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Slow and steady wins the race, they say, and at least I’ve got the slow part mastered.  The trail started at ten thousand feet of elevation and goes up from there, to the top of 13k Mount Wheeler, which i think is sandy-face himself.  The horn of matter is more domed from this side, covered in scree and conifers, like this last one I’m resting under at the moment to have a snack.  Tree line breaks here, so I thought it’d be a good excuse to sit and catch my breath on the soft carpet of slowly decomposing cones and needles and branches and ferns. 

The flies soon found my sweat, along with the rest of me and i moved on munching mangoes.  Definitely easier to get winded here. Slow, then.

Crossing the ridgeline i see the valley from last night, the windmills in orderly rows, when seen outside the skewed frame of the road which brought me here. A crow shares their captured currents in wings cupped, climbing more easily than I.

A chittering locust and a skunk announce themselves in their own ways.  Later i guess it might be something that smells like skunk instead.  

There are quite a few emergency rock shelters here, built in U shapes to block the prevailing wind.  [See: windmills.]  I use one to rest my shoulders from  where the pack straps are cutting into the trapezius.  I really need a more suitable day pack, this Walmart special is built for a much smaller torso.  My good one is back home.  Always this problem of stuff, right Mr. Carlin?

Up in 4 hours, a half hour at the top and heading down at 15:30.  The last thousand feet was pretty rough in both directions as the trail disappeared under snow.  I made a snowball to celebrate it not being 115 degrees.

On the way down, I can tell the air is thicker because I can drink more without gasping for air.  At the top it was breathe, sip, breathe, sip.  Here it’s drink drink drink breathe. Much better.  The Himalayas are twice this high. Wow.
Arrived at 18:20, so even down was slow.  I’m beat but feeling good.  Resting my everything for a little bit and then setting a course for the next thing.

I rolled out of the park, taking some photos along the way, then got diesel and started across a 75 mile gap between services into Utah.  It turns out there’s a ton of BLM land (which this time I’ll clarify as Bureau of Land Management) and that generally means it’s wide open for RVs.  I pulled off the road just as it was really starting to get dark, and i found a decent level parking spot with a trash-filled fire pit i won’t use. I don’t think there’s anyone around for miles.

I’m still unable to get my RV internet working, which is the fault of my ISP. And Verizon has very little coverage anywhere around here, so I’m offline again and didn’t get to post last night’s thing.  I’m a lot more tired tonight so this will be a short update whenever it goes up.  

Tomorrow: Bryce canyon NP, Grand Staircase Escalante NM, Capitol Reef NP, Arches NP, Moab, Canyonlands NP, Bears Ears NM, Hovenweep NM, Canyons of the Ancients NM and Mesa Verde NP.  Just kidding, not all tomorrow, but that’ll be the order.

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Everything was good with the RV so i pulled it out of storage.  Well, i tried to, but the thing is, I’ve never left that parking lot before, and it turns out that the giant sliding door you come in isn’t how you get out.  It’s the other one on the other side of the building you can’t see from any of the places I’ve ever been.  There should be arrows painted on the pavement.

You know how every vehicle takes some getting used to, when you get in it?  [Especially ones with clutches.] Well i wasn’t exactly used to it after the 8 prior seconds of driving practice in four months, but i did manage to get out of the parking lot without hitting anything.  In their office, they’d put up plexiglass cough screens but there were no masks in sight, at least not counting mine.  I’d worn it for 7 hours, a little while longer wouldn’t hurt.  I did swap it out for a fresh one when i went in to the tire place to get some exciting new mystery items I’ll tell you about later.  [Spoiler: it’s tires]

Ok, it’s later now, i got tires. Michelin Agilis Crossclimate, specifically, the finest shoes for your bigass van.  I got to learn about load ratings!  They’re ratings for load [he said load].  But they’re not in pounds, they’re in [no, not kilograms] … in… Some other unit that converts into the two prior mentioned units. [He said “Units.”]  I went with the bigger number, as I’ve watched enough Tim Allen to know that more  heavy duty is more better  [arrrg arrrg ugg].  [Feel free to translate that into the neolithic language of your choice.]

This is of particular interest to me because i beat the snot out of my tires, since the pavement is a vague suggestion.  [Bitumen, for the portion of you picturing pavers].  Paving’s not seen as necessary, since every wash is drivable if you’ve got high enough clearance.  A wash, see, is a violent flood channel full of rocks in vee shaped waves, as though speedboats had gone upstream their pebbly paths.  Except of course when it isn’t… which is most of the time because desert.  All washes which are drivable until they aren’t.  So, I ordered the best possible tires to deal with the constant battering by rocks the size of alien heads as i barrel confidently across the great American southwest.  [It’s all aliens here. ]

After the tires i went grocery shopping with 3/7ths of a shopping list, and a hand basket. And my mask.  There were a few people wearing them, and i saw a few folks around in face shields.  I got unrefrigerated processed meats, cheese, bagels and other cheese of the spreadable bageloid variety [ed: he means cream cheese], and also not-round bread of the sour-dough variety. And a spicy brown mustard, because yes.  [I don’t have an editor.]  And pesto.  

In line in front of me was a greying patient-care-outfitted lady in line ahead of me had a hair brush and a  25 pack of beer and looked like she needed it.  [The beer; her hair was lovely.] When she forgot it on the carousel i chased her outside and yelled to her to come back.  [Can confirm: you can yell across the parking lot in an n95 just fine.]  So, she came back with… her empty shopping cart and her hair brush, back to get her beer.  [Also can confirm: the glass star trek doors work in both directions even if they only say “exit”]  The carousel I’ve never seen, a disc cut from a half sheet of plywood on bearings, which was pre-covid [or the store has a really good painter in their props-aging department.]  

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And a sandwich, of the whore’s radish and roast beast variety, which I ate in the rv with the engine and ac running.  Having completed my 24 hours to vegas mission, I sat and tried to figure out where to go. Because that part didn’t matter till it did, and I’d managed to mentally put it down until then.  Like an unread book I picked it up from the shelf for the first time.  

