Adaptive Curmudgeon

My 4×4 truck has no heat. No worries. Heat’s not rocket science and I was far more concerned with complex stuff like locking differentials and shit. Also, I’m open to unusual solutions…

C’mon… isn’t that photo bad ass?

Anyway, I mentioned that my truck isn’t yet rebuilt enough for winter fun. “…it doesn’t have heat. I don’t mean the canvas top and the ungasketed windows are drafty, I mean it’s utterly 100% unheated. The components that once did that are long gone. There is no insulation anywhere and no heat at all. In winter it’s like riding in a vibrating refrigerated steel box.”

I got several comments about how to plumb into the vehicle’s coolant lines and work up a heater. I get it but that’s not my plan. Since my truck has no heat and all of the parts that I’d need are gone I have a blank slate. The truck’s cab is tabula rasa baby! My plan is to install a diesel furnace.

Now hear me out…

You see that? It’s a VEVOR 8KW Diesel Heater, Diesel Heater All in One with Remote Control and LCD Screen.

IT’S GLORIOUS!

I bought it for myself as a Christmas present. It’s not installed yet but I did some preliminary tinkering. I know the thing works. I was pleased with its performance. It even has a remote and has things like a thermostat.

I really like this idea. There’s thinking outside the box and there’s drop kicking that damn box into the cheap seats. A diesel heater is NOTHING LIKE a regular car’s heater. In my mind, it’s better.

There are pros and cons. Pro:

• A diesel heater cranks out heat like a boss. My truck’s heater (even when new) sucked. Rebuilding or replacing it with basically the same thing isn’t going to give me the blast furnace, camp on a frozen lake in the middle of January because you roll that way, heat. I fired up the heater for a test run in my garage and it rocks!
• A diesel heater doesn’t get its BTUs from “waste heat” in the vehicle’s engine coolant system. Ever waited while a stone cold car took forever to generate heat to defrost the windshield? During testing I got full throttle heat out of the 8KW Vevor in less than a minute. My old truck might take 20 minutes to warm up like that.
• A diesel heater, being unrelated to the truck’s engine can make heat even if the engine is shut down. The sole limit is that it needs enough 12v juice to fire and run a small fan. Beyond that, it’ll run all day and all night without needing a truck at all.
• This is the the big pro: being unrelated to the truck, the heater could be removed from the truck and used elsewhere. Imagine some glorious future where I setup my super awesome winter tent and route furnace heat into it! Just let that idea roll around in your head for a while. Savor it. Be one with it. Grok the implications! That’s a big deal. Possibly the biggest of the big. If portable reliable externally vented heat doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, then you’ve never truly been cold.
• Being unrelated to the truck, the odds of losing heat AND engine simultaneously is vastly reduced. If I’m out in the freezing outback and smash a rock so hard I shove my truck’s driveline spline through the bell housing… well at least I’ve got heat. If the heater craps out… well at least I can drive home. This “redundancy” might same my ass someday.
• It’s relatively cheap. I left this for last because it’s hard to believe it. The heater, which is an “all in one” system set me back about 150 clams. It would be hard to create or rebuild a heating system that doesn’t cost a similar amount. That said, it’s not all about money. I’m more concerned with max heat with redundancy than the absolute cheapest solution.

Cons:

• It’s fueled by a small fuel tank. It’s 1.3 gallons and you can even use “farm diesel” but you’ll have to top it off. Forget and you’ve got no heat. I’m sure I’ll spill it all over the place every time I fill it up.
• It’s not “waste heat” so the fuel ain’t free. That said, I don’t care. Suppose you got stuck in a snowdrift and turned your engine off (to avoid carbon monoxide death) but ran your fancy furnace (which has a properly vented exhaust pipe) on high for 8 hours straight. If you had to pay $4 for a full night’s very strong and reliable heat, would you care? What about if it was heating your tent or ice shack all night? The little beast is pretty efficient. It burns supposedly between .04 and .16 gallons per hour. The literature says the tank capacity can run 8 hours at the maximum listed consumption setting. Because no sane human knows what these fractions of a gallon mean, I interpret it as between 1/3 and 1 1/3 pints per hour. For the American based alcoholics out there, it’ll burn less than two cans of shitty beer in volume for an hour on “blast furnace” mode. You’ll most certainly not run it that hard. I was messing around and the thermostat cycles on and off just like a house furnace. Also that dumb little lunchbox took a fair shot at heating my entire garage just during testing. Also, I’m not suggesting you drink diesel instead of shitty beer.
• The heater wants 12v, my truck is 24v. Bummer! This too can be handled but it ain’t plug and play.
• This is the big con: I need to route exhaust and power systems and output hoses and stuff like that. It’s not like you can just toss it in the back seat and turn it on.

