Our friend and neighbor Lane asked us if we wanted to go and do some off roading in his HummVee… I took him up on it, and we drove to Hungry Valley to hit the hills at the Hungry Valley Vehicular Recreation Area. Lane is a super-capable driver, so I had no worries as we went along some steep areas, some narrow tracks with thousand foot drops where it seemed half a tire was hanging over the edge and the other side of the vehicle was scraping against the rock wall. It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip for someone like me, who even though raised up around ‘boony-stompers’ and ‘sand rails’ has never done any off-road trails as extreme as what Lane took as a matter-of-course.
His vehicle is a HummVee with the most extreme off-road capabilities I have ever seen. It was a fun trip, and I got some good footage such as these videos here.
The video below shows how far these HummVees can lean over without rolling… they are very stable. I sped most of the video up so that it will go faster…. the entire process was four minutes or so…. contrary to the commercials and movies, off-roading is an action that requires much deliberation and slow movement. You don’t want suspension-action to be interfering with pitch, yaw, roll and stability … the limitations of physics make it difficult enough without compounding the issues with changing ‘center-of-gravities’.
A good vehicle to have if you’ve got rough roads to go over.
The economy goes through its ups and downs in a regular cycle that cannot be well predicted.
Every time things get rough, there are plenty of folks who figure it’s time to stock up on foods and medicines.. because if it all lets loose, you’re not going to get that at the store.
An interesting article on this phenomenon is at Beans, Band-aids and bullets.
The article interviews two survivalists who have popular websites… one is ‘Survival Blog’ run by a fellow named Rawles. The other has a website not accessible at the time of this writing.
Times change just like the weather and the climate… do not expect that things will always be the same in the future as in the past… well, maybe we SHOULD expect that things WILL be the same in the end… and in history we know that no civilization lasts.. this one sadly might be the same. Until then I say, keep some food always on hand (needed at all times due to earthquake and flood etc), and keep your powder dry.
Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area…
This is an area the state has set aside for people to drive All-Terrain Vehicles on.
It is located in Ventura County, and has many many miles of trails of many different levels.
A fire ran through this area last year. The grasses have grown back (although they always die off in the summer), but much of the mature bushes and trees have been destroyed.
No worries though, this is part of the natural cycle for this chaparral environment. Many of the large bushes will re-sprout from their roots. Others will have seeds that have been stimulated to sprout by the fire, and then the rain that came the following winter. Many of these plants have very thick, hard and durable seed coats. They are designed to remain alive and viable after even many years sitting on and in the soil…. chaparral is a thick type of brush, the plants grow together in very thick stands that are difficult to move through due to the density. Also young plants cannot grow well through such a thick overhead cover. The seeds will remain in the soil for years unable to sprout due to the seed coat which is designed to be impervious to water. The heat of the fire passing over will ‘crack’ the seed-coat, allowing water to enter when the winter rains come back. The young plants will grow in the shelter of the burned-over branches, fertilized by the ashes of the previous generations of plants that got burned.
It is my thinking that wild-land fires should not be ‘contained’, they should be allowed to roam uninhibited, with efforts of containment made only near towns and houses that are at risk. The disastrous series of fires we’ve had the last couple of decades are due to the huge overburden of fuel we’ve encouraged to accumulate for the last one hundred years of ‘wildfire management’.
Here are some of the trees killed in the blaze.
A loss of fine timber, although we noted many of the larger trees are marked for salvage harvest.
They will be able to salvage many board-feet from these trees. After the contracted loggers have left, the area will probably be opened to people to cut the remaining small trees for their home firewood. People must apply for a license to cut and remove the wood, it is a small cost considering the amount of wood you are allowed to take for your own use.
Here’s what these trees look like when not burned over. One tree here lost it’s head in a winter storm.
Another spot where the fire ‘skipped over’. Wildland fires will often skip some areas… this leaves wildlife an ‘island’ of cover and established food source. But when wildland fires are kept from occurring… the huge amount of unburned brush will result in a huge conflagration that will more likely not leave islands. Areas like this should burn every few decades, it is better for the animals and plants if it happens that often, because then there is less fuel to make the fire extra huge, more of the mature trees will survive a small cooler fire… a smaller cooler slower moving fire happens in a place that burned recently, but if it has been a hundred years, you have a huge issue with fire.
This is much like how I picture my family in Hungary living seventy years ago… then the Nazis came and changed everything… but so strangely, out of all that, I end up in America… what luck for me!
And what great singing here…
Our family had a farm near Budapest, they grew fruit trees, raised wheat and grapes, cattle, horses and hogs… they had no machines and did all the work with animal power and by hand…. It seems to me they worked very hard physically, much more than we in the west tend to work now. Over sixty years have gone by since the war officially ended… but the reverberations will echo for many generations to come.
Someone on the mailing list e-mailed asking about a discount off a particular item… we don’t have that item on discount right now… Here is the mail I sent back….
