Adaptive Curmudgeon

[In my last post I explained how I was driving my tractor, with the brush hog on the three point hitch, through deep weeds. I was simultaneously fretting over my inadequate winter firewood supply.]

Unexpectedly, the front tire popped high and the whole tractor tilted wildly to the side. WTF? I clicked off the PTO, hydraulically lifted the rear implement, and jammed on the brakes. I did this all in an instant. That’s the way to be good to your machinery! The front tire hadn’t come crashing down yet. I hadn’t run over whatever I’d just found. No harm, no foul! I throttled down and gingerly backed up. Then I set the brake, shut down the motor, and hopped out to investigate.

There in the weeds, absolutely invisible from above but totally obvious as I stood there, was a tree trunk. It had fallen sometime this summer. The weeds had covered it with flawless camouflage.

I paced down its length and found the spot where it had uprooted; cleverly hidden behind some tall ferns just inside the forest edge. I sat down on the log. Now what?

Are we not reasoning monkeys? Can we not weigh options?

Plowing and planting a deer plot is Springtime Curmudgeon’s problem. This tree was not the solution to Current Curmudgeon’s firewood dilemma (green trees need time to dry before they’re good firewood). But the log was part of the solution to Next Fall Curmudgeon’s firewood problem.

I thought. And I rested. It was the weekend after all. The tractor waited patiently. The leafless trees looked pretty in the pale sun. If you wait long enough usually a chickadee will show up. I love chickadees. I waited.

No chickadee showed up. But I became more aware of my surroundings. I had removed myself from the constant fret of civilization. I was happy sitting on that log. Peace!

There is nothing more beautiful than peace. I decided to do a solid for Next Fall Curmudgeon. Why not? He’s a good guy, right? As soon as I decided to attack the fallen log and prepare it to be firewood in fall 2024, my brain picked up other options I had heretofore missed.

Off in the forest, away from the shabby field where the tractor was parked, I noticed a dead tree. Nothing special about that. If you’re paying attention, you know forests are loaded with dead trees. However, this was my favorite kind of dead tree; perfect firewood! It was dead, the bark had sloughed off, it was still standing, and it was 100% sound. It wasn’t big, it was about the diameter of a roll of toilet paper. This is also perfect. Larger diameter trees are more efficient when you’re hauling tonnage out of the forest but they require extra labor to split them to the right size and they have to dry after splitting. When wood has dried just right for firewood it gets a gray tint. I could see the tint on the bare wood from 30 yards away.

I try to be appreciative whenever I find a tree that’s perfect for firewood right now. This little find wasn’t a lot but it was something Current Curmudgeon needs and it was sitting right there!

Who am I to deny good fortune when nature sends it my way?

Back on the tractor, I turned around and headed for the garage, with the brush hog shredding another 6’ swath behind me (why waste time?). At the garage I have a little electric chainsaw. I topped it off with chain oil, grabbed a battery, and headed back. I cleared my third brush hog swath as I went.

I cut down the little dead tree and bucked it into unimpressive 5’ lengths (suitable for my 5 ½’ tractor bucket). Since the tree was small, the logs weren’t heavy. I filled the bucket, drove it to my woodshed (clearing yet another brush hog swath while en route), and dropped the mess into my sawbuck. (A sawbuck is a crude wooden frame that holds short small-ish logs about waist high so they’re easier to saw into pieces. Firewood is hard. It’s double hard for a man working alone. Every little labor saving trick us evolved monkeys can invent is worth its weight in gold!)

Optimistically, I went out again. Sure enough I found a second small tree; twin to the first. Huzzah! Into the bucket it went! By then it was getting dark and the game had to end.

It doesn’t take much to dice a pile of small logs already balanced on a sawbuck and my pole light was sufficient to see. I used my real chainsaw with the sawbuck. Then I hauled the results to my house and stoked up the fire. Being a nerd I checked the water content. It was about 12%. That reading totally made my day!

(In case you’re a nerd like me, here’s the details. Wood is (or was) a living thing. It is complex like all living things are. It is not merely a uniform man-made material like a bar of aluminum or a brick. Live trees contain a stupidly huge amount of water; often more than 50% of a log’s mass. Burn that crap in your woodstove and you’ll get a lot of smoke and plug your chimney with creosote. Not good! Dead trees you find in the forest may have more moisture or less moisture. If a dead tree is elevated off the wet soil and under certain conditions… it can be quite dry; like what I’d just found. If a dead tree is in contact with the soil it’s often wet and will therefore need a while to cure. If a dead tree stays wet long enough it rots and becomes useless as fuel.

With firewood the goal is to air dry usable sized chunks of wood until they’re under 20% moisture content. Ideally I burn stuff even drier than that. It generally takes at least a year for the wood to “cure” down to <20%. Its final content is actually dependent on atmospheric conditions. In case you’re wondering, the kiln dried shit you buy at Home Depot was officially 15% when it left the kiln and it slowly adjusted to ambient relative humidity wherever it was shipped. The final complete end state depends on whether you live in a rain forest or Death Valley.

Now you know why I was so happy to find a standing dead tree that clocked in at 12% moisture content.)

So yeah, it’s just a damn log but I was delighted. Discovering a couple tiny dead trees that were exceptionally dry felt like a lottery win. I burned them over Thanksgiving and was nice and warm. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I spent much of Thanksgiving evening basking in the heat of a toasty fire. That’s what it’s all about!

I’m still going to run out of firewood sometime in March. But maybe I pushed back the day of reckoning a week or two?

I welcome winter. I’ve had a rough year and winter, no matter how harsh it may be, inevitably ends what was. It paves the way for what will be. Ice and snow is the price you pay to encounter spring. Whether you intend it or not, life begins anew each spring. I’m pretty beat and look forward to renewal.

You’re thinking “no shit Sherlock, it’s rough for everyone” and I get it. I don’t intend to get in a pissing match about who’s life sucks more. 2023 didn’t pan out well for me but it could have been worse. Everyone has complaints and they’re all heartfelt.

The question for all of us is “what are ya’ gonna’ do about it?” I’ve made my decision and it doesn’t involve getting black pilled and bitching about politics. (Sometimes I can’t help but bitch a little, forgive me. I try to keep politics on a short leash but we do life in the crazy times.) Politics isn’t that big of a deal in the overall arc of things. So there’s always hope. If you can get back up off the mat, do so. I have. I’ve been deliberately trying to be happy. I’m succeeding. Part of being happy is moving forward. For everyone else who’s 2023 sucked, I hope it’s working out for them too.

A week before Thanksgiving the weather turned unseasonably warm. The small amount of snow on the ground dissipated. I set out to “un-do” a fuck up from the hectic spring/summer. I have some land and I ignored it. Despite what suburbanite Karens and University dweebs have been made to think, the earth is not a delicate flower. It doesn’t crap out on the fainting couch if we don’t cut enough checks to the right charities. Life will find a way, and ignored fallow land goes apeshit! You have to keep up with it because nature never sleeps. My half assed little deer plots had turned into a sea of weeds. A chunk of my lawn, which is never really that nice anyway, had devolved into a feral shaggy jungle. Unbeknownst to me, several trees had fallen under all those weeds. That’s just scratching the surface.

Usually in November there is naught one can do about vegetation. You have to wait until the snow melts, then wait until the muddy soil dries enough to drive a tractor over it… by that time the spring’s orgy of greenery is well ahead of you. That’s a fact of life for a homesteader, you start the summer behind the eight ball.

