The One Thing RV Boondockers Should Fear

Most people seem to have a romantic vision of their "RV Dream" that includes them parked all alone with the perfect scenic vista of their choice, a drink in one hand, their soul mate's hand in their other hand, and a gorgeous sunset that even Hallmark would envy. Basically, a really nice Cialis commercial.

Once they hit the road, reality sets in. Boondocking involves a lot of unknown variables that makes it just plain inconvenient for most people. So the Cialis commercial morphs into full hook-ups at the closest RV campground with endless potluck dinners and thousands of questions like " How do ya like yer rig?", "Where ya from?", and "How do ya like that new Ford engine?"

Worse than the inconveniences, many people have fears that prevent them from ever really getting away from it all and finding that ideal boondocking spot. There are numerous reasons and not enough space in this post to explain why we have no fear of such things as thieves, rapists, murderers, teenagers, wild animals, poisonous creepy crawlers, loneliness, health issues, cannibals, loss of a Verizon signal, etc.

The only thing that can keep us up at night is.....water.

I'm not talking about the gentle rains that activate the oils on the leaves of creosote bushes and fills the desert with a fragrant, intoxicating aroma. It's the hard downpours that can happen throughout the year in the desert southwest that are the most concerning when it comes to picking a boondocking spot.

We recently found a nice private spot in a desert meadow not far from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. We were all alone with great solar exposure, four bars of Verizon, and a nice grassy base rather than the usual sand and rock.

The ground was firm and dry, even though there had been a little bit of rain the week before. When in the desert, I always like to do a thorough walk around of a site to see if I can find any evidence of previous water flow (trying to put that old college hydrology elective to good use). In this case, there was one site that looked like it could dump some water into this meadow during the monsoon season.

After three days in this spot, the weather forecast changed and called for a decent rain event. We decided to hook up and move about a mile away to a typical desert sandy spot.

The rain event turned out to be overblown. Our new sandy site became a little mushy. The big disappointment was when we returned to our old meadow site and found it high and dry. We decided to stay in our new site for a variety of reasons.

A few days later the weather forecast turned again and warned of heavy rains on the Friday and Saturday before the Super Bowl. Our reaction was "yeah sure, we'll see". It started raining early on Thursday afternoon. Nothing hard, but nice and steady. By Friday afternoon, the water outside had started to flow. Where there had been no evidence of previous water flow in our new campsite, a small river formed under the rear of the rig. Pretty soon, our outside mat had floated away.

Then the real rain started just as the sun started going down. It was a real rip snorter. Before long, 3/4 of our campsite was a small river as the water flowed over the tops of the access roads on either side of our campsite and came right underneath us.

The hard rain went on for about an hour and a half before slowing to a lighter rain the rest of the night. By Saturday daylight, it was just overcast with intermittent light showers. The small river had been enough to undermine our foundations. The rig had settled a bit and we needed to re- level. Another hour or so of hard rain and we probably would have been in a much deeper hole.

And where there had been no evidence of previous water flow, there was now obvious evidence of the flow through half of the campsite. In retrospect, the sand in this area was a little softer than the hard pack sand in the rest of the site. That softer sand was our hydrological evidence.

Meanwhile, back at our old meadow campsite, the scene was much uglier. Here's a picture of our old site when it was still dry after the rainfall earlier in the week.

This is what it looked like on Saturday afternoon after the heavy rains. This picture was taken from the access road about five feet above the meadow. Based on the debris left from receding water, this new lake peaked at least two feet higher than the level in this picture. We had been camped next to that tree sticking out into the middle of the lake on the left. If we had stayed, we would have had some seriously wet feet.

The water level had been as high as where the dirt color in the picture below changes from brown to white

Even the two access roads to the site were turned into bogs. The water had washed sand into a very large cattle guard, almost filling it in. 

On one side, a two foot wide sink hole had formed. 

We returned to the scene eight days later. While the waters had receded a bit, it was still almost two feet deep where we had been camped. Between this and the access road mud bogs, we might have been stuck in this spot until March. 

 
So water: boondocking friend and foe. There's some food for thought the next time you're camping out in a beautiful remote spot and the cannibals come knocking.

Where does your food come from?...Yuma!

