I'm a scifi writer. I have seven novels to my name. They are okay, but never made me any money. I don't like space operas, beyond their purely visual thrill. They aren't science. When you do the math on C (speed of light), all your dreams of conquering space? Destroyed. If you're the least bit realistic, C wrecks any value in space exploration beyond its trite silliness, pictures of the surface of the moon or Mars, some satellite passes of Jupiter's Moons. Its pretty, but really, space is not very useful beyond astronomy observations helping high energy physics. Space is entertainment with occasional science and profound boredom most of the time.
When Star Trek announced that Space is the Final Frontier, we were just starting the Vietnam War and hadn't yet been defeated by a third world country with IEDs and shitty commie rifles and human wave attacks. We still thought Manifest Destiny was a Thing. It wasn't. Evidence proved that thought very wrong. When we fled Vietnam, we ended Star Trek for the next 20 years and numerous re-runs got us Jean Luc Picard and the following series' of Star Trek before it was destroyed utterly by Scott Bakula and the terrible writers of his series. Space is NOT the final frontier.
Africa is. Africa is a difficult place to civilize, not just because the population has really no interest in wasting their time with YET ANOTHER con man trying to get them to work for free on another attempt at civilizing the Dark Continent, as described by Josef Conrad in Heart of Darkness aka Apocalypse Now, we'll almost certainly finish smoothing over the roughness in South America, paving its roads, installing its drainage grates and putting in those little signs "Drains to Sea, be kind to fishes!" they put on grates here. Even with the tons of radioactive water flowing through Fukushima's basement every day and the six winged butterflies and 5 eyed fish in the sea right outside the leaking nuclear reactors reminiscent of a Simpson's episode polluting the Pacific sea life and making sushi a tad more risky than before, even then, Africa is the final frontier.
Africa is very difficult, and offers many promises. It used to be half of South America. That's not an exaggeration. The Congo basin is the Amazon Basin. The continents split hundreds of millions of years ago. The central lake drained, leaving the big river basins.
Africa is difficult. The people don't want to give up their freedom or rights or do anything at all like work if they can keep living easy and dying young. They don't care that much. They are like Russians, in their indifference to death.
In Africa, you can still get eaten by a crocodile getting water for the day at the local river. This would be easy to prevent with a hose, much less actual water treatment plant, pipes etc, but Africans would rather die than pay for that. So they do. Naturally, there are countries with water treatment plants in their cities, and not every river has crocodiles, but still, this remains a realistic cause of death. How do you civilize a continent like that? Now throw in their casual approach to HIV and you're dealing with a continent intent on dying off. While China is there now, the rest of the world is sort of ... watching them end. The Muslims in Saharan Africa can't seem to stop the violence, which isn't any good for stability either, and will cost them dearly at the negotiating table later. Africa is the Final Frontier because it refuses to civilize, not due to its animals or lands but due to its people. It is the people who are the main obstacle to modernization. Why? Because they're been exploited and betrayed so many times, for most of a thousand years, that they just want nothing to do with foreigners. Trouble is, it isn't up to them. The world is coming in, whether they like it not. It is not a Democracy. It's Capitalism. Even the Chinese are playing Capitalism. You really can't stop that by doing the "talk to the Hand" gesture of contempt. They'll just shoot you, or mace you because you aren't worth the cleanup of a bullet impacting. How lame do you feel now, Africa? China is aiming at Africa and has taken all of the East and South and is coming up the West, every 24 hour convenience market, every shop. Its Chinese owned and backed with money and guns. Africa just can't keep up. It will be speaking Szechuan and Canton and Mandarin soon enough. Say goodbye to the natives. No, that isn't nice at all, but its happening. And we're wondering about Honey Boo Boo and the latest Internet Fad celebrities. Are we terrible people to ignore Africa? I wonder.
Believe it or not, it is possible to make delicious BBQ without actually owning a grill. The secret is moist heat. Moist.
Love that show. Great writing.
