Cbys Paracord is fast becoming one of my favorite YouTube channels. Heres a hack for making a tensioning locking knot for setting up a tarp.
Month: April 2022 (Page 3 of 4)
I have always hanged around special forces types, bikers etc so it might surprise you to hear that the toughest person I ever met was a 14 year old girl.
Around this time of year is a time I start to remember friends Ive lost. June is when I had my first set of lungs put in and I met some great people in hospital who became great friends who have since left us. One person I met was a young girl called Kylie.We had become friends and both had hoses in out throats and talked using white boards.
Before I go too far a little background to help you understand. The first time I had lungs in I was in ICU for 38 days. Some people come out after a week walking talking etc. I wasnt one of those. I was still incubated and my lungs didnt start working after being weaned down on off machines. I had weighed 85 kilo before going in and 60 after woods, It took me all my time just to walk to the door of my room.
I had my respirator blown up on me and had to breath on my own for seven and a half minutes, they were about to start bagging me when they managed to hook me up to the next respirator. I wasnt able to have an epidural due to me back, so I was on a lot of morphine and in daylight for that 38 days. Lets just say I wasnt able to turn off a light for 6 months and had lots of PTSD from my experiences.
The second set I was in ICU for 58 days and was knocked out for most of that thankfully. I came out weighing 50 kilo and took four people to lift me out of bed and couldnt raise my head by myself. I had lost that much muscle. When I finally escaped hospital It took me 2 endone and a six pack of beer to walk the dog around the block. When people say I should write about my experiences this is why I dont and Im leaving a lot out.
So when I say the toughest person I ever met was a 14 year old girl youll now understand when I say it. Kylie spent 9 months in hospital. She had a double lung transplant and was up a week later walking trying to get off a portable respirator. She then had a stroke and was partially paralyzed and was a up a week later walking around trying to get that hose out of her neck. Her kidneys then failed and she had a second transplant from another donor for a kidney and was up a week later exercising her lungs.
This is how tough this kid was and I dont know many adults that could have gone though what she had. So every time I get slack or too tired or in pain I think of her and get off my backside and push myself harder.
When I was stuck in hospital for a month with pneumonia and was too tired to get out of bed I would think of her strength and push myself and do laps of the hallways in my walking frame. Every time I was dragging my arse around with no muscle in my legs from months in ICU I would think of her. When I was on 15 litres of oxygen, I would get the nurses every hour on the hour to turn the oxygen down quarter of a turn to wean myself down and it felt like I was being bagged with a plastic bag over my head for 15 minutes. I would think of Kylie and push myself through it.
So I wanted to share kylies story and maybe it would help someone else to push through their limits of strength as she did for me.
What happened to kylie? A nurse over dosed her on warfarin and she clotted into her lungs and never got back out of ICU. She passed not 30 feet from me. For the 14 short years she spent in this world her strength has carried me through the past 20 years. I dont like letting my friends be forgotten.
I was chatting to Rick J Peterson from Southern Exposure Survival. I had called up about doing a course with him and he was in the middle of training so I left it at that. A few days later he called me in person to thank me for advertising his website and courses and since then we have tried to keep in touch. While we were chatting I was saying about my blog and that I was trying to put together 30 knots to teach a knots only bushcraft style course as well as a blade style course and he asked which 5 knots would I teach someone.
This caught me off guard, not only because I have a shite memory but I had just drank my first beer in three weeks and wasn’t quite with it, but it got me thinking. Well 4 knots covers putting up tarps and a bowline to teach the pathfinder quick tarp set up but I couldn’t leave it at that and started to reverse engineer the 29 knots I had so far come up with because Ricks question hit a nerve with me.
When I had first met Gordon Deadman at the Morakniven I had arrived a day early in a 30 foot bus so I could park and had given Gordon a hand setting up when he had asked me to do a bowline. I couldn’t remember. Knots are a perishable skill set.
I had learnt a dozen knots with the SES Stae Emergency Service and done cliff rescue and had used a bowline for years in Aborist work and was blank. Since then I became a knot addict.
Before the level 1 bushcraft course I had boned up on knots and found Gordon had to dumb down many just to get people through setting up a tarp. The generation of velcro. I amazed me how many people had never cooked a meal for themselves.Several of use knew knots so we helped the others to catch up.
