Occupation of Independence

Permission to speak freely? I have never envied men who camped with women. It's not that I don't appreciate women, it's just that the female camper usually seems like a proverbial 'fish out of water.' When I camped with a small band of RV campers this past summer, it really hit me that I had never considered this topic before, despite its importance to the human condition. Imagine the poor devil camping in the desert in winter, and having to listen to the lawnmower-like scream of a vacuum cleaner for hours a day. Think of all the electricity it wastes. And yet, the crazed woman never thinks things are clean enough. She fancies herself a nature-lover (aka, a scenery snacker). Yet she thinks dust blowing in the desert wind is unnatural. This is one of the many examples of a woman-camper being a liability to the poor fellow. But who wants to give up on half the human race that easily? Last summer my best conclusions about why women disliked camping were: They

One of black squares in my checkered past is a brief stint at teaching. I say "black" because I was aware I wasn't very good at it. This seemed unfair, because my father was an excellent teacher. Perhaps that is why I am enjoying mentoring Grasshopper as he hooks up the solar panels, battery charger, and inverter on his new Nash trailer. When he called up on the phone to buy my first trailer a couple years ago, I didn't think he showed much promise. He said that he had no house-handyman or technical experience. Worse yet, he didn't seem to desire overcoming that handicap. Any RVer who intends to camp outside RV parks and their hookups has to be a little bit willing to get involved with their RV. Buying my boondocking trailer from me was a deft move by him, because all that solar/battery/charger/inverter stuff was done. Even better, it was visible, because I treated the trailer as a cargo trailer wannabee. And he asked questions from time to time. Before ge

It is quite something how popular 24-hour races have become over the last few years. But why should that matter to anybody other than extreme athletes?  That was the challenge before me, as I camped in "Frogtown" and volunteered at the "longest 24 hour race in the world," so called because it goes from 10 am Saturday to 10 am Sunday, over the end of Daylight Savings Time. Thus it is 25 hours long in real time, and Frog-Time. Some "typical" scenery, mountain biking in central Utah. Practical benefit: I learned how some 29 inch mountain bikes will accommodate the 27.5 inch (aka, '650') wheels with 'plus' sized (wide) tires.  I was leaning to the 650 Plus bikes for my next mountain bike. Additional benefit: having my nose rubbed in the obsolete-ness of my 26 inch mountain bike. Will I even be able to buy tires for it five years from now? When roaming free range over a wide group of people, it is so easy to begin categorizing crea

Yesterday I had a nice visit with the fellow who bought my first trailer from me. He bought my trailer for $1800, camped full time in it for two years, and then sold it for $20oo. The bastard! I tend to treat him as my "grasshopper." So when the topic of loneliness came up, I was a bit disappointed to hear him endorse the "sacred solitude" paradigm of RV boondocking. But h e didn't outright deny experiencing loneliness as some solitary camp ers do. ______________________________________ Let's take an indirect approach to this issue of the loneliness of campers, by experiencing the human tribe at its best, during a festival. Currently I a m camping near, and volunteering for, a mountain bike race in southwestern Utah. 1. Racing. The fe stival is predicated on the idea that racing is supposed to be exciting. Observing the crowd's behav ior, this appears to be true. But it i s strange how any human endeavor must be turned into a competition. C

Some observations from my campround: 1. It is pleasant to talk to anyone who has some special interest and knowledge. They are rare. One camper was a serious jeeper. He taught me about the "pull-pal," a type of land anchor. It is a steel plow that digs its way into the ground when you pull on it with a winch. Perhaps even a "come-along" hand winch. Then it collapses/folds so that you can store it in your vehicle. Made in Carbondale, CO. 2. Had our first bicyclist from the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. (Adventure Cycling, Missoula, Montana.) Wish we had more of them. Maybe we aren't on their map. I have to admit that doing nothing but cycling all day and camping in a tent don't really appeal to me as a mode of travel.  Still, their stamina is certainly impressive.  3. One campsite had a large number of kids sitting on rocks, waiting for their meal. They looked so enchanted by the campfire. It would be fun to be invisible and hang out there and wa

