Adaptive Curmudgeon

I went camping! Finally!

A night sitting by the campfire was exactly what I needed. I need outdoor time. Whether you know it or not, you do too. Here’s why; modern society is fuckin’ weird. It’s getting weirder and it wants to take you down with it. Don’t go down the rabbit hole!

Society lacks grounding in reality. It behooves every sane human to interact with the planet from time to time, lest one lose their bearings. Go outdoors periodically and you won’t (can’t!) get as weird as society wants. That’s because we were made (or evolved) for this planet. We belong here. Like it or not, you are doing what you were born to do when you traverse the imperfect, not climate controlled, sometimes difficult, planet we inhabit.

The place that drives us mad is not our home planet with all its dirt and bugs and rain and sun; it’s the mental landscape of the fake that wrecks us. Spend hours awash in an online simulacrum of reality and you begin to believe the bullshit. Spend a lifetime there and you become the bullshit.

Society is drifting as it is because we are living as we are. We don’t sufficiently embrace reality. It’s hard to be a spastic weirdo while tending your own campfire. Even if you are a spastic weirdo, the fire doesn’t care. That’s the point. It does even the most spastic of weirdos a lot of good to realize the campfire, nobody else, and the entirety of the planet itself, doesn’t care about their particular bespoke flavor of weirdness.

More in next post…

Read this: I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again.

I agree with almost everything the author is saying. This includes the part about physically beating douchebags who aren’t smart enough to run a database but who are getting hot and bothered over AI like it’s the next coming of Jesus. The author differentiates between people who do shit and the vast swarms of bullshit peddlers jumping on the AI bandwagon in hopes of harvesting more money to shove up their own ass:

We have a few key things that a grifter does not have, such as job stability, genuine friendships, and souls. What we do not have is the ability to trivially switch fields the moment the gold rush is over, due to the sad fact that we actually need to study things and build experience. Grifters, on the other hand, wield the omnitool that they self-aggrandizingly call ‘politics’.

I’ll add that AI, as it exists now, is a shitty solution in search of a problem which it won’t address. I’ve seen this before. I’m old enough to remember when personal computers were just entering normal households. I remember idiots suggesting housewives might use dBASE to store their recipes. Yes, that was an actual thing spoken by an actual human. Every era has another herd of idiots trying to shoehorn fancy new technology into whatever orifice seems handy.

“Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know exactly what they’re going to use AI for, you do not need AI for anything – or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the benefits.”

It seems to me most of the AI hype is a work avoidance process. Doing a good job with tools that already exist takes effort… and competence. Telling your boss you’ll make straw into gold with the newest buzzword is so much easier.

“How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I’ve met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you’re worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven’t even come up with yet? You sound like an asshole and I’m going to kick you in the jaw until, to the relief of everyone, a doctor will have to wire it shut, giving us ten seconds of blessed silence where we can solve actual problems.”

And we all know management is mostly herd beasts with great hair; they’ll believe any dumb thing so long as it’s hip and new. Remember other buzzwords like “cyber”, NFT, and blockchain?

“…some of my friends feel that they have to be in leadership positions, and it is because someone needs to wrench the reins of power from your lizard-person-claws before you drive us all collectively off a cliff…”

The best solution probably is a brick to the face.

“With God as my witness, you grotesque simpleton, if you don’t personally write machine learning systems and you open your mouth about AI one more time, I am going to mail you a brick and a piece of paper with a prompt injection telling you to bludgeon yourself in the face with it, then just sit back and wait for you to load it into ChatGPT because you probably can’t read unassisted anymore.”

Hat tip to 357 Magnum.

Follow-up:

I wanted to add this myself. Watch and you’ll see there’s nothing new under the sun. Whenever you hear “AI” in its current context, just substitute “blockchain”, “NFT”, “cyber-space”, “e-commerce”, or fucking “tulip mania“.

Just one of the many cycles of stampeding midwits I’ve watched in my brief life was the dot com bubble. At it’s height, people would put the words “dot com” after anything, hurl money at it, and assume they’d strike it rich. “Rollerskate sandwich dot.com! It’ll make a ton of money!”

At its peak, someone thought it brilliant to sell dogfood over the internet. Between November 1998 and November 2000 this fucking thing was all over TV. The best minds of Wall Street thought riches would come from using “e-commerce” to “solve the problem of buying dog food”. What sane world would use Superbowl ad money to sell fucking kibbles for Fido?

