Sporting Road

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”  ~Mahatma Gandhi There is something deceptively simple in Gandhi’s observation. The earth gives us an extraordinary abundance. Food, water, timber, game, fish, horses, gardens, mountains, rivers, open country. It gives us the raw materials for both survival and pleasure. What it cannot provide is an end to wanting.  Perhaps that is the distinction worth remembering: need has a limit. Want does not. A day in the field has a way of making this point obvious. You walk a ridge at first light, a dog working ahead through the sparse cover of windswept prairie grass and cheatgrass, and for a few hours the notifications from the machinery of modern life that we carry in our pocket become irrelevant.  In fact sometimes those notifications get in the way of enjoying your experience outside, so if I have cell coverage, I often turn the phone to silent.   You are left thinking about the direction of wind, the dog's effort to quarter through the field leaving nothing uncovered, the anticipation of finding birds,  and the dew on the ground beneath your boots.  The view is often rewarding, as is the physical and mental calculations needed to be successful, but more than anything it creates a situation where you are forced to just be---just living in the moment.   Even if the hunt is successful, the reward is not measured by how much game meat you brought home. One bird can be enough. Sometimes the real prize is simply having been there and the stories that are made through these experiences in the natural world. The same is true around a table. A well-prepared meal does not require

There are sporting men who take the field seriously, and then there is Jock Jorrocks.  Created by the English writer Robert Smith Surtees in the nineteenth century, John Jorrocks was a London cockney, horseman, foxhunter, gunner, gourmand, and enthusiastic authority on nearly everything. He was also, depending on the occasion, somewhat less accomplished than he believed himself to be.  That was precisely the point. Jorrocks appeared in an age when sport was becoming part of a larger culture of leisure, travel, food, friendship, and storytelling in the 1830's and 40's.  Surtees understood that the sporting life was never merely about the hunt, the hounds, the ride, or the quarry. It was about the entire day surrounding them: the early start, the horses, the dogs, the companions, the lunch, the weather, the mishaps, and the story that would inevitably become better by the time it was told again.  Jorrocks loved all of it.  And, we have to Surtees wonderful writing filled with humor that is as on point today as it was back then.   Frankly, nothing else in fictional literature about foxhunting even comes close, except maybe Gordon Grand. Surtees's famous character also possessed the great sporting virtue of enthusiasm. He approached the countryside with the appetite of a man who intended to enjoy himself regardless of whether the day went according to plan.  His character fits this image, when sketched as a man overly stuffed into his hunting attire, perhaps from decades of indulgences.  His confidence routinely exceeded his competence, but his pleasure in the sporting life was genuine. He was never too dignified to be ridiculous and never too ridiculous to be thoroughly entertaining. Perhaps that is why Jorrocks still feels familiar.  The best sporting lives are

I recently got a copy of Aflield: A Chef's Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish by Jesse Griffiths.   Griffiths does a great step by step demonstration of the Gabrel Method of cleaning big game, which is how we do it as well.   My daughter is spoiled by hunting with a professional butcher as her mentor, so we are trying to perfect all of this during the next deer season, as Uncle Henry is still better than we will probably ever become at butchering big game.  Here's how to start:

Approximately 50% of all Toyota vehicles ever built are still on the road today, and about 80% of Toyotas sold 20 years ago remain active. About 80% of Toyota vehicles sold two decades ago are still driven today. Roughly 9.1% to 10.7% of all passenger vehicles currently driving on roads worldwide are Toyotas, making it one of the most common automotive brands in existence. Research shows that a Toyota has a 19.7% chance of reaching at least 250,000 miles. The general automotive industry average for reaching 250,000 miles is only 5.4%, meaning a Toyota is roughly 3.7 times more likely to hit that milestone than a typical vehicle.  Lexus (owned by Toyota) ranks second with a 14.4% chance of reaching 250,000 miles. While EVs can have lower ownership costs due to fewer moving parts, a study by iSeeCars ranks Toyota vehicles as having by far the best chance of reaching 250,000 miles or more, when compared with all other brands. Here’s a look at the top 5 brands and where Tesla placed. Rank Make % Chance of Lasting 250,000+ Miles Compared to Average 1 Toyota 19.7% 3.7x 2 Lexus 14.4% 2.7x 3 Honda 13.3% 2.5x 4 Acura 9.5% 1.8x 5 GMC 5.8% 1.1x 13 Tesla 3.3% 0.6x Study Average 5.4% Toyota cars are 3.7x more likely to reach a quarter-million miles than all other brands, and Japanese automakers dominated, securing the top 4 spots in the study. Tesla placed 13th out of 33 brands, a respectable showing for the only EV-exclusive manufacturer. However, it was below the overall study average. “Reaching 250,000 miles is an exceptionally high bar for any vehicle, which makes the distinction among the four highest-ranked brands meaningful,” said iSeeCars Executive

A few of our favorite artists from this year's show.

