While it would have been nice to get out of town for the Memorial Day Weekend, I’m enjoying the light breeze camping in the back country of Cole Hill, eating good healthy and delicious meals cooked over the fire and enjoying the light of a fire, the moon and candles in the evening. I’m sure if I had gone to the Adirondacks I would have been dealing with a lot more black flies to say nothing of the long drive, traffic and probably not getting my dream campsite. Onwards to Juneteenth Weekend, lol.

Good morning! Happy Sunday. Sunny and 68 degrees at the Cole Hill State Forest. 🌞 Calm wind. The dew point is 46 degrees. Warming up quickly after a somewhat cool night. I probably could have used another blanket for hammock camping last night.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 82 degrees at 4pm. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around June 24th. Maximum dew point of 47 at 11am. Calm wind becoming northwest 5 to 8 mph in the afternoon. That breeze is nice and it’s not expected to be real humid. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning, which became cloudy by afternoon. The high last year was 80 degrees. The record high of 93 was set in 2016. I think that year I was camping in the Green Mountain National Forest and spending much of the day at the beach at Grout Pond. There was a dusting of snow in 1902.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:55 pm with sun having an altitude of 68.8° from the due south horizon (-2° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:43 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (294°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (301°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:24 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 21 seconds with dusk around 8:57 pm, which is 52 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon in the south-southwest (199°) at an altitude of 51° from the horizon, 248,997 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:41 pm. At sunset, look for clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 71 degrees. The dew point will be 51 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 15 hours and 3 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 30 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 51 degrees at 4am. One degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 26th. Maximum dew point of 51 at 8pm. Northwest wind around 7 mph. In 2022, we had partly cloudy skies. It got down to 51 degrees. The record low of 34 occurred back in 1956.

I took my bike to Downtube and they told me that they didn’t think it warranted a professional rebuild 🚲 due to numerous components needing replacement to get it up and running well. They were more than happy to show me the latest 2023 models which run about $800 after tax and destination charges, but suggested my bicycle might still be a fun project to rebuild myself even if there are some components – namely the gas suspension which is bad and will fail catastrophically at some point in the future. They pointed me in the direction of the Albany Bicycle Rescue which offers free classes on bicycle repair on Tuesday.

Looking ahead, there are 2 weeks until the Gas Up Day 2 🚜 when the sun will be setting at 8:35 pm with dusk at 9:08 pm. On that day in 2022, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 78 and 50 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 78 degrees. We hit a record high of 94 back in 1947.