Tales from the Road

Survival, no other explanation needed

I don't want to fill the internet with more photos because it diminishes my ability to describe. A picture is worth a thousand words or more, so every picture is 1000 words I can ignore and my brain shrivels and my writing powers ebb.

what you might see in Navajo land

I'm touring the great South West Indian lands. Zuni, Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi, Mescalero Apache. The land was different in 1000AD so it's not fair to imagine how these cultures survived since I would also have to imagine 1000 years difference in climate and grasslands, imagine western farming practices never existed, etc.

Van-Camping

Today we have the Bureau of Land Management basically safeguarding land from illegal squatters but they do tolerate hippies and non-conformists like me for 15 days at a time in any given location. So, a person simply finds a State Forest or BLM land reserve and then finds a road into the land and parks. Usually, the locals have already cut a good road to throw teenager parties off the grid so simply follow the beer cans. Sometimes they are pristine. New Mexico and Colorado and Utah are names the White Man gives to this ancestral land of the First Nation people.

I refrain from describing my experiments in winter heating of the van because I do not want to encourage others from attempting these madman stunts such a...

...putting a woodstove and chimney in your van.

No, it's a bad idea. It's also a bad philosophy because it rejects the nomadic tradition of moving to climates that suit the skin, rather than torturing wild animals so one can better survive the climate one is forced into due to changing seasons. Move south or north or higher or lower to adjust the climate. Do not install a woodstove in your van. You lunatic. What is wrong with you? Well, now that the disclaimer is out of the way I can say that a woodstove is also a bad idea because if you are trying to survive with found fuel then where the hell are you going to find good hardwood and mesquite in a Walmart parking lot? I ask you. You won't. You will find cardboard and white pine wooden pallets behind the Big Lots nearby and you will burn these and they will keep you warm for 20 minutes (insert image of yourself patting your own back) and then vanish like the sweet scent of your first girlfriend's hair shampoo in the summer breeze. You will then freeze and think that Oggy is some kind of sadist for making you put a woodstove in a van and neglected to tell you that it will not keep you warm for even half an hour. Bastard! Well, the deal is that even if you found an unlimited supply of hardwood to burn the stove will have to be the variety to burn sticks.

Small fatsco woodstove in van.

And if you can burn sticks of hardwood in your stove then maybe you can survive a night. But my stove is no designed for sticks of anything. It is a Fatsco Pet stove and it is designed for charcoal. Oh, I burned wood in it for 3 evil winters while processing lobsters in Maine and wandering Labrador but I tell you this was not easy nor comfortable. I knew that the stove was designed for charcoal but I figured where am I going to put a huge bag of charcoal? And do I want charcoal dust on everything? And when I run out of charcoal then I will use wood so why not start with wood?

Well, one day I will describe all the gory details but my experiment with wood is over. The kind of wood that one has easy and free access to is not suitable for heating a van for a few hours let alone an entire night. So, I decided I must experiment with charcoal because it's always around 20 degrees in Navajo November so coal is the next step.

The bags of Charcoal caution the user that it emits carbon monoxide and can not be burned in vehicles. They actually have a drawing of a van with a big X through it so that the illiterate Trump supporter might still grasp that charcoal ought not be burned in their van. BUT, everything that burns emits carbon monoxide, including wood and gasoline, so it's a risk we all take every day because engineering has made it possible to produce tons of CO but not immediately be sick from it. The charcoal manufacturers simply don't want to leave any excuse to get sued and they are not going to say that burning charcoal is perfectly fine in a well ventilated van or in a van with a chimney because that's a ridiculous disclaimer, like car manufacturers telling you not to run your vehicle inside your living room. So, I have a well ventilated van with a functioning chimney and I can burn anything in my stove because all the gases and smoke go straight outside. The combustion heats the cast iron and heats the van and the poison goes up into the air where magic fairies churn it into rainbows and unicorn fetishes.

So, I bought two bags of charcoal and started a fire per normal with some old Honduran newspaper, broken-hearted letters to imaginary lovers and some wax firestarter log. And when I get flames then I poured some charcoal onto the flames and opened the air flow door and the damper on the chimney for full air, and the coal blazed up as expected. I always knew the coal would burn, and I suspected the gas would all vent through the chimney with the smoke but I was suspicious that the time of heating would not justify the expense. In order to fully perform this experiment and post information on the internet where foolish van dwellers will get the wrong idea and try this and die, I purchased a Carbon Monoxide detector. I did not get a smoke alarm because that would go off every time I burn the eggs in the morning. The CO monitor I put right by the chimney so there could be no doubt that it would alert me before I entered the long sleep. The alarm, I should add, does not alert the instant it senses CO, but after 5 minutes or 10 minutes depending on the concentration of CO it senses for that length of time it will sound the alarm.

