Occupation of Independence

...positive inches, when you're lucky. I've done a lot of back-and-forth about whether my next travel trailer should be a converted cargo trailer 6 foot or 7 foot wide. When we discussed trailer size a few months back, didn't an experienced RV camper say that width doesn't matter much? He wasn't necessarily wrong, of course. It all depends on your camping style. If you spend a lot of time camping in ponderosa forests, where trees are far enough apart to suck you in, width does matter. Note the driver's side mirror and the nearest tree. To heck with 7 foot wide trailers. Six feet is the width of the tow vehicle. But in this case, I was using a flank attack (where width mattered) rather than a direct frontal assault, where ground clearance was even trickier. It's an example of how logically-distinct design criteria blur together in the real world. At any rate, the campsite (near Luna, NM) was worth it. The forest fire last year near Glenwood NM. 

Silver City, NM. People who don't walk or mountain bike with dogs might not realize that they can be an asset in finding wildlife. They might think the dog would just chase off the wildlife or scare them away. But it's easy to forget the power of a canine's olfactory. They know something is up, when the human is oblivious. Coffee Girl disports with a Pronghorn Antelope, on sagebrush hills near Gunnison, CO Yesterday Coffee Girl, my kelpie, took off like a maniac. Soon I heard her barking in an uncharacteristic style. Actually that's a misnomer. Dogs bark in different styles for different prey. I was alarmed by this particular bark, so I ran over to her.  She had treed something. She had her front paws on a tall pinyon pine. (This area is full of the tallest pinyons I've ever seen.) She looked rather triumphant about it. I had to look carefully, but there it finally was: a coatimundi, the first I've ever seen. Interesting creatures. ______________

When the mountain bike frame cracked a couple days ago, I was resigned to the worst: a new frame or maybe even a new bike. It is too bad that the industry has gone to 5-year frame warranties. Annie, of Twin Sisters bicycle shop in Silver City NM, surprised me when she mentioned a local guy who has done TIG (tung sten inert gas) welding of aluminum bicycle frames. Here is the happy outcome : A TIG-welded aluminum bicycle frame repair job. His price was ridiculously low. Since the bicycle shop deprived itself of selling a new frame (or even a new bicycle) by providing this information, I went back and gave her a generous "finder's fee," which surprised and pleased her. A commenter, Brian, recommended welding a triangular gusset at the broken joint. I agree with him. In this case the welder chose not to do that because he thought he'd get too close to the carbon-fiber suspension parts (the little black swing arm, in the photo). Instead, he chose to build up

It wouldn't be so bad -- really -- to come home one day and find that your wife ran off with an itinerant revival preacher, that your pickup truck was towed and impounded, and that your dawg was run over. At least they'd write a country/western sawng about you. But who is going to give any sympathy to a mountain biker with a broken heart and a cracked frame? It cracked some time last week, just fore of the seat post/top tube weld. Sigh. With a little bit of analysis I think I know who the culprit is. I had ridden with a rear rack that was cantilevered off of the seat post, because you can't mount a standard rack on a full suspension bike, which bends after all. The rack warns people to put no more than 25 pounds on it. I put on less than half that. With 20/20 hindsight I suspect that their number was pulled out of thin air (or the next most imaginary source, computer modelling.) It would be too expensive for the rack manufacturer to do real-world, destru