Adaptive Curmudgeon

The future is far off, but it looms. I bought my PC800 with a plan. The plan was delayed but not defeated. I inch forward. Vague plans become more solid. What is fleeting and ephemeral moves forward, seemingly molecule by molecule, but it moves nonetheless.

I have hope.

I was carrying a box. The box had things that go with hope. I will store them in the PC800’s voluminous bedonkadonk. They are for the plan. I have a map. Many good dreams start with maps. I have an attachment that goes on the battery to allow me to jump start with the battery pack, directly through a charging wire. Thus, I should be able to jump start without pulling off panels to access an inconvenient battery. (I haven’t installed it yet.)

Then I have the pièce de résistance! A freshly printed and bound shop manual! I paid $70 getting that bad boy printed. I even bought a water resistant envelope to carry it. I now have the entirety of Honda derived instructional materials. Back in the 1980’s this manual went to dealers along with Honda’s new, carefully designed yet soon to be market failure, Pacific Coast.

The PC800 is an odd duck and it’s old. It has a Rubik’s Cube of cladding that was meant to be a killer marketing win. It scared bike guys away in droves. From what I can tell it fits together in ingenious ways as only Honda engineers could manage and (with a modicum of care) it pops open for most reasonable service. However, it’s not an easy “look at it and deduce what to remove in what order” situation. I have seen at least one such bike where a ignorant monster used a hacksaw (A HACKSAW!) to access the battery. Good grief, anyone with the slightest common sense would fucking know that the bike must have some way to remove and replace the battery and a hacksaw ain’t it. But people are stupid.

What kind of heathen sees this location and decides the best access method is a fucking hacksaw?

(Ironically, test driving that abused mangled bike sold me on the model as a concept. It ran like a top despite being beaten by apes, cut with saws, stored in a snowdrift, and otherwise subject to indignities that are mechanical war crimes. If a bike could run well after that… it was a good design! I didn’t buy that mess but was more confident when I bought a much prettier one that had been owned by a person who knew to patiently pull panels in proper order to mess with the battery.)

Anyway, people are apes and even many mechanics aren’t overly clever. Dealers in my area (which are few, expensive, and largely incompetent) won’t touch a bike like mine. Would they fuck it up? Who knows? Do they think they might? Yes. Thus maintenance falls to me.

I’m pretty sure I can handle routine maintenance; oil changes and such. Plus I’ve got hope that the well built little spud won’t need much. But there’s a whole different wrinkle. I have plans that involve very remote roads. Also, I ride alone. Shit could go south in a flash. This is the “working without a net” world where you don’t have cell phone service to call the tow truck that doesn’t exist. You have to get out on your own initiative. I have to be prepared. Which is why I printed the entire damn manual.

This is a real world test of “The Professor Theory”. Remember Gilligan’s Island? It’s an old TV show from just as black and white morphed into color TV. It’s so old that “the Professor” was assumed to be intelligent. I laugh just thinking of it. In the modern world I associate “professor” with words like “indoctrinated” and “irrational” and “intolerant”. (Forget what woke university swine say about “tolerance” and “diversity”, there’s never been a more lockstep, intolerant, uniform, population of useless looters on earth than the “professors” of modern time.)

Back to Gilligan’s Island. In the show, the Professor built radios out of coconuts, concocted plans to get the hapless castaways off the island, and generally acted as a voice of reason.

Gilligan, I’m three standard deviations smarter than anyone on the island and possibly eleven deviations smarter than you and your platonic male partner combined. Now get away from my coffee maker.

Also, it’s common knowledge that the only correct answer to the question “Ginger or Mary Anne?” is Mary Anne.

Of the castaways, guess who the Professor hung around most.

Even as a kid, it seemed clear to me that the Professor could, at any time, figure out how to build a craft, and with a bit of pluck, sail his ass home. It’s not that he was a boatwright and a sailor but that he wasn’t a dumbass and given enough time and motivation he’d figure it out. Alas, he was surrounded by idiots. Everyone else on the island, especially the weapons grade nitwit Gilligan, fucked up the Professor’s plans. Like clockwork, at the conclusion of every 25 minute episode, the Professor’s earnest attempt was thwarted as Gilligan covered everything in goo, or set it on fire, or ate it for dinner. The people around him dragged the Professor’s ass back into the crab bucket.

What’s this have to do with a service manual? Everything!

I plan on riding alone to places nobody goes. If something goes wrong there wont be a tow truck for me. And I’m absolutely not a good mechanic. I’ll have my inexperienced and untrained self, a handful of tools, and all the time in the world. And the book of instructions! If shit goes wrong, will I get off the island? Will I manage to read the manual, figure out the situation, fix what needs fixing, and get home? I guess I’ll find out.

While the PC800 idled in Honda-esque perfection, I popped the bedonkadonk to store these treasures.

Oh no! Fucking mice had moved in! I had anti-mouse satchels in there and it did no good. The rodent demons built an insulation nest right on top of it. They ate my goddamn gloves!

Panicked that they damaged more than gloves, I cleaned the mess. Luckily, that was the extent of the damage, no chewed wires or whatnot. I stowed the manual and maps and a tire patch kit and other parts of the dream and breathed a sigh of relief.

More in part 4 where I discuss the literary crack that’s the air under today’s wings.

After two weeks of intermittent rain (and plumbing issues enough to make me daydream about finally building that outhouse I’ve been meaning to build) there was a break in the clouds. A short glorious reprieve. I took a shower, fearfully watching the drain lest my recently resolved plumbing situation return to it’s former status as “I thought I fixed it but I didn’t”, and then I faced one of the rolls of the dice that northern people know all too well.

