diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'scratch.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | scratch.txt | 220 |
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 219 deletions
diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index e98618e..a103e87 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -574,115 +574,6 @@ People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. # Stories to Tell -## Lemon Lyme Summer - -The sun rises as a thin band of orange squeezed between twin blue worlds of lake and cloud. The tips of the pines above glow for a moment before the sun slides up and behind the distant clouds. - - -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-23-05-38-14_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4010" class="picwide" /> - -The sun rises near the center of the bay when we arrive in April, but by the solstice it's no longer rising over the lake at all, but far to the north, from some spot obscured by trees. There it rises most of the summer, a reminder that the arc of the world is large and never ceasing. - -Summer on the shores of Lake Superior is difficult to put in words. The best I can come up with is idyllic. It's never that hot here. It's often [warmer in Florida in April](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/05/goodbye-florida) than it is up here in July. The funny thing is, temperature is always relative, and come July we sometimes sound just like the people I [once laughed at](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/07/crystal-lake), calling a 85 degree day here "hot." - -There is something about summer up here that feels [more like the world of my youth](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/08/everyday-1984) than anywhere else we've been in the U.S. It's one of the few places we've been where the kids can wander the woods, follow the creeks, ride their bikes around town, make food over a fire, fish, swim, and whatever else they want to do -- on their own. - -<img src="images/2024/DSC00991.jpg" id="image-4014" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/DSC00979.jpg" id="image-4012" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/DSC00982.jpg" id="image-4013" class="picwide" /> - -Despite my best [determination not to be hurried](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/11/dunes), May and June were a blur of baseball and juijitsu, acting camp and sailing camp. This year the girls were invited to teach sailing for the younger kids, so that stretched out even longer. When I type it out it doesn't sound like much. Maybe it isn't. Busy is like the temperature, relative. - -<img src="images/2024/2024-06-13_181015_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3993" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-23_112419_sailing.jpg" id="image-4007" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-23_112742_sailing.jpg" id="image-4008" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-06-07_125848_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3992" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-06-15_094626_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3994" class="picwide caption" /> - -The girls' birthday marks what I think of the real beginning of summer up here. This is around the time it get "hot" with days above 80 and the lake water in the shallows of Chequamegon Bay gets into the low 60s, which feels like bathwater after swimming in May and June. - -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-11_064305_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4000" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-11_064556_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4001" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-12_065415_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4002" class="picwide" /> - - -By early August the midday light burns through the evergreens with a kind of sharpness, a sluggish heat hangs in the air, the haze of humidity weighing it down. Ashland, a mere four miles across the bay, gets lost in the watery blur of the horizon. Thankfully the lake is always there, always cool, usually cold, even on the hottest days. - -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-08_182047_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4004" class="picwide" /> - -<img src="images/2024/2024-06-01_155658_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3990" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-27_144831_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4003" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-18_201352_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4005" class="picwide" /> - -I had a couple big projects to get done this summer, which also made it feel busier than usual. These projects were largely physical, building things. Toward the end of July I found that my joints were hurting more than they should, even with the abuse of lifting heavy sheets of plywood and spending 6 hours a week on the juijistu mats. I would probably never have thought anything of it, except that I mentioned it one day, and my wife pointed out that joint pain is a symptom of Lyme disease, and I'd had a tick in me about two weeks before. - -Shortly after that I began to have a host of other issues, all of which pointed to Lyme. Lyme is so common in this area that you can actually get prophylactic antibiotic prescriptions. Well, if you have a savvy