Things That Make You Happier Than Firearms

There's way too much attention the fact that there are lots of idiots with tools that can kill you. I now want to write about things that make people happy.

I am a big fan of food. Particularly good food. When I was 4 years old I couldn't yet see enough of the counter to use what was on it, so I got my mother to lift me up there so I could sit on the kitchen counter and cook with her. We started with things like pies, breads, cakes, and cookies. I got to measure out the spices, salt, baking powder, and eventually the flour and oil and crack eggs. I did this enough that I started improving my recipes. And then official recipes on the back of the box or can. I learned to operate the oven and not get burned touching the rack or hot food. I learned to cook things on the stove. I learned to use the Crock Pot (slow cooker). I learned how to fine tune a microwave for cook settings, something few people seem to know despite them graduating from accredited top universities. Just more job opportunities for the food service, keeping those graduates poor and hungry. I even learned to fry things in oil and to BBQ, and to cook things with coals in a dutch oven in the fireplace or next to an open fire in the boonies. I got good at it. I learned what tools you need, and what just make you look stupid. Food is full of happiness. A great cook spreads happiness around them, unless they screw up the recipe and ruin the food, which typically demotes them from Great Cook to Bad Cook. Continuous improvement is a matter of measuring results and recording your steps. Sufficient experience leads to better results, provided you actually apply what you learn.

I find bicycling to be happier than a day at the gun range. I used to enjoy range day with my shooting buddy, but we both moved on. He's not big on bicycling but I still enjoy it when I actually get out there at do it. I've had some great rides along the Truckee River between Alpine Meadows and a Tahoe City. Its a nice quiet place, with other cyclists, rafters, trout fishermen, couples walking with picnic baskets, and crystal clear water spilling down the river from Lake Tahoe. Its really very beautiful and people live and work there so tourists can enjoy it properly. The paved trails means any bike can do it comfortably and any old speed. Not all development is bad. I saw many couples with cruiser bikes on that trail, his and hers. I saw recumbents and fancy race bikes. People were enjoying themselves in the warm, but not hot, summer mountain weather.

Hiking in the park is more fun than firearms. Last Fall I even got to hike to a creek with a salmon run. I posted about that on this blog back in October. True, the salmon were pretty small, only trout-sized, but they were brilliant red and there were a few thousand people there to witness this event. I had fun, and fixing my photos was also enjoyable.

This was shot using a Canon Rebel 300D without the proper lens filters so the reflective water surface was post processed clear. And that's amazing. And it was free! I love that. Photography is more fun than guns because when you "shoot" someone with a camera, there's no blood, no police, no arrests, no trial, and they live through the experience unscarred. I encourage everyone who owns a camera to "shoot" their friends often, in strange places, then post it on their blog, as if bragging about it. Because cameras are not violence. Though they are tools, and only go off when the operator points them and triggers the shutter.

This was a fun shot. It was about 20'F that morning, right after the snow finished falling, at dawn. Again, no filters, but it captures the dawn's early light rather well, and the way the snow is merely pretty, on buildings and landscape, yet the streets are clear so you can drive. That's the best kind of snow.

Scooters are like bicycling, only they make a little more noise, but you can enjoy the scenery more because you aren't huffing and puffing so much as you climb the many hills here. I've ridden a scooter once and loved it. I've wanted one ever since. I still need a license to do that in this State. Still, I plan to do it. It will be fun riding the local roads and not having to breathe so hard like I do when bicycling. There are some good sights to see around here.

In the faint haze, because I used my less powerful camera, are the Sutter Buttes. They're better seen more close up. The buttes are particularly dominating because they're the only tall structure in the Sacramento Valley. Everything else is flat, and rivers go on either side.

Image from Panaramio, who sells posters and would like your business.

That is a pretty nice image from Panaramio. Please visit their site. Maybe buy something.

I hope to get some better shots of the Buttes myself someday. They are really fascinating. They're actually the remainder of a volcano, and the rocks are from the rhyolitic volcanic necks remaining. There's even a road that goes through the Southern part of the Buttes. Its public and a fun is a not terribly long drive, being less than a dozen miles side to side. The road starts in Sutter and ends in Colusa. I happen to like Colusa. It's a very typical American classic farm town. It has grid streets, a real Main Street. Its treed with sidewalks and is a good place to bicycle or scooter around because it is flat.

Driving on interesting roads to interesting places is also more fun than firearms. Millions of people sightsee every weekend. Its great fun and not very expensive, mostly a tank of gas and a picnic lunch. You can take your camera, photograph what you see and brag to your friends. Here in California, this is a Four Season state for Tourism. There's always something worth seeing, all year round. And the weather is usually favorable. I've done lots of road trips to the High Sierra, and trips down Highway 49 into other parts of the Gold Country, like Jackson, which has a pretty interesting tourist strip in their own town, which Highway 49 winds through quite slowly on the weekends. Its friendlier than Placerville, and smaller than Nevada City, which is similarly scenic.

I live near Nevada City, which gets a lot of tourists and bikers in the Summer due to Highway 49 and 20 both converging there. 49 North and South is an interesting road so gets a lot of visitors. All those long sweeping turns and the various rivers it crosses, its good for motorcycle tourism and sports cars driven by doctors with their mistress in the passenger seat or on the back of the bike. The wives clearly stay home. They would never wear skin-tight black leather, right? I wonder how many "mistresses" are actually wives role playing? Probably most. Its impolite to ask. There are so many good things you can do that don't involve a firearm at all. Really all that fuss at banning them when most people have better things to do. Can't they leave it alone, like the current abortion ruling and whether meat is murder or just tasty? There's no end to the rights that should be left as they are, and its politically safer not to turn over those rocks. Each one likely has a scorpion with a lawyer under it, after all. That's like pissing off Chuck Norris.

Yep, vacations and cameras and good food and girlfriends are better ways to spend time. Don't you agree? Turn off the TV, turn off the idiot politicians and see if you can find a road worth driving down.