Occupation of Independence

 For better or worse I like to write about travel in terms of subjective experiences.  I prefer not to write about breathtakingly beautiful scenery, how many solar panels you need, or whether RV toilet paper should be one ply or two.  When you camp in the backcountry, and then return to civilization, you notice things that you probably wouldn't notice if you lived in town all the time.  In that sense, it is a 'travel experience.' Rolling into a gas station in the "big" city, I noticed a couple obese female customers.  Why oh why didn't they at least wear long pants and shirts?!  It is not exaggerating to say that they 'wounded' me with a special type of sadness. What was causing this reaction?  Was it just a male-sexist-pig being deprived of his fair share of eye candy?  No, I don't think so.  As a man gets older he places less emphasis on his own pleasure or excitement and looks at the Big Picture of the human condition. The punch in the gut...

 The introductory chapters of history books are usually marvelous to read.  But Big Pictures can sometimes become over-generalized, superficial verbiage.  So there is the opposite approach, using a tangible and specific event to serve as a metaphor to illustrate the Big Picture. Perhaps that is the approach future historians will take when discussing the end of the American Empire.  They will introduce their book with a comparison of the funeral in Iran and Trump's Great American State Fair, taking place on the same weekend. Did you have a chance to see videos at the street level of the funeral in Tehran?  I was impressed with how calm and long-suffering people were.  They needed hours just to get to it, after fighting the traffic of a giant city.  Where were the porta-potties and the food trucks?  It didn't seem like Iranians needed hats for that sun.  They stood shoulder to shoulder in triple digit (Fahrenheit) heat. Why!, it's as if t...

 Everybody probably has a list of worst fears.  For my part I have long 'horribilized' crossing Hell's Canyon in July.  Yesterday, the day before the Fourth of July, I did cross it.  It was hard to believe. Getting ready to cross the bottom.     At the bottom I crossed paths with a couple bicycle tourers.  They didn't seem too miserable.  A few more miles in Idaho, we stopped at a nice rest stop and campground.  The leaf-bearing trees were gorgeous.  Walking through the little park I felt warm, but not hot. People and children were jumping in the Snake River to cool off.  Their pleasure was infectious, even to me.  Up on top, the first couple small towns were having a nostalgic Independence Day celebration.  Farmers' Markets, watermelons, sweet corn, parades.  The grocery store was packed. I didn't see one pro-Trump banner or Israeli flag.  Everything seemed so normal and wholesome.  This is not an advertise...

 It is terrible to hear the saber-rattling by NATO and Russia.  Reckless threats!  As if talk of Russia hitting industrial or government facilities in Europe is not bad enough, the pundits even speculate about tactical nuclear weapons.   My guess is that Russia does need to hit NATO directly, if Russia is ever to stop NATO from sending drones to Ukraine, which then hit Russia.  Russia needs to find a way to retaliate that does not escalate the situation.  It should not inflame NATO countries, cause them to unify, and pull in Uncle Sucker from Washington, DC.  To do this, the loss of life should be minimal.  How could you hit drone-production in Europe without killing people?  The Ukrainian drones sometimes hit energy facilities in Russia.  Within 24 hours, Russia should hit back.  But at what? Look at the unique electrical generating system in Europe, especially in the countries along the North Sea.  These countr...

 If I wasn't familiar with this hill, the highway sign would have been alarming:  They even had a third warning, a half mile later!  But the risk was over-stated.  Real risk needs a nasty surprise and I almost got one, a few days later: I didn't see this vertical drain hole (and tire trap) when I drove in, pulling my trailer.  By sheer dumb luck, I missed it.   Imagine the embarrassing discussion with the tow truck driver that could have happened later in the day: "What were you thinking, mister?  Didn't you even see the hole?" Actually I was more concerned about the high winds on this half-bare ridgeline, and the upcoming weather forecast.  There were a lot of blow-downs in the area:  And yet, the high altitude, high winds, weather forecast, and isolation were exciting, probably because Book Bub had told me of a discount on Lawrence Bergreen's "Columbus: The Four Voyages."  There is nothing like reading the right book at the right...

 If you live long enough, you'll have a chance to experience anything, no matter how ridiculous.  Getting excited about buying clothes seems about as silly as you can get.  But it actually happened. I bought an excellent windproof, hooded shell in a thrift store, the other day.  I have always admired people who come out of thrift stores with their trophy-like bargains.  But you have to tolerate disorganized clutter, and I don't.  Since I bought an over-sized windshell, it came down long, almost to the mid-thigh. And the arms were long, too.  I love jackets like that. Recently an expensive bicycle jacket wore out at the zipper.  It was probably 8 years old.  I didn't think those narrow zippers would last more than one year.  But I felt inspired to get completely away from over-priced bicycle clothing.  After all, the fabric is just common nylon or polyester, made in some fabric mill in east Asia that makes square light-years of the s...