I walked out to the garage, key in hard, to find out if my least trusted motorcycle would start after a long winter’s freeze. I’d “put her to bed” ever so gently. I’d left StaBil infused gas in the tank. The battery was hooked to the umbilical of a maintainer. My garage is not heated, but it’s better than the brutal outdoors. I practically read it a bedtime story!

Folks without skin in the game might be forgiven for missing the import of the “first start of spring”. Of course it’ll start, it’s a mechanical thing bound by mechanical rules. Ha! Crom laughs at your naive faith!

Trust is earned, not demanded. It comes from long association and demonstrated performance. When a thing has done as expected, functioned as needed, done as instructed, been reliable when reliability is needed, then and only then can you trust it. Beyond that, it’s all bullshit.

But enough about politics.

I was too chickenshit to tinker with the plastic clad cream puff that’s my newest addition to the garage. I bought a 35 year old Honda Pacific Coast 800 just shy of a year ago. I believe it has the chops, but I don’t know that in my bones. I waited until it was a little warmer, lest the unobtanium cladding suffer damage in my Neanderthal hands.

The motorcycle I trust most is my ‘99 Honda Shadow. We (it and I) have crossed deserts and mountains. We’ve done city commutes and lonesome prairie expanses. It has never let me down. I trust it. So, as spring oozed into existence (with far too many fits and starts) I began by firing up the trusty Shadow. It started well and ran flawlessly; as it has since I bought it.

The Shadow is tough as nails but Honey Badger (my Yamaha TW200) has impressed me too. In the short time I’ve owned it I’ve decided the beast is unkillable. We (it and I) have bounced off trees, sunk in ponds, and crashed into ruts. I’ve overloaded it, overworked it, and over estimated my riding ability on dirt. I’ve flogged it mercilessly and it just doesn’t give a shit. It seems to thrive on abuse. It runs less like a machine and more like an immortal plodding mule that fears nothing and can occasionally charge like a rhino. I’ve happily zoomed around places through which I can barely walk. Honey Badger never falters. If I can keep it upright, the single cylinder brick shithouse will fling me through, over, around, and/or directly into anything at which it’s pointed. If anything on that man / machine pair breaks it will be me… the stupidly tough little motorcycle will probably outlast me. It’ll just sit there slammed into a tree or lying at the bottom of a cliff with a moldering skeleton on the seat. Eventually someone will brush it off, hit the starter, and it’ll leave my remains in the ditch as it has it’s next adventure. Alas, it’s not yet the season for off road mayhem. The trails remain closed (I think) and even if they’re legal, they’re soft and I don’t like making unnecessary ruts.

The PC800 is the new kid on the block. There is a ladder of trust in my garage, and the PC800 starts on the bottom.

Then again it’s a Honda and a model that’s well known for reliability. With minimal drama it started. Well done, cream puff!

Part 3 will ensue with my “Professor theory”.

Life sneaks up on you.

I’ve been meaning to blog but shit keeps happening. Literally.

On the heels (or at least within a couple months) of my earlier saga of plumbing (about which I blogged) I’ve had a second and entirely unrelated saga of plumbing. I didn’t need a second bout of the topsy-turvy whirlwind of uncertainty! Nor was it simple to diagnose and fix. I’ve had successes and failures. There’s been the thrill of victory. There’s been the agony of defeat. There’s been the creeping dread of when a thing you thought fixed… wasn’t. Each setback an undeniable reminder that we overclocked monkeys are but a hair’s breadth from civilization’s breakdown (or at least the loss of indoor plumbing).

It always comes as a shock when such things go wrong. It’s a short trip to becoming a defeated over-civilized fool. Eventually, you’ve exceeded your skillset. You can do naught but watch a turd circle its porcelain cage. A foul thing that’s doomed, pre-ordained from its inception, to go down to the black mire which it belongs. Yet it’s clinging to your world. It inserts itself in a place it doesn’t belong. It’s doing its best to stay relevant. It yearns to be a part of your life. It’s infuriating! A stinking loathsome disaster that does nothing but derail your busy day and reduce your standard of living. How we suffer when shit refuses to go down the hole where shit belongs.

But enough about politics.

Forgive the cheap joke. It had to be done. I’ll ramble more in part 2.

[Update: A commenter asked about my camp knife. I attached photos at the bottom of the post.]

Mrs. Curmudgeon has declared that she no longer camps. She once did. She doesn’t now. End of story. If I want to sleep on the dirt like a Neandertal that’s my business.

I accept that. I love her and she doesn’t drag me to events I don’t like.

However, I wasn’t far from home. So she dropped by for a picnic! She found me sound asleep in my tent… snoozing the afternoon away. I jokingly called her visit a “wellness check for wandering husband”.

She brought our dog. Actually the dog is her dog. It’s only my dog when it’s time to walk in a snowstorm. The dog is a happy sweet creampuff that charms everyone. It’s the size of a freight train but so damn fluffy you can’t help but hug it. The dog absolutely loves picnics but worries me in that it has the forest skills of a kitten. It might get lost halfway to the outhouse and it would probably die of fright if it camped in a tent with me. When the wolves howl near our house the dog hides near Mrs. Curmudgeon. (Maybe it’s protective of Mrs. Curmudgeon? All I know is that I don’t mind nighttime walks when wolves are about but our giant guardian dog will have none of that.)

I like that Mrs. Curmudgeon has a wonderful dog. I had a dog that was the best dog ever. I appreciated every moment. It died and this was to be the replacement but the dog and my wife bonded within seconds. I like that. The dog knew it was her turn.

The dog also likes it when I start a fire. That means food will happen soon. Have you ever seen a happier dog?

