Put the new to me boat on the horses once I was home and Mama-kat and the boys were appeased that they hadn’t been abandoned,,,
Serious look over and check out, plus some work on that backband and setting the seat up for hip-pads. I need to cut some out of a block of mini-cell I have, and I will do that while I am at Da’s tomorrow. I am really digging on how well kept Jim kept this boat. Granted, he didn’t do rivers with lots of rocks and stuff, but there are a couple minor dinks in the gel-coat where he hit a rock or two. Nothing major. Some minor cracking of the gel-coat where the seat is attached to the hull. I read where one guy cut those ‘brackets’ and injected some polystyrene foam under the seat instead, then was able to repair the cracks. I may do that, but they aren’t leaking and they don’t seem to penetrate the gelcoat,,,,
What she does need is a serious wash and wax, maybe a glaze buffing to get rid of some of the oxidation at the surface. Its not horrid, but is obvious under certain light. Its all around the hatches where there is little ‘wear and tear’. The foredeck where the bungees are is very polished still from where gear was stowed during paddles. The back deck just aft the cockpit, same, but from butt’s getting in and out of the boat. The hull is a little dull from it, though its harder to see with the color, but a good buffing will make that part shine like a beacon again.
I know; y’all are bored to death with my kayaky-madness. Apologies: its the only thing holding me together right now with the way the world is. Ya might have seen in that pic I posted the other day on my way home: the fuel prices in Indiana??? I had to fill up there the one time, and swore that I wasn’t going to fill up again until I was back in KY/Walton Verona exit where the fuel was almost a dollar cheaper a gallon. Even if I had to get out and PUSH,,,,,,
And every pump I saw in Indy, had a BIden pointing at the price saying “I Did THAT!!” (actually, the difference in price, state to state like that, is from State taxes, not Federal, but damn, the roads up there SUCKED compared to KY,,,, The State must be giving that money away for nothing,,,)
Just biding my time while the world burns down around our ears. Lots of little islands where you don’t see the damage being done, like where I went to pick up the Nordkapp. Still lots of commerce taking place, cash flowing between hands, nice houses and nice cars. Not like Jellisco TN where I had an install on Thursday: three out of four businesses boarded up, the install was to protect equipment at a down and out hospital. Stuff like O2 tanks disappearing in the night, so they wanted a welded fence line around them and it had to be bolted to the concrete pad and walls of the hospital. The place looks like a good wind would blow the town clean off the map, and you could feel the ‘defeat’ in the air. Dunno what happened to dry the town up like that. Maybe just location. Mines build towns, but then when the mines close,,,,
Talk about Green Deals, eh? Shut down the mines to keep the Green Weenies appeased, and kill entire towns and counties, then wonder why people are growing angry. And then you have Gabby Gruesome of Kalifruitopia telling people that they won’t be allowed to buy Gas powered cars soon, but, oh yeah, you aren’t allowed to charge your electric car at night either,,, too much load on an overloaded system, and The State is planning on shutting down the ONLY true Green power sources soon: Nuclear. (yeah, it may be a green glow, but its far safer and reliable than frickin windmills and solarpanels for mass infrastructure. I explain why ‘green energy’ is only viable in a highly localized manner in my book “Outside looking in” if you haven’t already made that buy. BTW, the Zon is now listing my books at halfprice, so make the move if you haven’t already; the links are in the sidebar.)
Wanna know what happens when you make it impossible to live outside a city, by killing off all the ways to live outside a city? The Cities implode when the means of food production go ‘buhbye’! The Rural doesn’t NEED the City to exist(it just helps to have the customer base), but the inverse of that, the cities DO NEED the rural to keep alive. Even places like the super-nice neighborhoods I traveled through, will crumble if the rural dries up. And whats killing the rural is stoopid policy like the whole Green Deal, and more than a little of that inflation thingy. The inflation thing is ‘forcing’ people to make the move closer to the cities where the work pays better, but most of that is service based these days, not so much production, And a lot of the production is highly specicalized stuff that hasn’t yet been moved overseas. (though if our education slump continues, that will move overseas to places that are showing high standards on STEM curriculum.). I know one guy locally that shuttered his shop because he couldn’t hire anyone with the skills he needed. His complaint was that only the greybeards understood the machines now, and they are getting further and fewer between. And the young’ns show zero interest unless its a computer. Granted, he needed to bring his equipment into the 21st century: IE CNC production, but that cost money, and it was money that he wasn’t making because he couldn’t get the help to turn the products out.
and that brings me to “local local local”. More specifically, DECENTRALIZED SOCIETY. With all the 3D printers, cheap computers (compare a PC now to that sold in the 80’s,,,,) and 3D printing that isn’t limited to ‘plastics’, but metals as well. Toss in guys like me that can print up a model, then cast the thing in the old fashioned way using foundry techniques that are as old as written history,,,, I could print one mold, and cast several a day, and do it cheaper than the old ‘Iron works’ places did. Small runs are not the realm of big business anyway. How many times have you ever heard of a factory having to re-tool for the next production run. They would turn out 10 million pieces and then shut down to retool for the next model. I could turn out 100 pieces in a week (size and complexity dependent of course) and be ready to do the next model as soon as I could load the new design in my printer. And if I had a small group, say 4 people, including myself, I could add a zero or two to that output, with much the same ‘turn-around’ time for new models. I have seen an APP that helps bring together the Makers, with the idea people, the designers, and in some cases, the product is made by 10 or 15 different people, each making one part, and shipping the pieces to be assembled and shipped from somewhere else. People doing this stuff out of their garages, shipping by NGO transportation like UPS or DHL, and selling on Amazon or Etsy (BIG time there). No store fronts, no extra buildings for production, small office in the house using an extension of the pc used for production to handle the ‘paperwork’, no travel needed to have meetings with the other team members,,,
And with our communications systems we have available to us now, IF the .GOV would leave well enough alone, quality would be self sustaining/evolutionary and bad actors wouldn’t be able to keep the gravy train flowing. Word of mouth is powerful, and if word of mouth can be broadcast world-wide (uncensored social media) the charlatans wouldn’t last long. And that communications thing goes past just checks and balances of commerce, but in education as well. Just tonight I received an Email for a ‘Zoom Class” to be held on Cold water Safety while kayaking. There will be 100 people attending from all over the lower 48 and NOT ONE will leave their house to do so.
Knowing this, TPTwB are freaking out. They have to ‘make’ us dependent or they are NOTHING. IF we don’t depend on them for handouts and ‘leadership’ (that ain’t) what do we ‘need’ them for?
Thats why they are shitting themselves trying to collapse the systems. They ARE NOT winning, know they aren’t, and are scared that people are waking up to all the bullshit. They have their media cronies spelling out how superduper they are, but that facade has worn pretty thin these days. There is a reason they are targeting speakers of the truth; like Project Veritas,,,
They are grasping for that last lifeboat on the sinking ship of “20th Century Government”.
And like me, climbing that incline of Kayak Skills, we all need to start climbing that incline to build under, around or over the world they are trying to collapse. And the hardest part of that is going to be figuring out a currency exchange that isn’t barter. I suggest keeping an open mind on the whole block-chain thing, since it is bottom up security right out of the gate. There is a solution there, that isn’t ‘bitcoin’, I just don’t know what it is yet.
Dio's Workshop 