Ralph Lauren’s personal style is one of the more interesting examples of a designer essentially living inside his own mythology. He rarely dresses like someone trying to demonstrate that he is fashionable. Instead, he has spent decades refining a very specific American ideal: wealthy without being flashy, athletic without looking like he just left the gym, and traditional without appearing trapped in the past. His wardrobe tends to revolve around a handful of dependable pieces, timeless classics: tailored navy and charcoal suits, white and blue dress shirts, Oxford shirts, chinos, denim, Shetland and cashmere sweaters, suede loafers, leather boots and beautifully made outerwear. He is particularly fond of classic American sportswear, but he mixes it with British tailoring and the occasional Western reference. A denim shirt might appear beneath a tailored jacket; a tuxedo might be worn with a deliberately informal attitude; a cable-knit sweater might sit over a button-down and tie. What makes Lauren distinctive is his ability to make expensive clothes look lived in. He is not particularly interested in the pristine, highly coordinated look that often comes with luxury dressing. His clothes have texture and character: worn denim, corduroy, tweed, suede, leather, flannel and weathered boots. Even when the clothing is exceptionally expensive, the effect is relaxed. It suggests that the wearer has owned the jacket for years rather than having had it delivered yesterday by a personal stylist. (In fact, many of the Polo Ralph Lauren photo shoots purposely patina (or age and wrinkle) the wardrobes for the shoots before the model ever puts them on, and U.S. Polo Assn. clothing also followed suit.) There is also a strong element of the American West in his personal wardrobe. Lauren has

I was reading this message from The Secret about envisioning today as the best day of your life.   Byrnes writes: When you woke up this morning, what kind of day were you expecting? Did it just seem like another day to you, or were you expecting that today would be the best day of your life? The truth is, today is the best day of your life, because you’re here now living it. Yesterday has disappeared into the sunset, and tomorrow never comes. Today is always the best day of your life!  Let’s try to never take today for granted. Instead, at the beginning of the day, when you first wake up, take a few minutes to mentally expect that today will be great, today will be amazing, today will be full of joy - today will be your best day ever. Let’s expect that things we’ve been thinking about all work out perfectly today. Let’s expect to feel good. To feel love and gratitude. To smile and laugh a lot. Let’s expect there to be miracles today. And let’s expect the Universe to delight us today.  That sounds like a perfect day to me. What do you think? Let’s do it, every day. It becomes more than a habit. It becomes a mindset, part of your lifestyle, and eventually, you realize you have no desire to step off the carousel of life.

Teddy Roosevelt had a great style for adventurers to adopt, both in terms of his fashion as well as his exploits. Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was a lifelong equestrian, cowboy, and military commander of the [Rough Riders](https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/tr-rr-spanamwar.htm) whose passion for horseback riding defined his personal philosophy and rugged public image. After personal tragedy, Roosevelt fled to the Dakota Badlands where he learned to ride hard, rope cattle, and live as a frontier ranchman, transforming his health and grit. As lieutenant colonel of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, he famously led parts of the advance on Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill, riding his horse Little Texas into the campaign. An avid horseman, Roosevelt routinely rode through Rock Creek Park and Potomac Park with aides, famously declaring when offered an early car that "The Roosevelts are horse people." To prove his military physical fitness standards were realistic, President Roosevelt rode 98–104 miles on horseback from Washington, D.C., to Warrenton, Virginia, and back in a single day through freezing weather. His most famous personal mounts included a spirited hunter named Bleistein and his trusted cavalry horse Little Texas. In his own words.... from https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/tr-rr-spanamwar.htm Who were the Rough Riders? Excerpts taken from the The Rough Riders by Theodore Roosevelt "Secretary Alger offered me the command of one of these regiments. If I had taken it, being entirely inexperienced in military work, I should not have known how to get it equipped most rapidly, for I should have spent valuable weeks in learning its needs, with the result that I should have missed the Santiago campaign, and might not even have had the consolation prize of going to Porto Rico. Fortunately, I was wise enough to tell the