It is Easter. I was raised Presbyterian/Methodist by my mother. My Dad is atheist. At age 12 I decided to be Atheist too. My brain is too smart to be fooled by such nonsense. Unlike sex, there's no payoff for self-delusion. Someday I will die and turn into wormfood, just like everyone else. That's my position on religion.
It rained last night. I'm glad Dad and I finished off splitting the oak and stacked it up for pickup. It was good exercise and now that eyesore is out of the yard and neatly waiting for the folks we donated it to for their wood stove. Not all the wood was any good. There were termites in half the logs, audibly singing Kumbayah and holding hands, all that was keeping that papery mush together. That a tree was still standing with that? Wow.
Yesterday I bought Aloha shirts online, cheap. They'll be here this week, probably Tuesday. Considering how warm its been I'm sure I'll like that. Having lost my health insurance when my wife lost her job, along with everyone else in her career thanks to some Kenyan Hawaiian fumbling the budget pompously and OwnGoaled himself in the process, I will be paying for insulin and diabetes supplies out of pocket. It will be about as much as a real car payment. Sigh.
At least I'm getting a newer PC from a tech friend who is leaving PRK after a year of disappointments here. I plan to use it to play Diablo 3, and Torchlight 2, hopefully without the buggy slowdowns. Its a nice machine with lots of essays written about how he built and modified it. He doesn't want to lug it back. I don't blame him.
Hopefully my friend can use his IT skills where he's going. Apparently, PRK is fully saturated with mostly qualified IT. Considering the IT guy at work is really well skilled, I suspect that's actually true. I was a dabbler in comparison, but I've been out of IT for 6 years. That's a LOT of missed bulletins and updates. I think the price is fair and it will pay for a lot of gas money for his move across the country. He must feel so frustrated.
I really thought we'd see recovery here first, but PRK just keeps failing more and more. It's the Socialism, I think. It's this huge millstone around our necks. The weight of all those useless eaters dragging us down to the bottom of the pond, drowning in debt and their demands for "free this" and "free that". Who do they think pays for that? Some Kenyan Hawaiian who OwnGoaled his Legacy? Yeah, probably.
Aloha shirts. They make a certain statement. Mostly they're loud and cheerful and remind me of Xander Harris. The slightly more normal of the Scoobies on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, viking in the sack, demon chick-magnet, though to be fair Anya was human at the time, Faith was really aggressive about that sort of thing (like a real woman some of the time), and the mummy girl was cursed and died rather than hurt him.
So Xander was one of the real heroes of the show and was good for hanging lanterns on plot holes. The director sort of recreated him in Firefly with the pilot (Wash) who ALSO wore bright Aloha shirts. We'll call it "This Land."
I'll try not to get harpooned when I'm being a Leaf on the Wind, okay?
Not to be confused with Vash, the Stampede.
Vash is a funny alien-guy thing. And he has 3 guns, knows a version of Drunken Boxing, and is good at stealing bullets out of guns. I am not, however, fond of dusters or trenchcoats. I really did enjoy his character though, and recently got to see the Trigun movie.
I had Easter waffles this morning so I may be more random than usual. Sorry if that's a bother. I keep dreaming about packing boxes, since that's my job now. I'd much rather dream about hot women. I am definitely needing to start dating. On the upside the hot girl at work wants to bicycle as well as hike so maybe that will go somewhere positive? At least my bicycle is in good shape and ready to go. I really feel like I should do just a bit more critical maintenance on it. That and buy some yellow reflective tape so it's more visible. Solved: LED pedals and new lights coming by mail. Be here in a few days. These will make me way more visible. Even the blind drunks up here will see me, now. I'll put some tape on the frame too.
Worst case, I suppose I could put that silly 80cc engine on it, but that's risking arrest since they MIGHT violate the law. Closer inspection is they have to be under 15 mph and 2 HP, which they might be. Its also way too loud for this place. I saw a listing for an electric bike at Walmart, but its famously bad batteries and low power don't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. The exercise is best. Its only a couple miles. With a good blood sugar and a snack, I should be fine. I just have to be safe riding it. It will be funny as hell delivering the last UPS boxes of the day by bicycle, in an Aloha shirt, and shorts. You have to take your comedy where you find it, right?
Happy Easter, if you care. Enjoy your Sunday if you don't.
I work next to the main arterial road between downtown and the east part of town between Grass Valley and Nevada City. I'm a block from the Post Office downtown, but thanks to geography, Main Street narrows to barely two lanes. So, everyone going back and forth to the Nevada City or Burger Basin (nickname, obviously) goes past me when I'm at work. I've got a big window to stand in front of, and the traffic noise is dominating at times. The upside to this is I see the bikes going by. Sometimes this is race bicycles, more often mountain bikes ridden by hobos. There's a local school run charity that fixes up bikes for the "homeless" so they can get around.
Its been warm this week. Even with the very brief rain, it mostly just made the pollen stick to my car paint. I'm hoping that the rain today will wash it off again. I got sweaty, working this week. It was that warm. Trees are starting to leaf out. I realized my polo shirts, while being very nice looking, are actually a little bit too warm. So I ordered a couple Aloha (Hawaiian) shirts and a pair of shorts. Should help lighten the mood. I feel kinda grim when I am working so very hard to catch up. I wish they'd warn me there's a sale coming. Might be a good idea to come in early to catch up on the orders. The good news is sales at work is way up. Bad news is we're still playing catch up far too much of the time. Inventory on Monday. That will likely be a long and hard day, but we'll finally know what we've got.
At least I've got Pandora music channels to relax myself to. Lots of Portishead, Nouvelle Vague, and now Hot Buttered Rum.