Less than a year later, Pets.com crashed (everything else in the “dot.com bubble” crashed too). Pets.com never made a profit. It turned an IPO price of $11/share into $0.19/share and not a single business executive was thrown off a cliff! That’s part of the game, the dipshits that vaporizing huge piles of money chasing “the new thing” never seem to pay the price. It all burns down but they’re already chasing the next “magic noun”. Our current AI situation is what happens when business dweebs find a new word and pound it to death.

Whatever circle jerk CNN’s pet sycophants cook up won’t be a debate. Debate is supposedly an attempt to suss out truth, or at least test knowledge. Sigh, ok fine, it’s really just nerds doing word based rhetorical gladiatorial combat. Still it’s nothing of the sort when “officiated” by biased mental nullities like CNN’s staff.

I imagine an ideal situation where it’s better. Join me in a flight of fancy!

I ponder learned men and women discussing issues of great import. I imagine Socrates rocking a Greek toga while Cicero in Roman garb that’s basically a hipper version of an old Greek toga strides about. Everyone there is smart, civil, and intelligent. Any moderator who interrupts gets stabbed. You need to swear on your mother’s grave that you’ve read at least three books per quarter just to watch. If you’re lying, the Oracle of Delphi knows and rats you out. Liars are thrown down a well… which, now that I think of it, should be applied to Congress starting now. We might need to dig more wells.

Socrates is a stone cold asshole who answers every question with a question. The crowd shouts and complains. Thinking is hard. They don’t like it.

Cicero is such a mental bad ass that he can share conjecture with a re-animated a 200 year old dead philosopher. On the other hand, he’s an elitist douchebag.

Cato the Elder seizes the microphone and shouts;  “Furthermore, I consider Carthage to need to be destroyed” and drops the microphone. (The microphone has a function which is unclear to a man from 2,200 years ago but it looked cool when he watched rappers drop theirs and he wants to look cool.) The Republic of Tunisia exclaims “not cool dude” but nothing happens. This is because almost nobody in America knows Tunisia exists and of those only eleven people know Carthage was an ancient city there. Those eleven people are all killed when a single elevator mishap at a Holiday Inn Express kills the entirety of the “East Wichita, Mensa / Carthage Special Interest Group”. However, Cato’s words incite Syria to invade Iran which attacks North Korea which assassinates the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, for reasons nobody understands.

Confucius tries to calm the crowd, imploring them to use their greater reason and morality; which seems to work. Then Socrates askes another damn question “Oh yeah? And how do we know you even exist?”. Pandemonium breaks out!

Then, because it’s my imagination, Diogenes shows up stark naked and carrying a plucked chicken. The scene fades as the greatest minds of humanity help Diogenes beat the cameraman with the chicken.

CNN has a 5% boost in stock value that lasts for exactly one day before the whole thing is forgotten. Meanwhile, the United States has the greatest debt ever assembled in all of human existence, so Congress wisely passes laws about transgender street signs.

Would that be worse that what’s going to happen tonight?

Today is the day of the “debate”. Ugh! “The Thing That Haunts Dem’s Nightmares” and “Totally Legit Joe” are going to “match wits”. I think I just got sick.

It’s bullshit and you know it:

First of all, nothing happening in the CNN studio is going to change anyone’s mind. It might be fun to watch “Ow My Balls” on TV but don’t think that makes you a better or more informed voter. Both players have had approximately 10,000 hours of press over the last 50 years to demonstrate what they say. More importantly if you’re not dumber than a sea slug you have seen for yourself what they’ve done. There’s no need to examine words, you’ve seen both do the job for 4 years and you’ve seen both through their long public careers.

Folks who make decisions based on a “debate” (if they ever existed) haven’t been paying attention since JFK’s hair was better than Nixon’s on black and white TV in 1960. In 2024, you’ve either hardened your opinion into granite or you’re a flake who’ll serially agree with whomever you last interacted.

This election is more or less over. What “uncertainty” there is comes exclusively from the 6% of the populace that is either in a coma, stoned, or so clueless they can’t identify the two participants. That and the 2,938% of the ballots that will be found at 2 am November 6th. They’re probably already in the back of a truck which is already idling outside of whichever counting venues have the greatest statistical influence. But of course, such conjecture is de facto illegal in 2024 so I’m just saying it as satire.

The thing that won’t happen but would be cool:

Orange Man Bad is one hell of a showman. I wouldn’t put it past him to use the 11.3 seconds his mic is live to drop the name of his VP pick. That alone would send everyone scurrying for Wikipedia while Captain Depends sought to regain attention.