I skewered bits of onion, pepper, tomato, and marinated beef and cooked it over pallet wood in my Redcamp Wood Burning Folding Camp Stove. (I’ve used that little stove for years and it’s quite battered now. Well worth it!)

(Note: Amazon requires I specifically mention that I get a kickback if you shop from any links I post. Which is true, so I heartily encourage you to follow a link and buy anything. I never link to stuff I don’t like but in case you were unaware of the biases of the modern world, now you know.)

Yes, we had a firepit, but the folding campstove is a much more controllable fire. It also heats up faster and uses less fuel.

For skewers I used bamboo. Disposable and cheap. Why not?

Dinner was delicious, the dog begged shamelessly and got a ton of treats from both of us, and a good time was had by all. Then a single mosquito showed up. Mrs. Curmudgeon packed her folding chair in her car and vamoosed. The visit was nice though.

I packed up the leftover food, poured myself a drink, and settled in for a long productive session of doing nothing while sitting by the fire. Such relaxation!

After sunset I used my little shortwave to fish the airwaves. I own and highly recommend my TecSun PL-880. You can find it here on Amazon. I mentioned the search for it back on my blog back in 2014. I don’t use it much but I enjoy it every time I use it. It’s a good little radio.

In the massive ecosystem that is shortwave, you never know what you’ll catch. I was hoping for blues. I wound up finding something with acoustic guitars in Spanish. (Sadly not flamenco.) I don’t know what it was but it was delightful.

The next day, like every day, began with coffee. Here’s a hint, prepare in advance for soot. Nothing burns as clean as butane or propane and lately I’ve used everything but that. I coat my percolator and frying pan bottoms with bar soap. The carbon from whatever you’re using for heat builds on the soap and not the metal. It’s much easier to wash off later.

Note: I use both white gas and unleaded in the Dual Fuel stove. Unleaded does make more soot but it’s available everywhere. Wood is of course the sootiest.

In case you’re wondering, a well cleaned maple syrup bottle is a good way to carry a half gallon of water.

Breakfast had been planned as bacon and eggs. Since I had leftovers from last night’s kebabs it became; “put everything in the skillet and then put an egg on it”. Here’s some of my “leftovers”:

Dump it in a big mess and you’ve got an outstanding meal!

All chuckboxes should have salt and pepper. Don’t overthink it. Anything will do. You don’t need to spend a fortune on a “spice wheel”. I use these:

All too soon I had to pack up. I still had a few pages left of my book. I read them while happily sitting in an empty campground, next to a packed truck. I enjoyed the book so much I wrote about it in earlier posts.

Was it a big adventure? Heck no. Not every campout has to summit Everest. All you need is a chance to unwind in nature.

Happy camping y’all!

Update: The camp knife I’m using is a Gerber. It’s a fairly stout knife. I meant to use it for hunting but it turns out to be just right for cutting up veggies & cooking.

I meant to write about camping. I wrote about everything else. Meh.

Then, my in-box reported a few donations. I’m an easily motivated fool and wrote this post. After camping I’d wasted the opportunity to post a few happy photos and by golly I’d better whip out the keyboard and fix that!

Digression: Not like I’m a continuous ray of sunshine, but I put some thought into the ethics of posts which peer into the abyss during a time when everyone is jittery and half the populace is pissing itself. I try to limit consideration of things that cannot be solved. If it’s a done deal it’ll happen. Maybe at first it didn’t have to happen but when the choice is made, the Rubicon crossed, and the bridges burned, it’s best to stop looking in the rear view mirror. Better to write about butterflies.

Have y’all noticed I stopped bitching about the Federal Debt? It hit $10,000,000,000,000 sometime during Obamathon. I was like “huh, I guess it’s a done deal now”. Trumpski didn’t “fix it” because it was mathematically impossible to do so and probably he’s on board with debt anyway. (Only Rand Paul seems to care.) The Bidenverse has been spending like a monkey on crack. Now folks are shocked at the inevitable inflation that was inevitably inevitable. (Insert joke about Paul Krugman here.) I could post about it. But to what end?

In an amusing anecdote I had a $100 trillion Zimbabwe note… but I spent it.

Certain kinds of doom are neither our monkey nor our circus. So I try (and often fail) to focus on the light. Satirical squirrels and motorcycle dreams lead the way. And camping is the best light of them all!

Anyway, it was the donations that reminded me. I’d beaten the dead tree / ebook thing into the ground and was about to “peace out” when I realized “hey, lighten up dude”. It improved my attitude. BTW: I haven’t yet sent a thank you note but you know who you are and thank you very much!

If only to apologize for a camping thread that was all about literature and media delivery technology lets talk about my chuckbox.

A chuckbox is what campers use as a sort of “camp kitchen”. This is mostly car campers or possibly horse people. They’re too big for backpacking or whatnot. Most “chuckboxes” are filled with plates and pots and shit. Maybe a few spices or whatnot. I have all that but much more. I cram mine with all the normal stuff but also a stove, fuel, and enough food for a good long time. My idea was that (aside from water) I could grab the chuckbox and know for 100% sure I’d have enough for a few days. This is because I hate planning menus and shopping for grub. A “bug out chuckbox” suits me. I can say “fuck it” and blow town, knowing I’ll find something edible in there.

Lest you think it’s overkill (which it would be generally) most State / National Park campers are used to a grocery store or a McDonalds or something within a reasonable drive. I often (usually?) camp 50-100+ miles from the nearest open store; especially if it’s winter. That’s another good reason to cram a spare can of beans and a Mountain House in my chuckbox.