Stay tuned for part 2.

I ordered a NOCO Genius 1 and it arrived in a few days. I installed it on my old ATV (or rather plugged it to the pigtails I’d already wired to its battery). It looks like this:

In my last post I mentioned I’d installed a NOCO GC002 X-Connect M6 Eyelet Terminal Accessory on the ATV’s battery. I’d bought that accessory a couple years ago and thought it was necessary. At the time I was trying to swap one maintainer to several machines. If you swap one maintainer to several machines you’re going to need extra pigtails (which I bought while bitching about the price). I forgot that each  NOCO Genius 1 comes with pigtails that are fine to be hooked directly to little (motorcycle/ATV/lawnmower) batteries but too small for big car sized batteries.

Given the cheap cost of the little 1 amp charger, I have no idea why I was going through gyrations trying to use multiple pigtails with one charger. Maybe inflation has changed the maintainer/battery cost ratio?

The pigtails (included with a NOCO Genius 1) have a fuse on the hot (red) side (fuse included), their proprietary plug (that fits all of the maintainers I’ve bought so I can swap maintainers at will), and alligator clips. The pigtails look like this:

Alligator clips work on any battery, but I remove them because I’m not a Neandertal. Just kidding. It just feels more civilized to install pigtails right to a battery so that’s what I prefer. That way I can plug in any Noco maintainer without opening the hood or anything.

The pigtails are designed to have the clips removed easily. Just remove the little screw. Since every maintainer has a set of alligator clips and I hate alligator clips (preferring pigtails) I have a pile of leftover alligator clips. I use them to close half eaten potato chip bags… which is the manliest of all potato chip bag clips. BTW: The clips are pretty well built, they’re not flimsy at all.

One other note, the clips for Noco’s maintainers are different than the clips for Noco’s jump starters. The former are pretty beefy, but the latter are much beefier. On the smallest jump starters, the clips are almost as big as the tiny battery itself; as if you’re planning to reanimate a freight train. I don’t complain because thick wires and clips make it work so very well with the high amp task of a jumpstart.

The drawback is that I have to carry jumpstart clips with the Noco Boost Sport GB20 battery pack that lives on my dirt bike. It’s not built to jump start the bike through the maintainer pigtail (though if ever got desperate I’d try it). The big “jump start” clips are an unavoidable extra few ounces I add to my two wheeled mule in the interest of being unstoppable.

Back to the topic at hand, the proprietary plug between the maintainer and the pigtails is idiot proof. One side is round and the other is a pentagon, you can’t plug it in “backwards”. The clip also has a little red lever that snaps the two sides together and holds everything tight while you abandon your beloved ATV/motorcycle for weeks or months at a time. The lever is big enough you can see it in dim light and it’s idiot proof enough you can plug it in while wearing mittens.

This is what the pigtail looks like hanging off a generic old ATV. Someday I’ll use zip ties to “clean up” the install but it was getting cold. I’ve got similar pigtails coming out from under seats or access panels on all of my motorcycles. They’ve ridden thousands of miles that way with no issues. There’s a little waterproof cap on the pigtail too.

Pics or it didn’t happen. Here’s the biggest baddest ATV of two decades ago when big and bad meant “it has 4×4 and a massive 325 cc motor”. I’m rather impressed how well the little ATV has held up.

In 2022 I decided to get my mechanical ducks in a row. I’m half-assing my way in that general direction. My machines and gear are/were a bit of menagerie. Most stuff is well used (over used?) and my budget is low so it’s slow going. Plus life is chaos.

Anyway I did some stuff in 2022 and more in spring 2023… then the world temporarily ended. Shit happens. And machines degrade while you’re otherwise occupied.

If you’re not dead you haven’t been defeated so I started moving forward again. To my great delight and relief I managed to start two long ignored machines (plus handled a routine happenstance).

The zeroth challenge was that Mrs. Curmudgeon’s car wouldn’t start. Her car really is a daily driver so that sucks! But it was darned cold out and the battery is long in the tooth. These things happen. It was -20 Fahrenheit (or maybe a little less). The little car just couldn’t fire up.

I keep a Noco Boost Sport GB20 battery pack with my dirt bike. I never leave home without it. I wandered into my stone cold garage and grabbed the device from where I’d strapped it to my bike. It started her car like a boss! I can’t overstate how impressed I am with these things! (I also use mine for camping. It can charge phones and my SpotX and an iPad or my shortwave radio. Also it’s a flashlight. Really nice piece of kit!)

I don’t use it on cars much. I was so impressed how easily it started a car that I went out and ordered a second Noco Boost GB20. This way I could put mine back with my bike and gift a new one to Mrs. Curmudgeon. I was prepared to buy a bigger unit for use with the car but Noco recommended the diminutive GB20 for “normal sized” cars (it won’t start my diesel truck I’m sure).

