Yesteryon's Blog Had A Lot Of Traffic
Conrad is unsure if it was the "Bedknobs And Broomsticks" picture or mention of bedsteads, so there's no harm in re-using the word in today's title. As for our introductory picture - I'll let Art choose one at random.
What a remarkable coincidence!
This picture is obviously faked, because all the bed linen would get wet.
ANYWAY back to Flying Bedsteads. We have already established that This Sceptre Isle invented them first and flew them in 1954. I state this because the South Canadians, who are like the Russians in not believing they didn't invent it first, also had their own late entry into the Flying Bedstead field. Art!
Admittedly it does have more bedstead in it's DNA than the Rolls Royce version. This, gentlemen, ladies and the undecided, is the "Lunar Landing Research Vehicle" designed to simulate the Apollo Lunar Landing Module in handling behaviour and characteristics. Art!
The beast is in the background
The Lunar Lander, which resembles a giant metallic insect, had to be piloted down to the Moon's surface vertically from orbit, which was a tricky process to simulate. Hence the Flying Bedstead. If you look at the upper picture you can see the engine, which had swivel mounting so it always pointed directly vertically. To compensate for the Moon's gravity, which is one-sixth that of Earth, the engine was tuned to cancel out all but one-sixth of the FB's mass. These things were not easy to control and three of them crashed and were written-off. Mind you, that was three flights out of 792. Art!
Neil Armstrong ejecting
Fortunately, especially for NASA because astronauts are rare and expensive creatures, there was an ejection system installed and all pilots jetted to safety. I think we have a photographic sequence. Art!
Neil later piloted the Apollo Lunar Lander down to the lunar surface and said that due to problems that cropped up on the descent, if he hadn't had hundreds of flights on the LLRV, he would have crashed. Art!
LLRV with puny humans for scale
Conrad is sweating a bit out of fear that the Hollywood Suits will have read his idea for a sequel to BAB and are even now paying a hack with a barrowful of dollars to work up a 'treatment'.
Motley! I've gotten a bed frame up on the roof and we're going to see if bedsteads can really fly. You, of course - obviously! - are the pilot. Here's a helmet and a stout pair of boots.
An Army Marches On It's Feet
Ignore that bafune Napoleon. How far d'you think you'd get if you had to wriggle along like a snake? Exactly.
Okay, another indication that the Russian army has not progressed since 1950. Today I learned that they had, in the past, used "Portyanki" up until 2013. Art!
This is a think sheet of cloth wrapped around the foot in lieu of a sock. Why use a thin sheet of cloth? Because it's a lot easier and cheaper to manufacture than a sock. Art!
And now Ruffian reservists are being issued with footwraps instead of socks.
Incidentally, a couple of commentators on Ryan MacBeth's vlog explained that the Polish word for 'footwraps' is 'Ocuna', which is also an incredibly offensive insult they use against pro-Ruffian posters on fora. I shall have to remember that one.
Pro-Revenge
Might have to split this one up, it's a pretty involved tale from Quora. Okay, Original Poster had been a mechanic with the official Porsche team in South Canada, so he had mad mechanical chops. When he left there he went to work for a garage that fixed cars, where the greedy bottomhole owner cared for nothing except $$$. He was enthused about OP working there because he could put him to work on exotic foreign cars that were expensive to repair. Think Lamborghinis and things like that. Art!
Quite possibly a Lamborghini
However, there was a downside to working on luxury cars, in that they took much longer to repair or perform maintenance. OP said he needed to take some cars apart to manage minor maintenance tasks. Not only that, he often needed to order custom parts for cars, and then wait until they were delivered. Bottomhole owner wasn't happy about this but had to put up with it.
Enter Italian celebrity, whom OP never named and whom I cannot identify, except he was incredibly rich and collected expensive cars. He had a Porsche that needed an engine re-build from scratch, which meant ordering lots and lots of parts. OP then explained that a professional engine mechanic will not start a job until he has all the necessary parts; only when he's got enough will the re-build occur. He warned IC about this, and IC was perfectly happy about it. Art!
3D jigsaw puzzle
Bottomhole owner had made sufficient money from the garage that he could afford a boat, and ran a Corvette. Art!
Like all greedy bottomholes, he always wanted more, and believed everyone he employed was cheating him. Thus, when he came into the garage and witnessed OP working on the Porsche engine, he exploded with rage and verbally abused OP. This is all he dared to do as he was 5' 5" and OP was a burly 6' 4".
(End of Part One)
"The Sea Of Sand"
We left the Doctor shooing Albert away from their hide at the dig, to avoid being caught by aliens.
Thirty terrifying minutes later, Albert cowered behind the flapping canvas of a tent at the camp-site. How grateful he was that the Moon wasn't full! His transit across the desert had been cautious and frightening. Now all he had to do was locate the Professor - easily done by following the truck's passage over the sands - persuade him to drive back to Mersa Martuba, meet with the Italians and convince everyone to join forces against a collection of monsters. No, not monsters: aliens.
Easy! At least compared to what the Doctor was attempting.
The patrolling bio-vores did indeed discover the collapsed canvas hide. By then, however, the Doctor was on the upper level of The Temple with a length of rope taken from the scaffolding.
Timing was everything. The noise of work coming from the damaged pylon had lessened perceptibly, meaning more bio-vores able to inspect their complex for unwelcome local intruders. He had planned, originally, to create hand-holds in the support columns of The Temple, allowing him to climb upwards easily, if a little slowly.
"Too late for that now," he muttered. Using the sonic screwdriver might give him away, now that the covering noise of work in progress had diminished. Those bio-vores certainly wanted their trans-mat back in action!
Next - see the Doctor climb a thirty-foot tall column with a three-foot length of rope!
Wow, a bit of blue sky!
More Of That Kreplach! Crossword
Don't worry, there's tons of clues and solutions yet to come, it's an unusual crossword with a lot fewer blanks than usual. Okay, try this one on for size: "Little by little see it grow: Till cut short by hammer blow (7)"
This one, unlike a few of the other solutions, actually makes sense: AUCTION
"The Singing Sands" By Josephine Tey
Your Humble Scribe finished this yesteryon. What a shame this witty and perceptive author didn't write more crime novels!
A central plot point is about the lost city of Wabar, a rich, decadent and sinful city located somewhere in Arabia, which was so sinful it wa destroyed by fire.
Conrad then wondered if there ever was a city of Wabar, or if Josephine made it up from whole cloth. Google to the rescue! Art!
Except it's the site of a series of meteorite impact craters, not a lost city. Art?
Ho hum
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done.
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