Beaten

Having moved from my cabin in the forest to town, I now have different challenges than I did before. One challenge I faced before was how to transport propane bottles by bike off-season. ("Off-season" was "non-mushing time".) During winter I had no problem, I used the dogs and the sled.

Above is one guy who really puts me to shame. (Found on flickr, by Meanest Indian.)

Here are my former alternatives:

How to transport propane on a bicycle.

Return of how to transport propane on a bicycle.

Return of son of how to transport propane on a bicycle.

And here's one from Oldfool.

TdF

Tour de France, 1927.

A good sign

Here's a sign from a shop close to where I now live (above). The shop sells clothes for women who are not too young anymore and not, whatever the sign might say, actual humans.

It's still a good sign. It's art to me.

When I was fooling around on my bicycle in the US a long time ago I was pleased to see that there were some signs of the kind I had previously only seen in movies and on album covers (below). It's hard for foreigners to know what actually exists for real in that country, and what is mostly made up.

I stayed at that motel. And a lot others like it. It was exiting and wildly cinematic to me, but not to the people that ran them.

Extremely specific ethnic stereotyping

I have written previously about old odds and ends I've found in the cabin, and how surprisingly often they featured some over-the-top ethnic stereotyping. Here's one which is pretty specific: Mosquito repellent with a brand that plays on preconceived, though in this case mildly benevolent, notions about sami, previously known in english as lapps.

Like "lapp" the term "finn" is considered derogatory today, so this bottle seems very odd. A non-sami will find it more quaint than maddeningly offensive.

Calling a finnish person "finn" is another matter. It's fine.

It's a polar thing.

I have decided I'm going to call people what they want to be called. This becomes sort of silly sometimes, some in Alaska prefer to be called Eskimo but would be called Inuit in Canada, so what's a qallunaaq to think. But in general, it seems like the thing to do.

Levantine bicycles

Just back from some time spent in Lebanon and Syria.

Beirut is quite possibly the least bicycle-friendly place I have ever seen, with steep hills, incredible numbers of road blocks and seemingly no enforcement of parking rules, or maybe there just aren't any parking rules. Garbage from public trash cans, however, is collected by customized trikes (below).

Damascus in Syria, which on the whole seems much poorer than Beirut and where transport infrastructure shows evidence of more stringent planning, has far more bicyclists. (Number of bicyclists is not an indicator of what the political system is like, I hasten to add. In this respect, Syria is Mordor.) While the few heroic pedal pushers in Beirut mostly used Taiwan-made MTBs, the Syrians mostly go for Chinese "Phoenix"-brand classic bikes (below).

In both Beirut and Damascus, I saw load-carrying bicycles with a sturdy front basket (below). These were mostly used by bread vendors.

The old town of Damascus boasts a stunning mosque and a of course a whole slew of jewelry shops. Being who I am, I was naturally far more intrigued by the amount of blacksmiths making tools and equipment on the spot, and found great pleasure in browsing the most fascinating hardware stores I have ever seen. Your humble correspondent below, trying to remember dimensions of some elusive screws he will surely regret not buying once he arrives home.

Cold is the new cool

Photo: Beatrice de Gea for the New York Times.

"When your house is 15 degrees, the only problem you have is getting warm. Focusing on survival is right up there with a Zen retreat when it comes to clearing the mind."

From the New York Times on living in an unheated home.

From outer space to the rice paddy

Japanese journalist and erstwhile astronaut Toyohiro Akiyama is now a rice farmer. He was interviewed recently in Danish Weekendavisen (which has a useless online site where this interview does not appear). Mr. Akiyama described his year-long training in Russia after being selected as one out of five hundred applicants. He had previously reported on the ill-fated Challenger Space Shuttle for Japanese TV, but said of the Russian rocket that was going to send him to the Mir space station:

"Most of the workers there were more than 50 years old. Bald or with gray hair. I felt I could trust them. The Russians' technology seemed solid. The space ship I was going to be on was like a car built on a twenty year old recipe, but delivered from the factory yesterday. It was not at all like the Americans' Challenger."

He reveals a little-known fact of space travel: Space sickness. "Astronauts are supposed to be heroes, and never talk about it."

After adjusting, he saw earth from above. And of course:

" I was very affected by the earth's beauty. The earth looked like.... it looked like life itself, seen from space. Seeing the atmosphere... the thin and vulnerable layer that protected all life on earth. It made me realize that humans have been allowed to live on earth together with all other living mechanisms... it is vulnerable."

After returning to Japan Mr. Akiyama made several TV shows on environmental issues, about deforestation in Indonesia and about how the travels of Christopher Columbus destroyed indigenous culture.

