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-rw-r--r--.gitignore1
-rw-r--r--blue-mountains.txt25
-rw-r--r--published/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt42
-rw-r--r--zion.txt1
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+redplanet
diff --git a/blue-mountains.txt b/blue-mountains.txt
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+Our forest has eyes. All forests have eyes, really, but this one shows them off more than most.
+
+The eyes are places where early growth branches have dropped from the Aspen trees around us.
+
+
+Aspens have always enchanted us. Greek warriors used Aspen to craft shields. The tree owes it's name to them, Aspis translates as "shield." Shield from enemies. Shield from tk Shield from tk.
+
+There are three species of shields left in the North America. Around us are quaking Aspen.
+
+These days Aspen grows mainly in the north -- Montana, Idaho, Colorado and especially as one of the early succession species in the north arboreal forests of Canada. Some, like the stand we're camped in here, still manage to succeed as far south as Southern Utah. Aspens have suffered over the last century or so, as humans have greatly decreased the number and size of forest fires. Aspens thrive after a burn and are later crowded out by pines, spruce and fir which steal their light. Aspens have only one real requirement -- sunlight, lots of sunlight.
+
+Aspens are part of the forest succession cycle, not the beginning or the end, but somewhere in the middle. Interestingly though, Aspens don't really go away even after they've been crowded out by the taller species like fir. They just stop existing above the soil.
+
+A stand of Aspen is considerably different than most trees in a forest. Aspens are rarely individual trees. Instead they grow like rhizomes, like giant white asparagus. Aspens are not really trees, the trunks we see are not the soul of the plant. The truth of Aspens is under the ground. They are massive root systems, some as large as twenty acres, that send up white trunks, which then sprout leaves. But even the leaves aren't necessary. Beneath the striking white bark is a there's a thin photosynthetic green layer that allows the plant to continue synthesizing sugars even without leaves. Winter means little to an Aspen grove.
+
+All of this means that some Aspen groves have been around a very long time. I have no idea how long this one has been here, clinging to a remaining belt of land in the Abajo mountains above Monticello Utah, but I do know that a few hundred miles west of here there is a stand of Aspens known as "Pando" in the Fishlake National Forest, just north of Bryce National Park that's said to be 80,000 years old. This stand, being at the southern edge of the current range of Aspens, likely very old as well, Probably in the 10-20,000 thousand year old range. Possibly older. Either way that's older than Sequoias, older than Bristlecone Pines, possibly older even than Creosote Bushes, which grow in a similar manner.
+
+These eyes have been watching the world for longer than recorded human history, which is why I spent most of the day watching them back. I don't know what Aspens are saying exactly, but I know that they talk in the wind. I know that they stare in the night, in the day. I know that I have never felt an affinity of any plant like what I feel for the Aspen grove.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/published/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt b/published/2017-09-06_breakdown.txt
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+We planned to leave Ridgway and head back to Utah by going over the Dallas Divide, which, while somewhat high, was within what the bus had done previously. Alas it was one of those days that did not start well and then got worse from there. I was feeling a bit dizzy all morning, not bad really, just slightly off. Corrinne wanted to stay and leave the next day but I really wanted to go. I should have listened to her, but when I get it in my head to go I tend to plow forward like a tank, come hell or high water.
+
+Things started to really go south when I got the dump station. I was emptying the tanks when I noticed fluid leaking out the front of the bus. Quite a lot of fluid. I crawled under to investigate. Transmission fluid. Lots of transmission fluid. Leaking. Again. I had noticed a bit a transmission fluid leaking over the last few weeks, but it wasn't leaking enough to even hit the ground, just a bit would dribble out on the suspension from time to time.
+
+I finished up dumping and pulled over to the day use area to get a closer look. After a bit of digging around I found the problem -- a flared compression fitting had cracked. It's worth here noting that someone had already done a considerable amount of surgery and patching to the transmission cooler lines, which were not single tubes but several connected together, three different diameters and types of hose in fact, all cobbled together. It was a crap job, but it was working. Until now.
+
+It so happens that I installed our propane system on the road, so I have flaring tools. What I needed was 5/8 copper tubing, but of course that's pretty much impossible to find outside an auto supply store, which Ridgway lacks. So I rigged up a standard fuel hose with overtightened clamps that seemed like it would hold about five miles into town. And it did. Sort of. I managed to get to the one mechanic shop in town and the mechanic was nice enough to just give me.
+
+Corrinne took the kids to the playground in the center of Ridgway and I sat down on the curb outside the shop and got to work with the flaring tools. About half an hour later I had it sealed up again. By now it was well past noon and I was hungry and the dizziness, which I attributed to not eating, was much worse. I decided to limp back to Ridgway State Park and try again the next day. Corrinne being right.
