More Anti-Boeing Sleep System Testing

In my last post I explained I’m planning an epic (in my eyes) motorcycle/camping trip. I’m taking Honey Badger (my diminutive Yamaha TW200) so I have to sort through my gear looking for small light things, or buy new small things, or just get by somehow on my savage ingenuity. It’ll be remote-ish. I’m traveling solo. I’m looking forward to it.

The first discovery was that my Vista 1 “Quick Tent”, which is kinda’ neat when setup on a Teton XXL Cot, is pure hell when setup on the ground. One night in that yellow sausage casing was enough to convince me I need something bigger. This is why we test things.

Next came my “sleep system”. My air mattress, about which I had doubts, passed with flying colors. All of my sleeping bags are heavy and meant for cold weather so I “spread three light fluffy ‘camping quilt’ objects on the air mattress”.

I was so discombobulated by the small tent I did a re-test in my huge and comfortable Gazelle Hub Tent. I realize the tent can’t fit on my (or any!) motorcycle, but I wanted to test the sleep system.

Did it work? Nope! That’s why we do testing!

My Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Topo (which has made the cut for this adventure) is R2.5. It ought to have something over it. (Normally that would be a sleeping bag, it’s just my own weirdness that I’m trying alternatives.

I put an Alptrek “Adventure Blanket” over the mattress. It didn’t fully cover it, leaving the top 1/3 of the mattress exposed. Oh well. I soldiered on.

I’m not providing a link to the “Adventure Blanket” because it was a gift. I’m not sure where it came from. The little blanket is just fine for hanging around camp. It’s not junk, just ill suited to the specific use I was trying.

For a pillow I use a Nemo Fillo. There are things which begin as luxuries when you’re young but become necessary when you’re older. For most of my life I’d die with embarrassment to buy a camping pillow. Cram a t-shirt in a stuff sack and that’s a pillow! But… life happens. The Fillo is scandalously expensive at $40+ but it packs small and  every time I use it I’m glad I have it.

The next layer was a present from Mrs. Curmudgeon. She gave me a Get Out Gear Down Puffy Blanket. It’s very small and crazy light. It’s half the encumbrance of the “Adventure Blanket”. However, it’s thin. I’ve eaten cheese slices thicker than this blanket!

So far I had a very light setup and I didn’t expect it to be enough. I just needed a baseline. It was a warm, humid, stuffy night in the mid 60’s. I’m planning for as low as 32 and expecting 50. At first I was cozy. The question was, for how long?

I drifted off to sleep under my cheese slice.

The little puffy blanket is impressive, it punches above its weight class. I was pretty snug at first. (I should add that I was wearing skivvies and nothing else. The goal here isn’t to prove I can survive a night shivering in my motorcycle gear during a cold rain, it’s to prep a baseline where I can sleep comfortably several nights in a row without carrying too much weight and volume.)

As the night wore on, the temperature dropped, just as you’d predict. After a few hours, I woke up in the chill. The cheese slice had done well but it wasn’t magic.

I deployed my next layer, a Therm-a-Rest Honcho Poncho. I’ve had mine for years. I use it mostly for hunting. As a poncho I’ll put it right over giant bulky winter jackets. It allows me to stay still in a snowstorm just a wee bit longer. Sometimes that makes the difference when hunting. It makes a fine little blanket too.

It’s much thicker than the cheese slice and it might be too big to carry (at some point a sleeping bag makes more sense). It’s a little short (being a poncho and not a blanket) so my shoulders kept losing cover. Even so, I expected it to be warm and it was.

I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of campfires and coyotes.

Alas, it didn’t last. A little bit before dawn I woke up again. It was 52. I was “OK but not toasty warm”.

I could, at that point, start putting on sweatpants and fleece shirts but that’s not the point. I already know I can survive a 50 degree night. I can survive much more. What I wanted to know was the baseline for “warm and toasty”. My mishmash of Adventure Blanket and the cheese slice and the Honcho Poncho wasn’t enough.