After being offered a job as an executive in the company, rather than as a journalist, Akiyama took stock of his options and decided to let it all go, opting instead for a spartan life as an organic rice farmer.

"I feel Homo Sapiens acts like a big elephant, running around on the surface of the earth destroying everything for ourselves and the life system. It worries me. What I felt out there in space is the reason I have chosen this life. I mean: Mankind and its' machines can go faster than light, but for what? What does it mean to us?"

Reading for the feral

Dwelling Portably is a zine that makes The Accidental Hermit look like GQ. This publication is for the true downscalers, the permanent campers, freeconomists and intentional bums.

For a long time Dwelling Portably has been the Sasquatch of zines, often mentioned and occasionally photographed but rarely seen in real life. One reason for this is that it has no net presence, for almost thirty years it has consisted of a few sheets of paper with typewritten text and occasional line drawings. To get a copy you had to send money to a P.O. box.

Microcosm publishing has now collected back issues and released them in rather handsome booklets. The typical contributors (and the editors) live in semi-permanent camps in wilderness areas, survive by foraging and buying foodstuffs in bulk, and travel occasionally to town for the odd money-paying job and to pick up mail. There is more information here on building with tarps and plastic sheets than most would have thought was ever put into print.

Occasionally the tips and suggestions come from Crazyland. There's one piece about recycling condoms I wish I hadn't read. But for the most part this is a beacon of staunch sanity.

Indianuity II

Ray, a gentleman I met in Gitwinksilhkw, northern BC, rigged together this system behind his mom's house. He fishes down by the bank, and loads the fish into what I guess is a Rubbermaid container. Once it's filled up he walks up the stairs he's built, and retrieves the fish-laden container with an old electric winch.

"I got tired of packing the fish up those stairs all the time," he said.

In a world where fish are disappearing from streams, a lot of people would rather enjoy that kind of problem. Still, it's a problem elegantly solved.

See also: Indianuity I

To go where no PV panels have gone before

What you see above is a part of NASA's LDEF, "Long Duration Exposure Facility", fibbed from nasaimages.org. The picture is labled "Solar-Array-Materials Passive", which sounds like something I can relate to. For more on the LDEF, and some absolutely stunningly beautiful pictures, see The nonist.

DIY trailer

Claiming that "everybody in the US has a car" is just another way of saying "I have absolutely no idea about how people live". One educational aspect of bicycle touring in the US is that one gets to know hitch hikers and vagrants of various sorts. Meeting people literally on the road creates a sense of camaraderie and fellowship which I am not going to exaggerate, but which is still noticeable.

Ray (above) was a soft-spoken gentleman I met 2002 on the side of the road in Arizona. He had access to some form of free dental care (which he quite needed) in another town but had access to no motorized vehicle, and there were no public transport alternatives between the place he lived and his dentist. Europeans never believe me when I tell them this, as they are not only convinced that "all Americans have a car" but also have absolute faith that surely "Greyhound or Amtrak" must connect every populated place in the country with every other populated place.

So Ray got around on his bicycle and had made a his own trailer, complete with a beer crate on top for his small terrier mutt.

Yellow peril

This is the wall of a rest room in Inujima ("Dog Island", actually), an island in Japan's Inland Sea which is basically just a big art gallery.

I am the kind of person who takes pictures of what I consider to be interesting walls in rest rooms. That is just how it is.

If you click on it, you can see it describes the connection between toilet-related business and the rest of the world. I am also the kind of person who feels we can never be reminded enough about this.

Below is the rest room itself. Like a lot of things in Japan, I felt it was both impossibly elegant and yet within the boundaries of something I might possibly ape after, given enough time. At least the part with the wooden wall and door.

You ladies out there might not know this, but European urinals often do not extend all the way to the floor, which frankly results in a whole world of unpleasantness. The Japanese system is infinitely better

Водогонный аппарат

Makeblog and Boing Boing have both featured this delightful man and his water purifier. Fortunately, through my contacts in the military-industrial complex, I have been able to have the original text translated from Russian. (To see the pictures, go to the original site.)

Anton Ivanovich Reznikov is 68 years old and has worked all his life as an engineer and technician. Even as a pensioner he has not abandoned is favourite pastime. In a cramped kitchen in his one room apartment he has made a real water purifier (not to be confused with a distiller). The looming, yet efficient invention transforms polluted tap water to perfectly clean, potable water. The inventor does not keep the details of the apparatus to himself. On the contrary he offers the details to anyone who wishes to construct a similar contraption so that they too forever can bid farewell to dirty water.