I've also got windows to glance out when I hear interesting traffic noises. There's a young man who cruises by on a restored vintage green 110cc 2-stroke. A nice looking bike, no obvious blue smoke so the engine was done properly and it has rings. Not exactly sure what make and model. I didn't see the expansion chamber but it sounds like a 2-stroke. Anyway, its restored and he goes by every day, back and forth to school.
There's also a couple of different old geezers with those 80cc engines mounted on their bicycle, which is barely legal way to get up the hill. Since I've seen him going ALL the way to Nevada City, which is about 800 foot climb from Grass Valley, I have to admit I'm rather impressed. And he's been using this since I moved up here last Fall.
I happen to know these are illegal unless registered and plated, but I guess the police don't care so he keeps riding anyway.
My bicycle is in surprisingly good shape having been kept under the house for the winter. Even the tires have more pressure than I thought they would. Want to ride it soon. My Dad thinks I should ride to work. Maybe I will, once I'm stronger and more used to the workload. Right now that's iffy. I'm standing for hours every day. It was hurting my back Thursday and Friday but I'm better now. If I do ride to and from work I'll get hella strong. It will be excellent endurance exercise and strengthen my heart. Maybe get me more fit for when I start dating again. If I start dating again. The nice lady at my work wants to hike and bike. This would be a good day for it, but she hasn't called or emailed me so maybe she's busy. Or maybe her offer wasn't serious. I learned long ago not to get worked up over promises broken. Sometimes people say things because they're being polite.
I suppose I should say I'm seeing patterns in traffic. I'm seeing a few scooters. I'm seeing lots of Harley tourists coming through town. I am seeing Rice Rockets, mostly 600cc Ninjas. I'm seeing very few Enduro bikes. I'm seeing a few vintage old bikes like the young man rides. I'm seeing geezer/hobos on mountain bikes, some pushing them, some riding very fast. I'm seeing a few bikes converted to mopeds like the one above.
Traffic is still mostly work trucks and a few cars, some nice, some beaten up, not much in between. I've driven home up Alta Street most days now, thanks to dropping stuff off at the UPS Store in town. Its a few block away from work. Every customer wants their packages right away, which means I go there before I go home. Oh well. It's the job. Just like standing for hours with a sore back, or the hangnails I get from stuffing boxes. Its a little bit of bad and a lot of good. I deal with it. For a 5 minute commute with a fairly late start time that allows a slow morning cup of joe, its pretty okay. If I can get strong enough to bicycle to and fro, maybe I'll trim down that much more. We'll see.
Anime sometimes really fs up. Evangelion? Could have been a pretty good adventure instead of this long slow suicide drama. Ugh. RahXephon was Evangelion done right.There are shows with outrageously fun characters, largely discarded around the start because they're machines. FLCL thankfully didn't ignore the sheer presence of the P! yellow vespa.
Few people, prior to witnessing the spectacle of FLCL realize that a Vespa is a formidable demolition derby powerhouse, capable of bulling small trucks into the air with its 49cc 2-stroke powerplant and 10 inch wheels. FLCL is madness, of course, but its got a good grunge sound track and the characters are fun so you don't mind. Its a lighthearted show. That's why its a popular mod in the real world.
Now consider shows which have vehicles just as awesome and proceed to ignore the heck out of them. In Eureka 7 AO, we get shown a flying Tuktuk. Its a tuktuk, and it flies about 5 feet in the air, or higher, thanks to a quirk of the show mechanics that allows for flying cars using magic rocks without any visible sort of engine. Forward propulsion, nonsensically, is still the 200cc 2-stroke scooter engine you find in all Tuktuks. Part of what makes them rock so hard. That and having 3 wheels so braking hard makes them flip over onto the driver. They're famous for that. They still rock because that aspect of being tricky to drive and dangerous means an underpowered vehicle like a tuktuk is a sign of manliness and derring-do. In its way Tuktuk drivers are like a Harley rider with a job, and probably a family rather than a drug addiction and criminal record.
Unfortunately, instead of focusing on how the flying tuktuk brings families closer together and enables the local health clinic to get supplies and bring the doctor to house calls, the planet explodes with alien nanites from outer space that grow glowing coral and everybody is a prick in Okinawa and they all deserve to die and why won't Renton just step back and let them? That was a really stupid show. A "what were you thinking?" kind of show. It wasn't funny. Just made you more and more angry, and further support for US control of Japan's military since the popularity of that show is continued proof that Genocidal maniacs are the dominant mindset of Japanese youth, same as during WW2 and the rape of Nanking. If we step away, they'll go back to raping and killing everyone. And this time the world would glass Japan.
Finally, I bring you Vividred Operation, which oddly enough has nothing to do with Vandread. Weird. Vividred is sort of a more lighthearted, lesbian seagull version, of Evangelion. Only without all the angst. And a flying scooter, completely unique in the show, used as a newspaper delivery bike.
This is apparently another world without pants. Like Strike Witches. Go figure. Apparently this is some crazy arc of the multiverse where the idea of women and pants just doesn't ever occur to them. Even skirts seem to be confusing. Only in Japan. Like Kiki's delivery service had a baby with strike witches and the war ended, only to get slightly different CGI aliens attacking their tower of magical flying scooters and broadcast electricity straight out of Tesla's wet dreams. A pity more of the show isn't focused on this scooter. It would be a better show if it was. The rest of it is pretty dumb. At least its light hearted.
If Rideback, which was about huge transforming segway-motorcycles with arms for no good reason and no shown ability to control, stayed a sports anime it would have been better. The violent terrorism subplot? It was crap. The first 4 eps of the series were pretty good. I keep running into that: shows which should be about sports and competition, friendly competition, turn into bloodbaths and murder. WTF Japan? And you call yourselves pacifists. Riiiight! Yeah, not gonna let you loose of that leash anytime soon.