So far the air mattress and the pillow have passed testing. I also fell in love with the cheese slice, I’ll bring it as “backup” if I have room. The rest, as my high school teachers often said, “needs work”. I’m going to have to buy a sleeping bag like a normal person. Damn!


While I’ve been messing around with blankets, Honey Badger is at a dealership getting hand guards. What is the return on investment on hand guards for the reduced chance of a broken wrist? I don’t know but it feels like it went positive when I decided to take this trip; especially given I’ll be solo and I’m inexperienced.

In other news, a small but steady flow of little tools and gadgets have been ordered and are trickling in. I’ll post them in due time. It’s my intention to be tooled up to fix anything that goes wrong but balance that against the fact the bike is small and pretty tough.

The first thing I learned that replacement tire tubes are too big to carry. The TW200’s huge ass end tire has a tube that’s a couple pounds in itself! I don’t regret buying it but the tube stays behind in the truck and only a tiny patch kit comes with me. Other details are starting to come clear too.

Stay tuned.


Note: If you click one of my links to Amazon and buy anything (not just what I indicate) it doesn’t cost you anything extra but I get a tiny kickback. I encourage you to buy whatever you desire from the links I provide. Don’t hold back! If you buy a yacht or a helicopter or something I might get that tent I need. Happy camping y’all!

Posted in Summer_2024 | 7 Comments

The Coffin Tent And Why I’m Better Than Boeing

Q: Boeing sent astronauts to the International Space Station for an eight day mission. Things got squirrely and they’ve been stuck there for months. Nobody knows how they’ll get back. What does this have to do with camping gear?

A: Test your camping gear before it matters! Unlike Boeing, I discovered planned gear won’t work before I wandered off into space.

I need a big dose of outdoor time. I took a good look at my homemade sailboat and my dirtbike. They both made good arguments but I decided to go with the motorcycle.

My plans underwent mission creep. They expanded, transmogrified, and went to eleven. Now it’s a “motocamping adventure”. Strap in folks because the fun is just starting!

I’ll keep y’all in the dark for now. Never fear, I will indeed provide details in due time. Being general, Honey Badger (my Yamaha TW200) and I are about to take a long “camping” trip. (The hip dudes call this “motocamping”.) I hope to stay 95% on dirt. (If I wanted to ride on pavement, I’d take a different motorcycle.) I’ll be self supported (no hotels). I’m going solo.

I hope to buy food along the way, at least some of the time. The rest of the time I’ll cook… or starve. I’m expecting to go a bit under a thousand miles. I’ve never done quite this sort of “adventure”.

I hope to make it in a week. The route is remote and I’ve never been there before; that’s why they call it an “adventure”.

I’m testing my equipment in advannce. Honey Badger is a small motorcycle. She can only carry about the volume of a backpack. I usually go truck camping. Carrying a half ton of gear is luxurious but addictive. It’s hard to go anywhere without that big giant diesel crutch!

The first phase is to harden up and get to basics. I need a smallish tent. Attempt one was a dismal failure. Mistakes were made!

My equipment is laughably specialized for things totally different than motocamping. In winter I use a Russian Bear UP2 with an internal woodstove. Most people are sane enough to avoid winter camping. If you need a Russian Bear UP2 you (like me) are afflicted with the condition of “winter camping”. Winter camping gear is mostly unworkable for motocamping.

Whenever I’m NOT in snow, I prefer my Gazelle Hub Tent. I love it! It’s a 3 season brick shithouse. It sets up in a flash, you can stand in it, and mine has ridden out big storms. It easily holds a huge Camp Cot, fluffy Camp Pad, and plain old rectangular Sleeping Bag. After all that junk there’s still half a tent left for sitting in a chair chillin out during any rainstorm! It’s almost as nice as a hotel room. It’s also too large for any motorcycle.

My last option is a Vista 1 “Quick Tent”. The Vista 1 an odd duck. It folds up long and tubular. Like a hefty baguette on steroids. It’s much smaller than my behemoth tents but it still packs bigger and heavier than you’d expect. The interior is minimal. I call it a “coffin tent”.

