The Miracle Of Capitalist Food

In my story I went off on a tangent about grocery stores. Y’all may be forgiven for thinking it a pointless digression but I have always been delighted with cheap plentiful food. Like a fish that can’t see water, most Americans (Westerners?) don’t notice.

Here’s a video of a grocery store in 1971. Park your ass down and look upon the mundane with new eyes:

Reflect on how amazing and miraculous such things really are. This isn’t a society recently created out of technology and unicorn subsidies. This is a society that has black and white TV. Their wall mounted telephones don’t have touch tone and long distance is expensive enough it’s reserved for special occasions. This society, 51 years ago, provided all of this food not to elites with good social scores but to average peons! The average peons drove in with big Detroit iron cars, bought as much or as little as they wanted, and drove away. This is the culmination of a society that has its shit together. Do you notice there are no police at the doors? No EBT cards? The coolers run on unlimited uninterrupted power. There are no blue haired masked freaks protesting out front. It’s normal law abiding capitalists enjoying the fruits of their labor.

This isn’t a rich people only store. This existed on the same planet where Soviet peasants waited hours to buy their allocation of bread. The food available is in greater variety and abundance than any society ever produced in all of human existence. A king in 1400 couldn’t even see this level of food. A Roman Emperor in 300 couldn’t witness it. An earthly representative of God in ancient Egypt came nowhere close. How sad that people gazed upon one of the greatest achievements in history and took a fucking hammer to it.

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Mosquitoes Get The Upper Hand: Part 2

I’m perpetually trying new things while camping. I’d gotten into a groove of eating Mountain House freeze dried food when I’d been canoeing into the Canadian outback. Now that I’m “backpacking by Dodge” weight savings are irrelevant. The freeze dried “groove” might be a “rut”? So I ignored my MREs and freeze dried wonderpacks. I stopped at a grocery store for basic human food.

I’ve always loved grocery stores. Don’t get me wrong, I hate shopping. It’s just that grocery stores are miracles of capitalist plenty. Even as a kid I was astounded buy the wonder and glory of any decent American grocery store. Colorful fruits and fresh veggies and miles of stocked shelves! I never took such wealth and abundance for granted. Now, as things fade, others are seeing what they’d never noticed.

Grocery stores decline along with everything else. I braced myself. There would be shortages. Nothing makes me feel sadder than empty shelves. I see the leering skeletal face of a far distant future death. I lived most of my life without empty shelves. I expected capitalist bounty to last the rest of my life. I was incorrect. The post-Covid Bidenverse of inevitable deliberate self-inflicted collapse is a much attenuated signal (we are not the much battered Soviets of 1980) but “I could never happen here” is no longer a true statement. I would see an empty shelf or two or ten and that would bum me out. I tromped into the store with head hung low.

What a shock! The place was fully stocked; just like the “before times”! I picked from among a dozen varieties of tomato. I grabbed exactly the canned goods I wanted. How silly I’d been. Despair is a sin. All is not lost, all is never lost.

I planned to cook beans and bratwurst. Full sized bean cans are too big for my little iron frying pan. Amid two dozen kinds of beans I found small cans with pop tops. Awesome!

After I checked out I realized I’d paid $1.33 for small cans when a big can was $0.99. Dumb! Also I didn’t find any Jiffy Pop popcorn. Jiffy Pop popcorn is pre-packed in a disposable tinfoil frying pan specifically designed to be cooked over an open fire. They’re silly but taste delicious. Harmless fun that reminds me of my youth.

I have a little plastic box full of “camping” canned goods. I take the box on every trip now. My idea is to have the box stocked with MORE than I’ll ever need. Should I go on a trip on short notice, there will be enough in there even if I don’t do any planning at all. At camp I’ll root around in the box and always find something to eat. I planned to stash a couple Jiffy Pops in the box. Maybe next time.

My box of food is more like a bug out box than an “I’m going camping on a normal weekend” box. Why not? In times of inflation it’s never a bad idea to buy canned food.