I picture Biden shouting: “Hey fat! I’m still here and I fought in the trenches of WW1 in Delaware to earn this attention. I didn’t take enough shots of meth to kill a trailer park in Tennessee just to be ignored! I’m relevant gosh darn it!” He begins to shake with anger as Trump’s smug smile shreds his brain until he comes off the drugs like all of Fleetwood Mac going straight in a heartbeat. Biden pictures his signature accomplishments from decades ago; Amtrak. “I like trains.” He mutters. Jill swoops in to shuffle him back to his recliner, while flipping the bird at Trump, who is trying to browbeat the cameraman into voting for him.

But what I really want to hear is this:

“Today I’m announcing my VP pick; Mike Rowe. You know the guy. He did the TV show Dirty Jobs. Very good guy, the greatest really. Our first joint announcement will be the ‘if you aren’t currently wearing scuffed work boots, you ain’t getting shit from welfare’ initiative. God bless you all and would someone bake me a cake with a file in it next week. Thanks!”

I won’t plow with my truck because it’s a Dodge and product of Detroit. It’s hard enough keeping the steering straight. Plus, plows for a dually ain’t cheap. I could easily drop many grand on a plow only to beat my truck to death. In the timeline where I live right now, the truck is irreplaceable. Financing a new truck under current inflation rates and paying it off with Bidenbucks might sink me financially.

It’ll be my tractor or nothing. I didn’t plan on being a plow guy. What would I need to turn it into a side gig? Long term I’d need to get to more customers, which means a trailer I can’t afford. Short term I can lumber down the road to a few nearby potential customers. That’s legal if annoying. I’d need flashing lights to avoid getting creamed by highway speed vehicles. And I’d like a radio so I could monitor weather and (hopefully) not get too bored.

Installing a radio:

My tractor is a Kioti and it’s a fine tractor. It has a few quirks. First of all, they rigged the world’s most inconvenient terminal access onto an otherwise decent battery position. It’s the first time I’ve used a 12mm short combination wrench. What a weird setup.

Tractor cabs are brilliant. So much better than freezing my ass off! And look here, it’s already setup for a radio!

And what’s this? A tiny little antenna! (Note, having tested it a while, it doesn’t get the best reception. It works and it’s small enough I haven’t smashed it into a tree yet, but it’s sub-par.)

I popped off the cover and spent a few brain cells analyzing this ridiculous wiring harness.

Then I bought a radio off Amazon. I tried very hard to get exactly what my tractor needed. This whole “wiring harness” thing seems excessive. The last radio I installed, in a Buick, was from before CDs. It had power / antenna / speaker. No harness at all.

They used to be so universal I could just buy one and jam it in. I think I got one from K-Mart (before Walmart even existed). Does that date me?

Bad moments in engineering, the fuse is in the back of the radio. I’d have to pull the whole damn unit to replace a fuse?

Great moments in engineering. The rear of the radio has a generic wiring harness and there’s an adaptor to match the vehicle I requested. I expected something like that. The radio came with a “pigtail” converting directly to my tractor’s wiring harness. There must be a factory somewhere with a bunch of people creating “pigtails” (possibly on demand, as they are ordered) for every conceivable harness system.

The vinyl (?) on my roof was too tight to allow the mounting hardware. I trimmed it with care you’d associate with defusing a bomb. I really don’t want to fuck up my almost new tractor!

Now the “receptacle box” is installed. Once I figured out the little press fittings it worked out nicely.

It doesn’t look like a gorilla installed it!

I don’t like the six exposed screws. I paid a few bucks extra for the “face plate” and I think it was worth it. To my dismay I had to drill it to fit. Luckily, I didn’t screw that up either.

Not bad eh?

There is even a snap on bezel to really “clean it up”.

I was reluctant to tweak my tractor, given that it was so very damn expensive to buy it. But the install is complete. I like it.

If the world goes to hell, I’ll plow driveways for anyone who can pay more than the cost of diesel. I’ll probably need the money.

If the world doesn’t go to hell, I can happily listen to books on CD while I plow my own driveway.

Win, win!

P.S. The tractor came with a “slow moving vehicle” placard. I kept bending it against tree branches so I removed it. I can re-install if needed. Legally, that’s all I’m required to do. (The tractor came with headlights and all that!) Realistically, I’m not leaving my property without a blinking light. I haven’t yet installed a blinking light. There’s time. Winter is coming, it ain’t here yet.

