On April 19th its Mom and Dad’s fifty anniversary. The family is getting together for that, midday, in the middle of the three day weekend. I have some grumbles about that but it’s the week it falls and it’s special for mom and dad, and I fully realize it may be the last time we are all together as a family. I really should get some kind of gift but I really don’t want to gift some more random junk. Maybe I’ll get a gift card.
Mom keeps talking about trying live until the end of Trump’s second term to see how things turn out but I know that’s a real maybe in her mind, and the same is true for dad who appears fairly healthy on the surface but I know he’s dying from diabetes, the most recent thing is holes in his feet due to poor circulation from the disease. You can understand why I’m so horrified by processed foods and sugar more generally when it’s killing your dad.
It’s fine it’s important I be there. It’s meaningful to mom and dad and it’s only one day in a long weekend. It really is getting close to the end. I know it – and with death it seems like people are doing well and will recover until it’s over and you are at the funeral. This may be the last special event with all us together. Mom offered her classic spinach casserole or baked chicken tonight, I chose the later though maybe that was foolish with summer coming and no more winter family dinners together. Chicken seemed healthier.
I can dream of that homestead and look at properties but it’s only a matter of time before will be at that point beyond my parents and settling the estate between me and my sister. I doubt she wants the property, she has a nice suburban house with her two kids in Saratoga. It’s five acres and it has barns but the house is enormous for one person and it’s full of junk and nick-nacks that only seem to accumulate faster when you are retired and have Amazon. Plus it’s a full featured old grid tied house with all the normal problems.
Truth is it’s going to be an enormous headache if I end up with it getting rid of all the junk. Though I do eye the barn with the hay loft goat stalls, have ideas for improving the forests and pastures by brush hogging and cutting down the crap trees, adding solar panels to the barn for more light and egg production. Yet it’s such a mess there. Plus I don’t know how much time and money to invest there if I still want to move out west upon early retirement and build that off-grid cabin. After all, how much homesteading gear can I ship across the country affordably? I really don’t want to spend my whole life in New York in an enormous grid tied, primarily oil heated house, though they do have a wood stove. Even if I can have fires within reason and camp out back most of the summer.
I know that is getting ahead of myself. I need to enjoy those final moments with mom and dad as they aren’t that many left. Even if a lot of them is crotchidity old people discussions about how Trump is destroying everything. Or how boring both of our weeks have been – me building data structures and querying databases – and them visiting doctors. Truth is that I hope to back to the wilderness sooner than Anniversary – Easter – Earth Day Weekend and if I go an Earth Day event it will be early in the morning so it’s good to be in town that weekend.
I was reading one of those endless ads about serious depression and they said one of the symptoms of depression is hopelessness. Like so many words I’ve heard, I have a common sense view of what that word means but no real understanding of the meaning. So I thought I’d ask Meta AI to give me a description.
“Hopelessness is a feeling of despair, helplessness, and pessimism about the future. It’s a state of mind where someone feels that their situation is impossible to change or improve, and that they are trapped with no way out.
When someone feels hopeless, they may:
1. Feel a lack of control over their life or circumstances. 2. Believe that their problems are insurmountable or unsolvable. 3. Feel disconnected from others, like no one understands or cares. 4. Experience a sense of numbness, emptiness, or emotional pain. 5. Have difficulty imagining a positive future or finding motivation to make changes.
Hopelessness can be triggered by various factors, such as:
– Traumatic events or experiences – Chronic stress, anxiety, or depression – Major life changes or losses (e.g., job loss, divorce, death of a loved one) – Feeling trapped in a situation or relationship – Lack of social support or connection
It’s essential to recognize that hopelessness is a treatable condition. If you or someone you know is struggling with hopelessness, it’s crucial to seek help from a mental health professional, a trusted friend or family member, or a support group.”
With that definition out of the way, the next question in my mind is do I feel hopeless? In some ways yes, as in the short term I don’t see a lot of options besides saving and investing so I can retire early and build that off grid homestead out in the real wilderness. Yet it’s not an immediate dream – still nearly thirteen years away – but I save and invest every week and I’m constantly reading and learning.
