Adaptive Curmudgeon

“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Mark Twain

I have an idea. I’m not good enough a writer to fully commit it to words but I’m trying. My last post was an honorable attempt. Today I’ll try again.

As I was saying in my last post, I got to live through the dissolution of the biggest baddest scariest system of the last several hundred years. The Soviet Union dissolved while I was still sporting a mullet. What it looked like, from the safe distance of an American who had nothing to do with anything, was a system losing all it’s stability. Internal controls were inadequate or mal-adapted to new conditions. They couldn’t keep the plates spinning. Inevitably, it collapsed. When it collapsed, it went down fast.

During this momentous transition, the press, on both the East and West, were useless. They insisted nothing was happening. The USSR was awesome and unstoppable and would surely outlast us all. Flunkies like the CBS evening news (it seems weird to remember TV “news” but it was a thing back then) worked very hard to not notice what was obvious to everyone who cared to look.

Right now it’s about the same but with a different former bad ass. The media is pretending it’s totally normal for an American president to be too incapacitated to run for re-election but simultaneously super healthy for “presidenting”. And of course pulling out of the race via an unusual memo on social media is totally legit. And of course the man who got more votes than any candidate in history polling lower than whale-snot just a few short years after being sworn in behind concertina wire is totally normal too.

You know exactly what I’m talking about. You feel the “vibe” just like I do. It’s what I consider the “feel” of a collapsing system.

Back to the 1980’s, I’m grateful USSR collapsed as peacefully as it did. It was hard on the Russian people but it could have been worse. It didn’t go WW3 or French Revolution or Great Leap Forward or Rwanda. I will always be glad it was thus. I never meant ill toward the Russian people.

After that long winded intro, I’m going to dive into the near-assassination of The Orange Menace and the massive levels of incompetence (if not deliberate malice) layered on the cake of Fuckuppery that created that event. But not yet! First a walk down memory lane.

Back in 1987 the mighty heartless Soviet Union was still spinning plates. Their military had a well earned reputation for being serious and brutal. Mathias Rust was a novice pilot. For reasons which probably made sense to him, Rust flew clear to the center of the USSR’s homeland. He flew past radar installations and machine gun turrets and military might the likes of which had most of us fretting over total Armageddon.

He did nothing clever at all. He just flew there!

Inexplicably, the huge military meant to stop such things sat there with its thumb up it’s ass watching it happen. He was in a fuckin’ Cessna! Stalin would’ve had that plane blown from the sky faster than you can say “glorious people’s air force turns hippy activist into confetti”. By ’87 the cruel and evil Stalin was gone. The USSR he’d created was (probably due to his excesses) a hollow ineffective bureaucracy.

Just think of the madness or clanging brass balls it took to do something that crazy. Just look at it! (Note; is that little kid in the foreground pretending to shoot the plane with a toy pistol? You go little Russkie!)

You can’t fly a Cessna into the gaping maw of unforgiving totalitarian militaristic machine at it’s peak, but you can fly into its ossified remnant when it’s nearly dead. At some point during the decline a system can’t manage its own affairs and the USSR couldn’t figure out what to do about a silly little Cessna.

Rust was lucky! Don’t think he was a steely eyed fighter, he was a nerd in a rental. As for the USSR? They just sorta’ gave up. Even after he landed they didn’t seem to know what to do about it. It was mystifying. Stalin’s USSR would’ve had the dude ripped to pieces faster than you can say “Gulag for him!” The remnant USSR tried nothing and was all out of ideas. They tossed him in the clink for a couple of months, treating him better than Stalin treated anyone, and then handed him over to Germany.

Rust is alive right now. Stalin’s USSR would kill a man for growing a turnip wrong. The shell left behind couldn’t keep a Cessna out of its airspace. The system had crawled up it’s own ass and died there. Eventually a nerd gave it a wedgie. Just look at this dweeb. This noodle armed fucknut defeated the Soviet Air Force!

That’s all old timey stuff and yours truly is just a GenX guy who never got over not living the plot to Terminator. Right? Nah, here’s a photo of our own system losing it’s ability to do core things.

Last year a “spy balloon” launched by the Chinese, dragged it’s nutsack across American airspace from sea to shining sea. America’s Air Force of past times would’ve blown that fucker up so fast it’d never have seen the continent. But, in 2023 and the system was hollow.

Just think about it. America’s combined military might couldn’t handle a balloon. Which is worse? The Soviet Union that couldn’t stop a dipshit in a Cessna or the American military that couldn’t stop inflated fabric?

Think that over for a second. America arguably has the most powerful military on planet earth. It couldn’t handle a fuckin’ balloon! A balloon has no defenses. It doesn’t use stealth. It can’t maneuver. It’s not loaded with passengers or hostages. It’s not a question of international law; blowing up shit that’s not welcome in your airspace is just as legit in 2023 in America as it was in 1987 in Russia.

Our military can drone strike a goatherder in Syria but it failed to pop a balloon over the homeland!

Why did we put up with the damn balloon? Beats me. I assume a long chain of command filled with gutless career dweebs. Most of them never could make a decision and the rest have been taught to stop making decisions. In 2023 that included the “currently missing but perfectly alert at least until next January” President.

Reagan would’ve whacked a spy balloon so fast it would make your head spin. The conversation would be like this: “I don’t want the details. You had me at balloon and Chinese. Shoot it down before it reaches land and don’t fuck up like Carter with the damn helicopters. Prepare a press release where I look good announcing it.” I would expect the same from any “adult” president. Bush Sr., Clinton, or Bush Jr., or Obama would all be like; “It’s a balloon, why are you even bothering me with this?” Trump would’ve blown it up twice and then blown up the water where it landed, just to freak out the sqaures.

Biden did nothing until at the last possible minute. He shot it down after it had traversed the entire American homeland. (Presumably protecting Spain or UK from having to handle it on the other side of the Atlantic?)

The balloon flew for days. I ask the question; “Who among us is so clueless that they can’t figure out the solution to a balloon?”

I get back the answer; “None of us individually is that incompetent, but we could form a committee that’s dumb enough.”

That’s the “feeling” of a collapsing system.

Now back to one of the many weird things in this very weird summer. A would-be assassin came damn close to nailing Trump. But he wasn’t a hard core, ice cold, steely eyed, killer. Thomas Matthew Crooks was a twerp. Look at this tool!

I’m fat and old and generally peaceful and even I could kick this twerp’s ass. My housecat could probably kick his ass.

Thomas Crooks is the human version of a Chinese Spy Balloon.

Everyone’s stomping about with alternate theories about how the Secret Service used nine dimensional chess to nearly off Orange Man Bad, but life isn’t like that. Systems that do not adapt, die. Often they go with huge kaboom, but other times they go slow and stupid; like a wet fart in church.

Our decrepit bureaucracies are not doing well at anything for which they were created.

It didn’t start in 2020 but it was unavoidable by then. The plates aren’t spinning. The election of 2020 yielded the greatest number of votes in all of the nation’s history while looking, acting, and smelling as corrupt as possible. Short of actually mooning each individual voter by name on live TV what else could have happened to add to the stink of corruption?