I knew the story started in Vegas and was definitely going somewhere cooler, since it was a hundo plus ten [that’s five score and ten [converted to C [exercise for the student to complete]]] degrees, Fahrenheit, (to clarify for you non-murricans and APMs [hereinafter: Americans Preferring Metric] who were surprised i was still alive.)  In the shade.  [just kidding [there is no shade.]]

Hot.

So, i went to a place called the Valley of Fire.

But it was ok because it was a dry fire.   

And i had a partial hookup [no, that’s not dirty] so i had AC all through the 95 degree night [see above], and was able to cool down my fridge on AC [the current] as well, which takes a while even in cooler weather.  They also had showers and a dump station [that’s dirty] and some imposing red rocks, and I climbed up into a tiny cave near the top of one, and sat, and sat, and sat.

And sat.

And then I drove a few hundred miles and collected some trilobites.

The sign suggested a rock hammer and chisel, so i brought my regular hammer and my 6 inch long pry-bar, and went to war with the tools I had.  I’m pretty happy with my preparedness there, i but i did have to move the antifreeze bottle, the fuel filter, the silicone lube (huh huh), the fluid transfer pump, the roll of shop towels (unused), the windshield squeegee and the box of spare parts, not to be confused with the spare parts BAG (which is in the kitchen.)  Mostly because stuff fell when I pulled the toolbox out, and also when it fell again a second, and for one item, a third time. Did i mention it was hot?  

I found a spot in the shade and managed to find a few trilobites and other bites, after i got the hang of opening the shale seams. [Tappy tap tap in outward vectors from the middle of the long face of the slab, like you’re trying to open a book with a hammer.

Because you are.  

A story anyway, equally leaved and sheaved, older than the mountains, unseen by conscious eyes.Till mine.

[Interlude]

[I said interlude]

Fossils are quite good storage media for lumpy-thing-shaped temporally-resistant records.  Pretty slow retrieval time though.  Always trade-offs in IT.

I broke some and I feel like an ass about that, but I think there’s like a whole former ocean floor of them, and i collected a handful of those pieces in my sil-nylon backpack [yes, per the rules, which suggested bringing a hammer]

Also i definitely leveled up my rock whacking skill, I heard the tune and everything. [+1 to Whacking Skill]

[Ed:  *sighs*]

Whacking.

So yeah, I hacked the storage array of the trilobite lumpiness-record. It was a messy fight. People got hurt.  [And by people i mean trilobites.]  31337.

It was also messy, as in covered-in-rock-dust-messy, and of course my Alanis fanclub n95 was back in the RV, a quarter mile away, so i held my breath when it seemed like i might be inhaling rock dust.

It smelled of a childhood memory, of a boy covered in dirt. Constantly.

He, who put a different soft dirt in each of my pants pockets, and later zip lock bags [thanks, mom] and biked on muddy trails, and slid down anything slideable. I remembered him.

Probably better i didn’t have the mask on.  

Then i drove a few hundred miles through vast valleys and past a mountain whose Matterhornish peak seemed shaved and sandpapered, since sand’s cycle is to sand only sometimes, sometimes paper (never scissor.)

Said sandy peak sanded itself into billions of tiny sanders, each set free to carve curved caves of all circumferences by the hand of the howling wind.  A matrix of sedement cyling itself anew.  A sculpture carving itself over millions of years. 

Throughout the day, short hikes only, in the heat, mostly hopping flop-shod over red rock outcrops.  On a trail, rivulets of soft red sand had me try to recall my Attenborough… something about lizards.  I passed petroglyphs hopping from foot to foot flipping at my flops to unlock some flotsam.  Different shoes for me soon.

That trail led to Mouse’s Tank, meaning hole-in-the-rock-which-collects-water, which explains why Mouse came here to hide out, as in outside-the-law, because he was an outlaw Mouse and not a mouse-mouse.  This day it was claimed by bees, and lots of them (minding their beeswax) and the tank looked more suited to them and dead mules.  It looked like a dangerous scramble, too, and I calculated i had a 3/7ths chance of a compound fracture even if it had been freshly scrubbed by Mouse and his mule brush.  Don’t bring a bathing suit.

Aa sun was setting  I climbed the van up the long road into Great Basin National Park, which, contrasted with the valley is thousands of feet [metres] higher and dozens of degrees cooler [see above].  Then i started writing.  I’ll ride down in the morning; i bet it’s better in the daylight.

Goodnight.

*I figure there’s not much overlap between radish growers and whores, because of the difference in working hours.  [Ed: he knows how to spell horseradish, he’s trying to be clever.

[Insert footnote as desired]

[This blog post has been brought to you by [[[[[[[[[SQUARE BRACKETS, inc.]]]]]]]]]]

[The brackets are too small on my phone screen for me to count when my eyes are this tired, so just pretend all the brackets are perfect if they aren’t.]

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This is already the longest I’ve worn a mask.  I’m fortunate in many ways, and this is one of them.  Much has changed since my last post, and while I’ve been thinking it would be good to write about that, I’ve not really felt up to it.  I’ve been experiencing new stress in new ways.  Different ways at different times, as the waves of despair and uncertainty wash over me, tossing me against the rocks of an unrecognizable shore.

And yet I’m fortunate, in my little lighthouse against the storm, clinging to rock against wind unseen, the microscopic rain and hail of humanity’s dark hour invisible in the small-town spring.  

More frightening than the storm is those that are too stupid, too ignorant, or too deceived by charlatans to acknowledge it.  These, the worst among us, the least able to acknowledge that other people exist and have value, row frantically toward peril to the tweeting chant of their psychopathic coxwain.  