The story gets better. It came via Amazon a few days after I ordered it. I handed it to her but Mrs. Curmudgeon didn’t open the box. The very next day it dipped down below -20 again. As before her car was bricked. (I sense a new battery purchase in the near future.) Mrs. Curmudgeon was convinced you need a Y chromosome to operate anything involving a car battery. I assured her that unlike most of my gear, this one was easy to operate. I mean it. It’s stupid easy to operate and has a thousand safeguards. Heck, it’s almost cuddly! She clipped the thing to her car’s terminals and jump started her car with absolutely no drama. Those little battery packs are miraculous!

So now we have two, mine lives on my motorcycle and the other is in a regular car.

The first challenge was my old ATV. It was serviced in 2022 but time flies when you’re in the shit. It sat all winter from fall 2022 on. In spring 2023 I shamelessly raided it for the battery. No regrets, I needed the battery and I was broke. The poor thing sat unused (with the seat removed and everything) until this weekend. The battery had been taken off its temporary duty and had been sitting on a maintainer for at least 6 months. I rolled the ATV into a warm-ish place where it was 40 degrees instead of -20 and gave it a week to warm up.

I installed the battery and buttoned it up. I had no optimism it would start.

But it did! In a fit of joy, I tore off on a dirt road to “warm it up”. I wasn’t well dressed for a winter ATV excursion and promptly froze. I only went 4-5 miles. But that was enough to get everything up to operating temp. It’s running pretty darned well actually!

Back in the past, I’d parked it plum full of gas and that was the hint I’d shown some foresight. The gas hadn’t gone bad! I can only assume past Curmudgeon had the minimal intelligence to top it off with Stabil and non-oxygenated fuel. Nor were the carbs mucked up. Probably I’d run the carbs dry during “decommissioning”.

Damn it’s nice when past me doesn’t fuck over present me!

The second challenge was my old truck (sometimes I call it “Jeep-thing”). It’s an old 4×4 beast that I haven’t seen fit to unveil on my blog. It is a bad ass off road machine but it’s still in recovery after long neglect. One serious limit is that it doesn’t have heat. I don’t mean the canvas top and the ungasketed windows are drafty, I mean it’s utterly 100% unheated. The components that once did that are long gone. There is no insulation anywhere and no heat at all. In winter it’s like riding in a vibrating refrigerated steel box.

Patience old truck, your time will come again.

Anyway, it hasn’t been started since the beast playfully forced me to spend a weekend driving around in the dirt… back in October. (The story is here: My Truck Takes Me For A Walk, Parts 1, 2, 3.)

Without a battery maintainer, I feared the dual batteries were toast. But, and this was the second miracle of the weekend, it started!

I took it for a 20 mile jaunt. It ran like a top. I returned half frozen but grinning.

Enjoy every little bit of good luck. Then build on it.

I’m slowly improving my “fleet” of battery maintainers. You may think this is lame but it’s a major achievement to me. My personal battle against entropy starts with keeping batteries charged.

This will be the year I have maintainers on all of my motorcycles! I didn’t have one for my ATV but I will soon! In my garage I had a NOCO GC002 X-Connect M6 Eyelet Terminal Accessory. I bought it in 2022 and never got it installed. It’s a miracle I hadn’t lost it! (ATVs and motorcycles and lawnmowers have pipsqueak batteries. They need a smaller pigtail than things with “regular sized” batteries. All of the Noco stuff I’ve bought comes with the bigger pigtail. I have several stashed in my toolbox.)

Even though I had the pigtails I didn’t have another maintainer. I ordered a NOCO Genius 1. It’s a tiny spud of a maintainer but it’s plenty for a motorcycle or ATV. I haven’t tried the tiny Genius 1 on a car, it seems a little too small for that. (I have used Genius 10 on cars, and that works fine. I did have a Genius 10 malfunction after it got froze into a snowdrift and flooded in snowmelt many consecutive times. I don’t blame that on the device, the user (me) beat the shit out of it. ) A NOCO Genius 1 looks like this:

I put a NOCO Genius 1 on all my toys that sit unused all winter. When the ATV maintainer arrives I’ll have assembled a “fleet” of 3 NOCO Genius 1 devices and one battery tender. (The battery tender pigtails came pre-installed in the 1989 Pacific Coast 800 I bought in 2023. I didn’t feel like swapping to different pigtails so I just bought the right maintainer to go with the pigtails. It’s kind of a shame because it would look super cool to have 4 identical maintainers all lined up.)

