Dry, red, lots of merlot and some zinfandel tempranillo, petite verdot, cabernet. Not sure what the 4th grape is. Probably (Petite) Syrah. It's not as stunning as Menage a Trois, but its good. A nice wine to sip. This would be a better wine if the grapes had some sharpness in them. They're all a little too bland. Good, but just a little bland. With development and a more distinctive blending I think this could be a very good wine.
Also: I bought gasoline after 45 days of driving only 5 miles a day (2.5 miles each way), 6 days a week (one day for errands to the grocery store). It was $57 and change. At this rate of 80 cents/day, I'll need to drive for nearly 10 years before a motor scooter makes financial sense. Of course, gasoline prices won't stay at nearly $4/gal for the next 10 years, and while 100 mpg sounds like a lot, because it is, a stronger engine such as found in a Honda CB360 with the disc brake installed would probably suit me better. Its a balance of vintage, slightly more power, bigger wheels, and a better suspension than the MadAss. It would be enough to cruise Hwy 49 if I wanted. Maybe even short bursts of 80 over the sierras back onto Hwy 40 again. I like old 40. Its such a mellow road, running next to the Yuba River on the way up, and the Truckee River on the way down.
One of the reasons I am ready to haul out of here is I keep running into a problem with other people. Their ambitions exceed their abilities, so they cut corners on morality to try and reach their ambitions. This is why people end up committing crimes and going to jail. Desperate people do desperate things. I avoid that because I got taught the lesson about hope always leading to disappointment and despair before I even graduated college. My ambitions are tiny. Almost non-existent.
Ambition is a luxury few can afford.
And that's a real Truth of the modern world.
When I worked at that DNA company, getting poisoned every day, most of the people I worked with were either ambitious beyond their abilities, and hurting everyone around them, or had given up and were protecting what they had, meager and pathetic though it was. This described both managers and workers. The ambitious were dangerous because they would betray a trust to get a minor, tiny, advantage in the workplace and the managers would offer it and rarely reward it because it gave them an edge. They overestimated that edge, however. That's why the place is out of business now, or got bought for its patents and will be shut down shortly, anyway. The new owner doesn't need the building or the sullen overworked employees. They're all getting pinkslips. That's where ambition gets you: fired.
My friend That Guy(tm) says that Advertisers are responsible for the disgusting materialism that fuels ambition because they've had decades to perfect their art and they're very very good at it. I gave up reading gun magazines, for example, because they made me want to buy firearms despite having no proper range to shoot them at. Avoid the advertising, you lose the bad ideas that drive the materialism and ambition. The ambition that poisons your mind and makes you hurt people just to have THINGS. Advertising is about money. In the end, things are about Money too. And getting that Money takes all your time. When you give up Materialism, you get a lot more possibilities in your life, including the possibility or working a job you like that pays less than the one you don't, with lower pay or shorter hours. Its Portlandia, sort of. Trust Babies in Nevada City, probably Hipsters, are all about the Time to party, and work a PT job at most, wander around High the rest of the time, and often stink because they have no fixed address, couch surfing till they wear out their welcome. I suppose you could say they are a sort of anti-Materialism success story, only most are just junkies and die of STDs like that liver infection.
Ambition is a really powerful poison. I'm not very fond of Women's Liberation, coming as it did during my Puberty. Liberation made women largely indifferent towards men except as sperm donors and child support sources who get none of the benefits of parenthood, just its costs. Its made men bitter and angry, and Liberation more than anything else is responsible for destroying my culture for good. Rich men get Russian Mail order brides. Liberation never hit Russia. A Russian woman knows she's a sex toy and never tries to be anything else. This is what successful men want. Liberated women who get successful whine they can't find successful men to want them. Duh! If you want a happy marriage, you shouldn't have voted for Liberation.
Unsuccessful men either get Asian women or angry because white women hate white men today. I seriously considered an Asian girlfriend but she said I was too old. Marriage is over. My culture is going extinct. The Mexicans will have America for themselves in a generation because they don't have Women's Lib, and they still get married and have proper families. That other culture in America, Liberal Socialism? AIDS. Staying here in post-prosperity America with a socialist mindset but no white liberals to pay for it? Yeah, that will end in fire and blood. I won't be here to see it. I expect collapse before then. Without insulin, a post-collapse luxury I probably can't afford, I'll be dead. So may as well live in a trailer and keep fleeing the riots and finger pointing and Spanish I can't speak, Catholicism I don't believe in, and the final extermination of the pale skinned people like me. Grim? Probably. Wrong? I don't think so.
The women up here are mostly white, like me, but are largely divided between Cheaters, Druggies, and Ambitious but Misplaced. My ex was a cheater. I want no part of that. Druggies are worse than useless, and often diseased. No thank you. The Ambitious people around here will leave. There's no jobs for ambitious people, for people who want a future and are willing to work for it. They have to flee for better economies. The folks with money around here are just enjoying their twilight years, waiting to die. They don't invest in jobs. They don't care about the future. They have always been Narcissists and will die that way too. When they're gone, I imagine their homes will burn in the next fire. What's the point of mansions when there's no jobs to pay the mortgage?