Ahem. Anyway, to achieve moist heat in a BBQ, you either put a pan of water in there to simmer with the meat, keeping it 100% humidity so it won't dry out during the low and slow cooking process... or you wrap your meat in aluminum foil like this:
Note the cookie sheets underneath to catch any spillage. While these are St. Louis ribs with a dry spice rub so they won't drip burning BBQ sauce onto the oven floor to smoke and burn, they can drip fat from the ribs. Also note that the foil is in direct contact with the wire rack rather than resting on a pan which might burn the surface. This is preferred for good cooking.
If I had the inclination and the propane, I'm sure I could spend every 30 minutes basting the ribs while they cook. I don't have the inclination. In about two hours these will be slow cooked in their own moist heat and juices to perfection and I will enjoy them with some potato salad and some yellow crookneck squash. Yes, its very early for dinner, these being a late lunch, but it gives me time to deal with the insulin requirements for them and get that under control before bed tonight. And I prefer that. I won't be eating many of them, instead keeping them for snacks and for Dad when he gets home. If he's not up for stew, we'll have these as backup. So yay. This would easily cost $50 at a restaurant, considering its enough ribs for 4 people, or two hungry college boys anyway.
UPDATE: The ribs were salty, and one of the spices was cayenne pepper, a pepper that gives me really painful indigestion. All night worth. I will be leaving the rest of these to my Dad. Rolling agony in the belly is very unpleasant.
Feds close 600 weather stations for reporting warming less than predicted. If those were people, it would be like firing or jailing them for not meeting govt mandated production quotas decided at the top rather than based on reality. Isn't that what Stalin did during the heyday of the worst part of the Soviet Empire? The sheer bullheaded hypocrisy. The weather stations in question, some of them were bad and needed to be moved. Others were good but showed warming was less than predicted in "the Model". That Model(tm) which is heavily tweaked with exponential functions and has been shown as utterly unreliable nonsense. THAT Model(tm).
Global warming has been going on for 19,500 years now. Well before people were burning coal or driving cars. We've had much warmer weather than today during the Medieval Warm Period 800-1150, right before the Little Ice Age kicked in, something that only ended about 1850ish. We went from good wines in England to the Thames freezing thick enough to hold festivals on it during winter.
Despite what you've been told, weather is not generally stable. It was for the last century and a half, during which lots of people were writing books or taking weather measurements so the data is biased by being so much of it, and so recent. The trouble with biased data is it isn't accurate. It wasn't that unusual to get a July blizzard in the Sierras, or a hot spell that melts all the snow in April. Stuff happens, and its all about chemistry and air pressure differences that cause it. Its ironic that ancient accounts of "this weather on this day was odd" by monks in the 9th century are actually useful because they only thought it was important enough to write it down, rather than how that report could bias the Big Plan To Kill Everyone (by forcing them to give up technology and live in mud huts). They just wrote it down and scientists today find it and say: "Huh, Didn't expect that." A real scientist keeps the data. A fake (climate scientists) hides the data because it makes things look less certain and prevents The Plan(tm). Geologists know that the ice will come again, because its done so dozens of times over millions of years. Interglacial periods, like this one, were not that long, 10-20 thousand years. Then the ice comes back. Over and over again.
They didn't know about Ozone until 1979, then they found a hole in it the first time they looked and so therefore it must be a new hole, rather than a feature of our planet from the dinosaurs or older. Right? False!! These people are failures at logic. The ozone hole might be a direct result of the magnetic field. Has nobody noticed the holes are over the poles? Where the most intense aspects of the magnetic field go, and the bigger hole is where the field is strongest but in the hemisphere with the least ozone wrecking chemicals. Isn't that curious? Or that the hole in the ozone changes size based on how much solar activity there is, which causes the magnetic field to respond, protecting us from potentially deadly radiation. But finding that correlation would be Science, and the climate cultists don't DO that. They chant to Apple and Al Gore.
Don't bother arguing science with Apple cultists. They are a religion. Their leader is visiting God. They expect his return at any time. Why do they do that? Well, its EASY to pretend that the world ends with them, that the world just can't go on without them in it. Its Narcissism. One of the primary diseases of modern Western culture, and one of the few points Muslims make about us that's true.