Picture 1.

Ioniser. The water passes through a container with silver (in this case some old watches and a couple of silver teeth.) During this phase, the structure of the water is reestablished and the water absorbs the silver's ions. A quartz lamp has been added to improve the effect.

Picture 2.

Magnetic bottle. A plastic bottle with magnets (the originator has used magnets from a refrigerator). Here, metal is removed from the water.

Picture 3.

Coal filter. A plastic container, filled with ball point pens that are, in turn, filled with activated carbon. Carbon is an excellent absorbent and sucks up contaminants.

Picture 4.

Mineral deposits. A five litre container with rocks. Rocks are natural minerals. Anton Ivanovich has transported the rocks himself from a sanatorium. They nourish the water and add a distinguished, natural flavour.

Picture 5

Sound chamber. An old radio-cassette player is taped to the container. The sounds of classical music have positive effects on the water, and improve it's structure.

Picture 6.

Grain container. Funnel made out of a bottle neck, filled with millet. Here, the water absorbs minerals and the aroma of Russian fields, an aroma that can be compared to nothing else.

Picture 7.

Thermal tunnel. A metal shower hose wrapped around a radiator. Here, the water is quickly heated to 70 degrees Celsius (158 F), thus killing all microbes.

Picture 8.

Stratification. Plastic container with layers of different types of soil and sand, with a flower on top.

Picture 9.

Modestly sized pitcher. The water has now passed through all the stages and can be imbibed, preferably cooled.

Monkey see, monkey do

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jane Goodall
www.thedailyshow.com
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Here's an interview with primatologist Jane Goodall. You don't have to watch it. I am posting it here because Goodall, who has done some good stuff for apes and the Jon Stewart who is not entirely insane despite being a talk show host, are probably as close as you are going to get to American household names who might agree with me on some issues.

And this scares the living daylights out of me.

For some reason, the subject they choose to discuss here is "extremists". Some loony vegan nutcases complain about how the candles on Goodalls birthday cake might contain animal products. So the scientist and the talk show host shake their heads, oh those extremists.

I have had enough skirmishes with vegan activists to suspect that some of them might not be on my side. Their motivations and their aims sometimes seem disconcerting to me. I could even claim that most rich businesspeople I know are more friendly and tolerant than the vegans I have encountered.

But I don't buy the idea that "extremists" are poisoning the well, that because of their actions the rest of the environmentalist movement has setbacks. Vegan activists and animal liberation types are too few. The power of those who wish to destroy the earth is astronomically larger.

The sometimes misguided actions of "extremists", like setting out domesticated animals into the wild, is only a problem for other environmentalists if we keep yammering on about it, like here, instead of shifting focus to what the problem really is.

The "extremists" are not the real enemy. They're nothing, compared to the logging industry, the oil industry, compared to almost anything. The ice cream industry is stronger than all the "extremists" combined. I know PETA has Pamela Anderson, but come on.

The apes' habitat has been destroyed by all kinds of human greed and destruction, and yet Goodall and Stewart chose to whine about a handful of "extremists".

In the US, to a larger extent than in Europe, I have been amazed at how often I have been told stories of treehuggers who neglected to clean up their campsites, or of ill-advised "safe zones" for deer that have resulted in overgrazing and starvation and so on. Incredibly, harm on the environment is routinely blamed on the people who make attempts at protecting it.

(I don't think European activists are better or that Europeans are smarter at recognizing flak from corporate media. But mainstream news coverage in the US does seem rather one-sided, seen from the outside.)

Not once during this interview do the two otherwise rather clever participants lean back and say: "But honestly. Who are the real extremists here? Who really wields power?"

Blatant anti-hermit bias in media

The Long family live in South Westland in New Zealand. To get to the nearest road they need to walk for two days.

This documentary about them is interesting on at least two levels. There's the family itself and how they manage. And then there's the other level: The attitude of the team filming them.

The parents are presented as mildly batty, and "the cause", whatever that might be, would perhaps be better served by hermits with better teeth. And obviously, the kids are denied a lot of things that their peers would take for granted.

But in my experience, people who have completely whacko upbringings turn out surprisingly normal as long as the parents have been at least moderately well-balanced, while some of the people I know who inject heroin into their veins have had seemingly normal childhoods.

Not many kids, anywhere, have the level of access to almost completely untouched nature that the Long children grow up in. It's degraded landscapes and landfills for almost everybody else. That can't be right.