If it's green and it's winter, your food probably comes from the agricultural area around Yuma, AZ.

Whether it's trees, wine grapes, row crops, meat or fish, we've always been fascinated by the business and technical skills required to grow and distribute agricultural products. We've taken many university courses on these topics and have worked in the business, but some of the best learning events we've attended over the years have been those sponsored by growers who do it for a living.

Since we were in Yuma, AZ for a while, and Yuma is the agricultural center of the U.S. during the cold winter months, we made sure we were the first people to sign up for two very popular agri-business seminars offered by local farmers here each year.

The University of AZ Ag Extension is extremely active in the Yuma area. They have been instrumental in developing the best seed sources and farming practices that work in Yuma's unique climate and soils.

Celery is a more recent crop added to the Yuma mix. It is incredibly profitable to grow. We like celery, but it's surprising that it's such a cash crop.

Ed Harrison is a fifth generation farmer in the Yuma area. His family farms 7,000 acres. We also learned the origin of Swastika Bridge bridge, which is only about a mile from where his family homesteaded in the early 1920s.

Some of the fine local produce we picked. The yellow cauliflower and purple romaine lettuce were particularly interesting. The same produce we picked will be in grocery stores throughout the Northeast in two days.

Yuma growers custom plant and pick their products. Different packers like different mixes of produce placed in their specific containers. Everything is done according to the packers' orders.

Most of the equipment you see in Yuma are simple harvest aids. They just transfer products from the field to refrigerated trucks. The pictures below show a rare and expensive piece of equipment. This is a custom processing plant on wheels. The produce is custom picked, measured, cleaned, placed in custom packaging and shipped directly from the field to your local store throughout the U.S.

Where the soil is too sandy for row crops, they just grow date palms. Every date palm tree here was propagated from the original trees brought from Morocco back in the early 1920s. We saw the six remaining Mother trees. They were just out in the field by an ag storage building. You'd think they would be cordoned off with a special plaque of some kind.

And you can bank all of this green as well!

In a multiple choice, which of the following agricultural lands would make you the most money? To make it easier, let's define making money as the land that has the highest Cap Rate and ROI per acre.

• Ultra premium vineyard land in the heart on Napa Valley's best appellations?
• America's Garden: The California Central Valley?
• Fertile, deep, black soil in Iowa's best corn producing regions?
• Timber land in Northern Idaho where the six most widely used wood-product trees grow like weeds and disease and fire threats are low?
• Prime citrus growing land in Florida?
• Low elevation desert land around Yuma, AZ?

Based on the blog topic, you've probably guessed the answer is the Yuma desert. The result is surprising, but true. Rather then lay out a spreadsheet (which would be the most fun for me but not for you), here are the basic facts:

• Yuma ag land isn't the cheapest to buy or lease (Idaho and Iowa are lower), but the prices matched with the diversity of crop options give it a clear edge over all the others.
• The Yuma growing season and climate isn't the best due to high and low extremes (California, especially the Central Valley, has much more moderate highs and lows), but it is the only land that can be successfully farmed and kept productive for 365 days out of the year.
• Water costs aren't the lowest (Idaho wins that one), but water rights established and refined over 100 years make the cost and availability of irrigation among the most cost effective in the nation.
• Operating costs (equipment, fuel, agricultural inputs, labor) in Yuma are among the lowest in the nation.
• The diversity of crops that can be grown in Yuma is unmatched. In addition, the nature of the farming allows growers to quickly take advantage of fast moving markets. They can change their crop combinations faster.

It's good to see a farming region where family growers can be extremely successful financially. So why isn't there a mad dash to buy ag land in Yuma and drive prices higher? Mostly it's because the largest growers have been in the region since the 1920s. These families have been working this land and growing their enterprises for four or five generations. Land rarely comes up for sale (when it does, the locals know about it first and scoop it up) and leases are closely held and maintained. That's unlikely to change any time soon.

Wherever you are, support the local farmers.

We spend a lot of time at farmers' markets around the country. That's about as local as most people can get with their food, but while up in Idaho for half the year, we eat foods we grow or forage on our place, eat fish we catch in local streams and lakes, eat lamb and beef that are born and raised on properties that adjoin ours, eat wild game from our land, drink milk from cows and goats raised by neighbors, and so on. It's nice to have a little of that same "ultra-local food from sources you know well" feeling while spending the winter 1,500 miles away from Northern Idaho.