The climate models are WAY OFF. See here. The above graph shows the models predictions as the various colored lines, with a chart indicating which is which. The black line is their average. The blue and green squares and circles are the actual recorded temp averages. Notice how temps have risen 0.15 degree C since 1979. Now take into account heat island effects near weather stations in cities and ... well, won't they tend to be warmer? Now look at the model predictions above the actual recorded data. Huh. The models are clearly wrong. All of them. And we're supposed to spend money on these clowns?
When Clinton laid off 75% of the geologists working at USGS in 1993-94, it was a serious blow to my own career. It taught me an important lesson: you CAN major in the wrong subject. And jobs aren't guaranteed just because you studied a science and got the diploma. All that nonsense about going to college means a stable middle class career and the house with the picket fence... was a Con. The kids who came after, with no jobs, joined the strident cultists or flipped burgers. College let me down. Not the first or last time that's happened. Simply the biggest and most expensive waste of time and energy of my life. I suspect others have come to a similar conclusion. Maybe conning people into getting funding by alarmism and tinfoil hat theories like that nonsense Al Gore was spewing in An Inconvenient Truth, maybe that was the best way to hurt America? Anthropogenic Global Warming is provably false. Its become a religion and you can't tell religious people anything. When the Baby Boomers die, we'll see if the silly thing is still a problem. Like most fads, I suspect it will stop being cool without any funding, and fads are driven by money.
17 miles Northeast of Foresthill, between Foresthill and Colfax South of I-80 a fire broke out on Saturday afternoon. It is pure wilderness, not even people live there, and it spread going to 40 acres, then 1200 and is presumably bigger now. The smoke from it has been drifting down into my neighborhood. It was strong enough to wake me in the night. Not pleasant. Foresthill is mostly canyons, tributaries of the American River which eventually flows down past Auburn and joins Folsom Lake, the primary water supply for Sacramento. At this size, they should be listing it by square miles, which is about... two. There are 640 acres per square mile.
Despite its small size, its making a LOT of smoke, drifting up here, into Nevada City, and all the way to Downieville. The smoke is heavy, like fog and drifts visibly close to the ground. Ironically, it looks like people's landscape sprinklers can knock some of that out of the air, and the increase in humidity may get some of the rest. I wish it would rain just to kill the smoke. Yesterday, the wind came up and blew most of this smoke away by mid afternoon. I sincerely hope it will do that today too, though that will likely make the fire worse. I apologize for my selfishness but I am allergic to poison oak and the oils atomize in a wildfire like this and get into the smoke. It isn't very nice.
UPDATE Thursday 8/15/13: Still burning, up to 5000 acres, or 8 and a half square miles. The smoke is thinner, but still drifts around in the morning.
UPDATE 2 Monday 8/19/13: Still burning, now 15,000 acres, and the Swedes Fire south of Lake Oroville is now 2000 acres and growing. Smoke combined with thunderstorms and dry lightning has actually greatly increased fire danger for the next three days. It has been gray overcast and 30% humidity all day, with the sun never quite breaking through. It was sweaty and hot all night and while it did drop to 60'F this morning, we had to close up at 9 AM for smoke. I worry about friends near the Swedes Fire and hope they and their farm are okay.
Its August. August is typically hot summer days and warm nights. You can throw a party on your back deck, have BBQ, if the weather is cool enough not to roast in the summer evening heat. This year the weather has been weird. We had Blizzard in February, with 8-12 inches of snow in 2 hours. Apparently those happen every 5-8 years. The rain wasn't particularly heavy, unfortunately and the winter was mostly dry, so we're technically in drought. Fires this summer have been pretty bad but the aerial and ground crews are doing good work putting them out and CalFire has been doing the brush clearing to prevent the really big ones. The sunsets have been RED from smoke in the air every evening, although it is worth pointing out that the sun actually sets into the mountains at the far side of the Sacramento Valley, towards my brother's house, 100 miles away. That's the whole valley worth of smoke and soot to filter the light through so the RED is quite startling.
