Occupation of Independence

With every passing year, I find it easier to admire people for various activities and skills, while at the same time, feeling no desire to emulate them.  Mountaineering is a good example of that.   One mountaineering writer -- perhaps it was Jon Krakauer -- was asked what he did when bad weather set in, trapping him in a tent for a couple days.  He said he picked a lot of lint out of all the velcro in his equipment and clothing. With that advice in mind, what should a camper do when it rains and he fears muddy roads ?   Step one is to move towards town, pavement, and shopping.  Step two: go to an actual laundromat and stuff your big things into one of their larger machines.  The next step is something I really went crazy with, today. Your storage and organization of equipment tends naturally towards maximum entropy every day.  It adds up, over time.  After all that time of putting it off, I finally went crazy organizing nuts, bolts,...

 Recently I had another look at Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly."  It was interesting, but the book was written a few decades ago and needs a Rev. 2.0 update.  The update should be called "The March of Suicide." 'Folly' is just too mild a word for what is happening these days.  Never before in my lifetime have I seen several important countries attempting suicide, at the same time.  There have been some remarkable examples of attempted and successful suicide in the past: 1. Jewish stubbornness and provocation of the Roman Empire , ending in the destruction of Jerusalem. 2. The refusal to surrender by some cities in central Asia after getting an ultimatum from Genghis Khan . 3. Napoleon's unnecessary invasion of Russia in 1812 . 4. Britain's unnecessary involvement in World War I . 5. The Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 6. The Ukrainian people allowing "their" (post-elected-term) government to continue a lost war agains...

 Given the forecast of more rain, it made sense to hang around in town on paved roads for another day or two.  But I ended up shopping too much, and that is nerve-wracking.  So I headed out to a favorite area in central Utah :    Maybe I would get lucky with the mud.  The sky was fairly bright, actually, so I was optimistic.  But when you see tire ruts in the dirt road ahead, you know you are in trouble. There were hardly any puddles, so the road didn't seem  that wet.  So why was I losing traction and fishtailing on a flat road?    The traction control system lit up the dashboard like a Christmas tree.  It would then shut down the throttle, which is annoying to a driver.  I did better with the damned thing turned off.  I really should have let some air out of the tires.  Trying to get the van tires over the most gravelly part of the road did more good than anything.  What an utterly perverse surface!...

As a reminder, comments are no longer moderated on this blog, so your comments will appear immediately.  We do not mention specific locations.  Once again I want to praise Pacific hurricanes to the sky.  Despite being so far inland, Central Utah felt the most recent one (Rachel) to smack southern California and northern Baja.  I got a reminder of how much care a camper needs to use to stay out of the mud.  It is ironic: when rain finally comes to this gawdforsaken wasteland, I go into a mild panic instead of enjoying it as much as it should be enjoyed. Clothing is important.  Rubberized boots certainly help.  And rainsuits (jacket and pants) with the all-important property of the pants slipping on and off over shoes.  Even something as simple as a baseball hat helps, since it keeps rain off you face and eyeglasses. It happens so rarely that I am 'out of shape' when it comes to the flexibility that rain requires.  A momentary break in the rai...

 I believe it is possible to construct a survivable and stable solution to the mess in the Persian Gulf.  Let's call it the " Greater Persian Gulf Co-Prosperity Sphere ", administered by Iran.  (No facetiousness.)  Iran would charge a hefty transit fee at the Strait of Hormuz , and some of the money would be shifted to Gulf countries that have become friendly to Iran and unfriendly to Washington DC and Israel. What is so bad about global wealth shifting toward energy and resource producers, and away from parasitic consumers? But food will cost more because of high diesel prices , you say.  What is so bad about shifting to more locally-produced food , with its lower transportation cost? When people talk about the cost of energy being a 'tax' or drag on the economy, they act as if your energy usage is absolutely fixed.  Walk into your local grocery store and look at the cars.  They aren't cars, of course, they are monstrous F-150 pickup trucks .  A...

 I am experimenting with NOT moderating comments on this blog.  Let's hope the spammers don't invade.  Last time, it was strange cows.  Now it is horses acting unusual.   Last year it was a weird bighorn ram.  This horse was too friendly.  But that's OK, he and his friends were sure pretty:        Maybe animals have been acting so strange because, in Utah, they have never seen a human being walking or riding a bike.  They have only seen humans in motorized side-by-sides.   Remember the curious ram from last year?    

 Cows can act strangely around mountain bikes.  They started running along the dirt road ahead of my bike, instead of running off perpendicularly.  And they kept at it, going uphill for a couple hundred feet!  When were they going to get sensible?  I smiled thinking about the "Rollin', rollin', rollin" theme music of the old TV western, "Rawhide."   I got some better photos of my 'pet' balanced rock: The next morning a bull walked slowly down the road, bellowing loudly and repeatedly.  Then a cattle truck came and gave him an 'uber' ride down the mountain.  At the foot of the mountain, a man was riding a horse.  What a tall and proud beast!  His wife was also on a horse and had a toddler sitting on the saddle, ahead of her.  The little guy managed to drop one of his size 2 cowboy boots on the ground.  I picked it up so that the mother didn't have to dismount. I asked if the ranching business was doing well, now that beef was 6 ...

 Sing the praises of hurricanes coming in from the Pacific Ocean!  That is what it took for a couple days of rain to hit Utah.  Actually it is pretty impressive how far inland the rain can come. After a couple days of bliss, it went back to looking like Utah. People who haven't seen red rock before go absolutely crazy over it.  But that kind of infatuation is not long-lasting.  Personally I move onto shapes of various kinds.  It is strange how a guy can stay interested in shapes forever -- and maybe it is a guy thing. It is easy for a dog-lover to remain permanently in love with dog photos, of course:    How many ' balanced rocks ' are marked on map's in this world?  I shudder to think about asking AI that question.  Regardless of its answer about "America's Top Ten" balanced rocks, and regardless of the tourist industry's effort to make a minor tourist attraction out of them, most of the fun comes from discovering them for yourself su...