Mr. Jalopy's experience at the Maker Faire

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I read Mr. Jalopy's account of the Maker Faire with rapt attention. He writes about how he broke some important bolts in his car's engine just a couple of days before he was supposed to drive from LA to SF, and how he finally arrived at a solution. Then he goes on to describe the experience of teaching four sheet metal workshops, and shows photos of the neat things his pupils made from sheet metal and pop-rivets. Along the way, he touches on a great many valuable observations on the human condition.

Here, he explains why the six-hour drive from LA to SF on Interstate 5 was not boring:

No Ipod, no stereo, no air conditioning and not a smidge of boredom. Who could want for stimuli when you have time to consider custom van themes, firecracker packaging, modern farm equipment, blossoming trees, tremendously smelly stock yards, crackpot inventions, net generational impact of Mad Magazine vs. Playboy, LED voltage requirements, future Make articles, the Uniball Deluxe Micro, the merits of a brass drift, LiteBrite, telephone ringers, John Steinbeck, laminating machines and fiberglass lamp shades. Sweet luscious, generous hours spent without a paint brush in your hand. Just when you think you could possibly run out of things to think about, you can wonder about how they bronzed baby shoes. And then Harris Ranch appears on the horizon and you realize it is time for a restorative breakfast and bloody mary at the bar. The uneventful road trip is an incredibly rich gift to a busy person. The blank fields of the Central Valley are a stark contrast and unambiguous pleasure in comparison to the more subtle joys of using tweezers to pick metal filings from your hands.

There's a lot of wonderful stuff in this essay. I nominate it for a Pulitzer. Link