How do you pay for this with 28% unemployment?
Part of the problem with Ambition is the educational system is a Con. Older generations wrapped in Narcissism and drug abuse tell their kids "study whatever, the money will follow". Wrong. Dead wrong. Parents from the last 3 generations FAIL miserably at wisdom or guidance. They were terrible human beings who destroyed the future. We should stop being so polite to them, or at least remember everything coming out of their months is guided by essential Narcissism. I got that same poor guidance from my own parents, who had a good laugh at my employment prospects when the bottom dropped out of Govt Funded Research Geology. Thank you, Southern Bastard.
Left with nothing but my wits and the unintended education I managed to wrench out of my crappy Liberal Arts college of idiocy, I survived by doing what I must. But it hasn't been a happy life. Nearly every piece of advice or knowledge elder generations have passed to me turned out to be wildly wrong. I feel a great degree of contempt for them. I look forward to the obituary notices. Their Ambition was to destroy America. They have succeeded.
I can't help but wonder if China will invade once Fracking the Monterey Formation gets underway, and the pipeline to carry the oil is finished? It would be their style. They'll probably just buy all the operations and move in their own people, all very legal, and then sell the oil under contract back to China, leaving little or nothing behind. If California really is the next Saudi Arabia, thanks to Fracking, then its not a safe place to be. Places with oil get invaded, abused, suppressed, and genocide follows. If we can't get to the oilfields armed well enough to force them out, we can't exactly stop them. The Chinese army and Air Force will just slaughter us like animals. We're so obsessed with our water quality we can't attack the pipelines for fear of spills. Californians will end up like MEND in the Niger Delta. Man that's funny. It's what I would do if I were an Evil Overlord. That was how I predicted the decisions of my last employer you know. I just imagined I was evil and described what I would do, and that was how they decided everything. There was a good reason they didn't replace all the broken crap. They just wanted to sell the company. And they did.
This is the Real California. Narcissism personified. This is where untethered ambition leads. Death. I think I'll leave California when I hear China buys up the Fracking companies. They'll probably buy the pipelines, or setup shipping so that only their contract ships can use the ports, and then oil stops being a fungible product and becomes a controlled substance. Letting China control California's oil is too much influence in genocidal hands. It is the likely and probable outcome of oil here, however. This is China's century. We are on the way out. The rest of the world is kidding itself that China will respect their rights to exist. Genocide is far too easy an answer when you have 70 million unmarried men with no prospects and the options to enact compulsory military service on the whim of the People's Chairman. Think about that. Multiply those teeming millions of testosterone fueled anger with Predator drones and unmanned helo gunships controlled by AIs and remote viewing? Egads! Nowhere is safe. China's ambition is to make the world Chinese by owning everything and killing everyone not Chinese. Naturally they deny this, but that's not exactly an unusual claim from a growing military power. I wonder how long before the Chinese demand concessions from the USA and get allowed Naval bases here for their warships? Its what the USA did to Italy, Britain, Japan, the Philippines. How long before a world power like that gets a legal military foothold here? Maybe a base so they can refuel, then escort their tankers back to Shanghai? It would follow. That's Ambition too. We're kidding ourselves to think otherwise.
So where do you fall in this mess? When China takes California for its oil, and nobody has jobs to pay taxes and the roads are dust and weeds, what then? What will you do? Where's your Dream now?
I am a writer. That's my calling. I write fiction and these articles. I don't write fiction often anymore, but I used to do my college homework, then spend the next 4 hours writing a chapter for my latest book. I did that for years till college ended and the urge to write went away. I would have kept at it if I'd figured out how to get PAID to write, but the paper-based publishing industry in New York? They're self defeating jackasses who despise and act like French waiters to writers they depend on for something to publish. No writers means no publishing. When e-publishing became a thing I did it, of course I put it on the Web before you could charge for that so I'll never get paid for what I already wrote. I would have to write new things. Book publishers deserve to suffer, and they do. E-pub just needs a server, not a printing press in Korea or 2 years of excuses. E-pub is instantaneous. They mocked me when I told them that. Turns out I was right. Music downloads well exceed CD sales. Web pages have done a good job killing magazines. Novels are written and published, often free, online. Who needs print anymore? Besides, $3000 royalty advance divided by 2 years of labor writing and trying to get it published is a tenth of a cent an hour. Who works for that? How dare the industry claim they're enriching writers? Its utter BS. So to hell with them. This is why writing is a Calling, not a Career. It doesn't pay.