This year the weather threw me a bone. Weeds are in their winter dormancy yet still exposed and vulnerable to my brush hog. If I act now, maybe next spring might be different? I formed a theory that if I shred the weeds before they lie all winter under the snow, the biomass might decay instead of clogging my disk in the spring. (A disk is a tractor implement that turns dirt, like a plow. It does great on tilled fields but sucks balls if the dirt becomes sod. If the vegetation is tall enough to wrap around the disk’s axles it’s even worse. Little details like that are the meat of living close to nature.)

So I put the implement on my tractor and started driving around with my Cuisinart of Submission. Brush hogging isn’t my favorite task. It’s a bit of a rodeo; fraught with chaos that just cries out for broken parts. You’re mowing shit you can’t see and the ground is uneven so you’re either bouncing all over the place or slowed to a crawl. Who knows what’s underneath chest high foliage? There’s an internal inconsistency in trying to go easy on the equipment while performing an inherently violent operation.

Every now and then the brush hog lets out a mighty “thump” as it impacts with… something. This isn’t always a big deal, brush hogs are designed to “give rather than explode” when encountering a rock or a stump. But still, it’s nerve-wracking. My tractor is adequate but expensive. It’s not yet paid off. I try to baby it.

While I was gingerly picking my way through this mess, other thoughts got in the way. I don’t have enough firewood.

I’m not complaining; merely acknowledging the math. Good intentions don’t mean shit and I’m absolutely going to run out of wood heat. It takes a shitload of labor to fell, haul, buck, split, and stack enough firewood to heat my drafty old house. This year my labors were spent in the service of higher duties. I stacked some wood but not enough. It is what it is.

In case you’re wondering I do have an oil fueled furnace. It heats the place enough to keep the pipes thawed and so forth. On furnace heat alone the house is “habitable” but it’s never cozy or pleasant unless the wood stove is lit. Also, the furnace is expensive as hell. The best situation is when the fire is going most of the time and fuel oil is cheap enough to take off the edge or fill in when I’m sleeping or out of the house.

Speaking of the Thanksgiving season, I had a few years “living easy” with the furnace and I truly appreciated them as they happened. I didn’t take it for granted. I miss them now that they’re gone. During those years when everyone was freaking out about horror of the Orange Menace and his mean tweets, oil was cheap. It gave me some breathing room. I could afford to buy extra fuel oil to “fill in the gaps” and stretch a somewhat limited firewood supply. It was just one of many bits of “breathing room” that I miss. If I ran low on firewood during the Glorious Reign of the Perfectly Creased Pants the cost of fuel was high and my ass was in a sling. Then again I was younger back then. I mostly got ahead of the situation through pure grit. Now that Captain Dementia has won the most votes of any president in American history, fuel is expensive again. Also, I’m a little older and slower to stack the tonnage. I didn’t manage it well last winter and did even worse this year.

The whole cycle of induced unpleasantness feels grim but also unnecessary. I didn’t like the cold forlorn 1970’s. I don’t like reliving it all over again for more or less the same reasons. Then again, I’m not in charge of such things. Neither are you. If we must relive Carter’s malaise lets do it with aplomb; pop open a can of Coke and play Nintendo, pretend it’s a can of Tab and pong. We will all spend a few years freezing and that’s just how it is. Perhaps cycles of failure are a necessary part of life?

Despite these less than pleasant thoughts, at least I was clearing brush. Solving one problem out of 99 is better than wallowing in failure. A shaky step forward is still a step forward.

Stay tuned for part 2 where I run over a tree.

“Was looking for one of the PC 800’s, but wanted to ask an actual owner (who is not trying to sell me their bike) how reliable they find it and what sort of mileage you get in actual riding?”

The comment above came from this post. I just happen to have real world data from my 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800! Also my PC800 is not for sale! 🙂

In June I kept gas receipts on a 451 mile trip and scrawled odometer readings on them.

My 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800 got 46.9 MPG.

Details? I’m glad you asked! Since the bike is new (to me, it’s used and from 1989) I’ve been running non-oxygenated gas. I don’t think it needs that. I’m just being careful during a “honeymoon” period. One gas station had nothing but sketchy 87 octane sludge. I was desperate for fuel so I topped off. That probably lowered MPG a smidge.

About 45% of the miles were on two lane country roads at about 65-70 MPH. About 45% was fighting crosswinds on an interstate in 75-80MPH bumper to bumper hell. The remaining 10% was crawling city gridlock.

You might do better or do worse, but my number is real world. Expect to easily break 45+ MPG over the whole range of conditions. (Note: I’m riding one up.)

As for reliability I haven’t had it long enough to “test it out”. However, I have a good feeling about it.

I put only 1,500 miles on it this summer (I had plans for more but was distracted by non-motorcycle life). The day I bought it used, I rode 300+ miles. I did this without blinking. I’ve done absolutely no maintenance. I haven’t even washed it.

I figured out how to check the oil, verified there’s oil in it, and that’s it. I haven’t lifted a finger otherwise. Nor do I plan to. I’ll do an oil change next spring and probably (hopefully) nothing else.

I don’t know it’s reliable. I think it will prove to be so.

The bike is tuned mellow. For any machine that helps reliability. It’s not working hard when you operate it. It doesn’t get hot. It doesn’t roar. It doesn’t mind blasting out of the red light but it doesn’t seem to taunt you into it either. It starts cold without bitching (manual chokes work fine y’all!). It starts every time. Everything seems well built. It’s very design and appeal is for adults riding at reasonable (not slow but not crazy) speeds.

I do find myself riding a little faster than with my cruiser. My cruiser sounds like a stampeding mass of piston driven mayhem. The fact that all that kinetic energy is bolted, somehow, into a Honda (which should be smooth), makes it feel faster than it is. Ironically, that’s a Shadow ACE 1100 which is bulletproof. I’ve put on a lot of miles to prove it. (Honda’s genius engineers built the Shadow 1100 unkillable and then tuned in vibration and sound to mimic a certain competing brand. It’s a lot like making an aerodynamically flawless car and then bolting on tailfins from 1950. But what do I know? I bought it!)

The PC800 is also a Shadow (somewhere inside there is a bored out Shadow 750). It’s proof that Honda nerds can do anything. They were ordered to engineer “chill” and they did it. It’s so smooth that the RPMs feel “perfect” when it’s zipping along at 75 MPH or so. I have to be careful because it’s easy to overdo it in towns where speed limits are lower.

The PC800 is a no-drama ride. It doesn’t have mood swings like a lot of machines. It’s happy with any speed. The ergonomics aren’t flawless but they’re pretty good. Fit and finish is great and it runs like it was built to run until the end of time. On the two lane rural blacktop (my favorite) I like it feels like it’ll run until continents drift, the planet’s orbit deteriorates, and the sun is about to flare out.

I get your concern. Buying a PC800 feels weird. They’re funky, rare, and old. All that plastic is nerve wracking. You wonder “what if this thing needs wrenching”. I’ve no answer for that. I’m a shitty mechanic. The guys at my local dealership would fake their own death and move to Bolivia if I asked them to work on a PC800. I sure as hell don’t want to get into that Rubic’s cube of a bike anytime soon.

The thing is, it may not happen. My Shadow 1100 lets it all hang out in a way mechanics adore; but I’ve never had to do jack squat with it. Something about the PC 800’s weirdness encourages us to fret that the bike will ultimately demand attention. Yet once I got over my apprehension I realize I’d parked it next to a 24 year old bike that never needed much more than tires and oil. One can fret over the unknown but there’s a good chance the weird little PC 800 will roll for ten years or 50 without the rider touching a screwdriver. If not, I’ll piss and moan but then figure it out.