I paid at the robot checkout. They used to be buggy, but now they work flawlessly. Remember when people were bitching about “mandatory living wage” for entry level jobs? I think that was towards the end of the Obama regime. The checkout robot never calls in sick or goes on a woke political fit. It shaved the bottom off the workforce. Inflation did the rest. I don’t know if the $15 minimum wage law was passed in this or that State. I just know that nobody mentions it anymore. Robots and math; they fix a lot of things without even getting noticed.

(To be continued.)

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Mosquitoes Get The Upper Hand: Part 1

Have you sniffed the air? The winds have shifted. Fools ran rampant; but their time was short. In but a few years they demonstrated their totality of incompetence. When society was under their sway, it reeked of cattle cars and smoldering cities. This summer, everyone knows the emperor has no clothes. What was once crimethink is mumbled quietly in the general public. We joke about conspiracies and spoiler alerts. One can ponder the origin of the Wuhan virus, the source of inflation, the rule of law, or the efficacy of masks without being pushed off a cliff. Meanwhile, they still care who owns Twitter.

Parts of society turn to the work of course correction; not from wisdom or honor but simply because it has to be done. Monsters try to relight the soot at our feet but it’s not working. Not that they’re harmless! Oh no! They probe every avenue toward destruction. If they can’t fire on Fort Sumter they’ll shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand! But society can only stampede so long.

The sane remnant was not eliminated. We’re still here.

A sizable portion that fell for the madness have slowly (even grudgingly) pulled out of the dive. We receive them. We say “welcome friend, we’re happy you’re with us”? We mean it.

Such is the change in the wind.

If you have these thoughts, congratulations! You’re thinking during a time of mass stupidity. Necessarily, you are or were distinct from the frantic masses. It’s not over. This is but the end of a bad first act. So take refuge where you can find it. Maintain your connection to nature.

Nature may kill you but it’s never dumb.


I had a handful of donations and a desire to stay rooted. What more motivation does one need? I would hang out with trees; they’re good company. They’ve got their shit together.

I spent a little extra time on Honey Badger before this trip. Honey Badger is my Yamaha TW200. Small, stout, crude, tough, simple. If a BMW adventure motorcycle took a shit, it would still have more payments and wiring than a TW200.

My bike was filthy; as it should be. My bike is for wandering the earth. Thus should be coated in it. The only filth I care about was on the chain.

(I hate chains on motorcycles. My other bike is shaft drive. Shaft drive is simply better. I won’t be dissuaded from that until I see a chain driven Honda Civic. Some caveats, if you’re wringing every last bit of power in a heroic effort to make physics your bitch… then a chain is slightly more efficient. Have at it! Crack the throttle until you see God. Not for me though, I’m out to smell the roses. Also, if you’re a Harley guy dying to tell me all about belts… don’t.

Chains need maintenance but they’re simple and obvious. My bike’s chain was coated in a sandpaper like patina of dirt. I pulled the chain guard, slathered it with chain cleaner and… oh you’re supposed to wait a bit for the cleaner to kick in? Screw that! I scrubbed it off more or less immediately and hosed it down. This did indeed wash the topsoil off. It looked shiny. Good enough.

Then I rolled the bike onto my well worn utility trailer, strapped it down, and took off. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t lube the chain. You’re supposed to let the chain dry first. Let it bake on a trailer. I had places to go and things to do!

(To be continued.)

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Mosquitoes Get The Upper Hand: Part 0

Spoiler alert… I went camping but got my ass handed to me on a silver platter!

The story of my latest motorcycle / camping trip will go live soon. I had fun but mosquitos took more of my blood than I’m willing to accept! What can I say? I’m tough… possibly even stupidly tough, but sometimes shit gets out of hand.

On an earlier campout I had things under control. (I also saw a Norse God.) Ticks were bad but I easily handled them with permethrin and grit. (Also swearing, I swore a lot. It’s totally reasonable to swear while pulling ticks off your leg or whatnot.) On that trip, mosquitoes were a hassle but it was manageable. I kept them in line with a few Thermacells.

