I know the cool savvy hip thing to say is “lol, 2021 will be worse,” but I mean, Donald will be gone after Jan. 20, and eventually we’ll be able to dine in a restaurant safely. That ain’t nothing.
— Starfish Who Just Wants To Grill (@IRHotTakes) December 31, 2020
Was 2020 the worst year ever? Historians weigh in. https://t.co/ggX5Hnl9XG
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 1, 2021
… In a clever bit of marketing, the self-therapy app Bloom recently asked 28 historians from Yale, Oxford, Stanford and other major universities to choose the worst year in history — or, as they put it, the most stressful. British historian Philip Parker led the effort. Following a depressing dive down the rabbit hole of historical misery, Parker compiled a list of the top worst/most stressful years in world, British and U.S. history. Then the historians made their picks.
The worst year in world history wasn’t even a close contest.
It was 1348, the height of the Black Death, during which as many as 200 million people died. That would be like wiping out about 65 percent of the U.S. population. The Holocaust in 1944 ranked second, followed by 1816, when a volcano eruption in Indonesia blocked out the sun, starving millions. 2020 ranked sixth.
In U.S. history, 2020 was well down the list at No. 8, just behind the 2001 terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the tumult of 1968’s riots and assassinations, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Trail of Tears of 1838, the 1929 stock market crash marking the beginning of the Great Depression, and at the very, very top, 1862.
That was, most historians say, the grimmest year of the Civil War, when the country’s total collapse seemed imminent…
I've come to believe this is the most important thing in studying history. https://t.co/5RPZRLC3x4
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) January 1, 2021
Steeplejack
My circadian rhythm, such as it is, is totally screwed up. I went out last night (Friday) to get a few things and realized that (a) it was the first time I had been out in a week and (b) the last time I put gas in the doughty Kia was November 5. I’ve driven only about 200 miles since then. I think that’s my longest stretch during the pandemic. I shaved and took a shower before donning the tactical gear (pants!), and my beard had gone beyond the Dub Taylor/Strother Martin stubble zone into “Maybe I should let it grow out again.” Whoa.
All this is part of the days sort of running together, especially with these holiday weekends. I can’t figure out what day I’m in. Christmas and New Year falling on Friday make Thursday feel like the end of the week, and then after the actual holiday the rest of the weekend is weird. Today already feels like it should be Sunday, in some way. Go figure. Not complaining, exactly, just noting it for the after times.
And of course I’ve been up all night, because I sleep when I can sleep and don’t sleep when I can’t sleep. My sweet spot lately seems to be the dark afternoons. I’m trying to get on a more “regular” schedule, with little success.
Meanwhile, listening to music. David Reinhardt Trio, “Aparecida.”
Baud
If there’s one thing the Internet has taught me, it’s that the internet knows exactly how things will play out and will fight you to the death if you disagree.
OzarkHillbilly
Life’s a beach and then you die.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
I’m sorry 2021 isn’t looking better for you yet.
satby
I think any year when 100x the number of people killed on 9/11 die is a worse year, but then I’m not a historian.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I have not yet achieved your blissful state of pantsless nirvana.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: You actually think human misery can be measured in deaths alone? Silly girl.
satby
I guess there’s large swathes of Michiana without power after the ice followed by snow storm yesterday, including across the street from me. I have power, so I have coffee, which I’m having while waiting for it to get light out before I try driving today. Last day at the market for at least a month, or until I sell the booth. YAY!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: well, that’s how they measure the Holocaust, isn’t it?
Steeplejack
I object to the whole “worst year” listicle premise, because in some ways it requires people to negate their lived experience in deference to the listicle. I don’t know that a Jew on a train going to Auschwitz would think, or should think, “Well, at least we’re not dying from the Black Death, eh?” That’s Monty Python-level nihilism.
It’s all personal. Which Cary Elwes captures perfectly.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Those were fake deaths too.
Steeplejack
Count Basie Orchestra, “Dark Morning.”
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I lost my satellite feed for awhile yestermorn but the power stayed on all day.
Baud
@satby:
I also don’t know how the Cuban Missile Crisis caused 1962 to rank so high.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I did dislike that about living way out in the country, my satellite feed would go out or be useless at the slightest rainy weather. And because I was on the east side of a very large body of water we had a lot of those days. Of course if power went out, it was normally out for days too, so I didn’t miss only the tv.
satby
@Baud: maybe because the question was phrased as “stressful”. It was undoubtedly stressful to worry about what seemed like the brink of a nuclear war, but to me real death outweighs the existential angst of potential death. I’m just weird that way.
Steeplejack
John Basile, “Stop, Look, Listen (to Your Heart).”
Baud
@satby:
I’m sure it was stressful, but it was only a couple of weeks. The question wasn’t the most stressful events in history, but the worst years.
Anyway, here’s to a less stressful 2021.
Baud
We need a Stacey Abrams for Mississippi.
JAFD
Good morning, jackals and jackalettes !
As my high-schooll history teacher said, frequently, “Don’t Read History Backwards !”
A young lady I was courting, a few decades back, finally got exasperated and said, “JAFD, you must be a space alien from a planet with 27-hour-long days, the way you keep getting out-of-synch with the world…”
Baud
OzarkHillbilly
Hehee, as somebody else said, accurate as fuck.
Anya
With that list, maybe they should say, “worst year in western history”.
Baud
@Anya:
Very true.
Jeffro
Up side: woke up to see that, after I went to bed at half time, Ohio State finished off Clemson last night, meaning that for various reasons I can root for both teams on Jan 11th! 😀
Down side: still a little off after learning that Berlin was willing to play at Mar-a-Lago 🤨
Tie-breaker: will be going kayaking with my kids this morning, at their request(!) which is a vastly bigger deal than Ohio State or Berlin. 🥳
So yeah…it’s all about keeping things in perspective 🔭
Baud
@Jeffro:
Just tell yourself they’re desperate. Better than believing they’re Trumpsters.
evap
I like Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson’s take: Life’s a long song, but the tune ends too soon for us all.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: PERFECT!
Chyron HR
@Baud:
Imagine thinking you’ll get paid when you sign a Trump contract.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
Phylllis
@Jeffro: I think Dabo is in for a real wake up call with both Lawrence & Etienne heading for the pros. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving asshole.
Chris T.
@JAFD: Hmm… that’s my basic problem as well. If you find a cure, let me know!
raven
@Phylllis: And we start with them next year!
Phylllis
@raven: That win would cool off Kirby’s hot seat for sure.
p.a.
Vanilla Ice & Berlin? Andrew dice Clay unavailable?!!
Quinerly
@Steeplejack: I know what you mean about the days running together. I last drove Christmas Eve when I returned home from a 3 night social distancing on a horse farm in rural Missouri. It was mostly a test run to see how JoJo las Orejas adapts to situations and travel. (He was pretty perfect in his hiking harness.) Dreary day with sleet yesterday here. I retreated to my warm bed and started making a travel plan for a road trip that will start Labor Day weekend and end at the beginning of January, 2022. I find detailed maps and counting out days in locations relaxing. Love to research off the beaten path stuff and back roads. This is the year of the Great Sand Dunes NP, North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde in September and Bisbee, Tucson, Phoenix, Sedona area, and South Rim of the Grand Canyon in December. Christmas in Winslow. Months of Sept and October in Santa Fe with out trips camping at Chaco Canyon and Bisti. Just gotta figure out a vehicle. Leaning towards a Toyota Tacoma with a 6ft bed with just a basic camper shell. Nothing fancy.
I have to have something to look forward to or I will be crazier than I am already. 😳 And I realize that I am more fortunate than most.
Happy New Year, Jackals! Have a great day. Just a few more days and a Pres Biden!!!!
Mai Naem mobile
I don’t think 2020 was the worst ever but I don’t see how you say 2011 was worse than 2020 for the US. Beyond the deaths, 9/11 was towards the end of the year. This started at the beginning of the year. The economic situation is way worse this time around. Dubbya was an idiot with Daddy issues but he doesn’t even come close to Donny. The impeachment, the refusal to admit defeat. The police killings. The polarization of the country. Hurricanes. Fires.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
Heh. I leased my car in late August. The mileage now stands at 590. 🤷🏻♀️
Quinerly
@evap: 💜
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: LOL
I mean, Love Life is a really good album!…sigh…I guess if my RWNJ brother can enjoy Springsteen, I can deal.
Dorothy A. Winsor
In 2021, I’ll be able to go to the library or a cafe to write, which means I’ll be able to write again because I’m apparently too neurotic to write at home. Mr DAW will be able to go out to bridge clubs several times a week, which he’ll like because he’s a quiet, but sociable guy. We’ll both be able to go to fitness classes again. And we’ll be able to see our son and DIL.
That is all very far from nothing.
Jeffro
@Phylllis: 🙌🏻
debbie
@Jeffro:
I’m looking forward to watching clips of the Clemson coach’s answering questions about his contributing to the loss with his big, snide mouth.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
Does your brother grumble about the politics in Bruce’s music, like Chris Christie does sometimes?
