Monthly Archives: November 2021

Tired

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I was up at CostCo yesterday in the battery/tires section. I over heard a fella asking about tires for his vehicle and he was told that “they werent in yet” and that “we’re not sure when theyll be in.” Hmmm. So I asked the guy behind the counter if they wer having availability issues with tires these days. He replied that they were. I asked him if a person thought they might need tires in the next year or so if it would be a good idea to buy them now. He said yes. Now, I understand that you don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut, but perhaps a pre-emptive purchase might not be a bad idea.

Even if availability isnt an issue, I’m pretty confident pricing will be. I’d almost guarantee the tires I’d buy next week are gonna cost more in a year. Like, 99% certain.

You know, when I was a kid and admittedly a bit wet behind the ears, I thought the most likely survivalist scenario was the gun-heavy WW3 nukefest or something equally dramatic and unlikely. Now that I’m older, though not necessarily wiser, I foresee the most likely survivalist scenario as an economic one…either on a grand scale like a national or global depression, but more likely on a personal scale like a job loss or similar.

But, there’s nothing sexy about living on a budget, paying your home early, and having money in the bank/safe/mattress. And yet…my belief is thats the direction things are going to go – less .50 BMG, more $50 bills.

Nostalgia: Marlin Camp Carbine

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Ugh…zombie dreams last night. Well, sorta zombie dreams. The simplistic zombie movies or shows always have the humans versus the zombies but, realistically, the real danger is from the other humans. This dream sorta followed that line of reasoning.

I dreamt (Dreamed? Dreamt?) I was with a small group of people and we we’re scavenging though abandoned houses. At one point we were in a house and, looking out the window, we could see some rather unsavory types heading towards us. I had a bolt action rifle that took way too long on follow up shots, switched to an M4 which was handy but ran out of ammo, and then finally was down to what appeared to be a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 with a red dot on it…but only three 7-rd magazines.

Interestingly, in this dream anyway, the pistol caliber carbine with the red dot was the fastest handling gun for the shooting-down-the-hallway-at-bad-guys distances. While the M4 would be almost equally handy, its open sights were slower to utilize than the red dot.

But…it was just a dream. Real world experiences might be different.

But it did make me think about the old Marlin Camp Carbines. The .45 version, which has never suffered from a lack of demand, was a really odd gun. Not accurate enough to be a varmint gun, not high-capacity enough to be a real defensive gun, not cheap enough to be a plinking gun, not powerful enough to be a hunting gun, it was…odd. But…everyone wanted one because it seemed awesome to have a carbine that you could swap mags with your 1911. And that notion is still around today, although you see it far more with Glock pistols than 1911s.

Marlin also offered the gun in 9mm taking S&W mags, but the .45 version was the hands down favorite. The guns were notorious for eating up their recoil buffers and destroying the rather nice stocks that came with the gun. (Straight blowback isn’t always pretty.) Marlin discontinued them in the late 90’s and their prices on the used market have soared.

The Marlin weighed 6.75 pounds ( thats about three kilograms for those of you in countries that never put a man on the moon) which is pretty much what an M4gery weighs. So for the same weight, why wouldn’t you carry the more powerful chambering?

For me, it’s logistics. Same ammo, same mags…that streamlines things tremendously. I wouldn’t want to drop into Iraq with a 9mm carbine, but if I had to beat feet through Katrinville with just what I could carry on my back…different story. Id rather have an AK or AR, but if what I can carry in my pack is all I have available…well, its nice that my pistol and carbine can use the same mags and ammo.

Naturally someone will ask “Then why not an AR pistol and an AR carbine? Same mags and ammo!” Because when I have to be discreet I can tuck the Glock into my back pocket or under my shirt and smile nicely at the giuys manning the roadblock…nothing to see here. Thats alot harder to do with a an AR pistol hanging from a single point sling swinging around under your jacket.

I miss the Marlin Camp Carbines a bit. No one has really come out with a 1911-magazine compatible carbine since then. (Yeah, there’s that MechTech thingy that lets you use your 1911 frame to make a carbine….not the same thing.) It’d be nice if Ruger would do something along those lines but I suspect the money would be in making their PC Carbine/Charger in .45 but taking Glock .45 mags.

