Cornmeal cakes made up with zucchuni and onion pieces ground up in them with Frank’s Hot Sauce for breakfast on this morning. I would ride but I am probably going to the final Guilderland Hearing on Comphrensive Plan to make the argument for stronger protections for the Albany Pine Bush and I need a way to get my bike home as it will be dark out by the time the hearing is over and I don’t want to have to wait for the bus home.
Another real nice late summer day. ☀️ Too bad I can’t ride in but I should be able to ride in Wednesday, and then up to the farmer’s market. 🍆 Already almost through the big old zucchuni I got last week. Thursday I’ll ride in too unless I decide to take Friday off to extend my weekend trip up to the Adirondacks or maybe Rensselearville. I am a bit undecided – both are competing in my mind – and I got to see how much time I left on vacation. Red did make kind of a loud clunk when I parked him on Sunday, but I don’t think it really is much worse then usual. 🛻 Need to get to store too.
Riding the local bus to work then transferring to the shuttle kind of sucks, 🚌 but ultimately whatever. I mean I’m going to be riding it a lot more in the winter, unless I decide to start driving to work at the express bus is no more. 📖 I figure I can read on the bus on way in so it’s not totally wasted time though I like the exercise. If I didn’t have the Pine Bush thing tonight, and it was too bad weather for riding, the wasted time at least during the transfer Ic would use for walking. 👣 Still it’s a bit of walk now for the transfer, so I get some steps in then plus the walk to Lynn’s house to meet her after work.
I can’t believe less then a week left of wearing contact lens. 👀 I believe next week at this time I will be required to only wear glasses to make sure my eyes aren’t too irrated for the LASIK a week from Friday. I checked out whether or not I had any insurance coverage for the procedure, and the answer is no, as it’s elective surgery, but the thing is going forward I won’t have any expenses for ordinary eye care – my vision plan will cover check up every other year plus free reading glasses if I need them. 👓 Cheaters are cheap, so if I need them, I’ll need them. But at least I won’t need bifocuals. My eyes were so irrated for a while yesterday, so I’m glad contacts are done. Some of it is the dry air and the muck and muck I get in my eyes camping, but I think the weed up at camp doesn’t help with the dry eye.
“Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels. ” Or as my neighbor’s truck says,” Diesel Smoke Makes Me Horney. ”
Still singing along with Gram Parsons all the way back home from Bennington. ⛰️ Return of the Grevious Angel is a good song, and traffic wasn’t that bad for NY 7 though that’s a road a generally try to avoid, especially that shit part of it known as Hoo-sick Street. Who-sick in Hoo-sick Falls the trial lawyers claim, as morbidly obese people bump up to small town bar hoping the trial lawyers will dish out their fifty cents. I know I shouldn’t be so sympathetic to multinational corporations that bring us vinyl and poison the land. Shit stinks when you burn it. Diesels are great, lots of power, at least out in the country where there ain’t a lot of pollution besides the taste of dairy air, 🐮 but modern diesels with all that pollution control crap for use in cities is pretty awful.
I woke up feeling so dehydrated, 💦 which was partially my fault by not drinking enough water on the weekend that was and much too beer and coffee to obviously counteract or maybe ehnance the grass. 🌾 Kind of like hung over not that I’ve had any intoxicating substance since well Harmon Hill or maybe that fire I had in evening on Saturday. 🔥 Truth is I’m just all jacked up from having fires and watching as those plastic yougurt containers melted away, soaked with used motor oil. 🛢️ Amazing how the flames look when stoned. Some day I might get a diesel truck, especially if I’m hauling cows and tractors 🚜 but if anything my next truck will be small gasser for traveling and eventually hauling smaller gear back to my off-grid homestead. I figure by the time I retire and can focus full time on such things, I can then get the big ol’ diesel. With things being so dry – – it was frightening around the Robert Frost House how things looked like you could drop a cigarette butt and the woods were burn – – I made sure to really drown the fire pit and pull out any little hunks of aluminum or plastic that didn’t fully burn. 🗑️ Got to be green.
Eyes are real irrated this morning. 👀 I think I got some bacteria in my contacts and probably my eyes are just sore. Probably it’s the dry eye from the weather of later and we’ll you know smoking that stuff that irrates your eyes. 🚬 The dehyradation doesn’t help. That said, I don’t think I fried my brain 🧠 that much bathing in color all weekend, 🌈 and I should be good shape for write code and come up with creative SQL codes to get the Assembly’s data operations moving forward, targeting those who we want to talk to. Hopefully I can see well enough to ride to work, read those emails and lines of R code when I get to the office. And see how many people are lined up waiting for me.
Well I should get in the shower 🚿 and finish packing my lunch, especially if I’m thinking about taking Friday to out to Rensselearville or maybe the Adirondacks to eat too much clams 🦪 and sweet corn. 🌽 Memories of Vermont are all great, though it’s no Pennsylvania with all their burn barrels and real hick towns that smell like cow shit, paper plant and burnt plastic. 🛢️ Two days are much too short on the week. 🚲 The flat I got on my front tire was fine after I re-inflated. I should be a good example as the big boss man, and resume my listening to the late Gram Parsons when I get into the office close to on time. Have a good one, and George Hayduke for President!