This time I didn’t see a single tick but the mosquitoes went for the jugular. Mosquitoes 1, Curmudgeon 0.

When you do stuff, sometimes it sucks. That’s why many people sit on couches and few do stuff.

I’m an Adaptive Curmudgeon! I got my ass kicked but it’s really just an invitation to learn and improve. (Or level up your gear!) I pried open my wallet and ordered a screen tent. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s a Gazelle G5. (This is a file shot… mine hasn’t arrived yet.)

I’ll admit I feel like a wimp buying a screen tent. All I can say is you had to be there.

I’ve never used a screen tent in this way. My old solution was to avoid camping where the bugs hold sway. Wait for the first frost, stay out of stupid places, and/or stoically endure when that’s not enough. Lately I’ve felt the need to camp more often and right now. It’s probably because our weird world has me jumpy.

Impatience and a change of venue is why I met mosquitoes that went beyond “stoic test” and straight into “hellish nightmare”. Shit happens!

I’ll report on the new equipment after I get a chance to test it. Here are initial details: I bought a Gazelle because an earlier Gazelle purchase was superb build quality. My tent is a Gazelle T4. It’s been a brick shithouse of a tent! Among Gazelle offerings I picked G5 as a compromise between roomy but a PITA to setup and easy to carry but too small. I suspect I’ll be able to erect the G5 in a minute or two (I setup everything myself too). The G6 is a lot larger and hexagonal and I’m sure I could set it up solo without hassle, but it’s likely more than I need.. If I was camping with a couple people that’s what I’d buy. Also, it basically doubles the price and I’m trying to keep costs down. (If you’re starting from scratch, Gazelle even makes a tent that’s a duplicate of my beloved T4 with a screen tent sewed directly to it! It’s very cool! I’ve already got the tent that would be duplication. Also, I won’t need a screen tent every trip, just sometimes.)

In theory the smaller tent is enough. (An advantage of camping solo!) One lawn chair, one cooler, and (maybe) a cot is all I’ll plan to put in it. Clam makes a nice little (and more packable) squarish screen tent but I figured I’m carrying gear in a Dodge. There’s not much advantage to small & lightweight gear.

If the Gazelle screen shelter is half as good as my Gazelle tent, I’ll be well served. (Links go to Amazon.)

If you want to throw a buck or two toward my screen tent, I’d be a happy camper. If you don’t, that’s OK too. I’ll still do stupid shit and write silly stories. (But I ain’t going camping again until the screen tent is delivered!)

Donation links are below. No pressure though. If you’re broke, I get it.

I hope you enjoy my stories.

A.C.

tipjar

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How Some News Sites Write Articles

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Vignettes From America: Rise Of The Robots: Part 3

I’d wandered into a sushi joint. The place had sushi (which is Japanese or possibly Californian) but was named “Shanghai something or other”. What the fuck? Isn’t Shanghai in China? Do they not have a map? The inability to differentiate between two ancient and long time competitors and enemies is how Americans got an international reputation for being morons. It was like walking into “Hockey palace” and instead of Canadians selling poutine finding an Italian guy making spaghetti.

The place was mostly empty. I sat at the bar and pondered the menu. I love sushi but vapor lock when choosing among odd combinations of whatever Japan traditionally scoops out of the ocean. It’s delicious but sounds gross. I still can’t quite grok why I love an ingredient called “eel sauce”. I do not want to know where eel sauce comes from! If you know, don’t tell me. Eels are gross! If they make sauce out of them I just can’t even imagine…

Yet I love sushi; even if I’d never wrap anything in seaweed of my own volition.

I ordered and the bartender keyed my order into a terminal. I downed the first beer like it was trying to escape. The second beer went pretty fast. It might have been hotter than I’d thought. I might have worked harder than I’d registered. He handed me the third beer but I set it at arms length. I had to pace myself!

The bartender laughed, “Hot out today?”

I smiled “Yep, please pour me an ice water before I get sloppy drunk.”

