Tag Archives: other

Possible Escape Route Version 2.5

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | 10 comments

Guy with the RV sent me some more pics.

Econoline front

From the front there doesn’t appear to have ever been a collision on that side.  No pics of the other side.

Econoline odometer

Bummer that it only has 80 MPH on the speedometer.  I’d figured on coasting down mountains at 110 or better.

Econoline fridge

He says the fridge isn’t the original.  Says the closed compartment above is a freezer.

Econoline interior

Says that’s new carpet, which the cats should appreciate.  In fact, all that interior needs a few layers of cat hair before it will be able to call itself home.

10 Comments

Posted in 2013, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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I might be forced to find me a woman

Posted on June 8, 2013 by | 22 comments

Don Giovanni

At least for a while.  I’ve been kicking it around in my head a lot lately.  If I’m going to do any serious trekking into the high mountains for more than a few days I’m going to have to have someone looking after the felines.  And if I want to spend a season work camping somewhere they almost always require couples, as opposed to singles.

Fact is, I run across a lot of men who might be a lot easier to get along with than a woman, but most of them have their own ideas about what they’d prefer to do with themselves as opposed to doing what I might wish them to do.  And women tend to be a lot easier to come by in my experience.  The problem is keeping things clean and well lighted, the parties of the first and second parts each knowing where the other’s coming from, and where they’re going.

That can get complicated.  Mainly because one of the two parties is working on more than one agenda without coming out and saying so, figuring the agenda of the other can be modified after the hook is set better.

But a lot of the things I want to do before I die are going to require someone to lift the other end of something.  Finding someone willing to lift the other end and take joy in doing it is no easy matter.  Whatever the object needs lifting, whatever the agenda.

Afterthought:  A woman who owns a couple of mules or a string of pack goats and a few acres of land up near the continental divide might work out well.  Also a stock trailer and something to pull it.  Probably can find something on Craigslist.

Afterthought #2:  I can’t, in good conscience, recommend me to any woman.  In fact, I’d counsel strongly against me as a consideration.  Fact is, I’m a nice guy.  Got an honest streak in me and enough of a century behind to know this whole thing was a lousy idea.  Though fun, in an oblique sort of way.

22 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, New Mexico, Outdoors, Senior Citizens

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Reincarnation – Life after the evidence locker

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 10 comments

dodge powerwagonWhen I came across this picture on the web a while back I was fairly certain I recognized it.  I believed and still believe it’s the truck belonging to the man and wife wood cutter couple murdered in Catron County, New Mexico while I was working Fox Mountain.  An incident I described in loving detail in the Adams Diggings book.  They were found several months later, a bear having dug them up where they were folded yinyang style into a 4’x4’x4′ grave in an ancient ruin site.

Damn I love that truck.  Nothing sissie at all there.  A guy could drive that thing around just about anywhere he might wish to go.  It’s been pre-disastered so the odds of anything bad happening in it would be nil.

10 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Transportation, Trucks

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In God We Trust

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 6 comments

first man in space

I’m not sure what I think about this proposal to take Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson and so on off the currency and put Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the Koch brothers on there instead.  Certainly there’s merit to the idea.

Old Ben Franklin would probably find the knowledge people are rolling up his picture snorting coke and meth through him unsettling.  Building him a karmic load he didn’t pay for.

There are certainly more currently recognizable people guilty of all Andrew Jackson did, one-upped him in a hundred different ways.  But Jackson might be said to have set the pace and nailed down the precedents, earned his place on those bills.  Even though the people handing them over to supermarket clerks to pay for dog food mostly don’t who he was, nor what he did.

A series of bills reflecting their actual value in the world marketplace after the national debt is subtracted might be a good idea. $1 bills with a minus $1 Million across the bottom.  A picture of the last couple of presidents on each side.

All in all I think I’d prefer the government to issue a piece of currency molded in the shape of a straw for people to snort their coke and meth through.  If it’s got to have a picture on it, use the first chimpanzee to get launched into space. Or Ronald Reagan for starting the War on Drugs.  Building the need for a lot more of those bills to be printed.

Or any of the legion of celebrities who’ve overdosed on the stuff and become immortal.

6 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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FFFuture Shock

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 5 comments

The Internet came fast, though it’s tempting to take it for granted and just absorb it as it comes along without having to faint and revive yourself.

A person can hop over to Craigslist to see what types of travel trailers and cheap RVs people have they want to sell in lordee-knows-where places he tried to forget exist in Texas.  Pop off an email or two to the people doing the selling.

Exhaust that and pop over, shoot off an email to the USFS district handling the Gila Wilderness to find out the condition of this-or-that trail nobody in his right mind would use. Whether a particular trail has been cleared enough to a particular spot to allow a mountain bike to use it.

Pop over to Google maps for a quickie satellite look at a mountain or three, reboot the machine to clear the memory when things start to die.

Pop to dogpile.com to do a search of bicycle forums and discussion boards to see what mountain bikes are costing and what people are saying about them.  Then another search or two  to find out how much weight a burro could be expected to carry.  Whether anyone’s got a notion about them as riding animals and the maximum weight of the person they could carry under particular conditions.

Spang, another websearch to DIY sites looking for ideas for load carrier devices people have put together on bicycle frames, or using bicycle wheels.

Doesn’t appear to be any limit to it.  However obscure and esoteric the interest, there’s somone, somewhere on the Internet thinking along the same lines who’s already done some of the heavy thinking.

