I’ve written so infrequently that the posts become too long, so I’ve held on to these for a rainy day, and now you get nothing but the interesting little tidbits

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

In 1901, shortly after allegedly robbing a bank in Winnemucca, Nevada (not far from where I grew up), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, along with Sundance’s girlfriend, high-tailed it to patagonian Argentina, used the ill-begotten wealth to buy themselves a ranch and some animals, and proceeded to settle down into law-abiding citizens. They settled down in a place called Cholila, which I happened to ride through, and whose only aspect of note is indeed that the two famous outlaws lived there. “ButchCassidy2!” was the wifi password at the hostel I stayed in and was given to me accompanied by a history lesson and an appeal to go see the remnants of the American-style log cabin they lived in. Not much left to see. (Feature image is from the town but not of their ranch)

As is wont to happen with such characters, the motivation for their next move is unclear, but a few short years after selling in Cholila they sold their ranch and headed north to Bolivia. They are rumored to have robbed a couple of Argentinian banks and thus needed to run, though another theory goes that the beef company that bought their ranch had tipped off the agents looking for Cassidy and crew, thus forcing their hand in the sale and precipitating their hasty departure.

Things ended poorly for the gents, as they were gunned down in Bolivia after robbing a coach with the payroll for a mining company. Following the robbery, the two were discovered in San Vicente, Bolivia, and got cornered in a gun fight. Contrary to the film depiction, the story on the ground is that Sundance was injured, Cassidy had no way out, so Cassidy put one in the forehead of his friend and followed by putting another through his own temple. They are buried in unmarked graves in town…but a lack of photo evidence and the fact that the Bolivians didn’t know the famous outlaws and thus couldn’t identify them means some room for stories remained. Legend has it, they escaped and roamed free, returning to the US to visit family and live peacefully into old age.

Earth is a system

Now, if you’re reading this, it means you’re close to me, which means you’re probably familiar with systems thinking and earth systems, and the headline, while unspecific, isn’t foreign. But where am I going with this? Well, climate change doesn’t just make things warmer, it introduces warmer temperatures to a complex system which can have wide-reaching effects. In Argentina right now, they are going through a record-breaking epidemic of dengue. During the last epidemic, they had just shy of 20,000 cases. In this round, they’re already over 150,000. Similar to mass coral bleaching events, epidemics have also increased in frequency, from every 4-5 years, to 5 in the last 8 years. Joy! But what does this have to do with climate and earth systems? Well, dengue-carrying mosquitos need water and temps above 14 degrees Celsius (it’s a tropical disease after all) in order to develop and climate change has delivered both. More rain and more standing water, plus a much warmer winter, meant that the breeding period for the little bastards continued virtually uninterrupted through the winter. It’s been estimated that limiting global warming to 1.5C could prevent up to 300,000 cases of dengue per year by 2050 and a half million by 2100.

And why am I writing about this? Well, despite a friend getting it in Buenos Aires and warning me, I spent the first day in shorts and a t-shirt with no bug spray and ended the day with bites everywhere. Then I got a light fever, headache, and strange muscle cramps and aches (thankfully all mild, annoying not incapacitating). I got vaccinated against dengue last year and got the booster while in Buenos Aires, so it could have been a reaction to the booster, could have been a light case of dengue, or could have been something else entirely. Either way, I had to delay my cycling departure to ensure I recovered, meaning I’ll have to find a day or lose a day in the next 5 weeks. Tough.

A butterfly flaps its wings

…and half of South America declares independence. It’s actually a pretty nice transition on the theme of interconnectedness. In this case though, the butterfly was Napoleon and the wing flap was the invasion of Spain in the early 1800s.

Taking massive liberties here with the complexity of history, but basically, the dude had come to the conclusion that his brother should rule Spain, so he invaded. Far from Napoleon, my brother buys cadavers to poke around in their noses and figure out which techniques are best for cutting deep into your sinuses. Tobes, put down your scalpel, pick up a bayonet, and go fight King Charles for the UK, I think you can take him! Then give it to me (like a good Napoleonic brother) and you can go back to picking other people’s noses. But I digress. 

Back to taking liberties with history. The Spanish colonies in South America realized that when the Spanish king was captured (in Spain) by Napoleon’s armies, they (in S. America) had no more government. So they formed their own and not long thereafter got to thinking “oh damn, we could just do this forever and let the Spaniards deal with their own shit.” Over the course of the next 5-10 years, they themselves fought civil wars between “royalists” and “patriots” which the patriots won, and thus independent nations like Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru were born. Wild. All because Napoleon wanted to be a good brother.