Rainy start to the Sunday but hopefully it won’t last ⛈
I guess not every day can be sunshine and rainbows. Yesterday was beautiful but I didn’t want to burn any expensive gas in the SuperDuty and warm the planet. That’s for next weekend in Vermont.
Good morning, Happy Sunday. It would have not been a good weekend to head out to Vermont to camp, at least today, though yesterday was quite beautiful, though I took is slow. ⛈ Started out yesterday riding down to the Town Park, and doing some work for an hour. 👩💻 The came back home, read, watched some Youtube videos. Rode down to Hannaford got $30 in groceries, came home, cooked some lunch, then rode out to Five Rivers. 📚 I had hoped going out to Five Rivers I could have picked up some zucchini and summer squash, but already that season is beyond us. Didn’t want to run the SuperDuty at all yesterday so the gas lasts through Thursday. ⛽ I thought about taking the Nature Bus to Thacher Park but by the time I was back from Hannaford and looking at bus schedule it was too late. Plus I’m still cheesed about the driver refusing to let me take the bike on bus earlier in the summer. In the past, they always let the rule slide. 🐸
I am switching up into autumn mode, having picked up a bag of 16-bean soup, and are baking bread this morning, keeping an careful eye on the stove and oven to verify no malfunctions. 👨🍳 No problems noted in cooking. I tried to clean up any spills in the oven, and the stove smoked a bit but I figure today’s the day to test things out, with the windows being open and things being cool, and me not rushing around this morning to get to work. I was planning to bake zucchini bread but that’s not going to happen, but I might get carrots on Monday if I stop at Wally World before work to use in pancakes and bread for the rest of week. 🥕 I like the extra fiber that displaces and moves along some of the carbs of bread. Plus plain whole-wheat bread is just mushy.
A lot depends on the weather today, but this morning I plan to do some cooking, reading. At noon time I’ll go to the library to use the Wi-Fi and maybe look at some of the programming books. 💻 I should think about learning another programming language this winter or maybe using Python more. R is fine, it’s the backbone of much of my work but some things are slow and clunky in it, even if tidyverse is great for data processing and ggplot2 remains a killer app for programmatically making diagrams and maps. 🗺
Tomorrow I will take the SuperDuty into work, somebody asked to be shown the old truck on Monday, I’ll confirm today, and also visit my parents on Monday before they leave for vacation. I’ve been digging around for clothes to wear, tomorrow I’ll do my wash at my parents house. 👕 Working remote and being up at camp I’ve been needing to change my clothes less frequently. Plus it’s that time of year where I can wear both the long sleeves and short sleeves throughout the week. But I’m really getting down to the dregs of clothes at this point. ⏳ I enjoy spending time with my parents as I know there is only a limited amount of visits left. And you never know how many there are. 🤷♂️Things seem okay, but things can go downhill quick. Mom keeps saying she hopes to live to see the end of Trump presidency. But that’s not far away. The 2026 election cycle is rapidly winding down to a close.
Thursday if it’s not too wet I want to head to Vermont after my Thursday meeting. Work remote either from camp or probably the Bennington Library on Friday. 🏕 Saturday do some hiking – I wouldn’t mind doing Bald Mountain again, or I could do Harmon Hill, ride to the ATV trail from camp then hike back from there. Or maybe research other hikes. I also really enjoyed the trail at the Robert Frost Historic Site and should look to see if there are other alternatives. 🔍 It doesn’t seem like there is a lot of options for rail trails in Bennington unless I drive down to North Adams, though just riding along Prospect Mountain Road is pretty delightful. 🚴♀️
I’ve started to do a deep dive into truck undercoatings. I know a lot of people swear by Fluid Film and Woolwax, but it’s going to be like $750 to have it professionally done and it only lasts a year or two before it washes off. Is it worth it? 💸 I got over 14 years out of Big Red before the rot destroyed the frame. But you do see a lot of old SuperDuties rotting away in farm fields. But how long should a truck last? 14 years from now I’ll be seriously looking at retirement, and maybe I won’t want an F-350 in retirement. Maybe something more of cruising if I decide I don’t want the off-grid life? 🐐 Or maybe I’ll want a diesel? Or will the electrics be so good at that point, gas prices so high, and climate crisis so severe that it only makes sense to get rid of the SuperDuty? I have no idea what the world will look like in 2040. 🌎 It’s not like in 2011 I could have imagined that my next truck would have been an F-350. And the SuperDuty frames are a lot better painted and protected then the Chevy trucks – and much heavier steel being a 1-ton HD truck compared to 1/2-ton truck. I need to think about it some more. ❄️ Salt season ain’t far away.
