All Terrain Carrier

The original all terrain vehicle is the Mark 1 Foot. Eventually this was upgraded with sandals, moccasins, and eventually shoes and boots. Boots are great. They protect your feet and ankles and let you cross surfaces which would cut you to ribbons barefoot.

Elephant Skin Carbonate Weathering is SHARP

 

There's a common surface in the Desert called Elephant Skin Texture which comes from rain exposure to dolomitic limestone. Dolomite is not just the name of a terrible racist movie from the 1970s, the black equivalent of Birth of A Nation. Dolomite is a combination of standard carbonate, with the replacement of some of the Calcium with Magnesium. It's actually very rare, and when made is especially resistant to common rainwater carbonic acid which etches the heck out of limestone. Dolomite corrodes much more slowly than the surrounding limestone, so tends to form spines and ridges in mountains, and releases its nutrients far more slowly so things growing on it become ancient, adapting to the lack of nutrition. The oldest trees on earth rest on a high ridge of Dolomite, the Bristlecone Pine Forest in California's White Mountains. They look like tree junipers. Some jackass grad student killed the oldest tree taking a core sample a couple years ago. This level of competence is consistent with the UC grads I worked with. Yet another reason to defund the University of California. Their incompetence and arrogance is undeserving of my tax dollars. 5500 years old, the tree. Jackasses.

 

Not all field workers want to destroy what they study. When I was doing field work as a geologist, we used 4WD vans and SUVs to slowly wheeze up gravel and rock roads in the Mojave Desert or Great Basin to remote locations and then hiked a day-long loop to gain detail on the available topography, and hopefully use that to understand the geology and thus processes which took place. This is what geologists do. Most people find it really boring. I like hiking, and I find the desert very soothing and restful.

 

Previous generations of geologists had used army surplus jeeps, and before that horseback or even mules since they were sure-footed and wouldn't break a leg, stranding them in the middle of the desert. Desert is where a lot of geology is done, you see. That is why it is full of mines, and not the kind that explode. You can see where the deposits are in the desert, rather than them being covered in kudzu or moss or river. Very important.

 

A few geologists do their work, when well funded by oil companies or gold mines, via helicopter. They spot a position worth investigating from the air, or via aerial photo survey, and get dropped off with a day pack and a radio and bright yellow poncho for signaling. Helps the pilot find you later out on the tundra, where visibility is 180 miles in each direction. Yes, I know that is hard to understand, but the air is just so clear you can see what looks like forever. It's something to really love about the Great North. The thing you don't like about up there is it is hard to sleep. Too bright in the summer, never quite gets dark.

 

I've only heard about geologists trying to work from a mountain bike or a motorcycle, but never actually seen it in person. Part of the problem is the best rocks tend to be up hillsides and cliffs, which means free-climbing them absently, and then your wheels are left behind when you follow it around on foot. I suspect a geologist is capable of losing his vehicle the way we loose canteens and erasers and field note books. We tend to be rather focused.

 

There's a story circulating that during Custer's Last Stand, there were a group of paleotologists below the bluff, excavating a triceratops. The Indians, aggressively at war with White People, left the the scientists alone because of a cultural prohibition against harming shamans and other crazies blessed by the gods with madness. Tapping on rocks was clearly a sign of the gods, after all. They used horses, pack mules, and probably wagons to haul things in and out. In full Victorian dress with ruffles, needlepoint, this season's patterns, and a very couture hat, no doubt. I've been to Wyoming in the summer. Mosquitoes, heat, dust, thunderstorms, downpours, snow flurries, strong wind, rattlesnakes, cattle drives, wild fires, and volcanic spurs sticking out over the rolling terrain. It's a very wild place, extremely scenic and pretty, and surprisingly varied as well. The Big Horn mountains look little like the Wind River Canyon, yet they aren't that far apart. Yellowstone occupies the NW corner of the state, and Grand Teton is south of it. A Rubicon Jeep is completely justified there. Pity that you have to deploy jacks manually. It would be interesting if those stowed and deployed hydraulically, coordinated with the engine, able to pivot under power to help lift the jeep over obstacles. You see a lot of serious 4WD vehicles with manual jacks around here.