He was a good guy. It turns out he ran the place. He was obviously overworked. He started talking about his business. He’d almost gone broke but had been doing OK since the covid thing ended. Unfortunately, getting food shipped to East Bumfuck Nowhere was a constant challenge.

I was enjoying the conversation. I’m the kind of nerd that likes hearing details about supply chains that deliver octopus to middle America.

He’d shifted gears to personnel issues. Apparently, the one thing harder than sourcing exotic seafood was finding workers to be waitstaff. (He and I are not the only ones to witness this systemic development.)

I glanced at the sushi cook in the back. He looked like he might be a samurai. How does one hire a sushi cook from the land of the rising sun? Don’t tell me he advertised on Craigslist! What pay must you offer to lure someone from Tokyo to flyover country? The dude making sushi came from God knows where but there wasn’t a local college student to wait tables?

A dude came in and sat down. He was doing some sort of food delivery service. They’re all the same to me; Uber food, or just eats, or doordash, or whatever. The bartender / owner gave him a friendly nod. Neither one discussed food orders. I gathered the food order had been electronically transferred directly from the hungry consumer to the hard working sushi chef in the back. A system that seems pretty efficient to me.

This was another variable in the equation. Nobody wanted a job inside the restaurant but someone was willing to be a “sub-contractor” delivering from it. Is the role of waitress slowly evolving into cell phone software and a delivery guy? I’ve no opinion. I’m merely interested in the larger pattern.

This meant that the local pool of college students and residents too lazy to work as waitstaff were simultaneously rich enough to pay delivery fees. How the heck does any part of our economy actually work these days?

Then shit got weird. A robot went trundling by!

I had to ask. “You have a robot?”

“Yes!” The owner / bartender enthused. “I was afraid it would be a novelty but it’s really working out.”

Aside from the bar there were tables. Every table had tablets on which to place an order. The information went to the chef and the food was delivered by robot. The robot was a hit with customers. Soon I was listening to a discussion on the pros and cons of automated food delivery. Clearly the owner / bartender was smarter than the average bear!

As with all things automated, the robot handles grunt work like a champ. The downside was that it required the owner / bartender to take on additional “mindwork” duties. He was the robot maintenance guy. He said it wasn’t much; three hours a week or so. I mentally compared three hours charging batteries and cleaning wheels versus the hassle of hiring waitstaff that might flake out, screw up, or not exist at any price. Sounded like a good balance but it requires a secret ingredient. It depends on an owner / bartender clever enough to manage robot software AND do all of the other jobs.

Meanwhile we have delivery sub-contractors and robots in the same restaurant where there are no waitresses. All this depends on an owner who can both program robots and tend bar.

The interaction between jobs not done and automation is fascinating. I sense a mountain within the fog; a world that has already changed in ways we don’t quite fathom. Perhaps it’s neither good nor bad; it simply is. Waitresses were a job for millennia but nobody wants to do it in 2022. Pizza delivery is 50 years old or less. Covid made pizza delivery level up to “anything delivery”. Many consumers are more or less shut-ins. Apparently shut-ins still have money. How do the pieces of the puzzle fit?

If there was a legit self driving car, wouldn’t the car and table delivery robot merge? It could go either way. The Doordash guy could wind up broke. Or he could get rich. Right now he can drive one shitty car at a time. What if he could dispatch six self driving vehicles at once? What happened to the pre-covid experimental Amazon drones?

The hard working Samurai in the kitchen dispatched food on a self piloting electronic gadget for a rural American who wonders if his truck is becoming irreplaceable. Gas is $5. Container ships still float in the Pacific. I’d ordered fresh seafood delivered from God knows where. The beer was cold and the power grid is still up. What does it all mean?

The robot approached gently and beeped. Oh for fuck’s sake. Really?

“Did that robot just make sounds like R2D2?” I grumped.

“Yeah,” the owner / bartender chuckled “it needs to make a sound so people notice it. The sound people like is R2D2.”