The thing is, with the daily high being atypical in the mid or low 80's, nights cool off fast and evenings are becoming long pants weather, like last night. We ate Mexican food at Maria's restaurant in Grass Valley with some friends of my Dad's. A nice time. I dressed up with long sleeve shirt and long pants. I wasn't driving so I got to have a margarita, chips and good salsa, and dinner was Chile Colorado (pork in red chili sauce). Very tasty, but I paid for it overnight. Too many carbs, beans, and protein for one meal for a diabetic like me. I really should have taken a serious insulin dose overnight, a couple times. Today I am fasting to use up that food instead of possibly regaining the fat.
It was chilly this morning, however, around 51'F, and has been in the very low 50's every morning for the last week. Normally its in the upper 60's, almost 70'F at dawn. This is late September weather, almost October weather. Very odd. More like what I remember from my childhood when weather was more predictable. Based on the breeze outside, I'd say that the fog is in and the Delta Breeze is carrying that chill up here into the foothills 110 miles away. I am wearing my flannel shirt, one that's older than some of my friends, and glad to have it. The windows are open to deal with the later heat of the day by cooling the house right now, so its best to just let to do its thing. The night chill is such that I partially close many of the windows before going to bed. I don't want Dad to catch a cold. Or wake up in the morning and turn on the heat while my window is wide open.
The chill is enough that the oaks are dropping leaves, since that's one of the triggers, biochemically, to drop them. And I heard the first acorn of the season fall this morning. They're big, weigh about an ounce and the sound is audible bouncing off the deck from about 100 feet away.
Dad bought a Kindle Fire (not the HD version) cheap at KMart a few days ago. I went with him. They had TWO, limited to availability in store, and the department manager bought the other one. So far I've figured out the workarounds for importing contacts, hooking up Email, teaching Dad how to get onto wireless here and hopefully at his hotel in June Lake, where he is vacationing and hiking next week. Keep in mind he's 72. I'm really proud of him for being so healthy, but he has good role models from his friends at that gym, some older than him. He's playing Sudoku on the tablet, which is 7 inches, and watching YouTube videos (Good Eats), and reading novels from the library, which supports the Kindle and other reading devices. I can see the point of such gizmos. I love to read, but most of what I read isn't traditionally published so much as posted on Fanfiction.net or Spacebattles.com or Twisting the Hellmouth. When fanfiction authors figure out how to create believable characters and describe them properly they typically start working on original fiction they can sell. And its much easier to publish today than 20 years ago when I started writing my novels.
I think, since I write so much, a laptop with a good keyboard and a long battery life would suit me better. SSD drive for the OS and files, multi-core to run music and video, a cooling fan, GPS chip, USB ports, and built in WiFi N/G. A step up from a netbook, but a similar form factor, being small and thin, maybe 12-14 inches would be large enough.
The alternative is a 7 inch tablet with an external keyboard, with the caveat that I don't need the number pad and I have small girl-sized hands thanks to those prior generations of surgeons from Grandma Millie's side. I wish they made laptops with a solar panel on the lid and the recharging electrics built in. Leave that in a sunny windowsill and let it recharge from a lunchtime hour's use. I wonder if a charging pad that plugs into the gizmo exists that I could strap to a knapsack? So while I'm hiking in the sun, it's charging? If we had 4-layer stipple-PV solar panels this would be easier. Those are much more efficient at extracting electricity from light and save a lot of space. Those are the future I'm waiting for.
They're running them in buildings now and the energy recovery time from the initial investment cost is about 3 years instead of 15 like pure PV. Hybrid is the obvious and easy answer. This to heat your hot water and the PV to charge the battery that runs your Fridge and lights and radio? That's most of civilization right there. More panels means more heating options (large hot water sump, pumps for radiators or forced air heat exchanger) and things like WiFi and TV are up and running, off grid but on-network. You don't have to hook up to the grid, and its probably better if you don't. Every scheme I've seen with selling power to the utilities? Tax scam and you lose.