 It doesn't feel natural or desirable to start off on a walk by going downhill, but that was what we had to get used to, at our current campsite in eastern Oregon.  But I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard some loud and strange animal noises. Some You Tube videos clarified things: I was hearing the plaintive mating calls of rutting elks.  They sounded so close!  And every 30 seconds!  I have never heard so many 'bugles' by elks in my life.  The bugling is so high-pitched, it is hard to believe it comes from an 800 pound beast! There were so many bugles going off in my neighborhood that it was almost funny.  If an elk cow can't find a willing bull in this area, she just isn't trying very hard.

 No more embarrassment and no more apologies for becoming completely satisfied and content when I get certain things.  The other day I experienced a strange kind of chiaroscuro, of violently contrasting bright blue sky and lush, liquid green.  Eastern Oregon was being good at what it does.  If you live in a part of the world that has real trees and grass and soil, you just can't appreciate this: Yes, I can still remember mowing green grass when I was young.  It was wet and smelly sometimes.  I am so fortunate to be able to flutter my eyelashes over trees that actually have leaves.  This is a pin oak, perhaps?: As if these things are not miraculous enough, the city park also had a spirited river running through it: I laughed when I saw these thistles: There was a time in life when these would have seemed fierce to me.  Nowadays, I could chop 'em up, put 'em in a salad, and throw on a little salad dressing.  These softies in the Northwest don't...

Eastern Oregon: I love horses, as so many people do.  But they are not a big part of life, even in the western states.  So it was a real pleasure to stumble onto this, on today's bike ride:  (After popping the arrow twice, the viewer might want to click the rectangle on the black footer bar of the video to enlarge into  "theater mode.")  The immense 'sagebrush sea' (that starts down in southern Nevada) ends here.  The cowboy was only a mile from where the still-visible Oregon Trail exited the sagebrush sea.  Recall Nevada, a month or so ago:  A morning rain shower was dissipating, so the sky was opening up into puffy cumulus clouds: Meanwhile still photography is up to its old tricks -- that is, looking for soft hills and shadows: There is nothing more classic-western than Indian Paintbrush, and there are plenty of them around, in eastern Oregon:

Freakish weather has the effect of making you observant.  And what could be more freakish than two consecutive days of rain in a western state?  That happened recently.  The next morning large pendulous drops were hanging on plants in a way that didn't seem real. The photo, bad as it is, still gets the idea across that drops of water held onto plants like Christmas tree ornaments.  This kind of thing happens so infrequently I cannot predict it. But it makes me nostalgic for returning to a real camera instead of a smartphone.   For years I used a compact zoom.  It really was more fun taking photos back then.  And the moisture/water/fog photos turned out rather well: The photo above was taken near Moab on a chilly, autumn morning.  Our bike ride had taken us downhill, into a frost pocket.  It was shockingly cold in that hole. One winter morning, after some generous rain in southern Arizona: Sometimes even fog is photogenic: Even spider we...

It might sound silly to imagine oneself as an armchair media critic, but consider how much of your life can be squandered "watching" talking heads on You Tube.  Some method is needed to reduce the wasted time.   Most talking heads are simply too wordy.  They use words like most customers at a car wash use water: unconscionable quantities of water, blasting away at high pressure.  Noise and waste.  Do they expect to achieve the desired results through pure erosion? Consider the image of a skilled carpenter, or at least, a hammerer. Light tap, tap just to start the nail. Then a crescendo of harder strokes, with each one bringing the nail closer to home.  Three is usually enough. There is a German journalist (Patrik Baab) who talks like that, and in English, not his native language.  

 It's time to admit that it is harder to be an armchair general or armchair geopolitical analyst than I used to think.  Our current president makes that so.  And to some extent, Putin is to blame. So what is a retiree, with too much time on his hands, supposed to do?  How about being an armchair media critic, especially when you live in a time when a new medium is developing, as You Tube is. I have tolerated too many talking heads who speak half-English.  Even Brits with non-rhotic English have become tiresome -- or should I say ti-uh-some? Some guys flap their hands around on You Tube while over-hyping everything, like a salesman.  And there are female talking heads who expose too much skin and wear too much makeup.  Shameless! There are several talking heads that I have a high opinion of.  But the minute they show up on screen with an entire wall of bookshelves in the background and they talk like a professor, I should turn them off.  Do ...

