Flames
No Pissing Allowed
There is some things that particularly suck about urban areas. One of them is simply the lack of places to take a piss, particularly after doing a fair bit of drinking.
I don’t know about you, but at least for me after drinking, I usually need to take a piss. When I’m in the woods, it’s not a big deal — every tree works just fine for me. And when I get even more piss drunk, then basically everywhere outside of my pickup is just fine, including the campfire.
It’s kind of nasty, when your sleeping in your bed of your pickup, and you piss on the tailgate. So even in the sticks, you want to aim outside of the pickup. But in urban areas you have to be much more careful where and when you piss.
It’s normally not a big deal. Especially in rural areas, where they’re be nobody smelling it, and the rain will quickly wash the piss and the nitrogen-loaded compounds away. Nobody complains about when a horse or a cow lifts up their tail to spray out gallons of urine in a pasture.
I realize there may be problems with letting people take a piss in urban areas. High levels of nitrogen in one spot will cause the grass to die, as my dog ever so articulately demonstrated with his favorite winter pissing spots, where the snow isn’t so deep.
Then there is whole problem with all those perverted folks, who don’t want to piss but just show off their equipment in our puritan society, which gets people upset when somebody has fake plastic truck nuts on their pickup. We are too much of a honey society that’s paranoid about any reference of sexuality. Don’t let the kids near the pasture when the bull’s out there doing his thing! They might just get idears about what farm animals do.
Yet, I’m sure the major problem with urban pissing, it would just make everything smell like a beef feedlot. As they say, a few gallons of urine being pissed into the pasture, doesn’t really smell like much. Yet, you go to a feedlot, and you know there are lot of cows there, as they are getting fatten up to make your steak tasty.
Cities suck. America should be rural and free, and be a place where people can piss wherever and whenever people want to do such an important activity. This is why we as a society need more acres of pasture, and less of asphalt.
Rural and Urban Areas
Rural America and Urban America are both fundamentally different and also directly inter-related. One policy may make sense for one community but directly conflict with the values or virtues of another community. In some cases, one policy will benefit one community at the detriment of another community, but in more times then not the difference is ideological.
We live in an era with low-cost high-speed transportation that makes it easy for most people to intermix between rural and urban areas. Different cultures may not mix or meet due to environmental differences, but there is a constant possibility that urban and rural people, goods, and services will meet. This level of commerce can cause problems. Technology makes it possible to create levels of environmental harm that can move between both environments in the form pollution or nuisance.
Yet, the biggest threat to both of these areas is intolerance and ideology. People have viewpoints based on the environment that they are socialized in, and they tend to be intolerant of those who are different then themselves. People too often know how others should live and conduct their lives, without trying to put themselves in somebody\’s else shoes.
First Night in the Bed
Notes on the Re-Run for Friday, May 4th.
— Andy
This is a re-run from April 27, 2009, camping out at my parents house last year. This past weekend I put the cap on my truck, and look forward to the spring.
— Andy
Last night was the first night of the year I spent sleeping out in the bed of my pickup truck. I have the cap on, the sleeping pads and bags back in, an it was a delightful 75 degrees out last night. The weather was amazing, the stars where great, and I built a big campfire in the back field a ways from my parents house.
I had forgotten the wonders of the night. Sitting out and listening to the spring peepers and creek flowing by. Watching the flames flicker in the campfire. Swatting the black flies. Wandering around the field, looking at the stars and the distant city lights. Tossing stones over the creek bank into the stream 10 feet below.
As the fire burned on, I took off my clothes in the warm springtime eve air. I hopped in the creek, illuminated by the campfire. It was so refreshing after a warm summer day, and it cleared my thoughts. I could hear the owl in the distance, and the water bubbling down and over the rocks. It was so wonderful. I got out of the creek, and up the bank, and quickly dried off with the warm air.
I sat and listened to some old Gunsmoke radio programs I had downloaded to my Mp3 player and on my truck’s radio. The hours ticked by and the moon rose. It was almost 1 AM when I climbed in the bed of my truck, turned out the florescent lead lamp, slammed shut the tailgate and went to bed. I looked up through the back window of the truck cap at the stars and closed my eyes to sounds of the crickets.
Morning came, and I awoke with the hot sun beating down on my truck cap. It certainly was bright and beautiful out. I heard the neighbor’s cows mooing to be milked, and the occasional neigh of sheep and squeal of geese and hogs. Morning had arrived once again. I folded up my sleeping bag and moved things from the cab of my truck back to the bed, fired up the truck, and off I went on this beautiful warm spring morning.
Working Land (Dec 16, 2008)
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Wanting A Bigger Truck
Notes on the Re-Run for Monday, August 22nd.
I do like my Ford Ranger. It’s big enough and powerful enough for me needs right now, but I would love to have a little bit more space for camping, and in a year or so I think it will reach it’s end of cost-effective life at 13 years of age. Maybe not, but I’ve been saving for three years and the reality is full-size trucks now have fuel economy in the range of compact trucks of a decade ago.
— Andy
It’s probably no secret to anybody who reads my blog that I’ve been coveting a bigger pickup truck, with an extended cab, bigger bed, and a better off-road capacity. As I’ve also noted, I’ve been saving a big chunk of every paycheck to have enough money next year or the year after to buy that truck.
Yet, I realize it’s kind of silly. I still have a decent 1998 Ford Ranger regular cab short-bed, with only 95,000 miles on it. Driving only for pleasure, I probably will have less then 5,000 miles on it before the year’s end. It might be a bit old and rusty, but it still runs well with minimal problems. But I still want a bigger truck.
It’s not totally rational. I know I am buying into the consumerist mindset that I one level I supposedly reject as being vapid. But it would be so much more fun then my current Ford Ranger. Who wants to put money to upkeep a truck that I don’t really like that much, when I could be putting towards getting a new one?
It’s probably not a good attitude to have. I probably will drive more carelessly with my Ford Ranger and not maintain it as well as I should, secretly hoping that it will die, so I have to buy a new pickup. I need to avoid that attitude, as the truck is something I want to keep working,I also want to avoid financing as much as possible.
Rural Gove, NY
