Scenic section of Interstate 81, winding out of the flatlands of the Great Valley near Harrisburg into the Appalachian ridge country, getting stuck behind slow moving trucks.
Apparently I made the mistake at dwelling too long at an advertisement for vacations in sunny warm places like Cancun, Los Vegas, Tokyo and Europe. Now my feed is full of such advertisements no matter where I browse on the interwebs. It’s obnoxious, even if already I do hear that song, California Dreaming with a slightly different note as the long, cold dreary days of winter roll on.
Truth is though I don’t really want a canned vacation, one fake relying on others to make decisions for myself. I’d rather be in the wilderness, the woods, living my own life without the dictates of a vacation planner or time schedule beyond sunrise and sunset. If anything, I find traveling in motels to be anxiety driving – the carefree life in my mind is full of toxic foods going into my body, and toxic garbage and paper plates going into the landfill.
There are somewhat valid concerns, though the price of battery storage is coming down and the impact on solar development of agricultural and forested lands is much less then what it might appear from the view of major arterial highways. High voltage transmission lines tend to follow highways, and often highways are routed in areas with poor agricultural land and less productive wildlife habitat. If you take a deep look at solar, it's not as bad some of the critics, often bolster by fossil fuel propaganda, say it is.
Maybe it was good I cleared off the solar panel on my truck yesterday when there was actual sun to trickle charge things before the clouds and cold of Monday into Tuesday arrive.
Mom is still sick so I won’t be driving anywhere today 🤒, but I do think I will hop on my bike and ride down to Hannaford later this afternoon and get some bananas, frozen fruits and vegetables 🥦 🍌. Other then that, I’ll spend some time cleaning things up in the kitchen, 🧽 read 📖 some more, and just kind of hang out – maybe watch YouTube (in the Brave Tube app) or some kind documentary on Kalopy from the lbrary. 📹 Going to be kind of a cool day without the sun, so I might just want to spend a fair bit of it hanging out under the covers, with the heated blanket on low, rather then crank up the heat.
Most of the way through the book I got from Hoopla on Home Wiring. 🔌 It was pubished in 2004, so nothing in the book discusses solar or batteries, but it’s good to learn about the building code and safe building wiring, as most of that could be applied to solar, batteries, and off-grid homesteads. It’s good to have a good idea about safe practices and what code and building inspectors require, even if most of the book is more about replacing lamp cords and running extra outlets in your kitchen or swapping out a breaker. Also listened to several more hours of Edward Abbey’s The Fool’s Progress, 🎧 riding out to Five Rivers and walking around there yesterday. Only have week and half left on Hoopla borrows I have left, so I want to plunge through them as much as I can, as I can likely renew the Libby books if need be or get them out at a later date without costing the library anymore. 📚 Truth is I am really digging in deep on reading, as I think it’s a much better use of my time then social media and probably better then learning a new programming language or just watching random videos on dairy farms and homesteading that show yuo the livestyle but not the facts on ground of what real farming is about. 🐖
More cranberry and apple pancakes this morning. 🥞 All those shredded carrots 🥕 keep things moving through my system well, 💩 especially combined with the excessive coffee ☕ I drink. And I wonder why teeth have gotten so stained. I cooked the cranberries and apple in the microwave down to basically a sauce this morning, in part because I didn’t have the extra bananas 🍌 to blend into the mix. Last night, I made rice and beans, using the up the last of black beans and most of pinto beans I had in the freezer. I have still about 2 lb of pinto beans to cook up on the stove this week, but first tomorrow I want to make homemade bread, spegatti squash and green pea soup 🥣 🍞 tomorrow morning before I ride my mountain bike.
Tomorrow I hope to ride in. 🚴 Going to be a cold morning, but it saves $1.30 bus fare and it’s good exercise. Walking the Plaza is fine, but riding is more fun. Probably be doing Corning’s Hill but whatever, it beats the bus. Tuesday I’ll probably drive in so I can go to Walmart and the laundromat after work. 👚 Wednesday is going to be snow or rain ☔ – probably slop – so I’ll bus it in and out that day. 🚍 Maybe Thursday I can ride in and Friday is the Holiday 🌲 Party at work, and I’ll need my truck to transport people and food to there. One of the benefits to riding is it gives me time to listen to audio books undistracted. I prefer to read e-books when I’m on the bus. I used to use that for endless scrolling 📜 of Facebook or TikTok but I hate the ads and it’s waste of time when I could be learning by reading.
Today concludes rifle season, 🦌 and while there is still some black powder guys out, there are far fewer of them, so if the weather is decent next weekend, I’ll probably do an overnight or two in the wilderness somewhere. Family holiday party next Saturday, but that usually ends fairly early so I can head up to camp after that assuming there is not too much snow or cold. ❄️ Then the following weekend I another family obligation – my neice is going to preform in the Nutcracker – and the whole family goes to that each year. 🎅 After Christmas Eve, 🎄 I will probably head out to Madison County first thing on Christmas, assuming there isn’t too much snow for three nights. I also thought about Long Pond in Chenango County, but I worry about that road being icy there, and it’s always so picked over for firewood. 🪵
