Gas Prices

I know everyone is all excited about gas prices going down. I like money in my pocket instead of the oil companies, just like everyone else. But it's not a good thing all the way around. With higher gas prices, not everyone was driving as much and looking at alternative energy, which can be good for the environment. Or bad if they just look for cheap energy which may not always be the cleanest. With gas prices going back down, people will soon forget and go back to their gas guzzling SUVs. But what about alternatives to this.....

Here's one that is simply financial. Put a tax on gas now when gas prices are low. This will raise prices making people drive less. Save that tax money so when gas prices rise, you can lower the tax to less than it is now and use the saved money to fill that financial void. This will even out the gas prices and reduce spikes.

The second is tax the gas now, since the price is low. Again, this will keep people from driving so much. Take that money and put it into research to get us off oil, create the 21st century Manhattan Project. Personally, I like this second idea better. In the long run, it would help out the country and the world.

I know I'm a financial genius, but I don't know how bad this would hurt the economy, so it may not be the best idea, but we need to start somewhere.

The last harvest

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We had a long weekend up north with our family.

This year I've been trying to grow vegs as late into the fall as possible. I made it all the way to december 1st with carrots, lettuce, beets, and peas. Today at lunch I ate the last of the homegrown lettuce, and I've been waiting for the ground to thaw to dig up the last of the potatoes. BTW, don't be a slacker and dig up your root vegetables before the ground freezes solid. Today it was warm enough so I dug these all up. Sweet.


-40.

Go Vote Tomorrow!

Happy Halloween

I just want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. And I want to assure everyone that I did not do anything to any pumpkin!

Changing seasons, Ramhadab V etc.

Ah...Fall is finally here... though it seems late to me. I thought it used to be alot colder by halloween, but I could be wrong. The maples have gone through their thing, peaking about a week ago, then dropping this past week.


Along with colder temperatures and the foliage, one clear sign of Fall around here is the emergence of douche-baggy dumping. I'm not talking about a Bud bottle or dunkin donuts cup here or there... This is the time when the real Dickheads come out in force. The dump stickers expire in October, and they give you a week or two at the transfer station for a grace period before you have to buy a new $ticker. This year I guess quite a few folks couldn't, or wouldn't, afford the sticker. Around mid month there was a brand new slew of illegal dumping around here. The used tires were too many to count, and up at the pond where dozens of people walk their dog every day, someone decided to dump a week's worth of trash for 2 weeks. here are four bags of trashbags strewn about in the woods. Makes you want to find out who dumped it, and dump it on their front porch or the hood of their mercedes. But I didn't.

Next up if one of my favorites, Oil Filters. Yup, this is about a dozen used filters dumped up the road at the next pond. About, Oh, six feet from the pond. I found these about a week of moderate rain. Ah.. the oily sheen on the surface of the pond was beautiful

The potatoes are all done for the year. Here is BBW and snoopy digging up some gems from the ground. I got to say, its almost as much fun after a few beers as clamming. Almost. If you have some room (like, 4 square feet will do), plant a potato or two.. its fantastic.


RAMHADAB Vol 5 was last weekend. Unfortunately my camera battery went dead on friday night so I missed taking any good pix, tho I think CTLP did. This is the only pic I took, of the pre-weekend shopping trip. Good times, You get the point:
Hopefully CTLP can post a few of the better pix.

$700 billion

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a house.....
Ok, this isn't going to be a praise to Bare Naked Ladies. I know you all want to just have a discussion on how great they are.

But if I had 700 billion dollars, I'd buy everyone a house....
Ok, this isn't going to be how good or bad the bailout is, even though the exec of AIG took a $400K spa trip after they got money from the feds. Hey, I would celebrate too. Or how NASCAR got a $120 million tax break.