How to Survive a Bus Crash

Yesterday, while participating in an agricultural seminar in Yuma, AZ, we were involved in our first tour bus crash. We walked away from it just fine, but more than half of the riders (23 people) ended up in the hospital with three being airlifted from Yuma to a hospital in Phoenix. Four people were still in serious condition as of today.

The bus carrying us on our tour of the farms tried to make a left turn up onto a dike. I guess the driver was so concerned about the water on the right side of the dike that he cut the corner on the left too tight, losing his rear driver side wheels over the left edge and starting the the slow rollover of the bus down a ten foot embankment.

We were seated on the left side of the bus in the dead center. When he made that left turn, I had a great view of the slow motion wreck. First I told Susan there was no way we'd make the turn and we would get stuck. That was no big deal since there were about six large tractors working the fields around us. Any one of them could have pulled that bus out of the mud.

As the driver took the turn tighter and tighter I looked at Susan and told her "we are going over, brace yourself".  At first she thought I might be kidding...until she saw the look on the face and noticed me finding some good hand and footholds to ride the way down. 

That was the most interesting part. The whole process took about five seconds. In terms of a crash, that might as well be a 100 years. As the bus began roll over, we had time to think about where we would end up (on the bottom side next to the dirt), how to brace for impact, where other passengers might fall on us, and the fact that we'd miss an excellent lunch that was scheduled for after the tour (not to mention that the vegetables that we picked to take home were rolling all over the place).

Since just about everyone on the bus was a snowbirder who regularly travels in an RV, I figured a lot of other people would have also noticed what was about to happen. Amazingly, the recognition of what was happening and the screaming didn't start until we were half way through the roll and people and bags started coming out of their spots as the right side of the bus was rising above us and those of us on the left started to roll down.

This was when something unusual happened. Somehow, all of the people and their miscellaneous bags came tumbling down from above us, but nothing landed on us. Not even a water bottle. All of the people and their stuff fell onto the people seated in front of and behind us. It was as if a force field of some kind made them all miss us as we braced ourselves to hit the ground at the base of the dike. Sometimes it's just better to be lucky than good.

When we hit the bottom, I bounced into the window I was sitting next to. The safety glass shattered but didn't break. Susan ended up standing on the sides of the seats right above me. Other than a couple of really minor cuts from the shattered glass, neither one of us was hurt. The people around us weren't so lucky. 

As we looked around, there were people trapped under other people and pieces of wreckage with arms and legs sticking out in different directions. Sometimes it was hard to tell what pieces belonged to which people. Since we were in the center of the bus, I knew we would be the last to get out. It took about 25 minutes before we were able to get everyone out. Susan and I were the last ones off. We spent our time trying to make the people around us more comfortable and then helping to unwind them from each other and various pieces of the bus. There were a lot of broken wrists, ribs, ankles and other bones, but surprisingly very little blood. Again, probably thanks to a slow motion crash.

About 12 of us on the bus weren't hurt at all. Since we were fine, we had the "luxury" to feel sorry for the driver, the Visitor Center staff, and the farming family that was giving us the tour. Too many people on the bus that will be recovering from their injuries for a long time didn't have that same luxury.

On the bright side, we became better friends with two families that farm about 8,000 acres throughout the Yuma area. We'll be getting together with them again. We're also still planning to participate in two more Yuma agricultural tours next week. After all, what are the odds of being in more than one bus accident in five days? 

It took us about 25 minutes to clear the bus. At 45 minutes, still no EMT on site. It pays to be able to be your own First Responder.

 

The bus rolled over onto the emergency exits. Just kick out a windshield and there's an instant emergency exit.

Finally, some EMT units start showing up.

Eventually four helicopters showed up including two Marine Corps emergency teams.

And a prettier view at the end of this day in Yuma, AZ.

And So History Repeats

"When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, then you may know that your society is doomed."


There's been scant reporting of the fact that Citibank is now the largest holder of derivatives in the U.S., with $70.3 trillion in holdings (AKA exposure to weapons of mass financial destruction). 