But wait there’s more! I was on so much of a roll that I changed the oil in my tractor and generally gave it a minor service. The tractor has a block heater but had no maintainer. It’s a Kioti tractor and it is a bit cold blooded. I decided to go nuts and buy a maintainer for the tractor too. That’s a bigger battery and I use the tractor in the coldest weather. So I bought a Noco Genius 10:

It’s a little bigger than the tiny GB20 but a tractor needs a lot more grunt than a motorcycle or basic car.

I also learned to open the hood of my tractor when I park it. The tractor gets hot and melted snow runs down the hood. When you shut down that ice freezes the hood shut like it’s welded! Took me a few years to learn that! (I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out on day one but maybe I’m dumb.)

Between the block heater and the battery maintainer the tractor starts like a champ. On the other hand I replaced the tractor battery last summer, so it hasn’t been tested over time with an older battery.

So long as I’m on the topic, my Dodge has twin 12v batteries in parallel and I have an on board maintainer installed in the truck. I use it anytime it’s not particularly warm. I think it makes the batteries last longer too. I can’t remember the brand I installed, it wasn’t a Noco though.

Now I’m shopping for one last maintainer. My 4×4 truck has two 12v batteries in series making 24 volts total. I have no idea who sells a maintainer for a setup like that. If you know of one, shoot me a comment. Thanks.

My story of Project Daily Driver (2022) is here:

• Project Daily Driver / Gift From Past Me
• Project Daily Driver: Coming Apart At The Seams
• Project Daily Driver: Who Are You Calling An Antique?!?
• Project Daily Driver: Strange Observations In The Hinterlands
• Project Daily Driver: Pre-Paid Emergency Room

Note: I get tiny kickbacks if you buy from any link on my blog that goes to Amazon. It costs you nothing. But that’s not why I linked all that stuff. I really am impressed with Noco gadgets and I’m super stoked whenever winter doesn’t kill expensive batteries. I have good luck with Noco and battery maintainers in general are a good way to make my life easier.

One last note, “jump start” and “maintain” are two different things:

A “boost” or “battery pack” will jump start a dead car. That’s all it does. (OK fine I use mine for charging USB gadgets and as a flashlight, but it can’t “charge” a car battery.) The “boost” carries within it a battery with the energy to do jump start engines. It works wherever you are and you’ll feel smug and superior when you don’t have to beg someone to help you with jumper cables.

A “maintainer” won’t do jack shit if you’re off grid. It’s not for wilderness use. It’s plugged in at your house. It uses “shore power” (the AC power grid) to keep you car’s battery thawed and topped off. It’s not meant to jump start a dead anything. However, any functional battery on a maintainer will be more or less at peak performance for its age. It also takes a lot of stress off winter stretched batteries, I think they last longer if carefully “maintained”.

[I’m getting nowhere with wordpress, so here’s a fun distraction post.]

It’s a short list but there are some songs which I like but which also cause folks to break out in hives. Among them, is “Brand New Key”. I don’t care what anyone thinks, it’s sweet. Anyway, the artist “Melanie” has died and I’d like to honor her memory (and/or torture you with an earworm).

Comic geniuses “Kids in the Hall” seized upon “Brand New Key” as an ideal post-apocalypse torture:

Another song on my list is “Vehicle” by “Ides of March”. I think it’s a damn fine song with a rocking beat and lots of brass. Mrs. Curmudgeon says it’s a skeevy stalker’s anthem. Can it be both?

I contacted my hosting service:

“Can y’all help me hide or password protect some posts?”

“Your business is important to us. Type some shit so our bot can ignore you.”

“Open the pod bay doors HAL.”

“I’m afraid I can’t understand you.”

“I’ve got a fever and the only cure is more cowbell.”

“I’m afraid I can’t understand you.”

“You maniacs! You blew it all up! God damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

“Please give me a phone number so I can call you.”

“xxx-xxx-xxxx”

“We will call you in 24 hours.”

The next day the phone rang.

“This is the hosting service, ‘your ball are in our vice’. How can we help you today?”

“Can y’all help me hide or password protect some posts?”

“Sure, how many posts?”

“About 2,500.”

“Standby while I put in touch with a developer.”

“Sure thing dektol.”

“Hi, I’m a developer. What’s dektol?”

“I want to hide some posts. About 2,500 or so.”

“Glad to help. I can do that in a jiffy. It’ll be $165 a month.”

“The fuck you say?”

“$165 a month. Pretty good deal for unlimited support.”

“I’m a guy that writes stories about talking squirrels. $165 isn’t going to happen.”

“But sir it’s unlimited service. In fact…”

“You maniacs! You blew it all up! God damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

“Um…”

“Why don’t I hang up now?”

“OK, have a nice day.”

Standby while shit gets real. I’m reaching for a hard drive with a screwdriver and a pick axe. I’m sure this’ll work out fine.

