You the preacher liked the cold and he knows I’m going to stay, California Dreamin’ on such a winter day.

That is words I sung to myself as I watched as the home, that homestead next to my parents house has finally gotten moved into that could have been mind for $150k or maybe even just the $120k that apparently was ultimately paid. I do rent month-to-month after all. I don’t have to stay. But the house I looked at year ago now was pretty dumpy, really not much different then my apartment, an old one-story structure with a sloping stone foundation, collapsing floors, oil heat next to a busy rural highway where the trucks run their Jake brakes through the night. With a barn, she’d and sink for butchering animals. A swampy pasture and hay field. The lack of a woodstove, wood lot and insurance issues were a deal breaker. But I passed it up for something better, my freedom, maybe eventually that off-grid cabin somewhere in a free state. It looks like they’re a nice family who moved there, someday they might be my future neighbors.

I rent month to month, I don’t really have any family locally outside of my increasingly elderly parents. I don’t kid myself, I know it’s only a few years before I get asked to move back out to family 5-acre homestead to care from them and ultimately end up with their property full of junk and brush. Going to need a lot of goats and chainsawing and fire too clean that dump up. A much too large of a structure, and ordinary grid-tied, leaky old house but probably with a lot of possibility. But I still like my freedom, I don’t want to be stuck feeding goats, hogs and chickens at least for a few more years. I know you can butcher animals – they’re not like pets – but I sort of like my freedom I have now. I like living in hte city and riding my mountain bike or taking the city bus everywhere, only driving when I want to get out of town. I mean I could buy a place in the city or a suburban house, anything would be nicer then my dumpy old apartment. But I kind of like living month-to-month, even if I know some day I may have to leave at the most inconvient time.

Freedom comes Thursday or Friday. I could leave on Juneteenth to head north and take off Friday – indeed that was initial plan but Thursday looks awful wet, cloudy, and cold up north. Friday is better but cool. The thing is a major heat wave is pushing in next week, m and I’d rather take advantage of my limited time off to be swimming and cooling off in the nice weather, rather then sweating at home. After driving up to Partridge Run and all over today, I really have had my confidence built up in my driving skills and the condition of Big Red, so I’m ready to go psychologically. I should check the oil though before leaving. And then I’ll get up north, be floating, cooling off and smoking pot. Still, it’s been such a cool spring that the appeal of floating on the tube and hanging out in the Potholers seems limited but that is to change it seems next week.

Truth is I am pretty bored with summer and same trips I’ve been every summer for going on a decade plus now. Juneteenth at the Potholers and the House Pond Campsite, how original. Then maybe a trip to Schoharie, then Finger Lakes National Forest in late July into August, and a few other random trips. The same places it seems, because those are the places I like and I’ve tapped out and discarded the rest locally. Next summer, I really want to do Michigan and Wisconsin and see the Upper Midwest for a change, but not until I replace Big Red, which uses too much fuel, is too difficult to drive into small campsites and parking lots. I kind of wish I wasn’t living month to month, and I didn’t decide after a few looks at that property and the hitch over the insurance and lack of a wood stove to walk away. But I was more interested in the Potholers and a life based on escape last summer then a life based on reality. Smoking pot seemed like more fun then driving back and forth to a house out in the country in the snow, shoveling pig shit and feeding grain.

The lyrics of California Dreamin’ are the “preacher liked the cold” and not the “preacher likes the cold”.  Time keeps ticking by, and while assets and investments keep growing and offering future opportunities, it sucks being so broke these days and feeling like I have to ride my bike to work to save on the bus fare, even though I also enjoy the physical and mental clarity the commute gives me. It certainly beats driving, that any house out in the country would provide. Even when I do camp in the same places in wilderness, year after year, I do try to find new adventures and places to explore and clear my mind, but it gets tougher the more I explore each year.

I might end up just hanging around in town on Thursday and working remote on Friday from the library in Delmar so I can leave early for the Potholers and take off Monday rather then Friday. Next week is going to be warm, and that’s when I’d rather be floating in the river and swimming in the heat. The following Friday is my dentist appointment, so that might be yet another opportunity to leave town early for a long weekend either in Schoharie or Vermont. Even if I don’t do much either weekend besides listen to music and podcasts, smoke pot and read, and have some rip roaring fires, it’s good to get away from it all. Maybe I should do that Michigan and Wisconsin trip this year, but I’m not ready, and I’m anxious enough about driving creaking ol Big Red on just ordinary trips, much less 8-hour days at 75 MPH on Midwest expressway.