Dead Weight

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No foot, no horse. The classic advice to a buyer. Without 4 sound feet, you ain't going anywhere, because however much power the animal may have, delivery is through the feet.. Obama is looking very trendy in his shiny new old mac hoofboots and we have been mucking about shopping in Brecon while I try to redesign the trailer to get shot of a whole load of weight. And this is where the whole foot /engineering bit comes in.
The saddlechariot puts no load on Obama's back, and unless I foul up loading the trailer big time, the trailer puts no weight on his back either. The Saddlechariot and trailer are running on the same 16x6.50x8 tyres, on plastic rims bored out to take 20mm sealed bearings. Essentially they are kite buggy Big foot assemblies, though not the mega Big Foot which I have on the wheelchair version. The rolling resistance is minimal, but we set off from Wales and in addittion to unpronounceable place names, Welsh roads go up and down like a yo yo.
All you cave dwellers whizzing past in your high speed, airconditioned, overpowered, soundproofed, fossil fuel burning caves only notice the hills because the scenery is tilted against the windows. But on foot, and when relying on someone else's feet, you notice the gradient, and it starts to really matter.
I am really lucky to have two foot experts, this is not a team of highly trained, extremely altitudinally challenged dwarfs, this is two guys who really understand feet, and before the metrication freaks decide to make me the latest metric martyr, whatever they may say, I have two feet, not 600mm and Obama has four feet and not 1200mm.
Patrick Meyer is Cheltenham based, and training as an equine podiatrist, without doubt the worst offence perpetrated on the English Language by any profession for years. But despite the perfectly ghastly job description, he is a guy who is up to date with all the latest stuff. At the other end of the scale is Nick Sanders who makes a major performance of pretending to have either forgotten, or never bothered to learn, or been unable to read the tin, on all subjects to do with horses. He doesn't do equestrian because he tries to avoid using words he can't spell. However he is pretty good with most words up to and including four letters.
Now Obama gets it pretty easy with two experts around because they both want to ensure he has an easy time, and I want to ensure I stay friends with both, and get Obama back on the road asap.
So Patrick is looking at the feet and contemplating the effects of the surface on the sole of the foot, and Nick is looking at the same feet and suggesting that Patrick is dead right on the problem, but the cause is not impact from the bottom, relating to the road surface, though that is what is causing the current discomfort, but that the problem comes from the bones pushing down on the sole internally, and bruising from the inside out.
I am the one who was actually there with Obama while I am fully prepared to admit, Obama did the grunting. But I walked the whole way, and I can see the damage the surface did on my £5 Milletts mock crocs, and it isn't much. But I also know what my legs felt like after climbing Symonds Yat at the end of three days of travelling and that last climb was quite something.
Now all the fancy bearings in the world don't change simple engineering, and hauling 110kg of trailer up hill, is work, and while the load is taken on the traces running through the collar, so through Obama's body and down to his feet. So his leg bones are pushing down into his hooves and it is the connective tissue on the hoof wall and the sole and the frog that finally transmit the load.
Hoofboots certainly help, but stripping down the dead weight on the trailer is a crunch issue, which conveniently brings us back to Cobbetts Rural Rides as Dead weight was a big issue with Cobbett who used the term to refer to tax eaters, all those who lived off the work of the rural labourers, and did nothing for it, Stock Jobbers, placemen, etc draiwng huge expenses for doing not a lot.
I keep thinking there is something here that links into the recent news but it keeps eluding me.