doctor anyway. - -If you do any research on Lyme you'll quickly enter a minefield of conflicting information. Luckily for me, a good friend of ours was a nurse in the area, and has had Lyme, so she suggested I go to a Lyme-specific clinic about two hours away. I made an appointment for a week later, but in the mean time, Lyme began to eat away at me. And I mean that literally. You can feel it inside you, in your joints, in your head. The only other thing I've ever had that was like was Covid (which was much, much milder, but had the same eerie presence to it). Coincidentally there is some [pretty good evidence](https://www.amazon.com/Bitten-History-Disease-Biological-Weapons/dp/006289627X) Lyme is another escaped bioweapon. Make of that what you will. - -Whatever its origins, half the problem with Lyme is finding a doctor who understands it. Fortunately I did and I got the prescriptions I needed (antibiotics along with a slew of supplements). If you've got Lyme and you're anywhere near the [Tick-Borne Illness Center](https://www.aspirus.org/find-a-location/aspirus-tickborne-illness-center-552) in Woodruff, Wisconsin, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately you'll have to pay out of pocket. The tick center does not follow the CDC's guidelines (which will leave you with Lyme for a lifetime) and therefore most insurance won't cover it. - -I'm still not back to 100 percent. Maybe I never will be. I do feel much better and have been able to get back to juijitsu and physical labor, which I'm thankful for, but my joints continue to hurt and swell up at times. - -<div class="cluster"> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-03_111503_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3996" class="picwide" /> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-03_111734_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3999" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-03_111447_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3995" class="cluster pic66" /> - </span> -</div> - -Toward the end August I was able to get back to work on my projects. Baseball ended, all the camps were over, our lives had settled down again. This year we had a string of warm weeks around then, almost no rain and temps in the low 80s. We spent most of our time in the lake, on the paddle boards, with the occasional break to hike, pick berries, or record it all on paper. - -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-21_145028_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4006" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-26_091624_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4009" class="picwide" /> - -September sees the sunrise inch back out over the lake again. The orange and blue mornings return. Normally it turns cooler in early September, but this year it has not. It's not hot by any definition, it's idyllic. The maples and birch are turning colors, the humidity is gone. Fall is in the air. - -Autumn is a quality of light, a taste in the air. Something new is added. The world is clearer, the edges sharper, it feels like around the corner, all will be revealed. The earth is brilliantly alive. You can taste it. If I could live in perpetual Autumn I would. For a while at least. - -## economics -Once people get over the big blue bus, two questions inevitably follow. - -The first is, *so... what do you do?* This is the polite American way of saying, *how the hell do you afford to do this?* - -The second thing people ask is what the kids do for school. That requires a much more complex answer. Let's stick to money. Money is simple. Well, compared to education. - -### Set a Goal - -Before you figure out how you can afford to travel you need a goal. What is your goal? Is it to travel somewhere specific? Some specific means of traveling (e.g. RV, boat, AirBnB, etc)?Is it some specific amount of time (e.g. a few months between jobs, during a summer break, etc)? - -It's important to have a concrete goal in mind before you start trying to arrange your life in a way that carries you to that goal. I hate to sound like a life coach, but if you don't have a goal you'll never find your path. Without a clear path you won't go anywhere. - -For example, the first time I went on a long term trip I had general destination in mind (India and Southeast Asia). That allowed me to research to costs of getting to those places, the likely costs of life there, and then I could work backwards to figure out how much I need to save. I had a concrete number in mind ($10k, which I expected to last me 6 months), and I started saving until I had enough and I then I left. When it ran out I came home. I was young enough then that I just crashed on friends couches until I landed a new job, if that's not an option be sure to set aside a fund to re-enter normal life. - -This isn't the only way to do it though. I met several people on that trip who went the opposite direction, they saved up a chunk of money and then figured out where they could make it last the longest. That's another way to do it. - -And finally there is what I do now, which is working on the road. I only recommend this if your goal is to travel indefinitely. And for the record, neither I nor anyone I've ever met traveling left home planning to travel indefinitely. That tends to be something you decide when it comes time to end a long trip. You start thinking, *I want to keep doing this forever*, and that sudden pressure (the