Occupation of Independence

Maybe he was right after all; the commenter that is. Recently a commenter chided me on my inconsistency in denigrating single-track riding when mountain biking, since I usually praise the Agony-and-Ecstasy dualities of heat/cold, downhill/uphill, Dry Heat/monsoons, city/outback, etc.  I just got back from a "nice" ride today. You know what? I feel disappointed compared to the ride a couple days ago, when several things went wrong. "Nice" sort of means "boring." I was following an ATV trail. Who says that motorized and non-motorized sports can't be compatible? The trail was smooth and troughed. It was delightful to mountain bike on, and it was a perfect running track for my kelpie, Coffee Girl. Then it started dying step-by-step. First it devolved from a two track to a single track; then it became a gnarly hiking trail; finally it turned into a game trail with fallen logs every few feet. My gosh, does it ever get tiresome to lift a heavy

Arizona's White Mountains, Springerville. Actually it seems less like mountains around here than high lava-based plateaus with occasional volcanic knolls. Some of these were connected by a grassy ridgeline, and you know how I get with ridgelines and saddles. But first... Since there are new readers on this blog lately, some explanation should be offered to them as to why I don't show them scenic postcard after postcard of all the photo cliches of the West: Monument Valley, red arches in Utah, snow-capped peaks in the Rockies, etc.  The short answer is that I see full time RVing as a profession or occupation, not as a short term vacation. If you are looking for scenery-based escapism, you have arrived at the wrong blog. Let's make the case for appreciating these high grassy plateaus, knolls, and ridgelines by looking back to something I wrote earlier when visiting the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Then, after the second horizontal line, I'll return

Springerville, AZ. On a sunset walk one night, Coffee Girl and I crossed a large pasture at 9200 feet. Dark forests lined the edge of it. At that edge she went looking for trouble, and you know what dogs usually find when they go looking for trouble... Something was behind the downed dead log. It made a horrendous sound and started moving. Try as I might, no words adequately describe that sound. The creature stood up, as Coffee Girl ran circles around it, and barked her head off. After panicking for a couple seconds I finally got a view of the monster: But where was Momma? Was she just off looking for food while "Bambi" stayed behind and hid next to a log? Or was Bambi a young orphan and about to starve to death or, if she was lucky, get eaten by a predator? OK I might as well admit that I felt an urge to bring Bambi food and water, except that I had no idea of what kind of food would be accepted. But more importantly Bambi is wildlife, not a pet. The predator or sca

Since being listed on hitchitch.com recently (due to no effort of mine) this blog has many new readers. I probably owe it to them to tell them about this blog so they don't waste their time. This is not one more RV blog that discusses where the blogger is today, whether he got the oil changed at Walmart, or whether RV toilet paper should be one ply or two. Nor am I interested in selling you solar panels, LED lights, etc. Presumably you don't need me to tell you that there is 'breathtakingly beautiful' scenery in XYZ national park. I don't want more readers -- I want better readers and commenters. So then, let's put our newbie readers through a sink-or-swim test by depriving them of the travel escapism and eye candy that they expect. _______________________________________ Anyone who reads a lot of editorials and opinion on the internet must feel frustrated much of the time. So it is a pleasure to announce a rare victory: an editorial that is worth rehash