I use a Milwaukee Packout as my chuckbox. I love it! It’s tough as hell and stacks with other Packouts like Legos. It even looks cool. It’s probably not bear proof but they’d have to work hard to break it. I know it’s squirrel and bluejay proof. It’s waterproof and I wouldn’t hesitate to leave it out in the rain or snow.

If I ever join a cult, it’ll be based on Packouts.

As to details, the chuckbox is a Milwaukee Packout 22 inch Modular XL Tool Box. (I’d offer an Amazon link but for some reason Amazon sketchy about that one piece of Packout kit). It’s identical in size as the Packout Rolling Tool Box which I use for “tent stuff”.

(Note: Amazon requires I specifically mention that I get a kickback if you shop from any links I post. Which is true, so I heartily encourage you to follow a link and buy anything. If you buy something huge I’ll probably spend my little kickback on more camping stuff.)

Yes, the two components lock together tighter than two frogs fucking. I’m glad you asked.

I also use the Milwaukee 932471132 Packout Jobsite Cooler. It’s half the width of the chuckbox and locks down tight. It’s not the ultimate cooler but it’s a decent one. It’s a reasonable size for one guy. I can, if I wish, carry the cooler on my dirtbike too.

When I’m bringing my dirtbike for trail riding I bring a Milwaukee 15 in. PACKOUT Tool Bag. I put that on the other half of the chuckbox. It too locks down tight. I don’t use it for tools. I fill it with dirt bike things, a sweatshirt, maps, water bottles, gloves, etc… I ride solo and remote so I carry extra “survival” stuff on my bike. I’ve modified my dirtbike to accept half size Packouts. I can move the tool bag from the camping stack to the back of the bike in two seconds flat.

So if you imagine it, some bearded weirdo with a giant ridiculous Dodge shows up at camp. All these Packouts are bouncing around in the truck bed. He pulls out the wheeled thing and stacks the rest and they all lock together into a well planned out system. It’s heavy enough to kill a backpacker but perfect for a Dodge and he can effortlessly wheel it any reasonable “car camping” distance. You might think that guy has got his shit together.

The wheeled thing was originally the chuckbox, but the one without wheels has more internal room for stuff. And boy have I got a shitload of stuff in my chuckbox!

First thing’s first. Most people’s chuckbox doesn’t include the camp stove but mine does. See that plastic Folger’s can to the left? That’s an empty can that perfectly fits my Coleman Dual Fuel Stove. It’s such a perfect fit I swear the Folger’s people planned it. (It goes without saying that Folgers coffee sucks.)

Not only do I carry the stove in the chuckbox but I carry fuel. I bought a 20 ounce MSR liquid fuel bottle. It’s exactly the right size to fit upright but underneath the upper layer of trays! (Note: Someone is probably aiming to write about fuel stored inside a bottle, inside a tool box, which itself is tossed roughly in a truck bed. I don’t wanna’ hear it. My solution fits me and it’s not a rag stuffed into a wine bottle filled with gas. Nor am I interested in OSHA’s regulatory minutiae.)

Another note: when you’re fitting things together and getting them to work as a system, it’s worth it to pony up for the good stuff. Amazon is desperately trying to route me away from Packout boxes, Coleman liquid fueled stoves, and MSR brand bottles. Amazon is wrong! Get what works for you, not what Amazon decrees.

Some Packouts come with one tray that sits above the deep well where you keep your shit. There’s room for two. I scrounged up a second tray. It’s a slick arrangement. Little stuff like forks and soap and matches and skewers live in the trays and don’t get lost among the pots and pans below.

I probably have enough food to 5 days (or longer if desperate) in my chuckbox, but I cooked mostly fresh food. I’ll mention that in my next post. Stay tuned.

On my last campout I read The Road To Missanabie on dead tree. It’s not even remotely deep but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Just pure enjoyment. Highly recommended for the six guys out there that want charming stories about riding old motorcycles on the backroads of Ontario.

This was a dead tree book win! Nothing is quite so fine as sitting at a campsite flipping through a paperback. Such a simple pleasure; cheerful campfire burbling away, bourbon seeping though my bones, foolish luxury of a bright Coleman lantern burning away over my shoulder to illuminate the pages. Yes, I drink alone and read in the dark. What about it?

Anyway the book was such a good fit I took a photo.

The author doesn’t do anything earth shattering. He just fires up old motorcycles of the supposedly less reliable sort (he talks at length about the pros and cons of his antique Moto Guzzi bikes) and then he rides all over Canada (often to remote locations… which are my favorite places!).

Of course, I’ve got a bit of wanderlust myself. Y’all might remember I bought an “antique” motorcycle of my own last year? I bought it specifically to road trip from nowhere to nowhere. Just like Nick Adams. Apparently, I wanna’ be like him when I grow up!

Just like Nick Adams likes his goofy Moto Guzzi motorcycles, for a “touring bike” I rejected the obvious mile hauler Honda Goldwings and purchased Honda’s oft mocked market failure from the 1980’s: the Honda Pacific Coast 800. It is supposedly mechanically excellent and incredibly reliable and I know for experience it can carry a lot of luggage. On the other hand it’s repelling to most motorcyclists based on its visual aspects alone.

I absolutely love my PC800. I know it’s weird and (in some eyes) butt ugly but who cares? I like “ugly ducklings”. I also like how it “does what I want it to do without getting in my way”. (Hard to explain but a true thing.)

I’ve only ridden my PC800 (purchased used of course) a few thousand miles so far. It hasn’t been started in 2024 yet. I never got to take that big ride I dreamed of. But is a new year isn’t it?!?