I am also a geologist. Even though I have never worked as one, though I have worked as a cartographer, just not a geologist. I would still love to work as a geologist. I am a Lumper, not a Splitter, so I prefer an overview of what I'm looking at rather than infinite division, a reason why splitters get jobs in research and lumpers don't. In the right circumstances, I would work as a geologist even when I'm old and grey. I hate the sea, I love the deserts. I like seafood, but I also like steak and the smell of sagebrush and trout caught in a trickling stream flowing out of the eastern Sierras. Obviously, this means 395 (Hwy 395) is the place for me. I like June Lake and Bishop best. Those are beautiful places, with fantastic views, good fishing, and very peaceful. The tourists come cycling through on weekends or during holiday weeks, mostly up from LA. The air is clean in Bishop, and its got 13,000 high mountains on either side, so when the sun sets, it doesn't get dark for a couple more hours and you can watch the shadow climb up White Mountain to its 14,028 foot peak, capped by snow even in the summer.
In Big Pine, the next small town south of Bishop, there's a turnoff for the pass to the East, Westgaard, which at the top of the pass has a turnoff to the north which climbs to 10,000 feet to reach the Bristlecone Pine Forest, the oldest living things on Earth. The Methusaleh Tree was accidentally killed by a Botany PhD student who was taking a core sample. He drilled through the only living part of the tree. 5,000 years killed by arrogance and ignorance. He really should have known better. The trees are ancient because they are in really poor soil and get very little rain, so they evolved to just barely cling to life on top of that mountain ridge, overlooking some important and spectacular geology in Deep Springs Valley, to the Southeast.
It was in Westgaard Pass that I began to envy motorcyclists. I saw a bevy of young men on Ninja sport bikes racing up the pass, weaving through the S-turns in primary colors, buzzing merrily, and down the far side where they clearly hit 100 mph on the straight, heading for the Nevada border. Beautiful. A 600cc inline 4 Ninja is a race bike with just the right amount of power to weight ratio to haul a normal sized man, my size, to faster than he'd ever think possible on 2 wheels. It was seeing this, back in college while hauling a trailer full of camping gear and food for a geology field trip I was cooking for, that I came to understand why people ride dangerous motorcycles and what they see in it. I have since refined that interest to Vintage bikes, as I prefer to go faster than a bicycle but slower than a race bike because when you go fast, you don't see much more than the road in front of you. I doubt those young men even noticed the Poleta Folds they tore past, or realized they missed the turnoff for the oldest trees in the world. They were in a hurry to keep the adrenaline going. Understanding that I like the scenery is why I later realized that a scooter or a vintage bike was the answer for me.
Later I found out the Routing Problem, in that most of the Rides you can take require you to either get on and off the freeway, needing 70 mph minimum or be killed, or you have to go WAY out of your way to get around it. Up here in the Sierras, its hard to get around I-80. The sections of Old Hwy 40 was broken, and there are miles where you better be fast or you get dead from the person behind you running you down. This means a tiny 250 cc bike isn't good enough for many rides. Around here, I need a 500cc bike to climb highway 20 and then I-80 so I can get to Truckee and the many turnoffs. This is certainly possible. The new Honda CBR500F would do that just fine. And its got enough cowlings to warp the wind for stability through the fast bits. Probably. The wind does GUST hard through Donner Pass and the highway tends to funnel the gusts to the point that it can be interesting in a car with proper aerodynamics. It might be dangerous on a bike. Not that I need a new bike to climb the mountain or maintain proper speed on I-80. Any older and cheaper 600cc or 750cc bike you can think of would also work. The downside with fast bikes is you HAVE TO go farther to find the peaceful place in your mind from moving. I have noticed that about motorcyclists. They ride at the speed the bike can do till they're tired and exhausted, physically. Then they stop, get a room and a beer and a meal and have some laughs. Get up in the morning, get a leisurely breakfast and roar home again, perhaps a bit slower. That's why the Harley riders roll into town and park on Broad Street. Mixing with the Hipsters, the Hippies, and the Junkies.
The woman I wanted to hike with at work is pretty busy. Nicole hasn't had any time on the weekends so we haven't hiked yet. I suspect raising a child pretty well ruins any hope of time for yourself. While I was asking the generalized question of "Are we Hipsters?" of my coworkers, she denied this. Despite tattoos and weird vehicles, a high heel shoe collection in the dozens, she's working two jobs and saving for retirement aggressively, and owns land in Hawaii. Land she plans to build her retirement home on someday. I hope that works out for her. Hawaii is expensive, but if you're perpetually cold like she is, its a good place to stay warm. Post-oil, Hawaii will have a serious population crash, and its far enough off the beaten track it needs to farm its food supply or perish like Easter Island. She's lived in Hawaii before so its probably a great place for her. She asked our coworker to help fix her daughter's bike, so perhaps she and her daughter will go up to Truckee River like I did with Dad last weekend. I hope she has a good time. I offered to sell her the spare mountain bike. Its not fancy or light, but it is cheap and has a full suspension. She could ride with her daughter and not have to make excuses. For someone who exercises as much as she does, that would make sense.