[Warning: Nerd content and authorial navel gazing below.]

When I started my blog, I promised myself I might fret over things I write but I’d never spaz out over “content management”. I’ve done so. I’ve been so careful to avoid “content management” that I hate the term “content”.*

“Content” is the kind of vocabulary used by folks who can’t create but want to be “creation adjacent”. It emphasizes transmission over subject. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes where the kid tries to float a fancy cover page past a teacher who’s seen it all. “Content” considers everything equal and beneath the importance of the technology delivering the message. The medium of transmission should never surpass in importance the thing being transmitted! The glorious prose of Shakespeare, a fruitcake recipe, and the shit some thug scrawls on the side of a boxcar with spraypaint… these are not the same.

Anyway, there’s intent and there’s reality. I held out for years but could avoid it no longer. I’ve been forced to address some behind the scenes maintenance. This cost me $65 in software and 3 hours in hassle… and more will follow. Ugh! (I also pay a couple hundred to “self-host”. It’s worth it to be out of the wordpress.org sandbox but freedom ain’t free.)

Partly this is just deferred maintenance. Partly it’s a little bit of paranoia. I’m starting to wonder how much of everything is being used to train LLMs (counterfactually called AI). More importantly, how much I can opt out? I don’t have issue with AI (so long as it gets kneecapped whenever it comes up with even the slightest hint of a novel response there’s no “I” to go with the “A”). I do have issue with my dumb little blog going into the vat that made Frankenstein’s monster .

So… many posts may disappear. Don’t worry. What is not seen is still on archive on my private hard drive. Unless I screwed up my efforts this weekend. Yikes! That’s a loss I’d regret! Presumably, it’s still there. Theoretically, I can unearth it at will. Likely all I’ve done is avoid feeding the gaping maw of a LLM… maybe.

This is a delicate operation best done by a skilled practitioner of wordpress programming. I’m self-taught and my teacher was lazy. I’m coming at the wordpress database like a maniac with an axe. The whole thing may blow up!

If it does, I’ll come back… probably. Just be patient.

Thanks.

A.C.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, this burst of maintenance is good news because it’s related to squirrels. I’ve hammered out about half of another chapter. I’m about 9,000 words into a two chapter 25,000+/- word final stretch. The exciting conclusion isn’t written but it exists in my pointy head. Soon, though don’t hold your breath because I mean weeks and months not days and hours, the whole story will be finished. Huzzah!

*When tapping your feet to a Jimi Hendrix solo you don’t emote over the FM radio that received it or the FM station that broadcast it. Who gives a shit whether your radio is AC powered, bolted into your car, or handheld? What matters is that big booming power chord 32 seconds into Voodoo Child (Slight Return)! In a society that gets excited about the fucking radio, listen to the song!

This isn’t my first rodeo. I was suited up like the Michelin Man. I had three layers of jacket, heavy boots, insulated overalls, fur bomber’s hat, choppers, etc… (Choppers are a variety of mitten that’s well suited to stupidly cold weather.) My pockets were crammed survival shit; two flashlights, matches, SpotX etc… Just as I left I realized the SpotX (which I thought I’d charged) had a dead battery. No worries. I had cell phone reception, wasn’t going far, and Mrs. Curmudgeon was literally waiting for me in an idling car.

I hiked away from the car but immediately slowed to a crawl. I was exhausted. And for no good reason! My bum ankle was making me limp. The dog (on a leash) was dragging my ass around. It was tough walking and everything was going wrong in small but disturbing ways.

Stumbling on a bum ankle in -10 degrees is nothing like zipping along with my dirt bike. Covering even the shortest distance took forever.

At least the dog was having a blast. There were deer tracks everywhere.

Eventually I decided I must be on the wrong trail. It was a big wide trail but there was no sign of ATV, hiker, or snowmobile. No sign of humans at all. I assume it’s a snowmobile highway when the snow’s deep but that’s not the case yet.

I veered west, took an adjunct trail, and popped out on the plowed road only ½ mile from the car. I could see the headlights. Uncharacteristically, I used the cell phone to ask Mrs. Curmudgeon to come get me rather than my usual habit of hiking all the way back. I felt like I’d hiked all day instead of just a few minutes.

In the warm car, I directed us down more roads. Left, right, straight, etc… It was all pretty well plowed. I found another trail crossing. Maybe this was the correct one? Presumably, I’d started on the wrong one just a few miles away.

I stepped out again. This time the dog was less eager. It was brutally cold. The dim January afternoon was fading to dim January dusk.

I trudged out into the trees; trying to compare the winter wonderland before my eyes to the campsite I’d found by dirtbike in 80 degree warmer temperatures. This section of forest was dead silent. No deer tracks. No rabbits. No birds flitting about. The sun’s true location was hidden in a cloudy sky but it was nearly sunset. As the general diffuse light faded, the temperature seemed to be dropping like a rock.

