Bicycling Roots

Posted on July 15, 2022 by ehurst

I grew up riding trash bikes. I can recall the first time indexed shifting was offered. At that time, I still preferred turning that feature off, but the old style friction-shift is now actually more expensive than indexed shifting. Only in the last few years have I tested riding better bikes.

At the same time, I really needed a lot of education about what to expect. Not the crap dealers tell you; I’m talking about the kind of education you get from trying something and having it fail. Once I had tasted the high-end shifters and derailers, it was hard to go back to the cheaper stuff. But then, when I tried upgrading the cheap ones, there were always so many complications because nobody will tell you which particular type you need to replace that particular type you have. I discovered that Shimano Deore was not all one thing. There are about five different types of just that one model, and they don’t all fit the same way.

So, the last bike I had was really nice; friends helped me pay the high price. The derailers were easily the only part that worked right. The shifters could be a pain, at times. I had lots of trouble with other things, as well, issues that the manufacturer insisted consumers would not face. Everything was high-strung and expensive to fix. The other day, I was out riding and things were going quite well. Then, I had a flat on the rear.

No big deal, right? After replacing the tube, I was working the tire back onto the rim and spotted a crack in the alloy. I got to looking closer and realized that the spokes were almost pulling through the alloy shell of the rim. Had I not gotten a flat first, I could have suffered a crash when three or four spokes in a row ripped out of the rim. The Lord protected me from something I could not have known about.

Who would inspect such expensive rims for cracks like that? It was a gravel bike; it’s supposed to handle some rough riding. Instead, the rim was actually rather fragile. When I checked, the front rim was also starting to crack. Not one of my old trash bikes ever suffered that kind of thing. When I took it up with the dealer, he breezily told me that it’s not too surprising given that it was just out of warranty. He thought it was perfectly normal to replace those expensive rims after just two years of rather careful riding. I didn’t jump any curbs and I tried to avoid rough surfaces, but it was about to blow out completely after just over two years.

I decided to offer it for salvage on my local Craigslist. It sold the next day, and I gave the buyer the extra tires I had stocked up on because I am not going back to that style of equipment. Instead, I went back to my roots. It’s not entirely a trash bike, but it’s at the top of that class. And I’m going back to mountain biking, with the cheaper drive trains. I know how they work and I’m used to their sloppy shifting. I know how to replace parts of the drive train, and when to do it, and the parts are a lot cheaper. (The rack, saddle and gooseneck are carried over from previous bikes.)

Yes, riding a mountain bike is more work. The knobby tires offer a bit more roll resistance, but then, it doesn’t bog down in things like sand nearly as much. I can ride more kinds of places, not just restricted to paved surfaces. I’ll get a harder workout and take shorter rides. It will encourage me to stop more often and I’m more likely to take pictures. I won’t feel compelled to keep riding hard and ignoring the scenery. I’m more likely to ride as if playing, instead of riding like it’s some kind of competition. Meanwhile, stuff isn’t going to break any more often than it did with the expensive bikes, but it will be a lot less expensive when it does.

By the way, this is an extra large frame, which with the GT brand usually means a lot longer and just a little taller. The axle spread is over 5 feet, so it’s smoother on rough surfaces. I’m sure I’ll replace the handlebars sometime in near future, but I need to take a look at what’s available. And you know, every time I pray about stuff on this new bike, the Lord supplies my need. I started praying about this over a year ago, but I was determined to keep using what God had provided until He was ready to supply my request. The shocking discovery of the cracked rims, and the attitude of the dealer, helped me to realize the time had come for the Lord to answer my request.

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Stop Pretending

Posted on July 13, 2022 by ehurst

So here we are, associating ourselves with an alternative message, trying to make a clear distinction between the mainstream media lies and what we have to say. Some of us claim to be distinctly Christian, even embracing an alternative version of Christian religion that disparages the mainstream churchianity. We are the dissident voices trying to refresh the ancient biblical message of Christ, trying to tear down the artificial barriers that make religion just another category of human activity. We want to press the lordship claims of Christ over every facet of human existence.