Mai Naem mobile
@Quinerly: I would skip Phoenix entirely . It’s turned into a smaller version of LA and I don’t mean that in a positive way. Bisbee is a cool little town. Sedona is very pretty but has basically become Arizona’s Santa Barbara. I’ve always wanted to go to North Rim of the Grand Canyon but times always been an issue. Its a long drive from the South to the North rim. The Tacoma is nice. We’ve been looking at getting a truck and talk about sticker shock. The base version of new trucks used to be under $20K. When the hell did trucks start costing $30K?
Phylllis
@debbie: He started out as this decent, humble guy. Unfortunately, he’s fallen into the trap of believing his paycheck actually denotes his worth and abilities.
raven
@Mai Naem mobile: That’s not even expensive for a truck now
Ford F-250 Super Chief: $150,000+ V10 Luxury Pickup Truck With 500 Mile Range!
Gvg
@satby: My dad went to school with the daughter of the guy who wrote Alas Babylon. He knew people who dug nuclear shelters for their families in the backyard. Florida is terrible for cellars. He knew people who committed suicide because of fear of nuclear war being inevitable. His high school senior trip was to Cuba pre Castro. It was a quick boat trip then. He had a friend who volunteered to fight Castro and was never heard from again. Alas Babylon is set in Florida and has nuclear bombs hitting Orlando and McCoy Air Force. He grew up in Gainesville and I grew up in Orlando. That fear was really big in his generation.
My mom grew up in Wisconsin on an isolated farm and doesn’t recount the same kind of things, so maybe it depends.
Frankensteinbeck
All the things we know will be wrong with 2021 were wrong with 2020, and most of them were wrong with the previous 4 years. But Biden will be president instead of Trump. That is a huge improvement.
Baud
@raven:
The working man’s pickup!
ETA: it’s a 2006 model.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Little me was aware of a great deal of stress at the time. Parents, including mine, having to give assurance that we all weren’t going to die. As to the all-time ranking thing, not sure I see the metric being used, or for that matter the point. As to pernicious social effects, it will be a while before the book closes on 2020.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: That doesn’t sound like you are getting your money’s worth.
bluefish
I dream of being able to visit my elderly parents again. In person. At their house.
I dream of going to my favorite local diner.
I
mrmoshpotato
@raven: Luxury pickup feels like an oxymoron.
Phylllis
@Quinerly: I’m getting the hubby a National Parks Golden Pass for our anniversary, partly inspired by all your travels. Once I retire, we’re going to take at least one extended trip a year.
prostratedragon
@Anya: To start, the Congo under the heel of Leopold might offer some suggestions.
Gvg
@Quinerly: This country is going to have travel fever like crazy when the vaccinations release us. I’d avoid well known places and try for reservations.
My dad is chomping at the bit.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
No, but the trunk makes for a great storage place!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I bought my half ton 4×4 for $10K 10 years ago. I’ve put more than 100,000 miles on it and while I’ve had to do a few repairs, it’s still running on the original engine and tranny.
$150K for a new truck? Not me, not now, not ever.
Dorothy A. Winsor
On the same campus as my condo building is one that has skilled nursing care. We got notice this morning that residents and some staff will be vaccinated there next week. Progress!
Princess
At the end of December 2019, when everyone was saying they were so happy 2019 was ending, I was the one quietly saying “2020 will be worse.” It was only logical this would be the case. It was always clear that the election year would be hell on toast. I didn’t predict the pandemic, but I was watching and attentive to the early reports, imagining a SARS-like outbreak in several North American cities.
I have not much feeling for what 2021 will be like. I think it will be bad — hundreds of thousands more Americans will die in the first half of the year. Families that haven’t been touched by death yet, will be. Biden is going to have a terrible time trying to govern this mess. He will need our support. It’s hard for me to say 2021 will be worse (though it could be). It wlll definitely be better than if Trump won though. That’s for sure. We’ve had a brief reprieve; we need to make use of it.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: Ha! Out of sight is out of mind.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone 😊😊😊
Quinerly
@Mai Naem mobile: crazy prices on trucks. I go back and forth on the Tacoma and an AWD Sienna. I have been making variations of this trip for the last 10 years… Must have AWD or 4WD and have a 4WD Ford now. Just need a better set up for car camping 3-4 nights in a row, off and on. I did a variation in Jan-Mar, 2020…had just gotten back from Navajo Nation in 3/2020 when the shut down here hit in St. Louis. Later learned that my guide from Canyon de Chelly died from Covid.
I did a 7500 mile trip in 2017 that included Sedona. My base was Cameron, AZ for a week. Love Cameron and the place I stayed. My intense planning really started yesterday b/c of these camping cabins at Dead Horse Ranch SP that are doggie friendly and a good price. Can be booked 365 days out and I can use it as a base for Jerome, Prescott, and Sedona, and Flag. I want to try to give Sedona another chance and I loved Jerome. Phoenix only interests me for the Heard Museum. I have a friend who lives in Cerrillos, NM who is from Tucson. She’s going to meet me for the Tucson/Phoenix leg.
I’ve never done the North Rim so impt to me to get it in before it closes for the season. Plus, I love that Marble Canyon area. Was there in Feb, 2017. South Rim will be in Dec and I figure the lodges and Desert View will be beautiful Christmas time.
I adore La Posada in Winslow. The doggie friendly FDR room is always in high demand.. So why not just book it now for Christmas Eve and Christmas night?
Yes… The maps were out yesterday. JoJo snoozed. He might be part working dog breed and just over a year old… But I think he prefers to draw unemployment. Thanks for piping in! I welcome any thoughts and inputs for these “road shows.”
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
👏👏👏
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Never ever ever 😒😒
p.a.
@prostratedragon: I have a fed booklet we were mailed in 1966 on how to set up various basement fallout shelters, including a snack bar that converts into a small shelter🥴
rikyrah
@satby:
You are selling the booth?
I guess I missed that announcement
rikyrah
@Baud:
ICAM
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: just catching up on old threads. So sorry about your brother and SIL. Keep us in the loop re their conditions. Positive thoughts.
p.a.
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw the renewed Ranger, and it seemed just slightly smaller than the F150. Remember the old Rangers, S10s which were basically gasoline powered buckboards. Those small trucks were real values for non-professionals although they did seem to rust out pretty quickly here in the snowbelt.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t remember what I paid for my 66 some 34 years ago! When I add up the new engine, tranny, rear-end, electronic ignition, paint job and more I’m probably well over $6k
Mai Naem mobile
@raven: you can still by a lower end house in Phoenix for $150K. I can’t fathom spending an amount of money on a vehicle that you could buy a house for. You just can’t tell me that all the stuff in a normal house should cost the same as a car.
raven
@Mai Naem mobile: My stepmom lives at the base of Lookout Mountain and I think the house is somewhere in the $250k range.
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.: 🥴 – what do you search for to get that emoji? Sloshed?
Princess
@Mai Naem mobile: I think you need to be a very privileged white man to think that 2001 was worse that 2020. Which tells us a lot about the 28 historians they questioned.
(Same with 1962 and even 1968 — the economy was still expanding during that time. There were stressors, but young people basically knew if they got some education, a job was waiting for them. This is not true in 2020.)
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: I drove a couple of S10s for years. Yeah they rusted out but I got pretty good at body work so I managed. The best part about them was they would go anywhere I wanted. Didn’t need 4wd.
SFAW
@raven:
I guess I need to enlarge my garage to fit that thing.
$150K? JHC.
Ken
Good book. The scene that sticks with me is the two kids playing after the bombs fall, and one of them says “If I grow up…”
raven
@Gvg: One of my favorite books from high school!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Whoa man, did you have to mortgage the house to pay for that??? It cracks me up, people paying $50K or better for these new pick ups that will never go off the road or haul a sheet of plywood.
raven
@Gvg: Damn, not a happy ending.
Princess
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Illinois seems to be doing a pretty good job with the vaccine roll out. They panned ahead.
SFAW
@raven:
$6K these days gets you, what, a set of 24-inch alloy wheels and tires? (Probably closer to $4K, but still …)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Another good candidate for worst year ever is 536. Worldwide famine and death and messed up weather, possibly due to an eruption.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t know what I paid for this baby but I wish I had it back!
Ken
Right. I’d say, for example, that 1348 was terrible, but many people around the world (the Americas, for instance) didn’t even know the plague was happening.
I wonder how much extra stress we experience just because we can now learn about terrible events anywhere in the world. It doesn’t help that news stations have adopted “if it bleeds it leads” as their news programming credo.
Mai Naem mobile
@Quinerly: I know a few Navajos and Hopis who live in Phoenix and have family on the rez. They’ve all lost family on the rez to COVID. Not one has not.