I expanded my Google+ to watch more photography groups, and added some motorcycle ones too. I really wish I had a 350cc bike for cruising around up here. Maybe a Suzuki. I suspect I could come to love the DRZ400 in time, even if its looks make me want to literally puke. They're entirely FUNCTION, and I should love that, but the plastics get smudged and greasy and you can't make them pretty no matter what you do. I like Rounded Gas Tanks, and shiny frames and chrome exhaust pipes, with enough engine to pull these hills, and ride 80 over to Lake Tahoe. Anything less would frustrate me. A naked bike stays pretty for decades. A plastic bike just gets more worn and tired looking, even if its still good underneath. They don't age like a Naked bike does. This is why the Honda 350/360 is such a find, assuming I can actually track one down. Someday there will be a business that uses CNC to custom make parts to keep old machines running. For a modest fee. I'm not talking about the really BAD Enfields, which the Indians sell with tolerances so wrong that they never fit without a blacksmith getting involved. I'm really unimpressed with Indian-made products. They make the Chinese look professional. The Royal Enfield motorcycle is famous for suffering from its cooling fins resonating, which eventually breaks the cylinder or the fins. Rather than fixing that properly and replacing the cylinder casts with the correction, they just shove some rubber braces on them. Rubber that cooks and falls off, so it resonates again. That's utter CRAP. That's CONTEMPT for the customer. So no, no matter how nice they look, I won't buy an Enfield EVER.
See how pretty? Damn shame.
I like the Suzuki TU250 but it isn't sold here so I'll try and get a Honda CB350, in time. Get the job first. Get an apartment or rent a house (better for me), and a lockable garage. Get the motorcycle safety class done. Watched a video on shifting gears. Really? That easy? Huh.
I have to respect the simple design. Sequential gearbox for the win. Dad keeps looking at sports cars. If I get the job, might buy his red car, offer to sell my white one to him. If he declines someone else will buy it. Then Dad will have a space for a Porche and I'll have a nice red car appropriate for a divorced man for days I don't feel like wearing leather. And its REALLY FAST. Like my old Prelude (to what?) aka The Albatross because it kept breaking down and the repairs cost more than a new car's payments. I eventually had the Albatross crushed in retaliation under a state gross polluter program. I think that car was cursed. Or rather, badly repaired in important ways after a crash by the prior owner. Sigh. Bad car.
Still chilly and 65'F at 9:30 AM. Amazing, this weather. I hope my readers have a good weekend.
It gets light a bit later in the morning, now. After many weeks of waking at 5:00 AM to loud birdsong, its closer to quarter of six before they chirp their greetings to each other. Birds are allowed to be social at dawn because the bugs they eat are cold blooded and can't move yet, too cold. Their calls can't scare bird-breakfast away.
I have woodpeckers and bluejays in the trees here, as well as toehees and robins and sometimes quail.
Quail. Definition of cute birds.
The bluejays, with their raised crests, are raucous and smart, being corvids, from the family of crows and ravens, and capable of around 50 different vocalizations rather than the usual two alarm calls people are used to. You can tame a bluejay, if you're very patient. They like biscuits. I spent a summer doing that, once. That I had that kind of time was one of the reasons I knew it was time to leave my home town. Not enough jobs there.
The woodpeckers are pretty dumb, very loud, and sometimes get hunted by a Sharps Hawk that lives in the neighborhood.
Coopers (Sharp Tipped) Hawk
We ALSO have a red tailed hawk AND a golden eagle nest.
Red Tailed Hawk
The eagles aren't always here, as they range around, but when they are, the call is distinctive. In the spring and fall, Canada Geese fly past at altitude, calling to each other on the way to the various reservoirs where there's a place to land and grass to eat. Geese eat grass, like cows and bunnies. Canada Geese is the species name, not the country of origin. If the state ever gets around to refilling the upper San Joaquin Valley lakes currently caliche desert, perhaps after the fracking work is done, that will return to being bird habitat as it was before they dammed the Kern River and stopped the crucial floods that kept the Kern Lake alive. Bird Watching is a tourist thing too.