So, why do we see so little effort on trying to seek the lost sheep of the Lord?

I’ve noticed a lot of folks in alternative social media, the alt-right in particular, who militantly refuse to discuss any kind of redemptive effort. They do pretty good at presenting an excellent clear model of righteousness, until it gets to the part where we deal with people who want it but aren’t quite there, and don’t know where to go next.

Do you remember the Woman at the Well? Whatever else you draw from that narrative, it must include the patience Jesus had with the woman’s false understanding of things. Jesus got rough with the Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees (whipping the crooked concessionaires in the Court of Gentiles around Passover). Still, He took the time to minister to people who were just lost and needed some encouragement. He had fellowship with penitent low-life types, along with the likes of Nicodemus.

Why do we not see that kind of thing in the message of the alternative social media writers? I’m not suggesting a busy blog author needs to answer all queries. I’m saying they need to be more graceful in dealing with those who have a long path to walk. Some of your posts need to focus on redemptive guidance. If you have a clear vision of where people should be in their hearts, can you at least now and then offer a little advice on how to get there?

Along with a couple of other writers, I keep pushing the necessity of restoring some measure of the ancient Hebrew perspective to which Jesus called His nation. We need to know what Jesus the man was thinking, and it starts with at least a grasp on the Ancient Near East in general. A major part of that was how men with any measure of authority at all were moved by the high value they placed on people under their authority. The greatest treasure of an ancient Hebrew man was the people within his domain.

If you are going to exercise the authority to broadcast your moral path to others, you must also take some measure of responsibility for those who consume that broadcast. I know what a hassle it can be; that’s part of our fallen condition. Still, to shut off all access simply because it’s inconvenient means you need to stop pumping out more than you can follow up on. If you can’t help people make it work, then you have done them no favors by sharing your wisdom.

So, basically you need to shut up and stop yakking endlessly if you can’t take under your wings at least a few folks who will testify that you actually know a thing or two about the subject. Either be a shepherd or stop pretending you should lead.

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Do You Really Want to Understand?

Posted on July 11, 2022 by ehurst

So, most of us understand that the globalists are doing a poor job of concealing their murderous plans to reduce the world’s human population through a very painful process of impoverishing us. They are shutting down the western economic system quite intentionally. The so-called pandemic was a jump start on that. Now they are destroying food handling facilities by the hundreds in America, shutting down petroleum wells and refineries (by regulation and by sabotage), exporting as much petroleum as possible, buying up farmland so they can make it all fallow, etc. They are insisting on vaccines that are guaranteed to sterilize and slowly kill a significant portion of us.

You get the idea; I think we all agree on this stuff. The only thing new is the ongoing exposure of the details. Sometimes what liberty researchers uncover still shocks the conscience. The globalists hate us and really do want us to die miserably.

In a previous post some time back I noted that governments are not actually running the show. It’s not enough that the entire federal bureaucracy is now devoted to the globalist agenda, but the people who actually control the policies are not government officials, nor even the so-called “Deep State”. They are all lackeys for a very secretive elite group that are essentially bankers and financiers. Those people are the true rulers of the world.

One of the recurring themes in many dystopian novels, science fiction in particular, is how government could be privatized. Well, that’s happening now. The global bankers and financiers are telling governments what to do.

If you attempt to estimate their next moves, you are quite likely to guess wrong. Most folks who profess a liberty orientation are focused on the wrong notions of how God is working in this tribulation. They honestly believe that God is somehow an uber-patriot in favor of America. He’s not at all like that. America was never a covenant nation.