I pushed my chair back to blocked its way. It burbled R2D2 robot gibberish at me and carefully piloted around the chair.

“A real robot mimics the sounds of a fictional robot from a movie in 1977?”

“Yep!”

“Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”

“No, why?”

“It’s a real robot. It can make any sound. Human voices, opera, heavy metal, it could have a Japanese accent, or meow like a kitten. Why make a real thing mimic a fake version of itself that never actually existed?”

“It’s what people want I guess.”

“Everyone here except us,” I waved around, “wasn’t alive in 1977. Shouldn’t it sound like Ultron, or Jarvis, or Alexa?”

“Speak for yourself, I wasn’t born in 1977.”

Great! Now I felt old AND disconcerted.

“Well if you ever program it to talk like HAL9000 give me a call. I’ll give it a big tip.” I chuckled and left it at that. I complimented the bartender / owner on the best sushi I’ve ever had and prepared to leave. Meanwhile, the robot wandered away and came back with paper bags for the Doordash guy. He patted the robot like a dog.

As I walked out the empty robot passed by. I stepped into it’s path. It stopped and beeped at me. “All your base are belong to us.” I snarked. Patiently, it routed around me and went back to work..

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Vignettes From America: Rise Of The Robots: Part 2

The hotel’s website said “ample truck parking”. They lied!

I pulled into a dead end parking lot and, for want of better options, blocked everything. The world would have to wait while I checked in. Don’t blame me, blame the marketing genius who lured my huge truck to this citified lot.

If you live in what I call “reality America” things are pretty normal. You can almost forget the other half crawled up its own ass and still hasn’t come back out. The hotel was a reminder; the nutters are still nuts. The dread of covid hung in the air like an unvented fart. Cities get off on impending doom. We’re all human. We have roughly equal physical resilience, but cities cling desperately to the idea that citizens (subjects?) are fragile hothouse flowers; one step from the fainting couch and two from the grave. The rest of us figured it out literally years ago. If covid was going to be the black death it would have done the job by now. Rural folks in every state quit cosplaying Armageddon and went back to our lives. The cities shot society in the head and now sit in corners praying for death.

The hotel front desk was “protected” by a frame of thin wood slats. To this, someone had stapled clear plastic film. This Kindergarten arts and crafts project was supposed to protect the brave frontlines worker. They might as well have glued macaroni to construction paper. Yet a virus prowls the other side of 4 mm vinyl like a lion behind bars; or so they pretend.

Behind the irrelevant film was a college student. I know this because no living being can be as pretentious and annoying as a college student. I’ll go out on a limb and say he was a graduate student and he majored in “you want fries with that”. He oozed “I’m better than you” with a side of “you’re different than me so in the name of diversity I reflexinvely hate you”. Universities train the ignorant to be snobbish while holding monkey’s job.

He passed me my keycard as if I were a dog that might bite. He didn’t actually hand it to me though, he slid it through a slit cut in the bottom of the film. I suppose this kept the double vaxxed effete twit within safe from the air breathing deplorable on the other side.

“Where’s the truck parking?” I asked.

He waved at the inadequate parking area. Syllables are too much like interacting with your equals. I nodded.

Back out in the parking lot I found an entirely different world. It was nearly sunset and a work crew had wheeled out a BBQ. They were grilling brats and standing around drinking beer. Several were playing a makeshift game of horseshoes (with non metallic throwing shoes). A few were lounging in lawnchairs. A radio played shitty three chord country pop. One guy, off to the side, was having an intense discussion with his cell phone.

I was so happy to see them. People who work in the real world were enjoying a well earned break. I’m a loner. I haven’t been on a work crew in years. I still remember the comradery and sometimes I miss it.

I hated to interrupt but I needed them to move a few of their pickups “Sorry fellas, the manbun in the saran-wrap told me to park here.”

They weren’t even remotely offended. Two pickups were moved in a flash. They had seen me pull in and knew it was inevitable. I laboriously backed my truck around a curve to get a better line. Then I rolled it forward at an angle to “parallel park” my truck and heavy trailer. In order to fit, I had to inch very close to a battered SUV. Seeing my problem, one of the men held up a hand. He trotted over to the man who was practically melded with his phone.