Where history is potentially repeating is in the interesting relationship between Citi and Goldman Sachs. Recall that back in 2008 Goldman Sachs was AIG's largest counter-party to the mortgage-derived credit default swaps that blew up and sparked the 2008 financial meltdown. Goldman would have gone belly up along with AIG had the Government and the Fed, with close to a trillion dollars in taxpayer money, not bailed out AIG and the other big banks. At that time, Henry Paulson was Treasury Secretary. Paulson was the former CEO of Goldman and had been appointed Treasury Secretary in July 2006. Paulson was conveniently placed in position to save his former employer and source of all of his own personal wealth. 

Fast forward to today, and who is the Treasury Secretary? Jack Lew. Jack Lew worked at Citibank up until late 2010, when he was moved into Government "service" as Director of the OMB. After that he was appointed Obama's Chief of Staff. In 2013, Obama appointed him to be Treasury Secretary. Although there is a long tradition of top executives from the big banks gaining choice Federal political appointments, it is interesting that a former Citi executive is now Treasury Secretary at a time when Citi is now the largest derivatives owner in the U.S. and second largest in the world (Deutsche Bank is #1). 

Additionally, Citibank was the primary force behind the legislation passed late last year by the lame duck Congress - legislation that was buried into the controversial budget bill - which allows banks to move their derivatives into their FDIC insured subsidiaries. This legislation is the de facto bailout-in-advance for the Too Big To Fail Banks for the approaching time when the derivatives market, which is larger than it was in 2008, once again implodes. This legislation is what created the odd alliance of opposition between Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz. Although approaching it from opposite corners, Warren and Cruz both had it right.  Once again, the establishment Democrats (ie., Obama/Reid, Pelosi) and the establishment Republicans (ie., their Congressional leadership) have aligned with the monied Wall Street interests to the detriment of the the U.S. taxpayer. 

Now it may be just a mere coincidence that Paulson was appointed to Treasury Secretary about two years before Goldman blew up on derivatives and Lew was appointed Treasury Secretary, well, about two years before Citi might blow up on derivatives. You have to ask yourself, why would Citi aggressively push for FDIC coverage of its derivatives exposures if it were not worried about the fermenting risks? By the way, Citi has now moved all of its derivatives into its FDIC-covered subsidiary.

Mere coincidence?

A Very Merry "Screw You" from Obamacare

For those of us who need to deal with Obamacare directly through the Healthcare.gov exchange, finding health insurance becomes more bizarre and frustrating each day.

After completing our 2015 application for coverage and managing to find a "reasonable" plan that will cost us only about $10,000 per year (before Obamacare, an identical plan in South Dakota would have cost us $3,000 per year), we just received a notice that we cannot receive coverage in South Dakota because we don't own or rent a home in the state and pay utility bills. Apparently, you need to provide proof of both mortgage or lease payments and the payment of utility bills to be eligible for healthcare coverage through the Obamacare exchange in South Dakota. Considering we had South Dakota coverage in 2014, I can only assume this is a new development.

So under Obamacare, you can't be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition, or even if you are not a U.S. citizen, but you can be denied coverage if you do not own property or pay rent to a slumlord and pay utility bills.

Even after explaining to the Dakotacare representatives that we live in an RV and provide for our own utilities by living off-grid, they either could not or would not understand our situation and address this ridiculous policy. The fact that we are legal residents of South Dakota, with valid drivers' licenses, pay annual property taxes to South Dakota on our truck and RV, are registered to vote in the state, receive all of our mail in South Dakota, and have South Dakota residency in the eyes of the most powerful federal agency in Washington...the IRS, was not a convincing enough argument. The help desk at Healthcare.com didn't have any answers for us to solve this. Like most of my dealings with this group, they were clueless and helpless, trying to refer us to the South Dakota insurance commission to seek some help.

At least we have a partial solution. We will skip buying health insurance for 2015 and save that $10,000. If they try to penalize us with a fee for not buying insurance, we have ample documentation that we applied through the federal exchange, were approved, and were prepared to buy insurance when we were denied by the Obamacare-approved insurer on the exchange. I don't believe we can be penalized for not buying something that we tried to buy but were then denied by the provider. But who knows, things get weirder and weirder in this country every day.

