Occupation of Independence

There probably aren't many readers who are interested in bicycling. Nevertheless I will write about a certain kind of bicycling as an example of a principle that applies broadly and beneficially to early retirement and full-time travel.   Lately I have given advertisements for adapting to steep land by pushing the mountain bike up the hills and coasting down. This makes me uncomfortable, more so psychologically than physically. It helped to consider the history of mountain biking: it originated by using cars or ski-lifts to get up the hill, and then they would ride the bike down. But I overlooked the examples of other "one-way" sports, such as river canoeing or kayaking, downhill skiing, hang gliding, and parachuting. None of these practitioners think that their sport is ruined by "one-wayness." They would probably have a hard time imagining it any other way.  The "push up/coast down" style of mountain biking is somewhat similar to a surfe...

If our consumption of information was analogous to food-diet, what diet plan would we be on? What is the informational equivalent of vegetarianism, veganism, paleo-carnivorism, or Old Roy dog chow? It is hard to see all the analogies. But one can be seen: most people are on an information-diet analogous to eating all of their food out of gas-station-convenience stores. That is, their informational junk food comes from the mainstream media, mainly television. What a shame. The financial turmoil going on now should be an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about our banking and political systems. At the very least, the general public should learn how our system really works, not just in theory, but the brutal and unseemly realities of it.  Who is benefiting from the basic policies? What are the incestuous relationships between banking and political power? How do they hide it or at least deodorize it from the general public? Why are the losers so complacent to the winn...

I've been putting it off: mountain biking up the famous high passes in Colorado's San Juan mountains. Remember that the main tourist draw here is the "adventure" of driving your noisy vehicle over the passes, and then dropping into the boutique towns of Ouray, Telluride, or Silverton in order to eat fudge, ice cream, or pizza.  If I wanted to share the road with motor vehicles, I would be a "roadie" instead of a mountain biker. Ahh but...the tourist season seems to be in a little lull right now, with most of the country busy with sending their urchins back to school. The hazy and smokey skies detract from the postcard scenery. So the timing seemed right for mountain biking up to Engineer Pass from Lake City. There are tricks of the trade when visiting tourist areas. You always win when you start your day early. Tourists are on vacation -- that means sleeping late. Besides, most motorsport-people are exposed to the air much more than in a regular car, a...

Although Mother Nature might not be friendly to me in the San Juan mountains of Colorado, there is a way to partially win. It isn't my favorite place for camping or recreation. The land is just too steep for dispersed camping and mountain biking. There are too many ATVs and Jeep Wranglers on the dirt roads. The tourist-boutique towns are over-priced and gimmicky. It is the best tourist scenery in Colorado, but you know how long that lasts. Hiking works better on harshly steep land. The ascent is always a fun aerobic blowout; the descents are simply drudgery and trudgery that must be tolerated. But I am addicted to looking forward to descents on a mountain bike. I have found a trick of the trade that helps me, and it might be useful to some of the readers. Rather than focus on achieving some goal on an outing -- and thereby talking yourself out of going, altogether -- focus instead on being defiantly lazy on an upcoming outing. Think about your dog, camera, clouds, or wildlife....

Sometimes I think a person who has escaped the cubicle and the rat race can undermine their own cause by puffing up with expectations that are too grand and romantic. No matter how you envision the perfect lifestyle, daily life still has to be built one humble brick at a time: perhaps a better diet, working on your rig, taking the dog for numerous walks, watching thunderstorms build up, reading and writing, investing, or keeping a keen eye for wildlife and birds.  Lately I have drifted away from photographing birds. The great advantage of being a bird watcher is that it can be done anywhere and almost any day. But that is looking at life the way a Baron d'Holbach or utilitarian philosopher would. There are advantages to their approach, as I was writing about last post. Or there is that other utilitarian, Benjamin Franklin, who wrote a classic line in his autobiography: "Human Felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little ...

It doesn't seem like such a great idea to camp on a bare ridge of sagebrush during the monsoon season. Lightning can be pretty scary. It seems better to have some trees nearby. But I don't want to go into a thick and gloomy forest. That is the value of a tree island near the higher end of the sagebrush, and just below the lower tree-line. It is pleasantly surprising how attached you can become to a tree island. By luck there was a two-track road ascending the ridge-line behind my dispersed camp in this photo. It looks like such easy pedaling in the photo, but I had to push the mountain bike in a couple places: There is an entrapment pond on the far side of the tree island. But it is so close that it provides an entertainment show for me. I saw my first weasel. Disgusting little creature: a snake on wheels.  Something strange happened when camped near this tree island. The wildlife became individuals, with quirks that identified them as the same individuals, day after d...

Perhaps one of the readers is up-to-date on El Niño and this remarkable summer in the Southwest, a summer of monsoons starting in May instead of July. The result has been the absence of wildfires, and an explosion of greenery and flowers. And bugs. This has been the first summer in years when I applied bug spray before going out on a mountain bike ride. Well it's about time I was made to appreciate how little I normally think of flying insects.   The appreciation of something else goes up, too: a nice breeze to keep the bugs off. It's a miracle drug. Normally I praise the breeze in passing on to another subject in these posts. For once, let me talk only about the wind. It's odd that so many people dislike breezy days. I used to, too, earlier in life. Some of these preferences are explainable: people with allergies are not helped any by the wind.  Also, many people don't wear hats, which is too bad, considering how well the right hat desensitizes you to wind, sun, ...

It has been a couple years since I rode a unique trail near Gunnison, CO. I probably praised it back then. It might amuse readers to hear a 'small-government' man actually say something good about a federal land-use agency, the BLM. Seriously, this is a great trail. How many people were key in making it a reality? What were their job titles? Was it really so superhuman that it couldn't happen more often? I'll probably never know any of the answers. All I can do is ride it and praise it. It starts off the way a -- literally -- civilized trail should start: at the edge of town. It should lure people out from their mundane townie existence to the underutilized public land around them. The trail should be non-technical at the beginning, so that it welcomes a broad cross-section of townies, not just 20-year-old male super-jocks and racers. The number of people should be so large, and they should use the trail so frequently, that it becomes an integral part of their lifes...