Some other details of interest to a PC800 shopper. My bike has been dropped… though probably gently. It’s not “showroom perfect” but it didn’t explode on contact with pavement either. (It was probably dropped decades ago.) The scratches are ok with me and I feel like I got a false start looking for showroom / museum level plastic when I’m not a “showroom” type of guy. Once I was seeking cheap and no-mechanical issues and was willing to accept slightly dinged I had more options. All the dings did was shave a few bills off the seller’s price and they’re really quite irrelevant. They have no effect on anything and you can’t see them unless you’re looking hard. When you buy a bike you practically crawl all over it freaking out over every scratch. I did. Within a week I couldn’t remember why I cared. I wanted a mile-eater, not a display piece. And it looks flawless at 5′ distance.

In return for overlooking (a tiny bit of) cosmetic scruff, I (hopefully) got a bike that is probably in the sweet spot for reliability. It had under 16,000 miles on the odometer. That’s peanuts to a bike like the PC800. They have a good reputation for high miles. Anything under 75,000 miles is probably “young” for a PC800.

Exceptionally low miles is sometimes as much a red flag as exceptionally high. However, the previous owner is the one who took the risk. He bought and “resurrected” a bike that had been idle for decades. He (not I) paid to have it “gone through” by a mechanic. A few years later he aged out of riding and I purchased it. I think that it worked out well for him too. Potential issues from sitting idle never happened. My understanding is that he swapped tires and fluid and it was more or less good as new. Buying a “running daily driver” I hoped that if it formerly had rats living in the air filter, such things had been resolved a few years ago. As always Caveat Emptor. Also, chill out; this ain’t a $20 grand financial payment with wheels, nobody’s dropping megabucks on a PC800. I’d be happy with mine even if I’d had to pay double the actual purchase price.

It’s only fair to add some negative comments but I don’t have many. People complain that the gas tank is small, and it is. (I’ll eventually get a “spare gas carrying solution”.) I spent $20 to put an air pad on the Corbin seat; which improved ass comfort at the cost of a miniscule increase in air buffeting to the top of the helmet. Occasionally a motorcycle guy will freak out that I own an abomination but who goes around trying to impress other dudes? An equal number of people are enthused to see a “new high tech 2023 scooter”. Is there anything else from 1989 that looks “futuristic“? If so what would that be? A Walkman? A VCR? I’ve had a few women call it “cute”. I feel like the bike is small, but when I park it I realize it’s quite portly. I need to use two hands to open the trunk which is the very slightest inconvenience when I’ve got a helmet in one hand. That’s about all I can bitch about.

Positive comments? I could write a book! Mostly it does the miraculous thing of not being a pain in the ass. It performs without the slightest hesitation, drama, or hassle. Don’t worry about the “little” 800cc engine. Unless you’re towing or weigh 900 pounds it’s the  Goldilocks perfect size. You won’t beat a GL1800 (or most other bikes) in a drag race but you don’t want a PC800 to do wheelies and hooligan about anyway. If you’re doing actual sane road riding it’ll keep up with the biggest GL1800 or HD bagger and carry about as much gear. I wouldn’t hesitate to ride mine coast to coast right now. (Curses that it’s winter!)

Personally I love the way it was designed and wish more mikes were like this. It’s not “as good as” a Goldwing, but (in my humble opinion) better. ‘Wings are the touring boss and I expected to love them. But when test driving used ‘Wings they “got in the way”. I want to hop on a bike and roll without drama. A Goldwing starting felt like a fucking laptop boot up. All that high-tech stuff on modern bikes turns me off. They feel like gadget heavy Christmas trees. The PC800 is the opposite. It leaves me alone to enjoy myself.

Here’s a quote I took from Jalopnik:

“Honda wanted this motorcycle to be all about the riding experience without any of the downsides. The engine isn’t encased in plastic and rubber mounts to hide it away from a car driver, but to attract someone who may not want to wrench on their own motorcycle. It’s why Honda went to great lengths to make it as maintenance-free as possible.”

That’s kind of what I’m trying to get at. The PC800 doesn’t get up in your face. Mine doesn’t even have a radio; which is cool because I don’t want a radio. Even the dash makes me happy. For example, the Neutral indicator light isn’t a post-literacy ideogram; it says “NEUTRAL”. Real letters that make an actual English language word! See what I mean? When was the last time you had a car where the “high beam” indicator said “HIGH BEAM”? Why the hell not?!?

The PC800 steps into the background and just lets you ride. It feels like cars quit leaving you alone years ago. Most touring motorcycles followed suit. The absence of bullshit on the PC800 attracts me. It repels folks that want to Bluetooth synch their cell phone into their motorcycle’s navigation GUI. Where you fall on that spectrum is up to you.

I’m sure I will have more to post next summer. (I bought some “moto-camping” gear and daydream of mellow camping/touring.) Be patient and you’ll surely find a good quality PC800. Also, don’t pressure yourself to jump at the first one you see or freak out paying a few hundred more to get one that you prefer. They’re good bikes that a public failed to recognize and now Honda makes so much bank on Goldwings they may never make a “smaller tourer” again.

Good luck.

A.C.

My snowshoes were bought in Kittery Maine about 35(!) years ago. I don’t know if the store still exists. I barely know if Maine still exists. I’m not sure why I remember the purchase location (the mind is a weird thing).

Over the years they dried out but thankfully they weren’t too dried out. The wood frame hadn’t cracked or split. (Once the wood is shot, traditional snowshoes are done. They become decorative wall hangers.) The dry rawhide and wood was easily remedied, as I’ll discuss later. Bindings was the harder and more immediate task.

My snowshoes (and most traditional snowshoes) have bindings made of some sort of artificial leather-ish substance. This material didn’t hold up as well as “natural” stuff like wood and rawhide. It got dried out and brittle and just generally “yucky”. Here’s what the top part of the binding looked like after removal from the snowshoe.

Shot bindings are not fatal, they can be replaced! The binding on a traditional snowshoe and the rest of the snowshoe are almost different beings. They need to work together at a pivot point but beyond that they can have different materials and varying design… most importantly, you can replace bindings without too much drama. (In my case, the hardest part was finding a guy selling snowshoe bindings.)

The pivot point on my shoes is unusual. At the time I thought it was a cool design. (I still think it’s a cool design.) I guess it wasn’t popular. I’ve never personally seen another snowshoe like mine (I didn’t search Google looking for their long lost twin or anything).

All snowshoe bindings must have some pivot or flex. Mine have a “spinning on a metal axis” approach. Most traditional bindings pivot on a knot tied in some sort of strapping. (This makes sense for a technology invented by peoples who had lots of leather and cordage but limited metal.) The strapping flexes, which is definitely the whole point of certain kinds of cordage, so it does work. But it seems odd to me in our modern world.  I don’t try to make car axles out of neoprene, why would I use that material as the flex point on a snowshoe? (Then again what do I know? I think belt drive on Harleys is weird and they work just as well as shaft drive; which is what I think of as “normal”.)

My bindings (which I’ve already admitted are unusual) had aluminum cleats underneath; facing down into whatever I’ll be stomping on. This is a photo from after it was removed and cleaned up and lightly sanded.

Bolted to the cleat was a little “axle holder”. It had a small plastic(?) bushing that goes between the pivoting cleat and the metal rod that’s solidly affixed to each snowshoe.

This was all covered (on the underneath side) by a yellow patch of neoprene (?). I think that was to keep ice from building up on the “axle”. It definitely “cleaned up” the look.