My funky PC800 practically causes organ failure among chromed out Harley guys who care deeply about looking cool. (Non-rider females have called my bike “cute”… which I take as a compliment. “Cute” comments would cause Harley guys to freak out. Go ahead and tell some dude his chromed out cruiser with Screaming Eagle pipes and the optional skull motif paintjob is “cute”. See what he does!)

The PC800 looks so un-cool as to make the word cool belong in a different dimension of time and space. I humbly think I do that too. I bought one and had high hopes to ride it many miles.

Then things went south. I had a hard 2023. These things happen.

Anyway, Nick Adams turned his questionable taste in motorcycles toward my chosen ugly duckling and decided to get one of his own! Here’s a video of Nick Adams buying a $750 Honda Pacific Coast 800 and roaming around Canada.

Could there be a video more perfectly tuned to motivate my ass? Bike, location, attitude… everything is perfect! Adams hit me dead center with a shot of optimism I desperately needed. I can do naught but follow.

As they say, the first sample of crack is free. After that, you gotta’ do the thing!

After reading his book and watching the video… I looked at the still melting snow and sighed.

Then I got “pro-active”. I bought a high quality paper map of Canada.

It cost $14 and it’s very nice; fiberglass “paper” that’s hard to tear, really excellent resolution, etc… It’s worth $14. (Especially for a man who’s been inspired to ride to the vicinity of Nowheresville Canada!) I intend to navigate by paper map… as God intended!

You have to be careful buying it. Amazon will do everything in it’s power to route you to purchase damn near any other map. I hate how Amazon just can’t shut up and serve the thing I request but it is what it is.

I was very particular about the section of Canada I wanted and Amazon is baffled. I suppose it should be. There are parts of Canada where even Canadians hardly go. This is the place I’m headed. Here’s the map:

I also bought a cheaper more generic “gas station map“. It cost about half of what the National Geographic map costs and it’s less than half the quality. Two is one and one is none.

I don’t know if I learned anything about dead tree books versus e-books but I did get a happy and appreciated kick in the pants. Nick Adam’s low key happy little adventures spurred me to get back to living. Neil Peart’s very well written and deeply thought consideration of grief was just too hard on me at the time.

Two Canadians. Two books. Two motorcycle road trips. One I couldn’t bear. One lifted me up almost by accident. Adam’s whimsical Moto Guzzis did what Pert’s superior BMW couldn’t. I’m glad for both authors, they both did their best. Now it’s up to me and my shiny new maps (and the weather). Wish me luck.

I was planning to write about camping but that’s not how I roll. During camping I’ve been experimenting with dead tree paperbacks versus e-book kindle books. I decided to veer into that patch of weeds.

My reasoning is that there’s a deeper and slower connection with the mind if you’re reading print from dead tree than fonts on ephemeral LCD screens.

I’m not a one man scientific experiment and it’s really hard to assess one’s reaction to books. They’re each subjectively different and subjective. So my sincere desire to suss out the dead tree / e-book divide is probably doomed. Anyway, I picked out an assortment of books and read them (some while camping).

Here’s my “sample”:

For an e-book “control sample” I recently read Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk on Kindle. What a disaster! (Warning: DON’T BUY ADJUSTMENT DAY!) Adjustment Day may be the worst book I’ve ever read. I had high hopes but Palahniuk just can’t write well. Also, based on his disjointed, perverted, half assed book… dude’s got issues. I mean serious issues. Like therapy and medication and maybe just keep him away from society for a while. His pointless story was a disgusting slog thorough a depraved yet remarkably uncreative mind. I wanted to sterilize my iPad after letting that dude’s gross book into its memory.

Another e-book misfire was Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart. It was meant to be a “control” in the dead tree / e-book challenge. Sadly, it didn’t work out and I’m only halfway through. It’s an ok book but it’s about a man dealing with grief. I have my own such journey. It’s too heavy right now. This in no way reflects on Peart’s literature! I’m sure I’d love it in some other sunny world, but after certain events last year, I can’t go there.

After Palahniuk and Peart, I expanded the “experiment” to “fluff”. Meaning books that were never intended to be learned tomes of deep wisdom. I think they were once called “beach books”? Sometimes you gotta’ peer into the dark but you don’t need to make a mission out of it.

On my last campout I read The Road To Missanabie on dead tree. It’s part of my “fluff book” list. It cost $4 on Kindle and $15 on dead tree. It’s a steep price increase for the physical object! I ponied up the extra $11 as part of my experiment in dead tree versus e-book.

I recently read old sci-fi (The Space Merchants by Kornbluth, 1953) not just on dead tree but used. (Beware! Amazon’s unholy algorithm will try to reroute you away from the Kornbluth story to something else.)

On e-book, I’m nearly done reading Union Station Omnibus: Books 1 – 5 (EarthCent Ambassador Beginnings). I wanted to pivot away from depth and I sure did! It’s what I think of as “super extra fluffy chick-lit” but it’s not all bad. I sorta’ like it in a “meh” way. In 2024 anything not actively beating me to death with woke (or depravity like Adjustment Day) is welcome. It’s smoothly written, shallow, fun-ish, and pleasantly forgettable. As analogy, I usually drink whiskey, but maybe an occasional sip of lite beer won’t kill me.

On deck for dead tree “fluff” I’ve ordered The Mark Of Zorro: The Curse Of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley. (Supposedly this is the real Zorro and not some dipshit re-make. Time will tell.) I haven’t received it yet but I have high hopes! A 1919 book about a Spanish horse riding, aristocratic, swashbuckling, Batman in 1800’s California sounds perfect! It should while away the hours.

What have I learned? Nothing.

