I was thinking all of the things I’ve learned about the auto dealerships, the automobile industry and Ford SuperDuty trucks over the past three weeks. While I’ve been trolling several dealership websites, I only just recently realized Ford has their own inventory website that has window stickers and info for each vehicle within 100 or 200 miles, at which I can take a deeper inspection of dealers own website, before calling to ask to have a salesman put hands on vehicle and confirm it’s on the lot, and get me their best out-the-door price with all taxes and fees to see if it’s worth taking the next step.
If I had been much more of a rush to get a vehicle to replace Big Red, I would have gone into this whole process much more blindly. Yet, I’ve learned and continued to learn what is fair and what is not with dealerships, how to speak to them. What are likely sales tactics that will be used, specific industry lingo, how fair deals go down. I can be direct and not wasting anyone’s time, using proper language and procedure, only looking at vehicles I’m truly interested and ready to buy. And I still have four weeks before the first test drive and two months or longer before I set down and buy. Time really is on my side, as most people are hurried when they go to buy, uncertain on different models, and just need something with 4 wheels quickly.
There are those who think by me not choosing to own a car this winter that I have permanently given up driving in favor of bicycling and busing it everywhere. Like those who believed when I took off a semester from college that I would not be back. But I play the long game frequently in life and just because I don’t rush towards action today, doesn’t mean I’m not planning in the future. Just like when it comes to buying a house, that off-grid cabin, just because I don’t buy it tomorrow or even this year, doesn’t mean it’s an impossible goal. I keep researching options and technologies, and watching as money compounds and grows. I am still amazed how much growth these was last year, or even the years before, and the magic of compounding. Time, persistence, and thoughtfulness really has it’s virtues.
That said, time is hardly unlimited and it’s not always apparent when time is going to run out. As happened with Big Red, while I knew the end was coming and needed to plan for his replacement, I did not know it would come in December. Age shows up, and you can predict many things but the end isn’t always apparent. A lot of warning flags can show up before it’s done. Truth is it’s not the best summer to do my Northern Michigan trip with all that happening at work, but I just don’t know how many years I’ll be able to get away after this year with my parents getting older and knowing I’ll either have to be around to care for them or take over their homestead. You can and should wait, but I know if I don’t do this trip to Northern Michigan and Wisconsin, it might be my last great opportunity to do it.
Some retirees travel a lot in their later years. I enjoy my traveling years while I’m young, but I still want to own my own land, and I also know that dream is incompatible with travel and seeing new places. It’s not to say you can’t learn a lot from own land and your own neighborhood, but also there is an opportunity cost. Is it worth it? I don’t know.
I follow a lot of farm and homestead pages on my various social media accounts. Probably flip through thousands of pictures and posts about cows and hogs each week. I am really into agriculture, I read not just Mother Earth News and Hobby Farms magazines but also Successful Farmer when they come out each month on the Libby Library app. I’ve read many books about homesteading and farming, and I own a few other books in my collection.
Even though I don’t own a farm and didn’t really grow up on a farm beyond my parents five acres, I am quite passionate about agriculture as it’s man’s closest connection to the natural world outside of hunting, trapping and foraging. It’s the use of technology to sustainably produce food off land using science both for today and generations to come. While many outside of agricultural industry are skeptical about industry practices, when it comes down to it, farmers do what is best for their land and livelihoods, which can sustain themselves both today and tomorrow. It’s not to say some agricultural practices aren’t problematic or cause impacts on the environment or nearby neighbors, but it’s hard to criticize people when you’re not the one shoveling shit.
So do I want to be a farmer? Not really, because I’m not much of an entrepreneur. I read a lot about ag marketing, and selling products, but it’s not really thing. I don’t see myself having that kind of mindset. It’s not to say though when I have my own land, I won’t have farm animals and raise crops for my own consumption – as a source of food without being wrapped plastic – or to be better utilize my acreage. Turn waste and things growing on my land into more food. Butcher my own animals, produce fertilizer for my garden. Things that don’t burn well, can usually be fed or composted. Be self reliant, both so I don’t have to worry so much about income and other systems.
Does commercial agriculture have all the answers? No, but it’s good at growing food reliably at a cost effective fashion that limits environmental harm while producing copious amount of food on relatively little land. And much of what applies to big farms can be applied to little homesteads. And people who farm have a deeper connection to the land the most of us. A simpler kind of existence.
