15,821 Feet

As the title to this blog post suggests, I have broken my previous altitude record on this most recent leg of my journey from Espinar to Arequipa. The night before I broke my new altitude record, I found frost covering my tent and bicycle for the first time since Northern Mexico. I was at only 13,000 feet then. Previously, when I topped out on a mountain pass, I was rewarded with a long downhill. Alas, the altiplano is cruel and rewards me with several days to a week of cold, wet riding. At 15,000 feet, it is cold even if it is sunny. Most of the time I spent in the altiplano was on a dirt road, albeit a high quality one without the wheel destroying washboard grooves and massive rocks jutting out of the road. Nonetheless, the road slowed me down. I spent three days over 14,000 feet. The first day that I topped out over 15,000 feet, it began to snow right when I reached a small village. The one and only lodging in town only charged $3 for one of its beds so I jumped at the chance. I even slept in late knowing that it would be as cold as a witches tittie in the morning.
I was so happy when I finally reached asphalt even though I was still at a very high elevation. The headwinds were fierce and cold. There were times when my feet were really cold despite the fact that I was wearing a double layer of socks. The small town of Imata had plenty of restaurants but no lodging. There were two little kids that told me that their family had lodging and I trusted them because I thought they were too small to have truly sinister intentions but they started acting real suspiciously which made my spidey senses tingle. They led me to the back of a house on the main road and told me to knock on the gate. When I knocked on the gate, the kids ran to hide. When I asked them why they were doing this they did not provide me with a satisfactory answer so I decided to leave them. I would rather camp in the freezing weather than wait around to see what nasty surprises were in store for me. Fortunately, I was able to find lodging that night at the local police station. They had an extra bed and everything.
The next day, in an attempt to avoid camping in freezing weather, I rode over 130 kilometers and ascended almost 4,000 feet to the city of Arequipa. Despite all the ascending, I finally got the long downhill stretches I had been pining for. There is nothing quite as exhilarating and adrenalizing as lane splitting between semis on a long downhill stretch. I am going to rest here in Arequipa for the next couple of days but I know that, eventually, I am going to have to bite the bullet and do some more camping in freezing weather as it is only going to get colder as I travel farther south.
As someone who comes from the radical nonconsumption camp, I have to admit that I am disgusted by almost all of the U.S. government's attempts to bolster the economy. I personally know several people who have been laid off recently but I think that we should nevertheless embrace the Great Recession as pundits are calling it now. There is something terribly wrong with an economic system that depends entirely on the profligate consumption of a few rich countries of products created by a slave-like underclass of third world workers. I want to live in a world where a 20 hour work week is considered full time. Also, I would like to see the industrial countries of the world significantly decrease their carbon footprint. In that interest, I have compiled a disparate list of companies, entire industries, government policies, and whatnot that should be downsized if not outright eliminated along with a short justification for each one. This is by no means comprehensive and I might add to this list in the future.
The Big Three automakers, do not deserve any sympathy. They have done their best to destroy public transportation infrastructure and fight any increases in mileage standards for cars for decades. They also effectively receive a massive subsidy from the U.S., state, and local governments in the form of highway building and free parking. The government should actively try to change consumer behavior by tolling all highways, eliminating free parking, and taxing gasoline. Moreover, the funds taken from these measures should be used to subsidize public transportation. Also every highway in the U.S. that has more than one lane for each direction should sacrifice a lane for high-speed rail. The only legitimate argument that the car companies have is that there impending bankruptcy will cost the U.S. government even more money than they are currently burning because of a U.S. law that insures the pension plans of companies that go bankrupt. My response to this is change the law. All of the other automakers will happily build more U.S. factories to supply cars to the largest car market in the world.
Golf is an industry that I would like to see collapse completely. In a world where fresh water is an increasingly scarce resource, we have no room for inplacably thirsty golf courses. The massive amounts of fertilizer that they use also pollute the water tables further damaging fresh water supplies. The golf course in the middle of Yosemite National Park still pisses me off. Also, I strongly dislike the elitist, racist, and sexist tendencies of golf clubs. Membership fees are exorbitant for all but the well-to-do. The golf course in Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters are held, still excludes women. Did I mention that golf is not a sport.