I can’t really say I’ve compared equivalent e-books and dead tree books. One e-book I chose would suck even if it were engraved on gold plates and the other was just too close to a personal loss.

The only true measurable fact is that the dash of my truck now has a couple paperbacks clogging the defroster vents.

What can I say? I have a theory but it’s not an exact testable science.

Maybe in my next post I’ll remember I was writing about camping.

Oh my! You thought I was writing about a camping trip? Me too! We should hang out.

The thing is, I go camping to think. When I think I don’t necessarily think about camping. This trip I was thinking about dead tree books versus electronic media.

You know what this means? It means brace yourself because I’m about to go on a tangent.

Since I’m already going off the rails, within the tangent I’ll hit a sub- tangent! That’s combined primary and secondary tangentialism! (Which is totally a word because I said so.)

You’ve been warned…

I have a theory. E-books and dead tree books are subtly but deeply different. The words, of course are identical. The difference is in how your mind registers what it’s reading.

Many years ago I reluctantly purchased a Kindle. I was impressed and quickly embraced e-books. I wasn’t just saving money (which I did), I was reducing the annual tonnage of bric-a-brac cluttering my household. Every year our house accumulated dozens (perhaps hundreds) of books. It’s always been that way. I hate throwing them out (or selling them for a pittance) and everyone loves big stuffed bookshelves. But at some point it gets out of control. Stacks of books grow from pleasant libraries to warehouse type issues.

The arrival of e-book readers was timed just exactly with the complete and utter collapse of bookstores. It’s not merely a cause, bookstores had it coming! They became useless, got worse, devolved into insufferable, and now most of them are broke.

Book shopping used to be a magical moment. I miss them! I remember walking into into a store and looking at that vast library of knowledge and thinking “this is all for me!” The titles seemed endless and I’d happily peruse for hours. Every few weeks I’d pick one or two titles out of the immensity of options. Those shopping trips were like Christmas to me.

Alas bookstores should be places where introvert readers sell books to other introvert readers… ideally with a cat hanging around somewhere. They became soulless corporate shitholes. Bored, barely literate, temporary flunkies who hadn’t read a book since high school stocked shelves with whatever crap corporate HQ was trying to sledgehammer into the skulls of formerly inquisitive readers. Interested in a discussion of Adam Smith? Fuck you! You’re going to read Hunger Games! Read Hunger Games and really hankering for some 1950’s sci-fi? Fuck you! It’s time for Game of Thrones. You’re going to eat shit and like it! Bookstores became brokers of woke shit and half-literature. Walls of duplicate books about sparkly vampires and bland committee written non-fiction “instructionals”. Everything a mile wide and an inch deep. “Chicken Soup for those Desperately Needing Affirmation” shelved next to “Programming in C++ for the Idiot”. The periodicals declined and information drained out. “Motorcycle Chrome HD Aficionado Photo Magazine” replaced “Chilton’s Guide to Keeping Your Shitty Car Running”. I have a homestead and hissed in response to “Generic Gardening Magazine; sponsored by $50,ooo Kubota mini-tractors”. It’s one thing to grow a tomato, it’s another to use a machine with a six year payment plan to do it.

It was as if a door closed. I didn’t cause it, but I saw it happen.

Without bookstores and indeed lacking in good books, e-books (particularly of whatever old classic thing I haven’t yet read) became a practical refuge.

I don’t have regret but I notice a problem. I didn’t notice it with e-paper but I notice it with the Kindle app on an iPad. (I “wore out” an e-paper Kindle, and then I wore out a standard Kindle Fire, and now I read on a iPad.)

Warning: I’m about to digress within a digression! Yep, prepare as I grenade a reasonable thought process with practicality unrelated to books:

A note about the iPad (which I use as an e-reader). It’s particularly handy when camping/adventuring because I use the Avenza navigation app. To me, navigating with the iPad is superior to a phone not despite but because it’s mildly inconvenient. Avenza is damn good navigation software for certain purposes and I can display it on any number of gadgets. Most people use Avenza on their phone. I don’t.

Here’s why. Having a phone forever in your hand (or clipped to your vehicle’s dash or clamped on ATV handlebars) changes you! It changes your thinking. It changes how you interact with your environment. Spend too much time dicking around with your navigation display and you might as well be a drooling teenager swiping Tik-Tok feeds. You go outside to be fully immersed in the moment. You must turn the screen off and look at the real world. Ever present navigation displays create a dependency of mind. Stare at that screen enough and you’ll forget that the map is not the terrain. You’ll never learn to evaluate a situation and determine which direction to go based solely on what you have physically encountered. One cannot fully navigate reality when engulfed by watching a dot on a database.

Before you reject me as a ranting Curmudgeon, give it some thought. I said any person will miss something (a lot) if you let navigation software lead you around like a dog on a leash. It’s not the gadget it’s the lack of self-reliance.

A person who travels in a group and always lets “the leader” pick the trail is just as unaware as the dipshit with his nose glued to a phone. It’s easy to tromp down the trail behind someone else and lack the slightest fucking idea where you really are. Slavishly follow anything, electronic or not, and you’re just sheep following a shepherd. That goes for an electronic gadget, a paid wilderness guide, or a hiking companion. If you’re not paying attention you’re not really present.

So, my phone (which could run Avenza) goes off and gets stuffed in the bottom of my pack. My SpotX is often off, but usually clipped to me. It has navigation abilities but they’re primitive. It’s pretty much for emergencies only. The larger clunkier iPad, with it’s large screen and superior map view must be fished out of the pack for consultation when necessary but not every step of the way.

