One year ago today: June 4, 2018, stack of Marshalls malarkey.
Five years ago today: June 4, 2014, “reconnection” fee.
Nine years ago today: June 4, 2010, early ‘app’ idea.
Random years ago today: June 4, 2012, their ghastly music.
Already 5:09 AM and we haven’t decided where to go for walkies. Life with doggies is always a new set of challenges. It’s a rare chilly summer day, so let me check the allowable 7.732” of closet space I’m allocated in this town. It’s sweater weather. Ah-ha, here’s a spot called Vivrett Creek we’ve never been. The map shows it is near Cable Crossing Island. I wonder what that place was ever used for. So we piled in the wagon and got into the parking lot before realizing we have been there. That time we circumnavigated the reservoir and had to stop for the boys and how. That was the same spot just approached from different directions, fooled me but not the crew.
This curbside camper for sale carries a price tag of $5,500. About three times what it is worth, no it isn’t a vintage item. There were amateur repairs to the hitch and that low ground clearance means it wasn’t designed for Tennessee railway crossings or most camping spots. The high price is fairly universal, indicating the demand is high. And why would the demand be high in this town? People must be living in them, that’s why. I’ve seen no evidence of it, but go figure. It’s not like any big stars got discovered in one of these, which is enough to ensure nobody has even written a guitar ballad about it. Here’s your big chance, Glen.
A twist on this topic was a restored unit made into a travel office. It was one of those boxy horse trailers and a little imagination. Lots of headroom, it looked like, and doors on both sides. There was no bed, but the desk was 7 feet wide. Sorry, no pix. I was using a Sony. The bargains are back in Florida. Let me take a closer look now that I have a yard to park it and tools to fix it. What needs fixing is Sony. If I had a million bucks, I’d design the camera so that if anything went wrong, by default it would at least take a picture. That’s correct. Whether it was dropped, or the battery went dead, or the software imploded, the last thing it would do is take at least one final picture. This fantastically clear concept is something the best minds at Sony have never grasped. Ah, some might say they did think of it and won’t do it. But that would reveal a lack of understanding of how other people think.
Faction. I’ve heard a new connotation of the word. It’s likely done the rounds but I missed it, likely because the word is already in use. I’m reading a fiction mystery based loosely on fact. Hence, it is a work of faction. I kind of like it, but wonder if it is different enough to become its own meaningful term. Changing the subject, I see that I’m not as content as can be unless I have a bunch of small unfinished projects. How foolish not to bring my tools when I have an almost duplicate set of light duty items that would have been ideal for this trip. I’ve always wanted to get one of those “wet tile” saws that look like a small table saw and see if they work on wood. I can’t see why not, the principle is the same. There’s one for sale in Murfreesboro for $40, used once. I’m thinking. I know the scenic route there and back.
Later, he lost the sale, taking too long to respond. You can play with your phone all you want, e-mail is still the primary business contact mode. And that applies to Craigslist. You want the easy way out, expect to lose business. I bought a jigsaw cheap enough to leave here, and some minor lumber. It’s the way I cope.
Unmanned Orca undersea attack drone.
(50 tons, dives to 11,000 ft.)
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The boys and I went on a four mile walk. It did us all some good, though I did not tell you how long it took. I suppose we’re all getting trim & slim but no details until I get home where the scales are. Such perfect weather makes for better walks and this increases the babe-meeting frequency by several orders. If you’ve heard that Tennessee summers can make you lazy, there may be something to that. Florida will sap your will to work, Tennessee will surgically remove it. I’m developing the notion to watch how the doggies handle it and do the same. The book I chose, “Death on the Patagonian Express” is such a stumbling effort I’m reading it as a sad comedy. It’s got every bad habit of the last century that some find so spellbinding they give it awards. (This train picture is recent, keep reading.)
Patagonia. I had once wanted to travel there, back when traveling was fun. And cost was, in today’s money, about a twelfth of our post-Internet times. The things that should have changed have not, top of the list being the enduring rip-off of “double occupancy”, particularly the outfits that advertise the price per person. Yet, before Google told the Venezuelan cab drivers what fares were in New York, I often (throughout the 80s and 90s) paid the double fare and still came out ahead. Try that in the millennial world. It was said there was a railroad in Patagonia used for freight. I’d heard somebody bought old Pullman coaches after the company priced itself out of existence in the 1980s, something they managed despite also building subway cars and trolleys.
I’ve seen photos of various trains claiming to be the Patagonian express, but the interiors are Spartan, not Pullman. Some of the passenger cars show a salamander, which is a wood stove that passengers stoke with their own firewood. Probably because there are no trees in Patagonia. Look for a picture, I’ll try to find one for you. There, here’s one from a recent travel guide. The chromed stove pipe is visible, a feature the indigenous peoples call “primera clase siberiana”, its meaning lost in antiquity. Making tea is permitted if you have your own kettle. I imagine a lot of Australians do.
Yet I maintain if American schedules could be made reliable (first step being kick Amtrak off the tracks), there is a market for train travel. You’d have to move the stations to safe places where people want to go. I’m sure there are enough spur lines and rights of way to make that viable. What would be a clincher is establish a minimum service maximum price rule to locate hotels near the terminals. Clean, single-size rooms, like the ones on the trains themselves (remember those) and maximum $50 per twelve hours. At that rate, a family could rent several and still save.
There are several videos on-line worth looking at if you are unsure of the Patagonian experience. It’s like Wyoming but without the warm winter weather. So windy, it is not unusual to see a train stopped to wait for the 75mph winds to abate. Or passengers standing on the railway embankment waiting for the flames from an overheated axle to flame out. There are always hills in the background, it seems, they’re not even mountains and they have summer ice caps. Prices seem to average $3,000 per person for tourists. But the local service seems reasonable if you can decipher the ViRail home page. Designed by spastics for spastics.
ADDENDUM
This is a flashback. I know I’ve told this tale from the trailer court before, but it may have been on paper. So it may, as we now know, never make this blog. Here’s the story, as I recall it. That summer, freshly out of university, and unable to find work in my field (computers), I took a damn good paying job at a mill. In the good old America, the more the job paid at first, the less chance you’d get anywhere with it. This mill made those construction trailers used by rigs and forestry crews as bunkhouses. I never saw so many 2x3”s until then.
It was located in a large abandoned aircraft hangar, so mostly open to the elements. Don’t work construction if that gets to you. Inside, the best job was framing the walls. It was the most automated task, so you could tell who the best workers were by who they assigned there each morning. I was doubly fortunate to have Stewie as a partner. The two of us could easily crank out our quota and take extra breaks while the rest of the line caught up. I’ve told you about Stewie, how he could go upstairs to use the can and reek out the entire building. And anybody who says smoking weed doesn’t make the stench worse did not work with Stewie.
Anyway, the most insignificant part I remember is the line boss, Charlie. Quitting time was 5:00 PM. And he’d always walk around at 4:56 and start saying, “Okay boys, that’s enough. Shut ‘er down. Shut ‘er down.”
Like at the end of a 9-1/2-hr shift he was doing you some humungous favor. It took five minutes just to take off all the safety gear. The rule was never aim the pneumatic hammers toward yourself. But it was common to use the impact to straighten an errant stud. And that is how Stewie put a 3-1/2” spike through the tip of his dick. Rumor has it later he showed the injury to all the gals in the steno pool, informing them it “didn’t hurt that bad.” Say what you want, that skinny little shit could keep up with me on a framing table.
