Dropout

     I've been holding back something about myself in these columns lately. I've failed to mention that I didn't intend to return to Telluride in the foreseeable future. I haven't said why I'd cancelled my plans to visit Europe. Did I say anything about becoming a truck driver? No, I don't think I ever got to that. I'm ready to come clean.
    First let me explain the truck driving thing. I'd been kicking this idea around for decades. With old age about to settle in any day now it seemed like the right time to jump, just before it's too late to do any jumping. Rumor has it that Wal-Mart is paying drivers in excess of $85,000. That's real money. I've lived my entire life in comfortable poverty. I've never imagined myself making this kind of money. I'd only need to bare it for a small handful of years to save up a fair amount; enough to live on for the rest of my life. I'd have to be trained first ,then get some experience behind the wheel.  I contacted a trucking firm that trains drivers and helps them obtain a commercial drivers license in return for a year's commitment to drive for them. They agreed to take me on if I passed drug tests, obtained a learners permit ( for a CDL) , and a Colorado medical exam for drivers. I took care of these requirements last week then rode to Salt Lake City for training.                                                                                                Through the whole process I was looking for some good reason to not follow through . The whole thing was preposterous. I'm not the sort of person who hears an engine purr and says " My, that's a pretty sound". I don't own a car. I hate cars. I've never driven a motorcycle ,or an ATV .I hate everything about cars and trucks ,motors ,and freeways. I've dedicated my life to avoiding them. My motivation began and ended with the money. The money center of my brain would light up when ever I thought about driving a semi. The rest of my brain was appalled, and thought the financial part of my brain had lost its mind.
      When I showed up at the driver's school campus I knew how crazy the whole plan was. I hated the place. I hated the dormitories, especially mine. I expected to feel like a fish out of water. I felt instead like a fish lost in outer space. It occurred to me that maybe the reason I was  having so much trouble picturing myself  a truck driver had more to do with it's lack of likelihood than any lack of imagination. 
      I spent a night at the facility ,but only because I was too exhausted from fighting headwinds all day to go anywhere else. I hardly slept. Having seven snoring roommates was only part of the problem. I learned that I don't have a prayer of sleeping in a room without a window left open. I can hardly sleep in a room at all, at least until I'm used to it, and even then I need.the windows open. Sleeping outside so often for so many years has ruined me for walls and ceilings, and closed windows. Give me fresh air and starlight. Give me bird song in the morning, the best alarm clock. If the wind rises at night I want to hear it tearing at the branches overhead. If it starts to rain, I want to hear big juicy drops of it pelting the tent ,and smell it's influence on earth and plants. You can see my problem. I'm not cut out for what other people consider everyday life. I'm especially not cut out for it when sharing it with seven snoring roommates.
        In the morning the bicycle and I rolled out of trucking school. It's probably safe to say that I was the first person to show up there on a loaded bike. I was happy to be the first to leave that way too. It felt like freedom.
         What would I do now? Where would I go? Telluride, I thought. I'd go to Telluride. The answer was suddenly obvious. The only thing better than twelve consecutive years in Telluride is thirteen. What could I have been thinking when I considered breaking ties? "To thine own self be true" wrote the bard. Is being true to yourself better than financial security? I don't know but it's always worth trying. When people see me on Colorado Avenue they may say to each other" There goes homeless Dave, a real pauper, but man, so true to himself. " Or maybe they'll say, " There goes old Dave, a trucking school dropout. " Either is acceptable.

