They’re still biting and it’s mad humid, almost foggy with the dampness and the wildfire smoke but only a few mosquitoes around so not too bad! I’m going to ride out to Voorheeesville, maybe just Bender Mellon and then head home as it starts to get dark out.
Something I want to do more in my forties and into my fifties – travel to new places 🛻
Next year I am thinking of getting a new, small, reliable fuel efficent pickup truck. It won’t be cheap but after 14 years with Big Red I’m due for something newer and more reliable that will open up more options for travel beyond my usual haunts in New York through West Virginia.
In 14 years from now I will be 56, going on 57 years old. It will be 2038, and I will potentially able to take state retirement with more then 25 years in with the system. Maybe it will be meger retirement compared to if I stayed longer, but I if I can focus on building my off-grid homestead full-time and be mostly self-sufficient, in end does money really matter? But that’s something more for the late 2030s.
In the mean time, I want to explore and see more of America. What is it really like living in Rural Midwest tor even the West? I don’t really have much interest in seeing the Grand Canyon or Zion National Park. I much rather spend my time on backroads in my pickup truck, camping on a dirt road in some little pull off along the way in National Forest. Have a fire in an informal stone ring, spend the night in the wilderness. See places that aren’t in the tourist brochures.
People are like buying a new truck is a terrible idea. Depreciating asset! Poorhouse life! Less money to invest! Don’t you want a big house with vinyl siding and an asphalt roof in a suburban neighborhood where people would be horrified at plastic in a burn barrel and smell of hogs? Rundown homesteads are hardly an investment, don’t you want to be a successful professional, a unit director and have a nice place in suburbs so close to work and giant mounds of garbage that are everywhere these days?
Truth is I want to get away from the giant mounds of garbage, even if my old truck of the past decade and a half is soon to be shred and mounded up in one of those piles. I don’t want a plastic picket fence or granite counter tops or all the things that “wealthy folk” have in their house. I want a life that looks like a run down hunting camp, then something invested in. But in the mean time, I want to travel and see more of Real America and not the plastic crap towns and canned tourist parks they advertise in those glossy magazines that aren’t even that great for starting fires.
Housing options 🏘️
The other night I was looking at various housing option should the day come when I have to move out of my run down apartment in the suburbs. People have suggested condos and townhouses for somebody looking for something smaller in the city, while having the tax and financial benefits of owning property rather then sending a check every month to the landlord.
Truth is there is nothing as inexpensive as where I live now, because I’ve lived here a long time and rarely request repairs or bother the landlord except when things are critical like a dead refrigerator, no heat in winter, a failed water heater or leaky faucets. Not only is the rent inexpensive but because I keep the heat low in the winter, don’t have a lot of electronics or light, and it’s small space, my energy bills are about as affordable as they can get.
So I was looking at Condos but there is nothing really out there advertised except really high-end, modern units – and even those aren’t that nuermous in the Capital Region. Condos are small, which I like as it’s less to heat and light and clean. There are more options for Town Houses, but they require more work and maintence – and generally are much larger. You don’t really find many studio or one bedroom Town Houses out there. Most have two or more bedrooms, which you have to heat and light. I also don’t want to have to be responsible for repairs and dealing with contractors and spending my weekends painting and repairing stuff when I could be out in wilderness.
So I’m back at looking at renting options. One option is to move into the core city, maybe North Albany or Menands offer some interesting options as those cities are either close to my office or near the 22 and Blue Line Express buses that I could easily take to my office on a one-seat ride. I would want off-street parking, as while I don’t enjoy motoring around the city, I do think owning a truck is the best way to escape the city. Another quite affordable option might be to rent a mobile home in a trailer park. I actually saw a ten acre parcel in Westerlo with an old trailer for sale but it was very old and diapolated – maybe best torn down and landfilled, a good site for building a home but I don’t want the commute or necessarily something so permanent in New York.
But hopefully I won’t need such an option in the immediate future, that I can squeeze out another year of my now very worn apartment with decades of neglect and relatively low rent. Every month I can continue to rent here means another month to learn, think, research and invest towards the property I really want – that off-grid cabin in a state without the burn ban and gun laws – where I can really settle down, call my home, have livestock and do the rural thing rather then either living in a city or in a suburban house that smells like cow shit that involves a stressful, long commute.
Eventually, I want a house that looks like a cross between a hunting cabin and a run down rural homestead with livestock in yard and a burn barrel out back. And lots of wildflowers, native species, with as much of those trash invasive species removed and replaced with native species that bring pollinators and wide variety of native species. Not something sold on Zillow like your typical plastic-covered suburban house.
A rainy and sticky Sunday ☔
For a while I was seriously thinking about heading out to Schoharie and then maybe later on thinking about Rensselearville State Forest for an overnight in my wobbly jacked up truck and good fire in the smokey haze of the climate-fueled wildfires but I decided against it noting the rain would be coming in later at night an last most of the morning.
Still hoping for things to clear out this afternoon 🌥️ and I’m thinking I’ll ride my bike over to Pine Hollow Arboretum 🪷 and walk around that for a while before heading out to either Voorheeesville or maybe just Five Rivers on the bike path. 🚲 Depends on the weather, and how ungodly hot it is come the passing of the thunderstorms. ⛈️ Still would like to get some exercise in as yesterday was mostly chilling on the banks of various creeks, cooling down.