I still feel in many ways trapped, stuck in New York State in my cold and miserable apartment. I do spend as many of my weekends as possible in the wilderness – state and national forest back country – yet it’s not the same and it’s now. And maybe it’s just a delusional dream not because of a lack of money or will power but because it doesn’t really exist. I mean I’ve seen a few both on YouTube and in person, toured that one back in college, yet all I ever see when I get another Zillow alert is another hideous suburban property covered with vinyl siding.
Everybody I know is buying that suburban house covered in plastic and saving it’s a good investment. Don’t you know homes appreciate in value. Renting is just pissing away money, but you need a place to live. But then I see the endless ads for plastic windows, roofersand gutters – not to mention kitchen remodels and new showers. As if I wanted to live in a place under constant construction with an enormous dumpster out back. It just seems like the typical suburban house is about buying more shit and ripping out and throwing away the old to the local dumping grounds across the river. Stock market is certain to be in the crapper at least for the next few years.
I think I’m playing the long game. But many say I’m playing no game at all. It’s all in my mind, it’s my mental illness speaking louder then reality. You’ll never escape New York State, you’ll work to your advanced age, stuck in that rundown apartment in Delmar, riding the city bus or taking your mountain bike to work every day. Year after year. You’ll be poor forever, as you pay one rent payment month after month as your building continues to rot away.
Yet, why settle for less when you can work hard, save and invest as much as possible, and build the off-grid homestead you really want with money you’ve saved and invested. Truth is if you buy land remote enough and build a simple enough structure it can be done. Equipment is expensive but money grows over time and you can acquire over time. Or rent for one time use. There are options besides the standard suburban home, whether it’s in a neighborhood that smells like cow shit or elsewise.
By mid-day it was absolutely beautiful spring day, but alas the clouds started to push in and by evening the wind was roaring and there was an incredibly strong band of heavy rain that came blasting through everything and then it’s cold this morning.
I won’t say it was a complete waste of a weekend, as I enjoyed the ride out to Hollyhock then Blodgett Hill in Coeymans. It was a bit cool to start out the day but by mid-day I shed the winter coat, especially after riding up Blodgett Hill then pushing the mountain bike up part of way up the steepest part of the hill. Couldn’t really ride all the way up due to drainage breaks they’ve dug into the logging road. I don’t know, you’re probably not supposed to ride a mountain bike in a Wildlife Management Area, though I stayed on roads and truck trails, except maybe that short section of the blue trail, but going up I mostly pushed the bike up the hill.
Generated so much heat with the front rotator on the bike that it started smoking — literally as I rode down Blodgett Hill. I rode the brakes hard going down to the logging rode down the north-side as there was many water breaks to cross then rode the brakes to go slowly down the blue trail but it wasn’t until I picked up speed heading down the hill on County Highway that the brakes literally started smoking. The whole rotor was covered with a grayish-blackish smoke. Not sure if it was brake fluid I got on the rotator when it leaked when I changed the pads a few months back, or if it was a mixture of road and trail dust, leaves and deicing chemicals that burst into smoke when the rotator got really hot.
Of course now, my advertising feeds are full of ads for muffler shops. Get the brake service you need at our shop! That said, if anything I am not sure if I need any service to bike, if anything the brakes preformed better once they got that hot, they stopped sqweaking. With a bit of chain wear, that new chain – well the one I found from old stock – is preforming well with only a bit of gear jumping at times so I’m going to hold off on replacing the cassette for a while even if I get it in the mail in next few days. I did get the chain wear measurement tool yesterday, and checked the chain wear. It was good but it’s something I’m going to check every time I grease the chain.
While this morning is cold and windy I think I will ride out to Five Rivers for a while this morning. I do have hope though for spring sooner then later, and it might actually be a decent evening after visiting the folks to do a quick hike up Bennett Hill. Mom is cooking chicken and sweet potatoes for dinner, and I’ll do my wash out there and dump the compost buckets out there. And then this weekend will be done, and I’ll head to bed again. I am just waiting for warmer weather and more meaningful weekends, spent out in the wilderness, though truth be cold it wasn’t a bad riding out to Blodgett Hill. It was nice seeing the Pitch Pines and Scrub Oaks up there, and that they’ve cleaned it up after the raspberries and other trash species crowding out the scrub oaks in recent years that have passed since the last controlled burn. I am so ready for a night in wilderness, not just to burn shit and turn that junk mail and wrappers in carbon dioxide but also get my sanity back, so I can be less extremely mentally ill. I doubt I’ll have be sane though, as I don’t worship the plastic crap that smells so bad when you toss in the fire. Just don’t tell a liberal. Just like I wasn’t riding my mountain bike on the logging trails at a WMA.
