Next lab move, I’m going to murder all the pipefitters, do the work myself, write it up as a cost avoidance, and win Employee of the Year.
But that is/was the week that is/was, we are interested in the Week the Will Be.
Mars (retrograde)-Terra-Sol: Ooof. Not Good. Mars is always a dick (that’s kind of his thing)
This is a spear and shield
but when he goes retrograde, he’s pure asshole. Then when you add the Earth (source of all evil) and empower the whole thing with the Sun, bad things happen. And I don’t mean “bad things” in the whole “tee hee, I’ve been a bad boy and need spanking” way, I mean legitimately bad in a Saw III fanfic sort of way. Then when you put Mars in Aquarius (source of plenty) and you wind up with destruction of valuables, loss of income, and warranties voided. Looking at the other end of the alignment, we see the Sun in Cancer (keeper of secrets) so expect a covert attack leading to the above disaster (fun fact: “disaster” is an astrological term).
Is there any good news? Well, kind of. The conjunction of Luna with Jupiter in Scorpio indicates a breakthrough in medicine, so that’s nice, though not necessarily applicable to any one in particular. Weight gain is indicated (that’s bad) because of particularly tasty baked goods (that’s good) and everyone’s love life should remain stable (that’s good, unless your lonely in which case that’s bad). With all this equivocation, you’d think there would be some activity in Libra, but there’s not.
Enjoy your day in the sun, Cancers. It’s fast coming to an end (where did this month go?) More political news is indicated, though that’s one of those signs that you feel embarrassed at reading (you’d expect that Mercury would be somehow stuck in Leo for the next couple of years, but that won’t happen. It will be there longer than normal though — tune in next week to see the shocking news why!)
Both groovy, and reminiscent of one who did not cross over:
I’m a little bit obsessed with tattoos, so when I saw that today is National Tattoo Day, I thought it would be fun to chat about tattoos!
I got my first tattoo when I was 18, and like most tattoos people get when they’re 18, it’s not great, but I didn’t realise at the time what good tattoos are.
Since then I’ve become obsessed with really amazing tattoos, and I’m lucky to be friends with some incredible tattoo artists.
I have a sleeve in progress and can’t wait to get it finished.
In the beginning, it was just a few figures to paint as the Crew of my B-25 Mitchell R/C plane, which is about 54” wingspan, so maybe 1/35 scale figures, so off I go to buy men, glue and paint. Some background: I have built models all my life, from shitty to glorious, and one of my customers is the owner of the hobby shop I have shopped at for 35 years, Pegasus Hobbies. So I knew where to go and what to buy, then I got home…
I finished my guys and put them in my plane and brainstormed, “what if this plane did an emergency landing, and caught a Tiger on a field out of fuel, pinning it with its massive amount of .50 caliber guns? So I bought a 70$ Russian Tiger Tank model, I’m not cheap, and it was a sweet build, I ended up modding it several times as you will see.
I needed landscaping and looked around and found some cheap shapes at the 99 cent store, and papier-mâché of course, but coverage? It was right then I knew I needed a plan, this was going to grow, I wasn’t sure just how big, yet. After a bit of research I found Woodland Scenics, which makes all kinds of very cool things such as bare trees, shrubbery, loose grass, dirt, sand, just an abundance of ideas, and with that in mind I decided what to do.
The Bocage
Actually means little boxes in French, however, from the wiki, in English bocage refers to a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture, with fields and winding country lanes sunken between narrow low ridges and banks surmounted by tall thick hedgerows that break the wind but also limit visibility. It is the sort of landscape found in England in Devon.
“The 1934 Nouveau Petit Larousse defined bocage as ‘a bosquet, a little wood, an agreeably shady wood’ and a bosquet as a little wood, a clump of trees’. By 2006, the Petit Larousse definition had become ‘(Norman word) Region where the fields and meadows are enclosed by earth banks carrying hedges or rows of trees and where the habitation is generally dispersed in farms and hamlets.”
In WWII, The Bocage would play havoc with the Allied Advance, so I went with Operation Cobra, and an Allied advanced scout finding a full blown German repair base.
Caught unawares, they get shot up bad, and call for help, then it all unfolds…
My son got involved when he saw the decals, especially for the men themselves, and he did some fantastic work under lamps and magnifiers. He had a go at painting, but he fucked up so badly, I made him do a complete repaint, which he did flawlessly…and said, never again. Now it was my job.
The Bocage needed to be at least 15 feet scale in places, so I glued down some shapes and began gluing shrub pieces, it took an hour to finish an inch, granted, I added hidey holes and things, but it was 30 inches long. There was also the Bocage tunnels; they were fun because I needed to keep them open some just to see the guys running through them.
Details: At this point, it’s midsummer, so when I come home from work, I just want to cool off, and paint…really what I began to do is run several jobs at once, spray big pieces, paint men, assemble, landscape, repeat, for 6 months. And the farther we got in the project, the more detail was necessary. I did 240 men total, and I spent 2 hours on each one, and I could have done better (and lost my mind).
By this time we are done with this panel, 30”x 50”and stow it in the garage ’til next year.
We spent a lot of time watching historical docs on YouTube, focusing on what they really looked like, camo, lifestyle, all that we could find. I scoured the Internet looking for new figures for the next phase, and bought just about every German and American 1/35 scale figures you can, then set up the next section.
The Base: the following Spring, I started filling the section I had built over the winter, this needed a bit more thought being quite busy. So what does a Base need?
(click to enlarge images)
The Storyline: Nazi fanatic Commandant throws everything at the force attacking, simple, it’s a caught off guard scenario, kinda like reality. There are culverts, ditches, a prime mover, wounded men, a pig sty, and my son made sure that every piece was the right division for the time and area, including 240 helmet insignias! I painted my men in groups, and mixed up the uniform colors for each one, while staying accurate. I lost about 200 pictures when my W7 machine died, but there’s a lot of neat stuff to check out.
I had a great time doing this project, it took 2 years and about 1400 hours between my son and me, and I think $1500 or so, but spread out.
Armory: US
M3 Lee
M3 Stuart
Sherman
Jeep
Armory: Germany
3-Flak 36/37
2-20mm AA guns
3-75 mm guns
Tiger1
Panther
Hetzer
PZ4 H
2- 75mm AT guns
2- Hanomag troop carriers
1- 8 ton truck to move this shit
1- Rail mounted PZ 4 turret
As I thought I was finishing, several knowledgeable friends asked, “where’s the radio room, how about a shitter?” It just happens that there is a radio room with operators you can buy, and I found the most realistic copies of maps, and shrunk them down.
I wanted a nice, expropriated office for my Commandant, and I found some nice period pieces cast in resin, so I set him up. I found 1/35 scale Nazi propaganda posters on Ebay. Sweet! I built his entire room, fireplace, desk, library, map table (with accurate maps), and a fraulein, again, custom paint.
Paint: For all projects I use Testors, and Testors Model Master, and Tamiya Acrylics
Landscape: Woodland Scenics, hands down. Use a white glue/water mix, spray and spread.
Brands: Start with Tamiya, best bang for the buck, because quality counts, Ukraine has Szvezda, but there are many others. YMMV.
At the end, things were looking good enough to find an actual place in France, and I found it! My Name, Lozon, France, not 3 miles from my diorama! Maybe closer!
I made sure to setup street markers, etc but not Lozon sadly. Still cool, it’s a real place.