And then the fires.  The unbinding of structures by oxygen.  The pent up rage of a nation, bound tighter with each casualty of violent hubris:  Rodney, Tamir, Breonna, George.  An impossibly long list of bloody hands extending throughout all history, but nearest of all the hands of blue on the necks of black.  The structure designed to divide and subjugate is now seen in the light of the burning.

But there is light.  New structures begin to emerge even as old ones continue to fall.  Columbus, Lee and Jemima replaced by BLM signs, pride flags, and calls for universal healthcare, police reform and basic income.  Voices long shouting into the darkness patiently heard at rallies.  Change, finally, i hope.  

I haven’t had the words for any of this, and still don’t, and I know that nothing i say can ever be enough, but despite that i cannot stay silent.  

What i can talk about with more expertise is myself, so I’ll bring this back to that.

I’ve always been a bit of a prepper.  I was a boy scout after all and our motto, to “be prepared” was taken to heart. As a result I’m a bit of a pack rat.  I’ve managed to avoid hoarding status, but I do purchase possessions for the possible prevention of peril. And i cling to them.  It’s not very zen, but it does come in handy when a power supply dies and i have a spare from that old router.  I’m a fixer, and an aspiring maker, and it takes tools and materials to do either so it’s easy to rationalize saving that perfectly good box, wire or sturdy foam.  I’m not complaining, it’s just an acknowledgement of who i am, and why.  

So it was expected that when I saw the first signs of the pandemic i prepared.  I got many things, rational and otherwise against unknown eventualities.  I have an abundance of hand sanitizer, and I’ve had N95 masks since the early ebola outbreaks.  Copious calories clog my cupboards. My RV too was stocked for options last year, with multiple ways to purify water and stay warm.  Too many, really, but that’s how i roll. One reason i purchased the RV in the first place was as a bug-out vehicle.  Imagine my frustration at it being four thousand miles out.

Normally during the spring and summer people tend to take days off, but for those like myself, who were already working remotely, days off grew sparse as new patterns developed.  My employer noticed, and since they’re required to backstop our PTO with cash, their books got fat with stagnant cash.  So, they asked us to take some PTO, and this coming week i scheduled some.  Yesterday i started to wonder what I’d be doing with myself.

I recently purchased some new toys, which for me means tools.  A Prusa MK3S 3d printer, and from the harbor of freight, a boat load of shop equipment, including belts for sanding and sawing, nails and staples and pins for sticking, and glues and tapes for also-sticking.  And of course all sorts of things that make things be bigger, smaller, attached or detached from each other.  More is on the way.  

My desire is to eventually develop the skills to use all the things to make all the things.  To have all the tools and materials and knowledge to bend reality into my vision of it.  I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos.  (Thank you Adam Savage, you’re a gift to humanity.)

What I’ve not been doing much of yet is actually bending, mostly for lack of vision.  I am trying to forgive myself for that part, since I know I work well when I have a project, and expect that will come with time.  Perhaps during low tide.  Meanwhile I have been cleaning and sorting and learning, so that when I do stumble on an idea I’ll be able to de-Platonize it into physical form.  

There is significant value to this, because while I wait for the physical world to call me to action my mental world is reshaped.  Each new tool is a knife, carving the putty of my brain.  Doors of possibility open and i gaze upon new vistas.  I deeply enjoy this experience.  Learning new things makes me feel alive.  I’m not one for mastery though.  I like to know enough about a thing to understand how it slots in with the rest.  To assemble my own tapestry from piles of puzzle pieces.  To build my brain from the inside out, scaffolding outward as quickly as possible.  

I think this is what I enjoy about board games. Learning new games means learning new systems.  I’m a systems guy.  I am usually quick to pick up on how things work, and knowing how things work gives me comfort that i can predict and guide my future. That future-me will be prepared.  Mostly I’m successful with that, but since everything changes it’s a constant effort.

We’re in a time of increased change. The ground feels unsteadier than usual.  The illusion of stability is translucent.  This is both unsettling and inevitable, and recently I’ve been trying to allow for both and forgive myself for being a flawed person, just like you and everyone.  I cannot be perfectly anything, and letting go of that is ironic and required. There is no zen destination, only the path to it. There is no there there. There are no right answers, only the value in looking for them.  

I should, in many cases, be trying harder. The comfortable path isn’t always the right one.  My privilege and fear have kept me away from protests and action. My desire to help outweighed by my indecision and the stagnation of idealized perfection.  The perfect is the enemy of the good, and lately I’ve been mediocre at best.  And this knowledge stagnates and depresses me further.  I need to meditate more often.  I’m losing my tools while I acquire others.  

Also I’ve been hurting. I wake up sore for no reason.  Aging is the process of whittling down the positions where we feel comfortable.  I’m down to two for sleeping.  Part of this, i know, is that i haven’t been swimming, or exercising in general.  I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to eat well and in moderation, so I’ve been keeping my weight in the range where I feel better about myself, and am not putting undue stress on my body.  But my cardio is crap and I’m weaker than I’ve ever been.  I’m not OK with that, but I’ve also been unable to muster the motivation to change it.    

Each day is a new opportunity though, a rebirth.  I named my RV Metamorphose, choosing the grammatical form that commands myself to change.  To turn myself entirely to goo in my rolling cocoon, for only from goo are wings formed.  Some days it works, and I go to bed happy with my choices.  Some days i remember I’m human and flawed and clinging to low rungs on the infinite path to enlightenment.  Some days i can forgive myself.

This is a five hour flight, so it might be a long post, if it isn’t already.  I didn’t sleep well last night, waking from fitful dreams, likely trying to solve problems i couldn’t.  Very un-zen, subconscious-me. Present-me wishes you were better at unconsciousness.  I could theoretically nap, but I suck at that on planes, and the mask would probably make me dream of drowning.  Suffocation is one of my biggest fears, likely stemming from childhood asthma.  I have now-asthma too, and though it’s controlled by better drugs, it justifies my extreme fear of the virus.  As I’ve said before I’m a very fear-driven organism.  That’s probably fortunate, because opportunity-driven organisms frequently don’t have much to eat.  Despite my recent weight loss, i have no problem on that front.  