It has odd advantages such as internal poles that are already in place. Pull one cord and the thing pops up like an origami miracle. It’s self supporting too. Being self supporting but tiny, it’s surprisingly rugged.

I’ve used it a few times on top of my Camp Cot. It’s a sweet novelty to be a foot and a half off the ground! That requires an optional “I chose to set the tent up on a cot” rainfly (it goes all the way to ground level). That makes it “feel bigger”.

My monster cot won’t fit on the motorcycle so I planned to setup the little “coffin tent” on the ground (with it’s standard rainfly). But first I tied it to my my motorcycle and blasted down the road for 20 miles. It’s weird size didn’t pack great but it rode OK.

Back at camp, now I had a six pack to drink (test rides have advantages) and things were looking good. Setup was a flash. The Vista 1 just plain explodes into being. It takes two minutes to set it up (fly and stakes included).

My air mattress fit, barely. Last year I bought a Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Topo. They aren’t cheap but they’re cheaper than a chiropractor. They come in a variety of sizes. Mine is “Large” (77″ x 25″) specifically chosen to fit inside the “coffin tent”.

Warning about the NeoAir Topo, they come in several flavors and it’s not always clear from the box or the mattress itself what you’re looking at. As you can see from the photo:

I hadn’t tested the air mattress with the tiny tent, or my back. I crammed it in there (all hail tape measures) but nearly the entire base of the tent was covered by mattress.

Note: I didn’t spring for the “Luxe” version of the Topo air mattress. I have to make due with 3″ of padding like the groveling peasant I am. If I could do it again, I’d get the Luxe version which is 4″ thick and more suitable for my aging and ample weight.

Go Luxe, because an extra inch is an extra inch!

(If that doesn’t sound dirty, I don’t know what does.)

My sleeping bags aren’t meant for packing small on a small motorcycle. Since they all suck for motocamping, I decided to try something new. On top of the inflatable mattress I spread three light fluffy “camping quilt” objects (more on this later).

I was full of optimism (and beer). It’s August and I was doing a test run in an easy environment. How hard can it be?

Also, It looked right. My small dual sport and my small tent look like a match made in heaven.

Then it was time to bend, fold, and spindle myself enough to climb into that tiny tent. I looked like a gorilla crawling into a yellow trashcan!

I’m not claustrophobic but there’s not one since inch of spare space in the little coffin tent. I think it “seems” smaller when it’s on the ground compared to on a cot. If it’s on a cot you can stash stuff underneath!

I like having stuff within reach but not on top of me when I camp/sleep. I kicked off my shoes which immediately bounced off the wall and back onto my legs. I tossed my sweatshirt to the side but there was no “side” where the sweatshirt could reside. This continued all night long.

In keeping with only carrying the minimum, I was using my motorcycle’s emergency jump starter as a flashlight. It’s a Noco Boost GB20 battery pack / jumpstarter. I keep it with my motorcycle at all times. It’s a fine flashlight and charger (I can jumpstart my bike but mostly I use it to charge my SpotX and cell phone). I tried to push it away from my face and gained a generous 3″ of “breathing room”. It sat there… looming!

Everything was OK but not fun. I started to get grumpy. I stashed my cell phone in the little tent’s fabric “attic” and that’s the only thing that wasn’t crowding me. My bedding was in disarray. Everything was bumping into the walls. Meanwhile on a humid summer evening I expected moisture would condense on the walls.

Grumbling, I drifted off to sleep. I guess the air mattress ain’t so bad!

A few hours later, beer reminded me that I needed to get out and pee. I switched on my GB20’s light from where it was crammed against the fabric wall. It blasted my face from a mere 2″ away. I flailed about looking for my glasses. I gave up finding my shoes and just stepped outside barefoot. The contortions as I found and fumbled with the zipper were epic.

I emerged from the tent under a glorious night sky. There were northern lights! I peed in the glory of cosmic fireworks!