I ended up very happy with the results, and it kept me busy for 2 summers. I know it’s amateurish, but hey I’m an amateur!
You’re 10% of the way to speaking Japanese with this one trick
Now that we’ve got the click bait headline out of the way let’s get down to today’s lesson – basic Japanese pronunciation and how English is used and pronounced in everyday Japanese. One study suggests anywhere between 5% to 10% of modern Japanese is derived from English.
We are just teaching Japanese pronunciation and loanwords so we are just going to use katakana and the western derived romaji. Romaji is the Japanese word for the roman characters that western language speakers already know. In the context of Japanese romaji is what is used to teach the gaijin and for signs and such within Japan to assist westerners.
Naturally, the Japanese couldn’t be bothered to use the same version of romaji that is used to teach foreigners, Hepburn, and created their own version called Kunrei-shiki. For our purposes, the two are mostly the same.
For those keeping count that means that are four “official” ways to write Japanese – kanji, hiragana, katakana, and romaji.
It sounds like what?
To an English speaker Japanese doesn’t share much vocabulary with English compared to Romance languages. It also has very different grammar and sentence construction. However, for an English speaker the pronunciation is very straightforward. Almost all the sounds in Japanese are already used in English. That means with a relatively short lesson we can have you able to read and pronounce Romanized Japanese words like names, places, movie titles, etc.
Let’s review the following chart:
The first row is katakana and the second row is romaji. We are only focusing on the reassuring roman characters at the bottom of each box. Focusing on just the “vowel” section the first row goes – a, i, u, e, o. The next row is ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. Are you beginning to see the pattern? It’s generally consonant (or consonant with a “y” sound) plus a, i, u, e, o.
Japanese generally doesn’t have the same concept as consonants and vowels in English. Instead Japanese’s building blocks are mora, essentially syllables. The chart above contains essentially every basic sound in Japanese. If you can pronounce these syllables then you can say anything in Japanese.
Don’t read Romanized Japanese as English!
The biggest mistake English speaker make is reading Romanized Japanese as English. There are no “long vowels” and “short vowels”. The vowels sounds for Japanese are:
A – sounds like the “a” in father
I – sounds like “ea” in “seat”
U – sounds like “oo” in “boo” as in what you say when you want to startle somebody
E – sounds like the “e” in “set”
O – sounds like “o” in “so”
English:
Ban – prohibit (short “a”)
Bane – a cause of great distress or annoyance (long a because of the “e” at the end)
Japanese:
Bane (ばね)- spring (e.g. coil, leaf). It’s pronounced “bah neigh”. Notice unlike ban and bane that the Japanese is TWO syllables.
That’s really the biggest obstacle to reading Romanized Japanese – remember to only pronounce the vowels one way and to make the consonant and vowel pairs form syllables.
All the other stuff…
Naturally, it’s not quite that simple there are few other quirks and things to keep in mind.
The “R” sound. Surprising few people, Japanese speakers have trouble distinguishing between “R” and “L”. Part of that reason is that depending on the word the sound fluctuates between what an English speaker hears as an “R” and “L”. In Japanese, the ra, ri, ru, re, ro row isn’t pronounced like an English “R”. The tongue starts at the top of the palate. I’m not a Spanish speaker, but have read it’s very similar to a Spanish “R”.
Intonation and stress in Japanese is very different from English. It most certainly DOES exist, but for an English speaker trying to not sound ridiculously wrong in Japanese you are better off pronouncing everything “flat” and give equal weight to all the syllables. You’ll pretty much be wrong 100% of the time, but you will sound much more natural and mostly be understood. Much more so than using English stress.
The “tsu” sound. This one just doesn’t exist in English. You are probably familiar with the word “tsunami”. It sounds a bit like clicking your tongue and saying the name “Sue”. Touching your tongue to the roof of your mouth is the key here and it is important as that is how you distinguish from the Japanese “su” sound. This distinction can be quite difficult to hear initially.
The one “consonant” in Japanese ン or ん “N”. It’s a bit of an oddball, but the sound is the same as English. You are probably familiar with it from “hello” or “good day”, こんにちは or koN ni chi wa. Notice how this word doesn’t read or sound the way you are used to hearing it. That “N” attaches to the first syllable and phrase is FOUR syllables long.
The small “tsu” or ッ. The small “tsu” in romaji is written as doubled consonant. I honestly have no idea how this crazy double consonant convention came to be. It’s used to signify a pause and has no effect on pronunciation. For example, ブック or bukku which can be used for “book”. In this you say “bu” briefly pause and say “ku”.
I’ve saved the trickiest one for last. You will read doubled vowel sounds in romaji. Like the small “tsu” above this has nothing to with how the vowel sounds, instead it means you prolong the vowel sound. For example, ビル or “biru” means “building”. But ビール or “biiru” means “beer”. To say the word imagine it taking THREE syllables worth of time, but said as only TWO syllables – BII RU with an extension of the first sound.
Tokyo – English spelling for the capital of Japan
東京- kanji for Tokyo and normally what you see in public signs
But Tokyo can be properly written as とうきょう – in hiragana. Note the う character here. That’s telling you the Tokyo is pronounced “toukyou” (Hepburn) or Tōkyō (Kunrei-shiki). The marks over the “o” here tell you to extend the length of the vowel, but NOT to change the pronunciation. You’ll note here the doubled vowel is two different vowels o and u, but the sound is still “o”.
OK, let’s put our knowledge to work
Surprisingly, Wikipedia has lengthy page on gairaigo and wasei-eigo which mean “foreign words” and “Japanese-English words” respectively. I’ll pull some highlights here that you might find interesting. Naturally there are many, many more than what I’ve highlighted here and on the Wiki page.
For extra credit
I’ve selected an especially “useful” YouTube video for you to practice your newfound Japanese language skills. Like lots of J-Pop it contains actual English choruses to be “trendy” plus the English that has become part everyday usage in Japanese. Both English and Japanese subtitles are available if you click on the CC symbol.
I’d recommend watching it with English subtitles first so you can hear how Japanese people pronounce English. Big issues for Japanese speakers are the “th” sound and the final “t” sound in English. So for example. “thank you” becomes サンキュー or “san kyuu” and “heart” becomes ハート or “haato”.
If your stomach can take it I’d suggest watching it a second time with the Japanese subtitles. In the Japanese subtitles where you see English sentences and characters that’s an intentional insertion of English to be cool. Where you see English written in katakana that’s English that is in everyday use in Japanese language.
I love the Waters of Life. I’ve never had a Japanese whiskey, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed those from our neighbors to the north, from the Emerald Isle, and of course from here at home. America truly makes a world-class product. Having said all of that, there really can’t be any doubt that the king of beverages comes from that tiny scrap of barbarian-infested wasteland on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall. It is truly the drink of philosophers.
Most of my Scotch Supply as of June 11 2018
Tonight, I will be trying two offerings from my favorite distiller, and placing them in context with those with which I am already familiar.
Our guests of honor for this evening, from left to right: Talisker 10 Year, Storm, Dark Storm, Skye, and 57 degrees North
For accompaniments, I have bread (an awful hippie spelt sourdough), cheese (Chaseholm Farms “Moonlight” and North Country Creamery “Feta” (which completely isn’t), chocolate (Ghiradelli 72%) and water (Saratoga County Water District “Tap”). I will also be starting with Johnnie Walker Black to use as a control and palate reset.