I was hesitant to fill the stove at first so the first two nights were spent testing the lower limits of functionality. Only after a successful two nights that I did not die and charcoal dust did not annoy me did I fill the chamber completely and let it rip. I will say that it's a success. A properly vented chimney with good draft will vent all the gasses and smoke. The charcoal is a huge improvement over the wood because when I used sticks I had to put all the sticks into the fire standing vertically and they burned to ash in about 5 minutes. Charcoal burns the bottom briquettes first and slowly works up, the ash falls through the grate and the higher lumps of coal slowly fall into the burning chamber. The stove was designed for coal with a slope to feed the chamber so one can fill the chamber completely and know they will not have to push the coal into the chamber since it will roll that way as the chamber empties when the lower lumps have burned to ash. The designer of this stove would say, "No shit, why do you think I say, "USE CHARCOAL" on the instructions." But Oggy must learn the hard way because I don't like doing the right thing until I know what the consequences are from doing the wrong thing.

The only problem is the ash that accumulates from an entire stove full of charcoal actually fills the ash chamber to the point that air flow is reduced. So, I would call this a 6 hour stove. I put a bunch of charcoal in at 9pm and there were still red hot coals at 7am the next morning...but the van was cold because I did not get up at 1am and empty the ash and refill the chamber with new coal. I believe that if I can streamline the disposal of the ash then the stove will keep the van warm all night long so that Oggy does not freeze in Zuni land.

this panoramo is worth more than 1000 words. and the van is actually in there somewhere.

Freezing Again

Fired up the wood stove

If the wood stove is blazing then that means something has gone wrong with Oggy's retirement program. I truly planned on winters in temperate Mexico and summers working in the mountains of the south west. But that all fell apart with a few shady employers and my innocently believing an employer actually has a job when they advertise a help wanted ad. So foolish.

We all need to check our first principles lately.
1) What is it we want,
2) what is it we are doing,
3) and what is it we are actually accomplishing.

These are the questions generally left to the sleaze merchants and the propaganda factories. We let other people give us information packaged in a way that makes us think we are informed, but we are not. We might know what we want (mostly manufactured desires provided by corporate marketing teams), but we are horribly misinformed about what we are actually doing and what we are actually accomplishing.

Take a thing as that thing and nothing else. Start there. Carve wood toggle buttons. In order to carve a wooden toggle button one must know what one wants and what one is doing and what one actually is accomplishing. There are no shortcuts. There are no deceitful propaganda lies and hype. You get exactly the toggle button you deserve. Whatever button you made, is the button you end up with. There are no magic fairies who appear at night to improve the button. And if you pretend you know what you want and then do no research, remain ignorant, then you might claim your conscience is clear when your button is not what you want. You say, "Fuck, I was misinformed." No, you were not informed at all because you did not embrace your desires and the full path to achieve those desires."

About 4 sheep had to die for this vest/blanket and it took me 3 months to finish.

The phrase, "You get what you pay for." can be taken two ways. First...you usually get no greater value then the value that you surrendered....Second...the value you surrendered will be exchanged for exactly what was for sale, and not for anything you believe or wish was for sale. You get what you pay for and the amount you paid is worth the value of what you bought. Simple.

This is the wisdom that I think is not valuable today.
It pays to be stupid because wisdom costs time and if we are collectively dumb then the trick is simply to pretend to be wise and let someone else carve your buttons. And when the button carver's currency crashes, but the button buyer enjoys a cheap fruit cocktail then it's obvious a crime has been committed. But these are things that do no good to write about. I am thinking like an Indian because I am in Zuni and Navajo land. I am not wise enough to know all the details and I suspect that if I were wise enough I would still think it would do no good to write about them. So I state again that we all need to carve some wooden buttons because going back to basics has always been the only path.

Blue Skies

Finally found a spot where the police don't wake me up at 2am.

Why The Media Should Stop Using The Word 'Overdose'

I've been pondering this heroin topic and think I see at least one problem that I'd like to bring to the attention of deep thinkers like myself. The problem is the use or misuse of the word 'overdose' when describing a death from drugs. It's sloppy, which is no big deal in modern journalism, but it is sloppy and also and insult and also misleading and also false information. And in this particular topic the use of the word 'overdose' is so misleading and false that it actually contributes in a way to the problem itself. I don't think journalists intend to magnify the problem because that would mean the journalists actually took some time to think about what shit they are writing and what topic they are writing about, but I suspect they merely write their essays paint-by-number style and give no thought outside of interchanging nouns. One week they write about legal prostitution, and the next week they write about heroin use...the same article format is used in both, total bullshit, and they swap some nouns and think they are big heroes. Well, this kind of sloppy writing is infectious because it makes any asshole who reads the paper some sort of half-assed authority on topics that a journalist made no effort to understand from an intelligent perspective. They merely want to sell copy and they are also probably dumb to begin with so what kind of intelligent examination is a CNN hack capable of really? none.

So, let me explain why they are further magnifying the drug problem with their misuse of the word 'overdose'.

