It’s a Conspiracy I Tell Ya!

I wrote this several years ago, but never published it.

Since I just blew out yet another set of hiking shoes and have had to switch to some replacements, it seems appropriate to finally release this post into the wild.

New and watertight (left), old and leaky (right)

I only started wearing the old pair in June of 2024., but, to be fair, I own two sets of footwear. Slippers for evenings on our raw concrete floor and a pair of hiking shoes for everything else, so they do see some wear and tear, everyday, all day.

Not sure the old one on the left can pass the Lincoln-head test anymore

So here's the original, but previously unreleased, post

Alabama Thighs

OK, this is a weird one that I'm trying to make a little less weird by giving you the complicated back-story.

Christmas of '77 was roaring at me like a visit from a herd of stomping riendeer, and not the friendly Donner and Vixen kind. First one in my life where I'd be truely alone.

A few months earlier my forever-more had taught me that forever can be pretty damn short as she carried her bags out the door and drove off in our only car! And now I was sitting there in Pascagoula Mississippi, 1000 miles from family. On the outside looking in, apart from all the twinkling festivity round me.

Used to working long hours, actually embracing working 12 hours 6 and 7 days a week at the shipyard at this point in my life, suddenly I was looking at two full days off. Two and a half if you factor in that I was working swing-shift and didn't have to clock in untill late-afternoon the day after Christmas.

Now I was staring at 56 hours alone in a tiny, newly bachelorized apartment (my bed was a sleeping bag on an air-mattress that doubled as my lounge-chair) staring out at a sun-burned, broken asphalt parking lot while being reminded of what could have been by sappy old Christmas movies on my 9" portable black & white TV. And I didn't like what I saw.

So at first-light Christmas Eve morning I threw the handfull of still-wrapped presents sent from home, along with a spare set of clothes (except socks. I forgot socks), and a map into my practicly brand new, bright yellow (only came in red or yellow in those days) Honda Civic CVCC 5-speed manual that cost me $3000, $300 down, and headed for Key West.

Why Key West? Why not? I could make it there and back before my next shift and it seemed about as far from Christmas pity as I could get. - Which wasn't very far at all since I apparently packed that in the car right along with my spare underwear.

That night I found myself in a cinder-block motel in Homestead Florida with a leathery 7-11 hotdog on a glue-like bun waiting on a corner of the TV stand with one packet of soup-like ketchup, one packet of watery mustard, and a bag of chips, while I opened Christmas gifts on the bed in my underwear. (Mom, up there in Michigan, had sewn me a big puffy-coat winter jacket - hint, hint - which I wore over my tighty-whities for a few minutes but it was too warm for too much of that sort of nonsense!)

Before dawn on Christmas morning I was out of that souless, puke-green and perpetually musty room and back on the road.

An old friend, the road. Just me alone in the car observing the world go about its business from the solitary safety of my personal cocoon.

In fact I was so solitary and unwilling to face the real world that day that when I got to Key West I drove a few loops through town and turned back north again without even parking, let alone getting out of my tiny yellow fortress of solitude.

Stopping only for gas-n-snacks, which wasn't very often since that 1.5 liter, 55 hp engine got just shy of 50 MPG and it had a 12 gallon tank, I drove almost around the clock, straight through. Not that I was in any rush to get back to that souless apartment in Pascagoula, but what else was there to do?

I had the radio playing just loud enough to almost hear over the open window wind-noise, and sometime in the wee-hours someplace in the sparsely populated (in those days) hinterlands of the Florida/Alabama panhandle somewhere inside my road-tranced head, I thought I heard, in that quinticencial, low, buttery-smooth voice of late-night 70's DJ's everywhere, something said about Alabama thighs.

I'm sure I miss-heard. It was probably something more along the lines of Alabama skys, or something like that, but in my trip-addled state of mind, out there sharing the road with pretty much nothing but a few lonely comercial trucks and the occasional dimmly lit yellow window off in the woods, I latched onto Alabama thighs and spent the rest of the drive writing the following in my head. Clearly a self-indulgent exercise in wallowing pity and wishful thinking.

