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March 19, 2019 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
15:06
If you enjoy NATURE, consider a FAT TIRE bike!
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If you enjoy nature, consider a fat tire bike.
Now, you might be saying, what's a fat tire bike?
Well, it's a bike with fat tires.
This is a technical term.
Typically, they have tires that are four inches wide, sometimes 4.8.
So you can ride them in dirt or mud even.
I ride in mud when it's raining.
And you can ride on forest pathways, nature paths, just walking paths, all kinds of places.
And if the biking itself is too difficult, you know, if you're doing a lot of hills and such, you can get a fat tire e-bike.
And so I have a fat tire e-bike because I like to ride with quite a bit of self-defense gear, you know, weighs more.
And so I have a pretty heavy bike rig and I'm pedaling, but I'm also using electricity.
And if I'm going up steep hills and such, I might use the electrical assist.
So fat tire bikes and fat tire e-bikes, they're amazing.
Just the other day, I was riding on my ranch.
And I ride on my ranch both during the daytime and at nighttime.
And if you haven't ridden a nature path at night, you're missing out because there's a lot of nature that's going on at night.
I mean, literally just the other night, I was riding along and there's a giant hog.
It's just like trotting out beside me, like 20 feet away, maybe 25 feet away.
There's a lot of wild hogs in Texas, and this one was partially pink and partially black.
It was splotched like that.
And some of the wild hogs have that kind of hair pattern.
And it was just like trotting along.
This thing must have weighed 90 pounds, 100 pounds.
Yeah, easily.
It's big, big hog.
And I'm just riding along beside it.
Now, when you have a bike or an e-bike, they're very quiet.
So it allows you to come up on a lot of nature and wild animals that you would otherwise chase away if you had a motorcycle or something loud like that or a motor scooter or, you know, like a four-wheeler or something.
You chase them away.
But on a bike or an e-bike, you get to encounter a lot of nature.
And just on this one ride, I not only saw this pig, This pig was just like touring around.
So funny.
And I even said to it, hello piggy!
And it just kind of goes, and it just keeps walking and moving around.
I mean, just actually a pretty fast-paced walk.
Didn't want anything, you know, didn't want to have a conversation, nothing.
It just goes on.
And then I saw at least a dozen deer on this particular ride.
I encountered two raccoons that were together on a tree.
And the way to spot the raccoons is to have a headlight on your head, like a wearable LED light.
And of course, the raccoon's eyes reflect the light, so you can easily see raccoon eyes.
They're like little yellow jewels.
Even at a long distance, you can see raccoons at 100 feet plus away.
And so I saw these two raccoons.
And they were obviously like a mother and a child or two adult raccoons together, whatever it was.
And they saw me and they were kind of scrambling down this tree.
Raccoons are often in the trees.
That's where they tend to hang out when they're not murdering chickens and other things that raccoons do.
And then I saw a fox.
And this was a very, like an orange haired fox.
It was like Donald Trump.
It was like the orange fox, the orange Trump hair fox.
And this fox, I still don't know what this fox is doing.
I've seen it like three or four times.
And It's a very small fox.
It's about the size of a typical house cat, but it has a long bushy tail.
And for some reason, this fox likes to eat the grain where I feed my donkeys.
And so in the winter, when the donkeys are not able to eat the natural wild grass, I have to supplement their feed with grain.
And in that grain area, for some reason, or sometimes I feed them hay, too.
But this fox likes to check out that grain area.
And I'm wondering if this fox is, like, picking up the waste grain niblets, you know, that the donkeys are missing or the donkeys are dropping out of their lips.
Because donkeys are kind of messy eaters, you know, and they drop a few grains here and there.
I'm wondering, why is this fox eating this grain, you know?
And the grain's gone right now because it's mostly springtime in Texas.
And so this fox is clearly looking around but striking out because we don't have any more grain for him.
Anyway, I've seen this fox.
I've seen his eyes in the forest and I've seen him actually moving around.
He's been there for a while.
From time to time I see armadillos.
And armadillos are the reason they get hit by cars all the time.
And this is why you have to be careful.
Oh, I see owls all the time, too.
So, you often see an owl just take off from a tree right nearby you, and they're silent flyers.
They don't make any noise at all.
You don't hear flapping of their wings.
Owls are very, very quiet.
You know, they're predators.
That's part of their whole thing, is they're extremely quiet.
They're like the stealth fighters of the bird world.
But armadillos, getting back to that, the reason they get hit by cars all the time is because armadillos don't navigate.
They put their heads down and they just steamroll Relying on their body armor to protect them.
They have this body armor, right?
And they have a long, snouty nose and a tail and little body armor feet.
And they're about the size of a cat or a small dog.
And they cruise around and they dig up little roots and things and grubs.
They eat things out of the dirt.
And they never look where they're going.
So if you encounter an armadillo...
It's just like running in front of you without any thought.
And by the way, armadillos have terrible hearing, so you can actually sneak right up on them.
One time I just walked up on an armadillo and...
Decided to see how close I could get to it.
I touched it with a stick that I carry when I'm walking.
It's actually a big staff.
I just touched it with the staff and then I just kind of leaped, freaked out, ran away.
I was like, dude, you didn't hear me coming?
Armadillos, I guess it's because they have the armor so they're kind of lazy on the other survival skills.
They're not good at fleeing or noticing that you're coming or anything.
You can walk up on armadillos You can touch them.
You can grab them if you want.
Dogs will sometimes grab them.
I've had my dogs run up on an armadillo and just grab it.