Fortune is a word I’ve thought about a lot lately.  I’ve always been uncomfortable with the word “blessed” because it implies an other, an order of things, and a hubris of understanding.  For some reason “fortune” feels less so, though i think it too has religious origins.  Privilege, as a term, is in fashion now, and though I’m increasingly able to acknowledge that, not all fortune is privilege, at least in my head.  I am afforded much of both, and that makes me always want to do more than i do.  I think it’s everyone’s duty to themselves, their ancestors and their species to make the most of themselves and their path, however they landed on it.  I’m trying, but i suck at it, and I’m trying to let that be OK and not-OK at the same time, for different reasons.  It comes in waves.

Maybe all things come in waves.  The oscillations of reality certainly do at any level at which we can measure them.  Without dusk there would be no dawn.  Damn, but it’s hard sometimes in the darkness.

I’ve thought about that a lot lately, the dichotomy of dark and light, of black and white, and how intrinsic it is to our psyches, and how harmful it is to the melanin-abundant, and how it is that it never occurred to me before.  Growing always, i am, refining the version of me by cuts and scrapes and putty knives to the brain.  Shaping a version of myself I’m a little happier with each day, as the pieces wear out and scar.  Two opposing waves carving the slow cycle of my existence.

I was once told my blog would be easier to read if i stuck to one subject, but that’s just not how my brain works.  I generally have no idea what I’m going to say until I do, and once said it’s nearly impossible to pick apart the pieces from the whole.  I take consolation that this is a more authentic version of myself as a result, if not a better one.  I write for myself, i think, but i have no success unless I’m talking to you.  I figure it’s because I already know everything i know, so why write about it to only myself?  Of course I’m wrong about that, since I learn much about myself through this process, but somehow the audience is required for the requisite brain juices to flow out onto the proverbial page. 

And for some reason i need disconnection too.  Even though my row-neighbor is on his laptop, across the vast one-seat crevasse across which no virus dare pass, i pretend his internet too cannot reach me.  It’s a useful illusion, and I’ll take it until I can learn another technique for juice-squeezing.  

I do consider myself a writer now, years into this blog.  I may only have a few readers, but I’m generally happy with the squeezings.  A writer writes though, and various versions of me don’t, which disappoints.  I’m a bit of a fledgeling everything, my toes dipped in to so many pools.  Even in my career I’ve specialized in not.  In knowing a little about a lot.  It’s gotten me what I’ve got, so I suppose i should embrace that, but should is a dangerous and difficult word.  It’s tough not ever feeling good enough at anything. At seeing an eight year old kid on YouTube who is better at something than i ever will be at anything.  The explosive growth of media is incompatible with our cave brains, stamped as they are from old molds with minor revision marks.  In the sixteenth century you could easily be the best mandolin player your audience had ever seen.  Now it takes a lot more work to appear as a blip on an ever expanding global average.  But the mandolin still plays, even if the audience has grown fickle. 

Worse, children are held to increasing standards, with schoolyard games morphing into traveling leagues, and international competitions.  Not that these are wrong, per se, but I do wonder how many kids stop kicking the ball when they figure out where they are on the global rankings.  I know I’m prone to it.  Motivation is tough, and brains are cruel mistresses.  Maybe Stuart Smalley was right, and we should all have a daily affirmation.  I always thought that was goofy, and i suppose it was meant to be, but if we’re all self-programmable machines, shouldn’t we, like, do that? With intention?  More cycles. More learning. More change.  More work.

Two hours into a five hour flight. I’m getting used to the constant heat and moisture of the mask. At least it’s keeping me from drying out too much and needing to drink.  I did accept a zip lock bag with a water, a snack and a napkin in it.  I dumped that out in my little sil-nylon backpack, stuffed the zip lock in the back of the seat and sanitized my hands.  Prepared for future thirst, and trying some seemingly sensible risk reduction.  In the end we all die, but I’d like to avoid that for as long as possible.  Especially from suffocation.  RIP George, and the hundreds that will die today, alone.  All of this sucks.

It’s going to be 109 degrees-American in Vegas this week.  I hadn’t intended to be in the south in this weather. If i spontaneously burst into flames you’ll know why.  I’m not stamped from the early molds; my skin is light and it’s very hard for me to stay cool.  I’m a later model, with fewer natural survival mechanisms.  I’m probably better at something as a result, but I don’t know what it is yet.  Documentaries about African persistence hunting assure me I’m a mutant.  

Evolution is frequently represented as a straight line or a tree, seen through the modern lenses of limited information, hubris, and white supremacy.  Really though all of life was formed with a single tool: the mistake. The error in transcription that inserts and removes features each model year.  My 89 accord had the ability to blow cool vent air on my face while defrosting the windshield.  You can imagine how much i enjoyed that, suffering as i do from the transcription error accounting for my discomfort with heat.  I’ve never seen this feature on another car, and it makes me sad every time i sweat in the winter trying to de-ice my windshield.  Each of us has a unique set of features, but no manual.  We stumble around blind, never knowing we’d be a great boomeranger or pig caller, or probably some other more useful things, for people who don’t hunt wild pigs with boomerangs.  (I don’t.)

Self-knowledge then. Know thyself, said backwardsly, but famously.  Those tools are some of the hardest to master.  It’s hard to fix the machine with the machine, especially when it’s unique and broken in unknown ways.   There are so many broken machines wandering around bumping into things.  Mistakes making mistakes, and somehow surviving because sex is fun and we like to kill things and eat them and make tools to do that more efficiently.  That which makes us human makes us terrible, and that which makes us terrible makes us persist.  We’ll make great pets when the aliens come.  