My tasting notes probably aren’t going to be very helpful for a couple of reasons. First, I lack the vocabulary of a professional taster. This isn’t that important, because nobody else on here does, either. The other problem is I suffer from a slight sense of synesthesia which becomes rather overwhelming when I focus intently on taste or smell. So my experience when comparing Dark Storm with 10 year is that the horizontal amber lines of the 10 year become thicker and further apart in the Dark storm, and charcoal arcs appear next to them. This may be the least helpful comparison made on glibertarians.com yet. I’ll avoid any references to geometry, color or sound in my description and hopefully someone will find this interesting.
Down from upper left: 57 Degrees north, Skye, control, Dark Storm, Storm, 10 Year.
If not, I’m still going to be drinking some scotch, so… win.
All of these will be taken neat as God intended, with the possible exception of the 57 Degrees North, which is bottled at 114 proof. That might get a splash after the initial taste.
Enough pittle-pattle. On with the tipple! *Drinks control* Yup, that’s what yer basic Highland scotch tastes like.
Talisker 10 Year: Oh goddamn this is delicious. Mild, gentle, not very sweet, a little spice, a little smoke, a tiny hint of iodine. No phenols coming up into the nose, a smidge of a tingle around the sides of the tongue. *Ponders how wonderful life is now Talisker’s in the world*
Ok, that golden moment of satisfaction has passed. What else is here? Talisker Storm: A lot more iodine on the nose, but not so much in the mouth. Sweeter. Sharper. More of a bite, more of the bourbon barrel taste. This would be really good with some chocolate. *Has some chocolate.* OMG. I don’t know why exactly my mouth is warmer, but that chocolate instantly melts, coating my tongue with sweet love but letting the whisky shine through. Another drink makes it shinier. Shiiiny. Better than the 10 Year? …maybe. Different. Diminishing returns kick in hard when it comes to scotch, and Talisker suffers from it particularly with their base product being so good. Sooo goood.
Talisker Dark Storm: This is more closely related to the 10 Year than the Storm was. It’s very like the distillers took the 10 Year and turned up the volume. I prefer it to the Storm. *Has a slice of cheese.* Sweet mamajama. I’ve gotten enough booze in me that food is tasting delicious. I want to refill this glass, but I have two more to taste.
I’ve had those three before [but never done a side-by-side with the Storm and Dark Storm to convince me which I should preferentially stock (Dark Storm)]. These next two are new to me.
Talisker Skye: I’m confused. I’m not tasting very much. Maybe it’s aftereffects from the cheese? I’ll eat some bread. *Eats bread.* That’s really shitty bread. Nope, not much here. It’s less like a Talisker and more like a really flavorful Irish whiskey. I am disappointed. This bottle will remain around to offer to guests, but I won’t be drinking much of it. Orrrr, maybe I’ve drunk too much and it’s killing my taste response. *Goes back to Q’s links.* That still works. Well, obviously in the future I’ll need to taste this earlier in the session to make sure.
Talisker 57 Degrees North: This is the most expensive bottle I’ve acquired at the duty-free. Between the fact that it’s a third larger than standard liquor store bottles and I paid for it in CAD, it’s probably not the most expensive bottle of scotch I’ve ever bought, but it’s up there. It fucking better be good. Holding it up to my nose is making me a little more reassured that I haven’t overdrunk my nose at least. I’m getting definite notes of… SweeTarts. Now I’m going to have to go back to the lab and see if I have any stearic or maleic acids lying around. I know I’ve got citric, but that’s not what I’m smelling. First sip. Oh. Wow. Yeah. Taste buds still work. Also, 114 proof is a bit saliva-activating. Lemme do the math: 114/80 = I have to increase the volume by about 40%. No wait, first let me taste it and see what I can find when it’s neat. Ok, trying again. It’s pretty good. Extremely smooth, low phenols, slightly sweet, but at this strength there is a noticeable anesthetic effect kicking in after about 2-3 seconds. Gotta get a spoon to make the dilution work. Also, there’s not enough left in the glass, need a refill.
Ok, going to get the spoon revealed to me that I might be a wee bit more intoxicated that I had planned. Also tasting the control whisky proved that yes, my taste buds aren’t working properly. So it’s a bit of a moot point to continue. Having said all of that, adding water to get the 57 degrees North to about 80 proof really did open it up. There’s a lot more happening there now, and in the future I’ll try again without the preliminary drinks to get a true appreciation of it. I’ll also retry the Skye, though I don’t think it’s going to be particularly salvageable.
I’ve been on a bit of an article hiatus since my laptop died. I have a desktop (which I’m on right now), but I built it 8 years ago from the clearance section of NewEgg, and it sounds like it’s about to die. In the last 12 months, we’ve had 3 computers go, and this’ll be the 4th once it kicks the bucket…. fun times.
Anyway, I know that y’all are just dying for some Trashy insight, so I’m gonna try to make the concepts of this article come together. This is mostly a “look at the cool razors I have” post, but I’ll try to shoehorn libertarianism in there somehow. I love these stream of consciousness articles because it doesn’t involve any planning!
I started my post-pubescent life like most other men and women. I got a free version of the latest Gillette razor in the mail, and I ran that trial pack of blades until they weren’t even sharp enough to cut tissue paper.
This showed up in adolescent trashy’s mailbox
I heard the common refrain from everybody. “They’ll give you the handle for free, but they’ll gouge you on the blades.” Turns out they were right. Gillette had a virtual monopoly, with Schick in a distant second, so they could charge anything they wanted for their blades. Add in a small psychological ploy to rely on consumers’ sunk cost fallacy, and you’re set for life.
There were three problems that cropped up. First, I was a broke high school/college student, so I was running the blades until they started to rust. Second, the shaves were absolute shit. Third, the shaves were a chore. Slather on the disgusting canned foam, scrape 5 dull blades across your face, have razor burn for 2 days. My skin is a bit sensitive, so a poor shave meant a couple days of sore face. How did I cope? By growing a beard. Yes, in high school, I had mutton chops and a circle beard because I hated shaving.
This seems like a good time to go on a social/libertarian tangent. There’s something about products like this that irk me, and I’m not entirely sure why. You have people with 1000 different needs from their razors, and you offer the same blades and the same orientation with the same lotion bar at the top. It strikes me like the perfectly beautiful, but completely tasteless tomatoes you can get at the grocery store. Sometimes, giving up choice in favor of the lowest common denominator results in absolute shit product, and that’s what the modern cartridge razor has become. If your cartridge razor works well for you, count yourself lucky. The cool thing about the free market is that you don’t have to follow the fickle trends of the masses. You don’t get stuck with the Comrade 4 blade because Supreme Leader Bernie decides that nobody needs 32 kinds of razors. You’re free to experiment with different types of product, both from now and from the past.
Back when razor makers were artisans
Speaking of the past, those guys really knew how to shave back then. It was a small luxury to get to shave, and it’s something that I have found immensely enjoyable, both from a “gotta do it, so might as well enjoy it” standpoint and from a “hobby that connects me to the past” standpoint. I shave with a 1957 Gillette Super Speed.
It cost me roughly $15 on ebay, and my razor blades cost a few pennies each and last me 5 or 6 shaves before they dull. Both men and women used to shave with safety razors like this.
Let’s dive into the hobby aspect of this stuff, and some of the nuances will start to come out. You’ll quickly understand why a single blade type at a single preset angle isn’t preferred.