And like bite down on it, you know?
But it's just biting the armor.
And then the armadillo gets away and it runs away.
And the dogs are like, almost got that giant rat, you know?
I try to tell them, don't eat the armadillos.
But sometimes they'll just find one and chase one.
The other day, one of my dogs chased a donkey.
So one of my younger donkeys, and these are...
These are big beasts.
They're not as big as stallion horses or anything, but donkeys can be pretty darn big.
I don't know how much they weigh.
Maybe 600 pounds on the large side.
They're big animals.
Maybe it's 500 pounds.
I don't know.
They're big.
They can get big.
At least the ones I have are pretty darn big.
And one of the younger donkeys...
I kind of ran up on one of my dogs because donkeys are natural killers of coyotes.
So donkeys like to stomp on dogs.
They try this and sometimes when I'm walking past them with my dogs, one of them will just want to practice a little stomping action and will just try to stomp on the rear end of the dogs.
And so this one donkey...
A dog named Sandy, by the way, ran up onto one of my dogs and my dog turned around and was like, and then my dog turned the tables on this donkey and started chasing the donkey.
And so this donkey, Sandy, she freaks out and starts running away.
And my dog is like, hell yeah, I'm chasing you.
And just starts chasing and barking.
So imagine the scene of like a, I don't know, 500 pound donkey fleeing.
A 75-pound dog that's barking after it.
This is exactly what happened.
And all the other donkeys are looking on at this like, what?
Why are you running away from a tiny dog?
Stomp on them!
That's what donkeys do.
But it was more than a little entertaining to see this happen.
And it reminds you that a lot of what happens in the animal kingdom is Bluffing and acting like you're mean and vicious when you're actually not the biggest dog around.
The donkeys are the biggest dogs around.
You just never know what you're going to see.
The donkeys are totally freaked out by my electric bike, by the way.
Like, they're very friendly if I just walk up on them, and some of them really like to be petted, and they come over, and they check things out, and they're very friendly.
But when I'm riding the e-bike, which is, you know, it's a fat tire e-bike, I'm riding it up on them, and when I get close, even I'm just being quiet and not moving that fast, and they flip out.
They're like, what the heck?
And then when I get off the e-bike, sometimes I'll ride close to them and get off the e-bike and then just walk over to them and check on them and touch them and pet them and everything.
And then they'll go check out the e-bike.
And then one of my donkeys decided that she needed to use the handlebars of my e-bike to scratch her ears.
So she's scratching, scratching, scratching the handlebars.
And of course she knocks the bike over.
And when the bike falls over, oh my god, they all freak out.
They're like, we thought it was, you know, not moving.
Now it jumped.
Actually, it just fell over.
It has a kickstand.
And so they just push it off the kickstand.
Falls to the ground.
Donkeys freak out.
So they went from ear scratching mode to, oh my god, panic mode.
Because an inanimate object fell to the ground.
It's like, Donkeys believe what gun control people?
They think guns kill people.
Donkeys think that bikes hurt donkeys.
It's so funny.
You just never know what you're going to encounter.
Getting back to the bikes, by the way, the company that I bought from is called Volt Bikes, and they're a Canadian company.
Their product has been really good.
I mean, I've been riding, I put, I don't know, 125 miles on my bike over, I don't know, just a few weeks.
And it's been great.
But I'm also looking at getting a non-electric fat tire bike because, you know, you don't want to always depend on electricity.
Sometimes you want to just move under your own power.
Bikes are really good to have.
For survival scenarios, because in a grid down scenario, gasoline shortage will be like right away, you won't be able to buy gas.
So you're gonna need to use a bicycle to transport yourself And e-bikes are very, very efficient.
You can charge them with a solar panel charging system, frankly.
And the battery that I have on mine holds 16 amp hours at 48 volts.
It's a Panasonic battery.
And from what I understand, it gives you a range of something like 20 to 25 miles on a single charge, which is, of course, you know, More than enough, I'm only riding it a few miles at a time.
But having a regular bike is a good idea too.
I haven't yet purchased a regular fat tire bike.
I've been looking at the Trek models and some of the other models.
There's also some really affordable sort of entry-level low-end fat bikes that are online.
Even Walmart sells some, believe it or not.
Amazon's got a couple.
But I don't know how the quality is on those, so I would tend to stick with something, I don't know, more professional.
But, you know, if you're just trying this out, then...
See what you like.
Maybe you like a fat tire bike.
Maybe you like a fat tire e-bike.
The Volt bike that I bought, I think it was $1,700 or something similar.
Riding an e-bike is just an incredible joy.
You can exercise as much as you want, but you can also back off the exercise and just enjoy touring.
I do recommend you change the seat because the factory seats are too hard.
You can buy a replacement seat online anywhere.
It's like a foam gel cushioned seat that is a lot easier on your butt.
Especially if you're going over a lot of bumps and things like you'll get When you're off-roading with it.
But bikes and e-bikes are a real joy.
Owning your own land is a real joy.
If you enjoy nature, don't forget to go out at night.
Walk around at night.
Bike around at night.
You know, if it's safe.
I'm not saying go bike around, you know, the hood where if you're going to get mugged or something.
Bike around nature.
I always carry a pistol with me, by the way.
Always have a pistol.
It's very important because, of course, you never know what you're going to encounter.
So, you know, have your gear for self-defense.
Be ready, you know, in case you need it.
But thanks for listening.
Mike Adams here, the Health Ranger.
Check out more of my podcasts at healthrangerreport.com.
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