After cannabis was legalized in New York State, nad I bought my first couple of pre-rolls at the advice of bud tenders, I set out to learn all that I could learn about cannabis. That said, thanks to long-standing government prohibitions around the growing cananbis and research into the plant, good science still does not exist, and most of what you read is either pro or anti cannabis advocacy.
I am not a heavy cannabis user, it’s something I like to drag on around a campfire, or a lazy summer day up at camp. Certainly wouldn’t call me a stoner in any of the conventional sort of way, although much of what I think is stoner culture is not actually from smoking the weed but the the kind of people who get enjoyment from smoking pot – and celebrate it openly. Many others, who you might think of cannabis users are much less open about their use of the plant. So in that sense, I guess I’m not strictly a stoner, as my liberal views are not as extreme as some of widely documented stoner’s.
But what smoking pot has done to me is realize how bullshit the pompous laws that are much celebrated and usually arbitrarily enforced against the colored and poor really are. Often laws don’t exist because they actually protect individuals, but because they make some politician or cop feel morally virtuous. Ban pot, save the children from the weed! Or keep those dangerous stoned motorists off the road! I am sure if you look somewhere, you’ll find a tragic story about somebody who done something really dumb after smoking a lot of weed. Or had an outbreak of psychosis. It’s tragic how many people have been deprived of their rights and liberties for smoking an agricultural crop that is pretty damn harmless, even if it does stink. At least the cheap crappy pot.
Not all that long ago, it was common belief that what the government does is right and just, and that you as a citizen had a moral obligation to follow all laws. But the legalization of cannabis in the majority of states is a reminder of how shockingly wrong government can truly be. Maybe we are getting this reinforced every day in the Trump administration which not only is skeptical, if not openly disobeying the law, but also is a constant reminder of how wrong laws are to our society. A law enacts a punshiment for it’s violation, but it’s not a moral statement on right or wrong. Something that long standing prohibitions on pot are just a constant reminder.
I don’t advocate the constant use of cannabis due to health impacts of breathing in smoke of any kind. As my health teacher decades ago said, smoking is no different for your lungs then standing of a smoldering garbage burning barrel. Yum! I mean yucky burnt plastic mixed with have-rotten food! Even if it’s not physically addictive, it is desirable and can become a habit for heavy users to break. I know after that first real stoner vacation how kind of a downer that day back at work was. But I do think pot bans and all criminal penalties associated with marijuana are just a constant reminder of how unjust our society is when it comes to possession of drugs and for that matter firearms too. Government really should be off our backs.
That was my exact thought when I saw yet another post reminding me that buying a $60,000 big-assed Ford F-350 is a bad financial decision, because nobody whose not hauling cattle needs such a big truck, and soon enough it will be 2040, and rusted out garbage that I’ll get $250 bucks for scrap metal. But then I remind myself, those 15 years will mark a 1/5th of my time on this earth, and you got to spend money on something that gives you pleasure – I don’t want one of those plastic houses in suburbs or a 25-year old Honda Civic to drive back and forth to work.
I’m quite happy taking the bus or my mountain bike and not putting fuel in a 7.3L Godzilla every few days. I hear funerals are only like $10,000, kind of the price difference between a diesel and gasser SuperDuty. But I think I’ll go for the gasser, as I’m not planning on doing a lot of long-distance towing, plan to do a lot of mountain driving and need cold-weather wilderness starts. It‘s good to save and invest money so I can buy my acreage and have my fires and horney buck goats and hogs some day, but you got to also enjoy life.
In the negative four degree weather, ❄️ I walked down to Stewart’s and got milk and eggs, so I could have my coffee ☕ and cornmeal pancakes with lots of shredded onions and carrots, some Stevia and salt. Hey, I am not perfect, I use artificial sugar, though Stevia is actually a plant, you can grow it at home. And I kind of like things a bit sweet, even if you won’t see me scarfing down candy bars 🍬 well except when I’m volunteering over at the dungeon downtown. 🐲 I know I shouldn’t be going for a high-residue diet, but fiber is so healthy, when the toilet in my office stinks like sewer gas. 🚽 It’s so gross in the men’s room at work right now, last week it smelled like poop and sewer gas, this week it’s more a chemical smell. Who want to sit on a toilet when it so nasty? I don’t know what’s going on, I work across the way from the maintance department so they must be well aware of bathroom issues, but I hope it’s fixed so I can stop gagging when I go to the bathroom. Normally I don’t care, I’m a hillbilly with a tough nose, 👃 but it’s downright foul at in bathroom where I work the past few days.