I’ve always,out of curiosity, wanted to go to Colorado City. That’s where the polygamist Fundy LDS church was based. I had a friend who was driving through there years ago and didn’t know anything about the town. She said it looked like you had traveled back in time because all the girls and women were dressed in old fashioned long dresses and hair styles.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
I remember seeing a very-short-bed “pickup” about 20-or-so years ago. And by “very short,” I’m thinking around two or three feet, sorta like a Honda Ridgeline, except I think it was actually an F-150. And I remember thinking “What’s the point of getting a pickup if you can’t haul anything larger than the weekly run to the grocery store?”
OzarkHillbilly
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: these short bed trucks are ridiculous to me. A couple of years ago someone hit my Escape and it had to be in the shop. They gave me a rental and I asked for a truck because the timing was right that I actually needed to haul plywood and doors. I got a rude awakening when I actually looked at the bed at Lowe’s. I really haven’t paid much attention to these all huge cab, little bed trucks. In my search for used Tacoma 4WD, it’s hard to find the longer bed and smaller cab. I have been poking around on Carvana just to get a feel for what’s out there. Their prices seem less than dealer prices but the minute the Tacomas come on line there’s the flag “sale pending.”
Ken
@Princess: Government planning ahead? No wonder my taxes are so high.
germy
These people paid lots of money to party with Trump, but they were happy enough to settle for Donald Jr., Kim Guilfoyle, Vanilla Ice, and the member of the Beach Boys that Brian Wilson hates.
Quinerly
@Mai Naem mobile: been there and your friend is exactly right. Creepy.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: I remember those, ridiculous. My current p/u has a 6′ bed. When I bought it I thought, “I’ll get used to it.” Nope, I still don’t like it.
mrmoshpotato
@Princess:
We have a Democratic governor now. 😁
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: A sign that rich people have too much money and need to pay higher taxes
NotMax
Recent watchables found.
On Netflix, Toc Toc. Spanish language light comedy. Fun film adaptation of a stage play, unpretentious and aims to be nothing more than an easygoing good time. You may not break into outright laughter but you will smile broadly a lot. Trailer (no subtitles).
Strange (and strangely paced) near-noir movie on Prime, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. Unusual as it’s in color and one of but a handful of films in which Claude Rains is unequivocally showcased as the leading man.
Mai Naem mobile
@raven: Lookout Mountain is actually a hot area. I have a friend who bought a hilly ~half acre lot there for $150K a while back. COVID has delayed their home building plans.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@Gvg: This must have been location-specific. I remember the missile crisis – my elementary school in the DC suburbs was divided from the Naval Ordnance Laboratory by a chain link fence – and I remember a slight uptick in duck-and-cover drills (like they would do any good) but I don’t remember my parents being super uptight. They talked about politics & world events, and they talked about this one, and they took it seriously. They weren’t panicked.
I’ve lived through 4 of these event/years. I would say that for US citizens, in terms of finances, health, stress, uncertainty, loss of life, political disruption, 2020 has all of them beat, even 1968, which comes close.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: A buddy of mine has bought an old Canadian forest service truck and is in the process of turning it into the ultimate off road family camping vehicle (they have 4 kids) When I first saw it, it was soon after our first conversation on the topic and I couldn’t help thinking of you and your search. It’s ridiculous and so over the top I couldn’t help laughing. I’m going to build the cabinets for it and when he brings it over (later this month?) I’ll take pics and send ’em to you.
ETA: I should say it’s not really ridiculous for them considering their plans, but…
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
My brother-in-law had, when I first met him, an F-150, I think it was a Lariat. I remember going to the local Home Depot with him and loading a lot of drywall in the bed, no sweat closing the gate. I was disappointed when he finally got rid of it (although it was in rough shape, so it was to be expected).
My first SUV was a ’97 Mountaineer. With the rear seat dropped, I could load 4 x 8 sheets of plywood, flat (although they’d have to sit on the wheel wells). The rear hatch would need to get tied down, of course. But I was happy I could load them that way. These days, not doable in what I’m driving.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly:
Damn, even a junker is with $10K
Quinerly
@Mai Naem mobile: the NM pueblos have been hit hard but not really in the national news. I have friends on Kewa (Santo Domingo) who have lost family members. I was at a pueblo wedding in Feb. All day affair with the service in the mission church, dances, and food in the the various homes. Last thing on my mind was Covid…. But I think about it now. We were eating in small rooms, packed in with beautiful food. Everyone was coughing, sneezing, runny noses. I remember it vividly at the time. Then a month later my guide for the day at Canyon De Chelly coughed and hacked his way thru 6 hrs in the canyon with the 6 of us on the tour. He was dead by the beginning of May. In his 50’s. I have a friend who is a nurse in Farmington, NM… She says an entire generation of elders has been wiped out.
rikyrah
TRUTH
raven
@SFAW: I have a tool box in mine and I can still fit 4×8 sheets of plywood!
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿
For Ozark’s family
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Are you also plumbing the hot tub and finishing the basement in it? I know your main expertise is car-pentry, but I figure you’re multi-talented.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: I have spent the better part of six weeks down the rabbit hole of “van life.” Learned a lot. Interesting stuff. Lots of people spending 6 figures for a kitchen on wheels.
schrodingers_cat
@Anya: Well that’s the extent of their 🌎.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: 💚
SFAW
@raven:
Nice. Do the 4x8s have to ride on the wheel wells? Looks like it, but I’m not a good estimator, size-wise.
And is that a Packers decal?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Odometer- 13922. I wonder how many times it turned over.
@SFAW: I had one F150 with a straight 6 and 3 on the tree, a real rust bucket but you couldn’t kill that engine. Blew the head gasket and drove it for another week while looking for another truck before I took it to the junkyard. And drove it in.
frosty
@Quinerly: No input from me but just a comment. I spent the late summer with guidebooks, map, and Google Maps plotting the redo of my retirement trip that got blown up by COVID. Ten or more National Parks depending if we decide to bike in Cuyahoga Valley on the way home. We’ll be on the road about six months. COVID willing of course.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
“Not my fault! NOT MY FAULT! The China virus did it! And the Democrat Party injected people with it to help Sleepy Joe win, and EVEN THEN they had to cheat, and I really got 100 MILLION votes because people LOVE me!! But the Yugo Chavez Democrat China software stole my votes and gave them to Sleepy Joe! Lock him up!!!!!!!”
And the sad part is: I have no trouble believing he would actually say or tweet something like that. Hell, he’s already 90-plus-percent of the way there.
danielx
@Baud:
I remember the drills in school where they marched us all into the hall corridors to crouch in the tucked in position for protection. It didn’t occur to me until much later that if our locale had been hit by a nuclear blast those drills would have been about as much good as a screen door in a submarine. There we all would have been found, sitting there like little chicken mcnuggets.
NotMax
@SFAW
Trucklets? Remember the BRAT?
raven
@SFAW: [email protected]!!!! Say what?? I’m a Georgia Bulldog! It is 4 ft between wheel wells, I had to use two sheets to build that bed. Plywood sheets ride on the raised tailgate with the toolbox in. Note the nifty storage door I put in for my jack and jackstands. I also finally found a spare and have it mounted upright behind the passenger side wheel well. (Of course after I found it I went out and put new tires on it anyway!)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@frosty: That sounds like a great trip. We’ll want pics
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Amazing when the wealthy hire recording artists to be human jukeboxes at their parties.
Like Rush Limbaugh hiring Elton John to play at his wedding. Rather than a DJ to play Elton John songs, or a wedding band doing Elton John covers.
The rich truly are different.
In Trump’s case though, the talent they hired is of the desperate kind. One hit wonders or rogue members of existing bands stealing the name.
Low Key Swagger
I used to make a decent amount of change curbing trucks. (buy, don’t title, re-sell) These days, the prices are just ridiculous. I prefer long bed trucks (I have a 4×4 1/2 ton and a 2wd 3/4 ton) because they ride better. You CAN put sheets of plywood into short beds, but you have to leave the tailgate down. A friend of mine has a son that is 23 yrs old, earns roughly 48k, and was just approved for a truck loan. His payment? 834 a month. For 84 months. Who on Earth loaned that kid this amount of money?
raven
@NotMax: They had them with seats in the back!
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
“This here beauty was owned by a little old lady, a grandma, who only drove it to church and the grocery store, and only once a week. That’s only 14,000 miles, ever. I swear on my mother’s grave!”
germy
@SFAW:
“This little beauty was used only once, in a suicide pact. Perfect condition, just a little lipstick around the exhaust pipe.” (old and tasteless Lenny Bruce joke)
NotMax
@Quinerly
Travel vehicle? Granted, you might want to re-do the paint job….