+
+I made it back, found a site and parked. I wanted to see how my handiwork was holding up so I crawled under and goddamn it there was transmission fluid pouring out of the hose behind where I had fixed, which was some kind of bizarre flexible hose with a flare at one end and screw fitting at the other. I kicked the tailpipe in anger, while wearing flipflops, which as you can imagine was not a good idea. I instinctively tried to grab my foot where it was burned and sat up, hitting my head on the floor of the bus above me. This would probably have all been hilarious to watch.
+
+Finally I rolled out from under the bus, staggered inside for some water, staggered back outside and lay down on the concrete around the picnic table. I was pretty much over it. I lay there waiting for Corrinne and the kids to be done at the park scheming ways to sell the bus, use the money to by plane tickets and just disappear into the far east somewhere to hide from my failure and shame. Eventually I fell asleep and that's where I was when Corrinne and kids finally found me.
+
+That's when Corrinne took my temperature and I realized I was quite sick, with a fever of 103. I stumbled back in the bus, put up my bunk and was pretty much incoherent for the next 18 hours or so.
+
+<img src="images/2017/20170828_174735.jpg" id="image-795" class="picfull caption" />
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row2">
+<img src="images/2017/20170826_181201.jpg" id="image-793" class="cluster pic5 caption" />
+<img src="images/2017/20170826_181529.jpg" id="image-794" class="cluster pic5" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+
+When I finally felt up to it -- two days later -- I did a bit of research and discovered that the only place with the transmission cooler lines I needed was Summit Racing[^1], which I needed to have shipped somewhere, which is one of the challenges of living on the road[^2]. I've also been wanting to put on shocks for about, oh, five thousand miles now.
+
+A while back the speedometer and odometer broke and I tried putting in a new cable but that promptly got chewed up just like the first one. I pulled the speedometer and took it to a shop down in Montrose that was recommended by some friends. They weren't able to tell me much, other than recommended a speedometer shop in Denver, but I liked the two mechanics I talked to so when the fever broke and I decided I was tried of spending my days under the bus I called the shop to see about fixing the transmission cooler lines, new shocks, and some other odds and ends I'd been wanting to do, but hadn't had the time.
+
+Unlike a lot of places I've called on this trip, Diamond G repair in Montrose was unfazed by the size of the bus and could start in on it the next day. The only question was -- should I tow it or could I rig something up to get it twenty miles down the road?
+
+I'd spent some time patching the black tank a week prior and had discovered this interesting a pretty cool stuff that starts as a flexible tap type material but dries hard as a rock. It's gets sold to fix everything from leaky pipes to broken rake handles and in my experience it actually works pretty well. I went back to the hardware store in Ridgway. Again. And grabbed another roll to see what would happen on a flexible hose. I put it on and let it harden for a while. I fired it up and check underneath, no leaks.
+
+I drove down to the dump station, still no leaks. I hit the road. I stopped to check the engine temps -- no leaks doesn't mean tightly sealed vacuum -- but, while hot, nothing was over 200 degrees. I kept going and eventually made it to Diamond G without further incident.
+
+We grabbed what we needed for a week's worth of tent camping, somehow packed it all in the minivan and hit the road. We had mail waiting in Monticello, UT and wanted to get up in the high mountains, to some places the bus couldn't go. I left a laundry list of fixes for the mechanic and we hit the road, Beverly hillbilly style in a packed-to-the-gills van.
+
+
+
+[^1]: Could I have used some brake lines instead? Probably. A couple people on Facebook suggested that, but honestly I was tired of rigging things, I wanted the right parts and I wanted them installed properly. More than that, think less of my mechanical abilities if you will, but I wanted to spend time with my family, get some *paying* work done and not spend my days under the bus.
+[^2]: Some companies are fine with what's called General Delivery, but far more online companies can't make heads or tails of it. I never wrote about it, but getting our Engle fridge was a two week long exercise in frustration. Amazon is hit or miss, really depends on what you're ordering. If it's Amazon fulfillment you're usually fine, if it's not, anybody's guess.
diff --git a/zion.txt b/zion.txt
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+Lines are degradding to the human spirit, they ask that we do something totally counter to all of biology, which freely mingles, exchanges information and materials. Lines are a purely economic performance, an adherance to an outdated idea of how the world works, an idea that no longer matches the facts on the ground so to speak. This is perhaps why the entire concept of waiting in line, or queueing as the British would have it, is a purely western phenomena. Travel anywhere in Asia and you find that things get done, tickets are sold, events entered into, all without anyone lining up.