Baseball is another sport I would like to see collapse. This is just a personal prejudice of mine and I admit that but one has to admit that there is something inherently unfair about a professional league where the team-that-shall-not-be-named spends up to ten times as much as other teams. Put all those steroid junkies on the street.
I would love to see military spending reduced if not slashed drastically. Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems to be doing very little in this department. We should immediately eliminate all expenditures on weapons development as we have no equal on the battlefield when it comes to technology. I would also like to see an immediate withdrawl from all foreign war zones and a selling off of all international military bases to our allies. All foreign military support should also be eliminated. Israel does not need our military support and all of our military initiatives in Latin America seem to fail miserably especially when one does a cost-benefit analysis.
We should stop the drug war as it does more harm than the drugs themselves. The illegal drug industry is also recession proof. As this is a favorite subject of mine to rant about, I will not beat this dead horse any more.
Junk mail is an absurd waste of resources. I would guess that most Americans do not read about 95% of their mail. I don't even check my mail anymore. There should be a do-not-mail list as well as the do-not-call list. Also, anyone with an internet account should automatically be weened from receiving any bills in the mail by law. This would save countless trees and fuel. Yes, we would probably have to lay off massive amounts of postal workers but they are redundant anyway.
I would love to see a massive grass-roots rebellion against planned obselescence. It is an open secret that ipod batteries die after two years and you have to replace the entire ipod. This is just one example of many. We as consumers should stand up to the corporations that make shoddy products.
Since more and more Americans are being laid off, we should collectively have a lot more time to cook. In this spirit I would love to see consumers shun prepackaged T.V. dinners and canned food in favor of fresh, preferably local ingredients. If more consumers shunned these products fresh produce would become cheaper as consumers would no longer have to compete with massive corporations and their bulk buying power when they purchase fresh food.
I would love to see the entire jewelery industry go down. These shiny little trinkets are useless and do nothing for anyone. The entire gold industry is one of the most environmentally destructive industries there is. For each ounce of gold that the mining companies extract they extract 30 tons of ore and bake it in cyanide. There is no environmentally friendly way to do this. Also the diamonds that people purchase fund bloody insurgencies throughout the world.
The advertising industry is another harmful industry. They create demand for products where there previously was none. Fire the whole lot of them.
The wedding industry needs some serious downsizing. I still can't believe how much money Americans waste every year on their weddings. Also, their inevitable divorces cost even more than their weddings.
We should truly harness the power of the internet to eliminate the real estate industry. They get 6% just because they had an effective monopoly of real estate listings. The internet can change that.
I also have a personal hatred for air conditioners. They actually increase the temperature outside whereever they are in use. Also, as most of the electricity in the U.S. is provided by natural gas burning power plants, the use of air conditioners contributes to global warming. If you can't stand the heat, stay in the north you fucking yankee.
People should stop paying for cable television. It is obscene that people pay a premium for these channels only to have infomercials on every one of these channels for about 8 hours a day. Night owls and early birds should know this well. We should be able to selectively choose which channels we want to have and pay for only those channels as most cable subscribers don't even watch half of the channels they have. Moreover, we should have the option of paying a one time fee for sporting events or other shows we would like to see. I recently discovered that I can watch many sporting events on the internet on live-streaming web sites.
I would love to see massive layoffs in law enforcement. The problem we have as a country is not that we don't have enough police officers but that there are too many laws that they have to enforce. Ending the drug war would eliminate the need for at least half of these police officers, not to mention prosecuters, defense attorneys, judges, and jailers. There are also a lot of other laws that we could eliminate. I personally hate noise ordinances. Why is it that the cops are called almost every time anyone throws a party but I can't call the cops when the sound of leaf blowers and car alarms disturb me.
I am sure that I could think of a lot more industries to eliminate given the time. We could then spread the remaining jobs among everyone else and work towards achieving the 20 hour work week for everyone. With all this free time, we could then rededicate ourselves to our hobbies and passions. Maybe we could even spend more time with our families and friends.