 It seems like Microsoft-Hate is in a growth phase these days.  You would have to know a lot about operating systems to sum it all up, fairly.  Hating Microsoft appeals to some of us on an emotional level, especially for people who are suckers for an anti-establishment, anti-mainstream cause. One practical issue is that laptop PCs only seem to last about three years, these days.  And it's getting harder to buy a replacement for $300, as in the recent past.  Chromebooks can be bought for that, but that just switches you to Google-Hate .  Chromebooks don't even have a delete key .  They are too browser-oriented for me -- Google deprives Chromebook of reasonable memory in order to force you to shove everything onto Google Drive , Google Photos, Google Docs, etc.  And Google will find a way to defeat any ad-blocking by the browser.  I was turned off by going to the Linux operating system by partitioning the drive of my current laptop, dual-b...

Certain dogs have charmed my socks off.  But 'charm' is not the word that first comes to mind when contemplating homo sapiens .  There must be exceptions.   In fact it is easy to run into exceptional and charming people in early summer.  That is the morel mushroom season .  Every year I run into mushroom-mongers in the inland Northwest , and every year they amuse me.  There is something wonderful about middle-aged and older adults acting as enthusiastic as puppies chasing a ball. And they love to talk about their obsession.  This year, an older couple drove by in a pickup and proudly showed their collection:  She held those mushrooms like they were nuggets of gold.  They gave lots of advice on the right way to cook them up. Early summer is so wonderful around here.  Yes, I know an Arizona-like furnace will be here in a month.  But let's enjoy paradise while we can.   The Little Salmon River was full of life:  ...

Are Americans changing what they eat, as a reaction to the shocking prices in the grocery stores?  It would be a significant silver lining to the foreign policy disasters of the current regime .  The whole idea of fast food has fallen out of my head.  Does it seem like McDonalds is less busy than the past?  Wouldn't it be nice to see thousands of Starbucks close?  Eating "out" has become unimaginable.  I am even shocked by the coffee prices at the gas station .  Even the junk food at the Dollar Stores has become unaffordable.   Obesity might become a shrinking industry in America.  Older men remember that you couldn't walk through a grocery store in the good old days, without turning the corner at an aisle and being surprised -- or momentarily stunned -- by some nice-looking young lady.  Imagine if that were to happen again! The worse the news becomes, the easier it is to become hopeful, almost to the point of escapism....

 Western Idaho.  Every year I look forward to riding the service road along an irrigation ditch that drags water over to an agricultural area a few miles away.  There is great shade; the slope of the road is 1%; and the water in the creek is so utterly soothing and drinkable for my little sweetie dog. Not this year!  The irrigation creek was dry, dead.  It might as well be in Arizona, rather than Idaho.  I was so disappointed. The good news is that I looked for tributaries coming into my irrigation creek, and observed where the water went.  It disappeared into a vertical pipe and then, presumably, turned 90 degrees into a horizontal pipe underneath the service road that I was riding on.  That way, a trench for the pipe did not have to be dug. Water a few feet under ground wouldn't freeze.  So the irrigation ditch just serves as overflow? Meanwhile, a pretty sky over an unusual flat spot in hill country:  Here is a video panning the hills...

Does anybody really like overly thick forests?  So it was good news when the Forest Service was doing some prescribed burns in early May in Idaho .  Conditions turned out to be too wet, according to what one guy told me.   It is quite something how versatile and powerful drones have gotten, and not just in war!  I stumbled onto the parking area for a drone-operating crew.  The drone was colored like a World War II battle tank, and was about 3 feet in diameter.  If you have only seen toy-like quadrocopters before, this thing would make you stop in your tracks.  I thought about what drones are doing in current wars.   Of course I wanted to pepper the operators with questions, but guys with a job to do can only spend so much time answering questions.  It was a quadro-copter , and ran on batteries.  But how did it help out with prescribed burns?   I imagined it shooting out a flame-thrower based on some kind of fuel....

 The bike ride wasn't too far below the snowline .  But how long would our luck last?  Nice, smooth, moderately steep gravel roads in an Idaho forest.  So many bicyclists miss out on this type of riding, probably because the industry doesn't promote it.  Maybe it is a good thing that gravel bikes were invented, although strictly speaking, a mountain bike is perfect for this kind of riding unless you are racing. 'Snowline' is a bit of a misnomer.  Actually, it is more of a transition zone, rather than a 'line.'  You expect to flip back and forth between wet gravel and barely passable snow banks.  It makes for a good simile with the idiotic back-and-forth behavior of Trumpanyahu's negotiations with Iran. Thus it was surprising to hit an 'end of the road' snowbank all at once at about 5900 feet. Back in ranch country ( sagebrush , grass, and cows) we saw a remarkably green patch.  It looked like a golf course, but wasn't of course.  T...