I am not particularly cold, and I can take the heat, dry heat, the cold of frosty mountain mornings, and the altitude, and the dust doesn't bother me. I like the sharp dry air, and the chilly wet air. I like trout and sagebrush and I'm not intimidated by the tiny high desert rattlesnakes that look like 7 inch worms. Allegedly they get bigger but I've never seen one. I'd retire to Bishop if I could. They have really nice bungalows in town which are perfect for my needs and if I get an Enduro bike to putter around on the dirt roads running everywhere, I have it covered. Its not a completely rational place to live, being loved by Angelinos and ignored by NorCal since its on 395 far south of Carson City and the Walker River, so too far for a NorCal vacationer. If the hurricanes come back, there will be a lot more summer rain falling in the desert, including there, and the extra water will make the place bloom again. I'd love to see those dry lakes stay wet. Eventually all that salt will dissolve. It has nowhere to go, true, being internal drainage in the Great Basin, but sometimes there's a downstream, and it might end up in LA, which would make me laugh pretty hard.
My new coworker Kate likes hiking too. "Who doesn't?" she asked. Good question. Kate is working hard to find a way to use her degree, a Masters in International Marketing. This is tricky since our job only really sells domestically, to rich hippies and shop keepers smart enough to know that good smells make window shoppers come in and buy something. Hey, it works. The rich hippies are more of a mystery. Why do they exist? And for how long, since hippies are the very definition of Irrational. The Hipsters are more rational than hippies, and hipster priorities are codepency and trust funds, followed by rejection of solutions in favor of looking different. They do have upsides. They are re-examining old technology, like a sort of low tech steampunk with basic mechanical and electrical ability. They're history rhyming rather than repeating. Cyberpunks like me refused labels too, 20 years ago.
I need new hiking boots. My $30 hiking shoes from last October are wearing out pretty bad, mostly on the inside. Laces, linings. Replacement is not expensive. Maybe Saturday I'll do that. I haven't asked yet, but perhaps Kate will have more time to actually hike rather than vague promises.
I've asked her what she wants to do with her Masters degree. Kate wants to farm. Wants to buy land and farm. Thinks California is too expensive for that. She may be right, but I think the decision is hasty. The thing about farming is there's many places to do it, and many techniques and crops you can grow that will pay the bills. Its all about inputs and yields, and not overwhelming your time with stuff that doesn't pay. Doing the math, and leaving a margin for unexpected problems, is important. Getting off the beaten track, and having either irrigation rights or a well or both, those are key. Soil can be improved. And there are crops to grow while that happens too. Eventually California is going to be mostly farms, like England. We'll use our water over and over, and purify it each time, before releasing it to the sea. The impurities will be sold too. Eventually we'll have cheap desalination and water pumps to recharge our aquifers and provide for coastal irrigation for farms there too. Farming has a bright future here. The questions are how do you do it without going bankrupt, and how do you grow crops without taking hard losses sometimes. Not easy questions to answer. Not at all. Someday there will be mining operations pulling the Phosphorus from the mud below the Mississippi river in the Gulf of Mexico. Mining mud. Crucial for life, mud. Without phosphorus we die. Adenosine Tri Phosphate is our energy. Calcium Phosphate is our bones. So yeah, mining the mud is a career path someday. The upside of desalination is we can pull the phosphorus from sea water too.
Kate got her bike because she was thinking of biking down the mountain from Cedar Ridge to work, similar to my own commute just from the South rather than North. Same elevation change too. Trouble is, the route is narrow, twisty, treed, full of blind corners, and not terribly safe for a cyclist. I got all those lights on my bike so I'd be visible, but my commute is straight and wide so there's good visibility. But her ride home is a lot of climbing through narrow and twisty and you're likely to be hit by a car. That's no good. I've asked if she wants to bring the bike over and we can fix it up in Dad's garage. Probably take an hour for basics, two hours to do it right. I don't know the extent of the rust. I've got all the tools, though. I encouraged her, and I'm responsible for helping her get it working. If she doesn't ride it to work, that's fine. She can ride it for fun at Truckee River trail like I did last week. Good fun.
I am mechanically inclined. Not as much as my Dad, but enough. Bicycles are easy. I like technology I can understand. Every part on a bicycle makes sense. That's elegance of design. I really appreciate that. There's so much kludged together crapola in the world. It's why I like Vintage motorcycles. They are elegant. I don't yet appreciate Enduro bikes. Too much of them wears out, is cheap and expected to break and be replaced. I dislike that part of them. They weren't made to last. When I see rebuilt Yamaha 650s like the Deus Bali or this SR400TT:
Look at it. Nothing wasted. It is beautiful and simple and light. This is a machine of loving grace.