thought of going back) tends to lead to the creative thinking you need to develop if you do indeed want to live on the road. - -### Get Rid of Everything - -The first step to affording to travel is to get rid of everything you don't absolutely need. I actually think it would be easier to get rid of literally everything, head out the door and just buy things as you need them, but no one has ever taken this suggestion seriously so the best I can say is: if everything you doesn't fit in two bags, you're going to run into problems. - -Get down to two bags. If you need to add things down the road, that's fine. For example, if you end up traveling with your home, like a van, RV, boat, or whatever, you're going to need tools, you can add those in later. But for the most part get rid of everything. - -This is important literally, as an act, but also as a process. It will teach you things. It will teach you how remote your wants are from your needs. Get rid of your wants along with all the debris those wants have brought into your life. Focus on what you absolutely need. If you want nothing you will not need as much money. Needs turn out to be pretty cheaply met. Find a dumpster and throw your TV in it. That alone will do more to get you on your way to having enough money to travel than anything else on this page. - -Don't worry if this is really hard or insanely time consuming. It's that way for everyone. I've written about this elsewhere, but it is astronomically easier to let stuff into your life than it is to get it out. - -Stuff costs money and takes up space, neither of which you have future traveler. Life on the road is one of necessities (food and shelter) and great views, not endless wants fulfilled and Amazon deliveries. The less you want the better off you will be financially. Yes, you can take this too far, but very few people do so don't worry about that. - -One trap to beware of, having less doesn't mean you have to have the best. I see things on the internet from people who profess to be minimalists because they have only one fork, spoon, and knife, but those utensils are $40. That's not what you're after. Let go of the need to impress if you can, it will save you a ton of money. And none of us out here traveling will be impressed anyway. - -### Become Financially Self-Dependant - -I stole the phrase Financially Self-Dependant from the good people at Wanderer Financial because it captures something key that no other way of putting it does: you're in control. There are myriad ways this can be achieved depending on your skill set, but one thing I can absolutely promise you is that it won't mean having a traditional job. Can you travel with a full time job? Sure. I have several times. It sucks. It doesn't suck because you have set hours, though that's part of it, but mostly it sucks because you are not in direct control of your income. Worse, you only have one source of income. - -Lose your job at home and it's a big deal. - -I hate to tell you this, but the truth is we saved up for a long time before we went traveling so that we would have a good cushion of money should anything go wrong. - -Speaking of which, if you're like me you got no financial education. You're going to need to fix ## The Good Life I was recently talking with my editor about my decidedly low ambitions at work. Writers often have trajectories. They start at small publications, write that one big story, then move to a larger publication, write that one big story, then move on to a larger publication, and so on. I have never had any interest in that. I've spent my entire writing "career" primarily at Wired. I've been writing for Wired in one form or another since 1999. In all that time Wired has never rejected a pitch[^1], why would I want to write for anyone else? @@ -700,7 +591,7 @@ One of the great dangers of life is that we don't know what the good life looks ## April White -The mild winter of 2023-2024 brought very little snow to Wisconsin. We watched the weather for months waiting for more snow to fall, but it never did. Last year we arrived after Memorial Day and it was still cool. This year we headed up April 1 and found not a patch of snow on the ground. +The mild winter of 2023-2024 brought very little snow to Wisconsin. We watched the weather for months waiting for more snow to fall, but it never did. Last year we arrived after Memorial Day and there were still patches of snow in the deep shade of the wood. This year we headed up April 1. So far as I have been able to discover, there is only one Wisconsin state park that opens this early and as luck would have it, it's right where we wanted to be to visit some friends. We headed north from [Ferne Clyffe](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2024/03/illinois-cliffs), stopped off for a night in Rockford, and made it up to Hartman Creek State Park the day it opened. @@ -867,115 +758,6 @@ Electric cars are limited to a city for the most part. I don't think this is a d f the urban operating system is going to happen, as the WEf and all the smart city avocates believe, I want to throw my lot in with the free softwareists—the drivers. -## Car Show Post - -Someone stopped by the bus the other day to talk about it. I answered his questions, but then as he was getting ready to go he said something that stuck with me, "thanks for keeping it going". It jumped out at me because he was the second person to say that to me. *I love knowing these things are out there, still going.