A quarter mile from my office on the evening commute I lost pressure on my mountain bike rear tire. That rear tire is shot, I should replace it but it’s been good with the fix a flat. Aired it up a bit at one of those woke bike self service stations they have at all of the parks but never actually work properly. Races down to the local bus which I just barely caught. Got home and aired it back up fully.
It seems to be holding air fine 🚲 but the chain slipped into the lower front cog and was out of adjustment. I put on my nitrile gloves 🧤 which I don’t love ♥️ using as they’re disposable but that chain 🔗 grease is mad hard to get off my hands. That’s back in adjustment but ultimately I do need to replace the frayed front shift chain which is skipping. I’m kind of pissed it happened, it’s still a muggy day but actually less hot and humid then yesterday. I’m hoping to ride in tomorrow and Wednesday but that’d weather dependent. ☔ Friday after work I might do Schoharie.
Now I’m down at the Normans Kill West Preserve, 🍓 but unfortunately the blackberries aren’t out yet. They’re always such a treat. That and summer squash from the farm stands I really want. 🌽 Corn too but especially summer squash and zucchuni. Assuming the bike still has pressure when 8:15 rolls around I want to get some groceries 🛒 at Hannaford then ride home. If it’s flat, I’ll catch the bus home at 8:37 pm. Maybe it’s an excuse to walk down and get ice cream 🍦.
I scheduled my yearly physical appointment for the first week in September 😷 and I’m continuing to research LASIK but I’m thinking of calling 📞 to make an appointment later in the year. Too late to set up an Health Savings Account but whatever I’ll pay the taxes, it’s a good investment in my future. How many other things can you buy for around $5,000 that would provide you a life of good vision – lasting for decades, basically your lifespan. 👀 I’m just so tired of irritated eyes and dealing with contact lens. I’d probably wait until later in the year just as I want to use up my contacts that have in reserve and are paid for already.
People from the internet probably think the way I spent my whole summer is eating bacon, smoking weed and floating on an a truck tube on the East Canada Creek.
I wish life was that simple but it really ain’t. Still it’s kind of fun at age 42 to be riding my mountain bike to work several days a week and spend my weekends in the wilderness enjoying marijuana, onions fried in bacon grease and beer.
Honestly, some day I do want to settle down. But not the plastic life of vinyl siding, SUVs, asphalt driveway and mowed lawn on a subrurban lot of 3 acres. if I can’t have that off-grid cabin on acreage in wilderness right now, at least want some time to escape and pretend I’m away from it all with my bright flags up at camp.
I do wish there was an alternative life to the high-consumption, suburban life with weekly garbage service and high speed internet and a television in every room. The same old kitchens found in every suburban house, full of appliances and enormous television in every room.
The wilderness, while not perfect, gives me a chance to at least feel a little bit of what a tomorrow will bring, as does the drives up in country past the run-down old farms and houses. I like this world as it’s so real compared to the suburbs that seem so fake, so isolated form the real world in palaces of plastic and garbage financed by the 30-year mortage
A week from Friday or maybe two weeks from Friday – it depends on the weather, my schedule and what weeks the Watkins Glen track is active – I will be starting my vacation. I know the time period – early Friday morning one to sunset nine days later on a Sunday. I know the location of base camp – either Chicken Coop Road or Potamac Road in Finger Lakes National Forest which is between Watkins Glen and Ithaca. But the details are still very vague in my mind.
Truth is I don’t need a solid plan as I have a base camp already planned and a time period I’ll be there each night. I also want to find novel, memorable things to do on summer vacation – the old favorites are fun but hardly memorable. I’d much rather explore new places but I don’t have the time to necessarily develop a new complete new plan, plus it’s just easy to go out to Finger Lakes National Forest which I know well.
I’d like to get down to Pennsylvania to do more of the Pine Creek Gorge Trail and poke around Wellsboro. Also maybe poke around Elmira a bit. Maybe it’s rainy, I could do a day trip to the Corning Museum of Glass. Not usually my cup of tea but I like doing things. I should research interesting views and trails on some of state forests I’ve not explored in that area. I feel like there must be some trails or roads I’ve not ridden before. Also, are there some lakes and ponds to kayak and fish? I should renew my fishing license so I catch dinner. And maybe get clams to boil down mid-week.
For some reason, I took a phone call last night as I sweltering in my apartment from an unknown number that didn’t get automatically blocked asked if I was still looking at buying a house. I said I think you have a wrong number, thinking it was a scam and hung up.