The neighbor up the hill tells me people are putting together 3D printers in their garages allowing them to duplicate anything that’s ever been manufactured.  Putting what they do up on the Internet so other people can manufacture the same thing somehow.  Some guy making a crescent wrench that works from his old crescent wrench and a printer.

It’s no wonder the governments of the world are suspicious and concerned.  With things like that going on there’s no predicting what will come of it.  People might get used to thinking and begin to make a habit of it.

About a century ago two bicycle mechanics put something together the scientific community was busy agreeing couldn’t be done.  Without any help they took a manned heavier-than-air flight convincing enough to turn everything upside down.

Didn’t even have computers and the Internet.  If they’d had those someone might have been able to convince them they couldn’t do it.  Or everyone and his dog would have been making one in his garage.

5 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Communication, Internet

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A failure to communicate

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 3 comments

ivy leaguers

These unfortunate undercover police officers were mistaken for ordinary citizens when they attempted to address uniformed police officers in the way uniformed police officers address ordinary citizens.

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Police

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The Paradigm Gearshift Knob

Posted on June 6, 2013 by | 4 comments

atabrine

This a wakeup call for those of you who have ignored the DEA, FBI, and State Law Enforcement shift to required mandatory use of illegal drugs.  The War on Drugs has been a miserable failure in the attempt to either, get everyone in the US addicted to controlled substances, or place the ones not addicted into penal institutions. 

A whopping 25% of the population is neither addicted, nor in prison.  Of that 25%, at least 3% are suspected to actually be policemen, prosecutors, judges, and prison guards.  1% are believed to be politicians and lawmakers, though though a few of these are known to have allergies and adverse health reactions to some addictive and hallucinatory drugs. 

Finally the criminal justice system is going to clamp down on these shirkers and scofflaws who are making it difficult for everyone.  Effective August 31, 2013, any person found within the boundaries of the United States not addicted to a controlled substance will be given a fair trial, then sentenced to be tortured to death with common suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.

This means YOU.

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Police, War on Drugs

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Chaos in the US Congress

Posted on June 6, 2013 by | 1 comment

the US Congress 2013

The neighbor up the hill tells me the US Congress is in a state of chaos.  Says they want to impeach the mirror-image of themselves currently occupying the White House.  Says the IRS is corrupt, which no doubt it is, and no doubt comes as no surprise to anyone with the intelligence of a duckbill platypus.

Says one of the part-time paramours of former US President Bill Clinton, his wife, I think, is dancing a jig to keep from having to testify to some Congressional committee where she’d have to lie more to keep from going to jail.

Says some other high official or other took the 5th to keep from having to go to jail.  Says the US Attorney General is charged with contempt of C0ngress.

Well, what the hell?  What is there in any of this to raise any eyebrows?  And what’s the thing with having a contempt for Congress being a crime?  How could a person with any sense NOT have contempt for Congress?

1 Comment

Posted in Government, Politics

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Searching for The Lost Granfalloons* – Mine

Posted on November 20, 2012 by | 10 comments

FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT: Barely visible when the weekend began, sunspot AR1619 has blossomed into a large active region more than three times as wide as Earth.  So far the growing sunspot has not produced any significant flares, but the quiet is unlikely to continue if its expansion continues apace. Fast-changing magnetic fields on the sun have a tendency to reconnect and erupt. NOAA forecasters estimate a 20% chance of M-class solar flares during the next 24 hours.  http://spaceweather.com/

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been watching SS 1619 and wondering what the hell is going on with Old Sol. Likely you’re wondering, as I am, why he persists in blessing us with all those weird smiley faces with Errol Flynn mustaches.  Wondering what he’s got up his sleeve.

I have the advantage on most of you because I’ve been messing around with rare earth magnets, glueing them behind cabinet doors in the RV to keep them closed.  So rapidly changing magnetic fields are fresh on my mind, along with the wrinkled, crispy fingertips acquired by fastening them in place with super glue.

Which has created a loose granfalloon Old Sol and I both belong to.

But I’m what most people would call a real cool guy, full of compassion and sensitivity for all you who aren’t in a granfalloon with Old Sol right now.  So I’m not going to arouse your fears and spoil your Thanksgiving holidays by telling you what he might have up his sleeve.

One of the shortcomings, in fact, with granfalloons is that it might be anything, anyway.  Your guess is as good as mine.

But I’ve digressed.  My main purpose in posting today is to tell you about some other granfalloons of my past are cropping up hither thither and yon in my sinookas**.  For reasons I dassn’t speculate about, a good many of them involve a search I used to do for a lost gold mine.  Strangers from hell to breakfast are sending me emails wanting to talk to me about it, hinting around that, though they haven’t been within a thousand miles of that country, they know where it is.  Or might be.

Some granfalloons just don’t let go once they get their teeth locked into your leg.

So maybe  all this busy, busy, busy*** going on around here right now is about me going out and searching for the Lost Granfalloons – Mine.

Not that I plan to bank any money on it.  I’m spang out of money until my SS pension check arrives.

Old Jules

* granfalloon – a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is “Hoosiers“; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so they really share little more than a name. Another example is a Cornellian, a student or graduate of Cornell University.

**sinookas – the tendrils of one’s life.

***Busy, busy, busy” – what a Bokononist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

10 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Prospecting, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens, Social Security

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Philosophy by Limerick – Representative Democracy

Posted on August 1, 2012 by | 2 comments

An election where nobody came
‘Cause the candidates were the same
Would expose the collusion
Destroy the illusion
That YOU voting wrong was to blame.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Government, limericks, Poetry, Politics

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