:)
Quinerly
@frosty: as I recall, you and I traveled “together” in 2017. We were on the road at the same time… I got a little lonesome in AZ on that trip and started commenting on the early AM threads about where Poco and I were and what we were doing. (lots of Poco pissing at the Petrified Forest on my birthday… It’s allowed. I live blogged it. 😎) You were chiming in and all the travels started hijacking those threads… So…. I emailed Alain and “On The Road” threads were born! I think Poco was one of the first pics in those first threads….. I miss him. But JoJo says, ”
Mamá, tengo esto,”
SFAW
@raven:
Sorry, it really does look like a Packers “G.” Well, to me, at least; I’m sure Omnes (if he reads this) would go “WTF?!?!?!!!” [I haven’t forgotten you’re a Bulldogs guy. But part of me remembered you’re from Illinois originally, and Illinois is close to WI. Of course, you were from downstate, I think? And if you had ever been a Bears fan, suggesting you had a Pack decal is anathema. OK, so I ain’t as smart as I used to was.]
I guess I should have picked up on the two sheets in the truck bed. Anyway, I’m envious (although my days of hauling a lot of plywood are long gone).
p.a.
@mrmoshpotato: it’s included in my ipad keyboard kit
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: Believe it or not, I actually designed and built a hot tube for a Mardi Gras float. It was collapsible for easy storage between parades.
@Quinerly: He is one of those people who is never quite satisfied. The last one we built for them (2 years ago?) was based on a Mercedes Sprinter, the 12 passenger hi roof one. It’s a good thing he had a tall barn because I had to rig a hoist to get the cargo rack on top of it. Otherwise we’d have needed a crane.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Quinerly
@NotMax: oh, my!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gvg:
Pat Frank.
It was a good book and caught a lot of the social tension of the day. I used to think it’s portrayal of how the town was clueless about immediately locking down resources in the immediate aftermath was off, but after seeing MAGA anti maskers and deniers at work, now see that Frank was prescient.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@prostratedragon:
Congo is STILL deadly…
danielx
@Quinerly:
Try looking on Autotrader, I suspect you will find a better selection.
Kirk Spencer
So it’s an open thread, and I feel the need to vent. Pass by if you wish; no humor or great insights to be found here. But the jackals here helped me sustain my mind a decade ago when hunting work, so I’m revisiting the well.
The short is that I’m going to be working in Dallas for a different office of my current company with almost no prep time. I work as an operations supervisor for a third party logistics firm. We are essential workers shipping raw materials so nobody in my site has worked from home. Well, unless they or someone they’re in contact with contracted Covid. Which happened. But I digress.
About six months ago my just-departed site was outbid on renewing the customer that provided about half our business there. So the company had to downsize. Before I continue I want to note that to its credit this company tried to find positions at other sites for almost every person who left the site. There were just some, well, glitches.
The list of who was going to leave wasn’t finalized until about 100 days prior to the end. The list of exempt employees wasn’t finalized until 28 days before the end. So until December 3, 2020, I thought I would be working in Houston in 2021.
The second glitch is that while they’ve been moving people to other locations and such, the workload did not decline.
So for the past 60 days or so I’ve been working six days a week, 10-12 (and some 16) hours. And for the last 27 days of the month I was also trying to work with HR to find a new site. I got greedy and wanted to try to jump back to the analyst track. It didn’t happen, and in fact slowed things down somewhat.
Somewhat, I say, because my peer who just went ahead and grabbed a supervisor position earlier had the same joy. That is, we continued working till the last day of December. That, at least, was only 10 hours.
My venting is because I have not started to look for a place to live. I can’t move my wife and dogs till I find that. I’ll get to do that while working at a new place, learning the idiosyncrasies of that site and sector (not raw material, but finished goods). I’ve been told I’ll only see 8-10 hour days, but we’ll see what happens.
Someday, I hope to slow down enough to return to being a some-time commenter on these threads; more than simple drive-by comments or rants. But in the meantime…
it beats the heck out of not working, but there are times I envy those of you stuck at home.
(btw, if anyone knows of lower-cost rentals in Dallas that allow dogs in the 35-45 (should be 30-35 but they’re spoiled) pound range, the information would be appreciated. The work place is in Desoto and I’d like to not drive 45 minutes to work any more if I can help it.)
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: I have a friend who can’t get settled on her perfect traveling vehicle. She is on her third van… The Mercedes now but still not AWD but SHE CAN STAND UP IN IT. Her thing is the socialization of organized camping in these RV parks. She bitches to me that I must be able to stand up, not have to crawl around, cook in a “proper” kitchen, and if it’s raining when I stop for tonight, I won’t get wet before going to bed. I finally told her if a Coleman camp stove isn’t good enough for me, if I’m afraid of getting wet, and am not physically able to crawl around, I need to keep my ass at home. I think that line of argument has been shut down.
Quinerly
@danielx: thanks. Been poking around there too. Took a break for a couple of weeks and went down the rabbit hole of researching all these new traveling pods and teardrops. Learned that there’s a guy in Santa Fe who is making teardrop sleeping pods that weigh less than 400 lbs… Chicken feather composite. I get easily distracted. 😎
Punchy
This list is absurd. 9/11, while terrible, was one day in 1 city. And it happened at the tail end-ish part of the year. The Cuban thing was, again, a few days of terror, but did not change everyone’s wayv of life. In terms of stress due to complete lifestyle change (work, schooling, running a service-oriented biz, etc) 2020 is tops, period, on just that criteria. Throw in all the deaths and healthcare worker suffering, and its has to top 3.
Matt McIrvin
It may be years before we can dine in a restaurant completely safely.
Safely for ourselves, perhaps. But suppose the vaccines are only, say, 50% effective at preventing asymptomatic transmission, as opposed to illness (which is entirely possible), and suppose 50% of the population refuses to ever get vaccinated, so we never achieve real herd immunity and the virus just keeps circulating at high volume until it burns through all of them (and it’s looking like that WILL be the case). Then there’s always the possibility that by dining out you’ll be inadvertently giving COVID-19 to an unvaccinated person without even realizing you had it.
(And there will be some people who have legit medical reasons not to get vaccinated, so we can’t just say it’s on them.)
Immanentize
@Quinerly: Weren’t you looking for some german/euro/russian truck at some point?
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: I remember that float. What year was that? Was it the year a float caught on fire and Nadine and Ray got married in the middle of the parade?
Quinerly
@Immanentize: no. I rode in a really cool vintage Swiss vehicle in Canyon de Chelly. Can’t recall the name right now. Loved that vehicle.
NotMax
@Quinerly
She might like it. For me, filed under “impractical; see also: WTF.”
Immanentize
@NotMax: my brother had a Brat. I’d still like to get the Tamiya Brat RC kit.
But too much for that kit!
Quinerly
@NotMax: I love the color!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
So for entertainment we’ve been watching the doings across the street. The previous resident died this summer of Covid, and his 95-year-old mom M who we adored died a couple of years ago. I figure it’s my duty to be nosy, because M was the queen of the neighborhood. Sat on her front porch all day, people would drop by to chat with her, and she always knew everything that was going on with everybody.
Anyway, a crew has been filling dumpster after dumpster. I gradually realized that it wasn’t furniture after a while, it seemed to be a lot of wood. But skinny wood, like molding. I wondered aloud to my wife what it might be. She went over and talked to them (imagine finding out about people by actually having a conversation with them instead of lurking — shudder) and they told her they are stripping the interior walls down to the bones.
Our neighborhood went up around 1890, and most of the houses date from then. So it’s all plaster and lath over good bones. They’re stripping off all that plaster, all that lath. Now, I know that trying to deal with plaster & lath for hanging stuff is a pain from our own 1890 house, but it has to be a much much larger pain pulling off all that stuff, and is it really worth it?
Besides, I think part of the charm of an older home is those traces of original construction, but that’s just me. I have to admit I’m grateful the electricity and plumbing here were modernized sometime in the 20th century.
Immanentize
@raven: That’s the version my oldest brother had! Fun, but really crazy dangerous. Your head was well above the front roof
Matt McIrvin
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’ve heard a lot in recent years about how people don’t actually revert to savagery in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, how most actually become cooperative and even compliant and the biggest problems come from elites panicking about their loss of privilege and what the mob might do to them.
But I think we might need to modify these claims in the face of a pandemic like this one–because the invisible, insidious, delayed nature of infection makes it too easy to deny that the disaster is even happening or is really a disaster, and even a small degree of non-cooperation can cause huge problems.
Brachiator
Pretend cynicism.
Yep. Yep.
Matt McIrvin
The “worst year” list reminds me of that list of deadliest days in history that’s been going around, in which every great disaster we’ve heard of gets eclipsed by the COVID deaths of the past 7 days, or what have you. I do think that list is a bit misleading, since it leaves off previous pandemics like the 1918-19 flu in which people acted exactly like they’re doing in this one! A truthful list of deadliest days (even by absolute numbers, from what I can tell) would probably all be some peak days from the fall of 1918.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ken: FTR the author of Alas, Babylon was Pat Frank. Who died five years after the book appeared.
