So I missed a workout at PhysioDC and the appointment with my surgeon to discuss whether I'm cleared for skydiving because some asshat broke into our car. Normally this doesn't make a car un-drivable, but parking a car with a busted-in passenger window (it's only got two windows) in the District is not high on my list of things to do. The other problem is that it was hovering between 15-20°F in our area the night it was broken into and yesterday, so driving around in that weather with the window open is foolhardy.

I start the CFSA nutrition challenge on the 8th. I mostly think the "Paleo Diet" is hogwash and based on poor thinking (organisms do evolve quicker than the five-hundred-ish generations Paleo folks seem to talk about, and if they don't, it's positive for the species overall, so why regress? It makes little sense, but we're not talking about evolutionary biologists, we're talking about fitness wonks, and to some extent, nutritionist(a)s).

We had your average CrossFit Total this week, and frankly I'm kind of disappointed in my own results. But if we realize that everything I do at the gym is based on the principal of my having five broken vertebrae, I suppose it's not so bad. Rather than a traditional deadlift, I'm doing a lift with a kettle bell. The rest of the Total is a back squat and a push press (making the order BP, PP, DL). I managed 125/85/70, for a "total" of 280. This is an unremarkable score, except that I was doing a 10RM, rather than 5RM or 2RM, and I had more in me for the kettle bell lift, but we didn't have a heavier KB. What does this mean? Well, it's a good benchmark, but it bears little significance when compared to, say, your CFT. So we revisit this in some months, and see how I'm doing.

What's kind of a trip is that my deltoids and triceps have started really showing definition. Putting on deodorant in the bathroom the other day (I wasn't checking myself out, really), I noticed my arm looks way different than it did before. My quads and hams have pulled a similar trick, and my pants just don't fit the same as they used to. Which is probably more than you wanted to know.

In other news, I've been thinking a lot about the pairing of otto-cycle engines with turbines. I know that turbines are very, very efficient. But they're not very efficient in terms of "putting the power to the ground." For locomotion, they're actually kind of crummy if you want to go anywhere quickly. Fast, sure. Quick, no. Which is why turbines never caught on in cars (although, with flywheels and turbine-electric hybrid power plants, we may get there). So, borrowing liberally from the Spun files, I've been experimenting (on paper) with the notion of keeping a turbine spun up on E85 (or straight E), and using the output of the turbine to drive your average otto-cycle to generate torque. "Thrust" in this case is negligible, and the real difficulty is making the transfer of power from the turbine to the pavement efficient. Transmission to the pavement results in huge losses (sometimes > 20%, which is why we talk about "wheel hp" vs "crank" or "brake" hp), and otto-cycle engines lose tremendous wattage to power. The diesel cycle is more heat-efficient, but I don't think anyone wants to diesel ethanol, and I'd like the turbine and the reciprocating engine to use the same fuel for lubricant (foil/air bearings do come to mind, though), fuel, and cooling. Ethanol fits all those requirements quite well.

Anyways, it's an exciting idea. Totally impractical for anything that would ever be widely-adopted (not to mention dangerous), but if you wanted to make something blazing fast and efficient, you could certainly pull it off with a motor like that. You'd have to think real, real hard about the transmission part, but if you got that fixed, I reckon you could run enormous amounts of boost. With a 6L V12, I don't think 3,000hp is out of the range of reliable horsepower. This would obviously be for land-speed-record type efforts, not drag strip, and not for the street.