Friday was the best day for skiing at Rensselaerville State Forest despite the clouds and snow squalls. The trails had a nice inch of powder on top of them, with ice pack below making for excellent cross country skiing.
There are two ways to get between Crane Pond and Pharaoh Lake. One brings you over Pharoah Mountain, which has great views but it's a much bigger climb, especially on the southern side.
Pharaoh Mountain Trail (2,556 feet) extends 3.8 miles between the Pharaoh Lake Trail and Crane Pond Trail. The trails ascends 1,355 feet in 1.2 miles to the summit and then descends 1,405 feet in 2.6 miles to Crane Pond.
Glidden Marsh Trail extends 2.6 miles between Pharaoh Lake Loop Trail and the Pharaoh Mountain Trail. The trail ascends 300 feet from Pharaoh Lake for the first 0.4 mile and then descends 270 feet for the remaining 2.2 miles.
Totally wanted to take the bike path in but I’m afraid it’s still packed with rough sheets of ice, I don‘t worry so much about skiding but I do worry about breaking spokes and other shit on the bike pounding along those two and half miles so I guess it’s Corning’s Hill today.
Probably leave fairly early this morning, 🥶 as I got shit to do in the office today. 🏢 Coffee is a bit weak because I just reheated the growns and remaining coffee with water in the perculator. ☕ I need more milk, the plastic kind, still haven’t reached out to get delivery yet. I’ve been finding recycling bins on way to toss those bottles, and saving the remaining trash for waste baskets along the way. Just little frozen fruit bags stuffed with other non-recycle plastics. Really try to buy as little packaging as possible, especially now. 📦 It’s not like I’m not getting another truck, so I could save it for springtime fires or hauling to the transfer station, 🔥 but whatever – most normal people just use the landfill and subscription services. It’s nice when you’re in woods and have fires every day and shit doesn’t accumulate. I hate throwing away plastic knowing it’s going to sit in the hill in Pine Bush forever. But what about dioxin and furans the liberals say? To think of all that crap I’ve burned down to nothing, those stuffed white and black garbage bags over the years. ♻️ Carbon dioxide recycling. When I have homestead out in country, there ain’t going to be much burnable crap leaving the homestead except as smoke.
Maybe that’s the real question that remains in my mind about getting a SuperDuty truck. ⛽ It’s all the fucking fuel it’s going to use, and to a lesser extent the cost, though a basic HD truck compared to even modest trim half ton and mid-size truck really isn’t that much more, especially if you get a gasser and it’s not like it’s a daily driver. But what about having a big block engine in the era of climate change? 🌎 I don’t know, I hate driving in city, 🚦 with all the cops with their erect penises watching me run the yellow or going 3 miles over the speed limit and assholes who don’t know how to drive. I’ll just take the fucking bus. 🚍 But buses suck, don’t you know, only loosers, the colored and poor take slow, dirty old bus to work, 🚏which they of course keep cutting service to. Yet, I like reading, and not dealing with traffic or bad weather. It’s kind of nice knowing I don’t have to think about clearing the snow off my truck. 🌨️ That said, I’ve totally fallen in love ♥️ with those big Fords. And I don’t think I’ll need a lift kit one of those, even though the clearance isn’t that much more over a stock half they do ride a lot higher on road, and I like being able to see God’s scenery, the goats and cows and burn barrels along the roads. 🛢️
I keep studying various financial channels and books, and really enjoy that the library now offers free subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal. 📰 While the WSJ isn’t that much different in finanicial coverage then let’s say NPR or NY Times, it’s good to have more perspectives and more info. I used to listen to Marketplace on NPR all the time, not so much now, but I am always looking for insights into investing and saving, and personal growth. 📈 I don’t buy into some of the commercial TV guys like Dave Ramsey or Mad Money, as I think both of them get a lot of things wrong, though they may have some valid points for very poor, though they’re mostly entertainment. Slow and steady, boring in my way. I like simple things that make sense like index funds and bond funds, which have relatively simple fee schedules and track easy to understand indexes, and things like automatic investing. I am intrigued about rolling over IRA contributions to Roth IRAs – while I’ve maxed out both my Roth IRA and 401k/457B over the years – now I want to start moving over parts of the 401k/457B to a Roth – but I’m hoping the market moves down a bit so I have less taxable value when I make the backdoor conversion. 💰 That way, in retirement if I need a new manure spreader, won’t get hit by so much taxes. 💩 Also, I think I am going to work on building up my cash reserves, now that market is up, as I have the big cost of the SuperDuty truck, the camper shell, cell booster for remote work and other equipment for camping before summer gets underway. ♨️ Going to hold off on the diesel heater until autumn but that’s a further cost.