I’m astounded how well all those parts survived decades of age and use. The axle assembly thingamabob was held on by two stainless steel screws with two locknuts. After all those years I expected a struggle with corrosion. It popped apart like it was brand new! Nice! I reused the screws and lock nuts.

Aside from the two bolts holding the “axle thinbamabob” there were four rivets holding the grizzled old neoprene (?) bindings to the aluminum base. I cut the rivets off with a Dremel tool.

The replacement binding wasn’t intended for my odd snowshoe. It’s designed to be laced onto a generic snowshoe using the slots only. I got creative and drilled two screw holes in the front and four holes to match the holes in my cleats (the ones that formerly had rivets through them). I also bought big bad pop rivets. I wound up using about the biggest pop rivets I would want to do by hand.

I paid something like $75 for these bindings, which is a fair price for something so rare. (The guy selling them gave “build your own snowshoe” classes. He kindly gave me advice on my project and also sold me the bindings.) The pop rivet tool was about $15 and I’ll surely use it again in the future.

Here’s a photo of a binding taken after I’d attacked it with a leather punch.

Skipping topics and going back to the snowshoes. This is what mine look like without the bindings. The metal rod is apparently uncommon. Also, that’s corned beef hash with eggs cooked over a Coleman burner running on unleaded. Breakfast of champions!

It was easier to fix the dried out rawhide and wood than I expected. The solution is to slather it with a lot of spar varnish. Use a lot! You could just slap it on with a paintbrush but you really want to lay it on heavy. It’s probably pretty wasteful of expensive varnish. Did I mention you can’t use too much varnish? Ideally you should do this more often than every three decades(!). I guess some people do it once a year. I might start doing that.

The snowshoe building class guy had a container filled with several gallons of spar varnish. That shit ain’t cheap and dumping 3 or 4 gallons into a container is a real investment! When people make their own snowshoes (in his class) they need to “dip” their new creations. For a fee, the snowshoe guy “dipped” my snowshoes too! To “dip” is a lot easier than using a paint brush and if you dip many snowshoes it’s far more efficient. Ideally you’d have many snowshoes ready to dip at a time to avoid wasting varnish.

You can’t see it in the picture but my snowshoes turned from “old and worn” to “gleaming with potential”! It was a sticky gross mess for a while. Hanging them overnight in an old barn had them 95% dry but it would take a little longer to fully dry out. I like the smell of varnish. They looked great and I was delighted! (Note: Don’t “dip” binders in the varnish. Remove the binders before you get varnish on them!)

In my case, the metal rods (I got no idea what kind of metal) got a little bit sticky from the varnish. Assuming friction on sticky “axles” would be a bad thing, I sanded them smooth.

Here’s a test fit of the finished binding with a big honkin’ winter boot.

Conclusion:

I spent a little under $100 and made old snowshoes just as good as new. It hasn’t snowed enough for me to test them out but I’m confident they’ll do fine. I’ve never wanted mukluks more than when I look at the gleaming rebuilt snowshoes. (Boots work with snowshoes but I wonder if mukluks work better. I’ve never owned mukluks. God I love that word!)

For comparison here’s a cell phone from roughly the same era as my snowshoes. Ha! Wood and rawhide has beaten plastic and circuits once more!

Happy winter y’all!

The thing about traditional snowshoes is that you’ve got to take care of them like the delicate equipment they are… ha ha ha… bullshit! I abused my snowshoes for years and then rebuilt them without a lot of drama. I spent under $100 on maintenance after three decades and there’s a good chance I’ll die before they wear out again.

Here’s a photo of my snowshoes leaning against my tent. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take photos of them before I started messing with them. This is the only photo I’ve got from “before rebuild”.

Yeah, there’s no snow. I was carrying them around because I was looking for parts. I don’t know about you but I can’t find “snowshoe parts” locally. I didn’t have enough information to buy parts online. So I carried them with me, bouncing around in my truck, whenever I happened to road trip past a likely seller. It took a while to find what I was looking for.

Of course, you shouldn’t be a slob like me. Treat all your gear like it’s important. Also you should eat your vegetables, stop swearing, and hit the gym. I’m not going to feel guilty about beat up equipment (at least snowshoes). I think sometimes people get a little “into” their stuff and become “maintenance bots” for gear that practically owns them instead of vice versa.

Snowshoes are tools; like a dumptruck or a shovel. Mine serve a purpose. I don’t think of them as an heirloom so much as a “favorite tool”. (I have a “favorite” shovel too.) I’ll happily beat the living shit out of my snowshoes because they’re not decorative wall hangers.

Daily care:

When you get out of the woods, shake off the excess snow before it freezes on. Then dry them out in your house. Or don’t. If you’re going back out there soon, it might be a good idea to shake them off and leave them cold.

I learned this from experience. A million years ago I had a job where I worked on snowshoes day after day. I’d try to dry the snowshoes overnight but instead they just got wet but never quite dry; over and over. The rawhide got a little grunky being wet over and over again… like a rawhide chew toy that’s been gnawed on by a Rottweiler. I would have been better off leaving them froze and just thawing / drying on weekends. What can I say? I was young and stupid. No worries, the snowshoes survived my mistreatment.

They say you ought to treat your snowshoes with spar varnish every year or as often as possible. This is excellent advice which I didn’t follow. (This only applies to traditional snowshoes that are made of stuff that can dry out, not space age plastic/neoprene/aluminum hybrid modern snowshoes.)

Storage:

My big advice is hang snowshoes on the wall when you’re not using them. They can sit on the wall, covered with dust and cobwebs, indefinitely. If they’re leaning up against a shelf or whatnot, they’ll get in the way and you’ll invariably step on them and break them. Plus snowshoes look cool hung on the wall! It’s probably best if they’re out of direct sun but they obviously don’t suffer from being cold. (UV messes with stuff.) Don’t leave them where they’ll get wet (hence the hanging part). It is perfectly OK to hang snowshoes in a drafty old woodshed for years at a time… provided the mice don’t eat ’em. Mice never gnawed on my snowshoes. I don’t know if that’s normal or I was just lucky.

More in my next post.

In my last post I talked about “traditional snowshoes”. These are the wood and rawhide devices that look so “old school cool” that people hang them on walls at rustic bars. If you’re traversing Greenland or packing out a caribou, you probably want traditional snowshoes. Also, if you’re traversing Greenland or packing out a caribou you shouldn’t be taking advice from some rando on the internet!

On to modern snowshoes. Traditional snowshoes aren’t rare but you can’t pick them up at a box store. Conversely, you can buy modern snowshoes just about anywhere, even Amazon. That’s a hint that they’re a different critter.

If you’re a svelte person, more likely to wear spandex than wool and are more likely to be “recreating” than “working”, modern snowshoes make a lot more sense. Slogging around with wood and rawhide is cool but it’s unnecessary for your needs. There’s nothing wrong with new technology and they’ll probably save you money.

Modern snowshoes are a lot tamer and yet in some ways look cooler. You can find 10,000 variants but they have similarities in appearance (if not specific design and materials). Some modern snowshoes are serious equipment and some are more like toys. They all look like something from the Jetsons compared to traditional snowshoes.

Modern snowshoes have a much smaller hoop, usually made of aluminum tubing or something similar. This is spanned by a piece of neoprene or similar artificial flexible fabric-ish stuff that covers most or all of the whole area. This is a big difference from the wider spread lacing of a traditional snowshoe.

Modern snowshoes are (usually?) lighter, cheaper to buy (unproven?), and still last a long time (though not as long as their unkillable ancestor). Being lighter and cheaper they’re the vast majority of snowshoes sold. Remember how I said all things are a compromise? The big traditional snowshoes may wear you out but the smaller snowshoes will sink deeper if the snow is deep and fluffy. Life is like that.