God made it clear in the Bible that He does not deal directly with human politics except via His covenants. Since the crucifixion of Jesus was Israel divorcing herself from God, her national covenant was vacated. As I taught in a recent Bible lesson on the forum, Jesus warned the Pharisees that a divorce was coming. When Jesus died on the Cross, the Temple Veil was torn open. There was no longer any reason to imagine that Israel remained the one true source of divine revelation to the world. Her rituals and laws became meaningless; they didn’t obey Moses anyway. From that day forward, as Jesus said at the end of Matthew 23, the only way they could rejoin any covenant with God was to embrace their Messiah.

The Covenant of Moses is dead. It stands as a historical record that clarifies God’s personality, His divine moral character. However, it is no longer applicable in itself to any people anywhere. The ethnic nation of Israel is now under Noah. Of course, were they to actually live by Moses as Jesus taught him, they would comply with Noah at the same time. One of the things we are are supposed to do in studying the Word to show ourselves as “workmen not ashamed” is in discerning how Moses clarifies Noah.

Meanwhile, Jesus made it abundantly clear that human politics no longer mattered. Indeed, He dodged every attempt to get Him to fix the political situation. God was no longer going to work through human politics they way He had with Israel. Granted, it is still theoretically possible for a nation to embrace the Covenant of Noah, but that is now subsumed under the Covenant of Christ. In other words, a nation would be obliged to become at least ostensibly Christian.

And not “Christian” in any western sense of the word. Rather, a nation would have to become an Ancient Near Eastern style tribal feudal nation. They would have to embrace the heart-led way. They would have to bind themselves under feudal commitment to Christ as Lord. Yes, you could in theory implement the Covenant of Noah in such a way as to gain God’s direct involvement in human political affairs. That’s what churches are supposed to do, so that church politics are subject to God’s direct involvement.

Without that kind of covenant covering, all human activity, politics in particular, are under Satan’s dominion. The only way you can keep the Devil out of your business is to keep it all under the Covenant covering. America was never under that covering, so what’s happening now in America today is simply another part of Satan’s wider agenda in human affairs. God has placed all of it withing his domain as Prince of This World.

I’ve said this before: Satan is a faithful feudal vassal of God. The Devil’s rebellion was ended and punished before Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden. The temptation leading to the Fall was simply Satan acting in his new role, having been demoted from Covering Cherub. In the Ancient Near East, the way a ruler kept his strongest opponent under control was to make him the Left Hand Man, the punisher and jailer. The only income such a noble had was from those the ruler sentenced to serve in the jailer’s prison — the difference between prison and slavery is insignificant.

If you can’t get this image into your calculus, then you will never understand how Satan operates in human affairs, and how he gets God’s permission to deceive us. As long as we keep buying into the Devil’s lies, we are living out from under the divine covering. We must stand firm under the Lord’s covenant covering, and that means our lives have to look pretty much like the Covenant of Noah.

Oh, but there’s more. Since Israel divorced herself from God, she was picked up by Satan as her new husband. The Apostle John made it clear that Judaism is the Synagogue of Satan (Revelation 2:9 and 3:9). Judaism is simply Pharisaism; Jesus’ condemnation of the Scribes and Pharisees applies to the whole of Judaism and the ethnic agenda of Jews. In other words, they serve Satan’s agenda. And it just so happens that the elite bankers and financiers are all faithfully pursuing the Jewish ethnic agenda, since virtually all of them identify as Jews. The globalists in various official governments are all serving that agenda.

So if you want to understand the broader plans the globalists, you’ll have to understand the Jewish ethnic agenda. My friend, Catacomb Resident, has done a marvelous job of recounting that agenda, pointing back to Kevin MacDonald in current writings and one of his books. It’s not that we completely agree with what MacDonald promotes, but we agree with his historical analysis of how Jews destroyed America. It’s laborious to read, but his Culture of Critique shows in detail how Americans were manipulated and scolded into destroying their own culture.

The Jewish ethnic agenda is naturally evil, since it is the remainder of the Nation of Israel having divorced God and marrying the Devil, instead. Much of that agenda misses the point, of course, because it’s a lie of the Devil. It has become just another example of how Satan allows nations and kingdoms to rise and fall, all based on a deception about reality. And the Enlightenment, which is the philosophical foundation of America, was shaped and informed by the Jewish ethnic agenda. Thus, America was just another deceived human hope, as is every other nation on this earth that does not take refuge under any valid covenant with God.

