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Derailuered
Well I sort of got my bike working, new derailuer is skipping a bit. Continuing to adjust and I don't care if it's perfect or all gears work. Think there are more issues than the derailuer like the derailuer hanger is bent. Among many other issues with the bike, I ride it hard, many miles and do most of my own maintenance often with bit the greatest tools.
But I'm determined to get back on the road even if it does eventually mean seeking professional help or getting another bike. Even a really nice bike is cheaper than a single car payment and paying insurance on a car plus the SuperDuty. Plus I absolutely hate driving to work though the local bus and transferring to the shuttle or second bus ain't my favorite either.
There are always those people who will insist what I need is a 25 year old Honda Civic and a plastic covered house with asphalt shingles to live in with a 100 square foot television and high speed internet in every room. With weekly garbage service and air conditioning. Sit in bumper to bumper traffic, cut off your own balls with a butcher knife, join a HOA and mow your own lawn. I can only imagine how much I'd bleed after doing such things even if I'd heard Rocky Mountain Oysters are tasty.
Maybe I spend too much time reading Hunter S Thompson and Edward Abbey, or up in the wilderness watching shit burn, giggling in the hammock. Stories about the west and wilderness. Away from the flashing store front lights yelling buy shit, the garbage heaps, backfiring cars that billow smoke and sewage treatment works. Dreaming of far away places, looking at off grid cabins, farms and ranches and places out west or at least in BFE. But in the mean time I really like riding my bike to work and around town and it would be so hard to give it up in favor of a tacky plastic house and a 25 year old Honda Civic.
Saturday July 11, 2026 — Bicycles
Southern Albany County – Bridge Inventory
This map shows NYS DOT-inspected bridges in Southern Albany and details about the status of the bridge, age, etc.
Data Source: NYSDOT, Bridges. https://gis.dot.ny.gov/hostingny/rest/services/NYSDOT_Structures/MapServer/
3D Building Map
Mostly this an example of how to use MapLibreGL to create 3D maps for a different perspective on your town. It is connected back to NYS GIS Geocoder and Reverse Geocoders to allow you to search and see the current location of the center point on the screen.
Lawns are buffer space 🌾
Lately there has been a meme on social media attacking the suburbanite lawn, the vast space of empty green, manicured and cut to a perfect height, fertilized and sprayed to ensure no weeds or unwanted grasses.
You can be critical for good reason to the suburban, chemically treated lawn – especially those who put so much care into it they don’t want people to even walk on it. Lawns – even with robust grasses like fescue – are pretty delicate, they turn brown due to a lack of rain and quickly can become mud and worn if they are repeatedly walked across by people, animals or livestock.
But I do see benefits to having a small, largely natural lawn too. For one, grasses and their roots tie down the dirt and mud so your not tracking it all indoors. If you have land that isn’t productive – it’s buffer space than you don’t want to be a nuisance.
Buffer space is important. Setting your house back from trees means less likely for storm damage when a branch comes down. Being back from the road means less noise from passing cars and noxious fumes. It provides a defensible space during wild fire. Livestock like pigs have odors, cows and roosters are noisy. For both reasons of noxious odor and fire safety, you don’t want your trash burner near your house. Hay, cows and campfire don’t smell that bad but burnt plastic, hog manure and fermented grain aren’t exactly wonderful smells to be drifting in your window whole eating dinner.
Buffer space is important. But every foot of grass you have for buffer could be forage or forest producing useful agricultural or forest products. It’s a trade-off but can be made reasonably well if buffer is limited and it’s largely natural with common grasses and weeds, while surrounded by natural forests, local plants and cleared of invasive species.