* - -This evening I went to the grocery store in town and there was an early 1970s-ish Ford Bronco at the gas pump. I'm not a huge fan of Broncos, I'll probably never own one, but it was my kind of car, not perfect, plenty of patina in the finish. It had been around and I thought, you know, I too am glad it's out there, still running. - -It's not the thing though. The thing is irrelevant. *Thanks for keeping it going.* What is it? The past? Thanks for keeping this tiny thread of the past alive in the present. Thanks for the path back, thanks for keeping these things, and the memories we have that are connected to them alive. - -Nostalgia is commonly used pejoratively. The American Psychological Association considers it a subset of depression, which is, ahem, depressing. But then I guess if you're stuck trying to prop up the present as better than the past, at this point, you have to do some serious philosophical dancing. - -I find it far more telling that the meaning of nostalgia has shifted over the years from the original conception of "pain, grief, and distress" from trying "to reach some place, escape, return, get home," to our more modern connotation, "wistful yearning for the past." The genuineness of grief has be replaced with the easier to dismiss *yearning*. - -The word nostalgia comes from two Greek words, *algos*, which gives us the "pain, grief, distress", and *Nostos* the returning home bit. But combining these two words and then ending up with a "wistful yearning for the past," says far more about our values than anything. - -*Nostos* is the part that interests me. It has an Old English cognate, *genesen*, which means "to recover." There's also the Gothic *ganisan*, which means "to heal." This is the thread I think of when I see those Broncos and Travcos, those old appliances that actually work, those old clothes not made of plastic, all these things are not a homesickness for another time or place, but a yearning to heal the present. It's a yearning to recover those elements of the past that were better than what we have today. Not nostalgically, but tangibly, demonstrably better. - -*Thanks for keeping it going.* Thanks for maintaining a path to healing the present. Thanks for pointing the way. - -I didn't say anything to the Bronco though. There was no one around. Maybe the steel and iron understand, I think they do, but no one, including me, wants to be the weirdo talking to the car in an empty parking lot. Besides, it's the person who's maintaining that connection that matters. It's their struggle to keep that thing working that matters. All those people laboring to keep those bits of the past working in the present, that's what matters. Without them the objects are just rust and decay. Someone has to maintain them, recover them, repair them—this is what matters. This is the bond in the present to the past. Those who keep things going understand them, understand where they came from, why they work the way the work, and what that means. You have too, otherwise you'll never be able to keep whatever it is working. - -This means you're constantly communing with the past. If that sounds too hippy for you, don't worry, that communication with the past often goes like this, "what #$%@ idiot wired this together with electrical tape" or words to that effect. It's not all good, the past. But most things from prior to about 1995, were made with the implicit understanding that they would, at some point in the future, need to be repaired. This was an understood part of the design process, even if the designer assumed the repair person would be "a professional". - -Go back a bit further and not only is that part of the design process, but there's no assumption about professionals, the assumption is that the owner would be fixing it. Read any car manual—not the repair manual, just the owner's manual -- and you'll find the manufacturers assumed owners would change the oil, repair the brakes, and perform other basic maintenance. - -Somewhere in the last 30 years, we lost this culture of repair. - -Actually lost is the wrong word. I believe it was a concerted effort to destroy not just the ability to repair things, but the culture of repair, the idea that repairing things is something you could and should do. - -Today we live in a world where even professional mechanics can't repair some vehicles. It's so bad that Massachusetts passed a law requiring vehicle manufacturers to allow third-party repair and the United States federal government suggested that car makers not comply (the feds just changed their mind, somewhat). The primary effect of the Massachusetts law so far hasn't been what it's author's hope for though. Instead of giving mechanics and users access to the data the dealers can access, car makers like Kia and Subaru have decided to disabled their telemetric systems completely for Massachusetts drivers. The logic, if you can call it that, seems to be "if we have to give it to you, we'll just not record it, then we *can't* give it to you." - -This is why, in 2073, no one is ever going to see a 2023 Subaru at the gas station and say, "hey, thanks for keeping it going." The 2023 Subaru is going end up in a landfill with every other car made since about 2012. - -I write about cars because it's something I've come to know and love, but you can swap out car for washing machine, refrigerator, toaster, what have you and the story is the same. - - - - - - - - - - -Right now keeping it going is often