It seems I'll be going by Cedar Ridge this morning for a super-yard sale by rich people. Bring cash, buy stuff. Might want to stop by the cash machine in case I find anything extra good. Not sure if there's things I'd really want, but I should look, just the same. Might find something to replace something needing it. Or maybe a coffee machine since I've discovered Kate gets funny (snarky) when wired on caffeine. When you work with only two people in a carriage house the size of a 1 and a half-car garage, anything to make it comfy is important. Having to dodge each other so there's no bumping or injuries is key. Making that closeness fun and cheerful is really important to being happy at work. I play lots of music like this:
Since the neighbors at the Hairdresser salon next door complained about parking, and claimed their employees aren't parking there (they are, they take our spaces sometimes), we're trading off parking elsewhere on the 3-days a week there's 3 of us instead of 2. I'm going to bike to work on Mondays. It's the Summer now, being June, so provided I don't fall over and rip up my knees and elbows again, that should be just fine. All that exercise, and we're expecting 93'F Monday. Good times.
Honda has gone and made a weird Monkey Bike, which is a small motorcycle with small scooter wheels. Its called Grom. Grom is urban slang for a surfer who is under 15 years old. The bike is a 125cc, fuel injected engine, dry weight of 225 pounds. It costs $3K new, coming out in August. The interesting bit is the 12 inch wheels have fat tires and long suspension so it can take bumps. The seat height is under 30 inches, so it will work for short people, even girls. It has scooter fuel economy, but doesn't look like a scooter. It is less nerdy and less gay than a scooter. I have seen several people cruising through town on monkey bikes, not like this, probably older versions that are restored to running condition.
Honda Rebel
What do I think of it? I'd rather ride a cruiser than the Grom, like an old Honda Rebel 250 (234cc) with its crappy drum brakes, and butt-hurting seat. A used Ninja 250 is better than that in most ways. I saw a used Ninja 650 missing its plastics in the parking lot Wednesday, near the UPS store. Somebody must have laid it down and the cowlings cost as much as the bike does. Total ripoff. Replacements cowlings to cover the critical ugly bits in metal that look good would sell.
I once had a dream of riding a Cafe Racer version of the Triumph Bonneville through Eastern Washington's apple orchards. They're pretty, grown up bikes capable of speed and proper style, which is something worth the money. Or I could pay $4500 for a bike such as a TU250. I am not ready for real power. I could easily see myself twitching the power at the wrong time and ending up in a bad place.
Still, the Grom is interesting. I can see there would be lots of people who would buy it as a fun machine to get around town with. It's certainly better than scooters. I don't think I would want one, however. The roads are too rough. I liked the MadAss for its 16 inch wheels, which are a far better protection from potholes and such, which a Monkey Bike would stumble over its own tires and dump you. I would not enjoy that. On flat roads and good pavement? The Grom would be great. Down in the Valley there will likely be many buyers.
I still see lots of people on Scooters with smaller wheels than that (10" is standard for Vespa and many others), commuting across town. And I totally get that people can ride them safely. I just would rather have something with bigger wheels that rides more like a bicycle, like I'm used to. I'm really used to the 26" wheels of my commuter/mountain bike. Standard wheels are 17" for street bikes and 19" to 23" for Enduro/dual-sport bikes. Big wheels go through messy roads a lot better. The physics support it. The angles are gentler.
Considering a dual sport is probably the right machine for me in the long run, even though they're ugly as sin, I will probably eventually get one of those, with both sets of wheels and tires and progressive shock suspension. Perhaps a model with an engine balancer so it is smooth but retains the torque advantage of a single. I may have to do without. I have learned, by observation, that 600 cc engines are much quieter than expected. I know I would HATE a loud engine. That has got to be really annoying after a while. The Suzuki DRZ-400 is a popular dirt bike, and comes available with a Supermoto version. Downside is its $7K.
If I were to choose a sport bike, the Honda CB500F is 471cc, liquid cooled, $5500 and will climb the mountains at freeway speed. Important if you want to go to Tahoe for a good long ride around the lake. As Lake Tahoe is only 70 minutes away, that's a legitimate consideration. However a bike that takes more than 5 minutes to warm up is one I'd only ride on the weekends. While I saw a bunch of people on Hogs, I also spotted a guy on a Suzuki Bandit 600 at the old Donner Pass overlook. Nice looking bike. Good size and shape, really looked well balanced and agile. If I lived further out of town that would be a nice commuter.
Kawasaki Super Sherpa
Most of my motorcycling interests are local commuting to work and back, however. The $1000 beat up air-cooled bike that works reasonably well is probably more my speed. Maybe a used Honda 230CRL, lowered enough I can plant my feet. Or perhaps a Kawasaki Super Sherpa. Those are famously good bikes. I don't see them for sale used much, actually. Even stronger recommendation isn't it? I wonder if I could get an old Suzuki DR350? Mondo Enduro rode those around the world and found parts everywhere. They were a good choice.
