Readings for Thursday (2 April): Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Chapters 14-15
Recap of last Thursday’s lab
- Top end team worked with valves and springs and started with rockers.
- Electrical team worked on handlebar switches and hooked up headlamp, taillight, and turn signals.
- Mark used CAD software to scan and alter images of the gaskets.
- Bottom end team finished prepped to reassemble the crankcase.
- Frame, forks, and wheels team put new tires on the wheels (using dish detergent as a lubricant) and gathered parts necessary to reassemble the fork. Continued with Bondo application, sanding, and priming on the fenders and gas tank. Also worked on the engine block, where it was discovered that holes will need to be drilled into the cover and an insert likely added.
- Clutch and transmission team continued working to repair the Terrier.
Heated debate about the color of our motorcycle
After much discussion, an agreement was finally reached: the color should be scarlet, as in dark red (like blood), not orange-red. The fenders should have a stripe of either white, off-white, or silver and the tank should be two-toned (scarlet and either white, off-white, or silver, depending on the color of the fender stripe).
Book discussion
Chapter 12: First mention of the concept of Zen, which Phaedrus studied in India. It is said that this philosophy, unlike logic/reason, does not presume a separation of subject from object. Phaedrus never really bought into Zen because he could not accept the premise of “Thou art that,” or “that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided.” Attention is also given to the way Phaedrus solved DeWeese’s ostensible electrical problem (a problem with a light switch), which turned out to be a mechanical problem, since it was fixed with the installation of a new switch. We see that DeWeese, unlike the Sutherlands, isn’t hostile to technology, just ignorant of it.
Chapter 13: The narrator, along with Chris and the Sutherlands, is approaching Bozeman and the university where Phaedrus used to teach. While Phaedrus was a professor, right-wing politicians attempted to force the college to pass virtually every student, which threatened the university’s accreditation. In a lecture, Phaedrus called the University the “Church of Reason” and compared it to a repurposed church building that had been converted to a bar. Even though the physical building was that of a church, it had essentially been desanctified and no longer constituted a church. Similarly, the “real” University, which Phaedrus called likened to a state of mind (he called it a heritage of rational thought), was separate from the physical presence of buildings, faculty, students, etc. This logical perspective mirrors the discussion of the subject-object distinction from the previous chapter.
CMQ