a hobby, though for many of us it's an economic necessity as well. The day is coming though when it will be more than an economic necessity. It will be a necessity because there is no alternative. - -No one knows when that's going to be, but increasingly, I think we all feel it coming. The world as we know it is going away, and we have a front-row seat to the change. The question is, what are we going to do? - -The past hundred years have been unlike anything in human history. Today you can buy things made in China for a $1 at your local hardware store. But the global trade that's made our world possible is falling apart. We aren't going to keep getting endless replacements doodads, and most of the things that surround us now can't be repaired. We're going to have to reach back, to dig the old stuff that was repairable out of the weeds and get it running again. - -This is where I believe the anachronists can guide us into a saner future—by going through the past -- but that's not why I started learning to fix things and it isn't why I fix things now. - - -Where we spend our summers there are a number of campsites that are designated "seasonal", that is, the occupants, like us, have the site from the middle of May to the middle of October. As you would expect, we get to know the other seasonal people. - - -In the past things had to be repairable because replacing them would be too expensive. This is the world we will return to, but you don't have to wait for it to be forced on you. You can start now. You can get ahead of the curve. Repair is something you can learn to do right now and it has benefits *right now*, even if global trade remains a stable thing for decades to come. - - - -It likely won't, I think we are just a couple of high profile acts of piracy away from the death of international trade as we know it. - -There's nothing your or I can do about the fate the seas, but the next time the blender breaks we could have a crack at fixing it before we throw it away. Even better we could learn to do without a blender by gaining skills with a chef knife or mortar and pestle. - -Learning skills like this, whether to repair things or how to use older, more robust systems of doing the same task, is an investment in the future. In your future, in our future. If not you, then who? If you can repair it, then you might never need another. That's a future in which you're a little less dependant on the fragile, global systems. - -I think of all skills this way. I've spent the last year teaching myself to cook over open flame, especially using a dutch oven, in part because, well, open flame is the way all cooking was done until about 100 years ago, there's that connection to the past, but also because, if we happen to run out of propane, or don't have the electricity to run the waffle iron, it really doesn't matter, so long as I can start a fire I can cook just about anything. - -Every withdrawal you can make from fragile systems empowers you. - - - - - - - - - - - -Why be glad that someone else has an old car? It is a peculiar thing to think. I think it has to do with recognizing a kindred spirit in the person behind the car. In a culture that prizes the new and chucks the old without a thought, those of us who appreciate the old, the time-tested, the well-worn are anachronisms. We're out of pace with the world and it can be lonely to be left behind by your culture. It helps to know there are others out there like yourself. The things, the cars, the trucks, the buses, they're talismans perhaps, so we anachronists will know each other when we see each other. - - -Thanks for that reminder that cars used to be objects of art rather than commodities. - - -Making and fixing things with purpose. Extending the life of this thing is extending its potential to the world. Repair with purpose. - - - - - -We know what it's like to bang our heads against a problem for weeks. We know the pain of seeing that white smoke coming out the valve cover vent. We understand the sense of victory when it starts up and purrs after hours of work. We know these things. - - -Will my children feel a nostalgic connection to iPads and e-bikes? Perhaps. - - - - - - - -This is why I am always disappointed to meet people with classic cars who just take it to the mechanic. I know not everyone has the time or inclination to do it themselves, but I won't lie, I am always disappointed to hear it. The shared experience isn't there. They don't know. In some respects I do think perhaps you should have to earn the talismans. - -It's the same with people who ask if we plan to paint the bus. We don't. I wouldn't if it were free. Every worn patch, every scrape, every dent and frayed bit of fiberglass has a story to it. I don't know all the stories, but I've spent a good bit of time thinking about what might have happened. I've made up some stories. I've added a few of my own. I won't erase any of them, even ones I don't know[^1]. - - -[^1]: If there were rust, or something that threatened the longevity of the bus, then I would patch and paint if necessary, but fortunately that's not a factor since the bus is two giant pieces of fiberglass. - ## Parts of the Whole One of the interesting things about repairing engines is that they teach things about life more generally. Engines have taught me that while the parts might influence how the whole functions, all that really matters is the whole. If the whole isn't right, it doesn't matter how good the parts are. |