But while you're judging, remember that this was written in the 70's by bruised and bleeding 23 year old boy.

Alabama thighs

Twenty one hours of shifting gears, of listening to the engine roar
A lifetime of watching this flashing white line.
Of wind slashing through the window whipping my ears raw
My hands numb from the incessant road whine

 
I’m into my second logbook and still down to just one hour
Yesterday’s shirt is crusty around the collar, my butt heavy and sore
My eyes burn with miles of relentless interstate grime
I’m three long days and two hard loads from my last shower

Too many lonely hours listening to this staticy old radio
Fading in, fading out, as I slip unseen around the edges
An accusatory glimpse of lives lived in the real world
Unwanted reminders of what was, and what could have been

But that’s alright, because up ahead, where the swamp mist hangs low
Just over the jagged spikes of jet-black pines, I can see the Biloxi glow

I rumble on by the rest stop at marker sixty-four
Only a few more miles ‘till I can shut her down
Redemption lies just three blocks in from the inky shore
On a quiet, cracked street in that seaside town

You see there’s a woman in Biloxi, an angel really, that can blow this diesel stink from my lungs
And ease the midnight-headlight burn from toasted eyes, before I lay my head down.

She drives a trailer park Ford,
She has a kitchen table perm,
She wears a truck stop tank top,
- And she’s got Alabama thighs.

She’s got a gap-tooth smile
Wrapped around an M&M heart
She bakes a mean peach pie
- And she’s got Alabama thighs

She has hard, honest hands
Her kitchen smells like warm
Her bedroom like salvation
- And she’s got Alabama thighs

Grill Boss - I've Changed The Way I Do The Burn

This is another post I wrote sometime in 2023 but never released. Since everything in here is still relevant I figure it might be time to clear it out of the draft que and release it back into the wild.

BTW, I did just update it with a short video now that I've (sort of) figured out how to use YouTube.

OK, Yeah. This, and the next two photos, have absolutely nothing to do with the subject of today's post - Other than the fact that on my way out to The Van today (March 4) to take the real photos for this post I got distracted.

This one was taken with my trusty Canon SX50 with articulating screen so I can see what I'm doing pretty much no matter how the camera is oriented. In this case right down on the ground shooting horizontally with the screen tilted up so I didn't have to lay down on the ground to see what the lens was looking at.

You can see that this camera does a decent job of getting up close.

In case you are having trouble figuring it out, that's the thorax of a bee hanging upside down with its head stuck deep into a blossom and her stinger-end bent for balance.

 This one was taken with my Galaxy A32 phone.

I had to shoot this blind because A) the screen is fixed and was almost facing the ground and B) in sunlight it's difficult to see the screen even when looking straight onto it.

The Galaxy does a fair job of shooting up close but obviously is a little harsh about rendering edges. The depth of field is tight, rendering all except the immediate subject as soft. Something the artist in me likes.

This one, last one I promise, was again taken with the Canon SX50.

I sometimes struggle to get it to focus on the desired subject so I often wish it had a decent manual focus, (Digital cameras in my price-range don't) but with the Canon I do have easy control over the depth of field by selecting an aperture between 3.4 and 8 at a focal length of 24 so if I want to, like here, I can choose, to a degree anyway, how much to soften the background without turning it into amorphous blobs. In this case choosing an aperture that softens the background but still retains enough detail to "read" what's back there.

One last note here. Two days ago that bright green oak in the upper-center-background  was bare-branches covered with probably literally millions of white flowers so tiny that you have to get up very close to see them  (The bees love them and and the tree buzzes constantly for a few weeks as if it's a hive. And if the wind is right you would swear you just walked into a mall and got ninja-spritzed by a minimum-wage olfactory-terrorist wielding deadly perfume.) It's always one of the early trees around here and true to form has exploded into green almost overnight.