Next year we will switch our residency to Idaho, where we do at least own raw-land property and pay traditional property taxes. I doubt the Idaho healthcare exchange will require proof of utility bill payment since it seems that about 30% of the state already lives off grid!  

I've been trying to give this legislation the benefit of the doubt for the last year and a half, but the steaming pile of excrement that is Obamacare just seems to get worse and worse every day. From revelations that a major designer of the program devised a way to sneak elements of it by the "stupid" American public (Jonathan Gruber), to "we have to pass it first before we can know what's in it" (Nancy Pelosi), to let's keep delaying the employer mandate and the impacts on Medicare until after our next elections because the impacts on the voters are just going to suck, and on and on and on, this is a piece of legislation that is destined to die a long, slow, painful, multi-trillion dollar death.  There's really only one thing to say:

YUCK FOU OBAMACARE!!!!!

Bright Lights, Big Sell-Outs

We take great pride in such things as never needing to plug into the grid
(the last time was nine months ago), seeing how long we can go without needing to hook up and go dump our tanks (so far our record is six weeks), and seeing how cold the weather can get outside before we need to turn on the heat inside (so far, 9 degrees outside along with 41 degrees inside).

So now we find ourselves plugged in at the Circus Circus RV park right on the Strip in Las Vegas. For the next 13 days we'll have unlimited electricity, endless hot showers, be eating at some very fine restaurants (including the best pizza East of NYC), and endure the diverse crowds that flock to this "impressive" metropolis over the holidays. I suppose we should feel guilty about all of this indulgence, but it's for a good cause. We'll be spending the holidays with relatives from Pennsylvania.

A free doggie spa station is a nice benefit as well.

 Ah yes, Christmas and New Year's in Las Vegas.

By January 2nd we should be camped all alone out in the middle of the desert once again!

Meanwhile, at our place up in Idaho it may not be a very white Christmas this year. It seems to be warmer in Northern Idaho than it has been in Nevada. The elk herds are having a good time cutting trails across the valley floor as they move between our place up on the bench and the water ditch down below.

We're Number One!!!: A New $18 Trillion World Record

By the time Reagan was in the second year of his presidency, the US national debt hit $1 trillion dollars. That is the first time I remember discussions about the national debt. It was an astounding figure at the time and Reagan was pilloried by the press for his tax cutting, ramped up spending, and trickle down policies. David Stockman covers this time period in his excellent book "The Great Deformation" about the financial history of the US from the formation of the Federal Reserve to the present.

So it took about 205 years for the US to accumulate its first $1 trillion in debt. In less than 5 years the next $1 trillion would be accumulated. Again, Reagan took it on the chin for his administration's policies that contributed to this debt build.

When the Bush Administration took the country from $4.5 trillion in debt to $9 trillion in debt, he was called "unpatriotic" by Senator Barack Obama, who then proceeded to vote against an increase in the US debt limit. That's the Barack Obama I voted for in 2008. Someone who appeared to have the juice to take on these issues. I don't who the guy was/is who moved into the White House in January 2009. He's not the guy who campaigned so well in 2008. He hasn't had my vote or trust since. When Vice President Dick Cheney famously said "deficits don't matter," that may be the only position he ever took that Democrats could wholeheartedly endorse.

Ironically, on Black Friday, the US government took a major step forward to insolvency by passing the $18 trillion debt level. Under the last six years of the current administration, we have managed to accumulate the same amount of debt as the nation accumulated in total over its first 232 years of existence. Yet not a single network bothered to cover this milestone. I first wrote about this in October 2013 when gasoline was officially poured on the debt fire.

Who knows, maybe the US national debt really doesn't matter. That's one myth about our debt, here are some others:

"It's the Net Worth that matters, not the Gross Debt"

Analysts often pay attention to a country’s “net debt” instead of its gross debt. If you have a million bucks in debt, and a million bucks in cash, then your ‘net debt’ is zero. It washes out. It's manageable. This same approach is also applied to GDP. Again, a million dollars of debt is cancelled out by a million dollars of assets (GDP).