The big wheel of time spins slowly and sometimes imperceptibly, feeling like it gets stuck and then suddenly clunking into place over an unseen notch.  I remember a few such times in my life, the first being the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.  Older Americans had witnessed the loss of astronauts, but with the presence of the expected first teacher in space extra eyes were watching.  In my fifth grade class we weren’t, probably because the big AV cart was being used elsewhere.  Our teacher left us to go watch, and we anticipated lessons from space later.  She came back in tears and said simply “the space shuttle exploded” and we spent the rest of the day processing it together.  Clunk.

The next was September 11th, and i was out of work living with my in-laws, and my ex told me a plane crashed into the WTC. I’d been there a couple of years before and I assumed it was no big deal given the size of the building and my assumption that it was probably a small plane.  I was watching when the second plane hit and the world changed.  And when the tower fell and the world changed again. And when i hoped the second would at least remain as a weird post apocalyptic monument, and was wrong.  Clunk.

And now a literal apocalypse is going on and I’m in an airplane wearing a mask.  Really-slow-clunk-in-progress.  

Fuck.

After 9-11 the country really came together for a while. People were nicer to each other and we felt united as Americans. The world was with us.  And we, being Americans, wanted revenge. Past-me included.  I wanted the people who did it and everyone they knew to know they fucked with the wrong country. And i was wrong, and we were wrong, and all we did was exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to do, despite him SAYING it was what he wanted us to do.  So today i enjoyed the “privilege” of carrying an extra quantity of liquid on the plane, which i should note, is HIGHLY FLAMMABLE, because we’ve all decided to stop fighting an imaginary war from 2001 for a few months to fight a new imaginary war on an unkillable adversary.  More cycles, more mistakes, more clunk.

Meanwhile ignorance and hatred for each other are our only communal enemies.  We could have space colonies and a post-scarcity society if we could all stop being dicks to each other for like five minutes.  But that won’t happen because we’re broken and our molds are broken, and our putty will only change so much.  And then only if we try, and many of us are actively fighting that.  

We are, fortunately, a communal organism, since the advent of language.  We share a head space that transcends and shrinks meat space more even than this airplane does.  We have built in redundancy, to tolerate the broken pieces and stumble along despite them.  But as broken machines, stamped from similar molds, we are prone to similar errors.  One is that we’re bad at estimating the speed of large objects; it’s why people get hit by trains.  Fallacies wouldn’t need to be discussed if we weren’t so prone to them.  Conspiracy theories are attractive because people want simple answers to difficult problems they don’t understand. They want to believe they have control.  This is the same reason religion is attractive, because it’s easier to believe a simple story about a benevolent invisible sky wizard than it is to accept that we’re a pile of broken machines bumping into things, and that we’re separated from the other animals by nothing but transcription mistakes and hubris.  

Tribalism, too, feeds all of the above. Our molds evolved in small groups whose survival depended on defense of the tribe against the “others” whether man or beast.  Families who didn’t have these traits tended to perish, and that evolutionary pressure means we constantly seek groups, and form identities strongly around them.  And without the razor dividing the tribe from the other there can be no tribe, so we cut.  Even if we’re limning on stupid lines, like the idea that the earth is flat or that donald trump isn’t a dangerous narcissistic idiot.  

By the way, if you’ve gotten to mid 2020 and disagree with the last sentence, please don’t ever speak to me again.  I don’t have time for machines as broken as you are, there are plenty of much more interesting models to play with.

Three hours down, two to go. This is a long post.  You probably noticed that by now, and verily i say to thee “you brought this on yourself.”  But also, thanks for reading, it’s good to know that when i piss into the wind I’m not the only one who gets wet.

I reread the above and touched up a few typos, and realized I’ve reached peak hubris.  I cannot possibly say hubris again. I have plenty of hubrisses already and can fit no more hubris in my hubris quota. My hubris buckets are overfull and hubris is spilling out, getting hubris all over the ground. Hubris.

I should probably mention that you’re free to stop reading any time.  I apologise for not having one of those length estimators that Medium has, so you’ll have to judge for yourself by what fractional function a five hour and nine minute flight worth of writing translates to your own reading investment.  If it helps, I’ve just been informed by a very reliable source that there is one hour and thirty five minutes left in this flight to Furnace, i mean Vegas.

I’ve managed to only remove the mask to show my face to the TSA agent and probably the camera system doing the real work.  I’m wearing safety glasses to protect my eyes, though so far that’s been overkill since everyone has masks.  I also put a honking big Nexcare bandage on my hand to cover my pasta injury.  Right, you heard me.  See, I have a technique for snapping a whole handful of linguini (or similar-ini) in half before cooking so i don’t have to eat a baby’s head sized ball of pasta with each bite.  This technique works flawlessly, except when it doesn’t, which is twice.  The first being close to twenty years ago, and the second being Thursday, so I’m still planning to stick with it. Meanwhile though the jagged ends of said sticks scratched the back of my hand, so I’ve stuck a sterile sticker on it, because when it comes to viruses I’m ok with othering by bandage.  

We’re over eastern Colorado, which is flat, like the earth, and apparently is where food comes from, judging by the food shaped fields, or food-field shaped fields anyway.  Either that or Coloradans are really dedicated to large scale rectangular art.  I can see the mountains far ahead and am looking forward to driving back across them.  They’re covered in snow, which reminds me how tenuous our climate is, and how glad I am that i packed a jacket which I will absolutely not be wearing in Furnace, Nevada.

Someone sneezed, and i managed not to open the emergency exit door.  I like mountains but I will wait to visit them until there isn’t a 30,000 foot drop to get to them. Virus be damned.  Also i really hope that guy is covering his virus hole.
You wouldn’t think you could get from Colorado to Vegas in an hour, but then again you’re not an airplane.   And i mean the proverbial “you” and my sincere apologies to all the airplanes that read my blog.  

I might be dehydrated.

I’m looking forward to being de-high-drated, and by that i mean landed, on the ground, at the airport, on earth, the flat paved part.  