I saw an extended cab Ford SuperDuty pulling out of Stewart’s and had to gawk a bit. Thinking soon enough I’ll have truck like that. I mean a month from now, I want to test drive one of those trucks, even if neither DePaula or Metro Ford on the bus line has the exact model I want currently in inventory.🛻 Don’s Ford in Utica has like 10 of the trucks in the specs I’m interested in but so do many of the outlying areas around Albany, but the Albany dealerships for the most part either have very-stripped down work trucks and high end Crew-Cab Latariats both of which I don’t want. I think it’s what suburban people in Albany buy, which is different then what people in rural areas actually want. At this point, I’m just trying to familiarize myself with the trucks that are being listed, and what for and their locations, and trying to become as knowledgeable as possible about features and list prices, even if they aren’t real. 💰
Yeah, too much thinking about trucks as I head towards my 43rd birthday tomorrow. 🎂 Fuck you, the boot lickers and the greenies, and Happy Birthday to me. One year closer to having that off-grid cabin in a free state, where I can lay down my money and buy any handgun or modern sporting rifle I want, have just a slop bucket for the hogs and one garbage can lined by a minerals bag 🗑️ that I empty into the burn barrel and dump the ash and unburnables into the hollow to be covered with rock, dirt and manure with my tractor. 🚜 Yes, even plastic, the eco-horrors! Butcher my own fucking beef and hog products. 🗡️ I was actually looking and the Capital Region Horicultural and Agricultural Coalition or something else is having a class you can sign up and for a small fee learn the ins and outs of feeder pigs. 🐖 If I only had a truck, I would probably lay down my money and do it, just to learn things I can’t learn from a book. Though you really want to learn, you just got buy the hogs, but first I need land. 🏡 I keep following more and more cabin builders pages, from prefab to luxury cabins, to see what people are building. I don’t know if I want luxury, as I care more about land as I don’t really want to smell my neighbor’s burn barrel or have my own hogs and horney buck and plastic trash fires upwind. 🛢️ 💩 It will be great though once I have that simple off-grid cabin, without electric or heating bills. I doubt I’ll have internet beyond my phone either. I wonder how bad my electric bill will be this month! 💰 I don’t know, Ibut I won’t tell liberal like gun-banning Donald Trump that.
I can’t wait until my Facebook feed is one again full of ads for Better Help and the 988-service for this blog post. 🤪 Or maybe they’ll mash it up with mental health resources for farmers. Breaks it up from the ads for extended warranties and 20-year old Honda Civics. 🚘 I got a lot to look forward when I have my SuperDuty and cab, cellphone booster for remote work, though I know such a nice truck will be a magnet 🧲 to every other car on the road that somehow wants to crash into it, as that’s what happened with the last nice truck I had, and then weeks and weeks for the body shop to get the truck back with the panels mis-aligned. But so is life, and it’s not like the expensive big trucks from Detroit come from the factory with the body panels well aligned. If it fits it ships, they say in the city, compared to us country boys who say if it burns, it burns. 🔥 At least it’s not fake like plastics recycling. ♻️ I never did subscribe to milk delivery, but I’ll drop the plastic milk jug off in one of recycle bins on way into the office today. Not riding in today, I want to, but it’s so damn cold out at negative five, even if there is no wind. Well, I guess I don’t have an excuse to miss the Guilderland Planning Board Meeting tonight. 🌲Truth is I am a bit too sympathetic towards Dale Houck, even though he’s proposing yet another development in the last remaining acres of Pine Bush, and it’s important to save the Karner Blue so I can ride trail there on my mountain bike. 🦋
I just wish it wasn’t so damn cold out and I could ride the bike path to work on my mountain bike. 🚍 Happy busing it! At least traffic is moving smoothly and the buses have been mostly on time. I was surprised, usually traffic is so backed up at rush hour after the snow due to the snow banks and abandoned cars narrowing the roads. Being so cold, the snow was light and easy to remove. I was going to shovel out the bus stop last night but it was already cleaned up.🚏But if you only owned a 20-year old Honda Civic, then you could drive to work like a normal person from your suburban plastic house with plastics recycling.
