Occupation of Independence

A cycling website that I visit frequently mentioned the results of the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. Sigh. Just hearing of Leadville (use Search this Blog on the left) brought back some powerful memories for me. For the first time I started getting emotional about getting back on the road; until now it was hard to believe that I was really leaving tomorrow. A week after the Leadville race, still in the mid-August, I used to notice Leadville (10,200 feet high) getting cooler and foggier. Summer was on the wane, and it was time to start a slow retreat towards winter camp. Many high places in Colorado would still be good until late September. No matter how many years I was traveling, the autumn migration kept bringing a lump to my throat. And now I'm "migrating" north in mid-August? Everything is upside-down.

Here is my first post back on the Verizon network. Gee, I remember it being faster when I dropped the service three years ago. My campground's WiFi is actually twice as fast, even though it is all coming through a 3 Mbps DSL line, and then sharing that signal amongst all the users in the campground.

Straws and camels' backs, indeed. August is not the month when the migrational sap runs in my blood, but when I learned that my boom-da-boom-thud-boom neighbor might renew for another month, the decision became easy. I leave on 18 August. There's nothing wrong with how people live here, if that's what they like. But I have nothing in common with them. Any unpleasantness is my own fault for being in a place I shouldn't be. My 1995 Ford cargo van is all cleaned and waxed up -- beautiful. After three years of weathering in the New Mexican sun, the paint had turned dull and chalky, leaving the water bucket looking like a pail of milk. These cargo vans work so well as towing and storage machines that I wonder why more people don't use them: there are four bicycles and a BOB trailer in there -- and how could a human being live on less?! It has also swallowed up 33 gallons of water, a generator, a wall of supplies in shelves, and it's half empty! Granted, most bou

The only expense and chore remaining is to start up a wireless data plan with Verizon. I already have a MiFi gadget to use, thanks to the generosity of an RV friend. In Chapter 1 of my RV lifestyle the Verizon plan worked quite well. Trying to get by on free WiFi would have been false economy since it entails extra driving and temptation to buy expensive coffee and food at the "free" WiFi spot. Actually I made a game out of spotting cell towers and then camping in the forest or on BLM land where the topography gave me coverage. Nevertheless, getting wireless coverage did restrict my camping locations quite a bit. It is easy to resent that. It's natural to want Chapter 2 to be better or at least different from Chapter 1. Won't starting up a Verizon plan inevitably pull my camping lifestyle in the same direction as before? The satellite alternative doesn't appeal to me because of equipment cost, set up, and maintenance. And yet I have 18 hours per day to fi

It seemed odd that my resuscitation of the old van had not yet involved a drive out of town at highway speeds, so I used a tire purchase as my excuse to drive out of the Little Pueblo, down to the torrid high desert town of Deming, NM. It brought back some memories. For one thing, I remembered how much I would actually like driving the van and, yes, looking out the windshield, if the world would just let me drive at 45--55 mph. Call me heartless if you wish, but I don't really give a damn if the people who pass me end up in the ditch. But I don't want that to happen to an innocent motorist in the opposing lane, so I end up driving the speed limit instead of the leisurely pace I prefer. The other fact that came back with a vengeance was how different it is to drive south -- downhill and into the sun -- than north. My dog would heartily agree with that one. This was a reminder that an RV camper will find Dry Heat in the summer to be the source of 90% of his annual discomfort.

Financial turmoil is a serious business, so it's with comic relief that I read about Apple's market capitalization becoming bigger than Exxon's for the first time. 'Who has the biggest market capitalization' is a far cry from being the official 'most important' company; still, it does say something about the financial zeitgeist in a loose and unscientific sort of way.

Perhaps you are spending a lot of time these days reading financial websites. Today I have been drowning in informational trivia; maybe it's my fault for not choosing better websites. Why is it so hard for business writers, in the opening paragraph, to compare the relative sizes of Lehman (September 2008) and the current sickies, Bank of America and SocGen in France? That would let the reader quickly assess the risk and importance of the current mess with one already experienced. Sure, there are many facets to a comparison of SocGen and Lehman. But American news sources underestimate the importance of anything outside the USA; they are famously parochial. A simple numerical comparison might help their readers overcome some of this.

It is strange that Geitner, Obama, Wall Street liquidity junkies, and the usual cabal of narco-Keynesians would be so upset by Standard and Poor's downgrade of US government debt. Why don't they just nationalize Standard and Poor's, that is, literally make it a branch of the US government? Now, you might think I'm being facetious because that would result in the US government rating itself . To old-fashioned people, that might sound like a conflict of interest. They might even say it makes a farce out of ratings. But ratings are already a farce. Many people have gotten used to the idea that the budget deficit can be "funded" by the Federal Reserve buying US Treasury bonds. So why not take this sort of incestuous arrangement to the next logical step?

Yesterday was the day for the last big ticket items needed to get back on the road: I bought four new Interstate (GC-2) golf cart batteries; these are the conventional 6 volt, flooded, lead-acid batteries that lose water gradually and give off trace amounts of hydrogen when charging.

One of the difficulties of writing about financial markets these days is that it's hard to tell where politics ends and real markets begin. Many times it seems as though the stock market is just the tail of the Federal Reserve dog. Yesterday's market was down big enough to make mainstream news. Wall Street is desperately hoping that Bernanke's helicopter will come to the rescue, perhaps playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries , like in the movie, Apocalypse Now .  This scenario is playing out as I sketched in an earlier post . Obama must be nervous about Bernanke being too quick with QE3. There is a tremendous opportunity for him here if Bernanke doesn't blow it. If Obama wants to get reelected, the bloodletting in the job and stock markets needs a chance to look more desperate.

How many times have you bought something and experienced a real Wow! ?  In my case the first digital camera had that effect; so did the first GPS gadget. More times than not, I find new gadgets and appliances to be overblown; the ownership experience is disappointing or even embittering at times, and for good reasons. No gadget is better than its battery or its weakest connector or its cheapo plastic battery case lid. Typically the plastic display scratches up the first day. Yesterday I experienced a Wow from a homemade gadget: a trailer brake and light tester. Knowing how cheesy the connector is between the tow vehicle and the travel trailer, and how amateurish the wiring is near the trailer brakes, a driver can feel a vague dread in the back of his mind when he is driving down the road with many tons of stuff under his "command".