But it looks like something good may have came out of the bailout. I'm not sure how good it is. I've never been good at interpreting these things. Or how easy or what to do to collect this. So anyway, here's a couple links. #1 and #2. It sounds like to me that you can get $20 a month for bike maintenance, tax free, for commuting to work from your employer. It sounds to me that it's only if the employer wants to give it to you. So it's a fringe benefit from work, if they want to give it to you, but it would be tax free. So I guess that's the big bonus, you can get $240 tax free a year. That's how I interpret it.

If I only drove a car in circles for hours, instead of riding a bike to work, then I would get millions of dollars. It is a good thing though, it's a step to maybe getting more people riding their bikes more.

See you at the NEMBA Fun Ride Sunday!

BYOB Bitches!

MOAB defeated and a beer review

Wow.. they did it. Not much to say about it online, but over a nice brew I would love to discuss today. btw, I didn't make up MOAB, i read it online a week ago or so, and thought it was perfect description since it was the same MLA(multi letter acronym) to describe the Mother Of All Bombs, another ridiculous device used in Iraq.

So, on the way home from work I picked up a new favorite brew... Magic Hat seasonal, Jinx. Holy crap, if you haven't tried this one please do. Pick one up immediately. Along the lines of Long Trail Double Bag, but a little more flavor and about the same @sskick of high % alcohol. Hmmmm Mmmm perfect. Who knows, if the economy really tanks like they're saying on the news, this could be the last expensive six pack I can afford for awhile....

In some more cheery news, today I scored big at work, I got the sole collection rights to all our coffee grounds. Coffee grounds make ridiculously good compost for the garden.

-40

New Look for Pandapas, and the MOAB (mother of all bailouts)

Whew... crazy stuff is going on in the world. Major banks are failing, the gov't is now the owner of 1/2 the country's mortgages through Freddie and Fannie, the talking head politicians are still going strong with their campaign messages... etc. Things are so nutty the treasury secretary kneeled before the speaker of the house to beg for a bailout (anyone else find it odd that the Secretary of the Treasury is the ex CEO of Goldman Sachs... one of the banks that will benefit from the bailout?). So, instead of fixing problems that caused the economic mess (median income falling below the median home price, and lending ridiculous amounts of money to people who can't afford it), the govt is just doing the same thing, borrowing money they can't hope to pay back to dump down an unsustainable black hole of debt feeding the cancerous suburban sprawl. Reality always wins in the end unfortunately... the world is running out of oil to feed anymore suburban buildout, and in a country without any real industry left (50% of our GDP is fed from military spending, everything is made in china, etc), we're in for fall from superpower status. If the sh*t that's going on down south post hurricane over lines at gas stations is any indication, all the gun toting Joe Six Pack in this country isn't going to take all this lightly. Watching those morons bitch and moan on CNN over not having gas and ice for a couple weeks is enough to dash any hopes I had that the US will pull out of this mess peacefully.

Anyhow, out here things are still moving along. We're finished the majority of the harvest from the garden. No more tomatos, beans or cucumbers, we're back to the tastless store bought crap. The potatos are still in the ground, and we've picked about 1/2 the butternut squash (37 pounds so far from 2 plants... kickass). I've planted more cold-weather stuff in pots on the deck. Peas, carrots, beans, beets, lettuce. Hopefully I can get more out of that before the icy weather sets in.

Check out the butternut squash plants back in august:

I put in a second raised bed in the front yard.. filled it with homemade compost.. check out this stuff... Black Gold:

Now where the two raised beds are i'm hoping to build a super rednecky greenhouse so we can start plants even earlier in the spring. next year we're hoping to have a much larger and productive garden.

I've finished the 2nd to last ibucket for the FlatTires, just one more to go for Kaptain Krunch. In other news, mark your calendar for next weekend, Oct5th, RINEMBA funride, then for the weekend of oct 18th, the 5th annual RAMHADAB!!

Time to head to the dump with Flattires, then I'm going surfing. Yeee Ha. -40.

