Notes

I should have driven into today and picked up my bike wheel from the shop 🛻

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It was ready today as promised and I could have left work early and gotten it but I didn’t. Whatever, I missed the bike commute today and was a bit bitter that the express didn’t have the proper sign on it and the driver didn’t stop so I had to take the local. Ten minutes difference, could have been delays on the expressway due to a crash.

Truth is that I don’t like motoring one bit, 🏁 in many ways I would be happier if I never owned a car or drove again, even if an automobile is the best way to escape the city. 🏡 The truth is that I’ve started to look at houses 🏘 again and it’s just such a grim landscape out there, they are all so big, and the places I actually like – cabins in the wilderness are all too far from the city 🏙 for practical commuting. Yet, the fact that I like smoking 🚬 grass makes me rethink if I hate New York State all that much. There is a lot fucked up in New York but pot is legal. Boy oh boy can you smell it whenever your just walking around or are downtown. Not that I smoke much except up at camp and it mostly just mskes me tired 😴 but I do like the colors and clear perception of the euros around me.

I am looking at houses and land again, 🏡 and have promised myself that the next book 📙 I will read is about rebuilding old houses. I want to make that next jump, as I’m well aware my current living arrangement is not sustainable as much as I may like it. I’m the director, it says it on my business card 📇, yet I still live in my dumpy apartment since college 🎓 some 17 years ago. I oversee a division of six and while I bitch about inflation 📈, I could do better for myself. I mean how many professionals ride the city bus and free shuttle 🚀 to work when they don’t ride their mountain bike to work? Yet I’m trying to save every penny possible, 👛 in hope of some day having that off grid cabin and homestead some day in the wilderness. 🌲

I was told buying a house doesn’t make you into a slave in a gray flannel suit. 🕴️ I just hate the lawns and the suburban house plants, 🌿 and the vinyl siding and marble counter tops and carpets. Plus goats 🐐 and hogs to feed. 🐽 Plus growing cannabis apparently isn’t that simple like most plants. Agriculture is complicated, a battle against nature. And then so much of the housing stock is a complete dump and it would be a hell of a project to rebuild it. 🔨 I might have the money 💵 if I actually wanted to spend but I don’t have the skills and would certainly get ripped off left and right.

First night of the Altamont Fair 🎡 I believe, so walking back home past Mr. Preska’s dairy 🐮 I’m sure I’ll see the lights of the midway in the sky. Summer is coming to a close, the sunset is before 8 PM now and the skies hazy from wildfire smoke. 🌇 At least he’s not been doing too much pounding on the walls when I’ve been home but then again lately I’ve been heading into the office 🏢 early today to walk and then make sure I get in sufficient legislative hours. The retired operator where I work brought in some zucchuni 🍆and tomatoes 🍅 which was great, as that’s my staple of summer eating most nights. I hired a new operator today, 🤝 hopefully this one will work out. Friday I was thinking 💭 about working from home – well remotely – before heading out to Schoharie for the weekend but the weather looks like crap. Maybe the following weekend it will be one last summer weekend at the Potholers.

At some point, the old 🧓 will just give away, Big Red 🛻 will go no more, gentrification will lead to my eventual eviction or the mold covered refrigerator will give way, the door fall 🚪 off once last time or the building burn. 🚒 More and more sheet metal falls off Red, the front end is getting looser again, the transmission not shifting as well and the engine idling rougher. Then ultimately it will be a fresh start. 🌱Change is not a bad thing. I just have to make it through the year first and eventually things will get better.  Smelling the fresh cut hay by the dairy, soon it will be silage time. 🌽 Much too soon especially in the high country. The hardest part of my job is making  decisions, when you are director, you’re expected to make the calls even when your employees have been there decades longer than you and have far more institutional knowledge at your office that overlooks the sewage treatment plant and old.. city dump.

I have to tell myself that the reason I got put out to pasture above the print shop next to the wastewater plant and sewage sludge incinerator 👃 was because I’m not phased by the smell. You can count the sludge haulers rolling past the office 🚛, much like the trucks hauling cow shit 💩 and silage 🌽 back when I was working out in Madison County. 🏢 While the acres of parking 🅿 are nice especially if some day I do buy the house and decide to car commute, I do miss the team working downtown. You know, I do like pungent things. Be it dairy and cows, landfills and burn barrels, or nowadays the grass. The later is so cheap, at least the amount that I smoke up at camp 🏕. Healthy, natural things are dirty and have a smell. Highly refined things are not healthy, if anything sterility is not a virtue. Maybe that’s why I want to someday do all those redneck things.