I told myself for a while I would make it a lazy day, as my ankle hurts a bit from hiking yesterday along that ATV trail to Harmon Hill. Plus I wanted to read and get home early to unpack and unstress. Things have gotten better in my mind but I still don’t fully trust my now 14 year old increasingly creaky jacked up truck. It’s fine though, even if my mind keeps finding issues to anxiety on. I was noting the last bus to Albany leaves at 5 pm if my truck were to die. Not that I had evidence of that happening but I’ve been worrying for a decade and my parents are on vacation. Listening to Gram Parsons Return of the Grevious Angel as I hike. And the Blue Jays scream at me.
I did hang out at camp and by Beaver Pond in the National Forest until 2:30. I just wanted to take my time and collect my thoughs. Boy was it hot and humid when I got down to Bennington, Vermont. But the sun came out and the drought stricken fields and trees just glistened on the sun. I know it’s the residual on my brain from my visit with the magic dragon on Harmon Hill yesterday, lol. Pretty place though Lake Paran was busy and certainly not as wild as I had envisioned.
Vermont is just different with it’s old quaint buildings and architecture. I was going to check out some of the old covered bridges in North Bennington but I don’t have the time now and the clouds just pushed in. It’s been a great weekend but I want to get home without any truck issues or bumping another car with the inevitable NY 7 traffic. I kind of hate driving that road as otherwise I’d probably come out to the National Forest more in Vermont.
After five o’clock and it’s a mile and half walk back to my truck and an hour driving home on NY 7 through all those pokey hick towns that I half explored last year in search of my off-grid homestead and then the Troy-let where they want you to know aggravating driving is punished according to the sign and the expressway and then home by dark in the dumpy old apartment. Then riding the bike to work tomorrow.
I’m thinking about buying clams and corn on Thursday and taking Friday off for a long weekend at Rennselaerville State Forest. Maybe renew my license and shoot some tree rats. Right now though that’s just a thought – got to check the syllabus and the seasons.
I am reading Charlie Wings’ The Tiny House Handbook. So much of the book is about tiny houses, as the name would suggest. I find tiny houses appealing though maybe not quite as small as the sub 400 square foot designs, especially those designed to be towed, suggest in much of the book.
Is a tiny home really a home, if it’s designed to be towed? In my mind such a structure is a trailer with a lot of things economized to fit the dimensions and weight limits of the road. The same can be said about many pre-fab structures. There is a lot of benefits to building a structure remotely in a warehouse or a factory – but also disadvantages of weight and size limits on what can be towed on the road, especially to remote sites.
At the same time, something on wheels or constructed off site seems to lack permanence. Truth is no building is permanent though there are many very old buildings still in active use. Obviously that is the most sustainable option. But it’s hard to see the plastic and plywood buildings that dominate the suburbs today having much permanence. Maybe an old house is better – if it hasn’t been hauled off to the local dumping grounds yet – then they must have done something right building it.
Building science is both fascinating and infuriating in my mind. Builders have many good ideas, they know what works and doesn’t. Durable materials aren’t always sustainable or easily disposed on site by burning or burying due to the toxic compounds used in them to provide a long life. Neighbors growing up when they got their new double wide to replace their old trailer burned the debris vinyl , siding scraps, waste materials and that sure burnt black and stunk. Decades before the burn ban! Wood just seems like a better option even if it involves covering it with toxic stains and paints.
I read a lot about sustainable building but I’m not sure what is real and what is woke glossy marketing. The sustainability community sure likes their toxic materials that maximize energy efficiency a lot. Even if it keeps drafts from leaking out, vinyl hardly seems like a good material to be using in building any more than the absolute necessary. What is going to happen to the vinyl eventually? Be burned? Be pushed back into the earth to leach plasticizers into the earth?
In many ways I do embrace the tiny house movement in that I crave simplicity, something like a very rustic hunting cabin. Something lit by a light bulb hung from a cord in the ceiling, heat by a basic woodstove , maybe no inner walls at all, just a simple brass or wooden bed like you might find in an institutional setting. For cooking, a simple camp stove or maybe upgrade to a small, old used gas oven converted to propane. Inexpensive electric refrigerator and freezer like everybody else has powered by solar. Outside shower and outhouse. When it’s too cold to crap outdoors a bucket works to be dumped in the poop hole. Rather than sending all that shit to the landfill.
Truth is that I hate how wires are hidden and even things like garbage cans are hidden in people’s houses. Heat comes from an invisible source, water is pumped in then disappears down a drain to a leach field or sewer with all the scum being collected to be eventually dumped in the landfill. I get how infrastructure is necessary but I hate how it’s all so hidden. If we could only go back to the way it was done 120 years ago, out in the country.