The last Marlin Camp Carbine I came across was $200 and that was about twenty some-odd years ago. Lucky. Nowadays they go well north of $1000. If you break some parts, good luck. Replacement recoil buffers are available aftermarket, but thats about it for spare parts. Ruger has absolutely no incentive to dust off the tooling, if it still exists, and bring these things back but it sure would be cool if they did.

 

Inflation spending

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Technically a holiday, but me and the rest of my department had to go in. On the bright side, I’ll get eight hours of holiday pay in addition to the hours I actually worked today. This is good, because with inflation at a 30-year high, it takes more greenbacks to buy the same things as last shopping trip.

Speaking of shopping trip, I’m continuing to stock up on odds and ends. It’s interesting to try and contemplate what exactly to buy. Am I buying this item because I feel inflation will make it too expensive to buy later? Or am I buying this item because I’m concerned oer availability issues? Or am i buying this item because its a good item to have ‘just in case’? There can be a lot of existential thinking in Aisle 6 at WinCo.

But, at the end of the day, the facts remain:

  • There are ‘supply chain issues’ for many things currently
  • Supply chain issues may continue or reappear with little warning
  • Inflation is making life more expensive
  • Virtually everything you buy now will be more expensive next month

And if you really want to call inflation what it is: your $1000 paycheck next month may only buy you what $900 gets you this month. Thats inflation robbing your money of value. Thats why Großvater Karl took a wheelbarrow to work with him back in his working days.

Personally, I don’t see anything good coming, economically, on the horizon. I’m not an expert on economics but I can see for myself the effects of it on my surroundings and what I see makes me head up to WinCo and buy a case of soap and another 50 rolls of TP.

Just bring me all the guns you have.

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It has been quite a while since I did a gun deal that required me to literally back the truck up to the door of the sales venue.

And yet, there I was.

I wasn’t the person who came across this particular estate, but the person who did was nice enough to put me near the top of the list for buyers. The decedent was, apparently, ‘one of us’…with stockpiles of ammo, magazines, and that sort of thing. The widow decided to keep the storage food and a few guns for herself. The rest…was up for grabs.

Unfortunately, while I got some smokin’ deals on guns and ammo, they were guns and ammo that weren’t exactly in my logistics table. But, guns I don’t necessarily want have an uncanny way of transmuting into guns I do want…usually facilitated by selling them to someone and then using the proceeds to get what I really wanted.

What did I score? Hmm..some .40 Glocks, a Para-Ord .45 with a buncha 14-rd mags, a camo’d PTR91, and a Norinco milled Mak90 with several thousand rounds of ammo, a dozen mags and a couple drums. And at least a couple thousand rounds of .308 as well.

While I do like the PTR’s, I prefer the newer GI models that have the paddle mag release. I’ll sell this one and it’s dozen mags and use the proceeds to hunt down a newer GI model. The Glocks will get sold to get 9mm versions. The Para I have no idea what to do with. Might keep it…might not. The AK is actually pretty nice for a thirty year old gun, and apparently the milled receivers make them worth a nice chunk on Gunbroker. I’ll probably keep the ammo just because.

Still have to pick up the stack of big ammo cans which will go towards housing all the magazines I have here ready to go into the Deep Sleep.

Things I missed out on in the estate were .44 and .45 Ruger revolvers, some Bushmaster ARs, a nice Rem 700 .223 ‘gopher gun’, and a few other things like that.

RIght place, right time, wrong guns for the most part. But..wheeling and dealing is always fun so it’ll be interesting to try and sell/trade these out for the stuff I’d rather have.

I find it fascinating that since the ban on Russian ammo I have been falling into so much 7.62×39.

Article – All the dumb mistakes made by NYers who went rural

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It’s a tale as old as time: Sophisticated urbanites leave the concrete jungle for the country, and find themselves in over their heads. Think Diane Keaton bumbling through the Vermont snow in “Baby Boom,” or Carrie Bradshaw falling in the mud while visiting her boyfriend’s upstate retreat in “Sex & the City.”

Yet during the pandemic — with the Big Apple on the verge of collapse, and workplaces shutting down or going totally remote — many New Yorkers found themselves drawn to the promise of a simpler rural life, away from people and surrounded by nature.

Who hasn’t warmed to the thought of buying a chunk of land somewhere and moving out there to ‘simpler life’. (Cue ‘Green Acres’ theme….)

The reality is that when you spend your entire life in NYC you may wind up not having factored in certain aspects of reality in your new venue..things like predators, weather, distances, etc.

