Occupation of Independence

Is it crazy to read about Ernest Shackleton's adventures when our modern world lacks real adventure? Everything on earth has been seen. If you were to sign up for XYZ Adventure Tours, they would have you sign legal disclaimers, despite nothing genuinely dangerous being permitted. And you would be encased in safety equipment. In the world of travel, people who might see themselves as "adventurers" are actually like a lazy student who looks up the answers in the back of the book, rather than attempting to work the problem out on his own. With Benchmark and DeLorme atlases, Wikipedia, websites, blogs, and Google Earth, everything is known. So are we just looking back at the good old days of Shackleton, when men were made of iron and ships were made of wood, with romantic nostalgia? But there is still this thing called extreme sports in the modern world; marathon running, peak bagging, bicycle racing, etc. These don't offer the glamor of the unknown, nor are they pa

It was time for a rematch with a slot canyon that I love. Well, it isn't exactly a slot canyon in the Utah red-rock sense of the word. Actually, it's creepier because it is a steep gash in packed dirt, with layers of gravel every couple feet; except that it seems too hard for dirt, and too soft for rock. The gash is only about 75 feet high. It seemed to be cleaned out -- deepened -- compared to last time. Believe it or not, the photograph shows my limit of penetration. Physically it was possible to walk another hundred feet, and I would have done so if it had been real rock. But the idea of the "angle of repose" kept spooking me out. Ah well, I walked out of there and had a good chuckle about myself. It accomplished a little something. It seems that any time nature affects you in something other than the standard scenery-tourist way, you have experienced something real, non-trivial, and memorable. But it is humbling to the extreme to look at a little experi

Most people probably think that architecture is partly civil engineering and partly artistic design and beauty. How important is the subject of beauty to architecture? For the moment let's interpret 'beauty' the way that most would: a combination of shapes, colors, and textures that are somehow pleasing to the eye. Shapes?  A rectangle is a rectangle, an arch is an arch. There are only so many building materials and most of them are flat, so you can build with only so many shapes. Even when you see a structure as radical as a geodesic dome, you have to eventually say, "So, I now know what an equilateral triangle is." Colors? How many colors can a building have?  White, earth tones, metallic grey, rust. Anything else would look ridiculous or age in an unseemly way. Texture? Rough or smooth. Of course, reductionism like this is unfair. Couldn't we also say, "How many notes are in the musical scale? So when you've heard a few minutes of any mu

Perhaps a recent commenter was correct in thinking I wouldn't learn much about being an architect just from re-reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead."  But at least the book has me thinking in terms of architecture, a different perspective for me. But let's resist rushing off to build philosophical skyscrapers... 1. My host in Patagonia took me on a walk to the ruins of a stucco hunting-cabin. It was used as recently as 15 years ago, but now Mother Nature is rapidly reclaiming it. The main room was about 50% bigger than my converted cargo trailer. Spartan? Not compared to the Outdoors where the hunters spent much of their day.  Beautiful? Not really. The appliances and materials are not significantly different than modern ones. There are no exotic shapes, structures, or colors. So then why did I feel a small lump in my throat when inspecting this little cabin and the neglected cemetery outside it? ________________________________ 2. Down the street f

After sermonizing about grasslands in the last post, I started wondering whether this could be just one example of a general urge that some people have... It all started when my Patagonia AZ host tried to make an "honest man" out of me.  No more driveway mooch-docking and eating delicious leftovers from her catering business: now I had to earn my keep with a "small" repair project in her house. How lucky this turned out to be! It made me furious. All it required was a bit of electrical wiring, and then mounting something to the ceiling with four screws. Sounds tough, eh?  But it was enough to remind me how frustrating it is to find something solid to sink the screw into! That is true of stick-and-brick houses as well as standard RVs.  I have been infuriated with this all my life, until I converted a cargo trailer into my new trailer. In a way I don't want to lose the ability to become enraged when the Half-Insane is widely accepted as normal.  The desira

Looking back on a winter in the desert, it is gratifying to learn how to appreciate it more -- no, not the postcards of saguaro cactus or red sunsets. Those present no challenge to an experienced traveler. Rather, it is the touch-feel of harsh rocks, rocks that almost cause your hands to bleed if you lose your balance on a trail and put your hands down, to regain your balance. Perhaps the "credit" should go to the youthful orogeny of volcanic sky islands. But when you are out there, immersed in the sheer horribleness of it, you can't help but think that aridity is the cause. Surprisingly you see that rocks are somewhat rounded in arroyos that flow only once per year, if even that often. Ironically that is where aridity makes it greatest impression. ______________________________________ By this time of the year we have started the Great Loop. We've moved up to 4000 foot grasslands in southeastern Arizona. My friend in Patagonia was boasting of the winter rain, so

