Time For New Web

Early morning and this spider's web is dew covered. This web will be of little use for catching insects. Too visible. Soon the spider will be creating a new orb web.

Did a check at my favorite reference source -- the internet. It takes a spider on average about an hour to make an orb web. Looking at the construction, it seems quite complicated to create the outside anchors. Then at some point the radii strands are created. Finally, the spider goes round and round creating the orb. The only part of a spider web construction that I have witnessed was the creation of the orb pattern. 

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As I edit through the thousands of photos stored on the hard drive, I've found some to share with my readers. These photos will be posted when there is nothing else to write about. 

Balmy Day In Tucson

Compared to the zero degree temperatures on Front Range Colorado this morning, 26 degrees is balmy.  This was my weather station when I finally got out of bed this morning. Yes. It was 8:30. Over night low was 23 and that high of 30 was recorded at midnight.

As I lay in bed this morning contemplating the cold, memories of childhood winters in the farm home were recalled. The house was built in 1912 with all the modern conveniences of the time -- indoor plumbing and wired for electricity. A gasoline engine charged the batteries for the electricity.  (Electricity arrived at the farm in 1929). In 1912, houses were built as shells to slow down the wind and keep some of the heat inside. There was no insulation in the walls or ceilings of that house.

A coal and wood furnace provided the hot water heat for the radiators throughout the house. That furnace needed tending -- adding coal or wood to keep the fire going to keep the house warm. It would not be unusual for the furnace fire to die down over night. First thing in the morning Mom or Dad would get that fire going once again. About the age of ten, during day times I stoked the fire with wood or coal.

Yes. Those were the good old days. Today we just turn up the thermostat and the fire starts automatically as an ignitor starts the furnace fueled by natural gas. It's a wonderful world.

May be cold today, but nature is into averages. To create average temperatures, nature plans for "real" balmy temperatures to return to Tucson.

Physical exercise is another way to get warm. This body needs exercise and likes warmth, so yesterday I took a two to three mile wander on the trails in the desert behind the RV park.

Later today more exercise induced heat is planned in Tucson's balmy mid 40 degree temperatures.

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Yes. This is long pants weather. The daily attire is long pants and a heavy jacket over the Hawaiian shirt.

Digital Photo Nightmare

Digital photography is great. Take enough digital photos, you're bound to get a good photo. Store the photos on the hard disk. Each photo doesn't take up any physical space -- only changed bits on the disk.

Actually, it's not a good idea. A better method would be to follow my approach when I took real photos and slides. Keep the good photos. Toss the duplicates.

After almost eleven years on the road there are thousands of photos on that hard disk. Actually there are thousands for each year.

The filing system for the photos is a series for folders. High level folder is the year. Within that folder are the folders for the months. Within the monthly folders, there are folders for a location or event. Within the monthly folder, the photo files are renamed for further identification.

On a recent quest to locate a particular photo, I realized the disaster that I had created by not doing proper maintenance when the photos were originally loaded to disk. There were duplicates and some really bad photos. Some even out of focus.

Wonder why I care about cleaning it up. Those children who would inherit the digitally stored photos would not care about the photos that I deemed worth keeping. Without a person in the photo, the photo would mean nothing to my children.

That was the situation when I went through the photo slides that my father had taken. The photos were a record of where my folks had been and where they traveled. If there were people in those photos, I kept some of the slides. The others were dumped.

It might take a couple of months, but I am on a mission to perform major editing on the avalanche of photos on the computer's hard drive.

Gravity Testing

These guys were testing gravity at the Prescott Skate Park. Note the shadow in relation to the rider.

There were four or five kids on bicycles or skate boards. None of them ever crashed as I was watching. Since none were wearing any protection from a hard landing, it appears they didn't expect to crash. With a fast shutter speed, I was able to catch several at their mid air zenith.

Back on the farm as a kid, tests of gravity were a more modest venture. Climb up into the hay in the barn and then slide down the face of the stack. Some could handle it better than me. After a couple of exciting slides, I would have an asthma attack. On the verge of suffocation, I learned fast not to do that again.