At a macro level, we’re talking about wet shaving. Just as a quick disclaimer in case some woman happens to stumble across this site (because we know there are no female liberatarians) and wonders what the hell is going on… I’m talking about shaving one’s face, but my understanding is that it translates fine to doing legs, too. Wet shaving means that there is water involved. You don’t just slather canned goop on your face and start scraping. You don’t fire up some gizmo and hope it gets close enough that you look like you actually shaved today. Wet shaving is about preparing your face to get a close shave with comfortable results. In broad generalities, there are three phases to a wet shave: skin preparation, shaving, and skin protection. You prepare your skin to be lubricated enough to allow a razor and a blade to glide across your face without catching on the skin. You also prepare your stubble to be as erect as possible so that you lop it all off when you pass the blade through each hair.
As an aside, one reason why irritation is so common with cartridge blades is because the multiple blades act to pull the hair up out of the follicle and trim it below the skin line, resulting in irritation and a higher chance of ingrown hairs. It’s a very “close” shave, but it’s really too close.
You will find that most traditional forms of shaving involve a single blade, thus reducing the likelihood of such . . . uncomfortable . . . consequences. There are four types of shaving. Cartridge blade razor (including disposables), electric trimmer, safety razor, and straight razor. The bolded ones are the ones closest associated with wet shaving. Yes, you can wet shave with a cartridge razor, but you’re only getting partial benefits in that situation.
Some of the guys who make custom straight razors do some great work!
I’m sure we’ve got some straight razor folks here in Glibertopia, but I’m not really experienced with them. Besides the barber cleaning up the back of my neck with one, and the rare barbershop shave (which is shit once you figure out how to properly wield a safety or straight razor), I’ve never really even seen one in person.
However, the principles between safety razors and straight razors are much the same. The muscle memory is different and the stakes are higher with straights, but the process involves lubing up your face, holding the blade at a certain angle, and dragging it across your whiskers.
I’m big on connections to the past. Things may be “better” in the present, but often the consumerist impulses of today result in bland mass-produced products. There’s nothing beautiful about the latest Fusion razor. It’s an uninspired amalgamation of neon plastic and chromed plastic. However, I’ve seen some straight razors and safety razors that are works of art! Craftsmen made the shaving tools of old. Assembly lines stamp out today’s shaving tools.
There’s something about using a 60 year old work of art to do a mundane hygiene task that makes it less humdrum. When you add in the other components of a wet shave, it adds a small luxury to your morning. Back in the day, men didn’t mind taking a minute and enjoying their morning routine.
Pre-Shave
Before starting your shave, it’s important to prepare. Preparation is as important as execution in wet shaving, because your razor doesn’t have training wheels anymore. You can push pretty damn hard with a cartridge razor and not be worse for the wear. Safety razors reduce the chance of slicing your face open in comparison to a straight razor, but both types of blade are very unforgiving to mistakes.
There are two types of pre-shave preparation. 1) Skin preparation, and 2) Mapping your beard.
Skin Preparation
It is important to do two things to your skin prior to shaving. You need to lubricate your skin so that the razor glides along and doesn’t get stuck. You also need to get your hair follicles to stand up as much as possible to get a close shave. There’s a simple way to do both… hop in a warm shower. Many people shave in the shower to get the maximum benefit of the warm water. I’ve never found it particularly attractive an idea, but you do you. If you didn’t just hop out of the shower, a warm, wet washcloth to the face will do the trick. If your skin tends to be dry, or if you’re a beginner prone to making mistakes, you can use a pre-shave oil or a pre-shave cream to supplement the warm water. It also adds a pleasant aroma to the beginning of your shave. Like I said, small luxuries.
In the pic, I have one of each. There’s a Truefitt and Hill pre-shave oil with a citrus scent. Next to it is a Proraso pre-shave cream with a menthol finish. I don’t really use them very much any more. Occasionally I’ll use the oil because it is the closest to real-deal citrus as I’ve ever found in a citrus scent.
Anyway, you take a sparing amount and rub it into your skin, and all of a sudden you’ve got a slippery face.
Mapping your beard
Unlike a cartridge shave, where the blades are equal opportunity offenders, single blades are quite sensitive to the grain of your beard. If you go with the grain, it’s the least uncomfortable and it’s the least close shave. If you go against the grain, it’s the most uncomfortable and the closest shave. Usually people will do 2 or 3 passes in order to get a close and comfortable shave. For example, they may do a with the grain pass, a cross-grain pass, and an against the grain pass. If you properly do three passes like that, your face will feel like a baby’s ass.
The thing is that the grain doesn’t just go in one direction. Just like your hair on your head, your beard has whorls and direction changes and all sorts of unique challenges. For example, my left cheek grain goes down, but my right cheek goes backward. Knowing which way the whiskers go helps you avoid accidentally going against the grain in some areas on the first pass.
Lathering Up
You can see in the above picture the two brushes that look like huge weird makeup brushes. I’m not sharing the bathroom with Mrs. trshmnstr, so they’re not hers. Those are my shave brushes. They’re made from badger hair. Yes, they literally pluck hairs from badgers to make these brushes. You can also get boar hair brushes or synthetic brushes (think paintbrush bristles). I’ve never used either of those, but I like my badger brushes. The one on the right is a normal badger hair brush. It has enough resistance to stand up to vigorously rubbing your face, but the hairs aren’t irritating. The one on the left with the frosted tips is a silvertip badger brush. These are premium brushes due to the nature of the silver tipped hairs. The hairs stand up enough to be able to make a good shaving lather, but they’re quite soft at the tips, making for the perfect balance.
The purpose of a brush is simple, you load it up with shaving cream and you apply the shaving cream to your face. I should be more precise. You can use shaving cream (roughly the consistency of toothpaste) or shaving soap (a hockey puck shaped bar of specially formulated soap). This is where wet shaving completely leaves normal shaving behind.
You can see in this next photo a few shaving soaps. On the left is TSE Texas Leather Tallow Shaving Soap (yes, tallow as in animal fat… the best shave soaps are made with tallow), which literally smells like my cowboy boots. In the middle is Proraso Green, which has the same menthol hit like the pre-shave cream. On the right is Gentleman John Sandalwood Soap, which is my current go-to for everyday shaving. The left two soaps are a little bit creamier and aren’t really in puck form, so I use them directly from their containers. The Gentleman John didn’t come with a container, so it’s in my shave bowl.
There are two primary ways of lathering up, face lathering and bowl lathering. They’re both perfectly legitimate, but they yield different types of lather. The face lather tends to be more of a wet, slick lather, whereas the bowl lather tends to be fluffier and drier. Depending on your preference for lather, you can choose the appropriate technique.
Face Lathering
Face lathering is my go-to. It’s easier when you don’t have a ton of space, because you don’t need additional bowls and you don’t make a foamy mess all over the counter. Face lathering is two steps: loading the brush and lathering. First, to prep for the shave, you need to add a few drops of water to the soap to “bloom” the soap (meaning that the soap absorbs some of the water and the top layer softens up. Also, I like to leave the brush in warm water while I shower. If that’s not an option, just run some hot water over the bristles, because the brush will absorb some water. Then, give the brush a single shake (you want to get rid of some water, but not all), and start swirling the bristles over the soap puck. The soap will begin to foam, but you’re only loading the bristles with the soap, so you don’t want to go too long.