[I planned to slack off but I got another donation. Suddenly I’m motivated! Y’all are the greatest! Also, I set out to write about a tractor but veered into philosophy. Why? Because I modified the tractor due to philosophical thoughts. There is no reason why “preparing for the unexpected” has to be naught but canned beans and stacked ammo.]

I reflect on how we got here. In the swirling currents of current instability I can’t deduce where we’re going. You can’t either. Recent history suggests that absolutely nothing is “impossible”.

So long as society is in disarray it’s good to be humble about one’s predictions. The two things I’m most certain of are that it snows in winter and anyone who says they know what the future holds should be kicked in the balls.

Sit back and think of all the many possible timelines we’ve skipped from and to in the last few years! It’s mind boggling!

Most of us don’t take enough time to think. I implore you to do so now. Allocate to your soul the necessary time to process and digest what you’ve so recently experienced. Sit down, shut up, and think about it. Think about how you got where you are. Isn’t it weird?

Writ large, the nation lurches from timeline to timeline… each more perilous and weird than the last. It’s good to remember the madness; the stumbles and reversals. Settle it into your mind. You must do that or the gaslighting of the present and future will erase your awareness. Remember what you personally witnessed or you’re nothing but an NPC on someone’s vote farm.

Things were churning along one path; the economy was roaring back after 16 years of Bush / Obama. Half the political landscape was furious at all the… prosperity? Endless shrieking was touched off when Hillary’s Coronation in 2016 was denied. People dressed up as vaginas and broke glass windows in the streets. For some reason this wasn’t considered odd. An orange menace paid attention to American citizens outside of DC and for that unforgiveable sin, he became an avatar of hate.

The Gutenberg sized revolution of social media drove most of us mad. Words turned from communication to tools of control. Pretty much everything spoken in public now had shaded meanings; often implying the exact opposite of what the words were defined as. Consult a printed dictionary from a saner past; you’ll be surprised. The word “true” and “false” were twisted into “misinformation” and “fact checking”. Notice how the press never says simply “this fact is true and that fact is false”? Reality was bent on the anvil of ideas.

Then came the “Pants Shitting Hysteria of Covid”. It hit like a freight train and upended us onto a completely different timeline. After a few months it still wasn’t ok to leave the house to work or hug grandma but it was totally patriotic to burn shit down. Thus, we stepped on the altered path of “The Summer of Mostly Peaceful Protests”. Summer chaos led directly to “Statistical Improbabilities Which Shall Not Be Named”. (Indeed it is within the letter of the law to discuss such things but not the defacto application of such. The formerly free speech zone of USA reels under the weight of things which cannot be said.) Statistical anomalies created the next step. Now we’re stumbling along in the hot sweaty armpit of existence that is the “Bidenverse”. All this is right and proper and D.C. has the political prisoners and deployable mobile concertina wire perimeters to prove it.

Imagine that! Now it’s three years later. Gas tripled in price and we blithely pay. Meanwhile the press is actively “fact checking” whether the President did or did not shit himself on stage. (I’ve no opinions on sharts versus old men trying to sit in invisible chairs. Heck, I’d look stupid on camera if you followed me 24/7 so what do I know?) Regardless, that’s the timeline of our lives now. The Bidenverse drifts into the Shart-opia and we have convicted opposition party leaders to prove it.

We all have to live in a world where things are dumb. Unverified octogenarian bowel movements are a legitimate political discussion but things the National Debt is ignored.

What’s next? I’ve no idea. You don’t either. Anyone who’s lived through the last few years should be very humble about “what is simply impossible”. Do you think you really know what’ll happen? Did you predict, in 2019 while experiencing the lowest unemployment since 1968, that mass hysteria over an effect that originated in a Bio-Lab in Wuhan China would close your bowling alley? If you didn’t make that call in 2019, you don’t know what the rest of 2024 holds in store.

That’s ok. Life would be boring if it were too predictable. Knowing where you’re going is denied to mortal man. Unless you’re into pre-destination and have a direct line to the almighty, you’ll find out just like the rest of us… when it gets so weird that you notice it.

Where am I going with this? I’m grasping for things that I know to be true (extremely likely) for my own personal future. One thing I predict with full confidence is that it will snow in the winter. Neither of the shitweasel parties can change the planet’s orbital procession (though they sure talk like they can!).