Desert Storm

      I'm calling this a rest day. They don't come that often when I'm on the road. Usually I don't decide on them till I happen on the perfect campsite. It's hard passing up a perfect campsite..This one fills the bill, having water nearby ( I'm guessing this stream is Last Chance Creek). Best of all, there's shelter in the form of a large overhanging rock with a flat wide floor of sand underneath and plenty of headroom, even room for a tent. Beats last nights shelter by a mile, which was also under a sandstone overhang but was cramped and dusty and needed considerable grading to produce a narrow sleeping platform. It was the kind of spot you might hope to find in an emergency, but ard to imagine choosing it during better conditions. Good shelter is on my mind lately.
      I'm riding the Smokey Mountain road through the near wilderness of the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument ,that links Big Water near Glen Canyon Dam with the town of Escalante on Utah's route 12. It's 78 miles long, but you can't measure it by the usual standards of road since it is a four wheel drive unpaved road with many ultra steep sections ,rough sections, sandy sections ,and muddy stream crossings. Today I made four miles before calling it quits. There was almost no riding ,just a whole lot of pushing, mud caking around the wheels and on my boots. The road was washed out . It was nearly entirely mud, but here and there some sand or rock which made for easier pushing and sometimes even a little riding. 
      My early stop makes sense if it rains again this afternoon. It makes even more sense if it doesn't. Every moment it's not raining the road is drying out. If the drying continues I may be riding  tomorrow instead of pushing.
      I was about at the half way point when yesterday's deluge hit. It began with hail mixed with rain. The hailstorm lasted longer than usual. It wasn't just a minute or two long, but continued for twenty minutes at least, the hail stones growing larger as they rained down ,reaching marble sized, bouncing crazily ,knee high, waist high, and looking like snow where they landed. Lightning put on an impressive show. A long second might pass between flash and crash, no longer. In a few moments the quitest place in the whole world had become it's noisiest and most chaotic.
       I parked the bike next to a juniper at the side of the road and looked for overhanging rock to wait out the downpour. There was a small rock overhang at the top of a cliff 20 feet above a wash where I attempted to wait out the storm. From this cubbyhole I watched as the stream below increased in size and speed and grew sets of standing waves.. Adding to it's fury was a growing rush of water beside me as it hurtled over the cliff. I was at the brink of a fast forming waterfall. As it grew so did its roar. I've heard all sorts of sounds from falling water but never anything like this. As it built strength it's base notes became louder. Have you ever heard the woofer from a passing vehicle's speakers pound so loud that you wondered how anyone inside kept their hearing? Your teath's fillings vibrate, your ears begin to bleed, you can't wait for them to.move on. It sounded like that, only worse. Eventually the intensity of that cacophony ,along with the possibility of the waterfall blocking the only escape route drove me from this hole and back into the rain to look for my bicycle. I left it here somewhere, but where was it? All the most likely looking trees beside the road now had fast moving little rivers at their bases, tributaries of the waterfall I had been sitting beside. Panic set in. What if my bicycle and everything on it that I needed to survive had been swept away in the flood?  I ran around a bend in the road and with great relief found it was there, untouched by the maelstrom.
        For all my sudden relief I wasn't out of the woods yet. I needed to get warm ,and dry ,and fed, and out of the still pouring rain. There was little chance of pitching a tent. Where the ground wasn't stone it was quagmire. I headed back up the road to check out an expanse of slickrock ( smooth sandstone). If I could find a good cliffline I might come across some overhanging capstone and a dry place to change and eat and sleep underneath. What would have happened if I hadn't found what I was looking for ? I'd rather not think about it.
      Yesterday I saw only one jeep pass by. That was long before the storm hit. Today there will be none. The road has probably been closed. Until it's dry again I'll have all this to myself. The storm has brought me silence and solitude, rare commodities today. I think I got them at a good price.

Abolish police

   I was walking my sister's dog this morning out on the icy streets, and even icyer sidewalks ,of suburban New Jersey while listening to NPR's Morning Edition. David Greene was interviewing Tanya Faison ,head of the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter. Her group has been active over the last year leading protests over what they view as the murder of Stephon Clark by police. Stephon was black. On March 2,2019 ,when the Sacramento district attorney announced the results of her investigation into the incident, she exonerated the police involved resulting in a resurgence of public outrage and large scale protests organized by BLM. NPR likes to talk about " driveway moments " . This was my " icey sidewalk moment ", especially when Faison said " Our chapter is more of an abolitionist chapter. You can't just reform the law... we need to rely more on each other. " She was talking about policing, not slavery. When it comes to police and policing, she's against them. She believes civilians will pick up the slack once the police are abolished. This remark got my attention. It made little impression on the radio host. Maybe the time allotted for the interview didn't allow a follow-up question. I'd like to have heard more. For me this was a bomb shell.
    Up till today I'd never heard anyone advocate abolishing police, I.C.E. yes, but not all police. Once back to my tablet I could do a quick search of the internet and discover Faison' s remarks on NPR were not an aberration or a one off. They're fairly mainstream in the Black Lives Matter movement. They even make an appearance in their manifesto and platform which call for a " defunding of the systems and institutions that criminalize and cage us. " Calls for the abolition of police forces, prisons, and the entire structure of the justice system  have shown up in numerous statements by prominent BLM activists going back to at least 2016, and probably earlier. As I said ,this was a quick search.
      It's not hard to imagine what our world would look like without police ;without a justice system to investigate, arrest, convict, and incarcerate people like Stephon Clark . For a while I'd enjoy the difference. My run ins with the law are infrequent. Now and then I'm stopped for riding my bike where the law says I shouldn't. It would be nice to go my way without looking over my shoulder wondering if I'll be stopped. My glee would be short lived. The people I'm sharing the road with will  feel similarly liberated and begin using my piece of the highway as a passing lane. Darwinism would rule. The largest truck gets right of way. Mad Max here we come! 
      The chaos of the roads would hardly compare to the mass disruption in neighborhoods like Stephon Clark's. Police became aware of him when a neighbor called 911 to report that someone was outside breaking car windows. In Faison's world the call would have gone out to the neighborhood vigilance committee or something. No telling how that confrontation would have gone down. I suspect little better, assuming their patrolman are armed, or arrived on time, or Stephon reacted in the same erratic way, ignoring their orders to stop and show his hands, and holding his girlfriend's cellphone out in front of him as if it were a weapon. We can guess how abolishing police would look in poorer neighborhoods. Things would get pretty ugly pretty fast. Nights would be unbearable. In the better neighborhoods there would be privately funded security patrols, more gaited communities, concertina wire everywhere, and walled in homes. The better parts of town already look this way in parts of the world where police departments are corrupt and ineffective, and crime is rampant. I saw this for myself in Bogota Columbia in the seventies and have heard hair raising tales from South African refugees.
      In a way I can admire Faison's anarcho- libertarian approach to bureaucracies. I'm all for reducing the scope of government. I love the idea of holding every program and bureaucracy up to scrutiny and asking is this something we can reduce, reform ,or do without, but this is a discussion for adults. By adults I mean people who are capable of honestly considering  the results of their proposals.  Tanya Faison is not. Let's not forget that her central idea is that the justice system ought to be abolished. " We can't just reform the law. " ,she reminds us. Thats a childish approach. She's disqualified herself from the discussion. BLM is out of touch with reality. It assumes the worst about existing structures it opposes and arranges false narratives to suit faulty assumptions. On the slippery streets of public policy reform Black Lives Matter always takes a spill.