With all the hatred directed towards Elon Musk due to his political views and involvement in DOGE government spending cutting program, one can forget how innovative his businesses once were.
Remember, it was his businesses that brought the first really-good electric car with several innovations in design such as single-pour aluminum frames, touch screen controls, self-driving. It was his businesses that brought the world reusable-rockets, which in first fifty years were considered disposable, jettisoned to the oceans after launch, lowering the cost of sending satellites and people into outer space. It was his businesses which brought StarLink Internet service to millions in remote areas, with much better service then competitors, namely HughesNET.
There is a fair bit of evidence though that his companies weren’t as innovative as they were after they starting bringing in the profits. They got fat and lazy, as did their CEO and biggest investor, Elon Musk. It seems like in the late 2010s, Musk became more obsessed with moon-shots like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and the CyberTruck. Then he got into right-wing politics, first by purchasing Twitter in a hostile take-over, and then becoming the right-handed man for the Trump campaign and later his head of DOGE. Why try to excel when you are raking in the big bucks? It seems like hubris which often does in highly-successful entities got to the core of Elon Musk. Younger, more nimble businesses will likely gain on his losses, while capitalism destroys the once powerful for in favor of more innovative.
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as I enjoyed the ride out to Hollyhock then Blodgett Hill in Coeymans. It was a bit cool to start out the day but by mid-day I shed the winter coat, especially after riding up Blodgett Hill then pushing the mountain bike up part of way up the steepest part of the hill. Couldn’t really ride 
all the way up due to drainage breaks they’ve dug into the logging road. I don’t know, you’re probably not supposed to ride a mountain bike in a Wildlife Management Area, though I stayed on roads and truck trails, except maybe that short section of the blue trail, but going up I mostly pushed the bike up the hill.
— literally 
as I rode down Blodgett Hill. I rode the brakes hard going down to the logging rode down the north-side as there was many water breaks to cross then rode the brakes to go slowly down the blue trail but it wasn’t until I picked up speed heading down the hill on County Highway that the brakes literally started smoking. The whole rotor was covered with a grayish-blackish smoke. Not sure if it was brake fluid I got on the rotator when it leaked when I changed the pads a few months back, or if it was a mixture of road and trail dust, leaves and deicing chemicals that burst into smoke when the rotator got really hot.
Get the brake service you need at our shop! That said, if anything I am not sure if I need any service to bike, if anything the brakes preformed better once they got that hot, they stopped sqweaking. With a bit of chain wear, that new chain – well the one I found from old stock – is preforming well with only a bit of gear jumping at times so I’m going to hold off on replacing the cassette for a while even if I get it in the mail in next few days. I did get the chain wear measurement tool yesterday, and checked the chain wear. It was good but it’s something I’m going to check every time I grease the chain.
I think I will ride out to Five Rivers for a while this morning. I do have hope though for spring sooner then later, and it might actually be a decent evening after visiting the folks to do a quick hike up Bennett Hill. Mom is cooking chicken and sweet potatoes for dinner, 
and I’ll do my wash out there and dump the compost buckets out there. And then this weekend will be done, and I’ll head to bed again. 
I am just waiting for warmer weather and more meaningful weekends, spent out in the wilderness, though truth be cold it wasn’t a bad riding out to Blodgett Hill. It was nice seeing the Pitch Pines and Scrub Oaks up there, and that they’ve cleaned it up after the raspberries 
and other trash species crowding out the scrub oaks in recent years that have passed since the last controlled burn. I am so ready for a night in wilderness, not just to burn shit 
and turn that junk mail and wrappers in carbon dioxide but also get my sanity back, 
so I can be less extremely mentally ill. I doubt I’ll have be sane though, as I don’t worship the plastic crap that smells so bad when you toss in the fire. Just don’t tell a liberal. 
Just like I wasn’t riding my mountain bike on the logging trails at a WMA. 