Spastics like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg proselytize that 1.) Winters will cease and 2.) it’s your personal fault. But they don’t count. Anyone dumb enough to believe that shit is too dumb to be relevant. (I’m speaking here of the Nobel Committee and the UN, both of which are about as wrong in everything as a Paul Krugman economic prognostication.)

So back at the ranch… Mr. Curmudgeon accepts that anything from a return of $2 gas to invasion by space aliens can’t be ruled out and the only sure thing is snow. What to do with this information?

If winter is coming. Make winter your business.

Every human endeavor north of a certain latitude involves pushing snow. It was true of the Germans trying to invade Russia. It was true of the Russians trying to invade Finland. It’ll be true even if our economy and society crawls up it’s own ass and dies there. Commies, capitalists, rich, poor, sophisticated, simple, urban, rural… everyone pushes snow.

I plow my own snow. My driveway is huge and I spent a fortune on equipment to handle it. Maintenance ain’t cheap either. It’s a choice I made and I’m glad I did. My tractor and plow will work equally well under Orange Man Bad, Captain Poopy Pants, or Lrrr the Ruler of Omicron Persei 8.

Right now I don’t plow driveways as a side gig. I have too many irons in the fire. But…

Suppose shit goes pear shaped… I mean goes even weirder than now? (Which is hard to imagine but is clearly possible!) Might as well gear up to be Mr. Plow.

Even if I don’t need to be Mr. Plow in this particular universe, I’ve already decided we don’t know what timeline comes next.

The next post is when I break out the screwdrivers and power drill and actually do something.

This update has nothing to do with coffee or cups; a nice reader sent me a “coffee cup tip” and I appreciated it. I hadn’t posted all week but, with virtual coffee in hand, it only seemed right to rectify my lack of writing. I’ve been super busy so this post is somewhat random. I hope y’all don’t mind. Also, THANKS!

It’s supposedly summer but spring rains haven’t let up. Every time the sun shines I run out there to do stuff. Alas, I can’t get much sustained work / play done before the conditions revert back to rain. At least it’s nice and warm… if a big muggy.

This, of course, is normal. Sometimes it rains more than other times. It gets hot in summer. Also, nature is going wild. You and I may bitch about the rain but the plants are on a tear that won’t slow until things dry out.

I was buying tractor fuel at the gas station/feed store. The screen on the wall was blathering. The weather channel was in apoplexy over… weather. They had various maps tinted in dire shades of red; everything from dark wine red to lungshot bisque. They seemed desperate to imply heat in June is unprecedented and terrifying. I don’t know why.

The spokesdrones were muted. I squinted at one of the graphics (a sea of blood red like they’d committed murder across the map). I saw a temp of 83. Um… 83?

It’s June. 83 isn’t crazy. It’s not even unusual. It’s not even overly weird for the freezing ass of North America. (I’m guessing it hits 83 in Prudhoe Bay once in a while.)

I asked the guy at the counter. (I know him but forget his name. He remembers mine, which worries me.) “What’s with the weather channel? Is there something real or are they new to the idea of 83 degrees in June?”

He shrugged. “They’re always like that. I think it’s something they put in the water.”

I paid for my stuff and he asked about my homestead. “Get your hunting plot planted?”

“Nope, I skipped it last year so the sod’s established. Then the grass grew like a foot and a half. I was brush hogging it when the rain stopped me. The soil is wet as shit and it gets too slippery for my tractor. I’m not sure I can disk it up if it doesn’t dry.”

He’d been hoping to sell me a few pounds of food plot seed. I’d like to be at the point where I could use it. Alas, you don’t always get what you want.

Still, I’d admitted I’d fucked up and was in for some good natured ribbing. “Don’t sweat it. I heard you’re a super hunter who never misses.”

I swear to God I was near to blushing. Don’t hate me, it’s a guy thing.

Then came the punchline. “But then I heard you got a crossbow. You’ll come up empty handed with or medieval shit like that. Since you’re gonna’ get skunked you don’t need a food plot.”

“I might get scouted and ready.” I stammered.

“Really? Didn’t you say your best tree stand that was leaning?”

“Actually it’s gone.” It’s true. One of my favorite spots has been neglected a long time. The forest has overtaken it and I’m surprised the recent high winds didn’t completely topple it. I doubt I’ll get a replacement built before fall.

He beamed while I thought about my odds. Time to be realistic. “Ah well, I’ll wing it like everyone else does. The food plot was just hedging my bets.”

Then I added “freezer’s full anyway”.