What can you say about a camper who sells out to the Establishment, by flushing his principles and ideals down the toilet -- and a vault toilet at that!  Yes, reader, the unthinkable has happened: this old boy has become a campground host. I feel compelled to justify aberrant behavior of this type.  If there is a better way to finish off a life than achieving Moral Perfection, go ahead and tell me what it is. Good ol' Ben (Franklin) would not have approved of this project if it were just a sterile sentimentalism. In order for Moral Perfection to be real and solid, there must be some way of objectifying and validating it.  Otherwise, a person would just fool themselves with feelings that bounce around in the echo chamber of their own skull. One way of validating this project is to look at the effect we have on other people. That is why solitary camping needs to be abandoned. In the tab at the top of the screen, entitled "Summiting: Ideals and Suffering," there are m

Let no one confuse a retro-grouch with a human fossil. This retro-grouch made a giant leap forward when I bravely submitted to my first demonstration of Facebook. The fellow who gave the tutorial was quite good at giving demonstrations. Actually, I was impressed with Facebook as a platform. It seemed useful for certain types of groups. It seemed well integrated with other platforms on the internet. So then, if I was so impressed with it, why haven't I opened up an account? Two things are stopping me. 1. Won't I lose control of ad-blocking on Facebook? Please don't tell me that ads are not too obtrusive, so far. On an internet browser such as Firefox, you can use a free ad-blocking program that works 98% of the time. I am suspicious that most of the bandwagon towards smartphones and Facebook is ultimately motivated by the desire to get people addicted to a platform first, and then bury them under ads that they can't do anything about. 2. Thoreau's classic wise-crac

It is so strange going through small towns in the ranching country of the West. Especially shopping. You can not avoid the feeling that the purpose of life for these businesses is to be closed. No wonder there is a Dollar Store in the tiniest and most impoverished town. Show Low, AZ, is one of the few shopping meccas for me, on my annual loop. As always, I visited a couple car dealerships. I come away shaking my head about how ignorant car salesmen are about the product itself. They only know about the process of selling: demographics, applied psychology, and filling out the paperwork. The average customer could not care less about the $60,000 pickup truck they just got suckered into. They only care about the monthly payment and whether it is huge and showy, and raises their self-esteem. Imagine that: a culture where people get a boost to their self-esteem by being a fool! But this post has good news: I had a wonderful time at my favorite store for outdoor products. I didn't ev

M id-February was so warm that I said goodbye to the hiking season and hello to the mountain biking season for the next 10 months or so. I was biking down a dirt/gravel road in southeastern Arizona. Suddenly I felt misty-eyed. How strange! I am not one of th o se modern 'sensitive' men who acts weepie and huggie because he has been told to do so. In fact, in all the years (19) that I've been in this racket, this is the first time this happened. (Long-suffering readers of this blog know the formula by now: observe something odd or experience something unusually affecting, and then try to explain it by walking my way to the general and timeless.) Perhaps I was affected by southeastern Arizona having some of my favorite balanced scenery, that is, grasslands in the foreground and mountains in the background. And oak trees ! In contrast I have little interest in the pine monocultures that cover most of the mountains in the West. Or maybe it was the realization that

Long-suffering readers know that I like to poke fun -- gently I hope -- at campers who are Gandhi or Thoreau wannabees. They also know that I am not a solar purist. A rational and professional camper uses technology up to the point of diminishing returns. (Or more correctly, the point of diminishing marginal utility.) And yet there are solar purists who make it work for them. People who have vans or motorhomes probably don't count, since they can always charge their house batteries from their engine battery on a cloudy day. So let's only discuss trailers. A trailer-puller can connect their tow vehicle to the trailer, and run the engine. But that charges too slowly, perhaps 7 or 8 Amps. So what do you do when you finally admit that even Arizona is not sunny every day, and that you occasionally park under trees, or near the perpetually cloudy Coast? Buy a windmill? Never heard anything good about them. Besides, you need to supplement a solar system with a secondary system t

Winter campers might argue about what the best kind of heater is, but frankly, I don't like using a heater at all -- for the obvious reasons of fuel cost, safety, and condensation. Besides, it seems wimpy. There is another approach to winter heating. I owe this success to a camping neighbor. He doesn't buy expensive leather outfits for riding his Harley, but instead wears insulated bib overalls from Walmart. Well of course, that is what mechanics, construction workers, and oilfield workers wear in the winter.  (I love having useful conversations with camping neighbors. Especially when they mention some trick-of-the-trade that I have overlooked. These conversations are so much more valuable tha n the usual small talk, long-winded stories about the past, personality salesmanship, etc.) I have never owned bib overalls. But I took his advice and bought a pair of Walls brand from Walmart for $70. The insulation is not really thick, but they aren't supposed to be a sno