Alright, now to get back to what the hell this post is supposed to be about!

This is the single burner stove I have been using for close to twenty years.

This is the stove

I've been using for about four months now. (Actually about 3 years now in 2026)

There wasn't really anything all that wrong with the Coleman, in fact it continues to work just fine, but the impetus for change was all about footprint. 

Here's the Coleman sitting on two sheets of standard printer paper laid side-by-side.

Clearly the stove itself fits just fine with room left over, but that somewhat awkward feeder pipe/angled-gas bottle combination spills over by quite a bit, greatly increasing the practical footprint of the stove.

Here's the Grill Boss sitting on the same two sheets of paper, gas bottle and all. A significant decrease in consumed counter-space.

Setting up/stowing the Grill Boss is a one-handed single-step operation of moving it, gas bottle and all, from storage shelf to counter and back.

But setting up/stowing the Coleman is a two-handed, multi-step operation.

The Coleman stow operation requires first unscrewing the gas-pipe from the stove.

Fortunately, because of the push-valve in the end of this pipe it can be left screwed onto the bottle cutting out one additional step.

Then tucking the Coleman's bottle with attached pipe into the elastic that keeps it in place inside the cupboard, and finally sliding the stove-body onto the shelf.

Retrieval is just the reverse, still a three-step process.

As long as we're talking about gas bottles. Yes, the two different stoves use two different types of gas, and bottles. -- With an exception I'll get to in a moment --

As of right now the 16 oz green propane bottles can be bought for about $5 apiece, or 31.25 cents per oz, while the 8 oz butane bottles run about $3.10 each, or 38.75 cents per oz. Which means using propane saves me 7.5 cents per oz.

I can't deny that the propane route is more cost effective, especially since I refill my own bottles which cuts the propane cost down even more.

But what is the real cost here? Yes, the propane solution is cheaper. But considering the minimal rate I use gas in my stove, (butane bottles last me about a week and a half of several-times-a-day use, propane bottles last a little short of 3 weeks.) is that 7.5 cents really important in the overall picture of my spending?

Much like using up 30 minutes of your time, not to mention the pint of gasoline which I'm going to ignore here, to drive across town and back for fuel that is 2 cents cheaper per gallon in order to save 30 cents on a 15 gallon fill-up, which means you are paying yourself an eye-watering 60 cents per hour, the real-world costs of propane verses butane need to be put into context - because that's where we live - in the real world - - OK, that's where most of us live - -

For me the increased cost per oz. for butane is not much of a factor in my overall financials-over-time picture so isn't worth getting my panties in a wad over considering the other advantages of the Grill Boss, footprint being only one of them.

As for the argument that propane burns hotter than butane - well that may be true, but my own testing shows that either fuel will bring 12 oz of water to a whistling boil in my teapot in about the same 2 minutes and a few seconds, so I don't care.

As for the argument that the butane bottles can be harder to source - yes, that's true, at times, although at other times it's the propane bottles that can be hard to come by, but at the rate of less than one bottle a week and the ability to store 1.5 times more the fuel in the same space I used to store 2 bottles of propane, at least two months worth, I have had no problem keeping myself well stocked by buying when available.

And I still have storage space left over for one propane bottle.

Wait! Why the hell would I do that!

Well, though I try to avoid inside temperatures below freezing out of personal preference, it has happened a couple of times and butane will not vaporize, which is what you need to light the stove, below 30.2F. Propane will vaporize down to about -40F. So I keep a bottle of propane as backup just in case I screw up - climatologicly wise.

Although the Grill Boss is designed primarily for butane, it's actually a dual-fuel stove and ships with the propane adapter hose coiled up inside. (Of course you don't want to leave it there when using the stove!!)

If things get too cold on me the adapter hose screws into the stove's regulator and then onto the propane tank. (If it's below -40 F rendering the propane useless too I'm probably dead anyway so who cares?)

Of course, since the stove runs on vaporized propane and not liquid propane and this hose is flexible you need to ensure that the tank sits vertical or near vertical when using it this way.