We both nodded. Having a full freezer and appreciating the miracle of such is a secret handshake. Dweebs on TV ramble about “food deserts” and spend a lifetime hovering three days from starvation. Us yokels talk about food in units of “quarter cow” and “a pretty big buck”. It’s never guaranteed but always appreciated.

We’re a continent spanning portion of the populace utterly ignored in politics or social discourse. Us deplorable non-entities in flyover country know it. We’ve gotten (have always been?) cynical. Yet we keep our freezers full if we can and that seems to help. We hope to be eating steak (from hunting or farms) each fall when the Weather channel is freaking out as they discover snow. It’s hard to be pissed off when you’ve got a full freezer.

Over the weekend I couldn’t get my shit together enough to go camping. I had too many homestead duties. I’d promised myself I’d camp the instant the weather was good but sometimes one must “adult”.

Combining diligence and luck, I finally hammered back the lawn and brush hogged some feral fields. I’d like to say I “mowed” the lawn but really I just dragged the finish mower across the easiest spots. I dropped high ankle deep grass down to recognizable lawn without even pretending to trim. I sometimes call this “triage mowing”.

As finely manicured lawns go, I have an excellent firebreak.

I was interrupted by rain; which is good because I was tired. I napped during the rain. When the rain stopped I forgot about hunting plots and lawns. I spent a full day cutting firewood like my ass depended on it. (It’s not an emergency but it matters in the long run.)

A handful of smallish trees got windthrown in a spring storm a month ago. After a lot of work, they’re gone processed from flammable litter to “not yet split and stacked” firewood. The mess is, of course, heaped in a pile on my not-quite-lawn. What are lawns for if not to stack bulk materials? At the least, I’ve started the drying process.

Then the weekend was over. So much for camping.

Last year I bought a 1989 Honda Pacific Coast. It was to be my happy fun-time touring bike. I dreamed of “motocamping” road trips in remote (but paved) places. Alas, 2023 kicked me in the balls so it didn’t happen.

Well it’s time to try again. For better or worse my employer gave us Wednesday off work. In America, the land of formerly constitutionally guaranteed first amendment free speech, I’ll refrain from opining; lest censors crawl up my ass and eat my blog.

It’s only one day off, so I’d have to blast out on the road right after work the night before. I packed my bike early in the week. I bought some ROK straps last year. A super nice reader sent me two awesome drybags last year. Also last year I bought a backpacker’s air inflatable mattress and tiny air pump. I also have a tiny tent.

The issue is this; I’m nervous about motorcycle camping. I’ve grown used to camping with heavy luxury equipment; my fat comfy cot with mattress and fluffy rectangular sleeping bag in one of two equally large tents. What works when traveling by Dodge can be a luxury or it can be a crutch. If I go on two wheels I’ll once again sleep on the ground with minimal gear. I’m older than I was when I last did that. Will my back hurt without the cot? What about the tiny claustrophobic tent in mosquito season? What about this? What about that?

So many things can go wrong. So I packed my bike in advance and planned the world’s lamest overnight somewhere close to home. If it sucked, it would be only one night and I’d have a whole vacation day to recover.

The planned departure day it started to rain at mid-morning. Then it rained more. And more. I fretted but tried optimism “it can’t rain forever, just chill until 5pm and then roll out”.

At 5pm my packed bike was warm and dry in the garage. The world’s longest rolling thunderstorm was still in progress and felt like it would last 40 days and 40 nights.

I gave up. I almost never give up but I willed myself to do so. In theory I’ll camp in a fuckin’ hurricane if I feel like it. But I’m trying to be “good to myself”. Also, I wanted to test motorcycle camping, not prove I’m tough enough to huddle, wet and miserable, for a long crappy night. I know I can still do that.

The rain didn’t stop until nearly dawn. By my guess the “thunderstorm” went most of 26 hours. Ironically, this came with none of the hyperventilating weather alerts of the previous Covid thunderstorm.

The next day dawned pretty clear. It would’ve been a great day to camp! Unfortunately, the next morning I had to be at work. Ironic eh?

I unpacked my bike and then ran off to cut more firewood. Why not? After a full freezer, nothing is as nice as a huge pile of firewood.

This year, like every year, my lawn has gone feral. No worries, this happens at the beginning of every summer. Once the soil gets drier, the grass will slow down and I’ll catch up.  (I’m happiest when the grass goes dormant or just plain dies.)

