In honor of the drought, I wanted to offer this video from last winter predicting devastating flooding. Yeah. I find these really helpful for correcting a swelled head. I've lived through some of those atmospheric rivers, Pineapple Express situations with rain falling for weeks on end. Those really saturate the ground and cause massive flooding. Today? Its so hot I look around and worry about wildfire. The air is still, dry, never cooled off. I hope the predicted heat wave will end tonight.
The one time I rode a scooter, a Tomos cheapo like this one, I was wearing shorts and Teva sandals. The provided helmet would have saved me from a split melon, but not a trip to the emergency room for stitches and broken bones. Totally unsafe, but very comfortable in the 78'F seaside weather of Balboa Island, a lovely place 3 feet below sea level and filled with rich people and their cottages. If there were no cars, it would be like a tiny Mayberry, all crammed in together. Scooters and bicycles make sense there. They don't hog the one-way streets the way cars and SUVs do. So long as people are polite about their noise levels, a place like this works. If they can't keep it under control, things go sideways fast. The last place I lived was that crammed together, without the charm or high dollar rents to keep out the ingrates so instead of an experiment in good manners, I lived with examples of bad. The moral of the story is: don't live anywhere with Section 8 housing. Even if 80% of the section 8 residents are decent, the remaining 20% are criminals doing bad stuff. Like stabbing, mugging, raping, shooting, breaking into cars, all the bad stuff. Most of the police visits will be for that household. All that stuff was happening in the section 8 places in my last apartment. Never again. Thank you.
I have to wonder if there's such a thing as an upscale trailer park? One better than this:
As much as I enjoy Jaye Tyler's insanity, is she someone I want peering in my windows with a camera taking photos? Or the more realistic eternally skanky trailer whore trying to sell herself for rent or drug money. I have it on good authority that anywhere there's two trailers parked, one contains a skanky ho. Just... no. An upscale trailer park would fix a lot of this. One with... Standards. References. A proper gate to keep out the bad folks. Maybe, dare I say it, gardens. A community, only with the homes on wheels. Chasing the weather that suits them. People mock the Hipsters for being rich enough to enjoy things and cultures they claim but didn't earn. In my day, we called that Slumming. Rich kids dressing down and causing trouble in poor neighborhoods, then changing clothes back to normal when they get home. Back to their perfect privileged lives. Modern Slumming is with Hipsters trying to outcool each other. I get the Retro as modern culture is largely empty, nihilistic, dominated by trailer trash and black people assaulting each other. I don't see anything to identify with there, other than the sarcasm of Lily Allen and those like her. And she's talking about England specifically.
America has bigger problems. We're going bankrupt (because dumb people voted) trying to fund socialism and make everyone equally dumb and poor. That never works. Some are just more industrious, have better taste, or God Forbid, more talent and luck. They end up winning. The losers always lose. Jaye Tyler doesn't win. Neither does Alexander Harris. The Hipsters are doing a service, even if its not on purpose. In picking their props to pretend their association with subcultures they aren't part of and didn't earn the rights to, they end up overpaying for vintage stuff, most of which they pay to restore to working order so they can be seen using it. Even my ex did this with vintage cameras, most of which will never see the light of day again. More's the pity. The duplex lens models were cool, even if developing the film with a total PITA. If those had a digital back, they'd be fantastic. The Hipsters have too much money, everyone agrees, but they also have time and a strong desire to follow trends of counterculture, even if they don't really know what that is. As an actual Nerd, with the distinction of being an Actual Cyberpunk from the Chatsubo, nearly 20 years ago now, and 7 novels under my belt making me a proper author, even if I never made a dime from them, I wonder if the Hipsters will ever graduate from self-mockery and actual Making, Crafting, or otherwise doing something with their skin-deep interest? Will Hipsters become competent Makers and build Digital Camera Backs for SLRs and Bifocal/Co-Ax cameras like a Rolleflex?
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| Takes a 2.00 inch negative. |
Think about the quality photo for a 2 inch negative (replaced by a large CCV chip) and high quality lens that's over 80 years old. But your viewfinder is a mechanical flip top, inverted, and your manual focus relies on actual exposed gears. That's exactly the sort of weirdness that belongs in Hipsters if they actually turn Legit.
The old school vintage motorcycle and scooter clothes? Nice looking, but needs better ventilation and proper safety armor. That's a growth industry, in tailoring motorcycle clothes to ride these:
Doesn't that look like sex on wheels? And that's a converted Yamaha SR-650, so its still getting 40-50 mpg. And costs less than a Prius, too. Doesn't require imported Lithium batteries that have travelled 27,000 miles before you even get a chance to buy them. This is an honest bit of stylish transportation.
Post oil doesn't mean No Oil, it means it will be much more expensive, probably limited access (rationing), and competing fuels will be just as common. I fully expect people to visit their local moonshiner to buy methanol to make biodiesel, as that's part of the process. How do you make biodiesel, you ask?
It's like that. Start with waste food oil, hit it with methanol to turn it into fatty acids, expose to lye, to change its pH, drain off the glycerin from the other half of the fatty acids (thus a biodiesel tank needs a bottom drain or a sump tube), and what's left at the end is a stable diesel fuel you can burn in any diesel engine. This necessitates owning a diesel engine, or converting out a gasoline engine for a diesel one with the appropriate fuel system, engine mounts, transmission, and computer so it still drives properly. Most people just buy a diesel to start with, like a Jetta or Mercedes Benz or Cummins diesel. Ford is going to be releasing its Eurodiesel engine here. I wish they'd put it in a non-bubble car, something with fenders and angles and made to look good, but no dice. There are already engines made for bikes in diesel, they just suck, so far. Eventually someone will build a 2-stroke diesel with a good enough power and revs well enough to matter in an ultralight vehicle like a motorcycle. This is likely one of the more popular fuel options in the near (next five years) future.
With a scooter that's going 5 mph faster than I normally bicycle on flat ground, I feel like wearing lots of safety gear is counter productive. When you're up at 40 mph, though, proper gear had better we worn. Unless we've regained our disdain for safety in the modern youth, which is possible, and reset ourselves to more realistic expectations, we will have to muddle through as to what's the right amount of gear.
That said, with Nevada City being too damned expensive to be an artist, I have to wonder if Gridley or places like it are the real future of artist communities. Housing has to be affordable. Jobs have to be present. And the law has to step back and let them create. Even Chico, with its frat boys, has local biodiesel thanks to Sierra Nevada Brewery turning their waste into fuel. Good SNB! I think that's cool. Nevada City isn't that place. Its too pricey. Too controlled. Too upscale to be a proper artist's town.
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