Once the brush is loaded, you proceed to swirl the brush on your cheeks until a foamy lather builds. Once the lather builds, you can paint it on other parts of your face until you have built up a nice slick, cushiony lather on all the places you’ll be shaving.
Bowl Lathering
Bowl lathering is very similar, but instead of taking the loaded brush to your face, you put it into a bowl and start swirling. Because of the fact that the bowl doesn’t have any moisture in it (as compared to your lubricated face), the lather tends to dry out, which makes it fluffier. Once you have a good lather built, you can just paint it on your face with the brush.
Want an added touch of luxury? Pour some hot water into a shave scuttle and heat up your lather while you make it!
Shaving
I’ve written an entire article’s worth of info, but we haven’t even cut a single whisker yet. In reality, once you get a hang of things, the pre-shave portion takes 2-3 minutes at most. Now it’s time to choose a razor and blades (for the safety razors). As mentioned above, my experience is with safety razors, so that’s what I’ll talk about.
Razors come in all different shapes and sizes, but there are three most important attributes: weight, balance, and aggressiveness. The key to shaving with a single blade razor is to avoid pressing. The blade should glide over your face, and even the slightest pressure can make for a bad shave. As such, the right weight razor keeps you from having to exert pressure to get the razor to cut. Too light, and your blade will skip right off your face. Too heavy, and you have very little control and feel as you cut. Balance also influences the control and feel. A well balanced razor can be held by two fingers and you can almost feel every whisker yield to the blade. Aggressiveness is about matching your style and skin sensitivity to how much the razor tries to take off on each pass. Some folks like really aggressive razors. Some (like me) like less aggressive razors. It’s all about getting a close cut without causing razor burn. Certain safety razors have adjustable aggressiveness. You twist a selector, and the blade bends to a different angle, reducing or increasing aggressiveness.
The blades themselves are also seen as aggressive or not. Feather blades have a reputation for aggressiveness, but I happen to like them in my Gillette Super Speed because it mellows their aggressiveness. Others are less aggressive. Most likely these differences are due to minute differences in the manufacturing tolerances, despite the fact that the blade’s form factor has been standardized for 80 years.
One of the great things about shaving with a safety razor is that besides the initial investment in the razor (about $10 for each of mine on ebay), the blades are super cheap. I’ve gotten deals under 10 cents per blade, and each blade usually lasts 5 or 6 shaves, if not more. However, like any other hobby, you can get lost in all of the options and spend hundreds of dollars on shave equipment. There are some rare vintage razors that go for over $100.
Shaving is very much an exercise in muscle memory. It’s quite similar to knife sharpening in that you need to find a proper angle, hold it at that angle, and make smooth strokes. You know it’s right when you can hear the blade cutting the whiskers. It’s a soothing sound. Unlike what you’ve likely learned shaving with a cartridge razor, it’s not about pushing down and dragging across half of your face. That will end with blood everywhere. With a safety or straight razor, it’s about smooth short strokes with almost no pressure. You only exert enough pressure to keep the blade from skipping when it hits the next whisker. I’ve found that when in doubt, you’re using too much pressure. The goal is to “reduce” the hair rather than “eliminate” the hair. This is why you do two or three passes. The first pass takes the stubble down lower, the second even lower, and the third down to the skin.
Also, this is a literal razor blade. Razor blades cut you if you drag them sideways along your skin. Your short smooth strokes should be directly perpendicular to the blade’s edge. Turning corners is an advanced move for when you stop cutting yourself.
After a bit of practice, you start to be able to feel when a blade is getting dull. Before then, replace your blade on a regular basis. Usually 5 or 6 shaves is about as much as you can get out of a blade. If you have an old house, there may even be a blade depository in your bathroom. It dumps all the used blades into your wall for the contractor to find when you decide to remodel the bathroom.
Finishing Up
After you shave and wipe off the excess lather, you’re not quite done yet. Your face is in an “open” state due to the warm water, the lather, and the razor. One refreshing way to close up your pores is to splash your face with cool water. If you have a couple tiny nicks that are thinking about bleeding, sometimes this step will convince them not to bleed.
Once you’ve rinsed your face with cool water, it’s time to apply after-product. This is purely optional, but I find that my face thanks me. I have extremely dry skin, so this is the perfect time to add some moisture and avoid redness, cracked skin, etc. In come two categories of after-shave. In front is Clubman Pinaud, which is a traditional Home Alone aftershave. It’s alcohol based, and it’ll let you know if you nicked yourself. To me, this is the smell of a barbershop, and it lingers with you for the rest of the day.
Behind the Clubman is some Tea Tree leave-in conditioner. I forget who recommended it to me, but this stuff is the absolute best at moisturizing my face. I just rub it in like lotion, and my dry skin issues go away within a couple hours. It doesn’t linger like Clubman, but you can still smell it a couple hours later.
Also, while you’re cleaning up, rinse out your brush and get as much water out as you can. I hang mine alongside my razor to air dry the rest of the way. I also leave the soap container open to air dry.
But what if you got a boo boo? Bleeding is a part of learning to shave, and it sucks. Rather than sticking toilet paper to your face or bleeding everywhere, get yourself a styptic pencil or an alum block. They both contain chemicals that help your blood clot up and stop the bleeding. They aren’t magic, so don’t start rubbing your jugular while you’re bleeding out, but they’ve stopped cuts where the blood was dripping down my chin before.
I’ve never found out the right way to clean the styptic pencil. I usually rinse it off under the faucet, but the pencil doesn’t play well with water.
All of this to say, nobody needs 32 different kinds of razors. In Progtopia, we’re all gonna be stuck with shitty off-brand disposables and silly-string for shaving cream.
Bolt guns kind of own the outdoor rifle scene west of the Mississippi. Here in Colorado during the general rifle deer/elk seasons, probably 75-80% of the rifles you see are bolt guns. So, let’s look at those first, then we’ll come around to some other options. And there are other options; here’s a teaser, “Browning Automatic Rifle” doesn’t always refer to the WW2-era squad automatic rifle.
So, why bolt guns? They are simple, strong and accurate. Bolt guns will easily accommodate the most powerful hunting cartridges. Their stiffness and solid lockup increases accuracy, a key consideration in the West’s open country where 200 to 300-yard shots are not unusual. They are easy to maintain, easy to field-strip, easy to clean and easy to use.
A nice Colorado meat buck.
Bolt guns are also handy in that they have one feature shared by few other action types, save single-shots: You can remove the bolt without tools and access the entire length of the barrel. That’s handy for clearing blockages or just running an oiled patch through the barrel after a day out in rain or snow.
There are too many bolt rifles for sale today to go into brands, but there are a few things to think about when looking for a good bolt gun:
Controlled-feed vs. push-feed. This is largely a matter of personal preference. Controlled-feed guns, like the Mauser, have a large claw extractor that picks up the next round from the magazine and holds it in place while the bolt moves into battery. Push-feed guns, like the Remington 700, are just like they sound, simply pushing the round ahead of the bolt into the chamber. Controlled-feed advocates make a case for reliability of feed, although in a lot of those guns you can’t drop one round into the gun and close the bolt; the round has top be picked up from the magazine. But this is mostly a matter of preference.
If you are looking at a rifle built on a surplus Mauser or other military action, most of those won’t have a hinged floorplate. This is a disadvantage in that it requires you, when clearing the weapon, to cycle all rounds through the action, slightly (at least, it damn well better be slightly) increasing the odds of an accidental discharge. A lot of cheaper bolt guns (think Remington 700 ADL) have blind magazines, which have the same issue. A hinged floorplate allows you to dump unused rounds into your hand without them going through the action. That’s handy.