As kids we made excitement with what was available on the farm. Climbing trees was one way to defy gravity. The barn hill provided a sloped terrain for winter sledding. Riding a vintage bicycle, I managed to stay upright on the rural gravel roads and avoided drawing any blood.

When I was 14, Dad relented and gave into the begging to get a horse. Rode a lot and checked speed and stopping capabilities of the horse. My horse riding experience is related in Shattered Myth. Gravity got me that time.

It Is A Big World

As a small child growing up, we realize our stature in relation to others. Can't reach items that mother put out of reach. Stairs can be a challenge. Climbing onto chairs rather than sitting. At school there were tiny desks.

When in that northern Wisconsin farming community grade school, it was geography that introduced me to the size of the world. Loved geography. All the different kinds of maps. Lots of different people in the world in a range of skin tones. Some wearing little. Others are bundled in furs. That geography book had exotic artist renderings of deserts, jungles, igloos in the Arctic and oceans ending at the horizon. Wonder if schools still teach geography.

I credit that grade school geography for my curiosity about the world in which I live. Geography also influences my reading. My mostly non-fiction reading includes books about travel and adventure travel. Those books share what I will never experience personally.

There is too much to see and experience personally. It would take several lifetimes to experience just the United States. How many more would it take to explore and see the world. It is a big world.

Please No Sugar

Most every day, my lunch consists of a huge salad. Since most store bought salad dressings have sugar as an ingredient, my dressing is homemade with olive oil, a vinegar and spices. Sometimes it is Asian or Italian. Most times it is an original mixture that could never be repeated.

To add some variety to the salad dressings, I opted to make a ranch dressing. I already had the ingredients for the dressing except for the sour cream that the recipe called for.

After checking the process to make sour cream at home (my mother did that), I put sour cream on the grocery list. Whole lot easier.

When shopping, the ingredients are read when not familiar with the product and brand. (Would be a good thing to bring reading glasses.) Picked up the house brand of sour cream. The list of ingredients went on for a couple of lines. Cream was not the first ingredient. Milk was followed by several items which I identified as thickeners. There was the item that ended in "ose". Sugar in sour cream. Why?

Didn't even bother to check the "lite" sour cream. I know from past experience that fat is replaced with sugar for those "lite" products.

I like fat. Picked up another brand and checked the ingredients. This one was "Grade A Cultured Cream". One ingredient. Perfect.

The ranch dressing is getting better each time I make it. Or perhaps I am just getting used to my "throw together" ranch dressing -- without sugar.

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For decades, several doctors and researchers have been declaring the hazards of too much sugar in diets. The sugar industry must protect their profits and the result is Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies by Gary Taubes.

Fall of Roman Empire

Shortly after my recent post suggesting resolutions for members of the legislative bodies, I found this article describing parallels between the US and the Roman Empire.

In that same resolutions post, I was glad we heard there would be no more news stories including the words "fiscal cliff". I wondered what would be the next tag line for the news. Today the new tag was noted a couple of times on the internet (don't have a TV). The new subject is "debt ceiling".

Based upon the historical record of the Senate and House, any laws to address the issue will go to the last couple of minutes. Likely the next day. 

If these guys were your employees, you would fire the lot of them for not getting the job done and working as a team. 

Since we appear headed down the same path as the Roman Empire, I'm going for a hike.

Bye. 

Cost Of Living 2012

A question I have been asked as a full time RVer: How much does it cost?

The answer: How much money do you have.

Some full time road acquaintances and friends live on less than $1500 a month. No doubt there are others who would struggle to keep their expenses under $5000 a month.

My expenses for 2012 were a bit worrying. Didn't get to the $5000 a month, but the average was higher than previous years. The major contributor for the increase was maintenance to keep the 12 year old Silver Slug (Ford F-350) on the road. With fuel requirements, the Silver Slug was responsible for 30% of 2012 expenses.