The discount codes we have in effect right now are
Yes, these are all specific. We give those temporary savings on things when the plants have put a spurt of growth out, and the picking is easy… I like to pass the savings on, and also to encourage sales in that commodity so that we don’t get any waste.
So for us, the discounts are a way to stimulate sales of that item at the time the plants are putting out plenty of it… for instance the fruit is a temporary thing, and the plants will stop the heavy yield in a few weeks, after that we’ll have fruit, but not a lot of it… so we’ll remove the discount code, and stop promoting the fruit… the folks who have gotten used to buying it will still have the link and the ability to order while we have fruit, but we’ll stop the marketing of the fruit so that we’ll have enough for those who really want it.
The same right now with the nursery plant cuttings, the plants are in a prime season right now for making cuttings… in a month or two the new growth will come out on them, and we’ll have to sort through the plants to find large leaves without babies on them to take for people who want them. So we are trying to notify anyone who might want them now, that right here and now, Rivenrock Gardens has prime cuttings of really good eating varieties ready-to-go, ready-to-plant, and they will be leafing out not long after planting.
So for us the discounts are not so much a marketing tool to get business stimulated per se, but more a marketing tool to get the people who will be buying from us anyway to make their purchase at what is the best time for the plant, and also for the cutting they will be getting. A cutting made at the proper time has more vitality and life in it, and is more likely to impress the heck out of ya when you plant it!
Oh, you need to sign up for our mailing list below to get the discount codes I did not mention above… the mailing list is how we send out the notifications of discounts and what is in season and ready to harvest.
Our little bitty Toyota truck just turned 300 thousand miles old!
People here tend to drive trucks and SUVs more than their cars.
This is our little silver Toyota. It’s tiny, and not Four-Wheel-Drive, and only has a ‘Four-Banger’ instead of the larger six and eight cylinder vehicles around it… yet it’s hauled many hundreds of tons of material for us, and spent more time on dirt roads than probably any vehicle in this parking lot…all while giving us decent gas mileage, and a sense of trust in the engineering of the vehicle.
If challenged to drive it to Florida, leaving tomorrow for a ten thousand dollar prize, I’d take the offer (if I felt it was legit)… that’s how much trust I have in this little truck.
The real secret is to follow the maintenance instructions… especially in keeping the oil changed, and not driving like a maniac… accelerate reasonably, time stoplights, and keep your freeway speed from getting too much over the speed limit (I’m usually below it). To expect a quarter million miles out of a decently maintained engine does not seem unreasonable.
Engineering in both the machinery and the lubricants for them has advanced to such a high state now. And I am confident it will of course only continue upward. In ten years it is possible that these gasoline engines will seem so antiquated that it will actually be a benefit to purchase the newer models. Just as computing power undergoes a doubling in power every eighteen months, so too is our understanding of the possibilities of solar and other renewable power sources. In five years we should be at the beginnings of the true economic benefit of solar.. it will be cheaper to purchase and use a solar ‘package’ than to use ‘grid juice’ exclusively. Sadly we are not yet there, the economic benefits of a solar installation is not economical compared to ‘plugging into the system’. And anyone who purchases a set now will be angry in five years when the newer ones come out with more ‘solar capture’ capabilities and at a cheaper price! No, it takes too many years right now to recapture the costs associated with a solar electricity generating set right now…. and before you reach that threshold, the newer equipment coming out will seem so much better, that yours will already be antiquated. No, the future of solar is when a system will be seen to gain cost competitive advantage within a short time span of say a year. It does one no good to save on electricity costs if you are paying the equivalent to a small mortgage to finance the installation. But we are only five years away…..
As I roved by the dockside one evening so fair
To view the salt waters and take in the salt air
I heard an old fisherman singing a song
Oh, take me away boys me time is not long
Wrap me up in me oilskin and blankets
No more on the docks I’ll be seen
Just tell me old shipmates, I’m taking a trip mates
And I’ll see you someday on Fiddlers Green
Now Fiddler’s Green is a place I’ve heard tell
Where the fishermen go if they don’t go to hell
Where the weather is fair and the dolphins do play
And the cold coast of Greenland is far, far away
Now when you’re in dock and the long trip is through
There’s pubs and there’s clubs and there’s lassies there too
And the girls are all pretty and the beer is all free
And there’s bottles of rum growing on every tree.
Where the skies are all clear and there’s never a gail
And the fish jump on board with one swish on their tail
Where you lie at your leisure, there’s no work to do
And the skipper’s below making tea for the crew
Now I don’t want a harp nor a halo, not me
Just give me a breeze and a good rolling sea
I’ll play me old squeeze-box as we sail along
With the wind in the riggin to sing me a song
This is much like how I picture my family in Hungary living seventy years ago… then the Nazis came and changed everything… but so strangely, out of all that, I end up in America… what luck for me!
And what great singing here…