Again: If you want to understand what’s coming, you’ll have to understand MacDonald’s work, and you’ll have to understand how God works. You’ll need to get a clue about the existing Covenant of Christ, which includes the Covenant of Noah, and how Satan’s agenda is one deception after another, keeping people away from God’s covenant truth.

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More Economic Lies

Posted on July 7, 2022 by ehurst

The current economic malaise was planned; we all know that. A primary driver is the price of petroleum products. The price was rising well before Biden moved into the White House. Stopping the XL pipeline didn’t help, but it also didn’t hurt that much. It was supposed to carry just a small part of what has already been coming across the border in other pipelines. What set off the fuels inflation was a collection of decisions made long ago to stop building refineries in the US. We can get far more oil than we can refine. Sanctions against Russia simply made a bad decision worse.

So, this inflation is systemic and intentional. The ruling elite want us to die, but they want to insure we are also miserable along the way. This is going to get worse until it reaches a breaking point. That breaking point will be the states pulling away from the Union. Any other kind of uprising is impossible at this point. There’s no way to predict how this will play out. It’s for sure plenty of state governments are already discussing it, and negotiating how they might work together.

Most of the states’ leadership are reluctant to believe this is really happening. Those eager to make the move are currently in the minority in most state governments. The economic troubles are not enough by themselves; there has to be some kind of policy provocation that goes too far. Few states are in a position to survive alone, but they are the ones that will lead the way, but even then, they will be reluctant. For example, what will Oklahoma do with the massive and growing Tinker AFB? What about all those jobs? Look for states to strive mightily to first blunt federal overreach without a genuine secession. It won’t happen quickly.

On the other hand, given how much the national economy is shutting down, look for states to confront this issue on their own rather early. Out of sheer necessity, economic activity must localize. This will put the big corporations in a bind. Some of them have shown a nasty streak of wokism, and it predisposes them to attempt sanctions against states that make the first moves. In many cases it might not be much of a market loss, especially with Big Tech companies; so-called Red States aren’t their best customers anyway. But if more states take this path, it can get expensive for those corporations whose leadership thinks they are too big to fail. There’s always an entrepreneur eager to step into a market gap.

Given the rising fuel costs, I would expect agriculture to shift to the local market first. The business of the elites buying up farm property is aimed at shutting them down and forcing us to eat manufactured foods. But there are enough hard-headed farmers smart enough to realize the export market is going to die, and their future depends on cultivating a more local market. Instead of massive fields of single cash crops, they’ll start diversifying into multiple grocery crops. Raising food animals will change, too. Or, they can just shut down and sell, and states are already talking about how to keep out the elites trying to shut down agriculture.

What I’m getting at is that this economic downturn isn’t permanent. Some elements are long-term, but actual survival is not threatened. We will get to the other side of this eventually. Everything we know will change, but life itself will not be crushed. The globalist elites have miscalculated and some of their plans will fail. Not all of them, of course. America is dead; they’ve already won that battle. But seizing global control is simply not going to happen. Their neoliberal “rules based order” is their grand vision and the basis for constant scolding of those who don’t embrace their plans. But it turns out that the majority of the human race is against them, and will not play along.

Of course, we still have to deal with some natural disasters. Earth is in upheaval for several reasons, not least because of the solar catastrophes headed our way. Still, we have a couple of decades for that, and there’s a lot of living we can do until then. I’m still walking the Radix Fidem path.

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Economic Lies

Posted on July 3, 2022 by ehurst

There’s something going on here and I cannot keep it to myself; it’s a fire in my bones.