From there I’ll take a Lyft or Uber to my RV, hope it starts and get it out of storage.  I bought tires yesterday from across the country and will put them in their proper place by means of a form of sorcery which turns green paper into rubber and labor.  By that i mean actual sorcery; I’m a sorcerer.  

After that I will stock up on food and figure out where to go.   I’ve allocated two weeks to get back home, so i don’t actually have to hurry too much.  I hope to visit some more national parks and stuff, but won’t get to see the grand canyon because it’s apparently on fire.  I just checked the map and I’m on the wrong side of the plane to see that from here. I wonder if I will be able to see any buttes from up here. I do like big buttes.

One hour to go, still, because last time i rounded.  Or maybe I time traveled.  You’ll never know the truth.

Past-me left notes in the RV, but current-me doesn’t remember what they said, so I’m not actually sure if the water tank is full or not. Also i don’t know if I put sanitizer in it or if maybe it will have gone bad.  So that’ll be another task, because desert.  One s in desert, because one is enough, as opposed to dessssssssserts, because snakes like dessert and they make lots of S sounds when they talk in cartoons. 

One hour left now, because, dammit, i checked a more accurate clock.  I may snack after all, because i started thinking about desserts.  

I didn’t think there was this much Colorado west of the mountains.  

Maybe they were right about my multiple subject posts. Someone could read this and think “wow he was making some good points before he got all loony” and to that person i say, thanks for the first part of the imaginary sentence i constructed and attributed to you.

Man this is a long flight, but I’ll be glad when it’s done and I’m not on a layover in Orlando or something being coughed on by a giant mouse.

Passing by Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, otherwise known as “one of the parts of our shared national heritage that trump sold to his billionaire-villain friends.”  I say that word, friends, loosely since it’s pretty clear people only hang around him when they’re duping him.  They probably got the land in exchange for pandering to his fragile ego at one of his tacky properties. Our country’s biggest enemies have him figured out and I’m sure they love how stupid and gullible he is.  Just like his followers. Which again, if that’s you, fuck you, and go away.

Anyway it looks nice from the air, i should visit. The park, not the tacky golf course.

Looks like the next one is Bryce Canyon, which is redder and also looks neat.  I’ll be flying right over Kanab, which is where I stayed in 2012, the last and only time i was in this region.  I won’t be able to see it because this isn’t one of those glass bottomed planes, and I’m not the pilot.

Oh i can see Zion now, the park, not the mythical place, though it’s hard to argue with that Mormon dude once you see the place.  Really stunning, but it may be hard for me to visit this time around.   Access is very limited due to its narrow configuration at the bottom of the canyon.  I’m actually recognizing features, i think. I have a pretty good memory for place.  This area was the first time I spotted a peak in the distance and was surprised when i finally got there that it was 33 miles away.  I’ve driven a lot more in the desert since then, i expect I’m better at guessing long distances now.  

26 minutes now. I know you’re really interested in the countdown and are loving how much my writing has degenerated as exhaustion and dehydration have set in.  Just wait till they open the doors and we add heat stroke to that!  Really though i expect to post this right away, since it’s plenty long enough and i will be busy for a while.  

I don’t understand people who don’t look out the window in planes.  If it’s cloudy or dark, sure, but we are FLYING IN THE AIR LIKE A GIANT METAL BIRD, how is this not amazing to you?  How is seeing the world from this angle not enthralling?  Especially with terrain like this.  What sad transcription error broke you?

Landed!  Posting this before i forget.

H

I’m on a plane to Atlanta, flying out of Boston for just one night.  I have another meeting to attend tomorrow, and another presentation to give.  I was running late due to Boston traffic and bad planning, but got through security just in time.  It was only then that I realized I was in the wrong terminal.  

Normally at Logan I park in Economy parking and take the shuttle. Today, since I am only going to be parked for a day and a half, I’m using Central parking, which I’m not used to.  I followed the sign to park for terminals A and E, but apparently missed the turn coming down the stairs.  I guess I failed my navigation roll.  I quickly checked the map to see that I needed to be clear across the airport, and my flight was already boarding.  Logan doesn’t have post-security transportation, so I had to run back out and across the entire parking lot, then go back through security.  I’m thankful for speed walks and being in decent shape.  I’m a sweaty mess, but I made it with a few minutes to spare.  

If you’re wondering about the RV, it’s parked at a storage facility in Las Vegas.  I’m not sure if i discussed that here or not.  I will fly back to Vegas in a few weeks to pick it up and drive it again.  This plan made the most sense after i found out i needed to be in Vegas for a convention in mid February.

As per my habit, I won’t explain everything that happened since I last wrote.  Also I’m offline so i don’t actually know where I left off.  I’ve already accomplished a lot of what I came back to do, namely to reconnect with friends and loves and to play games.  I spent four days at TotalCon and one at PAX East, playing 46 hours of RPGs across 12 games, and four board games.  I played Thurn and Taxis, and Bruges during a pre-TotalCon hotel room hangout, and I played For Sale and Alien Frontiers at PAX East.  

The RPG list is extensive, and I might come back to that later.  Mostly I played story games with a lot of role-play and not much killing things.  I’m finding that my tastes are shared with more than a few gamers and tend to end up in games with some of them repeatedly.  This is really great because they’re all excellent gamers and we’ve helped make interesting stories together.  I have a growing list of GMs that tend to run the kind of games i like, and i get early registration so I can get in before they fill up.

This marathon of gaming was great, because I have missed it the past few months.  A big part of that is the RV travel, but I stopped running games after the untimely death of my dear friend and player.  I know he would want me to get back on that horse, and I’m starting to feel that I’ll be able to.  The universe where his character patiently awaits the next chapter of that story still occupies my thoughts, but I’m not ready to open that door yet.  Meanwhile though there are lots of other stories to tell and I intend to do that.  I’ll ride a zebra or a donkey instead of a horse, to get used to the saddle again.