Cinqo de Bike-O Non-Post

The bike weekend would traditionally been a couple weekends ago. Labor day weekend, or thereabout, is usually the last summer event. It started five years ago as a Serious Bike Ride, after which the clan and other folks consumed a keg of glorious Long Trail. The weekend was perfect, and every year only better from. Year Deuce saw the emergence of fireworks, disc golf, pseudo-nude crochet, and well, more beverage consumption. From then on, the years flew by. I could spend some time to recap year 3 and year 4 but well, search the blog for RAMHADAB and read the recaps yourself. (Sorry for lack of links, but I haven't been spending much time these days inside...even less on the computer to update the blog. ) Over the years, the ride has gotten somewhat easier and some riders complaining about parts of the ride. This year we'll probably be doing a ride around the CTLPs backyard, Arcadia, Pachaug and Beach Pond. Sweet. Hopefully it'll be easy enough that no one talks about dropping out, and we won't have to drop a vehicle down at the lake to get home.

Man.. the summer really flew by. I spent this summer in a mad rush of trying to get some gardens set up and grow potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, tomatos, squash, etc and generally messing around mtbiking, kayaking, surfing, walking around in the woods with Snoopy, going on a long vacation, and oh yeah... working too.

The garden.. I posted about it back in the spring after spending the day digging, filling, four new beds. Over the summer, I realized the beds I put in get too little sun until I clear some branches and maybe cut down a tree or two, so I put in a couple more in the back yard. Lots and Lots of digging out rocks, shovelling shit(horse to be exact), and even more of the legendary FlatTires leaf compost. There is something indescribable about eating food you grew yourself. Our potatoes pretty much rock, and digging them is a bit like digging clams, except without the muck.

So those are my excuses for not updating the blog. Sorry about that. Lately there's been just way too much fodder that have gone wasted... The DNC, RNC, and now, the (seriously...wtf!?!) Nationalizing (?!??!!) of more than 1/2 of the country's mortgages. All the chatter around the DNC and RNC about energy, the economy, Palin, etc, has been driving me absolutely insane. (I can't believe people aren't absolutely shitting themselves over the the Federal reserve taking over 5 trillion in housing debt. 5 Trillion. )

Anyhow... Mark your calendars for upcoming events:

Sept 13th- Burlingame Trail Work weekend (with the AMC)

Oct 5th (i think)- NEMBA Fun Ride, Arcadia, leaving from, and returning to CTLPs with some trails wandering through Pachaug.

Oct 18th- the 5th annual RAMHADAB weekend. This years theme is Cinquo-De-Bike-O. Stay tuned for details and the t-shirt design!

And now.. how about someone else post about something happy? :)

-40

Summer's Flying By

Hello, Sorry for the total lack of posts lately. I've been busy trying to pack as much fun stuff into the summer as humanly possible. With only about two months or so of true summer weather, and most of that being taken up with work or house work, the remainder gets jammed full quick.

Last weekend my little sister was in town with her 1yo baby, and my other siblings made the trek down to RI to see her. Kaptain Krunch and the Mrs made the trip down from Vermont for the week, and my sister in connecticut came down to stay with her kids at our place. Even BBW and Garden Girl made the trip down for kayaking and the saturday night bonfire. Since it ended up raining, I mean Absolutely Pouring, for two of the four days I took out of work, I was slightly annoyed until my annoyance was drowned in 16 gallons of beer. We said Screw-It and continued our plans of boating, rope swings, surfing, and general fuck-around-a-ry in the rain.

We had great surf for two days of the week, it was great to get out there. I used to spend all summer surfing until I switched over to mostly mtbiking and kayaking. I'll be trying to mix in some more surfing now that I've knocked the rust out.