I could see the whole story playing out. The cell phone man had the exact look of a worker who’s out on the road earning money and has just been dumped by someone back home. It’s a tale as old as time. The fellow helping me gesticulated to the cell phone man who responded with an angry finger. Someone else just grabbed a jacket from a nearby fence and rifled through it for keys. Soon the cell phone guy’s vehicle was moved without the cell phone guy’s permission, cooperation, or awareness. Poor fella’ looked pretty wrung out.

I did a good job “parallel parking” 40’ of machine with all of 14 wheels on 4 axles. Good thing too because I’d have been fatally embarrassed to fuck up in front of the whole crew!

I shut down and climbed out. “Thanks guys.”

They’d gathered round the trailer examining what I was hauling.

“Is that an Edsel?” One of the younger guys asked.

“No, it’s a Studebaker.” I responded.

(Note: it wasn’t an Edsel or a Studebaker. Please accept these placeholders in lieu of OPSEC violating facts.)

“It sure looks like an Edsel.” He insisted.

SMACK! A hand shot out from the guy to his left and administered a friendly but firm dope slap. “If the man had an Edsel he’d fucking know it was an Edsel wouldn’t he?” His elder explained. Quite reasonable logic I’d say.

“Yeah, that’s right. Sorry.” The younger guy stammered.

I was pleased to see such fine mentoring. Common sense and a quick correction. Someday the youngster would be a well rounded and competent man. Well done!

We stood around shooting the shit for a while and I felt like one of the group. It feels nice to fit in! As we talked about the pros and cons of Edsels and Studebakers we got an earful of the cell phone man’s drama. Everyone agreed the sooner he was done with “that slut” the better. There was a consensus that him getting dumped was, whether he knew it or not, a blessing in disguise. The phrases “dodging a bullet” and “crazy bitch” were bandied about. I wonder if the younger guy was picking up on this. It’s surely one of life’s most important lessons.

I could have scammed a bratwurst from their BBQ but I wanted to sit in air conditioning. I wished them all well and hiked across the road to the only restaurant nearby.

It turned out the restaurant was quite interesting.

(To be continued.)

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Vignettes From America: Rise Of The Robots: Part 1

[This is the story of when I had to hauled a thing I’ll not describe from a place I’m not going to specify to a location that’s none of your business. Enjoy!]

Usually my Dodge is ridiculous. Its massive drivetrain, including an expensive transmission and an engine that would eat a Subaru for breakfast, is overkill. This day overkill was just the right amount of power. The payload was well within spec but still hefty.

As I hauled ass and payload I thought about the lizard people pummeling our formerly prosperous and stable society. A horde of irrelevant screaming eco-dweebs and stern sounding authority figures would like to cram my ass into an electric car. (They’d like to do it to you too!) There’s no room in their glorious theories for real-life variation. There isn’t an electric vehicle on earth that can do what my truck was doing that day. I was using all the horsepower. Bitchy rants by autistic Swedish teenagers mean nothing to a person trying to move tonnage up a hill. Money Obama threw at the Chevy Volt did me no good. Trump and Biden’s subsidies of Tesla were equally irrelevant. I needed horsepower and was bleeding hard from paying Bidenverse prices to fuel the machine to do it.

Electric puddle jumpers will eventually trundle handfuls of urban commuters to the fabric cubicles which have been abandoned in droves since covid. EVs might fill the ranks of the harpies at the HR department downtown but they’ll never drive civilization itself. Nothing in the real world is battery powered and yet strong enough to work a farm.

Such is the irony of an over-regulated world’s inevitable decline. I was doing legal and socially beneficial work. The work depends on tools which “elites” lust to ban. A Soviet peasant in 1975 could tell you all about it.