The problem is that the US government doesn’t have any cash. The Treasury Department opened its business day on Black Friday morning with just $71.9 billion in cash, or just 0.39% of its total debt level. Apple has more cash on hand than that. In addition, even after altering the way GDP is calculated so that they could go back to 1945 and artificially increase the nation's GDP figures, the US GDP is about $17 trillion. We are now $1 trillion in the hole versus a revised GDP calculation that artificially inflates the number by more than $1 trillion. So we're actually $2 trillion in the red.

“We can make some adjustments to get our debt under control.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have painted themselves into a corner and proven this is a lie. Politicians have been saying for decades that they’re going to cut spending and get the debt under control.

The reality is that the last time the US debt actually decreased from one fiscal year to the next was back in 1957 during the Eisenhower administration. During the Obama administration, the US government has been spending roughly 90% of its entire tax revenue (including payroll and gas taxes) just to pay for mandatory entitlement programs and interest on the debt.

This leaves almost nothing for practically everything else we think of as government. To keep our boat afloat, both parties need to embrace identical fiscal and monetary policies.

“The debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”

This is probably the biggest lie of all. Two of the Social Security trust funds alone (OASI and DI) own $2.72 trillion of US debt.

The federal government owes this money to current and future beneficiaries of those trust funds, i.e. every single US citizen alive and all the new ones entering each year.

I fail to see the silver lining here. How is it somehow ‘better’ if the government defaults on its citizens as opposed to, say, banks? To stay in power, both parties have to find any way possible to avoid pissing off the US citizens who see these entitlements as their birthright.

“The US can always ‘selectively default’ on the debt”

Another lie. People think that the US government can pick and choose who it pays.

We could make a big stink about China, for example, and then choose to default on the $2 trillion in debt that’s owed to the Chinese. Nice try, but this would rock global financial markets and destroy whatever tiny shred of credibility the US still has.

Others have suggested that the government could selectively default on the Federal Reserve (which owns $2.46 trillion of US debt, and that much more as mortgage and sub prime private sector debt). Again, possible, but given that the Fed (the issuer of the US dollar) would become immediately insolvent, the resulting currency crisis would be completely disastrous.

“We can tax our way out of this mess”

No, we can’t. Looking at the numbers, since the end of World War II, regardless of economic growth or tax policy, US government tax revenue has consistently been roughly 17% of GDP. 

We can raise tax rates, but it doesn’t move the needle in terms of revenue as a percentage of GDP. Even if we take every last penny earned (or stolen) by the 1%.

You’d think with this obvious data that, rather than try to increase tax rates (ineffective), they’d do everything they can to help grow GDP. But no, we have to regulate every aspect of people’s existence: How you are allowed to educate your children. What you can/cannot put in your body. How much interest you are entitled to receive on your savings. The water that falls out of the sky onto your property, and on and on and on.

All of this costs time, money, and efficiency. So do never-ending wars and policing a global empire.

This isn’t about any single person or President. The problem is with the system itself. History shows that every leading superpower from the past almost invariably fell to the same fate. Great powers often feel that their wealth and success entitles them to spend recklessly and wage endless, arrogant wars. The Romans. The Ottoman Empire. The British. And now the US. The lesson here is very clear. Debt weakens a nation and the society upon which it is built.

Generations that will not even be born for decades will inherit these debts by complete accident of birth.

And the people in charge of the system have backed themselves into a corner where there is no way out other than to default– either on their creditors (creating a global financial crisis), the central bank (creating a currency crisis), or on the citizens themselves (creating an epic social crisis). Being a Republican or Democrat doesn't matter at these debt levels. To maintain power, both parties have to implement the same policies that keep the charade going. So we will see more and more stories and "political" debates about social issues (race, immigration, marriage equality, abortion, gender wars, drugs, death penalties, torture, etc.) to serve as a distraction from the financial story that will have the biggest impact on our lives now and for generations to come.


Bottom line: Although through benign neglect of the issue we are being told not to think about our debt issues, this is not a consequence-free environment. Maybe this will change through media scrutiny of a Republican administration or become a campaign issue during the next Presidential race. Republican administrations seem to be held to account more aggressively by the media. While we can't fix the debt problem with our votes, we can certainly each reduce our own personal exposures to what happens next.