It’s a trope as old as media itself – the person from ‘the city’ who winds up as a helpless idiot in the sticks….”Northern Exposure”, “Green Acres”, etc, etc. And, rarely, it goes in the other direction..”Beverly Hillbillies”, “Due South”, etc.

Having moved to the somewhat-rural envron of Montana from the urban part of NY, I can tell you that while there are differences those differences are not a problem for anyone of average intelligence and self-awareness. The folks you read about from CA or NY who wind up shooting cattle that are mistaken for elk are a pretty rare occurrence that is predicated more on the people being ignorant idiots than being predicated on where their license plates came from.

However…if you’re going to move to a completely new envrionment it might be a good idea to do a bit of legwork, keep your head down and your mouth shut until you know whats what, and don’t keep saying “Thats not how we do things in ….”

 

Arbitrage

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Arbitrage is the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same asset in different markets in order to profit from tiny differences in the asset’s listed price. … Arbitrage exists as a result of market inefficiencies and it both exploits those inefficiencies and resolves them

A market inefficiency like….a Walmart in a populous region that doesnt have a large percentage of the population that does canning winding up with a shelf full of canning lids…..and a Walmart in a rural region where people are known to do quite a bit of canning and be survivalists that has no canning lids in stock.

There’s an opportunity there.

Someone who knew I was interested in lids texted me. The conversation was like this:

Them: Im in a WalMart and they have canning lids…
Me: All of them
Them: They have….
Me: All of them.
Them: How many do you….
Me: All. Of. Them.

(And bring me all your bacon and eggs while youre at it)

And in todays post:

More buying….

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6,000 55 gr. FMJ bullets take up about the same space as a big city phonebook. (Remember phonebooks?) What’s really trippy is that in many markets, the small rifle primers needed for these are worth more than the bullets themselves.

I’ve a Dillon RL1050, literal buckets of .223 brass and carbide .223 dies. Time to get busy.

Changing of the seasons

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I really like the fall/winter seasons. When the days are bright, cool, and clear…and the nights cold and brisk…that’s my fave. And, of course, that weather change makes some part of my lizard brain kick into gear and want to make sure things are ‘in order’ for winter.

Probably my biggest concern this winter is that fuel and electricity prices will take a big jump up. Between inflation, commodity prices, short-staffed power generation plants, parts/supply issues for same, and the remote-but-still-possible chance of malicious hacking, it could wind up being an expensive (or difficult) process to keep the heat on this winter.

Fortunately, I have a couple things going for me. First and foremost – I keep a cool house. I usually keep the thermostat around 63-65 in the winter. Additionally, my local utility averaged my heating costs and bills me an average amount of the course of a year. This irons out the ‘hills and valleys’ of my heating bill. I can budget and plan on the same amount every month for the year.

And, of course, I have a goodly supply of kerosene and kerosene heaters to cover me in case something does happen and utility service goes on hiatus for a week or two. Absolute worst case scenario, isolate the house to one bathroom and bedroom and only heat those two rooms. Turn off the water to the rest of the house to avoid pipe issues, and just live in those two rooms.

But I don’t foresee this winter turning into that. Oh, I’m ready in case it does, but it’s not what I’m expecting. What I am 99.5% certain will happen is that winter will be just like it usually is but with higher fuel costs. Fortunately, I’ve the resources to handle the increased heating costs if necessary.

Other winter things? Well, time to put the shovel and other unstuck-gear in the back of the truck. There’s already a sleeping bag and other essentials in there. (And, by the by, here’s the epic series on winter vehicle stuff.) And for getting unstuck, traction sand (or cat litter) and a good shovel go a long way….but not as long a way as a good length of rope, some snatch blocks, tow straps, and clevis. But, whatever your choice, at least have something to work with to get you out of that icy ditch you slide into sideways.

And, of course, it’s time to take the Filson wools out of the closet. I have, over the last few years, amassed a pretty impressive collection of Filson. It’s all wool so it repels cold, wind, and evil.

I expect this winter will see me doing not much of anything noteworthy except getting caught up on reloading, spending far too much time in my trading portfolios, and perhaps working on getting the place looking a little more Home & Garden and less Field & Stream.

On the other hand, we could all be isolated in our houses as the Chinese ‘accidentally’ release another ‘not a weaponized version’ of the flu and our economy sinks further into Third Worldism. :::shrug::: Who knows?