Does anybody remember times like these?

One of the most remarkable naked-eye celestial observances from the Earth is that the Moon and Sun have almost the same apparent size. Depending on its position in orbit and relative distance from the Earth, the Moon can appear either larger or smaller than the Sun, resulting in solar eclipses on Earth occurring in two varieties: total, when the Moon is close enough to appear larger than Sun and completely cover it, and annular, where a more distant Moon fails to completely cover the Sun, resulting in a “ring of fire”.

Relative to any fixed location on Earth, a total eclipse of the sun is a rare event. I remember watching the last one visible from the continental U.S. in 1979 from the sidewalk in the front yard of our Piscatway, NJ home – through a piece of green welder’s lens my Dad handed to me. I had no idea of the significance or rarity of the event at that time as that was his last one & the next one won’t happen for us here until 2017.

The longest solar eclipse our generation will see until 2032 will occur in part of the Western Hemisphere on July 21 and on July 22, 2009 in the Eastern Hemisphere. It will be only a singular occurrence with the difference in dates being caused by our International Date Line. Those of us in the United States will not experience this eclipse first hand, but in this Information Society, live coverage should be scheduled to be broadcast and relayed primarily from China and Japan. I’ve been checking CNN, but haven’t found anything yet.

More information about this eclipse is available at NASA’s Eclipse Web Site.

To maximize my available space utilization, I wanted to incorporate the entire steering mount / dash panel into one assembly with the braces I had made for installing the front sheetmetal body, but with all the projects I’ve been working on during this last week I ran through a full spool of welding wire and will have to run out tomorrow in the AM before I can finish this piece that was only in my mind before today. 

In need of the small pillow-block bearing you see holding the steering shaft/wheel to the dash panel (click images to enlarge), I stopped by Whisler Industrial Supply (aka: Whisler Bearing) today on my way home from work with the the rusty steering shaft in hand. I got the usual “Can I help you?“ from the counterman when I walked in.

Well you know as well as I do that you never know if a counter person in a parts place will be more of a help or a hinderance anymore. Like when you walk into the auto parts store and want spark plugs for a 350 Chevy or 302 Ford and the kid needs to know, “Automatic or Manual Transmission?”… You know right then that you know his business better than he does, but you want what you want so you deal with it or go down the road next time, appreciating all that much more when you find a real professional.

The man that I bumped into today, Dieter, Outside Sales; is just such a professional, not only knowledgeable in his business, but also helpful, informative and courteous. The kind of old school approach to Customer Service you don’t find all too often.

Since I have the U-joints from the original PTO shaft, to move the steering from its original “driver’s side” location from when this was a truck to the center more like a tractor, all I needed was the one small part, but Dieter took the time to make sure I was getting exactly what I needed, treating me like a valuable customer. 

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