Happy Campers
There are two kinds of happy campers. One finds peace in the quiet of the woods. The other parks in the left lane at 67 and destroys everyone else’s day. This is about the second one.
Hurry Up and Lead
I showed up to the airport way too early, thinking I was being smart. Turns out, I just bought myself a front-row seat to human behavior, and a reminder of what real leadership actually looks like.
People at 35,000 Feet
Somewhere between boarding and landing, people forget how to be human. It’s not the plane, it’s the entitlement, the impatience, the complete lack of awareness at 35,000 feet.
1:00 a.m. Courage
There’s a certain kind of courage that only shows up at 1:00 a.m., usually soaked in alcohol and aimed in the wrong direction. This is a story about commitment, accountability, and what actually matters when your life is on the line.
What the Hell Happened to Driving?
Traffic up to Los Alamos isn’t bad because there are more people. It’s bad because two or three drivers at the front of the pack have collectively decided that fifteen miles under the speed limit is a personality trait. And somewhere between horsepower and hesitation, we lost something.
We Create the Problems
Human existence sometimes feels like an endless loop: we build systems, then build more systems to fix the systems we built. Meanwhile, the machine hums, and we call it progress.
Free Enough to Complain
I rode all day in freezing sun, hands numb, coffee in my veins, donuts as fuel. And downtown? Protestors. Two years later, still marching like the sky fell. Here’s what I actually saw: a free country loud enough to complain inside it.
Coverage Limits
There’s something uniquely brutal about watching your trauma converted into arithmetic. Brain bleed. Collapsed lung. Facial reconstruction. Months of recovery. And at the end of it all? Coverage limits. It isn’t justice. It’s math.
What Harley Is Actually Selling
Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles. If they did, Honda would win every time. What they sell is muscle, grit, and the permission to make a machine your own. And sometimes, they forget that.
Love, Red Chile, and the Second Amendment
I walked into a diner drenched in pink and red hearts wearing a black Second Amendment tank top and boots. Best red chile in town on the way. Valentine’s Day might be a corporate fever dream, but freedom? That’s real. And sometimes the most absurd breakfast scene says more about pluralism than any political debate ever could.
Justice Before Sunrise
At 4:30 in the morning, I’m not chasing vengeance. I’m chasing a word this country was built on: justice. If someone can make a negligent U-turn, nearly kill a motorcyclist, and walk away without so much as a citation, what does that say about liberty? About accountability? About fairness?
We Keep Arguing the Wrong Fucking Things
We always argue about the loudest parts of the problem while ignoring the structure underneath it. Immigration isn’t the real debate. Federal power is. And nobody seems willing to talk about that.
Fuck Molds
People love molds. They love neat categories that let them stop thinking. And when you don’t fit, they don’t expand the mold, they try to shove you into a different one. That’s how freedom gets replaced by slogans.
I Have to Be at Work in the Morning
I have to be at work in the morning. I don’t have time to take a weekday off to remind legislators to get the hell off my Constitution. Yet somehow, I’m expected to defend my rights every single year from people who don’t understand them.
Two Tons of Inattention at Fifty Miles an Hour
This happens two to three times a day when I ride. Not once in a while, every day. Two tons of inattentive driving versus a human body, and the only reason I’m still here is because I ride like everyone else is trying to kill me.
Guardrails, Guns, and the Slow Death of Plain Speech
At some point we stopped arguing about policy and started padding reality. When algorithms decide which ideas are too dangerous to even discuss and legislators criminalize lawful behavior in the name of “safety”, the problem isn’t guns or technology. It’s that we’ve forgotten the difference between being civilized and being spineless.
Compliance Is Not Care
I went into my medical records looking for information. I came out pissed off. At the top of every UNM Health record it says my name, my birthdate, and then, predictably, male. No way to fix it. No place to correct it. Meanwhile, the Catholic hospital somehow got it right. This is a story about that moment, and about the systems that insist on explaining themselves instead of listening.
Freedom Requires Responsibility (And Other Uncomfortable Truths)
We’ve reached a bizarre moment in American culture where saying freedom comes with responsibility is treated as cruelty, and expecting people not to shit on public sidewalks is somehow controversial. This isn’t about lacking compassion. It’s about refusing to lie to ourselves about personal agency, work, and the choices that shape a life. Responsibility isn’t oppression. It’s the price of dignity.
When Did Dignity Become a GoFundMe?
I grew up poor in farm country Minnesota, back when dignity mattered more than comfort and work was how you solved your own problems. You didn’t crowdfund hardship. You handled it. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Now every setback comes with a digital tip jar, and we call it community instead of what it really is: the quiet death of personal responsibility. This isn’t about cruelty. It’s about what we lost when work ethic gave way to electronic begging, and why that should scare the hell out of us.