Locking lugs. Personally, I like the old classic layout, two big beefy locking lugs at the front of the bolt. It’s easier to maintain a solid lockup and keep headspace with two big lugs than with nine little ones, like the old Weatherby Mark V has.
If bolt guns aren’t your cup of tea, there are other options.
Semi-autos are very popular these days and have probably surpassed single-shots in the Western game field scene. Bear in mind that most, if not all states limit you to five rounds or less in any rifle used to take big game; that’s rarely an issue in bolt guns but sure can be in a semi-auto. The AR platform can handle some rounds suitable for deer-sized game, while the AR-10 and guns like the old Winchester 100 and the various Remington semis can handle .308- and .30-06-level rounds. If you want more oomph, look into the Browning Automatic Rifle, a gas-operated powerhouse in chamberings up to the .338 Winchester Magnum.
Single-shots are still popular. While older designs like the Springfield are weak by today’s standards and require light loads, modern singles like the Ruger #1 and the new-manufacture Browning Hi-Wall are bank-vault tough and can handle any rounds you choose to feed them.
Singles have another advantage: If you are on a tight budget, some singles like the New England Firearms break-tops are very easy on the bankbook and can be had in a wide variety of calibers. If your budget is really tight, you can even have a shotgun and rifle in one go with the simple expedient of purchasing additional barrels.
Finally, there is the classic Western rifle: The lever gun. While most lever guns are 200-yard propositions for deer-sized game, there are a couple of notable exceptions. The Savage 99 can be had in the .300 Savage and the .308 Winchester, which lends some more power to a platform traditionally used for cartridges like the .30-30. And there is the fine old Browning Lever Rifle (BLR) which feeds from a box magazine, handles cartridges up to the .300 Winchester Magnum and has a rotating bolt head with bolt-action-style locking lugs at the front of the bolt; the BLR has been described as a bolt gun where the bolt is operated by a lever, and that’s a pretty good description.
No matter what rifle you choose, there’s another key decision to be made as well, which brings us to…
Cartridges
In recent years it seems like we’ve seen an explosion (pun intended) of new rifle cartridges. Some of these are commercial adoptions of popular wildcat rounds, some are purposely developed by gun and/or ammunition manufacturers. I’m not immune to the wildcatting bug myself; I’ve long thought of having my favorite .30-06 rechambered to the .30-06 Ackley Improved, which gives .300 H&H Magnum ballistics while still allowing use of regular .30-06 factory loads.
For the most part, though, I’m a practical kind of guy, and most of my rifles are hunting rifles. While plenty of folks love to play with custom calibers or line up to buy the first examples of the latest Eargesplitten Loudenboomer Magnum, I’m pretty content to stick with cartridges that have been around a while.
Now, admittedly, I’ve got quite a few more rifles than I need for just hunting North American big game, like buck mulies or big bull elk. I load for and shoot rifles in the .22 Hornet (developed in the 1920’s and adopted by Winchester in 1930), the .45-70 (introduced 1873), the .338 Winchester Magnum (introduced 1958), and the .30 WCF (introduced 1895.)
Most of these cartridges are readily available in any large gun or sporting-goods store; hell, you can buy many of them in Wal-Mart, at least some kind of ammo to get you shooting. But when it comes to availability of ammo, you still can’t really beat the old .30-06 Springfield. The ’06 may be 112 years old, but it’s still one of the best big-game rounds going; if I know someone interested in learning the ins and outs of hunting and shooting who wants to buy a single rifle for North American big game, they would be well-advised to buy a .30-06. It will easily handle anything from antelope to moose, although it may be a bit on the light side for big Alaskan bears and the largest bull Alaska-Yukon moose. But the ’06 has a huge advantage for those packing one gun across long distances, perhaps in airline checked baggage: If you lose your ammo supply somewhere en route, you can walk into almost any gas station, bait shop, or general store (there are still some around) and buy at least some kind of ammo that you can re-zero and get to work with.
The only other rifle cartridge that you can say that about it perhaps the old .30 WCF (.30-30, for those not familiar with the original name) and the trienta-trienta is popular enough from the Yukon to the Canal Zone, but not quite up to game like elk or moose. It’s strictly a 150-200-yard cartridge for deer-sized game.
I reckon the .30-06 will be around at least as long as I am. Rifle and cartridge design hasn’t changed all that much, overtly, in the last 100 years; most modern bolt-action rifles are adaptations of the 1898 Mauser, and scores of cartridges, wildcat and otherwise, are still based on the .30-06 case. What has advanced in the shooting world is metallurgy, ammunition propellants and projectiles, and optics. But a good case design is a good case design, which is why the .30-06 remains one old dog that’s learned lots of new tricks.
But, with that said: I have one principle when it comes to hunting rifles: You can shoot little stuff with a big gun, but you can’t shoot big stuff with a little gun. That’s why I generally go afield with a .338 Winchester Magnum.
Shooting legend Elmer Keith was also a fan of the big .33 caliber for big game, although he favored the wildcat .333 OKH, named for its designers Charles O’Neil, Don Hopkins, and the aforementioned Elmer Keith. The OKH was a .30-06 round opened up to take .333 caliber bullets. This wildcat round saw some use in western game fields alongside the similar .35 Whelen (the .30-06 case necked up to .35 caliber) until 1958, when Winchester released the more powerful .338 Winchester Magnum.
If I were to own only one rifle, it would be a .338 Winchester Magnum bolt gun wearing a 2-7X or 3-9X scope and a good stout leather shooting sling. With that, you can easily kill any big game animal in North America while not messing up a 120-pound meat deer too much. But that’s a qualified recommendation; I’m tall, big-framed, and not very recoil-sensitive.
Some folks are just the opposite. Mrs. Animal is small, tiny-framed (4’11”) and, due to chronic pain issues, much more recoil-sensitive. Her primary hunting rifle is a Ruger 77 MkII Compact in the rather interesting little .260 Remington, a good round for deer-size game, but one that will handle elk with good controlled-expansion bullets and careful shot placement.
1891 Argentine stalking rifle
If you’re recoil-conscious and bigger game is on the menu, there are some excellent old standbys, including the .270 Winchester, the .280 Remington and the .30-06. Short-action rounds like the .308 have been wildly successful as well, partly because they work. The old 7x57mm Mauser has killed big game all over the world – “Karamojo” Bell famously killed a lot of African elephants with it, a feat I wouldn’t want to attempt. Some years back I found an old 1891 Argentine Mauser action wearing a 7x57mm barrel; I put a butterknife bolt handle and a Redfield peep on it, stocked it with a nice slim English walnut stock. It was a neat little rifle, light, handy and shootable. I fed it mild handloads and killed a few deer and one javelina with it.
Of course, there’s more to recoil than the cartridge. My .338 is manageable in part because it weighs close to ten pounds loaded, has a nice thick butt pad and is Mag-Na-Ported. The worst-kicking rifle I ever owned was a small-ring 98 Mauser with a slick little European-style stalker stock in black walnut, with an 18” light sporter barrel in .308 and a 1.5-5x scope. It weight about six and a half pounds loaded and was a joy to carry but kicked like a bad-tempered mule.
