Thinned Barriens Along Paper Street
Finally enough daylight to ride home after work 🚲
It feels great to be able to ride both in and home from work. Instead of paying the bus fare, I’m paying towards my future with better health and saved money. That buck thirty each way may not be a big expense but it still kind of gnaws at me like a dripping faucet.
It’s not to say that the ride home is a ride in the park. I mean it is most of the way literally but it’s still a good climb out of the gorge. But that cardio is good, and it’s a great way to get exercise while saving a bit of money and enjoying nature while not using much more time than I would use riding the bus.
I don’t know if I’ll ride home the rest of the week – going to be colder and cloudier but it’s a sign of spring time with the knowledge that soon I’ll be able to do this nearly every day, with some weeks never boarding the bus at all.
Nature Conservancy, state reach Follensby compromise – Adirondack Explorer
Worst week of the year 💔
As a single guy, I am no fan of Valentines’ Day. We are now seven weeks into winter, often with a gray haze and clouds all around. It’s cold, I’m stuck inside in my small little apartment that is rarely warm in part because I don’t like paying for the heat, and in part because it’s drafty and falling apart. Despite the foam I put around the door, one of the days it’s going to completely fall apart again. The vinyl windows have lost their seal, and the walls don’t line up with the foundation, allowing air to leak in freely on this blustery morning.
I got the news that I am likely losing my home 16 years this week, with the landlord selling the building. A place I’ve gotten to know so well, with many in-perfections but also the niceties of living somewhere that is walk-able and bikable, with good public transportation. I have to start the home search, be it an another apartment or buying a house. But I don’t want to move or give up on the life I’ve come to love — biking to work, walking down to the library, weekends in the wilderness.
My heart is so broken to be losing my apartment in the coming months. But it’s also tough to be so alone, in what often seems like the bleakest days of winter, before the dawn of spring. The nights are getting shorter, but not by much, and the mercury slightly warmer. Things will get better soon, but it’s so bleak right now. I have much to look forward to after this period of darkness.