The weather hasn’t cooperated with mowing. It kept raining and it’s a mess if you mow wet grass. I waited for a sunny afternoon and indeed one came. It was the kind of glorious day you’d die for in January! I had plans to fire up my tractor in late afternoon. I wouldn’t get my lawn all mowed at once before dark (it’s a big lawn) but at least I’d get a start.

A text came in. Mrs. Curmudgeon was warning me a storm was coming. I glanced out the window. It looked glorious! WTF?

I checked the internet and indeed my county was under a storm warning. The warning was impressive! It included, among various dire predictions, 3″ hail, strong winds, a deluge of rain; damage to buildings, roofs, and cars was imminent. It sounded serious!

Mrs. Curmudgeon’s phone and the internet agreed; all hell was going to break loose!

It felt off. I stepped outside and examined the horizon. It was clear as a bell. Not a cloud in sight. WTF?

I busied myself “battening down the hatches”. I don’t have a garage that’ll fit my truck. 3″ hail is the size of a fucking baseball and would surely curbstomp the body. Should I just bail? I could book it in a direction 90 degrees off the approach path? Alas, the storm warning was pretty wide. Maybe that wouldn’t work.

For a “hunker down” plan, I parked adjacent a couple of young healthy not too old and not too young pines. My thinking was that the young flexible limbs would break the fall of epic hail… not stopping projectiles but slowing them to “not-denting” speed. I hoped that the young trees would be more limber and more root firm; less likely to uproot in the anticipated winds. The tree selection thing was not easy because my choices suck. My land has mostly old decrepit trees that love to uproot in high winds.

Having stashed the truck as best I could, I was out of things to do. I stood there testing the air.

Now I’m not a meteorologist but I have what I’ll call “woodsmanship”. I humbly understand that radar and satellite imagery can see what a man on the ground cannot, but plain old common sense will go a long way. Hints at the local scale help one understand the atmosphere. Unless it’s an extreme cold front coming like a freight train in the dark of night, you can see what’s coming and have a good chance to react intelligently.

I observe basic weather stuff as you’d expect out of a person who’s generally in tune with nature. I’ll recognize a cumulous or cirrus cloud and know what each means. I know the way the wind generally blows in my area. I often know what to expect and when it’s likely to happen.

This warning just didn’t fit the world I was seeing. I looked at the leaves on the trees. I checked birds’ flights. I sniffed the humidity in the air. I scanned the skies in the direction from which the threat was supposed to come.

Something didn’t add up.

Without being able to put my finger on it, I knew (as well as one can know anything weather related) that the conditions were ripe for something bad but some key ingredient was missing. You need energy and you need the trigger to unleash it. The energy was there but not the component parts of the release. Whatever was going to happen was either not going to happen. Or maybe it would happen elsewhere. Or possibly it was busy tearing up the county upwind of me (which I doubted because it inexplicably hadn’t sent indicators downstream).

There wasn’t a big thunderhead to pull the hot humid air from low and shove it high into the cold atmosphere. There were gusty winds but not a solid developing front. The fucking birds were singing!

The thing about outside information is that it’s the voice of the media, not God. You’re a smart monkey. You can (and should!) compare reports to observation. The report didn’t look right for what I was seeing.

Rather than just standing in the glorious sun, I started mowing my lawn. I’d at least knock back some of the grass before it got wet again.

I got to work.

I recently added a radio to my tractor. I plan to post about the installation sometime. The intention was that I’d have NOAA weather updates while out plowing snow. I’m not a commercial plow guy but things could change. I could be one if I was desperate. I wanted a radio so I’m better equipped should I need to become one. I also need a flashing light so I don’t get creamed on the road. That’s not installed yet.

(Note: It is wise to have options during uncertainty. We’re in an economic house of cards and it’s collapsing around us right now in real time… as we always expected. There’s no point in wailing about our sad fate. We should adjust as well as we can and then roll with it. Snow removal equipment is much a “prepper” tool as anything. I’ll take it over another pile of ammo or yet another stack of MREs. Yes I have ammo and food, but beyond a certain point you should branch out. Shopping is not preparation. Realistic scenarios include things like snowplows and road conditions. It’s not going to stop snowing in winter. Do you need another 40 loaded magazines before you get a spare shovel?)

I started mowing in the glorious sunny weather. The local FM rock station is crap and the AM antenna wasn’t great. I settled on classic music.

I humbly assumed the storm would arrive eventually. When or if the mystery weather front actually arrived I’d hustle to the barn asap. I’d get soaked running to the house but the tractor would be fine. Plus, it was nice to get some grass cut.