See how tall those are? Now, picture all the ways that can slip, and who gets hurt or pinned when it falls. This is why most of those jacks look unmarred, new. No scrapes on their red paint.

 

 

But what will be the vehicle of choice in the future? I suspect a 4WD ATV is a good idea. Those come in various engine sizes, and must be ridden crouched above them like a monkey on a grizzly bear. With proper articulation, these work pretty well on crappy doubletrack, the pattern made from jeeps and trucks on otherwise unfinished dirt roads with grass growing in between. These show up on Tiger files (govt GIS map data), something I hope that modern Geologists and Geographers get to learn about. They're the obvious starting point for your own maps, the base map that Garmin and Magellan use.

 

There is such a thing as Singletrack, btw. Those are deer trails, which can be traversed by expert offroad motorcyclists, mountain bikes, and hikers. Singletrack is expert level trail, requiring very good balance, a light motorcycle with enough torque to lift the front wheel off the ground with the twist of a clutch, and sufficient balance for the rider, at walking speed, to roll it around a tree trunk without falling over. There's even a sport based on this kind of thing, called Trials. Expert competitors on Trials bikes don't even have seats on them.

 

An Enduro bike is typically ideal for Singletrack, and singletrack are the most common natural wildlife trails through the woods. Just be sure to wear armor. I'm pretty sure you need it for good reason because a branch sticking out can spear you, vines can snag your neck, thorns can rip... its dangerous. And even if you cut this stuff back annually, it will grow back next year. In the real world, nature wins. This is a big part of why I laugh so furiously at the conceited jackasses in cities claiming that we're destroying the natural world. 70% of the cut down rainforest is already growing back.

 

I hear good things about KTM motorcycles. If I were rich enough, I'd probably have one. Not sure the engine size. I don't race, I want something reliable and able to go into boonies with good fuel economy and excellent reliability. There's some mountains in California that are too rugged for jeeps, but perfect for bikes. Telescope Peak above Death Valley is accessible from its western slope via a jeep trail, closed by a waterfall. Apparently, you can get past this via motorcycle.

 

There's also a 10,000 year old stone circle on the north end of the Chocolate Mountains, outside the bombing range, that is a national historic site associated with the Carson Indians, probably, who were known for sky worship. Its around 9,000 feet up, near the Arizona border. There's a bunch of roads over and through the White Mountains. There's a bunch more through the mountains around Bodie, north of Mono Lake. A friend of mine got himself stuck driving between the Cinder Cones south of Mono Lake, which taught me two important things: carry proper tools to dig out your vehicle so you don't stay stuck or travel in pairs so the other vehicle can pull you out. There is a loophole for this however. If your vehicle is light enough, you can lift it up by hand. This is another reason to take motorcycles seriously. They can't get stuck. Not like a jeep. You still want to travel in groups, so any falls will provide immediate first aid.

 

There's a number of really interesting mountains and valleys across Nevada I've never visited which would be ideal on a motorcycle since they're much harder to get "stuck", unlike a jeep. In a scientific exploration mode, a bike makes a lot of sense, provided you camp with your gears at a central point, then loop around and back. Or have someone else haul the car camping gear, or stay at motels, which is more comfortable than the woods or desert. Showers are a wonderful thing. 

 

 

When I saw the Big Dog, an engine powered robot using pneumatics and computers to balance and walk I said to myself: someday that will be a useful transportation robot. A friend in computer science suggested a robot Ostrich you ride on via saddle, with the camera and laser sensing head dealing with navigation. If you can protect the optics, great. If you can fuel it and teach it not to trip when running, and able to deal with slippery surfaces which shift or slide or rock under its feet, great. Personally, I suspect the right answer is more legs, possibly some kind of tachikoma setup.

Now, imagine these with gasoline powered engines, knobby tire wheels, computer driven suspension limbs and navigation on par with the best of Boston Dynamics robots and Google-Car, only able to take a field worker to remote sites, largely regardless of terrain, and gathering data at the same time for further mapping via Google Earth and generally adding to the crucial US territory database. It's a geographers and geologists dream for a proper map. Some of our mapping should be done with flying drones, but sometimes you gotta bring the eyes and hands up there to ID the rocks and spot the details. Humans evolved for pattern recognition, and for finding the flaws in the patterns. This is how hunters work. We're the only mammals that go in straight lines. Other mammals travel in curves.