“We have won it. Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things.” – Art and Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance

Second gear, a lean right ⚙

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Moving forward this morning with a big stack of carrot pancakes, with lots of frozen pinnapple and Maine blueberries to top it with coffee and a pot of beans, brown rice and lentils boiling down. The plan is to catch the earliest express to work, walk over to Menands and be in the office by 8 AM if possible.

Showering and off to work on that early bus. 🚍 It looks like a nice morning for the walk up to Menands. Rice and beans with the soy sauce 🍚 should make a good hardy lunch for a change, packed with protein. Would have been a great day to ride in had I had my bike back, but I don’t. I probably should drive in and then get my bike after work, 🚲 but Thursday I have to fire up Red 🛻 to run out to my parents house to walk the dog, 🐶 so why not kill two stones at once? Ultimately it’s just two days, quickly passed. I really don’t like driving to Menands if I can avoid it.

It is a very pleasant morning, ☀ blue skies and cool. It won’t be a bad walk from downtown to Menands. Kind of like an autumn day, 🍂those of which aren’t far away now that the county fair gets underway today. 🎡 The earliest bus downtown is absolutely packed. I figure enjoy things while I still can. Listening to the Young Bloods, Get Together on the commute into the office. 🩸My blood work and physical came back well or so I was told, though I probably should scrutinize my online health records to see everything.

Time to let the Buddha rest 🪷

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Worked hard all day, kept the loyal companion, the Buddha server crunching away. I’m not sure if everything I come up with will be used but I’m learning a lot about the system works and ultimately it’s the skills you have to make things happen quickly and with skills that matters.

Still really into the Grateful Dead 🎸 and smoking grass 🚬 mostly because it’s cheap and lasts for a long time but like most things in this world is so meaningful and yet at the same time so meaningless. I want to believe it changes everything when really all it does is make me forgetful, sleepy and a bit paranoid at times. But then again, I’ve struggled with paranoia long before I used any drugs. Most over Big Red 🛻 letting me down on some dirt road in a hick town or getting evicted out of my truly dumpy apartment and having no good place to call home 🏡. Truth is eating a healthy diet is far more important for the paranoia then smoking a little grass. 🌾

The pot smoking Data Services director, I have many ideas I’m working to make a reality even if I realize not all can be done. 🖥 But as somebody who knows Linux, C and particularly R and the open source GIS stack, there are so many things I can do if only I can find the words and sell the ideas. 🗺 Data is really powerful and there are so many good ways to use it that it isn’t currently be used. As much as I want to advance new ways of targeting 🎯 and using data, I realize what is ultimately most important is to have the tools ⚙ ready to respond for any kind of request that comes in. 🎣 After discussing it with the other supervisors and checking references, I think I made a good second decision on the new hire, hopefully this one will work out.

I’m hoping that I can put that antagonizng hiring decision behind me 😳, it’s often not obvious what is the right decision. Maybe I over think things. 🚲 Broke a spoke again on my mountain bike up at Thacher, I dropped the wheel off today but it wasn’t ready yet today but should be tomorrow. At this point, I probably won’t pick it up until Thursday as I’m planning to drive out my parents house 🏡 to walk the dog 🐶 on Thursday.

It’s not a big deal 🚵and I should get the tools ⚙ to pull off the cassette and true the wheel myself but usually the shop so far has been good on same day repairs. Granted I didn’t drop the wheel off until 1:30 as at lunch time I got busy with work and then the sky just opened up. 🌧️ I’m kind of pissed that I can’t ride in tomorrow or Wednesday if I don’t pick it up until Thursday but I’ll walk from downtown to Menands. 💩 Shit happens. It’s not like I didn’t need to get to Walmart for groceries 🛒 and driving to work isn’t that bad now that I’m in the office with acres of parking 🅿.

