YouTube Bingeing

 Until now I have successfully avoided binge watching any particular YouTube content provider. But then I found Matt's Off Road Recovery. I have tasted the sweet nectar of 4x4 off roading in Colorado many moons ago and I liked it. However, I didn't like risking our family vehicle just for fun, so I stopped. I've been interested in the use of line and pulleys to gain mechanical advantage to move heavy objects. I love watching mechanics build vehicles to meet specific performance objectives. I love wilderness scenery and appreciate good cinematography and videos of real people in real off road work. Thus I hit pay dirt when I found this YouTube family. 

Matt's heavy wrecker is a work of practical art and I love watching it do its' thing. Their home base is southwest Utah, high desert country. However, they will just about drive anywhere in the western US to retrieve stuck or broken vehicles. He claims this is the worlds largest off road wrecker and that now job is impossible. Maybe hubris but I haven't found him wrong yet.

I snapped a picture from the TV to work from. This wrecker never stands still for long. I also departed from my ink-only approach and did some light pencil layout to be a little less wonky. Then on with permanent markers and watercolor pencil/waterbrush. 

Old Soldier

Just had my regular eye checkup. While waiting in the exam chair, waiting for the doctor and for the eye drops to do their magic, I noticed this plain-Jane instrument to the side. It won't be required for my visit but it piques my interest. Doc is a very thorough doctor who keeps up to date on the medicinal art and equipment used in the care of the eyes. He keeps updating his equipment and it's not rare to see a new piece show up between visits. This simple black instrument looks to have quite a few years on it. The style of the knobs, the color and aesthetic, etc.  So, this old soldier must do something better than it's newer counterparts.

So I ask, and, sure enough, this old soldier does a better job measuring the curvature of the anterior surface of the cornea. It's a manual keratometer. He feels it does this job better than the newer automatic versions. 

I can't help but see this as a metaphor that growing old may show some out-of-date visual style, yet when it comes down to function, we may still be superior in some ways.