Which started me on my knot journey because no one just teaches a knot course. I had learnt reverse engineering from AMOK a martial art style. Tom Sotis developed and teaches a knife based system that is based reversed engineering in its methodology. It changed the way I looked at martial arts and I incorporate that learning method into everything I do now.
For example I made my way through the 30 Jo strikes in Aikido and the when I become confident with those I start reverse engineering those into where they fit into each other , where to place those strikes into a fight etc etc. I’m now doing that with knots.
There is a lot more to learning a martial art to hitting someone. Systema taught me breathing, Amok reverse engineering I try to include something I learnt from every martial art ive trained in to me every day life. Which includes when someone is left behind in a class you either have the choice to just get what you can yourself out of whats being taught or you can help others catch up and make it an experience to enjoy.
So back to fudge knots. I went from 5 knots to 1 and am trying to fudge everything with one knot, which could be a bowline but Ive decided to use a basic overhand loop and use it for everything single chore in bushcraft and see if I can do it.
A end knot to secure a tarp is easy using a toggle but a tension knot Im trying to learn by incorporating a windlass system to tension the other end with a couple of twists of line. So my latest experiment is how to fudge a knot system using toggles.
Im doing this in order to learn how to teach knots to people. How do you do this so it sticks. 30 knots in one day and the students will walk away and retain nothing. 5 a day, there’s 5 days or 5 courses. Knots aren’t that interesting to most people.
Talking with Al Ainsworth previously about the courses he wanted to start up gave me a good idea. Al wanted to have sections of areas where he would teach bush foods in one area, then move to a tracking section then onto a bushcaft area.
This gave me an idea of how to do a 1 day knot course or maybe 2. Have an area to set up a tarp using 5 knots. Take it down and set it up in another area for a shelter to have morning tea and build a camp chair out of pre-cut timber. Take down the tarp and set it up in another are for lunch and build a bed frame using lashes and on and on. Do a different project at each section while repeatedly learning the 5 basic shelter system knots and different ways of setting up a tarp.
Theres a saying that under stress you fall to your basic level of training. Thats my idea with fudge knots. When you dont remember 30 different bushcraft knots, if your also taught how to fudge something and use improvisation, Thats a skill set in itself.
21st Century Bushcraft by Mike Lummio from Bushcraft Northwest is the next book on my list to purchase. I like the different perspectives and ideas such as an upside down fire.
21 Century Bushcraft by Mike Lummio
https://bushcraftnorthwest.com/products/21st-century-bushcraft-mike-lummio
Book review
Upside Down Fire Explanation
I believe Ive turned into a poncho addict. I own that many and keep buying them but I have them stored every where in every piece of kit I own. I came across the M.E.S.T – Multipurpose Emergency Survival Tarp on the Ochoco Bushcraft Channel on Youtube and it has some features that I havent been able to find on any other brand or make. Primarily its fire retardant, has double sided snaps for attaching to another poncho or may be paired with the KoreTemp Modular Shelter Half to make a larger shelter and is made of 70D nylon so its much stronger than similar products. The reason I like the koretemp over the standard MEST is that the koreTemp Poncho has a binder strip sewn into them. This makes the seam very resistant to foul weather. The perimeter has a 1.5” piece of webbing sewn into it for added strength and durability.
Bushcraft Outfitters
https://bushcraftoutfitters.com/koretemp-modular-poncho-ocp-pattern/
Ochoco Bushcraft
Does anyone else have the problem of which knife to take on bushcraft courses or is it just me. I still own too many. Im not sure if were doing any axe work but I think its unlikely. When I go out myself I like carrying a small knife and a large knife and dont bother with a belt mounted saw. On courses its different. An ESSE RB-3 is my go to in a cross draw along with one of several larger 6 inch blades. I keep going back to my Spyderco Bushraft for this course only because were doing firebows and Ill need a Scandi grind for processing wood. Otherwise I prefer other blade grinds. I like 6 inch blades and feel naked without taking one. I have an LT Wright Sospes on order which would solve my current problem.