Other than that, not much to write about. I was able to get out for the dawn-patrol mtbike rides this weekend. Saturday I took off on the usual PoDunk, Pardon Joslin loop. Felt great! Sunday morning I dragged Snoopy out of bed at 5:30 and made the trip down to Burlingame. Can you believe it was the FIRST ride around the lake since the winter NEMBA FunRide? Just haven't been staying at the lake that much with the change of family arrangements down there.. I've been missing the lake ride alot. This was Snoopy's first big loop. He did the entire off road loop. When I got to the inlaws at about mile 7, he stayed with them while I rode out on the road to get the car. I couldn't believe it... that is one tough little dog! Afterward, he and I went out for some father-dog fishing time on the lake. He was trying to eat my hand-dug worms from the compost pile (The compost is FULL of worms....sweet!), and when I caught something, would try to eat the perch. After a couple hours of that it was time to head back to shore to get Mrs 40.

Other than that, we need to pick a weekend for the 5th Annual RAMHADAB. I can't wait. many changes to biking portion were discussed...I'm sure we can figure out a decent compromise.

see ya.

Very Local Summer

View from the deck of Peace IV... typical perfect RI sunset...

Lately we haven't been going far. Most weekends, at most we drive or bike the grand total of 18 miles to the lake or salt pond. During the week, pretty much we go nowhere except home, and stuff within bike riding distance from home. Not that I've been riding my bike much... Kinda got stuck in a ride-less rut.. this heat and humidity and deer flies drive me a little insane lately on top of real and imagined work or family reasons i've been packing on the gut, and getting slow. btw, I may propose a RAMHADAB course adjustment this year to include more mellow trails. Some members of the pandapas folk are in the same boat as me.

Anyway So, about 1/2 the nights after work, Mrs 40 and I will head over to Wickford harbor to putz around. The other night I made it out of work early enough to go kayaking in the fancy wood boat. I've been using the wood boat more these days... even though after ten years its starting to show its age.

The other night it was pretty calm, so after a hot lap around the island, I headed out past the breakwater and figured it was nice enough to start paddling south. My rough plan was to cross the cove, and then was planning to check out all the beaches etc on the way back. I only had about 1.5 hours of sunlight, so I was going pretty fast. About 1/2way across the cove, I noticed a pretty classy looking catamaran anchored in further, so I headed over to check it out.



When I got closer the women asked if the boat was homebuilt. I said it was and asked if theirs was too.. It was. 'Come Closer so I can see your boat', she ses. No prob. After a few minutes of mutual admiration, I was invited aboard via the elegantly simple dinghy dock that was lowered down like some sort of modern pirate gangplate you can see in the lower part of this pix.. Sweeet.

We chatted for quite awhile, this classy ship is a Wharram designed Tiki 46, Hull #1, Peace IV. The brilliant simplicity of the design had me speechless. Plywood construction, hulls LASHED, yes LASHED, to the main deck, basic tiller steering with stuff you could pull together at home depot (no kidding), with performance on par with a scaled up hobie 16. yeah... freaking amazing. I was in awe. I kept snapping pix.... here is the view down the 46 foot hull at their wind turbine:


Anyhow, I took way tooo many to post here, but for more info about this Tiki 46 go check out this webpage. The long story short: this world cruising pair met, built this machine, and is travelling around the world on a shoestring budget, living like royalty, all from income from selling Wharram Plans! Even I know I'm waaaay to much of a dreamer to pull off buulding something this sweet... I have a hard time enough keeping up with the garden.

Before long, the sun had set, and I was a good mile or two outside the breakwater with no lights except my small bike blinker. I thanked Ann and Neville and headed back home right as the schoolie bluefish started popping out around the harbor.


Looks like that is the last pix bloggers going to let me post, so I'll end for now. More posts to come now that I have a computer at home (it is sweeeeeeeeeeeet if you were wondering). Long overdue, more garden musings, my latest Greeeeen rant, and ideas about Slip N Slide-ADAB(oh yes... begin thinking of candidate weekends this summer.....) and er, well.. a post about the new tarmac they layed down on Interstate Liberty Church Road and The Hallville Turnpike.

-40

Finally, new computer

Fate of the old computer..


Mrs 40 and I had been clunking along for the last 7 years with a very old celeron desktop with 512 meg of ram. the hard drive crashed about annually, thoughh after the first time we got wicked smaaat and bought a USB backup hard drive.