Going back over it I realized it was the real estate agent that I toured that house, homestead next to my parents house 🏡 🐐 last year, probably trying to sell me one of the latest dumpy houses and land on the market out in country, as she knows I have the cash 💵 and I’m the kind of person who would buy a rundown house on acreage that’s next to a dairy that smells like cow shit. 🐮 A place less then perfect, that banks would probably turn those nose 👃 up at financing. I’m sure at one level I’m walking away from the perfect opportunity to shovel grain and manure in his heat. 🐽 I know you can own a house without hogs, goats, and a burn barrel. Lots of people in suburbs don’t have such things, and their white-vinyl homes made of plastic and plywood are perfectly air conditioned and heated to 72 1/2 degrees year round. If they’re woke they have solar panels on their roof and a heat pump to provide the perfect temperature year round. ❄️ ☀️
And I’m just sweating and just generally miserable in the heat. 😰 By the time I got home last night riding my bike up through the Norman’s Kill Hollar I didn’t really feel like doing much beyond laying in bed 🛏️ next to the fan. I was so tired. So no fresh blackberries 🍓 from the Norman’s Kill Preserve last night or grocery shopping. 🛒 Maybe tonight if I’m more motivated. Cooking a pot of brown rice with onions and spinach up this morning for lunch and dinner. Then it’s off to work on my bike. 🚲 If it’s really too ungodly hot, I could take the bus back home in the evening. 🚍 It’s not like the bus is that expensive at $1.35 with the bus pass. More then I spent on bananas yesterday. 🍌
If anything with the heat, my emotions and energy levels are just dulled. 😴 It’s hard not to feel sapped out with the dew points in the 70s and mercury in the 80s and 90s. But you could have air conditioning, like the inefficient floor-duct unit my neighbor has, but I don’t want to pay for it as it steals from my future and I don’t want to be over-dependent on it. 🚨 I want an excuse to spend my weekends in laughter in the wilderness. And I’m so tired of excessive targeted advertising lately I’ve been seeing about not driving stoned and for drug-rehab places. ♋ And cancer screening and treatment. Everybody knows cigs cause cancer. I guess it’s better then the endless ads about schizophrenia after I clicked one last year, in curiosity about psychosis and power of psychoactive substances. Truth is I just think too much about the weekends in wilderness 🌲 giggling on the tube ⭕ and having rip-roaring fires 🔥.
Summer vacation is either a week from Friday or two weeks from Friday. 🏕️ I am thinking the later, but I need to check with the people who will be covering for me and I kind of would prefer the earlier option as then if the week turns out to be shit 🌧️ I could postpone for a week, though I prefer the last week of July as it breaks up summer better, 🏖️ and means when I get home from vacation it’s already getting dark early in the evening, and often is cooler especially when I get home from work. But a rainy vacation is no fun, everything gets wet, and everything smells like wet cow 🐄 in the National Forest. I have tarps and whatever, but I’d rather have a sunny ☀️ nice week for vacation. I know it’s the dog daysof summer – best spent on the hammock and by the swimming hole! 🐶
I also need to call about LASIK like today or yesterday. 👀 I have more and more problems with my contacts, last night I was having trouble removing one from my eyes – it got stuck under my eye lid, and irritation is only a growing problem. LASIK is expensive, but it’s a permanent fix for my eye problems. Without contacts I’m legally blind, and I hate wearing glasses, 👓 especially on a hot and sticky morning like this. I’d rather pay the big bucks and never have to pay-pay-pay for refills contacts again or deal with eye irritation. I am sure if I just put one call in it will be real estate salespeople, pushy, pushy to buy shit. 🗑️ In some ways now that I’ve researching more into depth about modern off-grid solar power and also building materials, some of the ads are actually much more interesting to me and find myself clicking through on them more. I’m not against modern building materials, despite reading a book about Timber Frame building, it’s that I care about self reliance sustainability and waste I can’t burn, not wokeness. 🏗️ I want something better then the white vinyl and plywood crap that dominates the suburbs and sadly in many cases rural country too. 🏠
Yesterday, I was reading the New York Times newsletter which I was required to sign up 📰 as part of getting free access to the newspaper through the public library, They had a Q&A section with readers questions being answered by experts in their field. ⁉️ They noted the following:
“When to build
Is this a good time to build a house? — Janie Spataro, Ringgold, Ga.
Conor Dougherty, who covers the housing industry, offers this advice:
Can you afford to build it, and do you plan on living there for seven to 10 years? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then it’s as good a time as any to build.
Housing is an unusual good in that it is both a consumable, like a car, and an investment, like a stock. Most of the worst home-buying decisions — overstretching on a mortgage, buying in an area you don’t really like — come from thinking of housing as an opportunity to make money instead of as a place to live. A house is only a good investment if you think of it as home.“
To be clear, in some applications roof top solar makes sense – urban and suburban yards where land is expensive and very limited. But for most farms, homesteads and rural acerages, roof top solar does not make a lot of sense.
Putting solar panels on one’s roof is all about disadvantages, beyond the simple space saved. Roof top means using ladders to install and maintain the panels, it means carrying expensive, heavy panels high in the air, it means drilling holes in your roof, covering your roofing material with panels, putting an electrical system exposed to elements on your roof where it could potentially start a fire.
Yes, you save a bit of money initially with roof top sets up – at least equipment wise – but everything else about roof top solar is bad. Ground mounts are quite a bit more expensive then trackless roof systems. They generally require more wire and burying cable. Labor-wise, ground mount can be DIY by anybody who is a bit handy and can follow instructions and lay the posts and bolt things together. And that can be a savings, especially if you also rent equipment to dig the trench to run the wires below the frost line to ground mount.
Ground mount separates the always on nature of solar panels from the building, lowering the already low fire risk due to bad connections. It exempts in many cases the requirement for a fast shutdown. It allows you to put solar panels in a location that is true due south and at a perfect angle for maximum production. You can also adjust in many cases ground mounts based on the time of year, which can dramatically increase production in the winter months.
But the biggest thing about ground mount is the ease of maintance. Come winter and snow falls and sticks the panels, you can easily go out with a broom to clean off the panels. You can wash them in the summer. They are easily serviced if they are on the ground. If your roof springs a leak or needs replacement, you don’t have to bring in a crew to remove the panels first. You are in control of your equipment, and it’s easily accessed.
It’s true that ground mount panels take up some room and have to be mowed around either with a lawn mower or sheep. But it’s much easier to keep them clean and maintained when they close to ground.