Canada Geese
It's odd to me that despite the easy access to information, the fact that Global Warming happened almost 20,000 years ago, and that it rose sea levels 80 meters (300 feet) means that the eventual return of the ice will drop sea levels that much again AND that most of the fears of further sea level rise just isn't justified. If you melted all the ice left, most of that is already at sea level and ice expands, so turning it back into water means the sea level falls a bit. What's still up on Antarctica will raise sea levels about 3 inches, worldwide. Three whole inches. Of course, you can't actually melt all of Antarctica all at once, and its not likely to either. There are 30+ feedback loops which control climate, and many of them aren't terrestrial so much as solar and orbital mechanics, things that humans cannot effect.
Wags like to cite the sinking Pacific Islands! Typhoons have a storm surge of around 4-10 feet, sometimes more, which generates gravel bars on their sea shores, bars photographed by non-scientists and shown as proof that the islands are rising. This is nonsense, but people are stupid. More importantly, most of the Pacific Islands are sinking, but that is continental rather than sea level change responsible. The arc of islands flowing from the Hawaiian hot spot volcano go all the way to Kamchatka, and most are underwater sea mounts. Hawaii will sink too. Eventually.
A lot of the problems people face with science is their time scales are way off, citing their own lifespans as the beginning and end of the universe, and religion as "old" when dinosaurs are just fairy tales and make believe, to the common fool. It's hard to respect that level of ignorance.
Since the last ice age took a break, sea level rise from the ice sheets melting off the continents described coastal temples flooding, inundations from various ice-water lakes surging out of glacial valleys into the lowlands, and various curiosities like the North Sea suddenly forming out of the settled dunes they once were. Flashy stuff, the kinds of thing that spawns religions in the first place. The Missoula Floods happened many times. The native americans in the area tell stories of the floods, responsible for the scablands, pouring out of Montana and down into Washington and Idaho.
Most of the Native American cultures believed that bears, ravens, and coyotes were gods, watching us because they were moody and long lived and surprisingly smart. Coyotes can dodge bullets. Bears are moody, unpredictable. Ravens can live 50 years and vocalize 80 different sounds. Throw in the skeletons of hippos, mammoths, camels, giant ground sloths, giant armadillo shells, and the occasional fossil dinosaur and American Indians must have felt they were living in a very strange place. The coasts had abundant shellfish and giant sharks and whales and sea lions and jellyfish that could sting you to death. The mountains had bears, sneaky lions, racoons and opossums and rattlesnakes, vultures and eagles and tasty trout and salmon, yet there were deserts that range a thousand miles with mountains climbing into the sky, fast running antelope, giant elk bounding away, moose, and deer everywhere.
Stone Sheep
Sheep evolved here. There are 5 species in North America. They are mostly protected in the wild, but decades ago they were good hunting, if only because the places were so exotic as most of them are in the Southwest and Rockies, well up mountains. I'm told the 270 Winchester was the primary round for hunting wild sheep, and the primary round for sheep herders to defend their herds against wolves and coyotes. Sheepherders are often poor, can't afford much practice ammo, and are consequently excellent shots, at long range. Most of them are also Basque, here in the Western States.
Alpaca on a farm
Camels evolved in South America, with 11 species (alpaca, llama etc). The camellids make better wool here than in Asia. I have a friend, online, who raises alpaca for their wool and his wife spins, dyes, and sells it for money. Nervous women knit, and the better wool is easier to work with. Alpaca make better wool. Apparently. Not my thing. My ex did it for a while. She had a huge collection of wool for that.
When the ice age comes back, possibly within our lifetimes, the ice will build up on the peaks of the Himalaya, in the Andes, in the Northern Rockies and Sierras. The ice packs will visibly grow and not quite melt, just get a little bigger each year. Eventually enough will accumulate to compact into ice and start moving down slope. The reflection of the ice will reduce the local albedo, keeping it cooler and helping more snow and ice to accumulate. The glaciers will start refilling the high mountain valleys. Big ones move a meter a day. That's 365 meters a year. In three years that's over a kilometer. In ten years that's 3 and a half kilometers. When you add up the time, you add up the distance and it stops being a joke and starts being inevitable.