Upside down

       On Thursday, February 14, Amazon announced that it would not be building a second headquarters in Queens New York as it had earlier announced. The company cited recent moves by Queens city council to block construction. Supporting Amazon's plans to create offices in Long Island City, Queens were New York's governor, New York City's mayor, most New Yorkers, and the union of construction workers who would have built the office complex and related public and private works. Opposing construction were  rather fringey anti- corporate, anti- capitalist community activists and members of city council elected from their ranks.
     Newly elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was ecstatic, announcing on Twitter " Anything is possible: today was a day a group of dedicated New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's greed, it's worker exploitation , and the power of the richest man in the world. "
      Amazon has spent the last few years searching for a new location from which to administrator it's growing business empire in addition to its original headquarters in Seattle. Many cities, including Denver vied for the honor. Their enthusiasm is easily understood. A business the size and wealth of Amazon in your backyard brings in billions in local and state taxes, high paying jobs, along with the taxes they provide, and a generous donor for local projects . Ultimately ,Amazon decided to divide it's proposed headquarters , creating one in New York and the other in Northern Virginia outside of Washington DC. Amazon planned to employ 25,000 at the New York office. Wages would be at around $ 150,000 for most office workers, which I understand is enough money to live even in New York. A business that size doesn't exist in a vacuum. The knock on effect of all those people working there is estimated to include an additional 67,000 jobs in the vicinity ( not including those construction workers mentioned earlier ). Over a twenty- five year period Amazon would have paid out an estimated $27 billion in taxes to the state and city. On a more immediate basis they had agreed to funding $ 600 ,000,000 worth of infrastructure improvements . The city would accept those improvements in lieu of that amount in taxation. Other tax breaks would equal an additional $2.4 billion over twenty-five years. The resulting $3 billion in projected tax breaks to Amazon became a rallying cry for the opposition, although in principle this is pretty standard in corporate - municipality agreements. The only difference is scale.
       In an interview with a television reporter Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said " if we are willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to. " . Her misunderstanding of basic economics is phenomenal. It's as if she were relying on her ideology rather than facts and logic to do her thinking for her. Of course there is no $3 billion lying around for the city to spend on whatever the city believes would be a it's best use. That $3 billion was not a " gift" from New Yorkers to Amazon. It would be money created by Amazon and left to their use. That's a distinction she is unable to appreciate or acknowledge.
    I've never heard anyone say that all the wealth of America belongs to everyone. I have heard a lot of people make remarks that seem to be based on this assumption.  If you believe that it is the duty of government to redistribute wealth to promote the greater good then you have bought into this way of thinking. There's no school of economic or political theory compatible with this principle outside of Socialism. Marx would have recognized it.
       Cortez goes a step further by claiming that even the wealth you ( or Amazon) may produce in the future is properly the people's wealth.  In her mind the taxes New York agreed to release Amazon from paying in lieu of services amount to theft from the people. Nevermind the enormous wealth Amazon would have brought to the city, or the tens of billions in taxes the corporation and it's employees  would have added to it's coffers, the only relevant fact for her was the $3 billion exemption. Prominent Democrats often rail against  companies taking advantage of legal tax exemptions, and refer to this as corporate welfare. For them all the money businesses produce is not wealth that would not otherwise exist. It is stolen money. It is greed that fuels their empires. They are takers, not givers, and government, which produces nothing but vast stacks of paperwork is the only true giver. Keep in mind that government can not give anything to anyone until after it has taken it from someone else. It's all a zero sum gain, which is exactly the way the fans of unlimited government imagine businesses operating. It's the world seen upside down.