Post Oil, lots of things change. The obvious stuff is rich people move into the cities to be near other rich people, and the cops shoot or evict the poor, because they annoy the rich people and poor people don't really matter. They are obstacles and sources of crime. Get rid of them. That's what rich people think, and money talks. The coastal cities will eventually be nothing but rich people and their approved servants, all very polite.
The countryside, on the other hand, will change a lot. Right now, most of the countryside is either farms or wild land, at least here in the West. The countryside is largely empty. It doesn't have to be. Most of the interesting farming towns that should be filled with happy families only have a few disgruntled Mexican farm workers and pensioners too poor to move somewhere else. Its true the Central Valley towns are hot in the summer and very dull all the time. However, they do have UPS/FedEx making deliveries, and real estate there is cheap, along with rents. A company that works with Brains, making Inventions, would be well served to move there instead of pay too much for facilities with no advantages and terrible traffic in the Bay Area, for example.
Back when I had a wife who liked me, we did lots of exploration of the Northern Sacramento Valley, north of the Sutter Buttes. Remember those?
Yeah, those. Volcanoes in the middle of the Sacramento Valley. The only real landmark. The Sacramento river swings around the West side. The Feather river around the East side. Both rivers have flood control from really big capacity dams. The Feather from Lake Oroville dam. The Sacramento from Shasta Dam on Lake Shasta up near Redding. Those two dams allow for the productive orchards downstream, and the rice fields responsible for feeding 1.00 Billion People give or take two hundred million people any given year, most of whom are in Asia, Japan and China in particular. Japan would starve without that rice. That would be sad.
The towns near there are either rice farmers or the farm workers, or from the orchards growing various fruits or almonds or walnuts. The almonds grown here are mostly sold to the Europeans, who are crazy about almond butter. I dunno why. Its nothing special. Not peanut butter good, for example. Or cashew butter, which is much tastier but really expensive. I really should find a local source for that. But the towns are half empty. They USED TO be full of families, businesses, people doing more than farming. But then the 1980s destroyed the world and the towns largely died. By the 1990s they were pretty well dead, with just a few old timers still there, the rest of the homes empty shells, the businesses boarded up. All that potential and cheap water and cheap real estate wasted, waiting for vision and someone smart enough to realize that good sushi isn't enough of a reason to pay 3x as much for your office space in the Bay Area. Much less the terrible murderer commutes. I am NOT FOND of Bay Area traffic. I tried to avoid it as much as possible. Its one of the things my wife and I agreed on: drivers in the Bay Area took stupid-moron pills, daily. Peak oil is the best thing to ever happen to Bay Area traffic. It will force those dumba$$es off the road. They can wallow in their stupidity alone, as they well deserve. Bay Area traffic is one of the strongest arguments for involuntary euthanasia... Yeah, I really hated driving there. Its not a positive place.
If I lived in say... Colusa or Gridley, I'd have all sorts of business opportunities. Imagine if Facebook were headquartered there. Cheap housing, local fresh vegetables, 65 minutes to Sacramento if you really must go there to party, see a movie, shop. 63 minutes to Davis, which was honestly a nicer town, just more expensive. Still, it's got real potential despite how far it is from cities. And being far from cities is why it's affordable.
Work the last two days has been furiously busy. We're dealing with sales backlog, plus other backlog. I want to be caught up. It feels bad going home after 9 hours with no real breaks but you just make mistakes when you're exhausted.
Work was hard this last week. I started on Sunday, unloading a truck and finding spaces for all the stuff that came out of that truck. We had help, so it wasn't an exhausting disaster, but it was real work. The rest of the week was spent picking, packing, and shipping the perfume oils, which is what my real job is. Up to this point I'd been prepping for this week of shipping the actual product to customers. And the prep work was all about streamlining the flow so the shipping would work well enough we wouldn't fall behind. By the end of the week we'd been shipping 40 packages per day, possibly more, spent close to a thousand on shipping charges, and only made one mistake that I know of. My fault, too. Otherwise its gone well. Its just hard work, so to speak. Its not digging holes or mixing concrete but there was construction involved and there's boxes to assemble and a tape gun and packing peanuts (ghost poo), invoices, packing slips, and I've now shipped several packages overseas. Never done that before. The product still smells good, being perfume oils (organic essential oils). The hardest part is I got a cold Friday a week ago and was sick with it the entire duration of this very hard week. Boxes of kleenex. It didn't really back off much until the rains came, and only a bit then. Its mostly gone today.
Good news of the week: new season of Top Gear out. And Trigun movie finally came to netflix. I was a fan of that series over 12 years ago, one of the few you could watch on cable TV. Back in the day where you had to pay for anime on DVD because there WAS NO streaming.
Bad news of the week? I'm losing my health insurance coverage because my wife lost her job, part of the Supression? Segregation? Crippling Anti-military presidential budget blunder? Whatever. I'll be paying for insulin out of pocket, and that's going to be expensive. I dearly hope my employer comes up with something. My soon to be ex-wife no longer offers me ANYTHING but bad memories now so filing for divorce is a priority. Whee!
I have been saying for some time that America is a lot like Spain after its Armada sank trying to invade Britain. This is not just a convenient metaphor. Our president's limo broke down in Israel, widely regarded as a Free Fire Zone, like South Central LA, New Orleans, South Miami, Detroit, the entire US-Mexico border, Stockton, and Oakland. Wow that's a long list. More and more of the USA is turning into a cesspit of bigotry, violence, ignorance, and contempt. Much like Spain, we continue to pretend we matter on the world stage when every time our chosen (fool) representative speaks up, he gets a laugh of derision from the rest of the world. That's the consequence of being All Talk. The current president has done a great job promoting the accomplishments of Jimmy Carter, previously known as the least effective president ever. That's no longer the case. Jimmy Carter is gaining a reputation, ex post facto, of being moderately successful. Someone else took his place as "Most Useless". Someone still proving daily just how little you can do despite having the job. Perhaps, in the future, we'll look back on these times and laugh about how stupid this whole era was. Then swing a leg over our bike of choice and pedal or ride away into the rain.