Another thing to pay attention to when using the stove with propane is to ensure that the hose connection to the regulator stays tight because the swivel fitting on this end of the hose is a bit snug and when moving the propane tank around  to get it vertical it's easy for the stiff hose-to-knurled knob connection to loosen the seal with the regulator enough that the resulting leak drains the propane tank slowly enough that your nose or even a nearby propane detector won't notice.

Yep - personal experience - - -  

Because of the design of the butane bottle - stove regulator interface, there is no screwing involved with these tanks.

It's just a matter of laying the tank down into the stove's cradle with nozzle pointed towards regulator, then pushing down on a lever on the front panel to pull the bottle forward and seat and lock it into the regulator.

Yes, again, the stove runs on vapor so the tank must be oriented properly, but even that is a no-brainer with this stove.

You see that notch in the rim of the butane tank? You see how it's turned slightly away from the 12 o'clock position here? Well the design of that little spring-latch thingy resting on top of the rim is such that you can't seat the tank into the regulator this way.

 

That can only happen when the notch lines up with the spring-latch thingy. This is done because inside the tank is a short L-shaped pipe with one end hooked to the nozzle and the other bent towards the side of the can. With notch up that means the inside end of the pipe is at the top of the horizontal can where vaporized butane waits.

Oh, and if the temperature control valve on the front of the stove is anywhere other than in the fully off position, the design of the Grill Boss prevents depressing the lever to seat bottle to regulator, preventing unintended accidents.

Another cool thing about that front-panel lever is that it works in reverse too. Flip it up when not actually using the stove and the butane tank is disconnected from the regulator.

Because of the awkwardness I used to just leave the propane tank connected to the Coleman all the time unless I actually stowed the stove for driving. Now, with virtually zero effort, I can be just a little bit safer with regulator and bottle separated unless I'm actually using the stove.

In a couple of the earlier photos of my Coleman stove you may have noticed a makeshift wind-shield made out of aluminum foil.

Without that, in any kind of breeze I had to close the side door of The Van to prevent the flame from blowing out.

The Grill Boss, shown above with my tea-pot sitting on it, which may be hard to decipher if you weren't the one that took and chose this photo, comes with a 360 degree wind-shield already built into it.

For some reason I take particular delight in this last advantage of the Grill Boss over the Coleman. Maybe because lighting the stove is done several times a day which adds up over time, or maybe just because I'm easily amused. 

Lighting the Coleman is a two-handed, multi-step process.

Open the drawer with one hand and retreive the fire-stick, light the fire stick and hold the flame close to the burner with one hand, while turning the valve on with the other hand, drop the fire-stick back into the drawer and close it.

Lighting the Grill Boss is a two step, one-handed process.

It has a built in, battery-less igniter, doing away with the fire-stick altogether and opening the valve and clicking the igniter is done with the same motion of the same hand. So lighting the stove consists of using one hand to flip the lever down to engage bottle with stove, and with the same hand turn the valve until it clicks once than back to wherever I want the flame set to.

All that is why, other than pulling it out for a photo-op for this post, the Coleman has been living on a shelf for the past four months with other unused gear. (2026 edit: which has since all been dropped off at the resale shop on town during our "death cleaning")

Trumped

 OK, that title might be a little harsh. After all it's not Trump's fault that power companies feel like they can successfully ask a GOP run government for exemptions that would allow poisonous runnoff from the coal-ashpits they've been stockpiling for decades and doing nothing about to drain into natural waterways that many downriver communities rely on for drinking water. It's not his fault that development of more sustainable in the long run, potentially less polluting, renewable energy production has been effectively hog-tied. It's not his fault that air-quality standards have been rolled back by over 30% while the EPA's incentive to enforce even those lax standards has been gutted.

Oh wait. Yes it is!

Smartest man in the room my smelly hind end!  No, no -  I need to roll things back a little here. After all, I assume he manages to go to the bathroom all by himself one or two times a day.