In practice that means I navigate on common sense and dead reckoning 99% of the time. I occasionally check Avenza when I get to a “fork in the road” or want to plan the next few hour’s travel. I’ll fish it out, check it, decide my next move, and then turn the thing off and cram it back amid water bottles and spare socks.

Also, I do not allow cell service on my iPad. Avenza can use the iPad’s GPS to locate itself pretty much anywhere on earth but I have to load Avenza maps for the appropriate area before I leave civilization.

This is good! You should always check some sort of map before you go wandering about. Grabbing a handy Avenza file in advance enforces good thinking.

This isn’t a hard challenge and you don’t have to be a dick about it. I’ve often been near the edge of a map and so decided to download the adjacent map while chowing down on a burger at some random bar. All I need is Wi-Fi, not the Library of Congress. By the way, because I don’t have a data plan, I cannot check the weather on the iPad while I’m at camp. Which is OK with me.

What I’m saying is that it’s better to move through nature thinking about what you’re seeing. Following a blinking dot on some remote database is handy but it’ll erode autonomy and common sense.

It doesn’t mean my opinion is popular, most folks follow that dot like a cat with a laser pointer. Having an unpopular opinion doesn’t make it wrong.

Wow! That just came out. It was a rant that wouldn’t stay untyped.

Back to the matter of electronic displays versus “dead tree” books, I believe our brains have been “trained” by various displays. Yes, yours too. Whatever part of your brain “activates” with a screen is subtly different than whatever activates with a plain old “dead tree” book.

We all use screens (whether it’s a phone, tablet, or laptop), often for hours a day. Every screen is always displaying ephemeral crap. I theorize the brain learns that stuff in front of it on a screen is “fleeting” and therefore of lesser importance. Maybe the screen is a spreadsheet at work, maybe it’s some dickhead on social media, maybe it’s the weather report, maybe it’s some airhead spewing “news” about whatever we’re ordered to believe today. The ultimate similarity of all those things is that the stuff you’re seeing will be gone (usually forever!) in hours or even minutes.

I don’t know how it works for folks young enough that they never read “dead tree” books. I shudder to think about the mind of folks that simply don’t read at all. But I’m old enough to associate a bound stack of printed sheets of paper with something that persists and therefore matters on a much longer time scale.

On campouts, I’ve been experimenting with reading dead tree books versus e-books. In my next post I’ll list a half dozen books I’ve read and whether I’ve quantified the dead-tree / e-book divide.

All through the winter I’ve been thinking about camping. All through a very painful 2023 I missed it. I’m very worried I NOT miss it in 2024. That said, every single week there’s a reason why this particular weekend you shouldn’t be camping. All of civilization wants your ass indoors and looking at a screen. It is the gentler call of your soul that wants you sitting by a fire, thinking of the universe. Thank Goodness Mrs. Curmudgeon kicked my ass into gear.

More to the point, this was an unplanned (or barely planned) short notice thing… and I was physically exhausted (which happens a bit too often lately). I decided this would be an excellent time to see if some of my “camp on autopilot” ideas would work out.

My first “camp on autopilot” notion is to pack heavy. I’m driving there in a truck, why go ultralight? The second notion is to be already packed. For basic State Park car camping I have a big Milwaukee Packout on wheels. That’s my “manage a hot tent” gear. I have a second Milwaukee Packout and that’s my “chuckbox”. It has all the stuff I need to cook in any one of several modes (over the fire, using the stove and fuel in the box, etc..). It also has enough food for a good long time. I added to that a Milwaukee Packout cooler (which I use on dirt bike rides too). I threw a six pack of beer, half a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon into the cooler and assumed there was plenty in my chuckbox to make it work.

Honestly, I’d forgotten what I’d packed. I could only assume I’d chosen wisely.

Two months ago, the last time I camped out (story links: 1, 2, 3, 4), it had been cold. I’d used my “winter gear”. It was still cold out but less so. I decided to stick with my “winter gear” setup:  Russian Bear Market UP 2, Caminus M Stove, Teton XXL Cot, Teton XXL Mattress. That stuff works together as a set and it’s all overkill. I could probably ride out a blizzard on an ice floe with that combination.

Nighttime heat:

This time I chose to try not using my woodstove. I brought it with me (just in case), but I didn’t set it up.

This State Park charges for AC power whether you want it or not. Last time I tried “a little “heat your feet under your office desk” heater and it didn’t heat the tent enough to keep me warm. I have since purchased a cheap 1500 watt heater that’s suitably small. I’d never used it. It was crammed in my Milwaukee box along with an extension cord.

It worked perfectly! It was slightly above freezing at night and the little heater kept my tent in the 70’s. (I don’t have a thermometer but it was toasty.)

On the high setting it was TOO hot. I put it at the mid setting and snoozed toasty all night.

Thus, I recommend the stupidly named Portable Space Heater, Electric Small Heater with Thermostat Overheat Tip-Over Protection, 750W/1500W PTC Ceramic Room Heater for Bedroom, Garage, Office, Desk, Workshop Indoor Use. It’s $39 but works like a charm. If the park people force you to buy AC why not use it?

Note: this isn’t a rugged waterproof made for camping gadget… use common sense. Don’t put it in a mud puddle or on top of dry tinder. Please be a damn adult about it! If you burn your tent down with yourself in it… that’s all on you. I’m just saying what works for me. (Also, I get a kickback from Amazon if you buy stuff, so go nuts!)

Firewood:

My last campout I had a lot of drama obtaining enough firewood. This time I reverted to my “magic pallet solution”. I gathered a handful of free pallets from a business that’s happy to be rid of them.

It took about 10 minutes to load that much crap in my truck. Then at home I cut out all the nails and stuff. There are LOTS of nails in a pallet so use care to get all that shit out of there. Expect about 30% of the pallet’s volume to be “waste”. Dispose of properly, that junk is a flat tire waiting to happen.