There is one of these in town, as someone's daily rider.
Really, I can see a real market for light 110-250cc bikes that are designed for city streets with crappy pavement. Bikes with an upright riding position comfortable for beginners. There are a few of those in town, actually. Even a 110cc would be better than pedalling up that mountain. Bikes are great when you have hours to recover. Not when you have to work when you arrive, or after having worked a full shift. Then they're just not much fun. Maybe the Hipsters are right? Get a Honda 360, dress down, don't waste money, be a sort of lower-key Libertine and extend the pleasures of life rather than race for prison like the idiots in Oakland. Hipsters ride the old bikes. They buy used airstream trailers and restore them. Cheaper than rent or buying a house in a flood zone. Taxes rise too much? Move somewhere else. Voting with your feet, and taking your home with you. This is what Socialism has driven us to. We're all getting poorer. So yeah, maybe the Hipsters are right.
This is probably the right bike for me. Kawasaki GTO 110.
Take your Materialism and crippling debt and shove it. The dream of the 90's is alive in Portland (and Nevada City if they ever get enough part time jobs to support the existing trust baby population).
Something like that. This is the horror awaiting the Baby Boomers retirement funds, and the Socialists with their Totalitarian dreams. They wanted us to be good slaves, working away to make a more terrifying future of Big Brother, but nobody cares enough to make it happen. Are we working too hard? Are the hipsters right to just do as little as possible so they can hang out in coffee shops and complain about not being taken seriously? I wonder.
So it seems there's a push to start fracking (hydraulic fracturing) the Monterey Shale here in California. On one hand, that would mean a huge oil boom, and extend the duration of California's wealth. On the other hand, Frakking is known to cause all sorts of unintended consequences, including natural gas leaks into the groundwater, getting into private wells, causing tap water to burn.
I doubt we can afford to ignore it. We need the oil to keep the water flowing, the lights on, and pay for installing cheap solar everywhere. Cheap solar isn't FREE after all. Were I the governor, I would be insisting on first repairing levies, so we don't have a flood disaster of Biblical proportions, intentional flooding of certain areas as a stopgap measure, then start deliberate clearing of sediment from reservoirs so they will work as flood control, during late summer when water levels are lower. I would insist on restoring the campgrounds and plant sport fish (trout) into rivers and lakes so California would be a good fishing spot again (there's a LOT of tourism associated with that and resorts are a better occupation than Welfare).
I would also get projects to inject clean water into salt infiltrated coastal ground water and using cheap solar and cheap desalination so the coasts recover from a century of abuse by all the rich jacka55e5. And I'd make sure the idiots living there paid for it. Coastal living is very expensive. Nobody who enjoys the benefits should get a free ride on my tax dollar. But they'll find a way not to. The work still needs to be done. I'm sick to death of people in govt who can't think beyond their next election. Protecting the state for future generations is going to be hard, not easy. Most of this recovery could be paid for with oil money from the Monterey Shale.
We have to boost tourism for the long run, and that means you have to keep the state clean and pretty. Nobody wants to stay in a dirty Motel room with noise and no view. People who want that go to Vegas. Here in California, pretty motels in scenic towns means jobs cleaning them in rural scenic towns. Pretty motels also means cute restaurants next door and down the street, and jobs at those restaurants. But you have to have a reason to stay there.
Before the Pike, Hwy 70 through the Northern Sierra was Trout fishing heaven. It's still listed that way in older books. My family used to go up there in the summertime, for a good long week of rest and recuperation. I still have a fishing pole, somewhere, that we bought at the local sporting goods and grocery store in Portola. You were sure to catch trout in Lake Davis, and any section of the Feather river, right up until around 1990. It was a great place to go for vacation. Very safe, very clean, anywhere you stopped would treat you well and the food was good. Most restaurants would cook your trout for you for a modest fee, and provide the first class restaurant experience as well. Trout Almondine is delicious. So is cornmeal crusted. Good times, good memories. So why am I talking about it like its past tense?
Around 1990, Nothern Pike got planted by some eco-terrorist, and not the defending but the destructive kind, they ate the trout, bred like crazy, and the last 25 years of attempts to kill them off, with poison, shocks, explosions, gas poisoning, draining the lake: none of it worked. Their eggs are lodged in the mud and nothing kills them off. The Feather River was a success story that went very wrong thanks to one evil bastard who wanted to catch Northern Pike instead of trout. Around 70,000 people lost their jobs and homes. Its not like a Fire, where you can rebuild. There's no insurance coverage for eco terrorism. All the resorts closed, with the exception of the ones focused on Golf. Most of the hotels, the restaurants followed. Lots of people moved up to there to retire in the late 1980's. Before the pike, it was a lovely place with happy families, the train moving through along the river, and thousands of fishing resorts and campground. Its very safe with clean water, clean air, and peace.