In a perfect world, the oil would never run out. It would be limitless and our infrastructure would allow us to continue living the Disneyfied(tm) world of tomorrow forever. We'd still have beehive hairdos for the women, and if you wait long enough your thin tie will come back into style. In a perfect world nothing changes. We don't live there.
In the best of all possible worlds, we'd have the foresight to build renewable electric transportation, like streetcars that go everywhere we want to go with cars, often enough that we're never waiting more than 15 minutes, and all our shopping and housing needs are met with this convenient and reliable answer to city living. Wouldn't that be great?
This is particularly important as we ease out of the Oil Age and into the age of 2-Wheeled transit. While its nice and charming to think about streetcars and light rail and electric vehicles the facts are these:
There is ONE (1) Streetcar maker in the USA, at Oregon Ironworks in Oregon. Their staff of 13 is not capable of producing all the needed streetcars for every American city and town a few weeks before some OPEC tragedy causes a panic shortage. This is a growth business, obviously, but that only happens if all those cities and towns start buying them NOW and they won't fund anything until its too late, like after the Panic.
Almost every American has a bicycle, and the rest can get one.
The trouble with bicycling is the difference in speed between a bicycle
and a car is sufficiently great that most drivers consider bicycles
pedestrians. This remains true until cars get into 25 mph zones, where
the bicycle is almost the same speed and suddenly the cyclist becomes
visible to the driver as part of the traffic flow. Its like magic. What
it is, is perception. This is one of the better arguments for upgrading to a scooter, since a scooter is fast enough to be perceived as traffic by drivers rather than a pedestrian with wheels.
The average work commute is 30 miles. This is too far to bicycle. I'm sorry, but the average American just can't do that and still be fit to work all day, much less bicycle home afterwards. It's not going to happen.
A scooter can do that distance easily, even with only 49ccs of bweeting noise, blue smoke, and pollution. If it means you keep your job, you don't care about the environment. The Environment doesn't put a roof over your head and food on your plate. Your job does that. You can't have a job if you can't get there. Everyone else is doing the same thing so there's smoke and noise whether you're causing some of it or not.
Giving up the job you LIKE (the one you probably have now) for the job you can physically reach post-oil will be a terrible personal tragedy and likely increase the Misery Index for the nation.
The gap between the end of plentiful oil (now) and post oil (post Panic event) will be a great opportunity for scooter sales and bicycle parts and repairs. This panic will likely last for weeks or months, since hoarding and rationing are just going to keep forcing people to scooters and bicycles as their basic personal transportation.
This will be especially tough on mothers of young children since they're used to the convenience of passenger vehicles and switching to sidecars or bike trailers will be very tough for them to adjust to. Picture the school run with bicycle trailers instead of SUVs and station wagons. Say goodbye to inefficient yellow school buses. We don't have the diesel for that.
The modern concept of Safety is useless in the face of a post-energy survival situation. We all become like Vietnam, a mix of rich people in cars (evil grinning grammas with tinted windows) running over poor people on bicycles and scooters. That's reality in the real world outside the rich First World nations. They call it the "road tax" and its paid in blood. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can adapt and overcome.
Eventually these sorts of light vehicles will become common because they solve the major issues of transportation while using minimal fuel. Its all about power to weight ratio, which is often the opposite of safety. Too bad. Suck it up. The Nerf(tm) world cost too much and it doesn't work. The real world has splinters and boo-boos.
Despite my many posts on motorcycles and scooters, I remain a huge fan of bicycles. The trouble with bicycles is they tire you out, which is a bad thing if you're on the way to work. To cars, a bicycle is a pedestrian only existing to be passed contemptuously, and probably not very safely, on the side of the street.
I live in a hilly place. Technically, this is the Mountains. Bicycles are great fun on the flatlands where moving forward is a matter of pedaling and coasting. In the mountains? Not so much. Also, there tends to be an absence of bike lanes, the roads are often potholed and spills of gravel spread 100 feet down or across every rural driveway. Its a serious danger to motorcyclists but annoying enough to bicycles too. Those long hills are often in narrow treelined streets sometimes with lots of parked cars. Climbing that, slowly, on a bicycle after working all day? Not safe. If there were no cars, it would be a different deal, but there ARE cars and there will be until the fuel stops being delivered here.
For pure exercise, bicycles are great. You shift your body weight as you pedal, which is why a real bicycle is far better exercise than a stationary one in front of a TV. The pauses, the hard breathing, the motivation of it is a big part of why bicycling is good exercise.
Bicycles are mature technology. You can buy a 40 year old bike and restore it and it rides just as well as a modern one. I scoff at poor cyclist wannabes, like a friend of mine, who insist they MUST have a $3000 carbon fiber race bike to keep up with their friends on carbon fiber race bikes on the Sunday rides they do hither and yon in their $250 jerseys and $120 riding shoes. Uh...no. Buy a used 1970's race bike, restore it, and your old race bike is both cooler and often has better components. Vintage has Gravitas. Trouble is that guy didn't actually like RIDING a bicycle, or being with his church friends. He wanted them to envy the bicycle he couldn't afford but they already had. He wanted to keep up with the Jones's. His envy left him in a permanent state of failure, a particularly UnChristian state for a churchgoer, don't you think? No alternative solution would do.We're not friends anymore.