Optics/Sights
Here’s a basic observation: Most people over-scope their hunting rifles. My favorite example is a guy I chatted with up in Routt County one year who had a 4-12 power, adjustable objective scope on a Marlin 336 .30-30. Scoping the ChiCom SKS is another fad of recent days, which seems like it’s pretty much the definition of polishing a turd.
Most folks, for most hunting, can do very well with a 4X fixed-power scope or a 2-7X or 3x9X variable. You’ll find that in most shooting with variables you’ll keep the scope dialed to the lower end of the range, as target acquisition is a lot quicker with lower magnification.
Long Rifle.
If you’re setting up a rifle for plains deer or antelope, you might want more scope; I have one like that, a Ruger 77 Mk II Target with a 6-18X scope. But that’s a specialized rifle for reaching out and touching speed-goats in open country; it’s not something you want to carry around all day. The damn thing weighs almost twelve pounds with scope, bipod, sling and a load of .243 rounds.
Whatever scope you buy, don’t skimp, but you don’t have to take out a second mortgage. Redfield, Weaver, Simmons and Burris all make reasonably priced good, solid scopes in a wide range of sizes and powers. It’s not out of line to spend as much on your optics as you’ve spent on your rifle, but you can get a decent scope for less than that if you shop around.
In Conclusion
Find a good rifle that you can handle, that you can shoot well, and practice, practice, practice. Get off the range and shoot in the field, from improvised rests and off-hand. Learn how to shoot in the field and you can hit anything, anywhere. Make sure your cartridge/bullet combination is appropriate to the game you’re after; I would not recommend taking on an Alaska grizzly with a .243, for example.
A good hunting rifle should last a couple of lifetimes. Consider it an investment, one that can be passed on to the next generation and choose accordingly. You won’t regret it.
...is the essence of ultrarunning.
Hey! That's not ventriloquism but it is funny, at least to some.
Same with ultrarunning: it's not ventriloquism, but it is funny,
at least to some.
This article is a quickly written, poorly thought out, biased introduction to the hobby.
You ready?
Ready anytime you are!
Technically, an ultramarathon is any foot race longer than 26.2 miles. Typical ultra distances are 50k (31 miles), 50 miles, 100k and 100 miles. Marathons are, more often than not, done on roads, and conversely ultras are more often done on trails.
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People run for many different reasons. Ultrarunners tend to run because they like how they feel as they are running. Some people get into ultrarunning through more traditional running (e.g. track and field or cross country); others come into it through hiking (sometimes through through-hiking).
Did I mention that ultrarunning isn’t really running? The nomenclature can be confusing. Someone who has finished an ultramarathon may casually say, “I just ran [name of ultramarathon] ” when in reality that finisher spent a good portion of the time walking or hiking. I guess the boastful may be deliberately choosing a misleading word to make the accomplishment sound bigger, but ultrarunners use the same word when talking to other ultrarunners who know full well how much walking might be involved (depending on the “runner,” the course, and the conditions).
You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to do the math and figure that someone who completes a 100 mile “run” in 29 hours is not running all that time. In fact, some people do complete ultramarathons without running at all. More typical is the mid-packers strategy of hiking the uphills, and running the flats and gentle downhills, and standing still or even sitting when eating or using the bathroom. Yes, there are exceptions even to those rules testified by little wiggly lines in the sand.
Consequentially, “running” an ultramarathon can be easier (potentially *much* easier) than running a marathon. It’s a great sport for slackers. In the middle of a “race” you can just drop your dummy and stop for whatever reason. Lots of ultra race reports include pictures that were taken by the participants during the race. You can do this when “running” a marathon (and people do), but there is often a different mindset involved.
When someone runs a marathon for the first time, it is not uncommon for that race to be that runner’s first time running that long. Typical training plans for beginning marathon runners have the training go up to 20 miles, with race day being the only time that runner does the full distance. As such, people tend to underestimate how long it’s going to take. In addition to not being aware of just how quickly they may fall apart in the best of circumstances, there’s just enough new stuff going on that virgin marathoners tend to make a lot of mistakes (going out too fast is super typical), yet they cross the finish line and are overwhelmed by emotion when finishing their first marathon.
Anywhere from seconds to weeks after finishing, the disparity between the prediction and reality becomes unsettling, but when thinking about all the mistakes that were made, the next step people often take is to sign up for their second marathon, eliminate the mistakes and see a dramatic decrease in finishing time. However, just as the nascent marathoner didn’t realize how quickly things can fall apart on one’s first marathon, it’s as easy to over extrapolate the gains that one makes between one’s first and second marathon, leading to disappointment on the third.
Some people then fall into a trap and get a bit neurotic about their marathon finishing times. They put in big blocks of time training for an event and then if anything goes wrong (weather, family emergencies, work) they feel let down. They’re no longer running for the fun of running (if they ever did that; there are a lot of people who run their first marathon for reasons other than a love of running).
Marathon courses are typically measured to be exactly 26.2 miles long, because if they’re shorter they can’t be used to qualify for the Boston Marathon and if they’re longer then all the people who are trying to set new personal records (PRs) are going to avoid them.
Ultras, especially trail ultras, tend to be different. Often the distance of the course is an approximation; the “natural” starting and stopping points, due to where the trails are, might cause a 50 miler to be 53 miles. Whereas the presence of hills on a marathon course (unless it’s a downhill course) tend to turn away marathoners, elevation change on ultras is often seen as a way to change gears (i.e., walk!) or as a challenge. Additionally, weather (and fires) cause course re-routes, so not only is it hard to compare two different ultras of ostensibly the same size, it’s often hard to compare the same ultra from year to year. That helps break the PR-driven mindset.
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Did I mention the free drugs? Many people get the runners high when running long but not particularly hard (after years of training, so their muscles, joints and ligaments are all used to the effort). Just watch the portion of this video that has the black and white photos.
These people are about 60 miles into a very tough 120 mile event. Look at their eyes; those people are fucked up. Look at their smiles; those people are happy! Oh, sure, the tequila helps also. In addition to the endocannabinoids your body makes, ultra aid stations often have free beer, tequila or other spirits.
Ultrarunners tend not to take themselves very seriously. The Dahlonega Ultra Marathon Association (DUMASS)’s motto is “Poor Decisions Make for Better Stories.” The Javelina Jundred, a popular hundred mile race outside of Phoenix, has a major aid station named “Jackass Junction.”
Sure, some people bucket-list a particular distance or a particular race. Sometimes that turns into a one-and-done, but many people find that the slower pace, along with the camaraderie and feeling of freedom leads to a fun hobby that can be enjoyed for hours (sometimes days) at a time and done again fairly soon thereafter. This isn’t always obvious from the race reports and videos that people write and make, because it’s human nature to emphasize the grueling aspects or the problems that had to be overcome.
However, although ultramarathoning is still pretty tiny, it’s growing by leaps and bounds, primarily because it really is pretty fun (to some people) and it’s definitely a lot easier than it sounds.
CrossFit. For some the word conjures up visions of guys with man-buns doing an impossible gymnastic feat over and over again on a set of rings, or a girl in a sports bra who is THICC in all the right (or perhaps wrong) places blasting out heavy Olympic lifts in rapid succession. To many it’s a weird and masochistic form of exercising with a cultish following whose adherents refuse to shut up about it.
“A CrossFitter, a vegan, and an atheist walk into a bar. I know because they told me when they walked in.” H/T Dr. Fronkensteen
Stereotypes exist for a reason and far be it from me to defend how some CrossFitters act (much less what they choose to post on social media). That being said, I myself am an adherent to this weird libertarian workout cult and can say that, while I will not claim it is the end-all-be-all form of exercise, it does offer something that most conventional gyms and exercise programs do not.