The spy balloon of 2023 outwitted the military with the largest budget on planet earth. I repeat, it was a fuckin’ balloon.

In 2024 we very nearly got to watch Trump’s head explode in real time. He was surrounded by the formerly impressive Secret Service. They did nothing until after shots were fired. That the Secret Service is now associated with girl-bosses and obtuse chains of command is not Trump’s fault. It’s not Biden’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault. It’s failure en masse. A collapsed system is a failure that’s nobody’s fault.

We’re seeing what you’d expect for a bureaucracy in decline. The Secret Service once had a very clear mission and they appeared to do it reasonably well. Now it’s part of the clueless foam that surrounds us.

Note: this is a societal thing, not merely the government. If you’re looking for instances of systems failing you can look beyond government failures. Ask Kodak about digital photos. Ask Blockbuster about video streaming. Ask Sears about everything. Ask Cloudfire about network security.

As for the Secret Service, check out Kimberly Cheatle’s wiki-page. I read between the lines that she’s probably never taken a punch in her life. There’s no indication she’s drawn a firearm in the line of duty. She’s the kind of person who’s perfectly suited to run a bureaucracy in decline.

The good news is this; freewill. Even the Terminator series claimed there is no fate but what we make. And shit changing doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll get worse. I’ve seen systems collapse without massive bloodshed. Do you miss Sears or the USSR?

We might get through this (at least most of us). Our systems might even have a glimmer of relevancy left. They might (one hopes) be less far gone than the Soviet Union.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Next week’s Black Swan event (at this point it’s accelerating faster than monthly) is going to happen. It could envelop us into full terror. Certainly I see that the people are easily stampeded. In 2020, it took a week to go from “it’s racists to stop planes coming from China” to fistfights over toilet paper… so there’s that. Avoid crowds.

That’s the thing about collapsing systems, you can see it coming and you can see it after it’s gone but during the middle part all you can do is react. But I’m rooting for us all and I prefer chaos to a death march. Keep your head on a swivel and keep common sense in your heart. You might do well. Chaos is neither good nor bad, it’s just the absence of order.

The political world, has been unstable for decades, but it finally went batshit nuts. On my blog I’m carefully ignoring most comments. I write about campouts and batteries because once whole thing starts to collapse what’s the point? It’s simply a fact. I don’t point at the sky and yell that the sky is blue. Why would I?

To one extent or another, everyone saw it coming. Well maybe not everyone. A portion of true believers will deny what they’ve experienced this year, probably for the rest of their lives. Lets just say everyone who’s not currently wearing a covid mask or getting a third face tattoo sensed the jig is up.

Join me in a virtual break. Imagine a beautiful stream nestled among Rockies. Imagine a comfortable lawn chair parked in the shade of a cottonwood. Have a seat, I brought two! Imagine the stream is cold and clear and filled with trout. Imagine the beer is cold.

Nice eh?

Observe the stream. It flows because it must. It cannot stop. Gravity, geography, physics, these things cannot be denied. A bucket of water dumped on a rock in Billings will contribute (in some imperceptible yet very real way) to the flow past Baton Rouge.

No analogy is perfect. The further downstream you go, the more the Army Corps of Engineers faffs about. They nudge and cajole the water at massive expense and with only partial control. No matter what they do, water must keep flowing downhill.

Painting with a broad brush, my little stream is a stable system. Especially far upstream where it’s not being carpet bombed with money, it’ll keep on keeping on… forever. Our hypothetical mountain stream was flowing before you were born. It’ll be flowing after you’re dead. It’ll send rainfall from the Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico long after the spastic monkeys reading social media feeds on the bank cease to exist. Isn’t the stream relaxing to watch?

No one man controls it. There isn’t a secret cabal of Illuminati that meet on Epstein’s Island to teach the water to flow. The stream simply is.

Left alone, the stream might flow for a thousand years with only minor adjustments to the streambank. That’s a stable system.

There’s another kind of system; the unstable type. I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you forgot. Maybe you’ve been gaslit since. Allow me to offer my take on that long ago event. Here, let me hand you a cold beer to sip as I speak.

When I was very young, it was presented as if the Soviets were forever, stronger than us, and unstoppable. Every school teacher, even in the 1970’s simply assumed we’d lose to the mighty socialist powerhouse. Yes, that was the zeitgeist of the times. Go to any university right now and it’s about the same. Folks who have seen many events learn nothing from them.

I remember watching USSR get weirder and weirder. The State sponsored media, just as trustworthy as our media, would lie and lie. They lied so much that truth became impossible to them. “The people’s glorious tractor factory is making so many tractors that every farm will output ten times more than those idiots in America.” The gulf between reality and their utterances grew. The few and tiny facts which slipped out always told a different story than the “news”. “Russia, which has the world’s most awesome tractor factories, is importing grain from Iowa. This just goes to show that socialism is more efficient.”

You might forgive a young Curmudgeon for asking the obvious; “If socialism is the more efficient system, why are they importing our grain? Shouldn’t we be importing grain from their centrally controlled supposedly scientific system? How can goofball farmers in Iowa who are just winging it outcompete them?”

Teachers hate that shit! I was often in trouble for noticing such things.

As I sip my beer I realize I still am. In trouble for noticing I mean.

Anyway, a system that can’t adapt will inevitably corrode and then collapse. The unstoppable USSR began to fail. The media assured us that each of a series of hopeless, clueless, geriatric leaders were hale and healthy even as every photo showed trampled dogshit in rumpled suits.

Like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Soviets leaders were physically fit dynamos right up until they were dead two weeks ago. When one was planted, they’d prop up the next. Each was as inept and ossified as the last. Meanwhile the US media sternly warned us that the Russkies were large and in charge.

In 1983 we watched Wargames, where an AI tweaked the Russkies until we almost all died. That same year, television had it’s own nuclear war porn with The Day After. This was a pattern in my GenX youth. “Never forget the Russkies are fully capable of fucking you to death. Don’t ask stupid questions and do what your teacher says.”

America was invested in pretending the Soviets were growing instead of fading. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. All of our “intelligence” agencies were caught with their pants down. They had no idea it was coming. Dumb little Curmudgeon had noticed who was importing food and who was buying it. Everyone else was on TV explaining how everything they’d said for 10 years was bullshit but now, in the late 1980’s they were on top of their game.

It wasn’t true. To most it was still 1962. Most politicians are older than dirt now and they never left their youth. They never evolved beyond the Cuban Missile Crisis. The breakup of the Beatles is always a fresh wound. The summer of 1968 is a loop replay in their mind.

The Soviets collapse had to happen sooner or later. An unstable system must be corrected and they refused to correct. Eventually the gap between reality and politics was too large. Nobody was willing to rectify the situation, so nobody fixed it before the collapse.

We’re in another nation with a series of hopeless, clueless, geriatric leaders. Biden first ran for president in 1988. That’s before e-mail, social media, Netflix, and DVDs. Twenty years later Biden was still around. He got curbstomped by Obama.

