Life is settling into a routine with my being semi-unplugged.
Mrs ERJ appreciates the fact that I am less of a zombie.
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| Itasca Tundra Pac Boots |
I am still getting two hours a day of hard, physical activity. I have many sore muscles. While the weather has been unpleasant, I have still been able to walk outside. I carry the 45 pounds of sand in the ALICE pack. Since it is snowy outside, I am wearing winter boots with felt liners. They feel pretty heavy after walking 90 minutes though snow.
I dealt with stress on Monday by doing sets of ten pushups. I don't know why my Latissimus Dorsi are sore but there you have it. Must be something weird in how I do pushups.
205 pounds is still the right weight for dead-lifts. No more adding 10 pounds each week. With my five-minute recovery between sets I spend about 40 minutes in the gym on a "lifting day".
My weight is not going down but I am telling myself that I am gaining muscle-mass and if my weight is staying constant then I must be losing fat. Math: It can be our friend.
You can tell the guys at the gym who never miss an arm day.
I really liked one of the comments on an earlier post "Be a mouse but carry a box of matches". I want to BE strong, not look strong. Yes, I know that those guys are super-strong, but they basically "open carry with a Barbecue Gun".
My disposition is more "compact Tupperware with 12 in the magazine". I know there are more discrete choices than the CTW12ITM but that size magazine means there is enough THERE to grip and aim effectively.
One of the old-guys at the gym pulled out his ear-bud the other day and we chatted. He initiated the conversation. "Old-guy", yeah, he was about my age.
Another hour-and-a-half is fiddled away looking after the house and livestock of a neighbor who was invited to the Gulf Coast by a friend who recently lost her husband.
Scaling
One of the jokers-in-the-deck with regard to scaling of food production or manufacturing is the hollowing out of the support infrastructure.
Lansing used to have dozens of small machine shops scattered about town where jobs could be farmed out to. To a lesser degree there were tool-and-die shops and pattern-making (for castings) shops. In case you were unaware, machinists, tool-and-die guys and pattern-makers don't tolerate stupidity well. They will quit at the drop of a hat. Many of them figure out that the only boss they can work for is themself.
GONE!
There are similar issues on the food-production side of the house.
Every small town used to have at least one butcher. There were guys who would pick up your animal(s) and haul them to that butcher if you did not want to do the deed yourself.
There were lots of guys with plows or discs who would work up your garden.
Let them eat bugs
Back in the late 1970s there was a huge amount of interest in a process where organic wastes like turkey guts and restaurant wastes were turned into something similar to crude-oil through heat and pressure and steam.
The promoters claimed "We never need to run out of oil!!!"
Small pilot plants were built and run. The process actually worked.
Investors were lined up and their funds accepted.
And then.....and then......
A crusty old guy in the Petroleum Industry asked "Where do the turkey guts come from?"
The smooth, fast-talking salesman said "Why, they come from turkeys."
"How much oil do you get from the guts of one turkey?" the crusty guy asked.
"I can't tell you that" the salesman said.
"Be very lucky to get more than 1-1/2 ounces by my figuring" the crusty old man (who was very into chemical processing) said.
"Well, we raise a lot of turkeys in this country" the salesman said.
"How much oil does it take to raise a single turkey?" the crusty dude asked.
"I can't tell you" the salesman said, exasperated.
"It takes a bushel-and-a-half of corn and soybeans to raise a turkey. By the time you add in all of the inputs for on-farm-fuel use, fertilizer, transportation and processing, it prolly takes four, maybe five gallons of oil to raise a single turkey" the crusty engineer said.
"So?" the slick salesman asked.
"How we gonna 'never run out of oil' when your process turns five gallons of oil into 1-1/2 ounce of oil?"
After that, interest in the process fell off of a cliff. Feedstocks have to come from SOMEWHERE. No process creates energy (calories), or for that matter, protein.
So where do the feedstocks for raising bugs come from? Fruit waste has very little protein.
Another thing is that bugs are cold blooded. They will not eat and will not grow when the temperatures are low. It gets cold, even in the south. What then?
Fuel from turkey bits.......
ReplyDeleteReminds me of about 20 years ago with "Bio -Diesel" made from used grease.
Early on, used grease was "free" because people had to pay to haul it away, then DEMAND went up and people were bidding up the price of used grease because more people wanted it.....
It seems going Galt is a thing.
ReplyDeleteI am offered little jobs, but if you figure in time, maintenance, fuel, etc (a set of 6 tires went up $700.00 in 20 months)
I get more done here by just saying no.
At one time I complained to my coach The Berserker that my maximums were not going up in lifting. He rather gently pointed out to me that we all have an upper limit to what we are able to do based on age, condition, and genetics, and there comes a point where only occasionally if at all will we see a new personal record. I think a lot of people can have problems adjusting to that fact, as we are often trained that numbers going up are better than staying the same, not realizing that maintaining and modifying the body structure (fat to muscle) is hardly a plateau.
ReplyDelete(For the record, my max deadlift every was 1 x 305 lbs and that was 8 years ago. Likelihood that I will ever hit that again- or need to hit that? Almost zero.)
RE insects: I had not thought about it in that way, but it is clear to me that giant insect plants are simply that: industrial plants that will rely on large amounts of inputs for what will likely be small gains. And all of it will be highly industrialized: lose power and you lose the "crops" for a while. Not a great idea when you have made this your only input for protein.
RE the bio plants, one was set up in a city thankfully far enough away from us it was never an issue but for the people there it turned into a nightmare. It got to the point the place couldn't handle the volume of "inputs" and even though it was in the "industrial" area the stench was overpowering at times. The good citizens finally got it shut down.
ReplyDeleteThere is a pet food plant and a frozen food plant located several miles from a friend of mine who lives outside of another city which on a day when the wind is right you can smell the mingled odors of Kibble, Fritos, and Onion Rings. Not terrible, but it does get old.
I don't remember who said it but the quote "You know your country is in trouble when they start turning food into fuel" (or something along those lines) always stuck in my head.
Ah yes, those pesky facts poking holes in 'ideas' again...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of local butchers, I had a farm that was on the southeast side of Charlotte, in the country but the address was Charlotte from 1976 to the late nineties. Lost it in my second divorce. Anyway I used to really like Carter's, I think that was the name, in Eaton Rapids. I loved their beef bacon made from cow belly, I once took a big load of it to deer camp in the late seventies and it was the first thing that disappeared. I still make beef bacon myself but I can't find a source of beef belly so I use brisket, good but not the same.
ReplyDeleteI find that holding better form during pushups seems to stress the outside of the lats. I chalked it up to recruiting muscles that have been just going for the ride.
ReplyDeleteBreak out the camera and see if you are really 'flat backed' during your reps.
I think most job categories are declining in available jobs. About the only one left seeing major growth is "social influencer".
ReplyDeletebig problem of the bugs for food issue is that humans don't have the gut bacteria to digest it.
ReplyDeletethe American public is messed up from the high carb, low fat garbage the nutrition people have pushed for so many years as it is. and bugs are full of bugs.
anything the gvt spews, do the oposite.
And, there is cross-reactivity between those allergic to shellfish (me) and those who would also be allergic to the chitin (shell) of bugs.
ReplyDeleteBesides, why on Earth would we want to take USEFUL resources from the environment? Which is what bugs are (unless out of control, due to monoculture issues). Bugs work aerates the soil, removes decaying matter, processes waste products (mostly shit). Although 'icky' to many, and annoying when they bite, they are useful.