Here’s a photo of modern snowshoes from Amazon (I haven’t tested these myself). Just look at them! Compared to me clomping away like Jeremiah Johnson, someone on modern snowshoes looks like they’ve got jet powered footwear. They’re orange fer Chrissake! Kids and recreationalists who sneer at bent ash frames readily get on board with modern snowshoes. The ones in this photo even come with a carrying case and poles. I completely understand why people like modern snowshoes.

However, it’s all about floatation and compromise. Ready for me to say a statement that will piss people off? Here goes…

I theorize that the vast majority of miles hiked are done on traditional snowshoes. Yet the majority of sales are modern snowshoes.

Now I’m going to duck for cover as people hurl rocks at me.

Don’t worry though. There’s a time and a place for a simple easy to carry “backup snowshoe” or “recreation snowshoe”. If you’re running a trapline and cover most of the ground by snowmobile, it would make sense to have little snowshoes strapped on your sled and only use them for the last few hundred yards between the sled trail and the trap. Same for maple syrup operations on the wet slushy end of winter. Their small size makes them perfect as a backup in case your tracked ATV has an electrical gremlin and won’t start.

They’re also perfect where you need some flotation but aren’t trekking a million miles in deep drifts. A windswept lake with packed snow interspersed with open areas or a heavily treed area that doesn’t get a lot of drifting is where a small modern shoe is perfect. Same for where a trail is already broken for you. If eleventy zillion snowmobiles have packed the trail, modern snowshoes are an excellent option.

I’d probably go for them if I were climbing something steep and icy too. (Modern snowshoes can have more jagged gripping surfaces than the wooden framed traditional style.)

Also, they’re great when you’re light. Not everyone is dragging 50 pounds of beaver pelts across the Canadian Rockies. If you’re a light person on a short jaunt like birdwatching or whatnot, why go overboard?

So that’s my two cents and it’s worth what ya’ paid for it. If you’ve got modern snowshoes that are plastic and came from Walmart yet you used them to cross a glacier during a two week Dall Sheep hunt… I bow to your different experiences.

Also, lets back up and mention safety. Deep snow can kill your ass dead.

You should never be more than a mile from your truck wallowing around in deep snow without a plan; either modern or traditional snowshoes are better than playing Donner Party six miles out. Most people have no idea what wading through 5′ drifts can do to you. It’s horrible! Snowshoes aren’t obsolete! Unless you’re nine feet tall to stride through deep snow or have mastered the ability to hover, have a plan! Also, your snowmobile isn’t invulnerable.

I’m linking to a few YouTube videos comparing modern and traditional snowshoes: here and here.

More in my next post.

“When life hands you lemons, quit making analogies about fruit drinks. Get off your ass and do something.”

Winter is already here. I hardly remember summer. It was all a blur! Oh well, winter’s undeniable so so there’s naught for it but to make the best of it. Winter comes with snow. Snow, if you live far enough north, is more or less impassible on foot. Most people hardly notice this because they never venture beyond cleared paths and manmade (plowed) areas. I try to get out there where God intended… with mixed results.

I don’t have ten grand to drop on a mid-level used snowmobile (and I know little enough about snowmobiles that I’d probably get screwed in the purchase). The solution (or rather one of many adaptations) is a set of snowshoes.

This ain’t my first rodeo. I already got me some snowshoes. However, they’re beat to shit. Thus, life’s video game offers a side quest. “Your snowshoes are shot. Buy new? Or rebuild?” I decided to rebuild ’cause that’s how I roll.

[Note: I have experiential knowledge using traditional snowshoes. I don’t know about the market for them and especially new technologies. I just bought a pair and used them for 35(!) years. If the newfangled ones are God’s gift to mobility I simply haven’t experimented with them enough to know. Forgive any inadvertent error in my upcoming advice.]

Broadly speaking, snowshoes come in two types: traditional and modern. (I’ve no idea what some REI salesman would call “modern” snowshoes. I do know that nothing REI sells is “traditional”. Virtually any big box “sporting goods” store might stock a zillion modern snowshoes but no traditional ones.)

Ugh… I just know someone is going to pedantic me into the ground for this topic…

Deep breath. Here goes:

Traditional snowshoes (like mine) are based on a largish elongated wood hoop, usually but not necessarily ash. This is crisscrossed (laced) with a mesh. The mesh is either rawhide (hard core traditional) or something that looks like a flattish widened shoelace. The hoop and lacing (regardless of material chosen) is slathered with a big dose of waterproofing (usually varnish). YMMV but I think the shoelace stuff is both cheaper and lighter than rawhide. I’m not implying the shoelace material is inferior. My snowshoe is laced in rawhide; which was a lot more common 35 years ago.

They come in an array of shapes. Here’s an image with three different shapes of traditional snowshoes. I found it at “Snowshoe Magazine“. The important point here is that there’s a magazine about snowshoes! I did not know that. Did you know that? I’m sure they’re super experts compared to me.

The job of a snowshoe is to float on the top of the snow. Snowshoes vary in this because snow itself is highly variable. A snowshoe will work best under condition X and less well under condition Y. None are perfect for everything.

Traditional snowshoes generally float more than modern variants. Thus, they’re better for deep snow. This can be a big deal if the snow is soft and fluffy. If you’re sinking into snow that’s balls deep, life can really suck. It’s easy to get exhausted flailing around in the drifts. Waist deep snow with no or inadequate snowshoes will feel like crawling through cement. After 100 yards you’ll be battered and a mile of that shit might kill ya’!

On a traditional snowshoe, some snow pushes through the mesh with each step (at least if it’s fluffy snow). That’s ok, it’s a game of percentages. If 95% stays underfoot and 5% comes through, it’s great. The snow will (hopefully) fall back through the mesh on your next step.

If the snow is wet and sloppy, sometimes the mesh will get gummed up with packed snow. It’s not a big deal. Periodically kick your snowshoes clean and pray for colder weather.

If the snow is tightly packed, a snowshoe can often walk on top like it’s a sidewalk. That’s the best!

Also, and I’m not recommending this at all, snowshoes will spread your weight out if you’re on thin ice. (It’s better to never go on thin ice of course!) At least once in my life, snowshoes have “saved” me when I “walked” right over an open well! It had a thin layer of snow and some brush covering it. It was more or less invisible. Without snowshoes it might have sucked me in like a pit trap! (I still shudder a little when I think about that!)

The point I’m trying to make is that floating on top of snow is a good thing but to do so requires an uneasy compromise between forces. Traditional snowshoes lean towards always floating in the worst scenarios at the expense of being larger and a little less ideal for “easy” conditions.

I tend to assume traditional snowshoes are heavier but that’s not necessarily the case.

Part of the weight is the same for both kinds of snowshoe. With any snowshoe, you’re going to be wearing big honkin’ boots. Big boots are heavy. I’m thinking of getting mukluks. I don’t really need them but I really like saying “mukluk”.

All snowshoes have bindings. (In my opinion all snowshoe bindings suck.) Bindings tie the snowshoe to your pre-existing boot or mukluk. They pivot when you step, often dragging the rear of the snowshoe like a lizard’s tail. They adapt to any boot; the exact opposite of downhill skis where you need special boots to match the crap you’re strapping to the boots.

Traditional snowshoes are tough. They’re pretty much unkillable. Within reason you can use them as improvised snow shovels or balance them on top of a drift at the edge of a plowed area to give yourself a place to sit. You can probably beat a wolverine to death with them.

