Prepping Equals Adulting

Adulting vs Rocky Mountain Race Week

The Stallion sits at home

$350 down the drain

Because this event is a “pay in advance, no refunds unless we cancel” setup (they have far more applicants than spots available), I dropped $350 several months ago (before COVID was a big thing). 

Of course, that isn’t a drop in the bucket compared to the car costs, but at least I still have the car and can run it next year (plus at the local tracks). 

There’s something in accounting called a “sunk cost” which means that, like this event, I’ve paid for it up front, so the cost (at a later time) shouldn’t be a consideration as to whether it makes sense to go.

We see people struggling with the concept of “sunk cost” all the time, causing them to make bad decisions because of a perceived value that something has that, in reality, it doesn’t.

Example. The Chicago Bears kicker double doinked away the season in 2018. The guy was horrible all year, and he (literally) cost the Bears a playoff game by hitting the upright (twice on one kick).

After the season, the Bears had to decide whether to bring him back because they still owed him several million dollars of guaranteed salary (i.e. they paid him whether he played for Chicago of not). His salary was a sunk cost. 

While many people may have felt a temptation to bring the guy back and “make him earn his money” in truth nobody wanted to see him in a Bears uniform again. 

The Bears chose adulting, and they adulted and fired him. As they should have.

Setting aside COVID-19 vs. Politics

I suspect, knowing the political leanings of many preppers, that I’ve gotten some of my audience rolling their eyes by now because I KNOW how politicized EVERYTHING is.

I honestly don’t care. I’ll leave caring about the political beliefs on COVID to people who haven’t lost multiple family members to this disease.

I have, and before anybody starts in on the whole “Yeah but they are calling anything blah blah blah blah” just stop. Tests were run, they had the symptoms, they got worse, they died from respiratory failure. We are a no-excuse zone around here, we couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about what any politician has to say about COVID.

We don’t get our medical information from politicians.

Ever.

Let me repeat that. We do not get our medical information from politicians.

EVER.

We have a pathophysiologist in the family, somebody who teaches future doctors about the study of disease. Unlike some website, left or right leaning news organization, we just don’t care about politics when it comes to understanding disease. 

Getting medical information from politicians is ignorant and dangerous, and it has no place here. Now that I’ve cleared this up….

COVID-19 vs adulting

As race week approached, the COVID-19 infection rate started skyrocketing in various areas across the country. Most of the new cases are being transmitted by people who spend time in close contact in restaurants and with large groups of people, especially large groups of people who have traveled recently.

SO… the whole thought of hopping into my car, driving out to Colorado, and spending the next week in close contact with hundreds of people from all across the country at events scheduled during the week, in restaurants and sleeping in motels… while wearing a mask at least for the interactive parts… for fun…

OK, there’s that.

Now add that onto driving 3,000 miles, loading and unloading my equipment and tools, maintaining a supercharged drag racing car, swapping wheels out twice a day, all by myself without any help whatever… and then having to deal with breakdowns with no support whatever. 

Dang. Just dang. 

I dropped a dime and made the call to cancel.

The silver lining!

As soon as I cancelled, I went ahead and set myself up for my “silver lining” option… 

One of my other passions is astronomy, and once it was clear I wasn’t going to make the trip for RMRW, I signed up for the Nebraska Star Party (NSP), which is held in one of my favorite places on the planet, a rural reservior high up in the sand hills of central Nebraska.

Why is this different, COVID wise, than RMRW? Well, there’s not nearly as many people, and people mostly only travel regionally for the NSP. It’s also held in one really big open area where you set up you own camp away from other people, and you kind of do your own thing. 

There are classes if you want to take them, and there’s a great “gear swap” session, and it’s an entirely different groove. It’s also something that Spice could attend due to timing with her job, so it’s not a solo trip.

Adulting has it’s rewards, am I right?

Of course, dear friends, this is 2020

Notification was given on the 15th that, due to the risks of COVID, this years Nebraska Star Party was cancelled.

I know there’s such a thing as fool’s gold, but is there something called “fool’s silver”?