Yesterday, while walking back and forth to the post office carrying packages, I witnessed one of the locals arrive on a very practical Suzuki DR650 with a milk crate strapped to the back. He put gas in at the local station on the corner. I have to say it was used but well maintained and the rider clearly knew what they were doing, sitting perfectly balanced in standard upright position and the long travel suspension took the bumps through the intersection as smooth as you like. I will think much harder, having seen that, about a used 400-650cc because the engine was very quiet. In the neighborhood I live in, and the hours I'll be keeping soon, that would be a positive. Especially with these hills. The supermoto makes good sense up here. Then again, depending on where you ride, so do vintage, rice rockets, and cruisers.
This is a good place for motorcycling, provided you're careful in the traffic and watch out for gravel spills from driveways near corners. Those are very dangerous. From what a friend with a long history riding said, torque is king when it comes to hill climbing and you shift a lot less with a 600cc so its more about throttle control and leaning properly, with the suspension, if properly setup, making it a safer choice for a beginner.
Rear Axel? About 4 inches behind the seat, which is a 12 degree hill.
As much as I like the MadAss, I worry it will pop a wheelie in front of traffic going up the hills here because so much of the riders weight is nearly on top of the rear wheel. Looking at that, and already wishing for a longer trailing arm suspension would fit it in the bad things category. I wasn't able to find a manufacturer that made them either, since that would require moving or replacing the rear fender. Maybe the DR is a better answer? Used they're cheaper too. Or would be if it wasn't Spring, when people go insane. Spring motorcycle prices resemble those of new bikes. You're better off not bothering.
Its been a dry Spring here too, and other than the rain coming tonight, its often a couple weeks between storms, thus tons of motorcyclists and scooters out and about.
If I had a garage I could be restoring an original series 1 Miata, though considering the person I'd likely be riding in it with has a 12 yo daughter, I suppose the money is better spent fixing up my Honda with its 5 seats. The tires and shocks, the windshield, and the ugly spots of bad paint and chips might be a good idea for repairs and replacement. Sigh. Its a nice car, at least. Once everything works right I can more confidently take it for long drives up and over the mountains and back. Maybe something will turn up that works, for a price I'm willing to pay.
Also: I've had a cold since I slept with my window open last Thursday. Sigh.
A friend at work says she likes hiking so it looks like I've got a hiking partner now. This is good. Going hiking alone isn't much fun, and its a bit dangerous for a diabetic hiking alone. I suspect we will start with the lower elevations and work our way up, to harder hikes with more interesting terrain. I have LONG wanted to see the lakes in northern Nevada County. I've made maps from them. I've processed their data in GIS databases. But I've never been there.
Good hikes and drives, since she likes moving so drives might be a good thing too:
Empire Mine
Hwy 20 PGE Discovery Center
Donner Pass Trail
Castle Crags (north of Donner Pass)
Hwy 89-70 Truckee-Grayeagle-Oroville loop.
Sardine Lake and Packer Lake, drive and picnic
Gold lake to Silver Lake hike.
I need some better hiking boots, and she might too. I'll ask.
She also expressed interest in mountain biking but doesn't have one of her own. I expect we'll talk about that a bit. See if we can find something for her, maybe a used bike or maybe her interests aren't so hardcore so a gentle one from Kmart will do. A road bike is good exercise around here, actually, and you can go some pretty interesting places. I have cruised around that way and found good things.
Its good to have friends to spend time with. I didn't have that in the Bay Area. The people I knew rarely called me, and only one of them down there called me on the weekend. The people who call you on the weekend are your friends. They ones who don't are acquaintances. I had to explain that to some classmates in college. They never called me on the weekend.
Tonight I will sleep with the window cracked open. Its so warm its pointless to worry about anything like heat. I want the fresh air and the sound of the night. This is spring in the mountains. In another month we'll have some proper heat waves. We're already using the fan at work in the afternoons. Its just too warm by that time of day.
Sorry I'm not posting much. Work is busy. The weather has been really nice. Broke a sweat at work two days in a row now. Tomorrow will be likewise. I'm glad we've got a ceiling fan. Feels good. The screen doors are nice too. Lets a breeze flow through. I suspect its going to get really sweaty in there this summer. We may end up doing the smelly bottling part in the beginning of the day and do the mail after just so we can use the A/C during the worst of the summer heat. Considering I'll be working there at 7 AM eventually, I'll at least get that benefit of cool summer mornings. We are largely ready to start shipping, once the inventory arrives this weekend. That's going to be my real job: shipping and bottling. We'll see if I handle this properly or not. I think it'll be some surges of business at first, then settle down. I get paid OT at least.
Unfortunately, the scooter etc just doesn't make sense right now. I have to manage my money carefully so I can get a place of my own, and deal with the various expenses of living.
My best friend, That Guy(tm) is Irish. Scotland was settled by Irish people (and others) after the glaciers melted 10,000 years ago. I enjoy reminding myself that Gaelic culture is really old. The Irish peoples have stone and bronze age artifacts dating back 37,000 years on that island. Pause and consider. When someone goes on about ancient middle eastern cultures I roll my eyes at how naive they are. Worshipping their newfangled hate-gods? Pah! Irish gods have weaknesses. They can be tricked. They die. None of this crazy sky god crapola. Irish gods walked among us. They built the Giants Causeway. According to legend anyway. Its actually a basalt dike and columnar basalts are ridiculously common, being part of every sea floor. There goes Geology, ruining all the fun of legends.
St. Patrick's Day is coming up in a week. I am not Catholic. I'm going to be busy, and Dad won't eat Corned Beef, so I bought it for myself and I'm cooking it now. Its hard to get wrong if you start with one of those kits in a bag in the meat section.
Put meat in a pot.
Add sliced cabbage and carrots.
Add water till the meat floats.
Slow simmer for hours.
This is really not hard. The result is tasty, but don't eat the little white balls. Those are white pepper and will make your guts rebel. Thankfully, the spice kit contains caraway seed, which kills the gas from boiling cabbage. I usually just eat the veggies the first day. After that they're nasty so throw them away. Same deal with stew and pot roast.
