I’m tired. This is probably going to be incoherent, poorly organized and make little sense. But if you’ve been here before you already know that.

So, this mooseknuckler is moving to Logan. I had been playing around with the big questions in life for the last couple of months. Like “What are you going to do when you grow up?” and “Can you really stand to work with these guys for the rest of your life?” and my favorite, “Are we going riding?” I have to admit that I have absolutely no desire to make more money than I am right now. I have even played with the idea of maximizing my income at just the level so I don’t have to pay income taxes, but that would cut into my bike expenditures. At the end of the day, I want to write and roam and stuff. I don’t want to manage or own a shop for much longer. Although I enjoy wrenching and being in the bike world, I would prefer to write something worth reading than wrench something worth riding. Both are valiant goals, mine just happens to be the first. So at the end of April, after the Fat Tire Festival in Fruita, I will be returning to Logan and Sunrise Cyclery to hopefully refine myself into a free-lance homeless writer.

Once again, I’m off to some other place to do something I can’t do here. If it was up to me, I would make USU come to me. Unfortunately, they don’t listen when I tell them what to do and they don’t offer journalism over the internet.

I plan to come back and ride a lot… Alliance rides will still be held, I’ll just be doing it on the other side of the state. I would hope that the rides continue here, but I haven’t had much luck while I’m here so when I’m gone is not looking good.

My right hand man from the last time I was at Sunrise came down this weekend. Mr. Anderson and I will be doing the Goose tomorrow. Finally get to try out the new brakes. They are the most beautifull brakes on the market. I hope they work as well as they look. I got them Thursday for QBP day. The hoses are a little long right now so they look funny but they will be changed sometime this coming week.

This guy is a drunk. And not very happy I’m leaving. It’s been a while since I was afraid of the big headed Gurrman, but yesterday I was scared. He kept shaking his head at me and telling me he was really really dissappointed. Whatever…

The weather here in S.G. has been a bit breezy. This year has been a bit on the strange side. First we had a January with record breaking cold. February was pretty damn cold too. Then March rolls in and we have record breaking heat, for most of it. This past week has been chipper, and hell-o-windy. The only thing that has gotten me into doing any commuting is thinking that if Ryan can do it so can I. Nothing better than some manpride to get you clipped in and pedaling.

And an orator said, Speak to us of Freedom.
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
 
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
 
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
 
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon you r won forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
 
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

I’ve been reading Jared Daimonds book Collapse for a while now. It makes you look at modern society in a different light, mainly through the glow of a catastrophe. The one thing that I can’t get past is how easy it would be to starve this nation. Can you imagine if food distribution stopped? Take S.G. as an example, we live in air-conditioned cubicles in the desert. There are 120,000 of us now in this little valley. The little agriculture that once took place here has vanished except for a few isolated fields of corn and alfalfa. Apparently our food grows in the grocery store because that is the only place we can get it. If distribution stopped for a month we would all starve.

Now think of how our food is distributed. If oil production was to peak or stop, or the oil producing people just stopped selling it to us, our food would never make it to us. Our complex economic system has removed the basics for survival from the equation of settlement. S.G. should only have a couple thousand people at most. It’s all the desert can truly support. Which brings us back to the idea of a bloated nation. Wealth gave us air conditioning and allowed us to get out of the natural environment. The problem with a bloated society is the fact that we will eventually over bloat ourselves and cause our own demise or nature will dictate when that demise will happen. Either way, we’re stuffed.

Declare your sovereignty.