Obama, for reasons which made sense in the short term, lifted Biden up from the floor and installed him in his seat of grift. He did the same with Hillary, who also got curbstomped. She ran State Department business on a private server and caused mayhem until Obama had to show her the door. He installed hapless John Kerry, who had at least won a few primaries.

Notice the pattern of picking among the losers? We have a system of competitions. It’s supposed to ensure our leaders are competent. Our geriatric would be overlords cannot win in competition, so they win through manipulation. Only one candidate in the last three cycles can regularly fill stadiums, and they hate him.

Obama wasn’t the only one to substituted manipulation for competition. Bernie Sanders was clearly popular even if I’m not a fan. He was swept away in a sketchy maneuver to give Hillary another shot. Why not let them duke it out? Because people who can’t win the people, build systems that reward sclerotic inertia. It’s not just one party. The opposing party runs in terror when any leader is popular with the people. They freaked over Reagan decades ago and they loathe Trump now. They tried to shoehorn Jeb(!) into the big seat, based on the stupid idea that the best possible leaders should a third order retread from the same family.

Biden hardly campaigned at all, yet won with more votes than any other president in history and in exactly the right locations with statistical anomalies we’re forbidden to examine. It’s literally dangerous to question such a thing. Like the Soviets of the 1980’s he jails people who ask uncomfortable questions. Biden ascended to his throne behind concertina wire. He keeps a bevy of political prisoners in jail. The system, long unstable, was dealt a death blow in 2020. We act like it’s still solid, but it’s already half gone.

Just like Obama, Biden selected as VP a loser who barely won any primaries. Since then roughly 14 million people voted for him in the primaries. As of yesterday, their votes are irrelevant. Deliberately avoiding the will of the people and then collapsing at the wheel is a common theme. President Biden is following the path of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Senator Robert Byrd, Senator Strom Thurmond, and all those half dead Soviet dudes of my youth. Like the Soviets before, Biden was unquestionably, fully, completely, utterly in charge, until everyone realized he wasn’t.

After the debate of July 21st, people asked; “If Biden is a vegetable, who’s running things?”

The answer is nobody.

A lot of people like to imagine someone is in charge. That’s simply not true. You don’t have to be a young Curmudgeon, peddling his Schwinn around wondering why Iowa has more grain than Kazakhstan, to come to this realization. Just look around.

As the unstable system collapses, many of us seek to avoid the truth of what we’re actually seeing. The near assassination of Trump on July 13th came with an avalanche of theories, they all boil down to “that thing you saw, wasn’t what you saw”. I view it as merely an unstable system. People bathed in “this one guy is the cause of all that’s evil” getting all worked up and becoming mentally ill is to be expected. I suspect the Secret Service is just as incompetent as the rest of the government. I think Biden is just as addled as he sounds. I think Kamala is as incompetent as anyone else who couldn’t win primaries. Biden withdrawing via text on a Sunday afternoon is exactly what it sounded like when various Soviet stooges cycled through their dying bureaucracy.

Biden can’t decide to shit or go blind but it’s exactly what you’d expect. A guy who campaigned from his basement and took his oath behind concertina wire is going to flake. Now, he’s flaked.

My hypothetical mountain stream will flow much longer than whatever the hell is going in politics. Perhaps we’ll become a stable system once again. A good step might involve seating a man who won the presidency through competition instead of shenanigans. The rest might involve watching losers who can’t compete, fail spectacularly.

It’s an interesting time to be alive. Enjoy the show.

I’ve been avoiding current events. It’s all shit. What’s odd is that nothing happening right now is particularly unusual but folks are acting like they’ve never seen it before. If the president is toast or wants to bail out there are procedures to handle this shit. None are happening. It annoys me that adults (presumably) simply can’t act like adults.

The president was fitter than a fiddle and bench pressing #200, right up until he could barely fog a mirror. Fine, these things happen. Ruth Bader Ginsberg says “hi”. It’s a thing that’s happened in human history and there is a way adults would handle it. We’ve got the 25th amendment; congress could grow a pair. Biden could just bow out. It’s not like he’s the first geezer to exceed his sell by date.

He ain’t doing that. Even that is nothing new. Like I said, clinging to power is as old as humanity itself.

Sunday Biden decided to split the difference. “I’m a super awesome President and I’m going to continue presidenting!” Same old same old. However, he also bailed. “I suck as a candidate so I’m going to bow out. Fuck those 14,000,000 people that voted for me in the primary. Also, I’ll endorse Kamala in a half assed manner as an afterthought in half an hour.”

People have pulled out of campaigns before. Notably Lindon B. Johnson realized he was less popular than shit on a stick in the middle of ‘Nam. He bowed out. It’s likely he also feared he’d die inside of 4 years during his second term and to his credit he reacted intelligently to that reality.

To LBJ’s credit, he made a decision. To his further credit, he announced it like an adult.

On March 31, 1968, LBJ went on live TV and announced his intentions.

Watch it here. Read it here. 

LBJ took a while to cut to the chase. He talks about Vietnam, for 39 minutes & 35 seconds of a 40 minute & 49 second speech. Then, in the last 70 seconds, he says this:

With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the Presidency of your country.

Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

Took him a while to spit it out but LBJ did it. That’s how it’s done! LBJ got up and said the thing on TV. That’s what adults do.

Biden isn’t doing that. He’s hiding like a teenage girl who discovered a zit before prom. Biden (we presume) sent out a one page memo on Twitter.

Biden dumped America via text!

Since then? Nothing!

Nobody has seen Biden since he “Bailed by Memo”. We don’t know if he’s alive (I assume so but we sure as hell don’t know).

No matter how painful a statement is it should be done clearly, like a serious man would. If it has to be said, it should be done right. Biden can add that to his list of failures.

[Note: This post has links to Amazon. If you want the same stuff I bought, you can click the link and it’ll be the stuff I was talking about. I figured that’s better than re-inventing the wheel. If you want other stuff that’s ok, click a link and surf to whatever you want. I get a tiny kickback from Amazon no matter what you buy. If you want no material goods at all, more power to ya!]

A few years back I bought a Dewalt electric chainsaw. There are many like it, but this one is mine:

I expected a battery operated saw to suck. I was wrong! It blew my mind. It’s not going to replace my full sized Stihl but the little Dewalt rocks for small jobs. In fact, the electric saw punches well above its weight class. It does much more than I thought it’d be able to handle.

I’ve been beating it like a rented mule ever since I got it. I have a couple chains and a “fleet” of four batteries. Three 5 AH (amp hour) batteries and one 4 AH battery. I’ve been using real Dewalt 20V batteries. As you’d expect the 5 AH is slightly noticeable as having more staying power than the 4 AH, but it’s not a deal breaker. If you’ve got 4 AH batteries just use ’em and carry more spares.

Batteries don’t last forever and saw work is in hard conditions. I eventually cracked the housing on one and “froze” another. Again, I’m not complaining. I’ve worked these things hard. I decided to buy a couple more batteries.

