Who Decided This Was Locost?

My daughter ran in the house today yelling, “Caleb pulled the metal bar out and now the car is rolling down the hill!”

It took me a second to realize what she was talking about since I don’t really consider the Dwarf a “car”.

Then thoughts of Caleb barreling down our neighborhood hill at 30 MPH in a car he can’t steer rushed to mind. I ran outside to find one of the neighbor’s daughters leaning strenuously against the Dwarf and desperately pushing back against the car’s downhill decent, which had taken it within several feet of our family SUV. I noticed the wheels were turned away from our behemoth, so I told her to let it go before she got ran over. She let it go, the car swung left down the sidewalk and crashed into the neighbor’s trash-can, which eventually stopped it after some bumping and scraping along.

I looked at my boy, who was standing nonchalantly nearby, and asked, “Why’d you pull the metal bar out?”

Without a pause, he answered concisely, “Because I wanted it to move.”

I failed to mention that my neighbor’s three-year-old boy was inside the Dwarf car for this entire fiasco.

At least Caleb didn’t plant my Locost (fake Lotus 7) project in the trash can, but I nearly put it there last fall.

Near the end of last year, I was forced to change direction with the clutch. I’d tried variations of one configuration many times, without any success. Each time removing the motor and tranny and separating them before adjusting something and trying again. I was rewarded only with failure. I could not get my clutch to work. 

So I changed the design and parts completely. Thinking surely I’d finally solved my lack-of-clutch issue with a new design, I put everything back in the car only to discover I still didn’t have a clutch. 

But, with what some people would probably call “grit”, or some other admirable self-appreciating word, I pulled deep on sheer life-defining non-sensical pig-headedness and decided I would figure out what was wrong with my clutch designs, rather than throwing the car in the trash bin.

A whole lot of measuring and pondering later, I discovered I’d caused my own problem. Imagine that.  Doesn’t seem like people talk about causing their own problems much anymore. I must be special.

With my clutch, I’d (really, really) wanted to make sure the clutch activator worked, so I put a spacer behind it to push it right up against the clutch. In reality, I’d pushed my clutch activator too far forward, and bound up my entire motor/tranny assembly from everything being jammed together inside. I couldn’t even turn the motor over with a big ratchet and cheater bar. 

I used the word “activator” for the sake of my wife, one of my few known (and appreciated) readers, but for the mechanics out there twitching, technically I used a hydraulic throwout bearing.

I took the car apart, again (maybe 7th time?), measured a million things, mocked up a clutch system outside the car, eventually took the spacer out, put it all back together, and finally, I repeat, “finally”, the clutch worked. Key word, “finally”.

Back to present, and today, one of my daughters started crying because she lost an important bead for a necklace she was working on. I kid you not, I gave her a talk about how many times I failed and had to start over getting the Locost’s clutch to work. I asked her if she’d found me crying in the garage when the car didn’t work after my 6th engine install. 

Of course I didn’t tell her I may have felt like doing much worse than crying when the clutch didn’t work for the ump-teenth time. I can hear thoughts judging me, “pig-headed hypocrite”… but wait, we only praise ourselves nowadays… I should write that I was “resilient” and other back-patting words! 

In truth, I’m not sure that I did a good thing. When I stand before God, will he ask me if I used my Earthly time in a meaningful way? How embarrassing to reply, “Well, on the seventh motor install I got my fake Lotus’ engine/tranny combination to work.” 

Yesterday the local Christian radio station played a special highlighting college-age, pro-life, Christian young-women who are literally saving lives while they go to school. They experience great derision among their peers. But, far outweighing that are the results they achieve. In one example, the four-year-old, who was saved from abortion, handed her mother her nurse’s diploma. 

This time I did cry, there on the highway, during my commute.  Compare those life-saving young-ladies with people breaking things in Portland to secure the “right” for abortion while screaming that those pro-life young-women are fascist. It’s that simple and clear.

I thank God for his mercy and forgiveness, I know I need it daily. What silly ways I spend my short time here.

And on the note of spending things, who was the bold-faced liar that came up with the nickname “Locost” for these cars? 

Now that the car starts, stops, runs, drives, steers, etc., I’ve been moving forward with all the other parts needed to make it legally road-going. And those parts are not “low cost”, in any sense of the word. Speedometers, tachometers, coilovers, lights, relays, and even the wires are expensive!

Yes, I could buy really cheap parts from China, like wires and coilover shocks, but the internet forums are ripe with tales of ridiculously short life-spans for things made by near-slave labor under a brutal self-worshipping government. The leadership of China is a great example of where back-patting leads.  Enough self-aggrandizing thoughts and you’ll soon believe you are God-like in determining what is right and wrong. I miss humility. I think our world misses it too.

Now note, I just disparaged China. That makes me a bad World-citizen. Soon my Social Credit Score will be low and it’s unlikely that you’ll be allowed to access my writing because I will be deemed a threat to civility and peace.

“Not in America”, I hear you say. 

Did you see what Zoom did to the Americans (of Chinese descent) who wanted to remember Tiananmen Square? Look it up. In a gross affront to the values of our nation, only one person at Zoom is facing Federal charges for this: in brief, China told Zoom they were concerned about Tiananmen remembrance Zoom meetings, so a Zoom official broadcast porn and terrorist’s logos into those Zoom meetings, and then banned the meeting hosts from Zoom for porn and terrorist links. This happened in America. Did you even care, or know? Should we have a Zoom meeting to talk about it?

Free speech is disappearing as fast as the ability to look someone in the face while you talk to them. Keep your space, stay safe, and enjoy your countenance wrapper so you too can be a good World-citizen.

Bringing the car back in, I want the Locost to be safe-ish, so I will probably pay someone to weld my roll cage nice and strong. But I am so very (deep-in-my-soul) tired of people telling me to “stay safe”. I want those same people to look at my Locost coming and think ,”What a dreadfully unsafe individual.”  I’d like to set a tone when I arrive; perhaps it will waylay the coming “stay safe” wish.

You can almost hear my Social Credit Score falling.

I don’t want to live my life for safety. I never have. Within reason, yes, but it’s not my life goal. It’s a lame life goal. Why would you want that as a life goal?

Theologians tell us that to love Jesus, and to bring him glory is why man was created. Of course, what any man says is dubious, but Jesus confirms this in many ways, notably when asked what the greatest commandment is, he responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”.  

With that in mind, did the examples in the Bible love God by pursuing safety? No way. They were very unsafe people, consistently. In fact, when they wanted safety it was often to their detriment… “We want to stay in Egypt”… “Let’s enter an alliance with our enemy”… etc..

So will driving an unsafe, rattle-trap, junk-pile of a car please Jesus? Doubtful, unless I use it for his work in some way.

But I’ve been thinking about that. Kids come running out of houses when I drive around the neighborhood on test runs. They wave and smile. I had it happen the last time I drove it this week. And I can’t recall seeing another one of these Locosts on the road in the local area, ever. Maybe this is one of those cars I can take to a kid’s hospital to give rides, or something like that. I hope so. 

And I hope my own family members and I can have meaningful discussions, while we have fun driving it, and going to places where we can appreciate God’s grandeur in creation. 

But I don’t, and won’t, chiefly endeavor to “stay safe”. I never will.  Deduct appropriately from my Global Social Credit Score.  And please, stop telling me to “stay safe”.