Ruts On Eggleston Hill Road
The Smells of October Road Trip
The Smells of the October Road Trip
What can I say, life is full of smells, some good, some a little more offensive.
Mike Pence on his dairy farm channel often jokes about smell-o-vision, so one can enjoy the good and bad smells of life on a dairy farm from freshly chopped silage and hay to manure to sour silage. No smell-a-vision here either, only words.
Diesel Exhaust
Driving down along Interstate 88 you could smell the semi-trucks and diesel fuel and exhaust. Trucks certainly can smell although with the cleaner diesels not so much.
Chopping Silage
Silage has a very sweet smell when it’s freshly chopped. It’s a very farm-like smell but a nice smell.
Cow Manure
Hard to go many places in Upstate New York or Pennsylvania in good farm country and not smell cows and the even more pungent smell of cow manure.
Paper Plant
Paper plants have a distinctive sulfur smell. It’s really obnoxious if your not used to it, almost makes your eyes want to water and wonder when it.
Burning Garbage
Lots of folks in rural Pennsylvania burn their garbage. It’s a pungent, sharp smell, chemical but in some ways depending what folks are burning on a particular day, not that pungent.
Oil Wells
Oil wells in the Allegheny National Forest have a distinctive oil-smell like you might smell during an oil change, only sweeter. Sweet crude has a very distinctive smell.
Oil Refinery
Oil refineries smell a lot like the oil wells, although maybe a lot stronger and sweeter. I wouldn’t say oil or oil refinery exactly smells bad but it sure is pungent.
Chicken and Turkey Farms
Some of the chicken and turkey farms have a particularly earthy smell. Maybe not that pungent but what you might normally smell in a chicken barn.
Coal Stove
Anthracite coal and especially bituminous coal has a very distinctive smell. It smells like coal, somewhat like burning garbage or kerosene but not as strong or acrid.
Kerosene Heat
A lot of trailers and rural households use kerosene because it’s can be purchased and transported in a regular gas can, and works in both portable heaters and some small heaters in mobile homes. Kind of pungent sulfurly smell, but very different then coal.
Coal Fired Power Plant
Coal power plants have a coal smell, a bit of a sulfury, mechanical smell. A smell like old machinery and coal.
Chicken Processing Plants
Moorefield and Keyser West Viriginia are home to many large chicken and turkey processing plants. Depending on the breeze, they can be pungent, reminding me a lot of smell of raw meat you might get at the store.
Landfills
Landfills have a methane smell that is more chemical, more bleachy or toxic smelling from the landfill methane. Definately a lot more sour and less sweet then what you might smell on a farm or from sweet crude oil
Wood Smoke
A lot of households in rural Pennsylvania also heat with wood. Generally wood is a pretty pleasant smell although it depends on the concentration and what exactly folks are burning.
Green Lake
Acid rain consensus cloudy | News, Sports, Jobs – Adirondack Daily Enterprise
Last week the Adirondack Council issued a statement on acid rain in the Adirondacks, linking increasing pollution from Midwest power plants to a rise in the acidity of clouds here and saying, “It is troubling to see acid rain re-emerge as a threat to the Adirondack Park.”
The researchers who collected that cloud data, while agreeing with the Council on the need to keep acid rain at bay, disagreed that the cloud pH levels have “reversed their previous trends.” They said a drop between 2016 and 2017 was “minor” and “a natural variation.” They also said that the latest data shows the acidity of Adirondack clouds continues to improve.
I think it's a mistake to say that running flue gas desulfurizaiton is free or universally good. Just because a few plants are operating without using the FGD stacks running due to equipment failure, doesn't mean that the acid rain cap and trade program is not working. Sulfur credits are cheap, because it's working so well. Capturing sulfur dioxide is both very energy intensive (more carbon emissions) and uses a lot of space to landfill the often contaminated gypsum.
Lake Alice in Fall
Into the Gorge
October 17, 2019 Morning
Good morning! Happy Thursday. Two weeks to Halloween 🛥️. Rain and 45 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ Breezy, ️10 mph breeze from the west-northwest 🌬 with occasional gusts up to 46 mph 💨💨💨. Definitely not umbrella weather due to the breeze but I’ve seen worse rain with stronger winds. The skies will clear tomorrow around 1 pm.
I am feeling better today after a good night’s sleep in my truck cap. 😴 There was a few gusts of wind but generally my truck cap was dry 💦 and the rain noise on the roof was quite soothing. Drive back to the city wasn’t bad, took a shower 🚿 and now the bus 🚍 to work.
It kind of ducks for my parents on their vacation 🌀 although once they get past the rain and choppy seas 🌊 today they should have nice weather 😎. If I had my vacation this week, it would have been probably fairly decent in West Virginia. No burn ban down there either.
Today will rain. 🌧 High of 50 degrees at 3pm. Nine degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 10th. Breezy, with a west wind around 24 mph, with gusts as high as 46 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 57 degrees. The record high of 85 was set in 1947. There was a dusting of snow in 1970.❄
The sun will set at 6:10 pm with dusk around 6:39 pm, which is one minute and 36 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain showers 🌧 and temperatures around 50 degrees. Breezy, 22 mph breeze ⛅ from the west-northwest with gusts up to 38mph. Today will have 10 hours and 59 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 47 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly before 1am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 42 degrees at 5am. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 9th. Northwest wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 31 degrees. The record low of 22 occurred back in 1978.
I’ve decided for now to hold off on replacing my laptop bag. 👝 I’ve been using this Sierra Club ♧ bag that was gifted to me from John Wolcott which works pretty good and has decent padding with extra cardboard added for protection. I didn’t originally like how the shoulder strap is short and I have to carry my lunch in a separate bag but I’ve gotten use to it. 🎒You can guess what happened to the old bag, fire not landfill.
I often read 📖 and sometimes share those paid articles that I see about personal finance. Some are good, most are kind selling shit. 💩 They often talk about the importance of saving to buy a home – which I’m doing 🏡 but I can’t imagine owning a home and land unless is off grid and has enough land where I can raise livestock 🐐🐓🐷 and burn my own trash 🔥 without bothering the neighbors in a state that protects my second amendment rights 🔫. My parents have decent neighbors but they’re too close in my opinion
A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, areas of frost before 8am. Otherwise, sunny, with a high near 58. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the afternoon. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 61. Maximum dew point of 43 at 7pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 59 degrees. Should be a good weekend for the Save the Pine Bush Hike and maybe also hiking in the Catskills on Sunday. I’m thinking about doing Indian Head Mountain this weekend 🗻 but I could change my mind.
As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Halloween 🛥️ when the sun will be setting at 5:50 pm with dusk at 6:19 pm. On that day in 2018, we had mostly cloudy skies with patches of fog in the morning and temperatures between 61 and 28 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 54 degrees. We hit a record high of 73 back in 1946.