But, bathroom or not, that doesn't change the fact that we're talking about a man who said the California wildfires were their own fault because they weren't out there raking up the forest floor and keeping it clean. - Of course that from a man that's never set foot off pavement unless it's on a manicured golf course.

Anywaaay - before I go off on an irrational rant (too late!) -

These are 10" rain gauges.

The central tube is 1/10th the area of the collection funnel which means 1 inch of rain fills the 10 inch tall central tube making measurements accurate to 0.01 inches easy. Once the central tube fills it overflows into the larger outer tube.

I've gone back over 17 years of our records and count 6 times that we've had over 11 inches of rain within a month, requiring a mid-month emptying. (in April 2009 we got over 12 inches in an 8 hour period!) Usually I record the rainfall once a month by removing the collection funnel, lifting the central tube out, dumping it, then decanting any rainwater in the large tube back into the central tube, keeping track of how many times I have to dump the central tube.

When new, the gauge on the right looked like the one on the left. That's what 17 years of sun and polution exposure 15 air miles from a coal-fired power plant looks like. And we are NOT even downwind of the prevailing winds!

Notice I've avoided the question of what my lungs look like after 70+ years of this same human crap. That's because after 12 CT scans over the past 3 years I KNOW what they look like. Surprisingly good concidering that we are such poor stewards of our one and only environment.

Painting Delayed by Weather!

 It was 18° in the 'studio' (cargo trailer) this morning.

Kinda difficult to paint watercolors when the water is hard!

Central Texas Winter

 

This is what

a typical Central Texas winter storm

looks like.

Ice and sleet, very little actual snow - though that has happened a few times in the 50+ years we've been here.

Speaking on years, I had a brand new experiance when out hiking this morning, but it all happened so fast I couldn't get through my winter clothes (it was 24°, wet, and windy this morning and it's still 24° this afternoon) fast enough to grab any photos.

While out near the back fence I heard a crack overhead and jumped back because there were a lot of ice-heavy branches overhead and I wasn't particularly keen on having one come down on my own overhead!

Except it wasn't a branch that came down.

Just a few feet from where I had been standing a turkey-sized vulture thudded to the ground and bounced once from the force of the fall.

I stood there in shock thinking 'what the hell!'.

It lay there on its back in shock thinking 'what the hell!'.

Eventually rolling awkwardly to its feet and hopping/limping away.

Birds don't have a lot of nerves in thier feet, which in cold weather drop down to just above freezing to conserve energy. I figure she was hunkered down up there in that tree minding her own business when I came along and startled her. Then a combination of not knowing where her cold feet were and being top-heavy from an accumulation of ice on her feathers conspired to bring her down in the most ungraceful way possible.

After flapping and slapping her way upright she hopped through the underbrush for a bit trying to get as far from that bastard that knocked her out of the tree as she could while trying to shake off enough ice to get airborn.

I figured I'd caused her enough distress already so left her be and quitely continued on my way, finishing my hike/workout.

Hopefull she got back up in her tree by the time I was sitting down to the breakfast of champions - or maybe that's fools.

It's frigin' cold out here!

Blowout on the Road to Ever After

Other than my grandmother's obit, the oldest of my writings that I can still find. Written sometime in the mid 70's when, to a young and inexperianced mind, it seemed like the world was ending and I was feeling appropriately sorry for myself.

Blowout on the Road to Ever After

Thought the road was clear

Thought the tank was full

Thought we were crusin'

between the lines

Thought we were in high gear

Thought the ring was ours to pull

Thought our forever yours

was forever mine.

Then we had a blowout

on the journey of love.

My world wobbling across the lanes

Life out of control and I'm screamin'

Headin' for the wall, loosin' my brains

and the devil's eye is gleamin'

Things are shredding

Love morphing to bitter rancor

Waste of a wedding

Lost my anchor

We've had a blowout on the journey of love

and there's no spare

Now it's a long walk to nowhere.