They’ve more or less tried to eliminate my truck already. For decades it has been a morass of engineering weirdness to get anything running and on the actual road. One side demands unreasonable fuel efficiency. The other slathers each and every vehicle with tons of expensive and heavy safety mandates. None of this is free. Every highly specific fuel injection mapping routine and delicate six speed transmission is funded by someone. It’s a huge (but invisible) pile of dollars extracted from the hands of men who might have spent it productively elsewhere.

You can see how it happens. A room full of college graduates who’ve never hauled a horse trailer in a mudpit gather together. They sit in an air conditioned room on the Potomac to write lists of demands. They hammer on the system day after day, year after year; all the way until the lights go out. (Which they say might happen in fits and starts this summer in Texas, parts of Nevada, and possibly southern California… but who’s worried about that right?)

Another few cranks to the regulatory ratchet and there will be no consumer grade vehicles with balls. No point in wishing it otherwise. The end result for me is a fork in the road. Either I’ll quit or I’ll keep the friggin’ Dodge running forever!

I’ve seen this elsewhere. As a kid growing up in cold war America, I loved articles about embargoed Cuba. I was enamored with the photos of the antique cars. Havana was filled with cars that had been pushed beyond their lifespan long before I even got my license. They were pretty to look at but it was also poignant. The people of Havana were reduced to exhibits in a time zoo. I felt sympathy for the poor bastards. A restored classic for a Sunday cruise is fun but who wants to limp around in a worn out Chevy every day? I peer at the horizon and sense our version of Cuba’s path. Are you ready for AM radio and hand operated windows… forever?

What a pain in the ass it must be? I’d love to own a classic car but if it’s your daily driver wouldn’t you gladly ditch a classic Bel Aire for an eight year old Honda Civic? What if gas was $5 a gallon? At least back then (I don’t know about now) such things weren’t in the cards. The Cuban people were chained down by people who’re comfortable drawing lines around other people’s life options.

We’re not entirely immune to Cuba’s fate. American cars built in the 1970’s ran like anemic shit. They suffered under new regulations until everyone was shoehorned into an expensive fuel injection system with wheels under it. So many Americans switched to Toyotas and Datsuns that Detroit was gutted. The city never recovered. Now we drive around in SUVs which are a loophole in the noose on passenger cars.

We’re much better off than Cuba but it’s a spectrum not a cliff. Where on the wide plains between an East German Trabant and “anything goes” do I really live?

Has the same happened with personal aircraft? It’s said that a logbook is sometimes worth more than the plane itself. A regular person who wants to own a plane tends to wind up with a very carefully maintained antique. It’s hard to build a plane but not that hard. If I could buy a new plane for the cost of a new Subaru, I’d probably be working on my license. Since that’s more or less impossible, I ride motorcycles.

Cubans can’t buy an Ford F-150. Americans can’t buy a Cessna without breaking the bank. Farmers run old tractors because the new ones are fussy and restrictive to repair. (The prices on a 25 year old farm tractor are shocking. In part because John Deere is the Apple product of the fields and nobody’s got time or money for that shit.)

We build the cage in which we lock ourselves.

The media squawks about electric cars and self driving vaporware as if there’s a tidal wave of demand. There isn’t. In real world America, the most popular vehicles are trucks and SUVs. No matter what Biden’s $5 gas forces on us, it isn’t going to make us enjoy an egg shaped 50MPH citybound e-turd.

In general, regulatorily limited cars make sense only in limited situations which correlate with limited lifestyles. For one thing, the baseline is a rock solid electric grid (so nobody sees the coal being burned to make the Tesla go). After that, small opportunities appear. If a retired geezer wants to trundle around The Villages in his boomerific golf cart, more power to him. If Mindy has no plans to go further than the coffee shop and Mandy only goes to her office cubicle they can cost share half a smart car. But if any of them spread their wings it collapses instantly. People that want to take the kids across the state to a little league game, haul a bale of hay, or keep rolling in a snowstorm need more than batteries can give. The smaller and weaker the machine, the more they become ridiculous beyond the walled enclaves of Panem.