What should an experienced outdoorsman look for in a hackneyed location like Moab, UT? Certainly not the iconic red rock arches and canyons. They are justly famous, but you've seen them a hundred times in jeep commercials, cellphone commercials, nature pin-up calendars, etc. They belong to everybody and to nobody. They certainly cannot belong to you. But that doesn't mean you should just give up, and relegate Moab to the tourist trade, as I used to do. When the weather was still a little summer-ish, my dog and I started a mountain bike ride before most of the tourists were up. As always, we wanted to beat the heat. We started going downhill; not far, maybe 300-400 feet. I was shocked at how chilly it was getting. In fact, I wished I had gloves on! At the bottom of the canyon I was amazed to find a "crystal house" of dew, that is, preternaturally dense dew, glazed onto grasses in a little swale.  It reminded me of the ice crystal house in Dr. Zhivago. The movie w

You would think that a lot of experience at camping would toughen a fellow up, considerably. But rain and mud have a way of humbling me. Nevertheless, for the fourth time in two days, I narrowly escaped getting stuck in the mud, thanks in part to actually taking advice from a local expert about mud on certain roads in the Moab area. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Taking advice. It is certainly good news to become a 'wise old man' who is willing to finally do so. And yet, it is hard to break the changes down that happen to a person who becomes 'older and wiser.' Perhaps a person becomes humbler and more cautious with each misadventure that happens in life. It finally seems inconvenient, expensive, and stupid to have to learn everything the hard way. Misadventures have lost their romantic charm. There was another reason for my narrow and successful escapes. I had a pair of rubber-bottomed boots in my van. Rather than rashly bulling my way through the mud,

Every backcountry traveler or camper has had a nightmarish experience with wet clay roads. But do you know about "anti-clay", that is, a surface that is as miraculous on the positive side as wet clay is on the negative? It is easy to be ignorant of what causes wet clay's amazing properties. It would be so nice to learn about things when they make huge impressions on you -- that is the very time when you are motivated to learn.  There might be a really good source of popular science out there, but I haven't found it yet. (And extra credit to any reader who has any ideas on this.) I am familiar with Wikipedia and "How Things Work". They both help. But the Wikipedia articles on a scientific topic quickly degenerate into the algebraic patois of the specialist, which makes for excruciating reading. What I need to find is popular science, written by an educated layman or generalist, with a minimum of info-mercial intrusions. But let's get back to &qu

Well, thank goodness that last post is over. It doesn't happen very often: this blogger flipping into "prophet" mode, and coming down from the mountain top with stone tablets, full of warnings and proscriptions to the Children of the Wheel. So let's just reiterate the bottom line: Counter-intuitive habit #1 = Learning to start an outing going downhill, when it makes sense. At the moment I am trying to entice a friend to come up and camp with me. She has the most perfect rig I have ever seen for hook-up-free camping, down dirt roads, on public land. And coming from me, that is worth something. It is a "Tiger." In fact, considering how illogical most people's rig-choices are, it might make sense to say that choosing a Tiger is on our official list of counter-intuitive camping habits. Let's let that stew awhile... Unfortunately I suspect that she is still a slave of "real" showers, as one gets at New Mexico's state parks. My serm

I just got back from an unusual mountain bike ride, that is, one in which I was successfully miserable. It started going downhill. Oh what a sinking feeling that is, literally and figuratively! It is so easy to dig a hole for yourself so deep that digging out of it will be pure misery. The same could be said of hiking down into a canyon at the beginning of a hike. Consider for a moment how unnatural it is: when you were a child, your mother trained you to finish off your carrots and peas first -- bleah! -- before you earned dessert. That is the feeling you get starting a mountain bike uphill. You can get so addicted to the rhythm of depleting yourself on the ascent and to the smug satisfaction of resting at a scenic high spot, before turning around and whooping it up on the descent. Now consider the opposite: descending at the beginning, and being chilly. When you turnaround now, it is later in the morning, and you are digging out of your hole in warmer air. That is just plain perv