The really interesting bit is thanks to modern medical science, we might breach the immortality barrier and have to start thinking long term because we personally will be living that long. So it is in our own interest to enjoy the transition from Interglacial Period (now) to Glacial Epoch (return of the ice). With computers, cameras, and various technology, its not like the ice returning is going to be a disaster. We can watch the glaciers on web cams. Yes, sea levels will FALL, emptying bays and harbors we conveniently designed for the current sea level. Oh well. Adapt. Typhoons won't be quite so bad. Those Etruscan, Minoan, and Greek temples will come out of the water again. The Black Sea might get cut off once more, drying out a bit without the sea water tidal surges. It is unclear whether there will be general drying, though it is believed there will be more northern latitude precipitation due to melting of the ice caps, thus free sea water on the Arctic Ocean could Literally Trigger the next ice age. Because science is funny like that.
"Climate Scientists" would have you believe ridiculous things. They believe that climate change is caused by people and modern technology, but climate change happened thousands of years before modern technology. We're in the lingering aftereffects of an ongoing event from nearly 20,000 years ago. I am convinced some of these fund seeking fakes think that the change in the length of days, of seasons, is a Republican Conspiracy because they're just plain insane. And they must TAX everybody and make us all victims and live in mud huts and die before we're 30 because that's the natural order. And eat bugs. I've been hearing hippie nonsense since I was a toddler. Back then, they were warning us about Global Cooling and Nuclear Winter, not from Nuclear War itself, but because nuclear power plants were clean energy and without that soot we couldn't hold back the oncoming glaciers. Hippies are weird, and not good-weird either. Just weird. I think the traditional answer to them, ignore the ingrates, is right. A perfect example of how de-funding stupid people is the right answer.
If I manage to get the job I'm interviewing for next week, I will be able to practice Balance when dealing with idiots of all stripes. Its apathy that got us to where we are today. If more people voted, perhaps things wouldn't get so messed up. If I do get that job I want to volunteer on the weekends at the Nevada County Narrow-Gauge Train Museum. Nice folks there. See about getting some of the engines restored. There are folks who want to get it running again, for the tourists. Its a massive legal morass, but perhaps the State will start making allowances for Living History. After all, California is about Agriculture and Tourism.
Dad and I agreed to preserve as much of Mom's garden as feasibly possible on the day she passed. We both work at it. Dad has found that our soil grows squash really well, which begs the question: why didn't Mom ever grow any? We bought seeds and planted them in flats in the greenhouse, then transplanted outside into the summer heat back in June and put in drip irrigation. Simple stuff, drip, very easy to put in, very easy to manage and maintain, and doesn't waste water. Mom was an early adopter of the stuff back in the early 1980's. It was easy.
In the early stages of her cancer, she still had the will to garden but not the strength, so after several decades of refusing to garden for a perfectionist who constantly attacked my work (she did), she finally came to terms with living with what she could get and we had our peace. She had me aggressively trim back an English Laurel hedge on the Southwest side of the property which was overhanging our neighbor's side. Can't have that. Not polite. So trimmed that back with hand shears. They were pretty dull. I don't like powertools. They are loud. They vibrate, which hurts my hands like bee stings, and they tend to be messy and imperfect. Hey, I inherited perfectionism from Both parents. Whenever possible, I use hand tools. I allow dishwashers and lawn mowers and microwaves, and blenders, but otherwise hand tools. Dad, conversely, likes power tools so there are many of them around.
My Moka Pot coffee maker works by steam pressure, not electric. Any source of heat will make it work. Love the look of the polished aluminum but if it were dark anodized on the bottom it would heat up faster. Polished aluminum reflects heat. Serious backpackers know to leave their pots soot covered. Takes half as long to cook things.
