Scandanavia

I have always wanted to visit Norway. I find myself quite drawn to the area, from pictures and from the one visit I made to Goteberg, Sweden lo these many years ago. One day I shall make the trip.

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The movie I was thinking about was called "Insomnia," and it did indeed star Al Pacino.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/

The movie is not all that great. I mention it because there's a tie-in to your writing about how the sun never sets completely up in the far north.

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I let the snake slither off. That was the first time we'd seen it up on our patio, so I don't think he (or she) was looking to set up camp there. That's one of the things about Arizona I have to get used to -- there are critters here that I didn't have back in Virginia. But it's still a nice place to live.

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My motorcycle now has 4,000+ miles on it. Last weekend I changed the oil and checked the "final drive" oil (my bike has a shaft drive, so the rear wheel has a "hypoid gear" assembly to transfer the rotational energy of the shaft into the rotation of the rear wheel.

Note: interesting side-note: shaft drives are the least efficient in transferring power to the rear wheel. Chain drives are first; belts second, shafts third. That's why sport bikes still use chains. The difference is not all that much, but enough to make the speed-enthusiasts demand chain drives.

The final drive oil was quite a bit low, which concerns me because that means it came from the factory low ... or from the dealership if they did final assembly including the fluids. At any rate, I drove the thing 4000 miles in the hot Arizona heat with low oil to protect the gears back there. But it's not like the oil was dry -- there was still 75% of the total recommended oil there, and from what I can gather, that mechanism is able to survive things like this quite well. The drained oil didn't have any recognizable metal bits or anything. And a visual inspection of the gear teeth through the fill hole shows, to my eye, no damage or wear.

The other thing I did was to use a different oil from the Honda-branded oil. (I still used a Honda-branded filter, though.) After reading tons and tons of stuff on the Internet, it appears that heavy-duty truck oil is ideally suited for motorcycle use. So I put in Shell Rotella-T 15W-40 oil. Now, some notes:

• You would not believe the discussion on the Internet concerning oil for motorcycles! Everyone has their pet oil, and everyone is convinced that their oil is the only oil to use. One person writes "Rotella-T Synthetic is the best oil out there!" and another rebuts it with "Rotella-T is worthless!" One guy wrote that Rotella breaks down completely in less than one hour in a motorcycle. I had to laugh -- that's absurd.
  
• I change my oil every 2000 miles. I think pretty much any oil would be okay with that frequency of changing.
• I wonder about the "weight" of the oil I should use given the heat out here in Arizona. Some say I should use a 20W-50 oil, not a 40-weight. But the Honda I have is water-cooled, so I don't know if that concern is as applicable as for an air-cooled (Harley) motorcycle. My owner's manual makes no mention of 50-weight oil, only 40-weight, regardless of the high-end temperature. But Honda sells a 50-weight oil. Go figure.
  
• There's a real science to oils and lubrication and such. I've read some write-ups on it and my head spins!
  
• In college I was fascinated with the topic of "Fluid Dynamics" -- I thought it must be the most exotic and difficult topic to master. I never took a single fluid dynamics course.
• Teichman's son graduated from MIT with a PhD in Fluid Dynamics.
• I don't know how much fluid dynamics is at work with oil in an engine. Some, I'm sure.
  

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We are heading into the Independence Day holiday here in the United States. It falls on a Tuesday, which means we have a glorious 4-day weekend. I can tell things are slowing down already, though. Friday will be very quiet.