IMO the scene that sticks with most readers is the very end:
By then we readers were all aware how little it mattered.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’ve often wondered how Stephen King comes across his deep knowledge of human psychology. I know of two books where he cynically explored this territory, coming to the conclusion that small-town folks may not be as nice to each other as all that. One was “Storm of the Century”, the other was “The Dome”.
“The Dome” is probably closest to 2020. Most of the people are fairly decent, it’s just a few selfish assholes (like the mayor running the huge meth operation) whose actions make the death toll much worse, and who we would recognize as MAGAts today.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kirk Spencer: That sounds really stressful. I hope you get settled soon.
NotMax
@Immanentize
From my link above. Apparently the rear seats were only for those sold in the U.S.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just something to keep is perspective about 2020; those police murders were going on long before 2020. The fact was the problem was shoved in the public’s face at a time when the public got to see the double standard were armed white thugs were treated with kit gloves while at the same time unarmed blacks were being murdered on camera for the luz.
Hopefully people will become aware that how all this reality denialism isn’t some colorful eccentricity and means these people are dangerous to be around.
Spanky
Happy Perihelion, everybody!
About an hour ago Earth came to the point in its orbit closest to the sun. A couple of things to note about this. There’s pretty much NO impact on the temperatures across the globe. Where we see the effects is in the sunrise and sunset times. Since the earth speeds up as it comes toward perihelion, the apparent day-to-day change in the position of the sun speeds up, resulting in a solar day running a few seconds long. These seconds add up, and shift the sunrise and sunset times later every day. So while the sunrise should be getting a bit earlier and sunset getting a bit later, with the added shift from speeding nearer the sun we see sunrise still getting later and sunset getting earlier fairly quickly.
Now as we move further away from the sun things will slow down. Latest sunrise for most of the US will be in a few days, and from then on the days get longer from both ends.
Immanentize
@Quinerly: That was it! A
Pinzgauer!
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah.”Lord of the Flies” is fiction. Reality is always more complicated.
This also seems largely fictional. People trying to survive don’t have the time to fall into mobs just to go after elites.
We have significant defiance and non-compliance because the impact of the virus is so heavily skewed towards older and vulnerable people. I still keep hearing people yapping about shutting old people away and “letting the rest of us get on with our lives.”
But yeah, there was also non-compliance with respect to the 1918 and 1950s flu outbreaks.
Immanentize
@NotMax: money is a great motivator.
OzarkHillbilly
Depending on how bad it is, sometimes most definitely yes. Ceilings on the other hand I would almost always go over the old plaster with the drywall. If it was a little lumpy or uneven nobody could ever see it with flat white paint, especially if the ceiling ht was 9′ or 10′
danielx
@Immanentize:
Nice – but I want mine with a turret!
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: The thing is, there’s a substantial risk even for young, healthy adults of, not dying, but getting seriously ill with long-term health consequences, and people in these groups even seem to be denying that. I suppose it tracks with a lot of other dumb things young people do.
Spanky
@Quinerly:
I’ve seen the specimens of humanity floating around US camp grounds. You are an outlier.
NotMax
@danielx
Turret’s syndrome?
:)
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Why suppose any of this?
Why don’t we see what actually happens?
Subsole
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yep. It suffered a major war that sucked in like, seven or eight neighboring countries around the new millennium. Right around the fall of Mobutu.
Quinerly
@Spanky: I have strong feelings about certain things. Don’t get me started….
OzarkHillbilly
The Stewed Krewe was together for several years, 5 or 6 iirc, before I finally pulled the plug because I just got tired of investing a month of my life into one day’s worth of fun. Not the year of the fire. I was working as a parade marshall that year, and the damn van caught fire right in front of me. The sane thing to do is move away from a burning vehicle but crowds aren’t sane. Ever try to hold back ten thousand gawkers all trying to get a better look? Yeah, neither did I.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
There are people who angrily rationalize doing what they want to do. But this happens not just among “young people.” Older adults and the middle age are big whiners.
Of course, some of this is rational. If you shut down people’s business and don’t provide subsidies or substantial relief, they will go looking for a reason to defy health regulations.
Quinerly
@Immanentize: yes! I actually would start dating again if the guy would pick me up in that and strap me in.
snoey
@Brachiator:
It happened in real life and came out rather better:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: I was the chick in the gold body suit, gold boots, beads, beads, and BEADS with the walkie talkie in one hand, Bloody Mary from the Legion Hall in the other who was lining up the floats for many years when we launched from the brewery parking lot. Remember the Lorena Bobbitt year? I had to tell those guys that they would not be throwing hot dogs dipped in ketchup into the crowd. But, I digress….
frosty
@Quinerly: That’s right, I remember we were tag-teaming road stories but I didn’t recall how far back that was. 2017 would have been one of our first Snowbird Road Trips.
I’ve been making the 6-month-out reservations lately. The Florida (11-month out) ones are done. Couldn’t get anything but a KOA at Great Sand Dunes NP, apparently we’ll be there when the creek is running. Utah state parks coming up this month.
We’ll hit the North Rim when it opens and gamble on 1st Come – 1st Served to find something. If not, I’ve upgraded with a 100Ah lithium battery and portable solar panels so we’re good with no hookups for 3 or 4 days.
PST
@p.a.: I remember helping my dad build a fallout shelter back in the early sixties. He thought Wright-Patterson AFB would be a target, and that we lived far enough away to survive the blast but close enough that we were in danger of radiation poisoning. In retrospect, that was maybe more than he needed to share with a seven-year-old.
MomSense
What makes 2001 and 2020 terrible is how revealing the respective crises were about how selfish and ignorant humanity can be.
Believe it or not, I actually was a people person before all of this. Extroverted. Social. Now, I just want to get as far away from people as I can. I can’t see friends because we are all trying to be responsible and not kill each other which means my human interactions have been skewed to the assholes.
Quinerly
@frosty: I’m just starting my research on a portable battery and small solar panel. Need suggestions. I basically need to run a few small things and an electric blanket. 😉
When in Utah… Bluff is a must. Also, I loved Torrey, Escalante and Capitol Reef NP. My test for any traveling vehicle is I have to be able to drive those roads around, Boulder, Utah and do Moki Dugway comfortably. Thats why I don’t need much of a van, Rv. Just good traction, clearance… Somewhere to sleep with my dog not more than 4 nights in a row. This is fun… Glad someone else is trip planning. My Soulard friends think I’m nuts with my maps this many months out.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@PST: I worked for a while at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in MD. Frank Zappa grew up there. His dad worked at the chemical weapons facility there, and Zappa remembered doing poison gas drills with gas masks as a kid.
That was one of the interesting bits of history I learned after I started working there. Another was that we were on top of one of the EPA’s worst Superfund sites. Nobody drank from the water fountains or made coffee with tap water.
Spanky
@Quinerly:
Do take video!
Quinerly
@frosty: oh.. Meant to ask… When are you at the Great Sand Dunes? I hit there in Sept after 3 days in CO Springs with a friend who is coming up from Madrid, NM.
I fell into the the site hipcamp yesterday. Really cool. I found a winery that I’m camping at between Las Cruces and El Paso in December. Lots of cool camping places on the site.
Quinerly
@Spanky: the Revolution will NOT be televised. 😈
germy
@Quinerly:
Will it be digitized?
germy
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Didn’t a doctor stick radioactive pellets up young Zappa’s nose to treat a sinus condition?
Quinerly
@germy: now there’s a thought….
frosty
@Quinerly: Ms F did the research and bought a portable battery for charging phones and whatever – Rockpals 500W. Our solar panels are from GoPower. I bought the 120W folding portable one. 180W would have been better for 4 days dry camping. You probably won’t need that much.
Non-portable. Check Battleborn Batteries. I found an installer outside of Pittsburgh who put it in the trailer, along with a new converter for lithium charging, and added some tow vehicle wiring to manage it. Murray Auto Electric and Radio Communications. Nice place, the owner is the one who answers your phone call.
ETA: Utah plans are Kodachrome SP/Grand Staircase-Escalante, Fruita campground at Capitol Reef (booked). Dead Horse Pt SP/Arches and Canyonlands. Also, one NP I’m really looking forward to is Great Basin NP in NB. Glaciers and caves both!
NotMax
@Quinerly
A kerosene blanket was good enough for our forebears.
:)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@germy: Yep. Radium pellets. The stuff that made Marie Curie famous and probably killed her, and the same stuff that gave “radium jaw” to those watch-factory workers who were taught to lick their paintbrushes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: Good times, good times… I think, maybe… kind of sorta? OK ok, I don’t really remember all that much.
We always had a keg of beer, gallons and gallons of hurricanes, and an outhouse on the float. I never got to bed before 3 AM the night before and always had to be up at 5:30 AM to start filling and heating the hot tub. Coffee? Fuck no, give me a beer. I remember one year it was still an hour before the scheduled start of the parade when we ran out of beer.
I was much younger and a whole lot more stupid back then.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Redundant.