Self-sufficiency in Russia

I am currently reading Steinar Wikans "Kola", about the Kola peninsula in Northwestern Russia. While hunting in 1992, the author stumbles over a small cabin, thirty kilometers (twenty miles) from the closest road, inhabited by Gennadij (64) and Faina (65). When the Soviet Union fell apart, so did their plans about retiring to Fainas apartment in Latvia, which the Latvian government gave to somebody else. And Gennadij got ill from inhaling the fumes in the industrial arctic town where they lived. They did what it seems quite a few Russians are doing, they built themselves a small cabin and lived mostly from what they could fish, hunt, gather and grow. Bear in mind that this is close to 70 degrees North.

They had an old russian Buran snowmobile and a generator to power some lights, but no chain saw. Wikan had dropped by some years later, and learned that Gennadij had drowned while fishing, but Faina was still living there. (Both photos by Steinar Wikan.)

On the edge

Look at it: It seams recognizable...

This is not my home. It's Ted Kaczynki's place. Or rather his former place. He's in prison now, of course.

Ted Kaczynski is perhaps better known as the Unabomber. If I had lived in a culture where he was better known than the one I'm in, I think he would have cropped up quite often in conversations when it dawns on people how I live.

And I have to say, I wouldn't have blamed them.

Even though I don't share his politics, there are some common denominators when it comes to preferences in real estate and interior decoration.

Just look at it: For chrissake.

Supposedly a news report, just following his arrest, went like this:

On-site reporter: Apparently, the Unabomber, now revealed to be former professor Ted Kaczynski, lived in this remote cabin without electricity or running water.

Anchorwoman: And still no suspicions were raised?

I am thinking about Kaczynski now, because I am reading a book called "What We Leave Behind" by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. They are this close to suggesting their readers blow something up. Their premise is that civilization is just flat out unsustainable, and any attempts to jerry rig solutions are going to fail.

This is bleak stuff.

Mostly, I find it pretty good, too. It fits well with what I think and believe, those rare instances where I don't sensor myself. I've developed quite a knack for sounding slightly less insane in polite company than I really am. It's a survival thing.

But it's become a habit. Now I hardly even whisper to myself how worried I am, how unsure I am that we will be able to tidy things up.

Some parts of the book make me cringe a bit. I find it hard to accept the way environmentalists lump together American Indians as if they were one homogeneous group. Some of them had (and have) very admirable cultures, others less so. Anything else would be crazy. They're not übermensch, those Indians.

Surprisingly, the chapter about aborigines and magic is quite readable. The authors manage to show respect while avoiding the new-agey baloney that normally surrounds this topic.

Kevin Kelly of Cool Tools fame has a kind of response to the kind of thinking held by Jensen and (to some extent) Ted Kaczynski. That's were I found the pictures here, too.

Indianuity

This is a Doolan's fish camp in the Nisga'a valley in northern British Columbia, where I spent a week for work-related reasons this spring. If you look closely and have perfect eyesight (or click on the pic), you will see that the door is connected with a string through a pulley to a large shackle (in front of the blue plastic bottle). This way, the door, which opens inwards, closes automatically and as little precious heat as possible is wasted.

So much elegant technology to ape after, so little time.

Best friend technology

Sometimes the bond between man and dog bring out the best in both. Sometimes it does not. And sometimes the result is something in between. Here's a "dog restrainer" gadget which I doubt would work for sled dogs. From Life Magazine's "30 Dumb Inventions".

Despite the title, some of those inventions aren't dumb at all. (Via Dinosaurs & Robots.)

A guy who actually knew what he was doing

This is Richard Proenneke. He thought it would be cool to build a cabin in Alaska and live there for a year in 1961. And stayed until 1998. He was insanely resourceful and built his cabin using almost only stuff he found on the site. That dutch door he's leaning through, those hinges: All's made from local wood using nothing but hand tools. He even made a hinge and a lock out of wood, too.

All this is documented in a film called "Alone in the Wilderness". Proenneke shot a lot of 16 mm film about his life, which has since been edited together. He's almost blogger-like, when a bush pilot friend arrives with two pairs of socks, Proenneke drags out his 16mm Bolex and films them, so he can show them sometime, somewhere, to someone. My friend, mushing comrade and, alas, ex-neighbor Jaass gave the film to me but I only managed to get around seeing it yesterday. It is mind-bending. The stuff this guy could build with hand tools.

He seems to have been a short man with a funny gait. If you get to see the film, look at his enormous biceps as he saws!

Somehow he manages to build, fish and hunt without any kind of macho swagger. Just a careful guy minding his own business, with a bent towards perfectionism. Me, I'm a tall, confused guy with no discipline. But I can still be inspired.

Excerpt of the film below: