Missive #607

After losing his bid for the United States Presidency as a third party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt decided to take on the most dangerous adventure left on earth. He and his son, Kermit, accepted Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon’s invitation to help him plot the course of the River of Doubt. The River of Doubt could just as easily have been named the River of Death. The river’s rapids turned out to be much more ferocious than expected,A very good read although Teddy’s writing style may be off putting for some readers. cannibalistic natives dogged the group through most of the journey, and Murphy was their constant companion. The expedition lost men, supplies, and canoes. At one point, Roosevelt contracted a flesh-eating bacteria and became so weak that he urged his son to leave him behind to die. Ultimately Teddy and Kermit emerged from the wilderness triumphantly. Here is their story in Theodore Roosevelt’s own words. — Book promo @ goodreads.com

The drive to the winter camp was not too bad although there were troubling winds between Deming and Lodsburg, a total of 266 miles including the detour in Deming. The route was NM195, Warm Springs Blvd, NM181, N Date St, I-25 (38 mi), NM26, I-10 (141 mi) & US191. I have not included the roads that I drove during the detour. While in Deming I stopped at El Camino Real for breakfast then went to the Stagecoach RV Ranch where I was to meet the host that didn’t show. Got gas at a station near Pepper’s which is a great market where I stocked up on some tamales that I haven’t found anywhere else. The last stop was at the SKP Park, Dream Catchers, where I verified that the park was being sold and would no longer be an Escapee RV Park.

I have updated the two maps for my Virtual Walk. They can be found in the sidebar Text Widget just below the camp location map.

Note that Mexico does not have a fentanyl problem, which is interesting. Only America does. Why? It is just my guess, but I suspect the reason is that America, once a pleasant land, is now miserable with declining living standards, rising crime, virulent political antagonisms, and little hope for the future. Before fentanyl, hundreds of thousands died of Oxycontin poisoning, and Washington did nothing about this either. Oxies were produced by American pharmaceutical companies, and thus easily controlled had the government wanted to. No one could be so cynical as to suspect Big Pharma, getting rich by peddling oxies to the miserable in regions devastated by offshoring, would bribe congressmen to look the other way. Perish forfend.…
The drug trade is too big to fail. It exists because too many people get rich from it, like oil. I occasionally see the figure of sixty billion dollars as the annual take.…
Serious question: Do you really think that anyone on the receiving end of that much money will want to end the industry that provides it? And do you think that, if Mexico and China disappeared in a flash of blue light, nobody else would start doing the same thing? That is, that the sixty billion in honey would not attract new flies? — Fred Reed