I will be making mashed potatoes too. I have them and its easy. I even got sour cream for 79 cents. Whoohoo?
I'm going to be making blended essential oils at work. I just realized that makes me a Potioner. Should I start wearing robes? Practice evil laughs?
Muwhahahaha! Cough. Hmm. Its a happy place. Maybe the Smurfs theme song instead?
Hmm. Maybe not. I'm more of a Federico Aubele cheerful worker.
Yeah. Not the evil laughter kind. That was my prior job. This is a happy place with people who are respected and rewarded. No evil or sarcasm is required there.
Just finished watching the National Geographic documentary "Hiking the Appalachian Trail". Pretty photography, but there's way too many superlatives used, some barefaced lies, and quite a few examples of stupidity. The worst? Trekking poles. Why am I against trekking poles? They make you tired. They have ONE purpose: to keep you upright in strong current crossing rivers in Patagonia when the water is over your knees. Anywhere else? They just make your arms tired and cause you to burn too many calories, slowing you down and making you take far longer to cover the same ground as an unencumbered hiker who is smart enough to go without such ridiculous attachments. Why do hikers carry them? "Look at me, I'm EXPERIENCED. I've been to Patagonia even though my pole is clearly new and shiny, but I WANT YOU TO LOVE ME because I'm totally a poser!" That's pretty much the thought process there.
I'm sorry if that's mean. I really am, but I've been hiking since I could walk. Less is more, always, when hiking. Serious hikers and backpackers? They don't bother with a full mess kit. They have a trail cup. Eat and drink from the same thing. Only have to wash the one. A spoon, no fork, no knife. Just a big wide spoon. One thing to wash, not three. One thing to carry, less than half the weight. One smelly acrylic teeshirt. One nylon rain jacket. Two pairs of wool or acrylic socks with wicking liners and FOOT POWDER!!, replaced at regular intervals. Comfortable boots with strong soles and a proper heel so your feet don't get bruised. Broken in so they don't give you blisters. Then again, my ankles are strong so I mostly just wear hiking shoes rather than boots. Camp shoes, very light for wearing around camp after the hiking is done. I don't always bother but miles of hiking makes my feet sore and the normal clodhopper boots appropriate for serious rocky terrain aren't very comfy anywhere else. The lightest tent you can get, if you stay in a tent, properly waterproofed and aired out. A serious sleeping pad, big enough to stretch out fully, and a light sleeping bag that's warm enough but not too warm. You won't have blizzards on the AT. Sufficient water bottles, preferably (3) 1.0 L soda bottles since the caps don't leak, and the bottles are puncture resistant, and a water filter if there aren't clean water supplies on the route.
Finally, preposition resupply of your gear in lockers or with services or friends along the way so you can swap stuff out to the appropriate stuff. Send unwanted gear home by mail. Remember that you can eat meals at real restaurants but get a shower FIRST you stinking heathen, and shave! Sheesh.
People backpacking massively underestimate just how many calories they're burning and how much they need to eat. They starve themselves rail thin and its dangerous. Eat lots of fatty foods, lots of carbs, lots of useable protein to rebuild your muscles. Serious hiking, day after day, is very unhealthy and can put you into a dangerous state called "reeating". That's where your body breaks down your muscles to keep your organs alive. People doing that become skeletal and it can kill you. You're not supposed to say that hiking is bad for you, but that's the facts. Soldiers in the field lose a couple pounds a day, every day, till they're pulled out to recover. Most of that loss is muscle and fat, typically muscle and fat they can't afford to lose and remain combat effective.
Healthiest way I ever did serious hiking was in Geology Summer Field course in Montana. We had REAL FOOD for breakfast, serious packed lunches (meat, not just PBJ), and serious dinner. Probably 4000 calories a day. I was FIT by the end of that 6 weeks. Hiking up and down mountains while concentrating hard on your book learning was excellent physical and mental conditioning. Show me a mountain towering 5000 feet over my head, I just considered the sanest ways up there, and whether the conditions would turn dangerous by the time I got there, and if that meant I needed a couple more layers or an extra meal of food with me.
I got the idea watching that documentary on the Appalachian Trail that people go nuts hiking it, obsessed and psychotic. I can't say that's very healthy. I don't see much of that on the Pacific Crest Trail, but then again the southern portion from Mexico border to Yosemite is so hard it kills idiots. Much of it is very high elevation, where altitude sickness is a real threat, and lack of clean water is another problem. Inexperienced naive hikers drink water from streams, not realizing its full of giardia contamination and will give you the Sierra Two-Step till you see a doctor for meds. I once had it for 6 months because I was too stubborn to see the doc. Not fun. The Pacific Crest Trail to the Canada Border is a very hard hike. The AT is not very hard. Most call it boring, unless they go nuts or do drugs. I think I'd enjoy the AT because I know the rocks and would find that interesting, but non geologists get bored there fast.
It looks like few people bother to continue the Pacific Crest trail seriously once they pass Yosemite. I'm sure there's a few, but once you pass Donner and get north of 80, you get into some interesting alpine lakes. Then you cross up to the Sierra Buttes, which I've shown pictures of before, and then the Sierras end and the Cascades begin, and those are volcanoes and mostly not as tall. Mostly. The transition from Granite Sierras to Basalt and Andesite in the Cascades into Oregon and Washington, with a lot more trees and bears, I'm not sure I'd find that to be hilarious fun or not. The smart move for the Pacific Crest is hike the bits you like, not ALL of it. And that seems to be the real secret of the AT. Hiking the whole thing is poor judgement. Hike the best bits. Like the Tourists do.