Libertarian economic theory is a lie. It makes no effort at all to account for fallen human nature. It assumes the “free market” will tell the truth, but almost nobody on this earth engages the economy in any logical fashion. There is always some other guiding principle besides what is economically reasonable. Classical economic theory is nonsense, but modern Keynesian economics is even worse. One thing’s for sure: If you do not restrict those with significant wealth and power, they will quickly own everything and crap on the little people. It’s not that all boats will rise in prosperity, because the powerful and wealthy poke holes in everyone else’s boats.

Here is a rather accessible explanation of some very obscure economic truth. It’s no secret that the economic collapse is being engineered by the western globalist ruling elite. As I’ve noted in the past, not everyone in the ruling elite are actually running the show. There are two levels, and it’s mostly the bankers and financiers who are running things, while the politicians are their lackeys. The latter will often say and do things that go off script because they just aren’t that smart. They will all be thrown under the bus at the appropriate time, as judged by the former.

The point is that bankers and financiers are seizing control through debt. As the linked article explains, they are rather quickly buying up real estate. If not directly, they are making the loans that give them ultimate ownership. It’s just a tiny handful of them and they form a group monopoly (technically an “oligopoly”), because they are always working in concert. Yes, it’s a conspiracy, a real one. Together rent and mortgages are shooting upward; it’s the single greatest cause of inflation. Meanwhile, through the MSM, these monopolists are lying, saying that the real cause of inflation is wages.

So they have announced a plan to generate a very high level of unemployment so that there are more people competing for the same jobs and it will justify driving down the wages offered. They do this on top of all the other crap they are doing to beggar everyone who isn’t in their class or their direct employ.

America is becoming and third-world hell-hole. You can do nothing about it. Nobody on the political horizon is on your side. Even most state government officials are part of this game. You don’t have enough bullets to kill them all, and you aren’t going to get organized enough to do it in the first place. Your only real hope is to become prepared in your heart to face this tribulation, to become self-reliant and adaptable enough to make do with what God provides.

Oh, and that’s the real solution of course — trusting in the Lord. You have to cling to Him tightly in a heart-led Covenant walk of faith. Get familiar with the Covenant boundaries, because they will be your salvation in the coming days. God’s promises do not fail.

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Ride Photos 05

Posted on June 27, 2022 by ehurst

Looking back from the south bank River Trail, this is the Portland Avenue bridge. This is the turn-around point for one of my most frequent loops. I ride across this bridge at least once per week as one of my shorter rides. With the excessive heat last week, I saw this bridge a couple of times, because long rides aren’t really safe when it gets above 90°F.

I did make it out to Draper Lake Bikeway once last week when the high was just a few degrees lower. I had to leave the house at about 7AM in order to get back before the heat was too high. Out at the lake, there is currently still enough moisture in the ground from the frequent torrential rains we had a few weeks ago. Thus, I still see flower patches like this. But another week of dry heat will wipe out the berries and the flowers like these. The taller grasses will start to brown.

This field produced a good hay crop before the drought hit. It’s pretty rare to see the smaller rectangular bales these days; everyone uses the one-ton bales now. These were mowed and rolled up over a day or so, and they’ll be left out in the sun like this for a week or more before they get collected and put away in the barn at the top of the hill in this picture.

Today was rather cool, so I took a much longer ride. I went out to Harrah and through Jones. Out on the big hill above the Canadian River in the northern Harrah area is the Wind Drift Orchards, producing mostly peaches on this high ridge. This is the owner’s house and a picturesque stock pond out front.

One of the larger commercial farms out in Jones, this one stands just north of the State Center School (the school so named because it stands on the geographical center of the State of Oklahoma). This whole farm runs along the flood bank of the North Canadian River. That means a portion of the crop is always down on a lower level, about a couple of feet below the rest of the farm.

Where I crossed the North Canadian River on Britton Road, the effects of the drought are very painfully clear. It can get just a little bit lower before the state declares some kind of water emergency.