Well, two months ago it died once again, and I'm giving up fixing it. Its amazing what you can get for a laptop these days, price and performance wise. Long story short, I can finally update the blog (can't use my work computer for that), upload vacation and trip pix from the last 2 months. Thanks to my credit card cash back bonus deal, the laptop was free!! whooo hooo. Anyhow, I just finished setting up the critical stuff, like downloading firefox to avoid the evil internet explorer, and finding an ancient copy of winamp that works just fiiiiiiiiiiine. Tomorrow I'll probably get to putting itunes on it... yeahhhh. nice.

Stay tuned for updates! -40.

I'm Back!

Hey,

Thanks CTLP for posting the FARTAB Vol 5 pics and recap!!!

Ouch.. My head hurts just *thinking* about my Cinquo de FARTABO performance... I swear I knocked something loose in my brain on that trip. Just not right. After the trip Baldboy Wonder emailed the results of his cooler autopsy.. between Kaptain Krunch, BBW and I we somehow consumed 1.5 bottles of Gin, and only 1/2 bottle of Juice. Could explain the early sleepy act...when we got to the campsite. Just a thought.

As the title of the post, I just got back from being away from the southernmost point of the Beermuda triangle. I spent a few days travelling for work, then took off on vacation with Mrs 40 up to Montreal, then up to Vermont for a kayak and camping trip with BaldBoy. I still have to download my pictures from those adventures and will post a recap when I get time.

In the meantime, Check out the video of this f*cking moron....You have GOT to be kidding me??? How did this chump get elected???

I'm beginning to agree with J Howard Kunstler, that GW b*sh and republicans will be going out of business if we make it out of the energy/food/global warming/housing crash/economy crash/insert ongoing disaster here.

On a lighter note: stay tuned for vacation and maybe more fartab pix!

-40

FARTAB V: The Re-awakening... Part 3

The camp was set up, an unadvised but surprisingly injury-free round of fire swinging occurred and cooking commenced. However, around the time dinner was served (thanks to the excellent cooking by BBW and KK), the sleepsy twins started nodding off:

It was barely 8:00, and in their defense, it was a long day on the river in the sun with G&J as their chosen beverage. That being said- it was not enough to stop us from entertaining ourselves at the expense of the one who decided to nod off in front of the fire instead of the relative safety of the tent...

Due to 40 worrying that some of the less tame pictures would make it on to the blog they were summarily deleted by him the next morning. I am still working out the punishment... Breakfast was a little tough for yours truly after an extra couple of barley pops and a late night of revelry. After breakfast was finished we heard the thunder start in, and kicked into high gear taking down camp and getting on the river. Seems EVERY time it rains during the final 'mile' of the river trip. And by 'rain' I mean 'epic storm':

All in all- it was a pretty great trip yet again. The iBucket delivery from 40 was JUST in time and operated perfectly. I was so psyched for that! Sleepy managed to stave off the sandman longer than two or three of our compatriots. Kaptain Krunch and Dogg had their first FARTAB experience and said that they might actually be willing to subject themselves to it again. BBW fell out of his kayak more times than I could count. GUDG got to fling a soccer ball around with reckless abandon and took full advantage of the 'family pass' staying up until the wee hours with yours truly in an attempt to lessen the amount of liquid cargo that would need to be transported the next morning.

So- until next year...

FARTAB V: The Re-awakening... Part 2

So- with poke-a-hottt-a$$ leading the way we continued down the river.


Stopping for the occasional (read: 'frequent') rest break:


And for Kaptain Krunch to show us his best 'Deliverance' impression:


Things got a little fuzzy for me after the mouse hole. I know we did our good deed for the day in sawing a path through a downed tree- during which I guess we broke BBW's great saw...

For a good portion of the trip we also managed to invent a new 'fappy-hun ball' game involving a beat up soccer ball I rescued along the way.

