1-28-07 Mark, rain, snow, the fun never stops.

This camp is just one of the best places I think I have ever camped. I am up high on this ridge with complete access to the sun as well as nice trees for shade if needed. My little solar panel likes it and has been keeping my battery well charged in the pod. I have been borrowing dvd’s from the windspirit library and watching a movie at night now and then. The battery in the little laptop isn’t strong enough to play a movie all the way through so I have an inverter hooked up so I can plug the laptop charger in and then I have plenty of power to play the movie and I even played two one night. I don’t know much about movies so I make some bad choices but every now and then I pick a good one. It probably isn’t such a good idea to be watching all the blood and guts ones that I often pick out. The last couple of days I have had this one line from a movie running through my head,  “It is easier to pull a trigger than play a guitar.” My favorite movie so far has been “Leon the Professional” I can recommend that one.

I have been doing some silver and copper work.

Mark Weeding came down from Miles City in his suburban towing his new bike trailer that he and his son built. He had his KLR strapped down on it and was ready to ride!! We went on down to Lowell’s place across from the Windspirit and stopped in to ask him about the back road over to Globe. Lowell got out his map collection and showed us the trick little road that connects this main ranch road to the road over Pinal mountain that comes down in to Six-shooter canyon and into Globe. It didn’t look too tricky. The next day after the morning walk (I have been walking up my little jeep road past camp every morning about two miles. It is mostly an up hill road and it sure does get my heart pumping and lungs working) we hopped on the bikes and headed up the road past the Windspirit and the other folks that live near there. The road was in great shape and had just been freshly graded. The back roads in Arizona are for the most part well maintained. The road climbs up and up through some really beautiful desert country and past some remote ranches. There is some hunting going on, I think pig or javelina and maybe some deer. (As I was coming down the trail this morning I met a guy that was hunting coyotes). We made it on up to the locked gate and then took the little trail that goes up this gravel wash for a mile or so. The trail finally gets out of the wash and then charges almost straight up a little hog back to connect with another road. That little steep stretch was rather interesting as it was covered with lots of loose rocks and deep ruts. We both made it up ok and it was fun to have made it and nobody got hurt doing it. Mark mentioned that he was glad he wasn’t on his big Vulcan on that stretch. The road continued on up higher and the desert changed the higher we got. Mark mentioned that there was a lot of grass up there and when we came across some cows they looked a whole lot better than the ones we have been seeing down along the road near camp. This is one that has been tasting the fruits of the cholla cactus.

When we finally made it to the top of the mountain we both were un prepared for the first stretch of snow/ice on a little corner going down hill. We were now on the north side of the mountain and it had snowed up there a few days before. The north side is a whole different world than the south side. The south side is all dry desert cactus and small, almost leafless trees, with brush. The north side of the mountain is big pine trees (two feet diameter) and looks a lot like the pine forests in the Rocky Mountains. As I said we were surprised at that first little stretch of ice and I almost went sliding off the road. We were much more careful on the next icy spots. The road was good other than those spots. We made it down into town and had a little lunch and then over to the library for an email check. We stopped at the old court house that is now an art community place and had a look around there. Globe has a nice little art community starting and some of the folks are fixing up some of the old buildings in town. There has been a walmart store come in the area and that is always hard on these little towns downtown.

We rode back on the highway over a 5,000 ft pass. The road is really a steep one and there are two emergency truck ramps on the way down which should give you an idea how steep the dang thing is. It is a wonderful motorcycle road with very few straight stretches. From my camp I can hear the little herds of motorcycles making a run at the hill as well as those Harley guys blasting up the hill.

We had a little stretch of wet weather here.

Mark hung out here for a while in it but finally took off and went over to the Yuma, California area to do some ridding. We looked on the internet and it appeared that the weather was going to be better over there. I have been over in that country and I don’t particularly like it over in California. They probably wouldn’t want me over there pulling my little train anyway so I opted to hang out here where I am comfortable. It rained and rained some more and finally it snowed here. I popped open the door of the pod one morning and snapped this one of the bloodhound.

It looked like a shitty day but by noon the snow was gone and it turned into a pretty nice day. The road was slicker than shit though and I had to drive the pickup down to Windspirit to connect up to the internet. Don has made a wifi connection down there this time and it makes it really nice to just pop open the laptop and be automatically connected. My new laptop sometimes gives me trouble as it doesn’t know if I want to hook up with my phone or do wifi. I confuse it and then I sometimes have to just reboot and let the little guy in there start from scratch over again. When I do that he gets me figured out pretty well.