Then… ugh… back in the tent. By the time I got back through the rainfly and the netting inner door I’d scrambled the bedding like a tornado had gone through. I fussed and arranged and somehow got one shoe behind my head and another under my knee. The simple little tent was kicking my butt!

I drifted off again. At least the air mattress was doing it’s job! The tangle of quilts was keeping me more or less warm… though it was a warm night anyway.

Hours later I woke up the second time. I wanted a snack. Normally this is no big deal. I keep a snack and a bottle of water in my tent at all times (unless I’m in grizzly country). This time I had to get up, stumble across everything, go outside, and rummage around on my bike. I found a granola bar and some water. It was a pretty summer night, otherwise I’d have been miserable. Imagine getting soaked in a rainstorm looking for a granola bar!

Breathing the cool night air was great. The tent had been stuffy. The glorious moonless sky was wonderful after being wrapped in that damn tent. Unfortunately, the northern lights had faded.

Turning back to the little tent I thought “this contraption is making me miserable”. I had alternate lodging not far away (this was a test campout not a real one!). I hopped on my bike and rode away. It was 4:00 am.

Mission failure! The Vista 1 Quick Tent did everything it was supposed to do. For the right person, such as a hobbit, it would be perfect. It’s just scaled wrong for me and it made me miserable.

I didn’t really get a good test of my sleep system. The next day I setup my Gazelle Hub Tent. I’d put down the same sleep system but try it in a huge tent that wasn’t actively trying to strangle me. I’ll post results shortly. In the meantime here’s a photo of the Gazelle Hub (without rainfly) next to the Teton Vista 1:

Posted in Summer_2024 | 17 Comments

Squirrel Update

I did a thing! I wrote the conclusion! I’ve been hammering away at Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels since 2016. Eight years! Finally, the story has a proper ending!

I always wanted it to be a complete story. I didn’t want a series that goes forever until it leaves you hanging. I intended for an arc. I did it!

I have met and defeated the last chapter!

I’m relieved. I’m fried. I’m about to collapse.

Don’t panic. This isn’t the end. I’ve got enough ideas to keep me writing forever. My immediate goal is merely practical. I want to get the full novel hammered into stone lest it remain forever draft. Draft is not done. I wish to take the whole trip to “final”. It is harder than it sounds.

I know what you’re thinking. You want to know when you can read it? Will it go live on Amazon? Will Amazon tell me I’m a deplorable bastard who can’t live in their woke universe? If so will I sell it via my blog? Will it be on Kindle? Will it be on dead tree? Both? How much? Am I going to post some or all for free like I’ve been doing?

The answer to all of those questions is “I don’t know yet”.

You’re thinking it’ll be fast. Will it go for sale next week? On Tuesday? On Wednesday?

Sorry, but it’s not going to happen like that. It’s going to take a while. Maybe 6 months. I’m only human.

Also this is merely the first draft of the last three chapters. I absolutely will tear it apart and rewrite it. Not once or twice but probably a dozen times. I always do. I don’t know any other way to make my best work. At least I came to a conclusion. Let me savor the moment eh?

Some details; I provide these so you know I’m not blowing smoke up your ass:

The portion already posted on my blog is:

    • About 100,000 words (give or take).
    • About 147 posts (give or take).

The unposted conclusion is:

    • About 30,000 words (more or less).
    • About 28 posts (more or less).
    • The whole thing, posted and not posted, goes to about 650 pages (depending on formatting).

I think it’s going to go about 5,000 words longer than that. I want to write an epilogue. I know; that’s more writing and delay. I should rip the Band-Aid off! But I need (want?) it for the plot. Also it helps me taper my “cold turkey” moment.


There are many details. Keep in mind that scaling up from “random blogging” to “650 page novel” involves a bunch of tasks in addition to writing:

I don’t have an editor. I don’t know any editors. I work completely in a vacuum. The last final edit is going to take a while. I might be looking for a volunteer to read it for continuity.

There are people who know how to format for Kindle. I’m not one of those people.