The radio had other ideas. I was chilling to violins and shit when they interrupted the music:

“NOAA weather reports that Curmudgeon’s county is about to get stomped by a storm. Reports are that it will be ‘Godzilla-like” and leave ‘smitherines’. We return you now to your sleepy old people music.”

I shut down the PTO (it’s a three point finish mower deck) and stepped off the tractor. Despite the engine’s racket, everything seemed peaceful. The air seemed reasonable, if a little “twitchy”.

I shrugged and continued mowing. To the south a few clouds had drifted in. My airspace remained clear.

Another announcement, this time read by hand by a guy who sounded terrified:

“A weather report for… um… Curmudgeon’s township. NOAA says everyone is going to die and there will be no stone left on top of another. Er… Well… NPR will miss our lost viewers.”

I stopped again and checked the sky. The clouds to the south were cumulonimbus. They certainly could develop into a shitstorm but they weren’t “done” yet. I assessed them to be still growing in height. Clearly weren’t yet releasing pent up energy. No lightning, no thunder, no hints of rain. They were plodding along my southern horizon like they were in no particular hurry. They didn’t seem to have a pent up front behind them. Skies over my head were still clear. I went back to mowing.

“We interrupt this sleepy music from whatever a philharmonic is to specifically warn ‘Curmudgeon’ that he’s going to get ass beaten. Hail, tornadoes, Poseidon’s own rainstorm, and probably a herd of rabid Chihuahuas wills trip the flesh from his bones. This is the end! This is not a drill! All you rural hicks deserve your fate as the deplorable rednecks you are!”

I tried to ignore it but ten minutes later another warning came. I found myself watching the gradual drifting cloud heads. They were not over me. They were not coming toward me. They simply weren’t doing anything at all. I’m betting on radar they looked like Satan’s ass crack but I didn’t see rotation and I didn’t see density and I didn’t think they were even ready to release raindrops.

With nothing unleashing from the impressive but inert situation, the logical thing to do was mow lawn and relax. The storm would come if it came, and it didn’t appear to be coming my way at all.

Another warning. And then another. Good grief!

I gave up. All the warnings were getting me jittery. It was as if the whole world was in a strange alternate universe of hailstones and destruction. Yet here I was in a sunshine filled heaven. WTF? I parked the tractor, carefully locking the door. It was as safe as anything on my rickety homestead.

I stood there, in the bright glorious sunshine, wondering what the fuck was happening. It was still sunny. Not a drop of rain had fallen. I watched a hummingbird flitting about. I saw vultures coasting high in the sky. One bird weighing almost nothing and the others very high in the atmosphere (which indicated it wasn’t particularly turbulent where they soared). What did the birds know that the radar didn’t?

I got another text from Mrs. Curmudgeon: “are you still standing”?

I texted back “I declare a WTF paradox! The weather report is just another Fauchi press conference, a lot of ‘potential this’ and ‘beware of that’. Dead bodies aren’t falling from the sky. It’s all crap!”

More texting: “You have a weird way of being reassuring.”

I keyed in my explanation: “It’s sunny and nice. I’m confused. If I didn’t have the radio I’d not give it a second thought. There are some clouds… another 50 miles travel and they might amount to something but they’re just… ” I paused, trying to describe “woodsman” weather knowledge. It didn’t translate.

I deleted my text and tried again: “It’s bullshit. Maybe somewhere is going to get hit but not here. Be careful driving home through not-here! Delay your trip if you can. But right here is fine. Ignore the fuckin’ eggheads!”

Being the ornery cuss I am, I popped out a lawn chair and sat there in my driveway; almost daring the storm to come and get me. Everyone was watching radar and listening to warnings. I was looking at the sky. I watched big clouds drift on the southern horizon, doing nothing in a very impressive manner; just as I expected them too. It did this for a long time. I ate dinner and still nothing had happened.

Eventually, the radio and Mrs. Curmudgeon’s phone quit sending us warnings of imminent doom. Not a drop of rain had fallen. Nobody apologized for their spastic false positive. (Nobody ever does.)

It feels like everything I hear from every source is hyperventilating all the time. I theorize the goal is to have us spastic and panicked. It’s bad for us to hear that crap.

I’m checking off the ‘net for a while. If I get all inspired I might pop in. Or maybe I’ll just go radio silent. Figure about a week or so. Carry on y’all.