Occupation of Independence

Live long enough and you'll have a chance to witness just about any food fad: one year a bombshell is dropped on a slow news day: fad-ogen correlates with cancer! The food conglomerates begin pumping out (higher priced) "new and improved" versions of the most boring foods, boasting about how low in fadogens they are. The mayor of a big city on the coast bans fadogen from school cafeterias and vending machines. Rumors fly that that the mayor might be appointed Secretary of Education or Surgeon General in the new Democratic administration. But soon fadogen becomes yesterday's news. Just then, a new blockbuster book comes out revealing that fadogen is actually healthy. Not only that, but fadogen is the only thing that one should eat. The author makes the circuit of TV talk shows, gives lectures for a six digit fee, and becomes quite the celebrity. Rumors fly that the author (a marketing major in college) might be in the running for the next Nobel prize in medicine.

One of these days somebody needs to construct a Top Ten list of ludicrous obsolescences: those anachronisms that somehow survive in the modern world, despite being way past their shelf life. Certainly Independence Day in America would make it near the top.

I really thought I was dreaming last night when I heard raindrops falling on the roof. And it persisted! Those who haven't experienced dry climates might not appreciate how brutal aridity can become, at times. But what should a person do to honor the occasion after a long drought is finally broken? Maybe the answer is in Frazer's The Golden Bough . It bothers me that I am living in a RV park surrounded by standard RV indoorsmen; the culture here encourages one to say, "So it rained last night, for the first time in six months. Big deal. What's on TV? Should we go out to eat?" On an unrelated topic, my 2004-era laptop is having trouble starting up Windows. It seems foolish to take it to a shop: all they will do is run an anti-virus program on it, and charge $100. Does anyone -- Apple groupies excepted -- have an 11.6" netbook (no optical drive, and low power consumption) in mind, that they would recommend?

It's a little hard to place this blog in the correct genre, since it's a hybrid -- or "bastard" if you prefer. RV, travel, camping, doggie outdoor lifestyle, walking/hiking and bicycling are all accurate phrases, but it doesn't fit cleanly into any of these pure categories. All in all, this pleases me. I can't imagine a better way to camp than with a smaller and less expensive RV, a dog, and a mountain bike. While readying my rig to start traveling again, it was profoundly satisfying to arrange the contents of my cargo van, yesterday. It was probably the same primal satisfaction that any animal gets when they rearrange their den or nest. So why didn't I ever experience that satisfaction when I owned a regular stick-and-brick house?

How can I do things better than before? That is the main question as I tool up for traveling again. Essentially, my answer is to push harder in the camping direction, as opposed to stereotypical RV travel or windshield tourism. Of course an RVer need not adopt a "camping" orientation at all, and most of them don't. But let's not talk about that. There are some bicycle touring blogs who interrupt their routine descriptions of ride statistics or camping details with perspectives about the real benefits of what they are doing: what satisfactions are they getting that couldn't be gotten by a more conventional lifestyle. They enjoy consciously dwelling on the things that a person with a conventional lifestyle takes for granted. And they like being inventive.