When they cure my Diabetes, I am planning to hike the Pacific Crest trail from Mexico to Canada. Proper Planning makes this possible. Also, taking breaks of a week here and there will really help. I bet a week in Lone Pine will make a big difference. Lovely town. In backpacking, it is all about minimalism. The less you carry, the less the weight destroys your enjoyment of the hike. Two is one too many, unless they're supposed to be in pairs (socks, mittens, flashlight batteries). I say super minimalism and frequent washing. If your pack is 20 pounds instead of 50, you will have a much better time on the trail.
The other thing people get wrong about backpacking is they think they need everything for the whole trip with them at the start, when the smart answer is renting lockers on the way and prepositioning crucial gear. Grocery stores exist in those mountain towns closest to the trail. Buy your backpacking food at grocery stores. Ziplock bags of salty dried pasta with the instructions cut off? It's the way to go. Mammoth Lakes (town of) is decent sized and has normal people living there year round. You just have to be willing to venture off the trail then come back to it later. I strongly encourage people doing the PCT to eat real meals, to bathe frequently, to sleep in motel beds rather than always on the trail. It is much healthier.
People who insist on the hardcore route, staying on the trail and digesting their own muscles for energy because the stress cuts their appetite sometimes die. That sort of thing causes kidney damage too. If the hardcore route destroys the enjoyment of the hike and turns it into a slog? You're doing it wrong. On my last hike on the PCT, I got lots of pictures of the flowers blooming up at Donner Pass. Think a Hardcore Slogger trudging along would see those? Probably not. I got into that bad mental state on my first serious backpacking trip with my Dad when I was 10, in Yosemite, from Tuolumne Meadows down to Yosemite Valley. It was two and a half days over Cathedral Pass, down Upper Yosemite Valley, and it was painful and exhausting. I had too much gear and Dad didn't realize the "belt" on the pack, which is supposed to take 60-80% of the weight? Yeah, it was bogus. It only had the front and was missing crucial back strap. And it was unpadded so REALLY painful. I later built one from scratch, padding it myself so it wasn't painful. I then outgrew the pack and ended up with Dad's when he gave up backpacking.
Something people don't do but should with an external frame pack: put beeswax on the pins to make them quiet, and tape on the rings so they don't jiggle in your ears. Noise while hiking is really annoying. Fleece is really wonderful, as are sweat pants on the trail. No belt loops to give you bruises from the backpack's hip belt. Internal frame packs rely on strips of aluminum to find their shape, and tend to get really HOT against your skin. I don't care for that much. Being sweaty is not much fun. You go through a lot of temperature variation when backpacking, from freezing in the morning to maybe 80'F in the afternoon heat, with sunburn at the high elevations quite capable of 2nd degree burns and potentially activating skin cancer from the long exposure. Not nice. Ergo, a hat with a brim, and long sleeves and possibly thin gloves aren't a bad idea at all. I've done mile high plus hiking in Montana and weeks of daily sun is wearisome without good shade protection.
Today, I used one of the allowed power tools and cut the lawn. Once finished, Dad edged it with a weed whacker and I went and found the trimmers I'd used last Fall on the hedge. They were dull back then, and still dull today. I know how to fix that. I broke out the metal file, got the shears into the vice, picked the right angle and filed it sharp again. Yes, a power tool could have done that but I think that would bodge the edge and ruin it worse. I wanted this right so did it by hand. Then I lubed the bolt with oil so it would move easier. I then went after an overgrown English Laurel hedge on the East side of the house and trimmed that back into shape. The cut leaves are now decorating the base of a tree acting as mulch and I won't have to dodge them every time I use the walkway anymore.
That done, Dad drained the hot tub. I'm not one for those, having a hole in my abdomen for my insulin pump so ideal place for infection to get in, and he's not into it lately for some reason. I think it reminds him of Mom too much. Until they cure my Diabetes no water sports for me, no boating or swimming in wild places, much less public pools.
Think I'll have a baloney sandwich today. I know its not healthy, but it was a nice change of pace. Still no calls about the jobs I've applied for. Sigh.