Alas, it’s the Bidenverse and the price of batteries is just as affected by inflation as everything else. I went to a store who’s name rhymes with “Home Despot”. They had 20V 5 AH batteries in stock. The cost was $100 each. Roughly double what they cost when I bought the saw and batteries. Holy flaming shit!

By Crom’s throbbing nutsack I’m not dropping a c-note on a battery the size of a potato!

I walked out of the store, fuming.

Online I found a two pack of 20v 5 AH Dewalt batteries on Amazon. It was a little over $120. For reasons that make no sense you can get a two pack WITH CHARGER for SLIGHTLY LESS? I have no idea why.

I stuck with Dewalt because I’ve had less than the best experiences with Chinese knock off batteries. YMMV but I’d recommend avoiding the knock offs for a big power user like a saw.

OK so, I saved roughly $80 by telling “Home Despot” to kiss my ass. Can I do better?

Sure I can!

One of the old batteries had a cracked case. Why not buy a new case? It was a good case, I just mistreated it. I’ve been tossing it (literally) into the steel bucket of my tractor. My bad. Carrying it around in the bucket; with firewood logs under, on top of, banging into, and of course mud and snow sloshing around in the mix just was too much.

I wound up buying a ridiculously named Compatible with DeWalt 20V Battery Cover Replacement 1 Set Plastic Case 5.0Ah 6.0Ah DCB201,DCB203,DCB204 Li-Ion Battery Case Replacement,10-Cell Broken Battery Shell Repair Kit Cover Parts. This had the suspiciously weird price of $12.32. It is definitely NOT sold by Dewalt. In fact Dewalt is acting like any normal “monopolist” would and has no parts readily avalable for “fixing” a battery. Well played, but still a bastard move!

The Battery Case arrived packaged like someone had shipped a potato from Hong Kong.

This is what the original case looked like.

Undeterred, I opened the broken case using a torx screwdriver to pull out 4 screws. The driver didn’t fit real well but it did work. Note: keep the screws! A Compatible with DeWalt 20V Battery Cover Replacement 1 Set Plastic Case 5.0Ah 6.0Ah DCB201,DCB203,DCB204 Li-Ion Battery Case Replacement,10-Cell Broken Battery Shell Repair Kit Cover Parts doesn’t come with 4 new screws. Silly but it is what it is. That would probably add $0.11 to the cost and they were so cheap they didn’t even spring for a shipping box.

Four screws, don’t lose them!

Also, the battery is dirt simple but it’s not too simple. There’s some electronic shit in there, you don’t have to know what it does, but break a soldered junction and you’ve added to life’s complexity. Just be careful.

Also, people are assholes! (Not that you didn’t already know.) I left the battery torn apart and laying around for a few days. Everyone joked I was making a bomb. Fuckin’ morons see some tubes and a circuit board and think I’m a James Bond supervillain? Really? I have a welder too, does that make me Ironman? A battery is damn near the simplest object this side of a brick. Does their car run on magic and their TV remote have magic spirits inside? Have they ever done anything involving a screwdriver?

Others mocked me for “wasting all that labor just to fix a battery”. My return on investment was about $85 for less than an hour’s work. (The next time it’ll take me 5 minutes!) Unless you’re Elon Musk, curing cancer right fucking now, or a lawyer billing $150 an hour, saving $85 bucks is pretty good use of anyone’s time. Just how much do these people think the average schmuck’s time is worth?

We really are in the dumbest timeline. It’s bad enough living in a world where people can’t drive a manual transmission or read a fuckin’ book but it’s worse hearing them preen about it. I hate that shit! Being incapable of fixing something is not a sign of superiority, it’s a sign of domestication.

It’s just a damn battery!

The replacement housing was not 100% identical to the Dewalt housing. I expected that. I’m assuming it came from a rogue Chinese factory but for all I know it came from a 3D printer in Fresno. It’s close enough, just not perfect.

The photo isn’t great but there are two “voids” in the case in the original Dewalt, that are not voids in the replacement case. I spent 15 minutes trying to squeeze the damn thing together before I figured it out.

A Dremel tool can fix anything. I ground out the “voids” in the replacement. It felt like I was making a functional receiver out of an 80% battery case. Don’t overthink it. I did a sloppy job and it was good enough.

It really is a tight fit getting that battery back together. There’s not much “play” in the fitment. I was probably a bit too rough on the replacement case, but it’s a learning curve and all that.

Before I could reassemble it, I needed to address the “these screws suck with my torx wrench” situation. Turns out there are torx wrenches and “security torx wrenches”. I found security bits in stock at my local store. How secure is it if it’s in every hardware store? The answer is none at all. I feel insulted to live in a universe where you can buy “security” bits literally anywhere and in so doing you’ve thwarted what someone calls “security”. Ever get the feeling we’re some other universe’s punchline?

I got security bits locally. They’re on Amazon here. I paid more in person but was willing to pay because the local guy had the knowledge to explain to me the concept of “security bit”. (Always pay for knowledge. It’s worth it!)

Once assembled it looks 99% like the original.

It charges on my Dewalt charger, just like usual.

If you ignore the cost of bits, I turned a broken battery that costs $100 for a replacement at “Home Despot” into “as good as new” for $12. I know people are bad at math but $12<$100 should be a no-brainer.

Thinking about how the battery got damaged, I bought myself a chainsaw carrying case. If a few bucks on a case saves a bit of damage on useful equipment it’s a decent investment. I sure like the little saw so why not? I couldn’t find anything from Dewalt. I was prepared to spend big bucks on a hard case, like I have for my Stihl. But there was nothing to be had.

I bought a stupidly named Chainsaw Case,Waterproof Chainsaw Storage Bag Compatible with DEWALT & Ego & Greenworks 10Inch 12Inch Cordless Power Chainsaw&Accessories, Black&Yellow. It was $44 which is not the deal of the century but it’s reasonable and I need to get used to living with Bidenverse prices anyway. It is somewhat thoughtfully designed so I was willing to roll the dice. This is a soft case and a cheap knock off from China. It might not hold up. But it was cheap so why not?

It actually looks pretty good. I give it an A for style.

One pocket is perfect for bar oil. (I bought a quart of bar oil too. I’ve been using a gallon sized bottle of Stihl bar oil and that’s overkill for the little saw.)

The other pocket has room for a handful of batteries.

It’s not made for or by Dewalt, but it fits my saw just fine.

One other reason I got it is that my saw leaks bar oil (saws tend to do that). When it was tossed in the back of my Jeep-thing it got oil where I wanted things to stay clean. Now the case will catch the oil… I hope. So far so good.

As always, YMMV. Happy camping y’all!

I don’t usually take a lot of photos but some places demand them.

I hope these share the spirit of the place. Maybe it just looks like foggy brush, but you have to trust me when I say it was gorgeous in the pre-dawn fog.