The remainder is kiln dried and perfectly useable. It took a little under 40 minutes to cut up a trash can full of completely nail free wood. It wasn’t very cold out so I’d cut more than I expected to need.

Trying to learn fuel consumption is a thing I do: A full trash can will supply probably 3-ish days (two nights) camping, depending on how much wood you burn. If you burn wood just for atmosphere and also for cooking and to heat your tent it goes away fast. If it’s just to sit by in the evening while drinking beer it’ll last a lot longer.

I’m happy to say pallet wood worked well. So far I was batting 1000%!

I did an entirely reasonable thing but followed through with (at least on my blog) nothing. Twelve days ago (holy crap has it been that long?) I rolled out for the eclipse.

I left the blog with a bunch of links to the 2017 eclipse and just… vamoosed. It’s good for the soul to bail out; maybe not always but perhaps periodically! Skip town! Hit the road Jack! It’s a thing I have to do once in a while simply to be me. While there are advantages to staying put, I still relish the simplicity of reducing your immediate life to the road and a vehicle.

It was a long trip. This eclipse’s path was far more inconvenient than the 2017 path.

But who am I to complain? The moon does what the moon does. Us monkeys beneath can observe or not. Which, it seems lots of people did: not observe I mean. I was there. All predictions of heavy traffic and unmanageable crowds were bullshit… as anyone who’s paid attention in the last few decades already knew. Here’s a video of the news leading up to a four minute dimming of the sun:

Don’t let it get to you! There is nothing the news can report without freaking out. Absolutely nothing! Trump tweets covfefe, two nations that have been at war since humans wrote on papyrus are pissed off at each other, it snows in the winter, it rains in the summer, it doesn’t rain in the summer, there’s a tornado in a trailer park, an old polar bear gets sick, a dude in a dress wants to take a shit in Target, Chick-Fil-A closes on Sunday, the DOW goes down, the DOW goes up… every fucking thing under the sun (including people looking at the sun) is discussed by hyperventilating dipsticks like it’s the end times. Is it not 24 years after we all died in Y2K? Why would anyone listen to any media about anything ever?

The fact that people (possibly spooked by the press) were reluctant to go is completely OK with me. As for myself I was all in. In 2017 I decided “I’ll see every total eclipse for which I have a shot”. I meant it and I did it.

The eclipse was just as awe inspiring as before. Also, it felt good to “do a thing”. There’s a goodness in pursuing an event totally beyond the realm of mankind. Nor was it without uncertainty. I spent umpteen zillion hours at the wheel wondering if I was heading for a cloudy disappointment. But I did it anyway.

Doubt is normal. Uncertainty and risk are part of God’s plan. But just plain wimping out is when you begin to die inside.

Suppose you drive there and it’s cloudy. So what? You tried. You were there; at the time, at the place. Through no fault of your own it didn’t happen. That’s just life. Life has disappointments. Clouds are not a flaw in yourself. To do naught, lest you fail, is the thing that’ll kill your heart. “I won’t ask that pretty girl to dance because she might turn me down.” “I won’t get a dog because it’s sad when they die.” “I won’t go look at the sky because it might be cloudy.” Our current society that can barely keep it’s pants on and therefore following their depressed sad-sack bullshit is just a way to become another NPC. I am not of that. You shouldn’t be either. They hate beauty, they hate joy, they hate love… in the end, they hate life itself. If you drive a thousand miles to look at a cloud, have a hearty laugh and continue being awesome! Never let them wear you down.

I did the thing. I didn’t watch it on TV or listen to talking heads freak out about traffic, I just went there. It was glorious and I came home fulfilled if somewhat exhausted from the long drive.

What better thing would I have done in those days? Surf the internet? Listen to America’s ongoing and slightly tamer version of Stalin’s show trials? Fret over war in the Mideast, a place that’s been at war or near war most of my life? Watch my driveway ice melt?

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. There’s no brighter candle that roaming great swaths of our huge nation just to get a peek under the Universe’s dress!

At the “zone of totality”… a bad ass phrase only eclipse viewers can use non-ironically, the sky was gloriously clear. The view was perfect. I saw, once again, something that can be experienced no other way. Here’s a hint, if you see an eclipse on TV you have not seen an eclipse, you’ve seen a 2 dimensional representation of it. The same could be said of sex or battle, watching is not being.

I’m covered for the next 20 years. Unless I get so rich off my squirrel book (which isn’t finished… damn it!) that I buy a Learjet, I’m not likely to see another eclipse for a very long time. Statically I might never see one. But I have seen two. Is that not a blessing?

So you’d think I’d get home, rest up, and then write my usual giant serialized wall of text about the thing. That was my plan. I just… didn’t. Maybe I will later, for now you were there or you weren’t.

However, something interesting happened right after I returned. I was at work and absolutely road weary when I got a text from Mrs. Curmudgeon. “So, you’re going camping this weekend?”

That was the furthest thing from my mind.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is a wise woman. I reflected on all those hours we’d sat in a car, blasting across time zones to and from the eclipse and I’d been chatting about camping non-stop. I pretty much couldn’t shut up about it. Clearly my subconscious knows I need “outdoor time” even if the rest of me is dumb as a post. I texted back. “Good idea!”

It was no longer the furthest thing from my mind.

Now, don’t get too excited. I didn’t do much. I was beat and on a short schedule. But I did make an awesome camp breakfast. So, in the next post, I’ll ignore the massive once in a lifetime (or in my case twice) celestial event and talk about my tame little overnight at a State Park.