Do most people see economics as an arcane subject? At other times it might turn them off because they can easily spot the political ideology hiding underneath the surface of mathematical pretense. They should have the experience that I just had. There is always a tweak or two that can benefit any RV.  Because my "RV" is a customized cargo trailer rather than a 'suburban house on wheels,' I am free to get out the tools and blast away at it as I please.  There was a noticeable pinch spot in the little cargo trailer that could be felt many times per day. It only took an hour of sawing and orbital-sanding to eliminate the pinch.   And yet how much material had been removed? Compared to the overall area (square footage) of the trailer, one part in 500 had been removed. In volume, one part in 3500. In weight, one part in 10,000. Despite such small numbers, I actually felt a temporary euphoria similar to what a salary-slave feels upon getting a 2% raise, after being

My bio-rhythms have been so screwed up with the 90 degree heat in Yuma -- in February! Soon I was in Patagonia AZ at over 4000 feet of elevation. It felt so good to sleep in a chilly bed again; to get out of bed in the morning and walk while trying to keep my toes from touching the 40 F floor; to put on a jacket and walk downtown Patagonia. Ahh, cool air and warm sun. Over the winter in Yuma, things that seemed like luxuries at the beginning began to bore me. Even my dog got bored: we walked in a beautiful desert at sunrise and sunset, but there was no game there. Just rubble. Eventually a snowbird can't or won't apply the mental discipline needed to ignore the overcrowding.    The tipping point came when my attitude changed about my road cycling club, the main reason why I was there in the first place. The high speed riding by 70-year-olds seemed so admirable at the beginning of winter. By the end, my loyalty to living at the point-of-diminishing-returns reasserted

Since the internet primarily offers infomercials and entertainment, it is difficult to find helpful information about four-wheel-drive and better traction. I had almost given up before finally bumping into this article, which serves as a primer. Today's post is aimed at finding shrewd low-cost methods of getting better traction without being suckered into a high-cost pickup truck. Automobile manufacturers use the marketing gimmick of "bundling," and the weaknesses of the male ego, to raise the cost of a pickup truck into the stratosphere.  This post is not aimed at: 1. A pickup pulling a fifth wheel trailer, which then is empty when you unhitch, meaning little weight on the rear tires. 2. A pickup used in town for getting groceries or hauling kids to school, and therefore has no weight on the rear axle. 3. Lowering a boat trailer down a boat ramp until the rear wheels of the pickup are sitting on ooze, algae, or moss. 4. Snow or dune buggy terrains. 5. Doi

Rewrite: good grief, I started off on how-to trivia before I discussed the 'why' of getting better traction: it will give you more freedom in choosing campsites and provide a higher quality experience.  But I have gotten-by just fine at dispersed camping without making a big or expensive project out of better traction. My rig was nothing special, traction-wise: a two-wheel-drive van pulling a 4000 lb (loaded) travel trailer. It had the standard open differential and lacked an electronic traction control system which is standard on newer vehicles.  But remember that an "equipment X worked well enough for me" type argument is a circular argument. You know the limitations of your equipment, and compensate for them by restricting your campground choices. That is what I want to rise above. (Circular arguments like this eat up enormous amounts of time and space on public discussion forums.) 'So what?' if you get stuck every couple years? Be a good sport abou

For some reason, I am thinking about the rules for "good blogging." Which topics are worth discussing in a public forum? Consider a single example of how important this can be: imagine how much improvement you could get in movies, plays, and novels if the writers would decide that adultery and love triangles are topics that have been beaten to death, and should be allowed to rest for a couple centuries. As usual when embarking on any issue, progress is most rapid when we invoke Horace's "fleeing vice is the beginning of virtue." First, bloggers should abandon their mundane and picayune "practical" details. Yes I know, there are readers who think that practical minutiae does them more good than arguments and opinions. But what if we are careful about the method of opining? Rather than shoving pre-packaged opinions down the readers' eyeballs, what if we invite the reader along as we develop an opinion, all beginning with concrete observations?