Occupation of Independence

Expect to see some visually unspectacular photographs the next few days. I'm back at a seasonal haunt, dispersed camping in the Green Valley, AZ area. There are several landmarks around here, such as Elephant Head... ...that I look forward to seeing. They are certainly helpful for navigational purposes. But they are better yet as fiducial points of time. There is always some cognitive dissonance in making this switch from space to time. Tomorrow morning, 'time' will get turned back into 'space.' It's really nice coming back to some of the same places at the same time of year. These landmarks become old friends who are eager to greet you. For the first time in a long time I actually wish one of my gadgets would wear out prematurely, so I can replace it with a new one. This place would be a good fit with the sweep panorama cameras made by Sony. On the ride today, Coffee Girl and I revisited a potential campsite alongside a large arroyo, washing

Oh sure, when you go shopping for a truck or van and a trailer, there are plenty of things that could discourage you. But w ith some effort you can see them as grimly humorous. Or you could put on your optimist-hat and say, with some irony, that the shopping experience confirms that Dr. Pangloss (aka, Leibniz) was right: we really do live in the best of all possible worlds. I said 'ironic' because the average product made by the vehicle industry is probably better than what the average customer deserves. Most customers only care about the vehicle or RV as a fashion statement, a sex object, or a status symbol. Although they buy -- or rather, they borrow -- on that basis, they later come to regret on the basis of engineering trade-offs, those sober and grown-up issues that would be too boring or nerdish to consider at the point of sale. These have been my prejudices for years, and they were confirmed by a day of shopping for a new trailer and van or pickup in Tucson. My fi

Tucson, AZ. When a full-time traveler pulls into town, a ritual ensues. Much of it is just shopping and errands. But more importantly, the traveler begins once again to reconstruct a lifestyle, always hoping to improve on the last place. Metaphor #1. For some reason I never saw the similarity of this reconstruction to something I was "brainwashed" with, as a child. My father, a teacher, would go down to the woodshop and collect sets of four or eight identical pieces of wood, sometimes blocks, sometimes round columns or other shapes. He would sand them off nicely for his two sons. Those were our toys and we ended up with a large box of them. We didn't have many plastic commercial toys or gadgets.  Hour after hour, day after day, my brother and I would build skyscrapers out of these wooden blocks. When the skyscraper reached as high we could reach, we would admire it for 3 seconds, pull a block out of the lower corner, and then laugh with boyish delight at the collaps

Some time ago I wrote about how over-rated the "happiness software" industry is, and how human happiness is not that much different from animal happiness, because both are primarily hardware. Readers didn't buy it . Very well then. How do they explain the little poodle in the photo? Has he just downloaded an upgrade to some trendy happiness-software? Could the operating system be tween those fuzzy ears even handle sophisticated software? Or maybe he has just read a special doggie version of Norma n Vincent Peale or the latest and greatest self-help guru ? A man will be happy under pretty much the same conditions that a dog will be: t he dog-pack 's wild romp is similar enough to a human tr ibe's hunting trip. The best proof of this is to watch a rampaging horde of bicyclists, all feeding off each others energy. Consider my bicycling club's recurring game of "king of the mountain." In the Yuma area there is only one real hill, the mou