          If you watched the two minutes of video footage from the Lincoln Memorial steps on Saturday ,January 19th , or saw the resulting memes on Facebook you saw something appalling occur there. Native American activist Nathan Phillips beating a drum and singing for peace in his tribal tongue was being menaced by a rowdy group of boys wearing red MAGA caps ,shouting racial epithets, shouting " build that wall! ", jostling, and laughing, ready to riot in the manner of lynch mobs . It was a disturbing picture. One boy  was seen facing down the 64 year old Phillps , smirking. That smirking expression brought him in for particular criticism by a host of celebrities and journalists on Twitter. It was said to be the smirk of white privilege, hateful ,intolerant ,and self satisfied. All of this was clear on Saturday, unless you were there at the time or waited around for the dust to clear and the truth to be revealed.  Longer, less carefully edited tapes were posted and other voices were heard. When the truth was revealed it completely overturned Saturday's tailored narrative. Journalists and pundits were forced to admit jumping to conclusions too early. They were had. We all were had.
      According to Phillips account he was peacefully proceeding up the steps of the memorial during the Native American march on Washington when he was suddenly set upon and surrounded by dozens of young men who were howling at him, mocking him and threatening violence. He saw two groups facing off and growing tension. One was made up of black men and the other a large group of white teenagers. " These young men were beastly and these old Black individuals was their prey, and I stood between them... " he told the Detroit Free Press on Saturday. He added , " It was ugly what I saw these kids were involved in. It was racism. It was hatred. It was scary. "
      It turns out the children were a Catholic high school group from Kentucky who had been on the Mall to participate in the annual March for Life. They were at the monument waiting for the buses that would take them home. Before the buses arrived they had been noticed by four members of the the Black Hebrew Israelites who are known for the confrontational tactics they employed against them, calling the white teenagers " crackers " and a black member of the group by the " n " word, and homophobic slurs for good measure. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group. The SPLC throws that designation around far to freely, but in the case of some congregations of the Black Hebrew Israelites, it is well deserved. The boys did not know why they were being assaulted ,nor how to react. One boy asked a teacher if it would be alright if they were to respond with the cheers they shouted at sports events at school and was given permission. At least cheering would drown out the insults being hurled at them.
       This is the scene Phillips walked into after falsely interpreting it. Video released after the original posting shows him walking deliberately into the boys assembled there and stopping in front of Nick Sandmann. Sandmann claims not to have intended to threaten Phillips ,or to have smirked. He believed his actions, or lack of action ,were necessary to diffuse a situation that was getting out of control and growing more bizarre by the moment. His smile, was a nervous smile, widly misinterpreted as a smirk. Proof of his true intentions  is available in longer versions of video where he's seen gesturing to another student not to engage in an argument with one of Phillips group of protesters who tries to goad him. Proof of Phillips lack of sincerity is also there. Why not walk up to the aggressors in this unfortunate fracas to calm them down and not confront it's victims instead? How does beating a drum inches from someone's face have the pacifying effect Phillips claims he was after?
     Covington high school students are not without blame in all this. They are often seen acting just like boys do. They're not angels.  Chants of build that wall and derogatory remarks hurled at Phillips group are not in evidence and are likely figments of his imagination. He has an active imagination and an axe to grind. 
      Change the respective races of the participants and you have an entirely different picture. Imagine white men in Make America Great Again hats shouting invective and profanities at a group of predominantly native or African American boys without provocation. Imagine a white man in Nathan Phillips place. Imagine  any of those who so quickly went to Twitter to condemn the children taking the word of the perpetrators over the testimony of the students or later video evidence. That's not imaginable because in the universe of social justice advocates like these politics ,power, and race are paramount, truth is irrelevant.

Fremont river valley, Utah

Camping and cycling through Green River desert Utah last week