Like I said, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know all about woodcraft and caution. Every ten yards or so I’d stop and assess the situation. I couldn’t pinpoint why I was moving so slow but I acknowledged it. I had a mental checklist of the thousand things that could or had gone wrong. Nothing was going swimmingly but I wasn’t doomed yet. Nothing was out of my league… yet. However, I was disappointed in my weakness.

The campsite I sought is not hidden, nor is it far from the maintained road, but it eluded me. I found it hard to judge distance comparing a slow winter trudge, bootstep by increasingly heavy bootstep… to my zippy little dirtbike. I estimated I’d need to hike out ½ mile and return an equal distance; probably much less. Every time I stopped to rest it seemed like I’d only need a few hundred yards before I’d be right where I wanted. The hike wasn’t long. It should be easy peasy!

The campsite didn’t appear. I kept feeling like it was just around the next bend in the trail.

The sun had set. Most people are scared shitless to be alone in the dark. I’m not. I’ve hiked in the dark plenty of times. In the winter, when the snow is bright white and you’re on simple terrain, you can hike all night provided there’s the slightest hint of moonlight.

“The moon on the crest of the new fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below.” I quoted to my dog, who was starting to look concerned.

When I say “my dog” I really mean my wife’s dog. It’s a Great Pyrenees. She’s genetically built from the ground up to be a sheepherder’s guardian dog. Great Pyrenees don’t herd sheep, they kill predators. That’s literally their whole purpose. They’ll gladly take on a pack of wolves. They gleefully turn coyotes into chew toys. They’ll square off with a grizzly if they need to.

Yet genetics is only one part of the equation. There’s the matter of temperament. Our last dog (same breed) bonded with me. Like me, it was gruff and standoffish and walked around with an air of “get off my lawn”. It tolerated kids but wasn’t cuddly. It was very protective. Plumbers and electricians never went anywhere without me there to assure the dog they were allowed. The UPS truck was on it’s best behavior at our house. My dog was fiercely protective. It would have taken on a dragon if it thought I was threatened. For that matter, anyone who messed with my dog would personally experience retribution worse than that of John Wick. We were a good set. I miss my dog.

My wife’s dog is the absolute opposite and perfect for her. It’s a big white fluffy ball of love that likes belly scratches and car rides. She (the dog) is cuddly and sweet and lovable and an absolute joy. She’s the absolute perfect companion for my sweet lovely wife. One effect of this is that the dog is not a forest lurker like me. My wife’s sweet, fluffy, cuddly, pup is literally afraid of the dark. Dumbass that I am, I’d brought the dog into a dark foreboding forest.

The dog was looking at me as if I needed an intervention. “This has gone on quite enough! Return me to the warm car and give me a nice treat. This cold weather is hard on my toes and my fur is all covered snow; which is your fault. I’ve enjoyed our walk but you’re nuts. It’s time to go home!”

There was the slightest hint of a rustling in the trees. Almost certainly a deer, though I’d seen no tracks. It could be anything from a porcupine to a yeti.

The forest suddenly seemed “wolfy”. Make of that assessment what you will. I’m not afraid of wolves, but I’m not stupid about it. I wasn’t sure if my dog was protection against them or bait to bring them in. If anything happens to my wife’s beloved dog I’ll be in deep shit! Nor was I armed. Most of the time I’m the biggest bad ass in the forest. Top of the food chain. The absolute definition of the thing that shit that goes bump in the night runs away from! This night was different. I was not at peak performance. I was exhausted and limping and had the constitution of a butterfly.

I waited a minute or two in case my second wind came back. It didn’t. I felt ever so close to that campsite but the goal no longer mattered. I hiked back out. Slowly, deliberately, carefully. I could see well enough. It never occurred to me to use either of the flashlights I was carrying. No need. But I moved slow. My ankle was gimpy and it wouldn’t do to twist it worse.

Back at the car, the dog gleefully dove in the open door. It immediately fell asleep in the car’s heat. I complained that I was unrealistically winded and slumped in the seat as if I’d been in the forest for weeks instead of hours.

I’m convinced I was no more than 50 or 100 yards from the campsite. Sometimes 50 yards is too far. You gotta’ know that truth and make the right call when the time comes.

Epilogue:

The next day I was completely laid out. My hamstring had not gotten better with exercise as I’d hoped. It got much worse! My tooth was worse too.

A day later, I went to a dentist appointment only to have the dentist cancel on me! That pissed me right off.

The next day a different dentist said my teeth were fine. He said I’d misdiagnosed a sinus infection as tooth related. A few hours later a doctor concurred and set me up with antibiotics.

When meeting with the doctor she said “one of the symptoms is extreme lack of energy, how’d you miss that?” I related the story of a short hike that wore me out. She shook her head as if to say “it’s amazing guys like you survive”. She and the dog could probably trade stories about the hike.

I’m recuperating now. I think I won’t go hiking for a while. So, how was your weekend?

A.C.

…I paused and breathed deeply of the dark icy air. The gloom between the trees had taken on an aspect of its own; an almost physical presence. The silence was almost physical as well. It was the deeper kind of silence. Caged domesticated people scarcely know such silence exists. If fact, for them, it doesn’t. Your average person would sink into angst if this level of solitude were forced on them. In such conditions you must use your intellect to make up for your emotional mind. Neither panic nor wimp out nor ignore warning signs. There’s just not enough room for mistakes. You can’t play loose.

There were no animal tracks in the snow. Birds were silent. The sky was impenetrable. The sun a forgotten thing from an hour ago. It was blisteringly cold.

My dog looked at me as if to say “what now”? Something about the forest looked “wolfy”. I’m not sure what I was sensing there, I’ve never had issues with wolves. Was my hundred pound Great Pyrenees an allied warrior or a leashed creampuff?

What was the point? Why was I here?

In the immortal words of Kenny Rogers “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, and know when you you’re gonna’ freeze your fool ass off”.

To my dog’s immense relief, I bailed out.

Now, the rest of the story.

Early in the week, the weather was tame. I started thinking of taking a three day weekend off to winter camp. Why not? I’ve been good. I earned a reward. That was my plan.

My plan fell apart almost immediately. I spent all week trying to adapt with newer lesser plans. I’d wanted to drive a zillion miles to camp with a friend who was also hankering for a winter expedition. But I was just too fried for the drive. So I decided to camp solo closer to home. My truck tires aren’t great and the last few miles of the access route were sketchy. So I decided to take my Jeep which would easily handle the terrain. (It’s not actually a Jeep but it’s like a Jeep so that’s what I’ll call it for now.)

My Jeep has no heat and the temp dropped to -20 farenheit. So I decided to trailer my ATV with my heated truck to a nearby spot and ATV the last few miles. The ATV is dead so I rolled it into the heated (well it’s maybe 40 degrees) garage to see if I could bring it back on-line.

Challenge encountered, solution proposed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile I had a toothache that wasn’t going away and I was low on energy. I skipped a trip to the gym to free up a little energy. That night I put my feet up on an old box, leaned back by the fire, and read a book. In my defense I kept trying to adapt, did nothing illogical, and was carefully practicing self care. It was a good book.

Saturday rolled around and I felt like I’d been trampled by wildebeests. Toothache, vaguely generalized headache, etc… Also, I’d dinged up my ankle when I put my feet up the night before. Age is weird. I’ve never gotten used to how I can completely jack the shit out of myself by “sleeping wrong” or “sitting incorrectly”. Mortality is a bitch!

Anyway, I canceled my campout. Too many uncertainties had piled up.

One uncertainty was the location of a dispersed campsite. It’s not super far from a main road but you have to know it’s there to find it. I found it by accident on a dirt bike trip last autumn. A few weeks later I managed to relocate it a second time with an afternoon Jeep trip (it was the last Jeep trip of the season and even then I about froze in the unheated cab).

I’d been there twice, but wasn’t 100% sure I could find it in the snow. I decided I’d just take a short hike from the plowed road to the campsite. There’s only ankle deep snow out there so I’d do it on foot. Mostly, I wanted a short hike to commune with nature and maybe stretch out my suffering ankle.

Mrs. Curmudgeon offered to be my ride. She’s a keeper! We drove on well plowed dirt roads to the spot I thought the trail crossed. I dimly remembered a tree bent just so and a few other things. For a variety of reasons we’d been delayed. I stepped into -10 weather just an hour before sunset…

Stay tuned for part 2.

Today, as I do every day, I shall not judge anyone by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I’m sure both sides of the political spectrum can agree on that. (Yes, that’s sarcasm.)

Welcome to the fourth year of 2020. What a time to be alive!

Doesn’t the tension feel palpable? It’s the gathering!

“… when there are only a few of us left, we will feel an irresistible pull towards a far away land… to fight for the prize…” – Ramírez (from The Highlander)*

Enjoy the show! It’s the gathering y’all!

Lucky for us it’s the dipshit gathering, not the deadly serious meeting of skilled and cunning immortals we’re told to fear. Our time is the uneasy faffing of stupid clumsy sweaty incoherent dweebs. The losers who got bullied in high school and never scored in college somehow got their hands on the wheel. Having gleefully driven into a ditch they’re stuck in the fucking ditch. They painted themselves into a corner. They ate the seed corn. They burned the bridges. They divided by zero. They made a mess so huge they themselves can’t wish it away. That’s what we’re feeling, the despair of losers who fucked up because they got power they didn’t merit. Their despair is not ours. They don’t know anything else but to double down on fucking up and it’s not working; which is not my fault. Nor is it your fault.

*(If you haven’t watched the movie Highlander drop everything and watch it. Also if you watched the eleven dozen knock off sequels and reboots, what the hell were you thinking? Bad sequels don’t exist in my world because I don’t let people muck up great stories with derivative cash-grabs. The single exception is Mad Max 2 which was somehow better than the original.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, reflecting on the mess that is now. Can you smell the unease in the air? Does it not feel like the tension before a thunderstorm? Do you sense the tide pulling back? Is that a tsunami building beyond the horizon? Do you see politicians looking panicked? Not just some politicians look panicked… they ALL do! Do you see every single authority figure twitching nervously as they reflect on their incompetence and try to outrun their mistakes. Which is more debased? The press or the church? Congress or the NFL? Banks or businesses? Ever see a pissing match where nobody deserves to win? I do! I see systems slowing and bureaucracies grinding to a halt. That which worked is replaced with that which makes the incompetent feel elite and it’s finally coming to a head. It could be huge. You know “the big one” is out there. We all know it.

We all know it’s coming. We just can’t tell what “it” is. Is it 1789, 1861, 1980, 1991? Will it be the storming of the Bastille, firing on Fort Sumpter, the completely unexpected miracle on ice, or the inexplicably war-free dissolution of the mighty and feared Soviet Union? Didn’t expect the last few did ya’? All we really know is there will be change. It will probably suck but it doesn’t have to suck. Sometimes what looks like an end is really a birth. Also, we don’t know if it’ll be one event or a series of shitstorms. Remember that the USSR was strong and unstoppable until the day it wasn’t. Remember “the war to end all wars” came to be known as “part 1”. (I told you sequels suck!)

“It” could be everything all at once or a fart in a windstorm. It might be dispersed chaos as political assclowns create a multiverse of circular firing squads. It might be one big non-political thing like a methed up sixty foot dinosaur that wants to stomp Tokyo. Or, and this is just a small chance but it’s possible, it could be something positive. Nobody sees whats coming, we only know that everything now is unstable.

Clear yourself of normalcy bias. That which “has never happened” has been happening. It’s been obvious since at least 2020. Maybe it started decades or centuries ago. All we know is it’s knocking on the door; whatever the hell “it” is.

For the rest of this whole damn year never let the phrase “that’s impossible” pass your lips!

Nothing can be assumed, nothing can be ruled out, nothing is impossible. There once were borders around the possible but that’s long gone. This far down the rabbit hole there is nothing inconceivable. Everything is possible, none of it likely, all of it unpredictable. Social conventions built to keep things in general balance (such as rule of law) have been battered and largely destroyed. They can’t do their primary function. Your gay priest, your profit free business leader, your biased judge, your incompetent doctor… none of them can summon authority because they cannot summon competence. They cannot fake what they failed to earn. So nothing is impossible.

For better or worse, it’s going to be a hell of a show! Hang on folks because shit’s going to start weird, stay weird, and finish (or not) with a flourish. Your goal, your only goal, is to laugh at the ridiculous and keep on keeping on. Sinking into despair is for the weak. Don’t go there.

In all times, but especially now, attend to yourself. Hydrate, get some exercise, hug those you love, get plenty of sleep, pet a dog, eat a salad, this is no time to neglect yourself or others. The thing most under attack is your mind. Keep it together. If your head is screwed on straight, most of the rest will work out as well as possible under the circumstances. Remember the basics; avoid crowds, brace yourself for more lies, and keep your wallet where you can see it. When you’re being manipulated recognize it and take countermeasures. Exercise caution because nobody is coming to help you; wear a seat belt, put on a helmet, get some sturdy boots; act like you’re a thousand miles from the ER because even if the ER is ten miles away it’s really in the past, back from when doctors did medicine. Believe nothing you can’t personally verify. Stay away from crowds. Show some discernment; value only the opinion of people who’s opinions merit value. Mock the rest. They’re ridiculous and you might as well let them know you’ve figured it out.

Above all, get away from the screen so you know the difference between real and imaginary. Things aren’t as bad as they seem. The literal world is fine, it’s the virtual one that’s a mess. The earth keeps turning and nature is as true and pure as ever. Even as society crawls up its own ass, the sun will rise in the east, set in the west, kittens will be fluffy, and summertime caterpillars will turn into butterflies only to die over the winter.

If properly anchored and sailed to shelter in time, a sound craft will ride out any storm.

I’m rooting for ya’! Happy New Year and good luck!