April 19, 2020 Night

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Good evening! Cloudy and 53 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a west-southwest breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Wednesday around 3 am. ☃️

I’m tired 😴 so I’m going to keep this blog post short and get some sleep.

Back home again. 🗻 That said it was a nice weekend camping ⛺ up off of the East Branch Sacandaga River, hiking the East Branch Gorge Trail on Saturday, hiking back along Stewart Creek and Cod Pond on Sunday mid afternoon and then the backside of Auger Falls in the evening. I left outside of Wells around six and it was a long drive home from there.

Still have more to unpack in the morning but the criticals like food are put away. 🍏 I took a very cold shower, forgetting to turn the hot water heater back on when I got home. 🚿 Evidently, the hot water heater is much more essential in mid April than the summer.

Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly before 1am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 37 degrees at 6am. Two degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 15th. Northwest wind 6 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2019, we had light rain in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 60 degrees. The record low of 19 occurred back in 1875.

Tonight will have a Waining Crescent 🌘 Moon with 8% illuminated. The Flower 🌷 Moon is on Tuesday, May 5. The darkest hour is at 12:55 am, followed by dawn at 5:38 am, and sun starting to rise at 6:08 am in the east-northeast (74°) and last for 3 minutes and 1 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 34 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 6:46 am with sun in the east (80°). Tonight will have 10 hours and 22 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 41 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 53 degrees at 4pm. Eight degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 4th. North wind 7 to 9 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 71 degrees. The record high of 93 was set in 1941. 5.8 inches of snow fell back in 1947.❄

In four weeks on May 17 the sun will be setting in the west-northwest (298°) at 8:13 pm,🌄 which is 30 minutes and 54 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had mostly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 73 and 52 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 70 and 47 degrees. The record high of 92 degrees was set back in 2017.

Looking ahead, Mothers Day 👩‍ is in 3 weeks, Pack Rat Day 🐀 is in 4 weeks, Strawberry Moon 🌕 is in 7 weeks and Fathers Day 👨 is in 8 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 33 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

The Catskills from Cheese Hill Road

Would I consider taking a Coronavirus vaccine? 💉

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Would I consider taking a Coronavirus vaccine? 💉

At this point probably not because we don’t fully understand the side effects that could have lifelong effects compared a disease that so far appears mostly temporary, especially with people my age having a good chance of recovering even from a severe case.

Honestly, I would be more worried about paralysis or some kind of other side effect permanently injuring me then a relatively quick death from Coronavirus.

That said, the disease in the short term seems pretty nasty (and potentially deadly) and after widespread testing and use in the population with demonstrated record of safety, I definitely would consider getting a future Coronavirus vaccine – especially in 5 years from now. At that point problems would be well teased out and reported on, and I expect it to be convenient and widely available for free with health insurance from all major pharmacies and grocery stores with pharmacy departments.

One of the Reasons I Want to Live Off-Grid

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Conservation: One of the Reasons I Want to Live Off-Grid 💡

Imagine if a buffet restaurant opened up in town. There was no fixed price for the meal but each scoop of food was a fixed price – 25 cents a scoop. Didn’t matter if it was steak or peas, it was a fixed price. A big guy could easily be filled up and then some for $10. Sounds like a a great deal? Well except if you are a very careful counter you might not know what your bill is at the end of the night. Plus the food is cheap and no discount for eating healthy so you would get fat after eating there a lot.

In many ways that’s how life in cities connected to the utility grid is a lot like. You get your electric bill, you pay it and while you might take steps to monitor your consumption and reduce your use its really hard when so much cheap energy is available at your house.

The flip side is an off grid homestead where you are making a lot of your energy using natural forces, where you have physical limitations on storage and consumption. Even off source energy like propane and gasoline are bought by the gallon, you can physically see and feel the materials being consumed and have a much more direct connection on your energy consumption. Likewise, if you lack a well and rely on water brought on site in a 250 gallon or 500 gallon tank you much more likely to take shorter showers and use more paper plates.

I haven’t posted a lot of pictures from this weekend’s adventures

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I haven’t posted a lot of pictures from this weekend’s adventures because I’ve been taking them on my regular camera and not using Instagram for higher resolution photos to better fit the immersive experience I’m trying to create with the new version of the blog. Instagram is nice but my smart phone takes crappy pictures and Instagram only allows low resolution exports.

I’m also increasingly paranoid about getting too specific about my whereabouts in the Adirondacks to not feed the trolls who will most certainly write comments about being a traitor for spending your weekend in the remote country during the pandemic whole they’re holed up in their fancy apartment eating Cheetos while watching cat videos. To be fair, I do watch videos of folks milking cows, turning dirt and building their off grid homesteads but only on crappy days.