Before Mark came the weather was very nice and after my morning walk I would get out my tools and make a few silver pieces while listing to the radio. I can get NPR here so there are interesting thing to listen to. I really like a program that Diane Ream has as well as the BBC segments. I made a few copper pieces first to sort of get my fingers working again. I really like working with copper and I know I could probably do well with them if I could find a store that would carry then.

There were a few copper jewelry pieces in the art center in Globe but they were pretty plain crude twisted wire things with beads on them. It would be fun to do more copper. One of the young gals (Kate) that came about the same time I got here as gracious enough to let me trade her hair clip for letting me take photos of her with clips in her hair. The first batch of photos turned out terrible and I asked Don if he would help me. Don had worked in a photography studio in years past and got out some of his stuff and with the help of Katherine, we tried to get some good photos. Don was able to get much better photos than I have been able to do but I think I need a better camera and a lot of practice if I am going to do great photos.

Look at the tree just above Don.

I got a pretty good picture of Katherine after she just bought a nice necklace and earrings from another gal here at the Windspirit named Lorrayne, who does fine bead work.

You might be able to tell that this photo was taken in the cookhouse. Both Kate and Katherine are good cooks and they invited me to supper a couple of times that they cooked for the community. Yes, I am a lucky dog…..

I have been going through an interesting time in my head lately. My friend Ken up in Fort Morgan sent me a book he had just bought and read. The name is “The Long Emergency” by James Kunstler. It is hard for me to explain exactly all that is in the book. The main premise of the book is that we are just now heading into what will become an energy emergency because we have depleted about half of the worlds oil supply. He goes into great detail on all aspects of our life and how it will be influenced. He has written an article that is in the recent Orion magazine that I think you will find VERY interesting.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-1om/Kunstler.html

This article should give you an idea of what sort of things have been going around in my head lately. I know the world isn’t gong to run out of oil tomorrow and hopefully there will be some intelligent thought and planning that will happen. I actually don’t have a lot of expectations that there will be.

Another article that I just read is this one..

Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for peak oil than the US
by Dmitry Orlov
http://energybulletin.net/23259.html Whoa!! This should open your eyes! When I was in Argentina I talked with a guy about what happened when their economy collapsed. Essentially, the banks closed and when they reopened a few weeks later, the people were only able to get a small percentage of the money they had in the bank. An interesting point is that if they had an account in US dollars, they gave you only Argentine money and very little of that. The whole country collapsed and is just starting to come out of it now. A lot of people lost everything. I think they are a lot more like Russia and able to come out of this in a lot better shape than the US will. Some of the little central American countries and most of the really small towns I visited I don’t think will have such sever problems because they have never been totally dependent on oil like we have. The markets I visited were supplied (vegetable wise) from local farmers who brought a lot of their produce on their backs to the market.

Those two articles will give you an idea of the thoughts and questions I have spinning around in my head. Kunstler goes into great detail on how different parts of the country will be affected.

Some interesting links:

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary20.html  The Cheap Oil Mirage

Actually his webpage has quite a few good links. www.kunstler.com

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I lifted this piece from another site I read, it follows what Kunstler has to say:

you might want to pop open a great 130-page Master's thesis from Sarah Odland (Mercy College MBA) titled: "Strategic Choices for Managing the Transition from Peak Oil to a Reduced Petroleum Society."  If you're just looking for her conclusion, check page 105 of the PDF (Chapter 8 - Lemmings In-The-Know):

"It is by now obvious that world oil production faces serious constraints to expanding. Exploration and refining infrastructure is operating at capacity, yet it may not be profitable to invest in capital expansion. New oil discoveries have not offset the yearly depletion of existing fields since the 1980’s. Whether or not world oil production will peak in 2005 or 2025 is not the critical question; we have already rolled over to a sellers’ market because demand exceeds the rate at which oil can be supplied. With little sign of demand abatement from the US or Europe and skyrocketing demand from China and India, we are drawing down the capital of our oil endowment at an alarming rate. From this point onwards, we can expect supply disruptions, price spikes, and oil shocks.
The petroleum-based world economy has therefore reached a tipping point. Fierce competition for the remaining oil resources will increasingly drive the markets, as well as national and foreign policies. The strategic choices we make now about how the 2nd half of the world’s oil should be used will determine how violently and abruptly we descend Hubbert’s Peak."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I got an email from Mark and it looks like I will be meeting him down in Patagonia, AZ on Monday evening at a campground near there. I need to go to Globe on Monday and see if my mail has finally made it there. I will go down this evening and see if I can get this loaded up and sent off. Mark and I will probably be doing some ridding down south for a while. I’m not sure if we will make it down into Mexico or not but we both have our passports, just in case we want to drop down there.