My limited experience suggests that flat out hard core winter trekker / camping people (which has got to be the smallest % of the population you’ll ever find) prefer traditional snowshoes. I’m not 100% sure of that because I go alone and I’m no longer super hard core about it. But that’s how I’d bet. If you’ve got a neighbor planning to “winter hike” the Iditarod Trail, he’s probably using traditional snowshoes. Just to be sure, ask him for me.

Traditional snowshoes are probably best for heavy loads. Weight sinks. If you’re a beefy (Curmudgeon sized) woodsman, the smaller modern variants might not help you as much. And by the way, heavier weight doesn’t mean you’ve been sitting on the couch freebasing Twinkies. It could be from a heavy pack, fifteen layers of jackets, ice fishing gear, or carrying stuff. If you’re lugging a chainsaw or an elk quarter, you need big snowshoes.

I’ve run a chainsaw while on traditional snowshoes! I’m not saying I recommend it, but it works. Smaller modern snowshoes might not help you with those kinds of challenges.

If you’re in deep snow, far from the packed trail (thus encountering all sorts of changing conditions), and possibly working or carrying a load I recommend traditional snowshoes.

Also traditional snowshoes make you look like a mountain man! Who doesn’t want that? It’ll match your beard. If you don’t have a beard but snowshoe a lot, you will grow one. (As for the ladies, the workout of snowshoeing means you’ll eventually have an ass like hardened steel. Go for it, you hot nature goddess!)

Traditional snowshoes come in a million shapes. Some are narrow and long, for snaking through the underbrush. Others (like mine) are wider for drifts. Every shape is a compromise between opposing forces. Wider snowshoes (like mine) will have you walking bow-legged like a cowboy.

There are many kits and workshops to build your own traditional snowshoes. I think this is cool and they look like a fun project. Don’t assume the thing you’ll build will be inferior. It may be just as good as anything you can buy. My snowshoes were purchased so I don’t get brag about building my own gear. Then again my snowshoes lasted a long time and have earned a place in snowshoe Valhalla.

In my next post, I’ll talk about “modern” snowshoes.

[You don’t need big motors to have big fun. That’s something I didn’t know when I was younger. I figured it out when I started to get into impressive mayhem with my 200cc Yamaha TW dirtbike. When I bought it I worried it would be too weak. Instead the crude little beast punches well above its weight class. It can do anything I’ve got the balls to try.

This spring I sought a “tourer” and choose, against all likely options, a tame little (actually it doesn’t look little at all) 800cc Honda Pacific Coast. It’s very old. It was cheap to buy. Like my dirtbike, the smaller displacement tourer punches well above it’s weight class. Can it do anything a battlecruiser sized 1800cc Goldwing does? Not quite. It would lose a drag race against a new $25k ‘wing. But it’s functionally close. It would catch up at the next stoplight and it carries roughly the same amount of gear. Did I mention it costs an order of magnitude less and gets great MPG?

I described these two bikes to a friend (who has an Africa Twin but also a Grom) he said “I’ll bet you’re scooter curious”.

He’s right! I like the idea of scooters (which are functionally the same as saying “tiny motorcycles”). I don’t have one butI’d happily park a scooter in amid my motorcycles. (Alas it’s snowing so I’ll ride no more this year. Bummer!)]

In the last few years American markets are starting to see scooters gain in popularity. I love them! If they sold in America at the dirt cheap prices they’re sold in Asia I’d already have one (or two). In particular, the Honda ADV 160 seems like it can handle 55MPH easily and still go on a dirt road without puking parts. It has a big cargo “hold” and gets around 100 MPG.

The interesting part is that these silly machines appeal not just to a nut like me but other people who I assume are less nutty. It’s weird to see that in America. Americans invariably prefer their machinery to be overpowered, heavy, fast, loud, and expensive. Tiny scooters were mocked in the past. That’s what I would expect.

Yet, perhaps driven by economics or demographics, scooters are gradually gaining acceptance. They’re considered legit adult machines. Sure, lots of beefy dudes in bars swear they’d never ride one but many “real” riders (like yours truly) enjoy like the idea. More importantly, people who aren’t “biker people” might be timidly joining the hobby.

I didn’t expect that. I’m “scooter curious” myself but I never expected to have company. In a world where a sizeable tonnage of 4×4 SUV is considered “necessary”, scooters are an outlier. I hope we’ll see more of them in the future.

Pondering this reminded me of a thing that happened long ago. I’ve probably written about it before. Too bad, I remember it fondly and will re-tell the story. It’s my blog after all.

About 20 years ago I was riding “the loneliest highway in America”. That’s route 50 in Utah/Nevada and it is heaven; a dusty empty deserted heaven.

I’d spent the night in Green River, UT. That’s an equally beautiful area of the Rockies even if it is on the Interstate. I was heading west. I crossed over to route 50, gassed up near Delta, and hadn’t seen a human being since. If you’re worried about planetary overpopulation, spend time in Utah!

The conditions were good. I headed west more or less bumping into the rev limiter of my 1100cc cruiser. It was roaring happily. I was grinning like a loon. I had sufficient fuel and hoped to tank up at the Nevada line. That was my only plan. Ride west, fuel up, ride more.

Somewhere out there in the glorious nothing I spotted a speck on the horizon. I closed distance like a cruise missile. In a split second I recognized it as a little scooter. I blew past it in an absolute cacophony of power and speed; like an F-14 crossing paths with a butterfly. In the blink of an eye, the little critter faded in my rear view mirror.

A while later I saw a dry lakebed. Google tells me it was Sevler Lake. There was water out there somewhere but I sure as hell couldn’t see it. I parked on the dry mud and explored on foot. There was a sign that said “Do not drive on the lake bed. You will get stuck! Tow costs $150.” I didn’t doubt it. There were truck tracks and it looked like even lifted Jeeps would struggle in that soft goo.

I hiked a bit out into the mud but even walking was sketchy. I turned around, very thankful I hadn’t done anything stupid to get my bike stuck. I fired up my bike and rolled back onto pavement.

A few minutes later I saw the scooter again. As before, I blew past it like a thunderbolt. This time I held out my hand with a thumb’s up. I was impressed. Dude had somehow gotten in front of me in a “tortoise and hare” moment. Good on him!

I don’t remember how much further it was to the Nevada line. Maybe an hour at 95-ish miles per hour?

I tanked up my bike and spent some time soaking up air conditioning. I was eating crappy road food and looking out the window when the little scooter showed up. Amazing!

This was a long time ago when scooters were called mopeds. It probably had 50cc at most. It was a urban street toy. Yet somehow that little gadget had rolled all the way to the middle of the damn desert.

I walked out to congratulate the guy. “Dude, you rode all the way here on that? Awesome!”

He was a nice guy. I don’t remember his appearance well. He was non-descript, like an accountant. He wasn’t equipped (or at least obviously so) for long range desert shenanigans. I think he had a T-shirt and jeans.

I was the opposite. My bike was laden with gear. I had a container of spare gas, and plenty of water. I was dressed in the classic cruiser safety mode; like a combination goth lunatic and leather fetishist. My helmet had a mirror shield and probably cost more than that guy’s whole machine. My bike was massive and chrome. Internally it was liquid cooled, shaft driven, had electronics to keep me from frying it by flogging it too hard.

I was loaded for bear, this guy looked like an accountant making a quick run to Kinkos down by the mall. Yet here we were… both of us.

I was impressed!

We struck up a conversation. Turns out he was from Salt Lake City. He’d been riding this little lunch box well over 200 miles!