It was a fun weekend, 🏕 and I’m hoping for another nice weekend coming up but only time will show. ⭕ The water levels were much too high to float in the Schoharie Creek 🏊 and truth be told I don’t love swimming pools that much with the adult supervision and chlorine. 🍆 Schoharie has so many good produce this time of year and I like Betty Brook Campsite a lot. Then again, there is autumn for that 🍂 though this year that will be difficult with work. 💻 I’m still hoping to get up to Powley-Piseco one more time before summer is done for some quality time on the tube, studying the clouds, and riding the road. I don’t know it looks like rain ☔ this weekend.

Maybe I’ll bake some bread this weekend. 🍞 I haven’t had homemade bread in some time, I got away from it in favor of quicker meals on the stove top, especially cooking with corneal and onions and tumeric. 🥞 Made brown rice 🍚 and beans the other day, should cook more rice and beans. 🫘 Truth is I get tired of one dish and I switch it up and that other dish becomes the go to for a while. Last week I didn’t really have enough protein in my diet as the store was out of tofu so adding more beans is good though I guess I did cook salmon up with my summer squash and zucchuni a few nights.

Sunday, funday 🚲

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Goddamn, well, I declare
Have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannonballs
Their motto is “don’t tread on me”

A bit of a chilly morning in the hammock 🏕 but that’s not surprising as I am suspended in the air despite the blankets over me. Did a quick overnight on the west side of Irish Hill above the ravine near East Hill County preserve. I’ve been thinking about possibly following the old woods road down to there and exploring there before hauling my gear back to Red 🛻 and heading over to Partridge Run for the day.

Just a quiet night in the wilderness, back country camping where none has done before. 🔥 While I wouldn’t call it Leave No Trace, I buried the coals once cold mixed with poop 💩 and piss to make sure they’re cold, scattered limbs and leaves over the site which is well off any road or path. Listened to the remaining section of Edward Abbey’s the Brave Cowboy. 🔉 Not a bad night, easy to do, beats being in the city 🏙. Precided by a day riding around Thacher Park 🏞 then down the escarpment through Voorheeesville and back home.

After eggs 🥚 and coffee ☕ for breakfast, I’ll haul the remaining gear back to the truck and maybe go for a little walk 🚶 around the state forest before heading out to Partridge Run. 🚲 I want to ride the bulk of the day and maybe cool down in the Switz Kill for a before heading out to the folks house 🏡 for Sunday dinner 👪. Then it’s back to work tomorrow. Campfire breakfasts sure are good. 😋

Why I oppose government friends clubs ♣

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It seems like these days, government agencies everywhere are setting up their own officially sanctioned booster clubs, popularly known as Friends of Park or Institution. It reinforces the idea that the government is benolevent institution and that it needs public boosters for its mission, especially in the era of cut backs and reduced government spending.

While such motives may come from truly good hearted people who want to do good, government sanctioned friends clubs are truly troublesome institutions. All political power comes from the king, or in the case of the United States and other countries constitutional monarchies, a fictional king known as the state. The people only have power because they rose up and made the king or the state give up their power. The people agreed to allow the government to have some power, to tolerate government but that hardly means they love or embrace the government. It’s something they hold their nose up to and accept as it’s the best option.

Government doesn’t need boosters. What it needs is activists on the outside forcing it to do what is right. Whether it’s citizen groups protesting, sueing or making it uncomfortable for politicians by getting involved politically, government can be held to account. Needed services of the government shouldn’t be provided by volunteers but for by paid professionals funded by tax dollars. Moreover, government doesn’t need boosters, it already has all the powers of the state and the king behind it. What government needs is accountability.

Gardening 🌸

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Lately I spend more and more time visiting arboretums and public demonstration gardens exploring and photographing the flowers and trees. It’s not just a great way to take in the beauty but also observe nature.

Gardens serve many different purposes. An obvious one is personal food production and feed for livestock. Another is to draw in and support local wild, such as food plots for hunting and pollinator gardens that encourage and support local wildlife. I’m less thrilled about people bringing in non native species for purposes of beauty. Even if species are non invasive, you’re still playing with the forces of nature, posing a risk to local ecology just for a frivolous purpose. It’s one thing if it’s just to be eaten but beauty alone to disturb ecology seems troublesome in my mind.