An unrelated storm that same week:

[Note: I’ve linked to Amazon when I mention various gear. This is because it’s the gear I think is best. You don’t have to follow my ideas but if you do it’ll spare y’all the hassle of reinventing the wheel. Also I get a kickback from the Evil Overlords at Amazon; which costs you nothing. If you’re not into shopping, don’t click the links. Thanks.]

I own an excellent Gazelle Tent (T4). It’s as close to a brick shithouse you can get without spending hours (instead of just a few minutes) setting up your tent. It’s roomy and very good against rain (and it had been raining on and off for weeks). So I brought it. Then I didn’t set it up. Why? Because the human mind (or at least mine) is a strange thing. I’d brought tons of gear. I had alternate options. I felt like experimenting to put myself in a little closer contact with nature.

This wasn’t a motorcycle / testing trip so I’d brought my heavy, (impossible to carry on a bike or backpack) TETON Sports Outfitter XXL Camp Cot, TETON Sports Outfitter XXL Camp Pad, and TETON Sports Celsius XL Sleeping Bag. The combination of those three things is flat out awesome! It’s the most comfortable camping set I’ve every owned. It’s almost as comfy as the bed in my house. (The only limitation is that it’s too heavy for backpacks and motorcycles.) I considered setting ’em up right in the open and sleeping just like that. If it weren’t for rain and bugs it would be perfect.

For the motorcycle I’ve planned on using a Vista 1 tent on the ground. (I can also set it up on top of the cot; it’s designed for the option of deployment on a cot.) There’s a different rainfly for ground versus on the cot use. (I’d brought both.) Unlike the Gazelle T4, which feels like a camping hotel room, the the Vista 1 is coffin sized. Even so it’s very stout tent and pretty reasonable when it’s on top of my much loved cot. I found it amid my jumbled gear. Then, in a fit of pointless “innovation”, I ignored it.

During my packing I’d thought “river + summer = mosquitoes”. In 2022, intolerable swarms of Old Testament level Mosquitoes kicked my ass. (Story starts here: Mosquitoes Get The Upper Hand: Part 0.) In response to that I purchased a Gazelle G5 screen tent. I never took a screen tent seriously before but the bug attack of 2022 was a bloodbath! Now that I have it, I use it more often than I expected. There were no mosquitoes but I couldn’t shake the idea they were going to come out and swarm my ass to death at any moment.  I have no idea why, maybe it was proximity to the river? Mosquitoes are a thing and I was in their turf, I think the only thing holding them back was the chilly temperatures.

I set up the screen tent just in case. Then I thought “why not?”. I put my cot and mattress and sleeping bag in the screen tent. So now you’ve got a tent with no walls, which won’t protect against rain if it’s windy but will handle a mild shower.

Also, it would be the bee’s knees if it were hot out. But it wasn’t hot. I think half my brain was paying more attention to the calendar than the actual conditions.

Despite my random choices, I’d setup camp in a flash. All the gear I’d chosen is tough and fast to setup. I was ideally situated for hot temperatures, mosquitoes, and clear weather. It was a mite chilly, there were no mosquitoes, and it has rained on and off for weeks. I’m a dumbass!

That’s ok. If it got rainy and windy I could put the Vista 1 coffin on the cot. It takes like 10 seconds to setup the coffin tent and with the rainfly on, and inside a screen tent, it would happily ride out a hurricane. The sky was cloudy but only moderately so. I have side panels for the screen tent. If I paid for ’em I might as well use them right? Soon I had a screen tent with wind / rain protection on 3 of 5 sides with a comfy cot inside and a coffin tent stashed under the cot “just in case”.

Unusual? Yes. Well suited to summer camping and yet flexible enough should conditions degrade? Yes! If a solution is weird but works great, then it’s fine with me.

Here’s the screen tent without stuff in it or the side panels:

Here’s the screen tent with side panels (3) and my super comfy cot/mattress/sleeping bag combination. A bit odd but at the same time I thought it was pretty neat.

The forest was wet as can be and I needed firewood. A few years back I bought a dorky little electric chainsaw. I expected a battery operated saw to be an underwhelming toy. I was wrong! The little beast really impresses me. I have been completely converted to battery based saws for small jobs. I take it on most campouts. (I even use it when I’m cutting small diameter firewood at home or when I’m clearing trails.) Of course, I have a big gas saw (a.k.a. a real chainsaw) but the two devices are apples and oranges. The Sthil is good for handling big jobs and full size trees, the Dewalt shines when gathering campfire wood. In fact I won’t take my Stihl camping because it’s louder than Godzilla and I hate carrying all the gas and oil and shit. For camping you can’t beat a (nearly) silent and easy to use little electric saw. Lesson learned.

There was no good wood nearby. I think I fire had gone through a few years ago and burned all the small materials. Grumbling, I started up my now mostly empty vehicle and drove back down the access road. I didn’t return until I’d gathered triple the wood I’d likely need. Why not gather extra? Having a chainsaw made it pretty much effortless.

Back at camp it was a bitch to get wet wood started but once I had a small fire going I used it to heat each piece and everything kept going nicely. The mosquitos were slowly building. The smoke helped and I lit a Thermacell.

It was getting dark but my work was done. I cracked a cold beer and it was delicious. Sadly, my shortwave radio battery died almost instantly. I charge it from a cigarette lighter in the Dodge but my Jeep-Thing has no lighter socket. These are the things you learn by testing your gear rather than making sunny assumptions.

I didn’t have much small wood for the little folding stove. No worry, I used tongs to grab hot coals from the fire and toss them into the stove. Easy peasy! I grilled tenderloin on the little gadget and it was delicious. I didn’t overthink it and I was lazy as I cooked. Some came out perfect, some was a little overdone. I didn’t care, it was awesome just as it was. I had a ton of “side dishes” available but cooked nothing else. Sometimes the best possible mean is grilled steak with salt and pepper. With beer of course. I had a little extra meat left over which I stashed for breakfast.

I could have cooked over the main fire but the little wood stove is a lot more “controllable”:

Notice how everything was smoky? The wood was pretty wet.

While I was eating steak, I couldn’t help but think about Chuck Schumer. If you aren’t aware, the dude tried to tweet that he was grilling on Father’s Day. It was one of those “see, I’m just like you deplorable voters” photos that should be no big deal. Yet it just looked off. He wound up looking like such a freaky weird space lizard that the people mocked him. He eventually deleted the tweet.

That’s a thing about politics right now. I’m just a loser with a firebox and a steak and yet I really did make dinner that way. I don’t look like a lying spaz. The food tasted delicious. Schumer, like so many politicians, is so vastly unlike a normal American that he can’t make a cheeseburger without looking like a fraud. What’s it like to be such a strange and alien being?

A little later three women in three kayaks showed up. They belonged to the Toyota. They arrived just as dusk was approaching.

How times have changed! Once upon a time I’d have chivalrously offered to help. In our current era of weirdness when you meet a woman who’s unknown to you it’s only wise to react with caution. Any male must (in self defense) assume she’ll shriek like a banshee and sue you for sexual harassment if you look her way. Wisely, I stayed in my chair, nodding politely. I made small talk without moving an inch.