There are people who know how to format for Print On Demand (POD) dead tree books. I’m not one of those either. The POD book will be huge; more like big old timey SciFi paperbacks and less like modern “short books”. I don’t know how much all those pages and binding will add to costs. Right now, I’m not planning hardcover.

Nor do I have a book cover. I just finished typing. So many details!

I’m also struggling with WordPress. A single topic that’s 150-200 posts is a bigger problem than my modest skills. I tried categorizing and stuff this spring and it messed everything up. If the “password” stuff annoys you I’m sorry. I messed it up and haven’t “unmessed it”. If y’all know anyone who’s a WordPress person (or are one), I’m seeking help. This could be a paid thing. I’m not made of money but I know when I’m beat.

Speaking of money, several readers made large generous donations over the years. I’m super grateful! Y’all kept the project going! Literally there are many times when I wanted to stop but then I’d be like “someone sent a donation… back to work”. I’d like to somehow acknowledge that. (Not sure how.) I didn’t keep official records so I don’t know who did what. In case you’re wondering, I spent most of the money on “infrastructure” (hosting costs and a NAS, etc…) When I was really lucky, a few donations went to “inspiration” (motorcycle gas and whiskey). If you tossed a C note at me or whatever, feel free to send me a gentle reminder.


One last note. I’m fried and July has been weird. I’m planning a “wilderness adventure” to get my head back in the game. I’m giving myself a break from thinking and will go play in the mountains. I won’t be messing with the squirrels (probably) for a month or more. Hopefully, I’ll have a clear head for that last bought of rewrites. A month off every 8 years ain’t too bad.


If you want to support my search for a WordPress guru and someone to do a cover and stuff. Please click below. If you want to pitch in for motorcycle gas and maybe a tent. Please click below. As always, if you’re tapped out, I get it. Take care of yourself first.

tipjar

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Everybody Knows The Dice Are Loaded

I’ve avoided talking about politics lately; both on my blog and in real life. There’s a time to ramble and a time to shut up and pay attention. Now is the time to concentrate on watching and listening. We need that to remember. What matters most to me is that, in the days and years to come, I remember. I hope you sense how much your memory will matter too?

In the days and years to come, we will be told so many lies. It will be hard to stand firm. What I see is what I saw. What I feel is what felt. Yet, I will be tempted, nudged, pushed, and ordered to forget. I will be under lifelong pressure to remember some different sanitized, molded, spun, concocted substitute. My memory of 2024 is going to be all I’ve got. This is true of you as well. Regardless of what future world emerges, vast herds of simpletons will remember a false story.

Today is a good time to prepare the foundation upon which tomorrow you will stand.

Even now, “the forgetting” is happening. Twenty-four days ago candidate Donald Trump’s head exploded on live TV… or rather it didn’t. People are working hard to change the experience in their mind. It was a setup. It was a fake blood pack. Trump was struck by fragments not a bullet. Folks who’ve never fired a shot discuss ballistics like children wondering what their parents really do at the office. Corey Comperatore was flat out murdered and y’all saw it happen. But hey, lets talk about the AR15 and the sloped roof. Trump roared like a lion, so lets censor it from Google.

See what I mean? A straight up assassination attempt is fading inside of a month.

In a year, maybe more or maybe less, the whole world will have forgotten. It will carefully and deliberately deny the old timey days of 2024. Sooner or later Epstein really did kill himself. At some point Wakanda really is a nation in Africa. Hamilton was definitely black. Lincoln, or Julius Caesar, or <insert name here> was gay, and everything he said was irrelevant because he was a white guy anyway. You will someday live in an America that is a foreign nation, and you alone will remember the earlier condition.

Future literature searches will confirm that Biden really was sharp as a tack. Every source will record that nobody saw the economy teetering.

Denial happens fast. Do you remember Obama telling you your insurance premiums would go down $2,500 a year? Why not? It was only 2010. What did you do with the $25,000 you saved? New car? Yearly vacations? Oh that’s right, it was bullshit. But do you remember the bullshit?