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He had no idea. Now that I think about it, I didn’t have a plan for myself either. Dredging my memory, I think I spent the night at Battle Mountain, NV, some 300 miles northwest. Such a distance was inconceivable on a scooter; then again look where he’d already gotten. Sometimes inconceivable means impossible but often it means “I wish I’d tried that too”.

We only talked a little bit. I bid him farewell not 10 minutes later, roaring back on the road like a dragon with it’s ass on fire. I’ll always remember what he said:

“I dunno’. I guess I want to see how far I’ll get.”

He was probably one of the freest people I’ve ever met.

I’m not sure if he was fleeing something in Salt Lake, seeking something in Nevada, or just soaking up the sun. I know only that he was sputtering through God’s country without a care in the world.

I’ll always have a special place in my heart for that guy. I assume he somehow made it to the Pacific. I like to think he did whatever he intended to do. As much as I love my big cruiser he made me think it was superfluous. I started wondering about smaller bikes. Hell, that guy was traveling damn near at the speed of mule and yet he was getting wherever he was going. He probably spent no more than pocket change on gas. He was the real deal.

In my mind I nicknamed him the Pavement Sage. I was (and am) truly a rider, but he was something more. I’m glad I met him.

[Founding Questions is one of my favorite reads. I hope he doesn’t mind me pondering one of his more pithy observations from today. Also, Scott Adams has from time to time pissed me off but he’s no dope either. Adams said some shit that fits with today’s cogitation so he gets dragged into my thoughts.]

Scott Adams mentioned years ago that “propaganda works on you even if you know it’s propaganda”. This is observably true and it pisses me off! Some politician blows smoke out his ass, the press puts it in a turbo vortex right up yours, and suddenly your chill is gone. You might be smart enough to recognize it’s bullshit but still you can get hooked. It’s hard to avoid getting agitated about either the thing you’re told (which you know to be false) or the fact that you’re forced to waste bandwidth on irrelevancies.

Irrelevancies are almost worse than outright lies! I’ve almost never heard a true statement about the kerfuffle in Ukraine after two full years but I’m used to it by now. What’s worse is that I shouldn’t have to be aware of the existence of either Taylor Swift or Colin Kaepernick. Neither seems to do much on their own. Why do I have to know about them? Yet I’m constantly told what people are doing in reaction to their antics. I don’t watch sportsball so there’s nothing Kaepernick can do to impress me except I do acknowledge he has a righteous afro. I’m not sure Taylor Swift can even read sheet music. If she jams out a blues riff that touches my soul or blasts out vocals like Grace Slick I’ll revisit my point of view. Until that time, Taylor is just a chick in a bikini singing forgettable pop with roughly the skill of any other forgettable chick in a bikini.

I don’t care what anyone says about them. I shouldn’t have to form an opinion about anything those two twits have ever done. Yet propaganda never sleeps and here we are. (Actually I don’t know if the whiny NFL guy is still around. Maybe he’s flushed?)

Propaganda is painful. I hate being fed falsehoods (or irrelevancies). I hate even more that the falsehoods work their way into my “default” thinking. But I am human; endowed with the same leftover simian software package that hampers us all. The best I can do is to be aware of the limitations of the mind and try to keep reason on speed dial.

Mining a different but related vein, Founding Questions cogitated about the difference between propaganda and advertising (which is small and decreasing). Then he went on to talk about the difference between informational and aspirational advertising.

An informational ad might tell me how many clock cycles an Apple computer can use to curbstomp a Dell in speed tests. I’d be fine with that. I might even be interested. But that never happens.

Mostly ads are aspirational. “Look how good it will feel to be recognized as the superior life form because your computer has a cool logo. You don’t want people to consider you a plebian trash-person because of your no-name laptop do you?”

Aspirational concepts are legion, obvious, and silly. We’ve all seen ads that imply a Caribbean cruise or a DeBeers diamond will make your wife/girlfriend put out big time. Especially amusing are diamond ads that show the lucky lady parading her ring in front of other women. It’s not that she basks in the gleam of the gem all on her own. The payoff is that her friends will be jealous.

Informational tells you the diamond is pretty. I could live with that. There ain’t nothing wrong with just enjoying beauty! Maybe she and her beau with the big checkbook could gaze happily at the ring.

But no… it’s all about the aspiration.

Aspirational is the opposite of valuing a thing for what it is. It’s straight up soul cancer. The ad tells a lady that the jealousy of other women is a super awesome thing to desire. Here’s a hint from me; if your potential bride is primarily motivated by making other women jealous, get a better potential bride.

EV Vehicle ads make it look like a plug in car will turn you into an urban legend of sophistication; which it won’t. Sinatra would be cool if he was on a moped. You’ll be you even if you’re in a Bentley.

Harley ads display how everyone else will think you’re awesome if your bike is loud and chrome enough. Which is why my cruiser is a Honda.

Until Bud Light shot it’s own foot they pushed how macho and fun all your friends would think you are if you drink their product. It was never about how cheap the beer is, or how… ugh can I use “delicious” in a sentence with light beer? Well you get the point.

Anyway, aspirational ads never seemed to resonate with me. I’ve always thought that was weird. If propaganda moves the needle… at least sometimes… why not aspirational ads?

I figured it was an eccentricity in Curmudgeon’s internal wiring. Aspiration seems to work on everyone else. I should be able to emote with the dumb ads too. Ads about how someone else will react to whatever I’m doing aren’t rocket science. I see what they’re saying. It’s just not getting traction. I never could figure out why.

Then Founding Questions slaps a 2″x4″ of obvious upside my head.

“Aspirational ads don’t work on Zen monks, who really ARE trying to better themselves — in isolation, as that’s the only venue in which self-betterment can take place. Indeed, we all know that’s the key to self-improvement, the one thing you must have for it to work: You can’t care what anyone else thinks.”

Huh! It’s that simple. I can’t believe I never really thought of that before.

When you concern yourself with doing, you don’t waste time caring about external validation. My last post was (at least tangentially) about my little sailboat. I daydream of fun times I’ll have in the future. I recollect fun time in the past. None of that joy was purchased. Nor could it be. The only thing I purchased was plywood, epoxy, and tools.

I’ll admit I initially assumed my silly looking boat would bring me a small measure of mockery (which it didn’t) but I was never too worried. The most important part was that it sailed well. Interestingly, nobody seems to mock a boat when they see it in motion. In fact, people are stoked when I say “it’s not that hard, you should try it.”

When I bring it to the boat ramp, it’s the smallest squarest thing in the vicinity. But I never wanted to impress anyone so everyone seems to get that right from the start. I built it to serve my purposes; which it does beautifully. (I originally built it as “a canoe that paddles itself”.) The only thing people do that annoys me is ask is if a square front boat can actually move. I assure them that it can. As soon as I float free of the dock they can see it themselves. (The style is often called “scow”.) Charitably I think a lot of people have never seen a craft like mine and are therefore wondering if they’ll have to fish me out of the lake if I drown out there.

A home built craft ruins everything for aspirational marketing. A 250 HP Mercury outboard seems pretty badass until some dork with a beard rows away from the dock with oars; like a fuckin’ caveman. He doesn’t have less horsepower, he has none! Then he hoists this stupid trapezoidal sail and drifts away at 3 MPH like he doesn’t give a shit. Because I don’t. (However, I’m deadly worried to get the hell away from a busy dock before I get in some bass boat’s way!)

I’d like to be a lot better at sailing. But I don’t “aspire” to own a more impressive boat. This one is teaching me plenty. Don’t get me wrong, if someone handed me a serviceable 25′ sloop I’d happily sail it. But I wouldn’t be impressed with myself for owning such a thing. I’d just focus on learning how to operate it.