  Western Idaho .  Bears , mountain lions , and turkeys .  That's what the guy said they were hunting.  It seemed like an odd combination.  But that was the reason for the higher traffic on my new road. With all the distressing news these days, it is important to focus on things that might cheer you up a little.  Years ago I joked that, if motorsports-morons ever switched to electric side-by-sides , they would mount sub-woofers the size of a bale of hay in the cargo bed of their vehicle, and then use 250 Watts of power to pour out electrically-generated engine noise from the speakers. Well, I never miss a chance to ridicule the motorsports industry , even though I usually have friendly conversations with individual motorsports people. Recently I learned that Polaris , the biggest side-by-side producer in North America, now sells the " Kinetic " model, a real electric side-by-side.  It's about $30,000.  There are several You Tube videos on it....

There are times when a person shouldn't over-think the situation.  Nobody needs me to say something profound. There's a time for just wallowing in the satisfaction of water, vegetation, food, and cool breezes.  And no rubble. No thorns. Southeastern Oregon hills, early summer  

 I can't quite explain why meadowlarks are so enjoyable to listen to.  They are difficult to see because they run around on the ground or perch on low branches of sagebrush .  But I finally caught one of them, singing an operatic aria to the mountains of western Idaho . My little dog runs merrily through the grass, looking for critters: I think you can expand the photo with your fingers to find the little cutie in the center of the photo. A local ranch hand stopped by and chatted.  I love to soak up information, and hope that I don't overdo it and scare people off.  He said the yellow flower that grows all over the place in the spring provides a lot of protein to the cows.   Things like that are so important to somebody whose interests have shifted from scenery to Life.  Life needs Food and Water.  The grass around here is lushly green and has big seedheads.  You'd think seedheads would wait until late summer. At any rate, with such thi...

 There are times when Nature comes on as an irresistible force.  There is a violence to it.  It is relentless.  Only a few North Americans experienced the volcanic event of Mt. St. Helens .  More have experienced floods , hurricanes , tornadoes , wind, or ice storms . Recently I experienced the weird Trickster-God of nature: wet clay .  You can't necessarily see it coming from a distance, unless you see the deep tire ruts that somebody else put in it.  But the second you touch it with your feet, you just can't believe it. For one thing, your motor vehicle is stuck.  You get out to work on the situation, and you immediately have 3" of mud stuck on the bottom of your shoes, which you then track into your RV or motor vehicle. That happened to me recently with my RV.  It required a call to the towing insuring company .  It helps to remember that your insurance company might not cover you unless you are just off pavement or a maintained, gra...

 It makes good sense to feel sorry for certain countries whose livelihoods and standard of living are being run into the mud by the Israeli/American war of aggression against Iran.  It was not the fault of the people of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other countries in southeast Asia.  But they suffer nonetheless. Europe?  I don't really care about Europeans. On the other hand, Americans deserve to get it, good and hard.  Let's wallow in some schadenfreude if the American pickup truck market crashes.  You could say the same of RV s and side-by-sides .  I will feel content just to see these frivolous and stupid motor vehicles marked "For Sale" and parked near some highway or in a grocery store parking lot. If that makes me a bad guy, well, don't wait for an apology.

 Camping near water makes it seem like you are on a different planet for some campers (like me) who only do it once or twice a year.  A few feet away is the upstream end of Hell's Canyon .  The Snake River is blocked by dams of course. A reservoir of water brings boaters with a furious sense of urgency, even off-season.  What is the great attraction to water?  This is not to run their sport down.  It is just a chance to crawl into their heads. Driving a motorboat across a lake seems interesting for 3 minutes or so.  It just isn't all that exotic compared to driving a car to the grocery store.  Of course, on a hot day in July or August, getting wet is a great way to cool off!  Maybe much of the appeal of water doesn't come from its liquidness, but from it being public space.  Back in the city, the boater is boxed in by private property, traffic, rules, etc.   The camping here is pinched between the reservoir and the road. ...

 When it actually rains in a western state, you'd think the locals would declare a holiday and close schools for a day.  I usually rhapsodize over the rain.  But a long day of rain is quite different than a brief shower or rain at night.  I got two days in a row of all-day rain.  It has been about 3 years since that happened. There are ways to deal with this situation.  First, don't spend too many hours in bed or sitting in a chair.  The chair should have lumbar support .  Stand up and walk around in your RV every time you can think of an excuse. Adjust and adapt your clothing.  I have really benefited from the rubber " mud boots " I bought a couple years ago.  Dry feet can really encourage you. Last year I bought the first " rain suit " ( = jacket + pants) in years.  What really makes it work is its ability to slide over shoes.  Taking shoes off is too inconvenient.  It is surprising how small details help in the design ...