Prepping Equals Adulting

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Sentry18

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Prepping Equals Adulting

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Salty


On the one hand, in a situation that needed some adulting, I adulted.

It was the smart thing to do, it was the right thing (for me) to do, and it stings. A lot.
Adulting vs Rocky Mountain Race Week
I withdrew from Rocky Mountain Race Week (RMRW) and gave up my spot because the middle of a pandemic (and associated economic challenges) didn’t seem like the best time to spend 10 days in 10 different hotels traveling all 1,500 miles in close contact with a thousand people from all over the US to run drag races (by myself, no crew).

Little known facts around here… Salty is a drag racer, a cave diver and does all kinds of other stuff that isn’t very “survivalist” by nature. Go figure.

What is Rocky Mountain Race Week? It’s a drag racing event held every summer in the Western USA where racers from all over the world (this year, not so much… the Canadian government shut down travel to the US) bring their cars and race half a dozen times on different drag race track. The kicker is you have to drive the race cars between tracks, a total course of around 1,500 miles in dragsters.

It’s a hoot.

Except… for COVID

The Stallion sits at home
As I write this, they are racing.

My car is sitting here. It’s headlights look at me accusingly. It’s not happy.

Adulting stinks.

OK, I know there are probably some people who are curious, so my car is as follows:

A 2006 Mustang GT 4.6L
Procharger Supercharger @ pounds of boost, intercooler, etc.
455HP at the wheels @ 5500 RPM
Cold air intake, long tube headers, tuned exhaust (it speaks really, a really pretty tone)
Cam
Ported heads
4.10 gearing
5 speed
10 wide in the back, 6 in the front (for racing, standard wheels for road).
Red Fuzzy Dice
Plus much more.


It looks stock, but there’s no hiding the sound to anybody who knows what they are listening to.

adulting


$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”?

https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/bullets/2020/06/26/adulting/
 
That race sounds like a lot of fun

I don't like races,round and round and round the ygo, loud and fast,lol. but I know most of you guys like that kind of thing,been to 2 races and that was one too man for me,.One big fat loud paarty only no good music just fumes and loud cars.

:ghostly::eyeballs:
 
I'm confused, albeit I read thru that article very quickly so maybe I missed something?

What does any of that have to do with Prepping? From the gist of it that I got, he cancelled a race and lost $350 b/c he believes the whole CV thing. OK, whatever. Then instead of doing that, he signs up to go look at stars somewhere else. Um, OK. How is that considered adulting? I thought I'd read an article about a guy who cancelled a fun time to use that money towards preps. Unless I'm missing something, that's not the case.
 
Well I guess in a sense staying home in a pandemic is prepping. Plus he has all the money he didn't spend on the trip to buy bullets and beans.
 
Well I guess in a sense staying home in a pandemic is prepping. Plus he has all the money he didn't spend on the trip to buy bullets and beans.
Except that he then signed up for another trip instead of the original one that he already lost the $350 on. So he was still spending money on a trip. Apparently that next trip got cancelled, but it wasn't due to adulting on his part. He never states anywhere that he would spend any saved money on preps. I don't see anything in the article regarding preps at all. I think this guy just wrote this article to brag about his car.
 
I agree with Angie_ nrs. I didn't see anything in this article that had anything to do with prepping as we think of it. Maybe the author was referring to his prepping for the races. Interesting concept having to drive the car to all of the tracks. I guess that is fun if it is your thing. I have never been into cars that much, and I surely wouldn't want that fuel bill. I don't think mileage is a big concern in drag racing.
 
Well I confess I got bored and didn't read it that close. He probably just had produce an article and that was close enough.
 
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