It’s been hot and smokey lately. 🌫️ Albany has had some of the worse air quality in two years as more Canadian Wildfire smoke blows in. Probably caused by my big jacked up truck and all that plastic I’ve burned over the years. And several billion other people, and the inability of our politicians to address serious pollution concerns, 🌎 which are anything but woke – though usually the left just prefers woke solutions and theirght to stick their heads in the sand. 🦪 It was nice spending much of yesterday at my parents house down in the creek with the dog, 🐶 and then after having dinner with them, spending it down at Hollyhock and Onesqathaw Creek until around 8:30 PM when it was getting dark out. Mom got my some raspberries 🍓 from Stanton’s Farm Stand, had some of them with Greek yougurt when I got home.🍦 I thought about getting ice cream on way home – I haven’t had any since the Gas Up 🚜 in June – but you know I feel like being so lazy, the Greek yogurt was good enough.
Spending the day home, I finished up Mark Kulinsky’s Milk 🐮 reading down by Hollyhock after visiting my parents, occasionally wading down into creek both at their house and at Hollyhock. Truck is fine, though I do want to get that loose shock fixed, as it making for an awful ride and it’s not safe with all that body roll, especially going out to vacation in a few weeks with the kayak 🛶 on the roof. Also started reading Abragil Gethring’s Back to Basics, which is a book a little bit about everything from finding a homestead site, to clearing land, logging, building a house and livestock. 🪓🪵🏠🐐 It’s so long I probably don’t have a attention to get through the whole book. It’s on Libby though so I can keep renewing it for a while at least, and it’s not like it is part of my 10 books a month on Hoopla. That said, I need to look at my July borrows on Hoopla soon because the month is rapidly fading away, and I haven’t got any additional books out of the 10 quota for the month. Got to have them out by Thursday, which I think is July 30th.
I tried to fix the broke bottle jack for my truck, 🛠️ with no luck. I am going to get a proper sized bottle jack for my lifted truck in the next few days so I don’t have to deal with that dangerous piece of fence post I’ve been using to jack my truck up in emergencies to change the tire. 🚨 I think I’ll get the one I see at Tractor Supply as the reviews are decent, and it should be fine for occasional emergency use. If I am getting rid of the truck the end of next March in favor of a smaller, more reliable Toyota Tacoma which I tell myself I won’t jack up, having a good heavy duty, high lifting bottle jack will be good on the future truck and many other projects. They’re under 50 bucks so it’s not a big purchase. And who knows with the dirt roads I drive on and the campsites where idiots like me burn pallets 🔥 I might end up putting another nail through those 35s. Those BFGs are nail magnets in my experience. 🧲 Both on my Ranger and Big Red.
So I’ve been looking a bit at trucks. 🛻 🔍 I will start browsing show rooms over the winter next year, and try to take delivery by spring, so I have time to get a cap for the truck, move the solar panel, wiring, batteries, and equip the new truck for mid July to make that trip out to Michigan and Northern Wisconsin. I really want something smaller, more reliable and safer for such a big trip then big heavy, creaky old Red. Plus I’ve noticed some rusting on the frame, besides the body work and another harsh winter isn’t going to be kindly to Red. It’s been a good 14 plus years with Red now, 10 years lifted, and a decade is a major part of one’s life. That said, a small Toyota Taco 🌮 truck would be so much easier to drive and fuel efficent compared to Red. 💰
Plus I’ve been holding too much in cash in recent years in though of having to replace Red in near future, so it makes sense before I am vehicle-less and trying to get to car dealers on the city bus 🚍 or renting a car – and trying to transfer all my equipment from the truck at the junkyard. I don’t think I’ll get much on Red from the trade, but mom seemed to think they might still offer me $4-5k with current prices, which is certainly better then $500 at junkyard or whatever they give now, or paying to get rid of it at the landfill. I’ll have to see what Carvana would offer too. That said, I’ll miss Red but still here is the belated summer vacation in a few weeks 🏖️ and that October trip to the St. Regis Canoe Area and the Adirondack Rail Trail 🚉 after my eye surgery 👀 and any other adventures I squeeze in November through t the winter.
I’ll call 📞 Capital Region Truck Center tomorrow to see if they can replace the shock bushing on Big Red and then I should be good for vacation once I get the replacement jack from Tractor Supply. I will want to do an oil change after vacation, but I’m hoping Red will be good as I think most of the other random noises and complaints he makes isn’t new. 🛻 Leave on August 21st and be back home on Labor Day from the Finger Lakes. I think that’s like 11 days, as I’ll stick on that day I normally take off before Labor Day. Or maybe hell I’ll leave on August 20th – the Wednesday and make it even longer. I can do up to 14 days in the National Forest, 🏕️ and I might as well use up what I have. I guess it depends if I do any long weekends in the meantime either to Schoharie or the Potholers/Adirondacks. Sunsets will be earlier by late August, but that means I’ll be back to camp earlier for the camp fires and sitting out, watching for the shooting stars into the night. 🔥 Hopefully it will warm up after the predicted cool start to August. Been also researching the best grass stores in Ithaca, as while I like the place up in Menands, I’ve heard they have some good, different products in that famously liberal college town, and I want to giggle 🤭 some on vacation, something better then the last of the Dank Diesel I currently have.
Excel is not a data cleaning tool 💾
I keep seeing Facebook posts that have tips and tricks for data cleaning and processing with Microsoft Excel. Honestly I don’t recommend it.
Excel is fine for reviewing outputted data and very light weight data work, but you are much better off to use R and tidyverse or Python and PANDAS for all but the simplest data work. Often storing data is best done using a Parquet but don’t assume most people even know what one is.
Spreadsheets are not databases or for processing data. They’re excellent for reviewing data and transferring it between people in a format nearly anybody can understand but don’t try to get cute with Excel formulas and try to do things in Excel you really should use a data library to process and a database to store in.
Out On Moss Lake