Think of what you weren’t told. Nobody told me Stalin was Uncle Joe. Nobody told me Hawaii’s electoral votes were switched from Nixon to Kennedy in 1960. Right now astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore are stuck in space. They’re on the second month of a 10 day trip. You aren’t being told the Boeing Starliner is a mess. You’re busy watching weirdos in Paris. The universe of what is deliberately obfuscated is huge. Remember all you can.

Your memories will have a hint of humor, of cynicism, a feeling of the weight of time. You’ll remember things nobody else thought about. When my grandfather told me about the first sales tax he was all about toilet paper: “It was supposed to be for ‘non-essential luxuries’ and the first thing they taxed was toilet paper!”

You are here. Future generations aren’t. All they’ll ever have is whatever memories you provide. I once had a discussion with an elderly woman who told me of her life as a little girl. How she stepped around dead bodies in Berlin, after the Americans came. A lifetime later she ran a restaurant in rural America. I am and will always be thankful for the wisdom she shared. All the Ancient Aliens crap on History Channel will never rise to the importance of an old woman telling me about the fall of Berlin.


My ruminations sound dire but I don’t mean them to be. Change is, of itself, neither good nor bad. It feels bad, but that’s just your normalcy bias getting severed. Maybe it has to be this way. Sometimes the can is worn out. Sometimes there’s no more road left to kick it down. Change is sometimes inevitable.

(I can sense a hundred fingers leaning into a hundred keyboards desperate to tell me that this moment, right damn now, is the most hopeless of all moments. Keep that black pill to yourself. Stuff it way down deep and focus on thriving as best you can. You do no good indulging in despair. You do society no good imploring everyone to lose hope.)

I think about other moments when change happened. In times of import, there’s a certain “feel” in the air. I feel it now. I wasn’t there for the French Revolution or Fort Sumter. I don’t know what that felt like. But I watched vote counts at 2:00 am in 2020 and I know what that felt like. I saw the would be assassination of 24 days ago. I saw Reagan take a bullet in 1981. I remember my earlier naïve ideas. I remember thinking we’d get to the bottom of things once Epstein was safely locked up. I remember the cold war and mutually assured destruction. I remember the miracle on ice. I reflect on the difference between that and last week’s Paris Olympics’ ceremonial spaz fest. I remember when normal Americans could use a clutch. I remember when if you couldn’t find a fact in the library, you simply didn’t know.

Now is not the time for despair. No time is the right time for despair.

If you must indulge in a little cynicism, allow yourself small quantities only. Cynicism is nothing new. Take a small hit if you must but then put the bottle down. That shit’s addictive.

In honor of cynicism, I present to you Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”. The song was written in 1988. It was played in the movie “Pump Up The Volume” in 1990. Give yourself a few minutes and really listen. It’s worth it. Don’t hum it while you’re fixing breakfast. Pretend you’re GenX and it’s the old days when you listened to an LP; like the music actually mattered.

There’s nothing more Gen X than Leonard Cohen’s lyrics. The nation’s ignored rounding error of latchkey kids came of age with all the pain of any other generation. Boomers called them “Slackers” and mocked their cynicism. Advice from 1950 pushed GenX off a cliff into the messed up and utterly different workforce of 1990. GenX knew the dice were loaded. Every new crop of teenagers learns very quickly “the fix is in”. The fix is always in.

GenX, yours truly among them, cares but won’t coddle. We commiserate over subsequent generations; driven mad by social media. Their suffering is real. Their mental illnesses have got to hurt. But it happens. That’s where I’m going with all this. Part of the misery of change is the false feeling that your unease is unique. It is not. The only way to know, is to experience it, and then remember.

Whatever the fuck is going on in 2024, it’s going to happen. Learn from it. Make yourself strong. Good luck.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

The Red Square Cessna And The Shot Heard Round The World

“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.

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Sure And Steady, The River Flows Past The Screeching Monkeys

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.

 

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Something Is Rotten In The State Of Denmark

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.

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I’m A Battery Wizard!

[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!

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Happy Camper: Picks Or It Didn’t Happen

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:

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Happy Camper: Part 5: A Sublime Night

[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!

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