Well, i just decided to spend the flight writing out some ideas, and now we’re landing.  

H

Today I got up early and worked, wherein bad things happened I don’t want to discuss publicly.  (I’m ok).

Afterwards I decided to be productive. I got my first professional haircut since Columbus day weekend, 2003.  I remember this because it was my wedding and I decided I should splurge rather than cut it myself.  I wasn’t thrilled with the cut and I went back to cutting it myself.  But since I didn’t bring clippers in the RV, and I figured it would be good to have a fresh cut before the conference I’m attending next week.  This one is better than the last one, despite there being less up there to work with. 

Next I went to a Sprinter repair shop to have them check out my brakes and the front end.   I generally do my own work in vehicles, but I’m not really a truck expert and wanted someone to check out some noises. He said the brakes are just squealing because of dust (wonder how THAT could have happened?) And they have plenty of life left.  He said all I need is four tires, and the other rattling should go away.  I knew the tires weren’t great when I bought it, and I’ve put something like twelve thousand miles on them, so it’s expected.  Often RV tires age out before they wear out.  The DOT code on the tires was 1915 meaning week 19 of 2015 so I resolved to wear them out.  Success!  I didn’t take the place up on the offer to replace them since I want to shop around, but I’m happy with the result.  It’s good to know there’s nothing seriously dangerous going on.

Next I went to a laundromat and changed into hiking pants and a PJ shirt so I could wash everything I care about.  I washed sheets and towels too, and when I was done remaking the bed I figured I should sweep to keep the bed clean.  I wonder where all that dust and sand came from?

Oh right, insane death valley sand storm. They should put a warning label on that place.  

Since I made an RV lunch of chorizo tacos with nothing else but cheese on them I decided I should have a healthier dinner.  I found a vegan Egyptian place nearby, and while I’m neither I’m glad I chose it because it was delicious.  I had lentil “soup” which was really a paste, with lightly fried onion strings on top and steaming fresh bread.  Then I had a cauliflower shawarma and a drink called Lemon Na’na.  It’s basically frozen lemonade and mint, and it is yummy. Pro tip: seems like it would be great if you put booze in it. I didn’t.

I was feeling apprehensive about going out in my slummy clothes, so I picked a place where takeout looked like a good choice. But the owner, who helped me through the menu choices with an easy smile and soothing voice told me I shouldn’t take it to go because how would she know if I liked it? I liked it.  A lot. She pumped her fist in celebration. Shout out to the place, called POTs, which everyone should visit, whether or not you are vegan.  Support local businesses that make amazing things.

Afterwards I moved to a street in a neighborhood with big houses and wide streets. This one is back at the back of the neighborhood by an open lot with nothing but a big antenna in it, so I figure I won’t get hassled. 

I use Google maps satellite view to pick parking spots. The one I used the last two nights was really good but it was a bit far away and I think it’s best to avoid patterns.  Cities are pretty hostile to RVs and expect you to be in an RV park. I have no need for those usually.  I prefer a quiet street.  I only need one more night in the city and then I plan to go somewhere for the weekend. I’m not sure where yet but I’ll figure it out tomorrow.  

I’m going to wrap this up, as I’m getting sleepy even though it’s early.  

H

There exists a mental state I’ll call “suffering,” which is caused by clinging to ideas about the way things should-have-been, might-be, or will-someday-be. By practicing techniques that others have figured out, we can learn to let go of this clinging and release the associated suffering.  

There is no magic to this, but there are some things to watch out for which can help you figure out what is causing suffering at any given moment.

First, ask yourself if the idea comes from an observable fact, or if it’s something you made up, or something someone else made up. Sometimes made-up things help us predict the future, but many times we’re wrong.  Recognizing the difference is what’s important here.  Don’t believe everything you think. 

Next consider how this idea is presenting itself to you.  Are you being honest with yourself when you think about it? Are you being honest when you talk about it with others?   Pay attention. 

When you think about it, are you doing so with intention and focus? Or are you letting the idea roll around in your head with no guidance?  Unguided ideas are rascally, and they’ll steal your cheese when you’re not looking. 

When you choose to act on an idea, are your actions aligned with your intentions and morals, or are you doing something to compromise your integrity?  Are you trying hard or are you being lazy or distracted?  Are you doing nothing and pretending that’s ok? Have you made a bad habit, or are you being diligent?  Be honest, I won’t tell anyone.

Is this real? Is this now? Can you do something about it NOW?  If so, do!  If not, consider whether you’ve let your mind run astray.  

We often get caught in thought-loops about the past or future, and one way to trick our brains out of these is to focus on something that is always in the here and now.  Many things work for this, but one is to close your eyes, slow your body down and just feel yourself breathe for a few seconds.  It’s better if you can do it for a few more seconds after that. Then a few more, since there’s no reason you need to be doing anything else at this moment.  If a thought tells you otherwise it’s probably lying.  If it’s not lying, for example if you’re in the process of driving, you probably should open your eyes.  Otherwise just breathe and nothing else.  Maybe sit too. Just sit and breathe. Just.

With practice you’ll get better at letting your body relax and breathe without trying to force anything.  It’s ok to be bad at it.  If it were easy we wouldn’t need to practice. It gets easier, but it never gets easy.  You’re not broken.  Breathe.  Yes, I mean now.
This practice of stopping for these few seconds teaches us to let go of ideas just long enough to see them from outside themselves, and figure out the answers to the questions above.  It brings us to the present moment, where the past and future don’t exist.  Only ideas of them do.  Pay attention.

This is how we hack our brains.

