?

[zorkan]

even further off original subject.............

I apologize for helping hijack the thread. I did ride a Triumph motorcycle in some of the many events. Does that count?

It's fine.
Here is a christian priest who rides a Harley.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/passed-failed-lionel-fanthorpe-1100549.html

He also presented a TV series on the paranormal.
He failed.

[Icarus]

Asmo the possibility of arriving too early was remote.  The terrain that had to crossed was not condusive to maintaining or even reaching an average speed. In the unlikly event that you were early at a check point, it would be perfectly acceptable to park and wait an appropriate time.  The problem with that maneuver is that the check points were chosen so as to unknown and not easily visible to the contestant until he was almost there. Surprise check points were part of the evil that the sponsors of the run foisted on the contestant.

There were, and still are, sissy runs where most of it is conducted on hard roads. In that case a careful attention to ones watch and odometer was necessary. Sissy run winner scores could approach 1000. Real enduro runs more typically had the winners with 980 more or less. My own scores on difficult runs were never even near winning scores.

I suspect that there are auto clubs in your country who do some timed events that have numerous check points. You could have great fun doing that in your new Audie.

[billy rubin]

wasnt the format for the ISDT an enduro event?

i remember when enduro people had a paper tape roller on their handlbars to keep track. steve mcqueen was on tbe US team at least one year

[Icarus]

ISDT (international six day trials) was an annual big time trials event in Scotland. Trials, commonly called English Trials, is a different kind of contest.  Trials are a different breed of cat.

A set of obstacles are chosen by the organizing committee. Those may be any sort of difficult to navigate areas.  The rider is to negotiate the course without ever putting either of his feet down, "footing" is penalized and going off the narrowly defined course even slightly. is also penalized.  Imagine a 2 X 12 plank spanning a small creek and elevated several feet above the surface of the water.  The damned board is probably wet and the rider cannot foot even if he needed to. A favorite of committees is making a U turn with a radius so small that it cannot be steered in the ordinary way. To negotiate the U turn the rider has to stop the bike, hold the front brake and hop the rear wheel around so that the bike is pointing toward the exit direction. Great fun is had negotiating a trials course. Speed is of no consequence in a Trials contest.

The old trials bikes were usually purpose built for the job, or at least modified to increase ground clearance. It was common to use a huge rear sprocket in order to smooth out throttle response. The modern trials bike and the current crop of good riders make all those difficult sections look easy. A modern bike with an accomplished rider can ride up a near vertical wall, turn around and come down as if it was a normal thing to do. They can easily ride over the top of a VW beetle without breaking a sweat. The kind of hazardous situations that we had in the old days would not even be considered in a modern trials contest. Too easy.



 

[billy rubin]

i did not know that

ordinary trials in america are very impressive to watch. hard to imagine doing it with a triumph of any kind

[Asmodean]

I suspect that there are auto clubs in your country who do some timed events that have numerous check points. You could have great fun doing that in your new Audie.

No Audi for a poor The Asmo. He's too small a fish in middle management yet.

But yeah, this does sound like something I might want to try and get into. Not with my motorway cruiser though. Might want to get something that's more fun to drive, as opposed to more suited to fun drives, if the distinction makes sense... How do I 'splain? Has to do with the process of driving being fun before the journey itself - its waypoints, sights and destinations. (Say, beach buggies and such-like. Look like tons of fun on a good day, they do. I wouldn't go galavanting through europe in one, but for short-ish (semi-) competitive weekend fun? Yeah, I'd  do that.)

Of course, may have both. Maybe get one of them GT cars what to go slowly broke buying parts and fuel for.

I also really want to get into private aviation, though can't justify the expense. I think building one of them "'sperimental" kit planes would be a fantastic hobby to both scratch my attention to detail itch and satisfy my need to build stuff that does stuff.