 

Making really good maps is not as exciting as claiming humans are ending the world while sipping organic champagne and free range canapés at high dollar guilt parties hosted by former vice presidents with cult followings organized around the collection of money to do more fund raising. Of course.

 

Geologists and field biologists and even farmers and game wardens would all want these kinds of high mobility vehicles, essentially a jeep with active suspension and self-deploying jacks. So would timber management and fire fighters and search and rescue. A legged all terrain vehicle that can climb cliffs and ford streams and parkour through boulder fields? Hell yes.

I'd far prefer this sort of thing put to useful means rather than smuggling or warfare, though knowing the nature of people, it will be those FIRST. And then deny access to sporting and exploration purposes in order to justify the high budgets for those military funds, while those who chose them get some tasty kickbacks. Corruption is the essential truth of America, kids. There's always a way to corrupt things. And odds are someone is doing so. Just because you don't notice doesn't mean it isn't happening.

 

My suspicion for the next generation of ATVs is experimentation on the Subaru model and lightening it and making it more flexible for terrain. As amphibious boating isn't really important here, since swamps are currently limited, that feature isn't so important. In the Midwest, where Civil Engineers warn that many bridges across the big rivers are on the verge of collapsing like the Twin Cities Bridge (killing several people), amphibious capacity WILL be important after all. Especially since once this drought ends, we'll get flooded like crazy. Because that's how climate actually works, not Doom n' Gloom. Idiots.

 

Adapt and overcome. I see dune buggies around town sometimes. I don't see many sandrails, since we don't have sand dunes, but they're very effective vehicles, which is why the Navy SEALs use them.

In my experience, high center rocks are really common on desert roads, so the ability to lift the chassis over those rocks, or go around them so you don't get stuck, is very important. In the real world, offroading is mostly done around 10-15 mph, not 35 or 40 like you see in films. Offroad driving you are HIGHLY aware that if you get stuck you may have to walk back out to the road, and that you haven't got enough water or supplies to camp or survive for long. That you could die from your own stupidity. If you go into the boonies like an idiot, you will get a Darwin award. I did offroading professionally while GPS mapping for a local govt agency, so our fire fighters could put out stuff like the American River Canyon Fire. My partner in that office was managing that fire last year. In canyon country, like this, wildfires are really quite dangerous, and should not be underestimated. So I've been on many roads, very slowly, and not gotten stuck.

 

So perhaps a variable lift suspension on an ultralight Subaru? I wonder how you would activate that? Or would it be better to improve a sand rail, which is simpler mechanically and lighter weight, from 2WD to 4WD? Tricky, since there's little forward weight on a sand rail. It is all on the back wheels. How do you make that work? Is there a mechanical way to make this work, like a central hydraulic reservoir? Or perhaps an overpressure vessel for the needed torque to power automated jacks, variable suspension lift, and anti-slip differential so it won't just get stuck? There are important aspects to figure out mechanically, and I have to say that I think most probably have been, I'm just unaware of them because the professional 4WD driving I've done was with someone else's truck that I didn't have to fix, so I didn't know how it worked. And now I do want to know, and having just rewatched the Top Gear Bolivia Special, which is about using cheap second-hand 4WD vehicles in proper 4WD terrain through jungle and mountains, it raises a lot of questions. It makes me think. I suspect I should make this a priority study project so I understand how it all works, the same ways I put into prior mechanical studies. Ignorance is expensive, willful ignorance much more so. Best that I figure this out so I can make intelligent decisions. After all, a Subaru is better on superslab concrete roads than a bike is, for comfort and stability.

 

And that might be our future, since fracking will release a lot of unexportable natural gas along with exportable oil. Natural gas can be used to make concrete. This is an efficient way to protect roads, so we still have them, rather than see them erode away into gravel and dirt and vanish altogether. Natural gas may just extend our civilization another 20 years. And we want that, all of us, so that will happen. It gives us time to build the electric trains and solar panels.