:)
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Yes I am. ;-)
Miss Bianca
@Quinerly: This news is so upsetting to me. I have friends in the pueblos that I met through my sister, when she lived in NM (she has since moved to Maine). She taught at Santo Domingo and then at the Indian School in Santa Fe for many years.
I used to love to go down there around this time of year for the Christmas/New Year festivities – dances, feasts, luminaria, hiking – the quality of the light in NM around the Winter Solstice is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before – even just a few hundred miles north of there it’s not the same.
Was, in fact, planning to head down there today for my first road trip in months – helping a friend move one of her horses down to a facility there. That’s been put off because she has to put one of her old dogs down today. It’s still on the menu for later this week. But no pueblo visits, no seeing old friends.
I am so sad and furious when I think about the devastation that COVID-19 has wrought in Indian Country, and how many stupid careless fucking Anglos have insisted on making it as bad as it could possibly be.
citizen dave (aka mad citizen)
@Quinerly: The revolution will be streamed!
frosty
@Quinerly: Great Sand Dunes will be in June, at the end of the trip. You’re starting a couple months after we’re done.
I’m starting to think about 2022. Some crazy college friends want to ride bikes to the reunion in So Cal in May … starting from St Augustine. Ms F will jump on any excuse for a road trip, so she’ll tag along with the trailer then after the reunion we’ll head up to the Pac NW and eastbound across the northern tier.
ETA: Wineries. Check out harvesthosts.com.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Wonderfully vivid observations! I suspect a lot of folks can relate to this.
Reminds me again of Julie Nolke’s No Pants Allowed! video.
Yeah. I know exactly what you mean here. I had some time off before remote work started up again for me. I had to keep double checking the calendar to remind myself when my shift started again. Week days and weekends feel the same. Undifferentiated.
This effect is wonderfully noted in a number of the “last man on Earth” and post apocalyptic stories and movies I have revisited since the pandemic. Sci Fi stuff from Day of the Tryffids to Omega Man and I Am Legend.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Hurricanes taught me that people (even some known assholes) are willing to help each other in the immediate aftermath and share what they have in abundance. But when scarcity rears its head (such as when 95% of the gas pumps are dead due to lack of electricity), it’s “I’ve got mine, fuck you” time.
Scout211
@frosty:
Great Basin is awesome. The glacier hike is amazing with all the bristle cone pine trees. And Lehman caves are amazing. We used to camp there when the kids were young and it was pretty empty. It’s more popular now. As it should be.
We basically did the camping trip you are planning right after we both retired. And add Death Valley on the way back to California.
ETA for correction.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
And use the back seat to hold their briefcase.
frosty
Gotta run, pull the trailer in front of the house, and do some repairs/improvements. 11 days left until we hitch up and a lot left to do.
Ken
@prostratedragon: My new hobby is the Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders – converting scans of old documents to text for PG. Just this morning, in the American Red Cross Bulletin Vol. IV No. 4 (1909), I came across this:
Actually it’s full of historical “oh boy they don’t know what’s coming”. Lots of national Red Cross chapters were organizing to scale up, in case war should break out.
Quinerly
@frosty: love your Utah choices! Check out the Coral Pink Sand Dunes SP in Utah (near Kanab) and Goblin… Also Gooseneck. Are you doing Monument Valley… Valley of the Gods? Easy drive from Bluff, Mexican Hat? Can’t brag enough about Bluff and Bear Ears.
Oh… And thanks for the battery info. I have been poking around on Amazon as a learning and budget tool.
Quinerly
@frosty: 💜💚
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@Steeplejack: Right about the weekends. Yesterday I reminded self “Friday!” about a dozen times. A weekday off feels weird, like it doesn’t have a name, or is this occasional bonus day. One feels unstuck in time.
Brachiator
Crazy BBC News story about 2,500 party ravers in France
germy
Quinerly
@Miss Bianca: I’m with you. Be careful. Hope you can make a trip into SF in Sept/Oct. I remember Cheryl, O Felix, and I tried to put something together but you had a hiccup at the last minute. Are you still near Crestone or am I confused?
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: we will always have our memories….
Quinerly
@NotMax: JoJo las Orejas is very cold natured. 😉
debbie
@Spanky:
I’d love to confirm that, if only these fucking constant clouds would go away.
Suzanne
I’ll be able to take another pottery class, and watch live music.
My kids will be able to go to school. In person.
Very, very far from nothing.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Oh, Lord, you should hear my particular friend D on the subject of the “chicken tax”, and why we can’t get more decent little trucks imported. He loves to taunt me with photos of my “perfect truck”, only to tell me that we can’t get it in this country.
Meanwhile, we have his perfectly lovely 2003 F-250 (short bed, slightly extended cab, has hauled *plenty* of hay, wood, and groceries, thank you!) sitting in its parking place by the woodpile here at the Mountain Hacienda. He searched for *months* for this particular truck, knew exactly what he wanted – needed a short bed because that is seriously the only size of truck that would fit going around the curves on the driveway, 5-speed manual transmission with a creeper gear…I fucking love this truck.
D’s been looking online for another, smaller car or truck for tooling around in. Found a jacked-up off-roading Mini Cooper for under 10k. Won’t be getting something like that any time soon, but it sure sounds like fun!
Uncle Cosmo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Between Becquerel’s discovery of natural radioactivity (1896) and the Manhattan Project, there was a slew of consumer goods that touted their radioactive content. Even some spa towns advertised the “healing powers” of their radioactive springs (can’t find a cite right now, sorry). Some of those spas still operate, like these on the Greek island of Ikaria; others are “hot” enough (not in a healthy way) to have been closed down.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Your planning makes me think of my parents, spending winter evening with maps spread on the kitchen table, planning the next Canadian camping adventure =-)
Suzanne
@raven: Base of Lookout Mountain is SUNNYSLOPE, which is getting pretty trendy these days. It’s an easy trip to downtown and has mountain views and a bunch of cool midcentury houses.
Ken
@Brachiator: When I hear about events like that (including a recent Florida NYE party), I wish that the authorities would surround the place and enforce a two-week quarantine. Probably require too much manpower, unless they could do something quick with plywood and palette wrap.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack: ❤️💛♥️💙💜💚
I get almost as much pleasure out of the planning and “research.”
Canada is on my list for 2023.😉
Miss Bianca
@Quinerly: I live on the other side of the Sangre de Cristos from Crestone.
Have serious fantasies of being able to get a decent horse trailer, get some friends together, and go riding through the Great Sand Dunes. Probably not in June, because with any hope I will be directing the outdoor production for our Shakespeare series that we had to cancel in 2020, but September…yeah, September! : )
Quinerly
@Miss Bianca: 💙
I’ll be in your area after 9/10 if all goes as planned. Let’s connect if you want to. Then there’s always Santa Fe in Oct/Nov. I’ll be based in the Railyard District. Would be cool to do a meet up with others in the area.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Oh, reading the thread backwards, I thought you were talking about Hillary Clinton.
Another Scott
@satby: Yeah, even if one tries to rank by “stressful”, 2001 (for most people) was stressful for about 1/10th of the time of the 2020 Plague. Even with the DC sniper and the Anthrax attacks, 2001 wasn’t close… :-/
But if it gets people to think about history and the importance of learning from it (Hygiene and vaccines are good!! Fascism and totalitarianism are bad!!) then that’s a good thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Quinerly: It’s a date! : )
WaterGirl
@Kirk Spencer: To say that that does not sound like fun is an understatement. All that upheaval. All I can say is that in all the time you have been on Balloon Juice, you always land on your feet. Always. So I have faith in you, I know you’ll get it all worked out.
Best wishes for the new year and your new life.
West of the Rockies
@satby:
Yeah, we both remember 2001 clearly. It was a walk in the park compared to ’20. Although 9/11 itself was the most dreadful day that can recall from a national perspective. (I’m almost 59 years old.)
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin:
Do you ever have a sunny, optimistic take on anything? Anything?
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: wasn’t expecting that, but I have been there and damn, sometimes you just gotta take the gig because you need the money. Anyone is the music biz who isn’t coasting on evergreens is in deep financial shit right now. Berlin has one evergreen and I don’t think it’s enough to pay their bills since they didn’t write it. I got two bandmates who would take a maskless gig playing inside Satan’s butthole right now. I have a decent day job so I can afford smugness and morality; they don’t.
I hope Trump didn’t stiff them.
Delk
Listening to the remastered Armed Forces that was released in November. Lots of concerts!
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
Sure, but we’re talking about Mar-a-Lago here.
Me too!
Another Scott
@raven: F-250? A toy. I recall seeing F-650 things once. But this is even better. Only $90k!!
Not bad for a 16 year old truck.
At the bottom of the housing bust, a friend in Dayton had houses down the street from him going for $6k…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Jager
@OzarkHillbilly: A good friend of mine is a car dealer, he says, there are three kinds of pickup buyers, people who need them for work, people who buy them for play, (pull a camper, haul horses, etc), and assholes.