Done honestly, self-motivation is almost like armor. You become largely unaware of what other people think of an action because that’s not the point of the action. I don’t give a shit if everyone at the University has an Apple. (What’s the opposite of “diversity”? University!) I have an iPad and it has the logo but it can’t do much and I’m convinced a monkey can use a tablet. I also have a MinisForum mini computer that I use for real work. I have no idea who makes MinisForum or why; it was adequate tech for my needs and I like that it’s silent. Now that I glance at it, it has a logo and the logo is ugly. I never really thought about it. I’d use a fuckin’ Raspberry Pi running on AAA batteries if it was up to the task.

I prefer bourbon to light beer and I’d only care about an ad that informationally tells me a certain bourbon is better/cheaper than another. Then I’d do a taste test and decide myself. I don’t need Clydesdales to pick out my liquor. Now that I think of it, what the hell do horses have to do with beer?

So that’s today’s thought. Not particularly deep but it took a while to sort it out in my head. I don’t “get” most advertising because I don’t care what people think. So simple it took someone else’s blog to light the bulb over my head.

One last thought. Not giving a shit probably saves me tons of money!!!

[While mulling over happy memories I almost named this post “The Ghost Of Christmas Past”. Such bad timing. It’s Halloween! (*Also, if your only exposure to “A Christmas Carol” involves Muppets or Bill Murray, do yourself a favor and read the real story.)]

The Ghost of Christmas Past used memories of happy prior holidays to start shaking Scrooge out of a dire state. I’m not Scrooge by a longshot but I found myself basking in happy memories.

My thought, worth whatever value you wish to apply to it, is that it’s always Christmas Past or at least potentially so. Societies shift, generations change, things adapt or, as seems to be the case lately, they don’t adapt. You cannot be sure where your path leads. Today might be your future’s happy memory! This isn’t a black pill telling you shit always gets worse; it’s a bit of stoic truth to mull over.

In 2019 I went on a solo camping/sailing trip. (Story in Walkabouts Spring 2019. Photos here.) That story was when I introduced my homebuilt sailboat on this blog.

At the time, my biggest concern was that folks would mock my crude but plucky little boat. God bless ya’, nobody mocked my little boat. Thanks!

I’d worked hard building that simple little box and was rather proud of it. I was also utterly shocked at how well it performed. Don’t let appearances fool you; if the details are right a boat seemingly shaped like a brick can sail like a boss.

I don’t generally put my heart on my sleeve so I almost didn’t mention the boat. The reason I did was to encourage anyone else who’s considering the challenge. So the first moral of the story is this:

“If you want to build a boat, for whatever variant of ‘boat’ applies to you. Do it! Start NOW!”

I built a boat and it’s a happy memory. I posted about it in 2019. That was before… whatever now is. What is now? I’ve heard it called “Clown World”. I’ve called it the “Bidenverse”. Some folks just swear. Others just shrug. We all know “now” is uncharted and unstable. We know “before” will never return.

It’s not how much cynicism has been built-up that shocks me but how fast it happened. 2019 was just a few years ago! As Hemingway wrote of bankruptcy, change happened in “[t]wo ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

We feel it in our bones. “Gradually” is over. Today we live in “suddenly”. That’s not a value judgment; just an observation.

When I was sailing that boat, it was still “gradual”. I was aware of historical election shenanigans (especially in Chicago) but they were from far removed, sepia-toned, history. For most of my life votes appeared to be mostly and broadly statistically sound. A small incremental growing “margin of cheat” was suspected, possibly undeniable, but it wasn’t anything we lost sleep over.

That was 2019. A year later everyone looked at vote counts and knew in their heart what had happened. People on both sides knew it. You can smell Enron accounting from a mile away. Of course, humans are adaptable. Since it is more or less illegal to think otherwise about half the populace has decided what looked and smelled like shit was actually roses. I don’t blame them, it’s a pain in the ass thinking otherwise.

Just to be sure I’m in the “good” category” I say right here and now that “it is unquestionable that Joe Biden is so popular that he got the most votes in history”. I want that on the record! Joe Biden got 81,000,000 votes and has the political prisoners to prove it. There is never doubt comrade!

Is 2024 going to be an “election” or an election? I don’t know. You don’t either. We both have a hunch, which most of us will not voice in mixed company. I’m not going down that rabbit hole today. The point is, it wasn’t a thing I pondered in 2019.

When I was sailing my boat I also figured the “freak out of 2016” couldn’t last forever. Hillary wasn’t coronated as pre-ordained so half the populace put on dumb hats and ran screaming in the streets. I assumed their panic would burn out. Panic is exhausting. Terror is bad for you. Eventually you give yourself over to mental illness or snap out of it; they’d return to jobs and lives and reality. I was wrong. The panic will last “until it’s over”. I have no idea what event will define “over” (possibly the StaPuft Marshmallow Man). “Fizzle in a few years” was an incorrect guess from naïve 2019.

In 2019 I didn’t expect to live in a nation with political prisoners. I didn’t expect Epstein solutions to go unquestioned. I didn’t foresee lawfare and corruption bordering on (crossing into?) the complete collapse of the rule of law.

In 2019 people sometimes got sick and nobody shit themselves over it. I didn’t anticipate the reaction to an illness (any illness, even Ebola) would push us over the edge. Not just us but many nations. A 99.7% survivable event crushed not just America’s economy but its society. In the end, it crushed souls.

That’s where I’m going with this. In 2019 I thought things were already weird but I had no idea how weird they could get. I thought things were already stupid and unstable. I fretted over $2.30 gas and $20 trillion in debt; not that various governors would shut down high schools and the President would try forcing injections into me.

Now, I fondly remember 2019. $2.30 gas and a “mere” $20 Trillion in debt; sounds like heaven!

I also remember sailing my boat. It was good. And here’s the next point; it is good right now too.

Even if the world is a smoking radioactive crater, you can go sailing.

My time in 2023 was spent in hospitals and inevitably a funeral. And now the boat is under 3″ of snow. But spring will come. There’s always hope.

I woke up this morning with a new idea for my “next” boat. (Once you build one boat you’re always scheming about the next one.) I could insert a through-hull copper pipe here and it would function like this. The mind, pulled forward by the soul (at least a healthy soul), does not dwell on what might have been. It sees the future and it sees the best of what might come. My mind, while I was sleeping, was building the next boat.

That happy thought had me grinning all through my Halloween morning coffee.

Then I had another thought. A few weeks ago I was snoozing in a tent with a woodstove. In 2019 a “hot tent” wasn’t on my radar screen. I had done winter camping decades ago but my main technique was “youthful toughness and stupidity”. With age, I’d faded out of that hobby. By 2023, I have exquisite gear (see here and here). More importantly I’m gaining abilities as I test the gear. In 2019 the future I anticipated didn’t hold either the good or the bad of now. I don’t like the horror of political prisoners but I shouldn’t ignore the joy of happy plans for a new kind of winter experience.

I stumbled across Joe Lanni’s LUCKY DUCK, The ultimate built-on-a-shoestring racer.

Joe came across the Puddle Duck Racers during his many wanderings down the rabbit holes of the internet. “They kept popping up,” he says. “I kept reading how surprised people were by how well the boat actually sails, despite being so easy to build.”

Here’s a photo of my version of the same boat. Pretty isn’t it?

One day you’ll look back on today, you’ll be better off if it’s a happy memory. So if you need to build a boat, do it.

Happy Halloween folks,

A.C.