Am I in another time zoo? Am I the generation that will see the end of the line for machines like my very powerful and useful Dodge? I think perhaps we’re already on the Cuba track; chained down by the American Government’s incremental embargo against Americans buying what Americans want.

My truck is approaching a quarter million miles. It’s almost old enough to vote. How different is that from my younger self marveling at the tailfins on a Cadillac in Havana? I’ll keep my truck running it as long as I can. It’s necessary. A replacement is unspeakably expensive and each year it becomes more unreachable.

Well that’s all very depressing eh? What can I say, driving gives you time to think.

After a long but productive day for man and machine, I bailed off the road. I considered trying to subsist in a tent somewhere but I crowbarred open my wallet and paid for a hotel.

(To be continued.)

Posted in Summer_2022, Walkabout | 7 Comments

There Ain’t Nothing Better Than A Bad Idea

In case my stories with a 200CC bike don’t inspire, here’s a fellow doing awesome things with a 125 CC bike.* Note: it’s a series of episodes, but what better thing are you watching?

*If you feel like using the price of gas (or motorcycles) as an excuse… don’t! The Honda CT125 is said to gets around 112(!) miles per gallon. My Yamaha TW200 supposedly gets around 78 MPG. (I top off from my Rotopax so don’t know exactly what I get, nor do I care.)Even in the Bidenverse, gas prices are just not an issue with these little beasts. The bikes themselves are pretty cheap too.

** If my 200cc Yamaha just seems too powerful and this guy’s 125cc seems overkill (and we both seem too sane) tune into Ed March’s C90 adventures. The dude rides a C90 fearlessly. He rides it EVERYWHERE!

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Don’t Forget to Remember

Right now I’m riding Honey Badger. The wheels of the internet run without me. Software was instructed and left to its own resources. I’m surely out of cell reception, there isn’t AC power anywhere near my planned camp location, and my SpotX is off unless I need it.

Honey Badger is my cheap little Yamaha dirt bike. I use it for “mechanized hiking” and to remind myself nature heals the soul of man. The latter is key! I’m too sane and the world too mad to be overly separated from nature.

Just look around. The shrieking freaks that pester us feed on each other and attention. Like a toddler, they need a time out. Sit them by a campfire in the moonlight. Leave them far from social media. Let them spend the night in a tent… all alone.

Part of modern madness is herd mentality. Most people have never been alone with themselves. The nutters can’t even unplug from social media. If they spent time where there’s no audience for their performative bullshit they might see a new world. They might sort themselves out. At the very least we could ignore them.

I’ll set up base camp somewhere random; all I really need is room for my truck and tent. Add a bottle of whiskey, a mellow fire, and a soft cot and I feel like a king.

Sufficient becomes luxurious if your needs are simple.

From camp, Honey Badger and I will launch simple unplanned bouts of adventure. We wander aimlessly. (The best kind of wandering!)

It doesn’t matter where we go, only that we went; the whole damn planet is gorgeous. Haven’t you noticed? Wherever people aren’t, that’s where Honey Badger wants to be. Who am I to argue? I triple check my gear, hold on for dear life, and let my tough little machine roll itself up, through, into, or around just about anything.

“We got this.” The bike says. And it’s true.

I’m not the only one to harness the magic spell of a motorcycle. I urge you to read Don’t Forget To Remember, by Eric Peters:

Like many, I sometimes get bogged down and tied up in work and other things that have a tendency to make you forget about the important things. These are the things you’ll look back on fondly one day – and which you’ll regret not having done more of at the end of your days.

. . .

Life and stress creeps up on you, like roadside Kudzu. Your intentions are good. We’ll ride this weekend. But then the weekend comes – and the grass needs to be cut, the kids have practice or (as in my case) the coop needs to built, plans need to be considered as regards the siting of the greenhouse. There is always something – or so it weighs on you – and it gets worse as you get older, in part because you get older.

. . .

We gave her a good workout – and got worked out, ourselves. Ivermectin may cure the ‘Rona, but an hour in the saddle heals the soul.

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