5/8 Craftsman

You will forgive me if sometimes on Saturdays I get a little carried away. It's just that 90 minutes of high octane endorphin flow slams my turbo charger to overdrive and it's hard to slow down from 90 miles an hour without a chute.

The daily metaphor was (again) of motors. Hot rods, hemis and horsepower. What it takes to get rubber in all four gears. And even more important the need to do it with economy. We need that spark. The initial fire to get going. Without it we're a museum piece, pretty, but collecting dust. I would much rather take it out caked with mud, a cracked windshield and stereo booming down the blacktop than ogle it up on jacks in some cozy garage. The spark.

Turn the key. Fire. Spark plugs. Gas and oxygen mixture, internal combustion, horsepower, drivetrain, inertia, momentum, speed. Go.

If your plugs get dirty they need to be replaced. In the good old days when Fords and Chevys were setting the pace, the tool was a 5/8 socket with 3/8 drive, and the folks at Sears, guaranteed their Craftsman brand for life. Somewhere around the early seventies an incredibly talented singer/guitarist named Lowell George formed a funkified blues/rock band and called them Little Feat. Lowell played the slide guitar and played it well. He used the Craftsman 5/8 to get THAT sound. A sound that to this day sends chills up my spine and feels like a 350 big block at idle. One of Lowell's contemporaries in the bluesy slide is Bonnie Riatt. Bonnie is to Lowell's 350 Chevy what a Fiat Topolino is to a Ferrari Testarossa. Fast, sleek, sexy with horsepower to spare.

That groove-zone sweet-spot we talk about all the time has its lineage from these two. When my motor is runnin' free, with clean plugs and topped off, this is what I hear. I hear the sound of the 5/8 Craftsman in the hands of masters.

I am working on the highlight video from our recently completed Madness in March (we just made it under the wire) CompuTrainer Multi-Rider Indoor Cycling Tournament @ The Bainbridge Athletic Club. I hope to have it done later this evening. Until then.....

Lowell George talks about the 5/8 Craftsman socket.

Bonnie covers SRV with her black one.

Little Feat plays Dixie Chicken with a Bonnie backup.

Buy yours here.

Pic: Please forgive as I took twenty minutes away from video editing to learn the opening lick to Fat Man in the Bathtub using my (still under warranty) 5/8 Craftsman.