I’d say “I let them struggle with their gear” but they had it well in hand. They didn’t need any help from the Neanderthal hanging out nearby. In fact, to their credit, they didn’t freak out about me at all.

There was a kerfuffle a few weeks ago about some women claiming they’d rather see a bear in the woods than a man. This was presented as an accusation toward men (as are almost all things these days). But I had to reflect that there’s greater risk to myself having three ladies around than a bear. I’m not sure I’d rather see an alligator… but bear… yeah I’d pcik the bear.

Politics is so divisive that it erodes us all. People have been trained out of happy interaction with strangers. But rationality still holds in the forest. All four of us were not merely civil but nice. I’m glad when we revert to being just good people. America’s trust is not eroding so much as it’s being deliberately killed by people who are doing so on purpose. Once again I think of Chuck Schumer who can’t make a cheeseburger without generating an uncanny valley.

They had with them a dog. Humans cannot be trusted but dogs are always awesome. I almost broke into song! It approached and with the owner’s permission, I gave it a bit of steak. The dog decided then and there to change teams and sat by my feet. I’d made a friend for life. It inspected my grill about a thousand times hoping I’d dropped some.

Eventually, the ladies had crammed all three kayaks, all three passengers, all three paddles, and assorted get in or onto their Toyota Rav4. They called for the dog. I gave him a last piece of steak and a pat on the head and he wandered over to be crammed into what was looking a bit like a clown car. He was a good dog!

Then I was alone. The sun set. Mosquitoes picked up but it wasn’t that bad. I don’t know if I just stoically bore the bugs, or there weren’t many to fret over, or the Thermacell did a great job. (Pro tip: Thermacells do a pretty good job. I pay a smidge extra for the “earth scent” refills. The pleasant smell is worth it.)

I had cell service (unusual for places I camp) but my phone was dead. I neglect my phone more or less on purpose. (My SpotX is serious equipment and was charged fully!) I plugged the phone into my battery pack / jumpstarter, gave it a few minutes to catch up, and made a call.

I wound up chatting for hours with an old friend. Me sitting by the campfire. Him watching sportsball in a different time zone. We bitched and joked as if we were both sitting out there in the woods. Call it “virtual campfire”.

Eventually, I ran out of beer and a fog came in. Actually it didn’t come in so much as materialize in situ. A dense fog, like Stephen King was prowling the forest. I let the fire die out, stood a long time looking at the spooky forest, and turned in.

I slept like a log. It wasn’t a warm dry night. I don’t have a thermometer but it must have been around 40f. Lucky I’d brought an “overkill” sleeping bag.

I woke to 9000% humidity and fog. Everything was soaked with dew; sleeping bag, my face, everything. Serves me right for using a screen tent instead of a real tent. On the other hand I’d deeply enjoyed the fresh air of the forest.

I had plans to make breakfast or something, but I lazily went back to sleep. A few hours later the sun was beaming through the screen and it was glorious. I stumbled out of the screen tent, got dressed, and had done absolutely nothing when Mrs. Curmudgeon arrived! Awesome!

I’d promised to make breakfast but I’d zoned out and slept late! Mrs. Curmudgeon no longer camps but if possible she comes by for breakfast at camp! Our dog was (as always) with her. It was delighted to tear around camp like a maniac. Dogs love camping!

I brewed coffee and served it. I make better coffee at camp than at home.

I started a fire and we sat happily watching the fire. Then I remembered I was supposed to make breakfast so I whipped up bacon, eggs, and cheese. I chopped up the leftover steak and added it too. It was a delicious breakfast in a mellow place.

We sat there for hours. The wet morning chill turned into noontime heat. It’s nice to rest. A hipster and his wife showed up looking for a hiking trail. They’d been led astray by Google maps. I pointed out the right route to the hipster while his wife took photos of our dog. Two human interactions in 24 hours is more than the “nobody for days” I’m used to. Maybe it’s a popular spot? Then again I’d had it all to myself most of the time.

Eventually, Mrs. Curmudgeon and a very happy but worn out dog rolled away. An hour later I’d broke camp and rolled out. I stopped at the ice cream place and the lady was grumpy. WTF? The ice cream was still excellent. Heading home I took dozens of random dirt roads and I only got home at dusk.

It was the perfect campout! This post is too long but I hope y’all got a secondhand whiff of the happy, cheap, simple fun nature offers. It you can, turn off the internet and go wandering. Good luck!

I went camping! Finally!

I’d found a cool new spot but another week passed while I pined to go. I did some research and the canoe landing was legal for free dispersed camping. Sweet!

Plans to camp Friday night (right after work) went to hell. I’d been to a doctor and he’d done doctor stuff. It’s all good and I’ll live and whatnot but I’d been put through a wringer and didn’t have the energy to pack the Jeep-Thing. Obviously, a motorcycle camping trip was inconceivable.

That night I slept poorly. I woke up creaky. While I’d been sleeping it had rained steadily. At this rate, the forest is going to go from spongy wet to flat out slime-mold!

However, by afternoon the rains were fading. I could stand no more. I’d camp even if it was in a downpour!

I started hurling shit into the Jeep-Thing during brief moments when the sky looked even remotely blue. I ignored my un-mowed feral lawn and hoped the drizzle would cease. It did, grudgingly, and I took off at the crack of 5:00 pm. That’s waaaaaay too late for a sane departure. It’s all I could manage.

I got to the location with limited sunlight left and my gear in total disarray. It was only a week after I found the spot and I hadn’t thought over which gear made sense for that particular location. I’d taken some of the stuff I’d separated from motorcycle camping, crammed it back into my Dodge-based Milwaukee Packouts, and hurled the Packouts into the Jeep-Thing. I wasn’t sure what I’d grabbed and what I’d forgot. However, I brought a lot of crap so I’d be OK. I’m adaptive if nothing else, the mishmash heaped in the vehicle probably included some combination of stuff that would work.

Also, I’d brought cold beer and a huge steak. What more did I really need?

There was a Toyota parked at the landing. Oh no! It would be unforgivably rude to setup camp if someone was already there. I’m not sure I’d have enough sunlight to find somewhere else!

Lucky for me, the Toyota was abandoned. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Someone had either parked it here and was merrily paddling downstream away from it, stationed it here and was paddling downstream toward it, or maybe they were only out for the afternoon and would return at dusk. Who knows? The important part was a logistics vehicle meant they weren’t camping so much as positioning equipment.

For those of you who don’t know; “dispersed camping” is a window into varying human interaction in the hinterland. It’s a whole different world. Allow me to expand upon this…

If you go to a State or Federal designated campground there will be dozens or hundreds of campsites. There will be vehicles, people, dogs, bicycles, kids, RVs, campers, tents, and the lively chatter of happy humans. There will also be rules and social norms. You’ll drop $20-$40 (usually through an online reservation system that takes an unavoidable fee for the service) and in exchange get a smallish spot amid a hive of beings. (Off season is a different thing. Once overnight temps drop below freezing, dogs, kids, RVs, and so forth cease to exist. All that are left are a few hardened self-supporting folk, much rarer and quieter.) Your money presumably pays for the services you get; plumbing or pit toilets, Park Rangers who prowl around looking grim but usually (unless you’re at the mercy of the simpleton bastards at Yellowstone National Park) leaving you unmolested, electric hookups, firewood (which you have to buy), mowed areas, and various other shit.