Had a few quick changes in gear for level 2 bushcraft. Ive swapped out my canvas haversack for the Frost River Messenger Bag so I can organize my equipment better. I dont have to pull everything out to get to the stuff at the bottom of the bag. I also have enough room that I can grab my light My Fire bowl from my knapsack at meal times and shove it in the messenger bag after woods.
I have my notebook, reading glasses and headlamp in the front section and my IFAK, cordage, compass in the rear partition. Which reminds me I now have room to store batteries in with the headlamp. I also have an oilskin bag for collecting tinder in here. This also gives me room to put things like a mylar blanket for setting up shelters for prerequisites . One element I lacked on past courses were not having a secondary smaller bag for carrying crap around.
https://lightmyfire.com/en/eat-drink/bowl-n-lid
The following youtube seminar pretty much sums up where we are in the world today and what possible ramifications will be happening in the next 30 years and what has led us to this point. A very interesting talk by Peter Zeihan and how agriculture and economics effect the planet.
It will be interesting how the restriction of the three big fertilizer types will be the new way of fighting. Economics and agriculture are the new ways of fighting wars and control.
Brief notes Pay attention to the following;
trade routes for fuel supplies 2 destroyers in the Indian ocean
imports and exports from different countries and reliance
air launch cruise missiles to Australia and range
great incites into barrack Obama and Donald Trump
export markets, health, mass consumption, financial stability and food countries require all these to remain stable
African swine flu in pig herd culled in the last three years and how they are fed quickly to build herd back up
food unstable countries
3 to 8 years to bring oil field on line
shale basins 3 to 8 weeks to bring on line and transport and all on land
9 access points to Russian defense Georgia Crimea karvekstan Ukraine
all three fertlizers removed at some time and consequences
Russia and belarus potash 2nd and 4th exporters
phosphate based fertilizers from china
nitrogen due to fuel problems
Hey great news. The only thing I didnt like about the Alton Goods tarp was the bright white logo. Theyve now changed it to black so it doesnt stand out.
There are some days where I just cant think of things to write about and then others just from random conversations that make it so I cant stop writing. I had two such conversations in the last few days. The first was with a mushroom lover. Which made me get off my backside.
I forget what started us talking, but it got around to mushrooms and the woman in question said she would never have told anyone about her hobby for taking pictures of mushrooms for fear or being laughed at and it was a death in the family that made her question how she was living her life.
I thought taking pictures of mushrooms was a great hobby and went on to share the courses I knew of that were local involving mushroom ID and growing mushys at home. Besides I can talk about staffys all day long and she used to have a staffy. I think i was in the shop for 45 minutes chatting.
Im leaving out a lot of details because it was a private conversation but it reinforced what I should be doing with my life. Every now and again I get off track.
The second conversation was with a mate who questioned if I was up to doing my level 2 bushcraft course. Mainly because Ive just gotten over two bouts of pneumonia and lost ten kilo of body weight.
My response was . Well for a start good points I was feeling like crap but then again when I got out of my second double lung transplant. Four months in hospital before going home I weighed 50 kilo and was dragging my arse around in a gutter frame. Three months after getting home i started training in three martial arts and it took two years to tell anyone I was going home after training and still using a walking frame then taking an endone and two beers I was in so much pain for the first four months.
Then just beause I am who I am I did a four day stint at the Australian Institute of Sport training with Paul Kale in Kinetic Fighting. Granted I was taking three endone a day to get through it. I think I was about 6 months of of hospital at that time.
So I think at last count I have a screwed left knee, 28 % nerve in my left leg from my back injury, four crushed discs, 15% nerve damage in my right leg from scar tissue in my right groin from having a 90 litre blood transfusion and a 12 inch blood clot, a screwed left shoulder (bone on bone grating), chronic pain from the back shoulder and groin, side effects from my meds to do with my hands, a broken sternum, 65% lung capacity, half my diaphragm doesnt work, been told Ive been terminal more times than I care to count and waiting for my third MRI to clear me from pancreatic cancer. So far Ive spent four years in a wheel chair and 12 years dragging around an oxygen bottle and have a lowered immune system limiting where I can go. Who can forget diabetic from the meds too.
Some days are good and I over do it and love working and spend three days recovering and totally exhausted. Some days I’m flat, some days are great, some days I’m on two different pain killers and a shit load of beer.
Point is “Don’t let shit get in your way of life”.