H

Too tired to write tonight. Drove 400 miles, went through death valley, saw the lowest point on Earth. Saw the highest peak in the lower 48(Whitney), went to Mono Lake, visited the bristlecone pines (road to Methuselah was unfortunately closed but I saw a tree that once met Methuselah in a bar). Survived an insane wind and sand storm that threatened to blow me off the road for hours and hours and hours and hours. 9.5 hours of driving. It’s windy as hell where I’m parked, hopefully the van shaking doesn’t keep me up tonight. 50 to 70 mph gusts. Nowhere to hide here…

Today I heard a raven fleeing the setting sun, not by caw and sqawk but by wings rhythmically fwip fwip fwipping their way into the wood high above.  I had stopped briefly during the controlled descent of a serpentine road, which threatens descents uncontrolled off perilous precipices, to view eleven mountain ridges and the luminous haze dividing them. The setting sun revealed much as it rushed to hide all.  

The road was built before and without consideration for the existence of large vehicles such as mine.  Its twisted form a vine growing up over and around, with frequent leaves of pavement pull-offs.

Often there were reminders that without regular maintenance the mountain would regain a semblance of its original form.  These sloughed bits of itself found around blind corners today made me think of the glass of my rooftop solar panels. 

Though at other times of year it is a rare pass over the long range, it was built not for passage over but passage up to the house of giants.  Waiting for me near the 7000 ft elevation marker was the giantest of all, the largest tree in the world.  

I was reminded of the tour guide from the Boeing factory, who told us we were in the largest building in the world “…by volume, because that’s how we measure things.”  Of course there are taller, both trees and buildings, but the sheer scale of each was staggering.  

The Portola Redwoods are more dense, with the lesser giants packed closer together despite evidence of substantial logging.  These Sequoias have plenty of company, but a smaller percentage share their species.  The other trees are also quite tall, and look tiny only by comparison.

I am staying in the park tonight and have a bit of internet, thanks to my roof mount antennas and altitude. I had intended to hike but contented myself with a wandering around trees and a lookening off vistas.  Still I’m pretty tired so I’m posting this before I fall asleep

H

Yesterday I had a craving for water, so I had a very brief and very cold swim on the Arizona side of Lake Havasu.  I brought the wetsuit and stuff down to the water but wanted to rinse off first, and by the time I had done that I was pretty much all set with the freezing water.  I stayed in the overflow parking of a state park, so I had access to a shower, dump station and fresh water in the morning.  I was nowhere near needing either, but it’s good to take advantage when I can.

In the morning I worked as an extra weird Time Lord, my phone showing California time while I was in Mountain time, and the work was in Eastern.  I headed to Joshua Tree national Park, and stopped to top off with cheaper diesel before the border.  In California I stopped at an agricultural checkpoint and discussed fruit with the agent.  I won’t say exactly what transpired in case it might get them in trouble.  

I’m currently sitting on a mountain again, this one a pile of loose and less loose boulders.  It looks surprisingly like Hampi, only with a valley full of Joshua trees.  The rock is a bit softer and more crumbly though, and while it looks like sand from a distance it’s all quartzy gravely snowballs made by a giant fond of tapioca pudding.  I did quite a bit of bouldering to get up here, and would be challenged to find my return path.  I’m hoping instead to be challenged by a different route, toward the petroglyphs I can see people admiring across the valley.  As in Sedona I can hear people talking clearly, when I sit still and avoid crunching across the rocks.

I definitely had to backtrack a few times, repeatedly deciding if a human could climb that way, and then whether or not I’m such a human.  The gritty rock provided good grip, with none of the dust of Sedona.  Still there were spots where it could flake off in sheets, or where the lentil sized gravel could be slippery.  I got down safely though and checked out the cool petroglyphs.

I’m going to post this now since I think I have a tiny bit of service.

H

The last two days have been weird for me. I visited the Quartzite RV show tent, which is pretty similar to the Big E, or a state fair for those of you not in New England.  I picked up a spare water pump, since mine is making bad noises, and some little bars like tiny shower curtain rods, which help keep things from falling out of cabinets.  None of that was the weird part though, it’s that I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with an introverted mood and haven’t wanted to leave the RV if I didn’t have to.  

Quartzite is pretty huge, with many square miles of drivable off road areas suitable for camping. Some spots are in RV parks but most is vast expanses of public BLM land, with veins of rough dirt roads on the high spots between frequent washes.   The desert here is hard packed dirt covered in dark gravel with bits of quartz. Most of what passes for roads are just places where the gravel has been pushed aside or sometimes just driven over enough that it is apparent where someone else was able to travel.  Whether or not your vehicle can follow depends a lot on it’s configuration, its tires, what the weather is doing, and what it might have done recently, via the violence of fluids.  I made it about two miles down a road before I hit a spot I couldn’t pass.  My RV has decent ground clearance, but a long wheel base. In flat ground I can army crawl in one end and out the other, but I can get hung up on a small mound if I can’t get any of my tires on it.  So, I got high-centered and had to back up.  If I had more time and energy I expect I could have made it with a bit of shovel work, but I decided to turn around instead.

Any such work, from hand, shovel, or tire leaves marks that last for ages.  I’m currently sitting at one such mark, this with a low fence around it and signs of warnings and requests to preserve and protect it.  It’s an image of a man with a spear, standing by a river under the sun.  There are two fish in the river, and he may well be hunting them with his quartz-tipped spear.  No one knows who drew it or why, only that it was discovered in the 1930s from an airplane, along with a few others in this area.  One native legend suggests this is the spear that carved the Colorado river, though that lies a few miles west of here. Other intaglios, or geoglyphs as they’re known are closer to the river.  This one is smaller than I expected, and the man himself is only about twenty feet tall, and skinny.  An eight year old could have produced this drawing in an hour or so, but whether they lived one or twenty hundred years ago, no one can say.  Now though it’s called the Bouse Fisherman, and it’s best photographed from a drone, which I don’t have.  It’s ringed by the Bouse ATV tracks and now with the Bouse My Footprints.  Aside from it being here, it’s an otherwise unremarkable but beautiful place, like millions of other flat spots between washes.  It would be a good place to park the RV, though the 4G is weak.

I had a craving for water and drove to lake Havasu.

H