Occupation of Independence

Being able to ignore national holidays is not the smallest advantage of an independent lifestyle. Still, they give opportunities for thought, especially when they are as weird as Valentine's Day. Look at how the marketing hype panders to women, with the jewelry, chocolates, restaurant events, etc. Isn't this just a bit slatternly, 40 years after women's lib? Valentine's Day is a perfect example of how 'there is no new thing under the sun.' Women always have and always will run a sexual extortion racket to their own advantage. Believe it or not, I don't really blame them for this. Biology and evolution have dumped a lot of overhead on the females. Males get most of the pleasure from reproduction, while women get stuck with the consequences. So there is a rough justice in women using their weapons to get even. Their imperiousness used to irk me when I was a young man. Old age has moderated this. Getting a female dog has had an even bigger effect. It was amus

Update: on the bicycle ride home today I stopped by the German Shepherd's house in the barrio that I ride through. He had almost completely recovered from his crash with the car! Then he confronted me like he was auditioning for a bit role in Stalag 17 . He was off-leash, so I called Animal Control. During the recent sub-zero night there was an element of playful adventure and even drama. But the dominant mood was one of anger. I was furious about being so weak and letting winter cold beat me. This became so noticeable that there had to be something larger at stake. In Lawrence of Arabia a newspaper reporter asked Lawrence what he liked personally about the desert. It's clean, he said. Keep in mind that Hollywood scriptwriters will put a western movie in Dodge City, Kansas, with Rocky Mountains in the background. The desert is not clean, but winter cold is. Perhaps it can fascinate us because of the clarity that it brings to life; it condenses issues into a manageable vie

One thing that I've learned about being cold is that you reach a point where you just can't put on enough clothes to help. You must move. The only thing possible in a small RV is doing push-ups. I tried that, and with good results. Normally I use closed-cell foam pads underneath my hands for comfort's sake; on this minus 2 F morning, the foam took on a compression-set that recorded an impression of my wrists and palms. I couldn't do push-ups for the next five hours until sunrise, so I popped Lawrence of Arabia into the DVD player, hoping that the desert scenery would warm me up, at least psychologically. It didn't work. There was only one more card to play: going into the campground's shower room and taking a 30 minute, scalding hot shower at their expense. But this seemed unsporting and unmanly, so I declined. What is the appeal of "cold survival" stories? Is it in our DNA? It has been a big part of living for much of the history of our species. R

I woke up at 1 a.m. last week. Something was different. I was just too cold to sleep, despite wearing a winter parka to bed, as well as boots, polartec pants, and a warm skull cap, all underneath two layers of warm sleeping bags. The catalytic propane heater was set on high; those things are fine for a mobile RVer who chases the warmth in winter, but in a real winter they must be supplemented with an electric heater that blows the air around a little. For the first time the electrical heater also needed to be clicked on high. I made breakfast, not because I was hungry, but just for the heat from the stove and for an excuse to stand and stomp my feet. The water pump wouldn't turn on of course. (I never use water hoses from the campsite spigot in winter.) But tonight was a first: the toilet froze. It was necessary to boil water on the stove and then pour it into the toilet to thaw the trap door. The water that I spilled on the bathroom floor soon froze. The thermometer said it w