Well, tomorrow’s the day I hit the road. Friday the 13th. That should be auspicious. Boy, from all the comments on yesterday’s “Stuff!” post, this topic of moving possessions really resonates. And some of you put my little trailer-stuff problem in perspective. Man … all that talk of 55-foot semis and reducing a life-long heritage to a few square feet of keepers. That’s depressing. Makes me glad I don’t have much more than one small trailer’s worth. As you can see, we loaded that puppy and then some. Neighbor Joel was invaluable, both in helping me shift stuff and in…
Category: Travels
Observations while wandering near and far.
Sometimes when you travel the backroads, you end up at the Bates Motel. Other times, for a pittance in some old tumbledown place, you get blazing-fast wifi, a no-charge stay for your dog, and a picture window through which you can watch the sun set over mountains. Not bad. Then some woman (apparently in charge of rousing the members of a work crew) knocks on your door at 4:32 a.m. Apologizes. And comes back 10 minutes later and does it again. This time with no apology. Just turns and walks off when she sees you’re not the person she wants.…
Last night I stayed at the Bates Motel. Seriously. It was better than its namesake because — obviously — I survived the night. However, I dared not take a shower. Not from fear of knife-wielding weirdos, but because, as Mr. Bates himself disingenuously explained, “We have two other guests and they might have used up all the hot water.” I don’t know what the other guests did (if they existed, they were very quiet), but this was definitely a cold-water experience. It was the only open motel in the itty-bitty village where I stopped, though. I was too beat to…
Hey, you wanna see what ObamaCare looks like? Here you go. It’s twice as tall as a can of Bud Light: That’s a copy of the actual law. It turned up at the Wyoming Republican Party convention recently, where Sen. John Barasso made appropriate use of it. Hope he didn’t strain himself. The photo above was taken by my ex-Significant Sweetie, Charles Curley who actually (OMG!) attended the convention. R’s in Wyoming are a little different than R’s in most other places, though. Nobody had a hissy fit when an armed man showed up and hobnobbed with both the state’s…
One more reason the mainstream media is dying. They’re still stuck back in the “reefer madness” days. Case in point: CNN (via an alleged new-media affiliate) discovers a “new” drug that strips users of their free will. Gasp! OMG! The horror! But the name of the supposedly new drug sounded very, very, very, extremely, wildly familiar. And sure enough. It’s been around forever and its been quite well known to science for 130 years. As to stripping away free will — dubious. But it’ll make you heave your guts out and hallucinate and it can kill you, as thousands of…
Panama. That’s where I was for most of the last month, as several people astutely guessed. I went because it’s freezing here and warm there. That was nice. I went to recharge my batteries, as Kevin Wilmeth put it. I went to play tourist. I went … just to go. And I went to answer the question, “Can I be more free outside the U.S.?” A lot of Americans have expatriated or retired to Panama, including a few I know. Some have urged me to head down that way and have a look, saying they found the place much freer,…
HOME! Waking up in the tropics, then struggling home through a blinding snowstorm 26 hours later is not fair! Not fair at all! But thank heaven for heroically dedicated friends; I didn’t have to drive myself that last crazy six hours. Why is every mainstream media article about the census a propaganda piece that could have been written by flacks at the Census Bureau? And why does every one of them repeat the lie about “just 10 questions”? Sure, there are merely 10 questions for people who live alone, but there are seven additional questions for each other resident —…
Travlin’ … Sorry for the “lite” posting the last few days. I will have more soon. But fact is that lazing, shopping, and basking in the sun don’t make exciting blog material, alas. Neither does routine traveling (even when you’re wedged into a strange little jumpseat next to a lavatory that has no water and whose door keeps flopping open every time the bus hits a bump). Ah well. In the meantime, I see that James Dunlap has an article on LewRockwell.com about free-market medicine outside the U.S. His piece is different from, but reflects the same values as, my…
8:00 this morning. A polite “knock” on our hotel room door. Okay, more like a polite scratch, repeated when we failed to respond. When we opened the door, in strolled one of our new friends: We’ve met this girl previously in the hotel lobby, where she and her much older companion, a lab, reign in pampered splendor. Rotties seem to be the most popular local breed. We offered doggie delicacies. Like nearly all the pets in these parts, she was deeply suspicious of cheese. She finally took a slice, but spat it back out. (My dogs back home would be…
Today in our travels, we thought we’d just play tourist. So we signed on for an expedition into the cloud forests. Things got a tad adventurous when our wonderful guide (the young guy in the backwards hat in the photo) decided to take us off-roading. The vehicle — a 1979 Toyota Land Cruiser — was certainly equipped for it. (And oh boy, do I know a young man who’s going to be very envious of that Toyota.) This particular Land Cruiser has more than 2.5 million kilometers on its engine! To explain the picture above, I could make up a…