Mary G
@Matt McIrvin: I wish I had bookmarked a short story someone wrote on Twitter. It was about an old geezer retired doctor who was perplexed about why he had been invited to the world’s most prestigious medical conference. Turns out they wanted to know how it was to live without a mask and just breath any old outside air. The year was 2070 and Covid had not yet been eradicated. Everyone wore nanotech material masks 24/7.
Gravenstone
@Jeffro: No one root for Alabama. They’re the New York Yankees of Div 1 football.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jager: Brian Williams used to harp on the fact that the F150 is the best-selling vehicle in the country as evidence of the Dems being out of touch. He never felt compelled to explain how A leads to B. After the election he became obsessed with Democrats being the party of Whole Foods. No one ever points out that (as I believe is true) support for trump increased as you move up the household income scale.
I also want some smart-ass to ask if that’s what he uses to run errands from his country house on weekends.
sab
@Another Scott: In my neck of the woods you can buy a decent house in a decent school district for 90k.
Kirk Spencer
@WaterGirl: and Dorothy_Windsor, thank you. Honestly, in a lot of ways this is a step up and an easing. Things will be tumultuous for a month or so, but I’ll end up with more free time and opportunities. The venting is as much cheering the end of 2020 as it is prepping for round whatever-this-is.
But thank you for the thoughts.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I still want to someone to explain to me how a party that’s won the popular vote in every presidential election since 1988 out of touch with ordinary Americans.
sab
Quinerly needs to teach that dog some English. Learning languages is much easier when you are very young, as he is.
frosty
@Quinerly: Not Monument Valley this time. ABQ to Petrified Forest NP to Dead Horse SP for a few days, then on to California. Joshua Tree, SoCal, Ventura, Antelope Valley (hoping for poppies), then up 395 to Death Valley and Mono Lake. Eastbound through NV UT and CO after that. We’re going to try for Valley of Fire SP in NV, but it’s 1st Come, so we’ll see.
I’ll see how close we’ll be to your suggestions.
sab
My two big hopes for this year is that my autistic grand-daughter can get into physical school with actual kids next fall, and that she will be able to come over and bake holiday cookies with me when winter approaches.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@sab: I think often about interspecies communication, living as most of us do in an interspecies household. But most of the language teaching goes the other direction: the dog invents a new signal to convey something and patiently keeps working on it with us until we finally understand it.
This week he just started the thing where he puts a paw in his food dish and rattles it audibly, which any idiot human can clearly understand means “I need some food / better quality food in this dish”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I’m not sure if Josh Hawley’s credentials measure up for First-Tier Ivies Ted– as Frasier Craine once sniffed about Stanford, “Well, if you have to go to school on the West Coast…”– but they are joined in standing up for Real Americans
None of these things, of course, are things. And even the anti-anti-trumpers of the National Review complex seem to be inching away from this kind of stuff. But I’m sure when push comes to shove they’ll find a way to rationalize Hawley/Haley ’24
Wapiti
@Kirk Spencer: The work place is in Desoto and I’d like to not drive 45 minutes to work any more if I can help it.)
I’m not in Dallas, but the idea of finding a new place to live reminded me of something an old Navy guy with lots of moves told me. Always try to find a place east of where you work. Living to the east means the sun is behind you on the drive in in the morning, and behind you on the drive home.
raven
Normaltown Flyers – Pick Up Truck Rock N’ Roll
VeniceRiley
Watch Yearly Departed on Amazon Prime. Made my day.
Kirk Spencer
@Baud: it’s all about the definition of “ordinary Americans.”
sab
@sab: quinerly: meant to put a // on that comment. I had Spanish in elementarry school in Florida a century ago. Haven’t had much chance to use it since, so reading Jojo w/ ears is fun. I just hope he is learning to understand English. Impressed he can type in Spanish.
We actually adopted a rescue dog in Las Vegas NV many years ago. He was a wonderful dog who had obviously been well loved. We could not understand how he came to be a rescue.
One day I was across the street chatting with my new Puerto Rican neighbor about his new puppy (his first dog, a rottweiler) with my rescue beside me. In the course of the conversation we both realized that Spanish was my guy’s first language. We and the rescue people had been advertizing in the wrong press! We never did find his original family. But he was happy. We had too many dogs, and he enjoyed life in a dog pack.
germy
My cat has a pantomime she does when she wants to signal she wants better quality food in her dish.
She scratches around the food dish as if she’s burying poop in her litter box. “This food is shit” is what she’s telling me. “Fit to be buried.”
germy
@Kirk Spencer:
White people.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I wonder if the Dems should start talking about impeaching John Roberts for murdering Scalia. It would demonstrate their willingness to be bipartisan.
Baud
@Kirk Spencer:
@germy:
On the 👃.
Suzanne
@Baud: The Dems didn’t win the popular vote in the presidential election in 2004.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Thanks. I knew that but forgot to type it out.
Quinerly
@sab: love this story! I think you shared it a few years back. Pre JoJo for me.
JoJo’s struggles with English started when I adopted him from Espanola Humane Society in Feb on that New Mexico trip. He was the last to be adopted of a litter of 10 b/c at 6 weeks the litter and his mom were left at the HS and his left back femur was badly broken. (the vet first thought he may lose it). Anyway, long story short, I adopted him and would walk him in Santa Fe those last 10 days in Feb. He would perk up on Canyon Road when he heard construction and landscaping guys speaking Spanish. I later learned the vet he had lived with from Dec until when I got him was Hispanic. JoJo is now trying to learn French. He met a big boned Great Pyrenees named Collette at the horse farm just before Christmas. He thinks he is in love. 😎
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t imagine this list of marble-headed stupes will not include Johnson and Cornyn, even if Blackburn and Tuberville did bump them down the “Stupidest Senator” ranking
Sure Lurkalot
@Miss Bianca: I’m glad my last visit to the Dunes was in September. The air temperature was cool but the sand was still warm to hot and no creek to contend with. I envy you living so close!
Poe Larity
@Another Scott: You need a used Cummins
Good for a holiday laugh.
Quinerly
@frosty: look up Dexwood in Albuquerque. He and his wife are great. Know the best microbreweries. 😉
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So the GOP plans to keep the bullshit going on forever.
Traitors.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Johnson is in.
Ksmiami
@Jager: As an unfortunate but temporary Dallas resident I assiduously avoid White guys in white jacked up F150s on the roads here- especially the ones with SMU stickers. It’s a universal sign for asshole and reckless driver
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: Sunny, optimistic takes make me nervous. It’s probably just superstition to some degree but expressions of optimism just make me feel like the next kick in the head is coming soon.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, I share that propensity, but sometimes it helps to avoid mentally planning ALL the possible doomsday scenarios. At least I find it helps me.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Wapiti: I like that. I currently drive North to work so I can peek the sunrise on my right. I will be changing buildings in September and will have to drive west in the a.m. so I’m still in good shape. : )
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Exactly how concerned should I be about this continued bs from them?
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Zero. It’s performance art for the deplorables. They were always going to vote against certification so there’s no cost to them to raising the objection.
JPL
@Matt McIrvin: One thing I’ll keep track of is the positivity rate. Since Biden will be president, information should be available. On my list is a visit to Manuel’s Tavern. They came close to shutting down, but a go fund me has allowed them to stay open. I’m going to pretend that I’m sitting on the same stool as Jimmy Carter and looking at the same dart board that President Obama tried his luck.
I can’t wait!!!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Quinerly:
I would like to do some traveling when the pandemic is over.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I hate them so fucking much. And all the people who voted for them.
cain
When it stopped becoming utilitarian but became a status symbol instead for conservatives.
Quinerly
@Baud: 11 of them. Kennedy in LA.
Matt McIrvin
@Mary G: I figure what actually happens is, COVID becomes another quasi-seasonal endemic illness like influenza, only worse. Not seasonal in the way flu is, but there are yearly waves among the unvaccinated in whatever time of the year people spend the most time indoors.
On the bright side: the vaccines seem much more effective than flu vaccines, and there’s less variation in the external proteins, so maybe it’s easier to control with vaccines than flu is–the immunity might last for a few years instead of just months
At some point, they’ll probably start vaccinating kids and requiring vaccination for school, which should cut down the spread among young people.
sab
@Quinerly: When I moved (age twelve) from Florida to Ohio my Ohio mother decided I should learn French not Spanish. My first French teacher was Madame Garcia. She laughed every time I answeted a French question in Spanish. I loved her.
Spanish to French should be an easy transition for JoJo avec Oreilles.
Another Scott
@Poe Larity: Made me listen (after watching it with the sound off earlier). Well worth it! Thanks.
(The Count should listen, if he hasn’t yet.)
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@MagdaInBlack
Gaze at the period at the end of this sentence.
Then picture it halved it in size. Then halve that.