Part I: A short and incomplete history
CrossFit methodology was developed in the early 2000’s by self-proclaimed “Rabid Libertarian” Greg Glassman. Appropriately for a libertarian, his physical appearance resembles a construction worker on the tail end of a three day bender rather than the founder of an internationally successful fitness movement.
Glassman was a gymnast in high-school who sought to get stronger than the competition by incorporating barbell lifting into his training regimen. He quickly realized that while training specialization might make his friends and competitors better in one particular activity, it often came at the expense of skill or strength in another and that when competing in varied activities and competitions he was often far better equipped than those who focused solely on their event or sport.
Fast forward to 2000 and he’s codified his “jack-of-all-trades” approach into the term known as “CrossFit” and is poised to unleash a fitness phenomenon on the world, complete with head bands, compression socks, copious amounts of loose chalk and pretentious FB posts. The fancy description of the goal of CrossFit goes something like this:
“greater work capacity across broad time and modal domains”
and
“Adherents train to enhance 10 key physical qualities: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance and accuracy.”
Put more simply, the goal is to be “fit.” Strong? Yes. Endurance? You bet. Flexible? Yup. Fast? Uh-huh….. You get the idea.
Unlike many other popular forms of exercising CrossFit eschews specializing in one particular area and seeks to train an individual in all dimensions of fitness simultaneously. An avid marathon runner may have incredible cardiovascular/respiratory endurance but this often comes at the expense of muscular strength. A body builder may be incredibly strong but they are rarely flexible or possess the stamina for prolonged energy expenditure, and so on.
While this may have been a revelation in the fitness world circa 2000, it was by no means a “new” idea. In fact, 20th century fitness was founded on this approach. The CrossFit brand may be relatively new, the methodology however bears a striking resemblance to Georges Hébert’s “Natural Method” of the early 20th Century.
“A (Natural Method) session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrium (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.”
While their definitions of the dimensions of fitness do not perfectly align, their similarity is undeniable. The underlying belief is the same: being all-around fit makes you better equipped not only for survival, but life in general.
The 1970s gave us two trends that would turn the idea of what fitness is on its ear. The running boom and Arnold Schwarzenegger. These two divergent phenomena pushed people away from pursuing fitness itself as a goal and toward physical specialization. New marathons, half-marathons, 10Ks and 5Ks began to pop up across the country, not as a spectacle for the super athlete to compete in, but as something for the average person to aspire to do; participation levels spiked as never before. Soon you had a sizable portion of the population pursuing running only (or at least endurance sports only) and neglecting strength training almost entirely under the false assumption that it makes you “bulky” and “slow.”
One the other end of the spectrum you have Arnold Schwarzenegger, a physical specimen the likes of which the world has never seen. His muscles had muscles. His physique made Michelangelo’s David look like a pajama boy and his popularity redefined the international conception of what it meant to be “strong.” So begins the “gym rat” phenomenon of [mostly] men pumping themselves up in the gym, trying to look like Arnold, moving away from some of the old-fashioned barbell power lifting movements in favor or isolating muscle groups with exercises like curls, flys, bench press, military press, leg extensions, etc. The gym rats were almost as disdainful of cardio/endurance training as the marathoners were of strength training; “it makes you skinny” and “it kills muscle.” “Cardio” if done at all, was confined to a separate workout to be done one or two days a week for most gym rats.
Thus over the last forty years we see the average person faced with a false dichotomy; pursue endurance specialization or strength specialization, when in fact both approaches neglect at least half of what being “fit” is all about.
Fast forward back to the mid-2000s and enter Greg Glassman. New guy peddling an old idea. For the average person, “fitness” is the goal of exercise. Your average person does not exercise to compete in a specialized sport but to have a healthy and functional body. As A Leap at the Wheel put it in GlibFit 2.0, Son of Glibfit:
Fitness is the process of picking things up and putting them down, using excess energy in your diet to improve your heart, lungs, and muscles.
I would add that training your muscles and your heart and lungs need not be, and perhaps should not be, mutually exclusive; fitness is your body’s ability to perform work and that work must be done at the pace that the situation and environment demand.
Will your average person ever “need” to run 26.2 miles? Is there any point to being able to bench 400 lbs beyond being able to claim you can bench 400 lbs? Neither goal is a bad thing in and of itself, yet, hitting a certain run time or weight on a particular lift is often an arbitrary standard to judge one’s fitness. For the average person who is not a competitive athlete training for a specific event, the better standard may be to ask yourself:
Can I lift the heavy object off a child?
Can I climb out the window of a burning building, hang from the ledge and drop to the ground?
Can I pull myself back in that window if need be?
Can I sprint a half-mile down the road to get help?
If I’m in a situation where I need to defend myself or others with my body do I have the stamina to keep fighting for several minutes after the initial assault?
CrossFit came about to supply a demand in the fitness market for those who prioritize function over form and utility over aesthetic. It’s not the only way, much less the perfect way, it’s just a really good, and increasingly available way, to achieve physical utility. While a person’s individual physiology certainly plays no small part, committed CrossFitters often end up with a body type that resembles someone whom works hard outdoors for a living. For those of us attached to keyboards and chairs all day, that’s not a bad thing.
Some of you are asking by now “So what the hell is it exactly? What makes it so libertarian?” Good questions that will be answered in Part 2. Please let me reiterate this disclaimer; I do not claim CrossFit is the perfect form of exercise. While I believe in the methodology, its execution often falls victim to human nature and I intend to distinguish between good and bad trends within CrossFit in Part 3.
For now let me close by saying that its appeal, for me, is rooted in the libertarian virtue of self-reliance. Sure it’s nice to look good naked and know that I’m doing something good for my body, but below that at the core it’s about capitalizing on the body I’ve been given.
In a world that is increasingly dismissive and hostile to the idea of self-reliance, I sleep better at night knowing I am physically able to come to the aid of a family member or neighbor in a time of crisis. It’s about being confident that I’m at least somewhat prepared physically to respond to the unforeseen. The best analogy I can come up with: it’s akin to owning a firearm or a tool; my body does me little good if it’s neglected and rusty.
Razors come in all different shapes and sizes, but there are three most important attributes: weight, balance, and aggressiveness. The key to shaving with a single blade razor is to avoid pressing. The blade should glide over your face, and even the slightest pressure can make for a bad shave. As such, the right weight razor keeps you from having to exert pressure to get the razor to cut. Too light, and your blade will skip right off your face. Too heavy, and you have very little control and feel as you cut. Balance also influences the control and feel. A well balanced razor can be held by two fingers and you can almost feel every whisker yield to the blade. Aggressiveness is about matching your style and skin sensitivity to how much the razor tries to take off on each pass. Some folks like really aggressive razors. Some (like me) like less aggressive razors. It’s all about getting a close cut without causing razor burn. Certain safety razors have adjustable aggressiveness. You twist a selector, and the blade bends to a different angle, reducing or increasing aggressiveness.
Some people then fall into a trap and get a bit neurotic about their marathon finishing times. They put in big blocks of time training for an event and then if anything goes wrong (weather, family emergencies, work) they feel let down. They’re no longer running for the fun of running (if they ever did that; there are a lot of people who run their first marathon for reasons other than a love of running).