The new sport was done more while paddling, but during stops along the river provided another way to continue screwing around.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with a lot of falling off coolers, falling out of boats and falling off of docks (guilty...). Gravity was a strange mistress... When we came up to the Alton dam- one that always looks like you can go over but the water never seems high enough- I was lubricated enough to finally just do it. As was proved during WIFETAB a couple weeks later (and with a higher degree of sobriety)- this is the optimum way to ford said water feature, and I will never carry a kayak around it again. By the time we loaded up all our stuff (apparently with two canoes on the trip I did not need to carry a single thing- that is not the way it should be, but probably saved me from testing my waterproof packing capabilities) at the last portage and made it to the campsite, it was nearing dusk.

At which point, someone switched the CTLP doll to 'evil'...

FARTAB V: The Re-awakening... Part 1

I know- this is a LONG time coming.


It has taken me some time to come to terms with the slightly over the top debauchery and drunkeness that marked this FARTAB. Yikes. By the end of the trip there was more falling out of the boats than piloting them... Seeing as it was Dogg and Kaptain Krunch's first FARTAB, I felt pretty bad for them at first. Until they started to contribute to and raise the stakes in the level of play.


We started out innocently enough- we put together our supplies- Lyndie style:






Then hit the river:

We made it through the portage sections quickly:

But we also were making it through our adult beverages at an alarming rate. When I reviewed the pictures from the trip I noticed that at this point a disturbing trend started to emerge. I think it is best simply called: man nipples.

It was like everyone JUST found out they had them and felt they needed to point them out to me. Ugh...

Then the silliness REALLY began.

Something tells me...

...that I should pull all the large bullfrogs out of my pond.

Not sure what makes me think that is a good idea...

Oh yeah. Maybe that... I don't know why I never figured out how it was that they were getting so big and so fat. After playing tug of war with the frog trying to pull the fish back out, I scooped him up and dumped him in the stream. He can catch trout now instead of goldfish and koi.

And yes, I am well aware of the fact that I am probably expected (received three phone calls/emails about it already) to do a bit of a FARTAB Vol. 5 recap. I will get to it eventually. Once my stomach settles from having to see some of the pictures that I downloaded. YIKES.

If we hit it that hard next year, life preservers might be mandatory...

Cinqo de FARTAB-O May 30-31

So it's just a few days away... the headline event of the year...FARTAB, Volume 5!

I must say, I'm un-naturally excited about the trip this year.

Greased Up Deaf Guy will be returning after a year of pro-creating and the associated doodies, er, duties.

Kaptain Krunch will make his inagural appearance, as will the yet to be named, N-D.

Check out the last few years worth of pix:
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

CTLP's Perspective:
Volume 4 Post 1
Volume 4 Post 2

CTLP got a video too of the event. I had a friend set us up with some FTP hosting. Stay tuned for video if we can figure out how to post a video here.

See you Thursday Night for FARTAB!!!
-40

Additions to the BFB

Front derailers drive me insane. I avoid them where possible. I've stopped using them on mtbikes a couple seasons ago but was still using one on the BFB where one is really needed... it's tough carrying all that crap or a passenger without looooow gears to get up hills. But, all that extra chain and sloppy shifting was getting old so I dug out an old SRAM 3x7 wheel I had made for the tandem recumbent project. I took apart the bike and set it up.

Nice and clean up front now!

Also, after taking a passenger, I realized I needed some handlebars and footpegs. I rigged up the handlebars pretty easy, but ended up buying the real-deal Footsies made for the Xtracycle kit.
I also broke a couple front spokes, so swapped out the front wheel for a tandem specific wheel. This is wicked rugged.

Other than that, I've been pretty busy getting the yard ready for spring... and FARTAB Vol 5!!!

FARTAB is in less than 2 weeks! I'm working to get CTLPs ibucket ready in time. This weekend I started a batch of three ibuckets. I brought the namesake ingredient over to the FlatTires for processing...via BFB of course!