Yesterday I wrote about the changes to the foods in my diet. Without the cheap calories of grains, my grocery bill was up with more fresh produce and more expensive meats. It's justified as investment in my health.

My plan is to spend my entire estate before I die. In order to meet that goal, there was little dry camping in 2012. I opted for full hook up campgrounds. At $17 a day, the 2012 average was two dollars higher than the previous year. However, $17 a day is not that bad. An apartment would be more expensive. And the apartment would have the disadvantage of no wheels.

The remaining categories were close to previous years.

No complaints. 2012 was a great year. Financially. Healthy. Still nomadic.

Feeling Great

Around the first days of 2012, I made changes in the food I ate. What was wrong with the foods I ate at that time. Didn't think there was anything wrong with the common wisdom diet. That perfect diet was described by the government, the agriculture industry, and the medical schools. Why would they be wrong.

Impetus for change began with Gary Taubes book Why We Get Fat: And What to do About It. Taubes started me thinking about my diet. His book led me to Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint. After more searching I was reading Robb Wolf's The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet. All three books said to take grains out of the diet. One of those books said, "Try it for 30 days. It isn't the rest of your life."

Why not. Those first thirty days were tough. The daily diet no longer included anything that had flour or grains of any sort. No breads. No tortillas. No rice. No pretzels -- my snack of choice. Just a few weeks into the "no grains", I noted I was no longer hitting the Tums container after meals. Interesting.

The acid indigestion, heart burn and acid reflux had been part of my life for a long time. The doctors solution was drugs to reduce the acid the body produces. Eliminate the symptom. Since the doctor was knowledgeable, I took the prescription -- for about three days. The gut pains caused by the drug were worse than the indigestion. So I lived with Tums.

Two months on the no grains diet it was time to introduce specific grains into my diet. Assuming that my digestive problems were due to a gluten intolerance in wheat, I included some wild rice in a meal. Bad idea. Within an hour I was at the Tums container. Next I tried corn tortillas when at a Mexican restaurant. Same problem. Easy enough. I eliminated all grains of any type from the diet.

A year later there are no grains in the diet. Todays diet is a blueberry/yogurt shake for breakfast. Lunch is a huge salad with lots of different greens and fresh ingredients from the produce section. Somedays, that lunch might include a can of sardines. Dinner is meats (fish, pork, chicken, beef, liver, etc) with a side vegetable. Pistachios are occasional snacks. Desserts are dark chocolate or a pat of butter.

A year later, I sleep better. There is no acid indigestion or heartburn. There is no acid reflux. I take no medications. Not bad for a 72 year old guy. The blood work at the doctor's office this past summer revealed the impact of taking grains out of the diet. The LDL numbers dropped by 50 points from the previous blood work a year earlier.

Life is great.

Resolutions

First post of the new year. Looking back or looking forward. Could do both. I will save that for another day.

Today I'm happy it is the new year and won't have to hear about the fiscal cliff** anymore. That has apparently been resolved in the early morning hours in Washington.

However, I haven't listened to the latest news at mid morning. Knowing the rancor and intractable nature of the sociopaths/psychopaths in those legislative seats, it would not surprise me that the House decides not to pass what the Senate passed.

Personally, I don't make resolutions. Never have. New Years day is just another day. However, here are a few suggested resolutions for the members of the Federal Legislatures.

• I will represent and create legislation -- with no loopholes or exceptions -- for all the people in my district or state; not just the members of my party or those who have bribed me for votes or paid for my re-election campaign.
• I will negotiate in good faith with other legislators realizing other viewpoints are valid and come to a common ground of understanding to achieve good legislation.
• Instead of talking to the media talking heads to make legislation, I will spend my time negotiating and talking with other elected legislative members.

Something akin to those words in their oaths of office would be much better than the words of the current oath (enacted in 1884):

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Enough of resolutions.

Time for another cup of tea.

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**The term "fiscal cliff" may now be out of the media daily headlines. However, no doubt within a week there will be a new phrase created by the media to describe the latest crisis in Washington.