Dispersed camping is free and you get nothing. You know all those people who say they’re libertarian but never stop bitching about whatever service they demand from the Government? Well this calls their bluff with a two by four. Dispersed camping is your chance to experience true libertarian values. Which is why I love it!

Not everyone can roll with it. You need to be a different breed of cat to be fine with nothing. There are no reservations. No prowling Park Rangers. No outhouses (with some exceptions). Etc… Often, the best places aren’t even mapped. Are there bears? Probably. Will windthrown trees block your egress in the morning? Maybe. Is there cell service? Rarely.

“Campsites” vary from awful to majestic. They might be a tiny nook under a single tree or a vast prairie under the skies of God. The unruled, unknowable, absence of people is a wild card. Dispersed sites are often utterly empty, bereft of humans; which is my goal. Camp alone like that and you might learn things about yourself you didn’t know. I think many (most? nearly all?) people have never ever spent much time completely on their own. If you’re of the wrong personality the vast emptiness of the universe might swallow you up. It’s all up to you and who you are. If you’re like me, you might sip bourbon next to a campfire and laugh aloud at the joy of it all.

It’s a bit of a gamble deciding how close you’re willing to camp to someone else. I usually won’t camp within a mile or two of other dispersed people. That’s just my choice but I’m not the only one who thinks like that. People who prefer dispersed camping tend to be independent, self-supporting, solitary creatures or groups of just a few. If I want solitude it’s only fair to preserve it for others. Thus, it’s good form to actively avoid other dispersed campers. (Exceptions are dispersed “campsites” with multiple “camp spots”. Even then, pick a spot and leave the other spots alone.)

One special exception is if you stumble across a super redneck family clan in a dispersed camping situation. This is rare but it happens. You’ll occasionally find a mobilized multi-vehicle encampment in mid hootenanny… maybe it’s a family group… or a group that’s ostensibly hunting (which is basically the same thing but with more guns)… or even a family reunion (which has the same amount of guns but more old folks and kids). In any case, you’re not going to get a nature experience if you rudely camp nearby. Accept the inevitability of what you’ve encountered. Either clear out or wander over and crash the party… which I highly recommend. If you bravely walk in like a Stellar Jay looking for an abandoned crumb of food there’s a good chance you’ll be loaded with delicious food and awful beer in no time. Hold steady! Tough out the shitty music they’ll inevitably be playing and laugh at whatever jokes they’re telling. Soon you’re in like Flynn! You’re going to have all the fun you can survive. Trust me on this; you’ll never have a wilder time than when you crash a few dozen rednecks all camping at once. Unless you’re a bitchy vegan headcase, in which case you should run.

Anyway I was looking for solitude that night. That’s why, if there’d been a single pup tent near the Toyota, I’d have left rather than “crowd” them.

I staked my claim and set to making camp. I was mildly concerned I’d freak the canoers out by my mere presence. People strategically stashing vehicles at canoe landings might be a mite worried to find some bearded weirdo drinking beer next to a rusty Jeep-Thing. Then again, fuck ’em.

A note about leaving your vehicle in a dispersed camping area: If you park a Toyota and come back to find a bearded weirdo with a Jeep-Thing camping in the area, don’t panic. If he was going to steal it, your Toyota would already be gone. Also, this is the forest not the ‘hood, so raise your expectations of humanity. There’s far fewer thugs in the hinterland than you’ll find in an urban WalMart parking lot. Don’t freak out about rural white supremacist Jesus freak maniacs like the gibbering ninnies on NPR and you might meet an actual normal friendly human being.

Anyway, I made camp and all was well. More to come…

This is what a Redcamp Wood Burning Folding Camp Stove with 4 years of very heavy use looks like when compared to a brand new one. The old one still works, I just use it so much I wanted a “backup”.

First use of the new grill.

They come with carrying cases. New one on the left, old one on the right. Both work fine:

I went camping! Finally!

Well not yet. First I had to find a place to go. During a rare patch of sun, Mrs. Curmudgeon and I went exploring in my Jeep-Thing vehicle.

A word about the Jeep-Thing. I own a creaky, rusty, old, 4×4 vehicle. It’s not a Jeep but it serves the same purpose. It’s not particularly valuable or glamorous but it’s uncommon. If I post details, someone will quickly identify it. In our current clown world I wish to retain my anonymity and obscure mechanical conveyances work against that.

Nor do I want to create an attractive puzzle for someone somewhere who’s an aficionado of old trucks. “That’s a 1968 International Swampmaster Travelall Deluxe Camper-Burbuan with optional Armstrong Steering. Only 5,000 were made, of which only 50 still run. Since Curmudgeon parked it next to an fence with double stitch half twitch woven barbed wire we can isolate it to Cancel County in State X.” That might just feed the trolls of cancel culture: “A Google search shows the only Swampmaster registered in Cancel County lives at 54 Dipshit Road in the town of East Cowschitt. Lets e-mail everyone in the county that the owner is a racist, bigoted, doo-doo head who talks to squirrels. Also, we’ll make sure he’s fired and everyone hates his dog… because that’s how we embrace diversity and tolerance.”

So, for now it’s just a Jeep-Thing. Call me paranoid if you want. In my defense, has there been a better time to be paranoid?

I could just call it a Jeep. That would work flawlessly but it would be lying. Nobody would know but I just can’t do it. I may be lame but it’s a personality quirk that I just flat out won’t lie. So I say “Jeep-Thing” and pique everyone’s interest over my shitty old truck. I’d make an awful spy and I’m unfit for our current era of universal deceit.

Back to the story, my Jeep-Thing is pretty old and it had a long period of “storage”. I’m slowly getting it back to “daily driver” reliability but it’s not like I’m done. I’ve had limited time and money to further the process. However, it runs now and it’s wise to drive it around to see what’s working and what breaks. It took a lot of cranking and choke to get her started but once it was running it ran great. I was delighted.

Driving winding dirt roads is always fun. With the Jeep-Thing it’s extra fun because there are no worries. It’s already beat up so I need not fret about damage and (within reason) it’s unstoppable. I don’t have to fret that I’ll take a road that’s too rough.

We set out to re-locate the dispersed campsite I discovered last fall. I couldn’t find it on foot during a brutal failed January attempt. (Read: Walk To The Edge, Then Walk Back: Part 1 and Part 2.) In my defense, in January I was ill and I was on foot with a bum leg at -10f at sunset. Bailing out was the right call. Driving around on a sunny summer weekend is a whole different universe.