With no trout, the resorts closed. With no fishermen, the campgrounds fell apart. With no trout, there were no tourists. This is something which must be fixed. And not just there, but elsewhere. Killing off the pike eggs in the sediments at the bottom of Lake Davis will require a lot more brute force. Maybe even permanently drain the lake, just to be sure. Its going to cost a lot of money. There are other places in California where things went really wrong and cleanup is needed. The North Coast, dependent on Salmon Fishing, destroyed when the Peripheral Canal was built, killing the newly hatched salmon, but supplying water to San Jose and Los Angeles, freeing them up from using Colorado River water whose demand was violating a treaty with Mexico. They built a nuclear powerplant just to desalinate water so it would reach the legal requirement when the river hit the border. Even so, it was mostly underground by that point and illegals could cross the river without getting their feet wet. And whom did that water help? American farmers who owned the Mexican land. All that money spent to make them richer. Getting LA out of the Colorado river, required NorCal's water supply, and killing off the salmon didn't matter to the movie stars who benefitted from it. They've never been short of hypocrisy. Woody Harrelson stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge 20 years ago to protest for Earth First, an anti-logging hate group that killed loggers and destroyed families in order to "save" trees which ended up cut down anyway. The logging was increasingly mechanized and eventually the jobs were lost, at which point the hate group of eco-terrorists found someone else to harm. The families on the North Coast? Terribly wronged. LA took their fish, so they lost their boats and went bankrupt. Some suicided. Are lives only important when those dying aren't poor white people? They turned to logging, and terrorists from Berkeley killed them with impugnity, ignoring the harm they caused and pretended they were "warriors". I felt glad when that b17ch0 died in her own bombed out car in SF. Would have been better to get shredded by a saw blade like most of her victims, but her cultists liked to pretend she never gave that speech on local TV about how it was justified to kill loggers to save the trees. Which grow back.
Do those eco terrorists plant trees and stop erosion? Do they help the salmon return so the coastal population can have legal jobs? Do they really care about anything but their own narrow violence? NOPE. They found other people to attack and murder.
I do not like Earth First. I went to college with the surviving children of the murdered. They like Earth First even less. Will Earth First blow up frakking rigs once this starts? Yep. There's no shortage of arrogant haters at Berkeley. They don't see the big picture. They see a chance to piss off Mommy and Daddy and get negative attention. That's how they were in the 90's. They'll be the same pricks today.
I've done basic lab research on the Monterey Shale back in college. Its an oil shale. You can smell it. Runs up and down the California coast, but turns underground, gets cut through by volcanoes and faults, and runs across the Central Valley well underground. There's a lot of oil in there. Trapped. A pretty ideal example of where Frakking would do some good, assuming it can be done safely with just water, no contaminants left underground.
California needs this money, and this energy will let us tell Saudi Arabia where it can get off. It's enough money we can stop paying any attention to DC. They do NOTHING for us anyway. Drilling the wells for frakking is jobs. Maintaining the jack-pumps is jobs. Harvesting and routing and storing the natural gas is more work, more jobs, and more savings. California could use some good news. What's more? The areas in yellow above are mostly empty, so real estate is cheap, and fixing up the houses will be yet more jobs. Restarting the schools for the worker's kids is jobs for teachers, hopefully capitalists instead of commies, since Capitalism will be paying the taxes, not Kumbayah and hand holding. Find a balance between the energy money and restoring our tourism for the future, long term. Do what the arabs utterly failed to do: give their people a future without bombs in the market place. We need a future.
We tried the centrallized Modernist approach last century. That gave us National Socialism, World War, Stalin, pogroms and purges and ethnic cleansing. The Military Industrial Complex. Too many madmen with too many loyal killers. We tend to ignore our own evils in that, but we shouldn't. America's biggest export is weapons.
Our next biggest export is food. Rice, wheat, corn, soy beans are the big ones. We feed the world, and some of our shady agribusiness men buy up entire country's crops and burn them, then sell hybrid seeds at twice the price just to insure that the local farmers have to buy them every year. It drives them out of business, and makes those nations dependent on US grain exports. We have a bad crop? Those countries starve, and starvation drives war or revolution. Maybe the new govt of those countries will have better credit and more naive fools to be manipulated with underhanded corrupt practices. Nasty.
The oil is going away. Not instantly, obviously, but it is going away. I just finished watching the Formula One Grand Prix of Monaco, live. Woke up at 5 AM to see the parade lap and the race. Back in the early 1900's, car racing was a big deal. People with horse and buggy, or even those newfangled bicycles, would ride out to the race track, usually dirt on really bad soil left fallow, and watch the race. The fuel for the cars was hauled in by wagon, much like the cars themselves. Racing has always been both sport and entertaining show. It remains such. The one F1 race to see, if you see only one, is Monaco, running today. The one Indycar race to see is the Indianapolis 500, also running today in an hour from now. Sadly, Indy is not really as polished or exciting as F1 so I pretty much stopped watching it after they removed the Turbochargers. When they sounded like Nascar I was outta there. Its like watching High School Football. F1 is professional and very competitive.