So it's Spring here. Flowers are up and blooming. Days are consistently reaching the low to upper 60's F. It no longer freezes at night. Most mornings when I come out the door for work the sun has been up an hour and its 40'F. Sometimes warmer. I am still enjoying long slow cups of coffee and a gentle rise and shine at my own pace. This is very nice.
Yesterday I took care of an irritation: buying a Dustbuster(tm) to clean up dust piles and such around the house. Sadly, the instrument did not come with the traditional charging mount, just a cheap wire plug you have to manually insert. This was not acceptable so it went back, along with a couple other things. Dad will buy a better setup from Walmart next week. Later I took Mom to the garden store down the road and bought her bulbs and some sprouted lettuce plants, something I'd promised her before xmas as her gift. I finally got to give it to her, along with some good potting soil. Very affordable too. Lots of people garden here. Its a good place for it, so long as you use raised beds or pots since the native soil tends to be full of arsenic, iron, and other metals (naturally, it IS a mining town after all).
We had a huge rainstorm pass over head last night. Not a drop fell here. Its finally little spatters now. I went walking in it with my mom. She's a little stronger today. We went a couple hundred yards at a normal pace before she slowed down and had us turn back, pips of rain falling every once in a while. The pavement just soaked it up and the rest evaporated again. The sky is grey overcast, of course.
Work itself has been lots of computer work, and simulated packing runs, to verify how to actually do it. We're getting closer and closer to the day the inventory arrives. OT that weekend, most likely, followed by shipping and bottling. I think it will be fun. I'm all set for that. Looks like the first half of my day will be shipping, with the second half spent bottling the oils for inventory. We're working up bottling schedules etc. It's going to be very interesting because neither of us is sure how much work that will be, and how stressful. We hope that having two of us there to divide the labor will make it far more manageable. The outsourced shipping company in Colorado seemed to have trouble keeping schedules. I won't speculate as to why. The bottled product looked nice enough. And they did ship. Just lots of dropped balls. I'm glad to have the job.
Now it is wetter outside, with visible standing water and wetness but drops are still few and far between and it remains relatively warm.
A little shout out to Snerdy who is sipping ales at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma today. Petaluma is the south end of Sonoma County, and only about 15-20 miles from where I grew up. Petaluma hosts the site of the former pathway of the Sacramento River, which prior to the opening of the Golden Gate (the strait, not the bridge) hosted the outflow of the interior of California's central valley waterways north to Sebastopol and the Lagunitas de Santa Rosa before reaching the Russian River and turning west through that narrow and often flooded canyon system. Imagine, if you will, that once there was no San Francisco Bay. There was a lake, and a strong ridge of chert and granite a mere 10 miles wide. But it was a critical 10 miles. One day an earthquake broke that spine and the lake flooded out into the sea through the Golden Gate, ending the detoured outflow through the Llano de Santa Rosa and allowing the "laguna" to fill in with local vegetation and dirt until all that remained were stagnant ponds which sometimes flooded in the winters. Geology is fascinating, folks.
When cars were first invented by Benzvarious people, they were a curiosity and powered by Steam. Technically Daimler and Benz (of Mercedes Benz, with Mercedes being Daimler's daughter) invented the carburetor to enable reliable engine firing, but that let him build cars that would run.
The first Horseless Carriages were clunky and slow curiosities, Victorian follies. Eventually, other refinements allowed the automobile to show off speed and manueverability and that lead to sponsored races and other public events. It was the Modern Era, after all. One of Science, not superstition, leading the way forward. We could build machines to make the world a better place for everyone. Clean water, roads, plenty of food to eat thanks to mechanization. It was a wondrous age of machines.
Car races were a great way to show off advancements in technology. This eventually lead to more formalized racing sports like the 24 Hours at Le Mans. It also lead the various Formulas, where similar cars raced against each other for serious prize money, and tickets sold to the public paid for the prizes. Formula One is the modern example of that evolution. It is not the only formula for racing, but it is the fastest and most famous.
Car races got the public talking about it over the water cooler or down at the barbershop. It also got them comparing cars and having parts upgraded for performance. Who has the better car? Is that new model any good?
Car review articles, then magazines, then radio and TV shows and websites evolved into things like Top Gear, which takes car reviews and turns them up to 11. And they can be quite funny about it too.
Cars are only part of the picture. Between 1900 and 1925, most towns and cities had taxi service and/or streetcar lines to move people around. Between 1920 and 1925, Standard Oil, General Motors, and Philips Petroleum and a consortium of tire manufacturers realized that they could increase sales and get rich if they just bought up and dismantled this public transit system in every town, forcing people to buy those new-fangled automobiles, put tires on the wheels, and buy gasoline every week. And it wasn't even illegal. So they did it and got rich.
Now that the gasoline is running out, we need those systems rebuilt everywhere they were destroyed. There's business opportunities there, but the public won't fund public transit until AFTER its too late to save our economy, and then they won't be able to pay for it. Ironic? Yes, yes it is. That's people for you. They're too busy with their own lives to worry about the future, even if that future is painfully obvious, and if that requires doing something before it all falls apart? "Well, that's the politician's job, leave me alone." That's how the public feels.
It doesn't help that social standards have fallen so far that public transit is physically dangerous. That train and bus stations often stop in really bad areas and you're risking your life to use them in many cities. Waiting at a bus stop isn't a great use of time and lack of funding means those buses come all too rarely to be useful as transportation, more as a delay in getting where you want to go. So most people just keep grumbling about the cost of fuel and keep driving. Right up till they go bankrupt. And that points us back to 2-wheeled transportation. No waiting at the bus stop in the rain. You'll be riding through the rain on 2 wheels instead. Comfortable? No way. Independent? Absolutely.
Were I a young pretty coed trying to get my nursing degree and I had to choose between waiting in a dark bus stop in a bad part of town for far too long after class (risking rape or murder by 2-legged predators) or a bit of discomfort and risk riding AWAY FROM THEM on a scooter? Scooter, absolutely. Or motorcycle. Whatever. Mobility is a strong defense against predators.