That then represents triple the the maximum amount of concern to waste time with regarding their tantrum theatrics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Meanwhile, there’s no scab this jumped-up Real Housewife Of Atlanta isn’t willing to tear at
Quinerly
@sab: he really screwed up with the lovely Collette. He was trying to compliment on her big bones and how she was so white (she’s close to twice his size). He ended up calling her fat and boneless. 😳 JoJo struggles but has lots of confidence.
sab
@Quinerly: That is me talking in either French or Spanish. I wish him luck.
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: 🙂 TY
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: the most interesting thing about it is they’re defying McConnell
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: he rolls his eyes at concerts when Bruce gets on his soapbox, that’s about it.
He knows all the bands on his ‘side’ suck, so what else is he gonna do? =)
Jay
sab
@Quinerly: My husband tells me that talking to girls is often difficult. Rife with miscommunication.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Johnson’s on the list, as are Kennedy and Cruz. I don’t have a link; just heard a list of names on tv.
Amir Khalid
My YouTube rec page is now showing me videos that people have made of their dying cats’ final moments — videos I didn’t seek out and don’t care to see. I hope it’s just an unfortunate coincidence.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as Charlie Pierce said about Occupy Wall St, at least they’re yelling at the right building (FTR, my stodgy old self thinks protesters should stay away from private homes, for pragmatic reasons as much as any other)
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Jesus Fucking Christ Amir, evil algorithms,
nobody needs to deal with that shit after a loss like yours.
Poe Larity
@Another Scott: The YT comments on this channel are gold.
2liberal
I’m in Tempe, a $150K house anywhere in the Valley is probably going to be in a very rough area.
NotMax
Suppose some note ought to be made that we have now reached the final day of the 116th Congress.
20th amendment, Section 2:
“The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m a little surprised at Lankford, since as I recall he made a few brief noises about accepting reality a couple weeks ago. I’d look for Cotton and Rubio to join this list. 50% chance on Lindsey
sab
@Amir Khalid: Amir, My dear cat was in wrecking mode in the wee hours last night. I wanted to sleep and he wanted attention or food. He did his usual approach of knocking things I care about off counters. I was in the process of tossing him out into the hall and then slamming the door.
Then I remembered you and Bianca. Cats have short lives. Every day may be their last. I will never take him and his love for granted again.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Pretty much what I figured. Thank you.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Once Hawley opened the door and forced everyone to vote, the floodgates of seditionists opened up.
Quinerly
@sab: 💚
Signing off. Have enjoyed this thread so much. Making chicken and dumplings from scratch to go with my black eyed peas, ham hocks, and collards. Have a great day. The end is in sight!
Uncle Cosmo
You need to back off a bit here. There’s a world of difference between radioactive species placed inside the body in an outer casing that remains integral (if not removed after a brief exposure), and those that are ingested and migrate unintended to specific areas of the body where they cause damage.
In Mme Curie’s active days in radiochemistry the damage that could be caused by internal radioactivity was unknown (she was, after all, at the cutting edge of the research) and what precautions she took were probably inadequate. Even so she died (from aplastic anemia due to radiation exposure) over 20 years after her isolation of radium.
The “Radium Girls” painted a radium-bearing compound that glowed in the dark onto clock- and watch-face numerals. The brushes were very fine and they pointed them on their lips. The body treats radium as calcium, and it lodges in the bones where its intense radioactivity wreaks havoc.
We’ve learned a lot about how to handle (and utilize) radioactive isotopes since Becquerel discovered natural radioactivity in 1896, and there are a number of radioactive isotopes in everyday use. Most commonly, americium-241 is used in home smoke detectors to ionize air molecules. Radioactive pellets (that do not dissolve in the body) have been implanted in prostates to destroy cancer cells. Other species (technetium-99 and thallium-201) are used in cardiac stress tests like the one I took (and passed) some years ago. And all of these uses are safe and even beneficial so long as precautions are taken to ensure that “hot” isotopes don’t run free inside the body.
azelie
@satby: I am a historian and aside from thinking that ranking horrible years is a weird exercise, I have a hard time getting my head around a perspective that considers 2001 worse than 2020.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We might need to get her one of those dog cones that would keep her from picking at things like that.
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: yeah, I hear ya…some of the lesser known bands/artists I follow have taken jobs working for Uber and GrubHub…total crap
dnfree
@Gvg: My extended family had a fallout shelter in Iowa, built by an uncle. It was supposed to be big enough to hold all of us who lived in driving distance. When the local residents complained, my uncle built another one for those who contributed to pay for it. It’s a geocache location now.
https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC32VZA_1960s-era-bomb-shelter?guid=661cf06c-54d3-4921-b90b-625ee3c9f0d6
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I really wish there was a way to hold these people accountable for the things they say and how they ruin our democracy. Losing an election isn’t enough – Loeffler is rich and won’t feel any pain at all from that.
But this is incredibly reprehensible.
citizen dave (aka mad citizen)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I just left a voicemail for sen. braun (IN), using the F word several times. Kinda worked up about this. wtf? I’ve NEVER called my reps in DC. Never.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: me too. Republicans are plague rats
citizen dave (aka mad citizen)
@Amir Khalid: Really sorry about your recent feline friend’s passing. I’ve done that journey, let’s see, five times now after becoming a cat person in my 30s, adopting my girlfriend/now wife’s cat. I remember taking pictures of that cat in her last week with a film camera as a keepsake. After the fact, discovered there wasn’t any film in the camera.
Re: YouTube, they pick up on a lot. There is a way under the options to say Not Interested and hopefully that would make them go away. I had to do that with some Fox News or some BS recommendations.
rikyrah
This thread😪😠😪😠
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She is Prime MISS ANN😠😠😠
rikyrah
😪😪😪
sab
@mrmoshpotato: Youmare obviously not spending enough hundreds of thousands on your truck. 300k gets you a nice luxury vehicle that can also haul work cargo plus your spoiled kids preppy friends in car pools.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
One thing that’s different from what I’ve ever seen before is that McConnell, specifically, is getting blame from large portions of the general public. I’m used to seeing him overlooked, as if the Republican Majority Leader was a mere nuisance that absolves no Democrat of anything. But people know McConnell is the one who has blocked Covid assistance, and they are pissed at him.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Equal time with the vandalism to Nancy’s house? What a country.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Agreed. And it’s not like the $2000 issue is going away. It’ll be back next Congress and with Biden.
Still, about a decade too late.
zhena gogolia
@Amir Khalid:
That’s horrible!
I try not to look at the YT recommendations. I just go purposefully to what I want to see.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
There was a trip where I landed at Charles De Gaulle airport. The usual overnight thing where it’s about 4 am on your body clock and you’ve only had about four hours of sleep. My brain would not engage in French and so when I went to order coffee, the word “leche” came out.
The French started clicking in after that but the girl had already decided I was spanish and proudly showed off her language skills by keeping the rest of the transaction in “my” language.
Baud
@Baud:
I was referring to people recognizing Mitch’s evil. Not about the checks.
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Tan gracioso.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: That is terrible. Who films that?
mrmoshpotato
@sab:
Not a female horse – I guarantee.
And I spend zero dollars on trucks.
😁
WaterGirl
@Baud: I knew that!
JAFD
@Uncle Cosmo: I got sent to the Radiation Lab at Univ. Hosp. last year. where they injected some radioactive stuf into my blood and did a scan of my heart and blood vessels.
Gave me a ‘doctor’s excuse note’ to carry for a week, in case I set off a Geiger counter.
prostratedragon
@p.a.: Wow! Me all refreshed (sic) from a long nap and you-all are still here.
evodevo
@Gvg: Yep…I watched that show on Playhouse 90 in 1960 – I was probably 13 and it drove home the probable aftereffects of a nuclear war…I certainly never forgot…it hung over all of us boomers and affected the way we viewed international relations until the fall of the USSR
cain
@mrmoshpotato:
Dang – living a Trumper life is soo expensive! Money to the grift operations, thousands for ammo and guns, and then of course – they have to buy a truck, with blue line flag and trump flags. These people must all be deep in debt. Of course, they will also vote for reps who make sure that if you file chap 11 – it’s gonna be harder.
frosty
@Quinerly: Thanks, but I suspect my two college friends in ABQ have the microbreweries covered.
mrmoshpotato
@cain: And all for their traitorous, orange, conman god emperor who is fucking them over but hates the same people they hate. And they’re too deluded to realize their god emperor hates them too.
J R in WV
@Wapiti:
This is so wise. I wound up driving this way to University 1980-84, but after graduation I worked SW of the job opportunities. So driving east on the way to work, and west going home. Horrible drive, visually.
sab
A great guy I used to work with back when I lived in Las Vegas bought all his pickup trucks used from Area 51. He used to joke that they were easier to find at night in the parking lot because they glowed in the dark.
hotshoe
@dnfree:
I’m a fairly fanatic geocacher and Iowa is one of my caching goals for this coming summer — so I’ve put this one on the list. Thanks!