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Ride Photos 04

Posted on June 9, 2022 by ehurst

A very nice homemade stock fence; this is strong enough to contain horses, but I’ve never seen any in this pasture. The upright posts between the welded frames are made of cedar, a tree that grows abundantly wild here in Central Oklahoma. This fence is relatively new and stands out near NE 122nd Street along Westminster Road.

The same concrete railing stands on both sides; a very nice place to sit. The area is fairly remote from most traffic, unless the sand and gravel yard is busy. Imagine: The breeze can be felt, but isn’t strong enough to make the trees rustle. You hear crows calling, several different songbirds, but the hawks are silent, hunting along the river. Every now and then you hear something burble in the water below, where the rip-rap catches the water along the bank. Somewhere just on the edge of your hearing are bullfrogs.

Just a little farther along NE 122nd Street is an alfalfa field not yet fully grown enough to produce the tiny purple flowers. This field rides up over the flood bank of the North Canadian River Valley. That’s the last obstacle to general catastrophic flooding, which is exceedingly rare. A little less rare is that water has come up to this hump a few times during my life.

Today I spotted there rare purple flowers along the Draper Bikeway.

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Ride Photos 03

Posted on June 4, 2022 by ehurst

I finally got a taste of dewberries this season. These are in the fence along the promenade trail on the NW corner of Draper Lake. As you can see, they have just begun to turn ripe (black). Meanwhile, the blackberries are in bloom, so they’ll be ready in about three weeks. On rides up around the north end of the county, I’ve seen just a few blackberries starting to ripen in protected areas (getting sun, but not so much wind).

Of course, we have to have some summer flower shots! The stuff in the foreground is clusters of tiny daisy-looking blossoms, actual daisies in the mid-ground bracketed by two different purple colored things. The red and pink flowers come out later when it gets hotter.

This (below) is just another mix, including some yellow sunflowers and a lot of plants that don’t flower. Okies call them “weeds” but they always show up in the flowers like this. They aren’t noxious in any way, but they do host ticks and chiggers, so you don’t want to stand still in them very long.

This (below) is another batch of sunflowers and some other stuff for which I don’t have any names. It features the same leafy stalks as before.

There is a stock pond on the OKC-PD property (below left). The OKC Police Department has a domestic animal facility which we jokingly call “the dog and pony barn”. There’s a training area for working dogs, a barn with stalls for police horses, some miscellaneous horse trailers and other farming type equipment, but there’s also some cattle, and from time to time, other domestic livestock shows up. In the background of this image on the right is a collection of waterfowl that nobody owns, they just hang around because the police feed them.

This is just one of the numerous sand and gravel extraction pits along the course of the river in the OKC area. This one has been worked over so that the banks are sloped. Off camera to the right, this pond connects directly to the river. Thus, it keeps the same water level.

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Random Ride Photos

Posted on May 29, 2022 by ehurst

Collected random photos from rides the previous week or two — this one is a protected cove on Hefner Lake. I rode past the lake twice and this was the better shot that came out. I did my 50-miler Friday and was too tired to do it right.

On one of my rides, I came across this cattle pasture (below) that had been harvested for hay at some point. The area close to the gate where I stood to take this shot was not that well developed, I guess, so it didn’t get mowed. After a half-week of heavy rain, the wild purple thistles came up in a swath that hadn’t been mowed. They were all very excellent specimens, too.

A little ways north of the previous shot was the horse farm I love to see. It’s the only one in the area that is so well done, with all the buildings matching the same theme. Today I saw more dogs running around in the paddocks than horses; apparently they run a kennel, too, and sell this one particular breed that seems good with horses.

This is the bridge over the North Canadian River at Hefner Road. This shot looks east, showing how the road isn’t exactly straight along the surveyed section line. You can tell we are out in the country.

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Spring Flower Edition 2022

Posted on May 17, 2022 by ehurst

Not much commentary to offer; I’ll let the flowers speak for themselves mostly. But the first shot is not just any flower; it’s dewberry vines in bloom. That means dewberries in a couple of weeks.

The water is normally up to the darker footing

Twin scent treat

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