Dinner

Oggy collapsed near the broken carbon-fiber picnic table, amid discarded fusion batteries and plates of protein bar residue from the CHEEP production process. Oggy thought he might be allergic to the residue or to some chemical in the protein bar that was liberated by the process of reduction. He examined one piece of plastic, or was it carbon fiber? Oggy reached out, distracted from all other stimuli, ignoring the feuding rats and the nagging prostitute bawling near the Dispos-all toilet shed. What was this artifact? Was it from a pair of biodegradable wrist cuffs that the police were using during their CHEEP raids? Possibly, but, it may have belonged to a personal communication device, long obsolete and broken down to harvest the circuitry, gold and microchip. Yes, Oggy recognized a hint of a shape where the case of the old digital device curved around the camera lens. That corner had been engineered for that purpose, thought Oggy, and now it lay here among the residue of rat feces and used Ultraviolet sterilization packages for temporary spermicide. Who could have predicted this fate? Not the engineer of the robots who manufactured it nor the drones who shipped it nor the consumer and then the pirates who scoured the landfills to retrieve the broken device and bring it back to the crude labs for disassembly and meltdown. This small portion of the case had broken off and been swept into a bag that later was used to transport donated food or clothing to the shelter. That was probably the timeline of this article of plastic, but it was not a complete timeline and Oggy stared deeply at the plastic shard as he tried to visualize the details, to fill in the gaps in the timeline as far back as when the plastic was in a boiling vat of ingredients waiting to be injected and molded, the workers...was it possible human laborers were needed during that process? It depended on the age of the device. There was a time when robots did not rule the workshop floor and humans still monitored or controlled the machines. That was important because the exact chain of commands that led to the molding of the molten plastic may have been controlled by humans or it may have been automatic, regulated by algorithms and supply demands and production quotas. The molding process itself may have taken place in the evening, or the morning, or on a full moon, or a full moon obscured by clouds or a tropical storm. Which tropical storm? Which moon? What continent? Well, it would be Central America, up until the civil war when the manufacturing was moved to the artificial islands in the Gulf. The timeline was impossible to complete with what little information Oggy had so he experienced a grinding frustration at the inability to fully visualize the lifespan of this piece of plastic. Why was it so complicated? He could see the groove where the circuit board would slide into, the small groove where the circuit board had once been but had been removed in order to harvest the chip and gold. But under what conditions had the board been installed and by whom did the board get removed? What was the person's name? When did the robot laborer get manufactured? What weather conditions were present during the harvesting process? Had that taken place here in Santa Cruz or elsewhere, had the workers been singing, what song were they singing? There were unsolvable mysteries because all Oggy had to speculate on was a piece of plastic no bigger than a Fiver Coin. So many mysteries, so many unsolvable riddles. A rat scampered through the debris, dragging its heavy scrotum over the trash.

"Dinner!" cried a scallion from near the entertainment tube.
The denizens of the shelter ceased their agitated milling and moved as one toward the tube. Oggy still held the piece of plastic and examined the circuit board groove with his finger nail but he watched the residents limp like brain-hungry zombies toward the tube. They gathered in a tight circle with those in the back climbing boxes of discarded fruit to see better. The tube glowed to life and a low murmur replaced the jabbering mosaic of hysteria.

"We had the slow-roasted roast beef," began the solemn gender-fluid voice within the tube. "And it was good. The sauce was not too salty..."

A man near the middle of the audience grinned like a grave-robber and said loudly, "Nothing wrong with salty sauce. I..."

"Shut up! Wait until dinner is over." shouted shrewd voice from within the audience.

The voice from within the tube continued, "...and the mashed potatoes were made with real butter..."

Many of the audience moaned with pleasure and a few murmured, 'butter...'

"I wanted the corn side dish but my husband talked me into getting the green beans and we shared the special summer slaw. It was all delicious. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough bacon in the beans. I give the restaurant 5 stars..."

The tube glowed silently for a moment and then turned off. The audience began to shout for seconds.

"Play it again! We want more!"
"Play the part about the bacon!"
"I want the one where she likes the medium rare steak!"
"I liked yesterday's pizza dinner better!"
"More mashed potatoes!"

Oggy watched with cheeks sagging over his fleshy frown as the audience clapped their wooden limbs and stomped their feet in hysterics until the dinner was served again. Oggy wanted to participate but the circuit board mystery bothered him. What was pure and right in a world where this piece of plastic had become so orphaned after so much love and attention was spent to produce it?

The tube spoke again: "We had the slow-roasted roast beef...."
The audience finished the sentence as one: "...And it was good."

Oggy nodded and whispered, "The roast beef was good because the sauce wasn't too salty." 

He got goosebumps as a twinge of warmth from a genuine memory came back to him, a real memory, not the ones he borrowed at the library, though hazy in image the smell was authentic, and a twist in his lips almost made him look happy.