These are desperate times, and desperate measures are called for. If you can carpool to school or work, do so. If you can't deal with the disappointments of people screwing over the carpool and making everyone late, or your boss will fire you, you need to think outside the metal box of comfortable 4-wheeled transportation. Uncomfortable transportation might be the answer.
Maybe a Geo Metro since they're cheap and have good fuel economy. They're slow and wheezy and have electric nothing (but lights and ignition). They'll get you there at Prius-level fuel economy for a fraction of the price. If you MUST have lots of seats, think about something slightly bigger but still light weight. Do you really NEED a station wagon or SUV? Most of the time? No. Not unless you have dogs in the back. For the rest a sedan is just fine.
My Honda Accord gets 32 mpg on the freeway, a lot less in town. It seats 5 comfortably and has a full sized trunk, electric everything, sunroof, leather seats and they go for about $3500 used. Its got 165K miles and had its timing belt changed twice so will run for another 80K miles. My last fill up landed me only 15 mpg, but half my trips were moving the car from one side of the driveway to the other, and the other half were trips to work, and that blizzard, which was 80 minutes going 2 miles in stop and go, spinning my wheels on ice and slush. Not the best conditions or gears for good fuel economy. Still, it's paid for and big enough. An SUV in these conditions would get worse mileage.
There's a guy in town who is running one of those 36cc gas motors on this bicycle to climb the hills. Its loud, which is why I won't consider it, though maybe I should. I just need a better muffler. The alternative is an electric bike setup, provided it will fit my bicycle. That gets me up the hill, silently thanks to it being an electric motor.
I have a bike in the basement this would work with. My old mountain bike would work fine, particularly if I mounted the battery on or under the bike rack. This is more cost effective than spending thousands on the scooter, and it doesn't require the licensing and DMV registration.The problem I see with this is the cheapest kits are at least $400+, and if you want regenerative braking and smoother controls to add to your power strokes, like the Bionx kit, you're getting to $1200 for the kit. The upside is they're actually really good, and still qualify as bicycles so can use paths and bike lanes etc, so long as they're under 21 mph. If I go without the regenerative braking that saves hundreds. Competitors point out that regen isn't very efficient and you're better off just buying better batteries. And the better batteries these days seems to be Lithium Iron Phosphate. Its not as dense as a Gel-Thermite battery, but it has the advantage of actually existing and being available for sale. Prices are hugely variable, from $111 to $900 for those, in various voltage and amperages. And how is battery life? How many charge cycles before it's useless?
My primary issue is not the distance, but the climb of first 200 feet up a slope in heavy traffic, then 500 feet up a steep slope with less traffic but lots of exhaust. This is the route I currently drive. At 15 mpg and only 4 miles per day, that is costing me 27 cents/day. That's not much. It is safe and convenient.
The alternative route is two short 300 foot climbs up a steep narrow slope with traffic followed by a gentle slope even narrower and treed, so lighting will be key for safety. Any close calls with vehicles brushing me there could be fatal or so frightening I give up the idea of pedal power. If that's the case, save towards full-traffic-speed scooter/motorcycle.
As I look at this, I find myself worrying about the dangers of the ride. Maybe I'm worrying too much, but maybe not. Danger is why I gave up my last 2 mile bicycle commute. All those close calls with Minivans and SUVs with the driver texting. To them I was just a pedestrian to be ignored. One of the better arguments for the full scooter or motorcycle is you are moving at traffic speed so are visible as "traffic" rather than "pedestrian" to other drivers. This is an important mental leap.
Many kits are $500-800. This is not as cheap as I'd like for something which comes with wheels to make it easier to steal. The battery is quickly detachable for recharging, but its also portable $500 drug money that can be resold on Ebay by the dealer or his fence. That means I can't park it at the market or movie theater or leave it unattended, ever. I need to investigate if I can set the controller with a speed lockout so its still legal at 20 mph, but still deliver the power needed to propel my 190 pounds and my bike and the 8-20 pound battery pack at 20 mph up a steep hill, assisting my pedaling after a hard day AND run lights so I'm visible to traffic. These are good people in this town, but I want to make it easier for them to see me so there's no tragic accidents.
My friend Brian, a local I worked with doing GIS 10 years ago, recommends I just pedal harder since it would make me more fit and I'd be saving all that money. And there's something to that. As it is now, if my bike is stolen its no big deal. I can ride the spare till it's stolen too, then buy a new bike to replace it for $100 from Kmart or Target. And eventually, either the cost of electric bikes will come down or people will just adjust their lives to bicycling and deal with the wheezing. In the end, Peasants won't have access to fuel because it will be reserved for the Liberal Elites in their Limousines. We have Diane Feinstein to thank for that term. She was famous for her hypocrisy, and remains so today.
And that means that electric bikes aren't there yet. They're still too expensive. We each individually have to take chances and solve our transportation problems since the Govt really doesn't give a damn. There's no legal requirement for them to care. That's hogwash they say to get elected. Lying to the public gets you a second term. Ask Bill Clinton.
The upshot is I still need to sign up for my motorcycle safety class, buy the fitting gear I need, read the manual completely, a couple times, attend the classes, and get licensed to ride a motorized 2-wheel vehicle. A pity I can't get a reworked and modernized Honda Passport with the shielded side pipes. Those are kinda bad-ass.
This is a 1964 model, still working somewhere. The MadAss is pretty much this with a better suspension and smoother tires, better brakes. You can put a long rack behind the seat on a madass, and a heat shield to keep the exhaust off your groceries. Or I can keep paying 27 cents/day for my current commute. Yeah, sometimes its not entirely about cost. And sometimes it is.
