I’m left in quandary in that city life has been mighty comfortable during this pandemic. But that is also from the view point of being retired and making my income from Social Security, pensions and life long investing. So this is the view of an octogenarian that doesn’t have to leave home to make a living, I’m out of the daily hunt. But we are looking to move out in the boonies where these digital derived amenities may not exist which at our age might just be too stupid a move, we’ll cogitate some more on that. We are a mix of a country boy and city girl and it is a constant tripping point in our relationship. The one thing that helps me with city survival is we live across the street from a 250 acre wooded preserve that basically is a forested park with few amenities only a hand full of benches and picnic tables and only one set of restrooms, and not much parking. So it doesn’t attract large crowds, mostly bird watchers and dog walkers. Our pittie and I tour it twice a day be it sun, rain, or snow.
Now living in Seattle which is a very digitally connected city almost every daily need from our food to kitty litter is delivered to our front stoop, so basic survival needs of food, water, electricity, sewer, heat or cooling are met with just logging on the web and placing an order with Amazon, Costco, and Chewy.
I‘ve been spending my time incorporating the tools and supplies from the shop into our basement and garage which is a huge job. It saddens me to pass around my Harleys, I didn’t ride last summer and at my age I recognize that riding motorcycles and building hot rods isn’t going to last for much longer so I’m pretty PO’ed over loosing a year. But we got shot number 2 of Moderna last week so things are looking better for going to the parts store when impromptu things pop up needing in the middle of a project which has been a real pain for me as my wife is on me like fly paper about going out. Her ‘suit-up’ process of street clothes, masks, gloves, and sanitizer takes a lot of time. But being in my 80’s and 5 or 6 heart attacks and 4 cardiac surgeries even I have to relent to the fact that catching Co-19 is probably not survivable or if I do it would be like my father after prostate cancer surgery where he turned into a little, frail old man before my eyes. So yeah, he survived but the last ten years of his life were way different than the previous 80. So I go along with my wife first because I have seen the other side a few times and of coarse the old saw of a “happy wife makes a happy life”and the house is too small and life too short to spend time in pee’ing contests with the ‘old lady’, that you’re gonna lose anyway.
So with supervision I got to go to Ace Hardware the other day to get the supplies of screw hooks and some cheap quarter inch chain and some 2x4’s and moth repellent to roll up two big oriental rugs that blocked getting to two storage cabinets for hardware and small parts storage in the basement. This stuff let me roll them on 2x4 armatures and hang them from the ceiling joists so they are out of the way. That was kind of the key to getting tons of shop crap out of boxes blocking the garage and restoring space to crank up projects. Between that and being in springtime having long days and daylight savings time things are looking up.
I do rather suspect that constant population growth is unsustainable. Looking back it looks like the optimum population for the US should be 200 million or less. It eases a lot of burdens from a taxation and environmental standpoint. So many things form a saddle curve where there is an optimum system load to where some or several critical elements of cost, weight, hazards, raw material consumption, environmental issues increase below and above the ideal point. So I rather think that hot rod ding as we know it is going to both change and shrink. Keep in mind the horse changed from the major mode of transportation to a toy for playboys and little girls.
Bogie