Even when the oil goes away, I still expect to see F1 continue, and be broadcast in HD, even if the fans get there by bicycle and streetcar and scooter. The winner of today's race in Monaco actually lives in town, so he slept in his own bed last night and rode a scooter to the paddock, put on his race suit, and eventually won the race. He'll probably get a lift home, thanks to all the parties, but it would amuse me to learn he'll just scooter to those as well. In Monaco, the streets are very narrow, very twisty, and very steep in many cases. Perfect place for a scooter.
Make tens of millions a year as a race car driver? Rides a scooter because they're fun. We can tell ourselves we don't need scooters or bubble cars in America, because we have the wide open road. And we're delusional, trapped in the past, and unable to cope with reality. We have entire generations raised with Entitlement complexes, and many of those people have already killed, and be jailed or killed in return, to keep that just a little longer.
Our overseas invasions aren't about stopping terrorism, since every bomb we drop and bullet that hits a bystander makes more enemies. We're overseas killing people because its our delusion that we're World Police. At some point, we'll run out of the fuel to even do that, and then those terrorists will come HERE. Like the Chechens in Boston, blowing up marathons. Perhaps they'll go after shopping malls, farmers markets, sniping movie stars on Rodeo Drive or bomb some Broadway play full of New York intelligentsia. Its the sort of Nightmare scenario that Homeland Security is failing to prevent. Every dollar we spend on Middle Eastern oil is a dollar that funds terrorism. And we can't get by without it. Not without huge changes in how we live, how we appreciate time, what jobs we do, and what risks we take.
Tahoe and Truckee are really beautiful this time of year. Hell, they're beautiful most of the year. Living there is miserable in the winter unless you ski, and even then the black ice is expensive in car repairs. Still, imagine post oil. Tourist trains disgorging skiers, trams running back and forth to the resorts. That only works if there's enough skiers to pay for it all, and the more it costs, the fewer can afford to come, or less often.
A sport can die out if its too pricey. Its not like F1, which can be held on any bits of reasonably smooth paved roads, even city streets. Monaco is streets. So is Montreal in 2 weeks. If the race is in your town or on the air, great, watch it. If its something you have to do personally to enjoy, like skiing? Well, that's a bigger expense and one maybe not justifiable with a modest post-oil minimum wage job and no career prospects thanks to the collapse of manufacturing.
When the Levies Break (so does your head), we'll have prime bass fishing territory in Lake Sacramento. I suspect that people will fish and do water sports and hunt geese and ducks rather than climb up those mountains for a literal fortune in fuel, at least until cheap solar powers the trains again. Even then, tough argument. Will people give up skiing and go bass fishing instead? Maybe sailing through the various sloughs in small dingies? Rowing? I could see it.
Bicycle tourism? Absolutely. I just got back from some of that up to Lake Tahoe. Lots of families out doing it. Fun times. Rode on Mom's restored 1970's Peugeot bicycle, which is, despite being named for a low quality car, a high end racing bicycle. We keep it under the house with the garden tools. On the relatively flat and gentle inclines of the trail, I made good time upriver the 4-5 miles to Tahoe City on Lake Tahoe. Dad and I got lunch at the Bridge Tender Bar and Grill. They were doing outdoor services today, but it was chilly so we ate near the bar inside where it was warm instead. It was breezy and almost cold during the ride. There were hundreds of bicyclists out today. Had a burger, fries, diet Pepsi, biked back after a brief stop at the lake to just stare at the huge majesty of the thing.
Lake Tahoe, May 26th 2013
Lake Tahoe is huge, but you can clearly see across it. It's a lake. Not a sea. And it has more water in it than the Great Lakes combined. The Great Lakes are quite shallow. Tahoe is deep. The river flowing out of it is over half of Reno's water supply, btw. The remainder are other tributaries of the Truckee River, such as the Little Truckee River north of Truckee (the town).
Also: I have a wine recommendation. It's Barefoot Cellars Impressions Red blend. It's similar to Menage a Trois, but half the price. Not quite as sharp a blend so not ideal but close, and a better table wine than many at the $7 price. I think I will drink this again.
Bicycles were very popular sporting tourism in 1900-1920's. They were new technology then, and were part of the exercise craze that comes and goes. Before cars, they would let you see the countryside without the trouble and stink of staring past a horse's behind. With modern bicycles and smooth pavement, they remain such. After pavement, they'll be slower going, but still better than horses. They're a lot less trouble. And don't cost you money when you aren't using them, or require a veterinarian or dentist. Anyway, I'm tired now. Cheers.
