Month: October 2011

Drove through Bastrop today

/ hsoi

I drove through Bastrop today, on my way to teach @ KR Training.

It’s the first time I’ve been to the area since the massive wildfires.

It was… shocking. The devastation was vast. What was once thick, dense, lush, evergreen… it’s now just lots of charred black sticks and scorched earth.

It’d be odd too. You’d see one building burned to the ground, all the trees and ground burned, then another building seemingly totally unharmed. Just the way things happened, the way the wind blew, whatever. Can’t explain it, but that’s how it was.

At the south end of TX-21 just past the entrance to Bastrop State Park, I saw stacks of fenceposts on the side of the road? Huh? But then I kept driving… and saw all the guardrails lying on the ground… their posts were wood, burned by the fire. Work crews everywhere, clearing burned trees, trying to repair the guardrails.

I got to speak to someone who lost their home. She told me how her whole neighborhood is gone. Think about that. Consider your neighborhood… now think about all of it being gone. Just… like… that.

 

It’s going to take years, decades perhaps, for Bastrop to “return to normal”. Will it even? Who knows what it will become. But the funny thing about fire… if you set aside the devastation, you have to remember that fire does bring rebirth… it’s the Earth’s way of clearing and starting anew. You could see people coming together, people helping, people doing whatever it takes to start over. The land will be reborn, the people will too.

 

New belt

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

I’m not Batman, but I do carry a lot of things on my belt. Every day.

When you carry a lot of gear, a lot of heavy gear, you need a belt that can hold up to it. Little flimsy dress/cosmetic apparel belts from most department stores will not cut it. I’ve been wearing belts from The Belt Man for some years now. 1.5″ wide, the horsehide one is my favorite because it doesn’t cost much more than bullhide but has held up fairly strong… even after years of daily wear and some softening up, it’s still stiff enough and holding form enough to do what I need to do.

Except….

Deal with my weight fluctuation. 🙂

With all my weight lifting and the associated food shoveling, of course I’m gaining weight. This requires adjustment of the belt. 🙂 Depending where my weight is and how I’m fiddling with my diet, the belt might hook into hole #2 or maybe hole #3, but most of the times I wish it could hook into hole #2.5. It’s either just a little too loose or a little too tight. I try my belt with the 1″-spaced holes, then the one with the 0.75″-spaced holes and just can’t get things right to both feel comfortable and properly support the gear I wear.

So I gave in.

A couple of days ago I was at GT Distributors and bought a Wilderness Tactical Original Instructor Belt. Appears to be the 1.5″ 5-stitch model, black of course. Why do I not want something like this? Because I don’t like wearing nylon. I like leather belts, leather shoes, cotton, and other natural materials. Sure I can’t be 100% that way, but I prefer it when I can. I mean, wearing a nylon belt with a Brooks Brothers suit just doesn’t seem right, does it? But the advantage here is it buckles anywhere you want it, almost infinitely adjustable, and right now that’s something I need.

I wore it for the first time yesterday and found it quite nice that I could get the tightness just where I wanted. Tight enough to hold things, loose enough to be comfortable. The interesting thing? I’ve been wondering if I needed to adjust my holster or perhaps consider a replacement. But now with the new belt? Things felt a lot better, nothing shifting around or feeling uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it’s the belt tension or perhaps… the belt. Being leather and worn constantly, my main Beltman belt has of course stretched and conformed somewhat to my body, so it’s not exactly a flat, even belt any more. Could it have changed shape enough that it doesn’t work for me any more? Or maybe conforms to the shape of my pre-weightlifting body? Hard to say… would be interesting to have a brand new belt for comparison. Who knows… the lack of stretching and changing may wind me up with using a nylon “tactical” belt for EDC saving the leather for occasions where I need it (e.g. dressing up).

I’m going to spend today out at KR Training and I’ll be wearing the new belt. We’ll see how it goes.