Halfway to the dispersed campsite I took a random turn. Why? Because I noticed a road I’d never seen before. Five random turns later I had no idea where I was. I was sure I could backtrack out of where I’d meandered; but I could’ve been in an alternate dimension for all I could pinpoint on a map.

Abruptly, the road ended in a turnabout. There was a small river nearby. Not an easily accessible rocky streambank but a swampy reedy mess. A muddy walking path went from the turnaround to the stream. It was a good landing spot to put in or take out a canoe or kayak and obviously well used for that purpose.

In fact, there was a guy already at the spot! He’d beached his canoe and was rehydrating. Many people go down this little branch of the river. Some for an afternoon, others for multi-day trips. I was reluctant to mess up this guy’s private solo time in nature, but he seemed happy to see people.

“How long you been paddling?” I asked, trying hard to not look or sound like a scary extra from the movie Deliverance.

“Two days.” He looked beat. I’m guessing the swampy area he’d just paddled was hotter than Satan’s armpit. I know it has a million switchbacks so progress must have been slow. “I haven’t seen anyone in two days.”

“Then you need the fruits of civilization. Would you like a cold soda?”

His eyes lit up like I’d just handed him a winning lottery ticket. He gunned the ice cold drink like only a man who’s been roasting for days would. I’ve been there, I know.

Unwilling to further mess up his solitude, I vamoosed quickly. He was all smiles.

After we’d driven away I realized my mistake. That poor bastard is going to have to haul an empty soda can all the way to wherever he’s going. I should have stayed and retrieved it from him. Oh well.

Mrs. Curmudgeon and I agreed the place was pretty cool. It looked like you were in the primordial wilderness but it wasn’t that far out. Also, the access road wasn’t too bad. I GPS marked it on my SpotX for further review.

By now, Mrs. Curmudgeon was looking a little wilted. There’s no AC in my vehicle and it rides like a cement mixer. Once I got my bearings I made a bee line for a small rural “store” not far away. (I try to mentally map every “service” I find in various hinterlands. You never know when you’ll have an emergency. Indeed, it was handy that I knew it existed.) “There’s a grumpy lady at a place nearby that sells good ice cream.” I said.

We pulled in and got ice cream (which was top notch). I setup our lawn chairs in the shade of a tree. It was a fine afternoon. Mrs. Curmudgeon beamed. I was happy too. We’ve been married forever and yet I’m still super happy when I can do something silly like get her a cone. That’s what life is all about; eating ice cream with your sweetie in the shade next to your rusty old vehicle.

The store lady came out and joined us and talked our ear off. She was super friendly. So much for my carefully filed memory of her being grumpy.

We set out for the dispersed campsite but I was already daydreaming of an overnight at the canoe landing. With a few twists and turns we found the spot which had eluded me in the January gloom. I’d probably been within 100 yards when I turned back. (No regrets! Many things could have gone wrong that day and turning around before they happened was a wise move.) The spot is large but hidden in a pine plantation. You don’t recognize it until you’re right there.

We parked and I busied myself making a bratwurst “picnic”. There was a firepit but I prefer my Redcamp Wood Burning Folding Camp Stove. (I get kickbacks from Amazon if you buy shit from my links. It doesn’t cost you a penny. I only recommend stuff I like, own, and use. Lest you think I’m hopelessly biased by the pocket change I get, I’ve given you proper warning of my devious plans.)

I’ve been meaning to do a “long term review” post about that trusty little gadget. Just know that it rocks! I first mentioned it four years ago. (TW200 Mods, Front Rack) It’s a simple little bugger but it’s super handy. I take it on every campout and I’ve used it on a zillion little “cookouts” in my lawn. After 4 years of hard use, it’s still completely functional but a little warped from the heat.

It’s such a handy thing I bought a replacement (or depending on your point of view a backup). I feared they might become unavailable or more expensive or lower quality. Since it’s cheap and convenient and a good deal at twice the cost why not stock up? In fact I bought a replacement, a second auxiliary spare replacement, and still kept the perfectly good but slightly worn original. I’ve got three! Wealthy isn’t just bank accounts and stacks of Krugerrands, sometimes it feels good to have a “lifetime supply” of a $30 gadget.

I set it up right in the firepit, why not? Fires are legal in a makeshift fire pit. They’re legal if I clear debris from under the camp stove. They about as safe as humanly possible if you put one inside the other. Not that it matters after all the rain, but I’m always cautious.

The camp stove is often more practical than a regular campfire. The little box heats up with a tiny amount of fuel; much less than an unconstrained campfire. It also cooks better than a plain fire. In particular, I prefer cooking food on the included grill over holding a stick like when roasting a marshmallow or making a pan dirty.

Campfire food is always delicious. In that time and at that place, basic brats were food fit for a King.

After chowing down we drove home. The vehicle started a lot faster having had it’s batteries topped off by driving around for several hours. I should “exercise” it more often.

Enjoying a story with no depth and lots of happy? More to come…

I went camping! Finally!

This particular campout had multiple false starts. Two weeks in advance I planned to take my Dodge to a basic State Park on Father’s Day weekend. Alas, it was too rainy. (Also the Dodge is ailing. I joke that Detroit surreptitiously contacted the truck’s ECU and reported I was due to dump money into the vehicle. It’s like that beast has a clock to tell it when I’ve gone too long without a mechanic’s bill. I’m avoiding adding unnecessary miles to the Dodge while I wait on getting it repaired.)

Later, I planned for a short motocamping “test night”. (“Motocamping” is the hip trendy term for camping from a motorcycle, or so the YouTube glitterati imply.)

I was committed! My bike was pre-packed and ready to blast out the instant work ended. I’d hurriedly ride as far as I could and setup camp in the late evening after work. I’d return leisurely during Kwanzaa / Junteenth / Toyotathon. “Cleverly” packing the motorcycle in advance turned out to be a mistake. I’d gone through my wisely and carefully arranged “Dodge camping gear” and raided it for a subset of smaller lighter stuff. Thus, leaving my “truck camping preps” in shambles. Whoops.

On the allotted day it rained most of the day (which was expected). The weather report indicated it would mellow out in mid-afternoon. It didn’t. Disgusted, I threw in the towel and stayed home.

I made the right call! Riding a motorcycle in showers sucks. Setting up camp in dusk during rain would suck worse. Then, a brutal thunderstorm hit just after sunset! For motorcycle camping, I have a tent the size of a coffin and a thin sleeping pad. I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep. I’m glad I didn’t spend all night in a wet, fabric coffin, wearing out my back while being woken repeatedly by thunder!

Calling off campouts due to weather is new to me. I’ve been working on this novel concept I call “not beating yourself to death doing stupid shit“. It’s not my default setting and I’m still working on it. Age may encourage wisdom but sometimes I fight it.

The following weekend was still drizzling and I had too much accumulated homestead work to fret over camping. However, it unexpectedly turned sunny on Sunday. I wanted to “exercise” my “Jeep-Thing” vehicle and I elected to completely ignore “adulting” and go play. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I rode off into a humid but not-raining afternoon.

The story continues in my next post…