I was happy to look out the window and see the street lights were still on and we didn’t loose power. Everything though on the driveway is a sheet of ice, and it’s raining out and expected to get real windy by afternoon. I’ll leave a few minutes early for the bus stop lest I slip on the ice racing out to the 18. Who knows if it will be early or late in this weather, sometimes drivers cut their break short if they’re worried about falling behind schedule.
Took a hit of some weed and popped two sleeping 💤 pills early in the evening for a solid night sleep. Still groggy this morning but I’ve not slept well since learning the news 📰 about Big Red though that cold blustery night in the wilderness helped. Those sleeping pills 💊 certainly happen for the sleep but they leave me a haze in the morning, but it helps I did them early enough in the evening, then stayed up reading and watching more YouTube. 📹 I usually don’t smoke weed at home, but whatever, I thought it be fun, and it’s not like I camped all three days in State Forest due to cold. Probably won’t do anymore the rest of the winter if I’m not traveling. 🥶 Apple pancakes 🥞 🍏 for breakfast, last night I stumbled upon some pea soup I had frozen a few months back, and cooked that up in the microwave. Along with ground oatmeal, cranberries, Splenda and sugar-free maple syrup for desert.
Busing it to work today. 🚍 It’s icy out! Good time to do some reading, then some laps in the Plaza after work. Tuesday I might ride in if not too cold and icy 🚲 (probably Corning’s Hill) and then Wednesday I’ll drive Big Red one last time, hopefully not snapping the frame on those massive bumps on Water Street. The bus is slow but when I don’t have my bike, I can spend the entire bus ride reading 📖 and I haven’t gotten a lot of exercise this past weekend so walking laps in the Plaza after work will be good.
I find it hard to believe this is week Red will be retired. 🛻 Goodnight 2025! Seems like only yesterday I was picking him up from the dealership. The year will be done come Wednesday. I will drive in that day, and leave mid-day to run a few errands and maybe take him for a final drive before I am driving until spring time. Hell of it is, I swear Red drove perfectly yesterday, no wobble, but I also know what the frame looks like at this point. I’ve been thinking about the plan for replacing Red, continuing to do my research but I don’t want to buy until winter is done. And I just need time to process this all a bit more. It will be adventure to do the car-free lifestyle, butI’m ready for spring though to come and have my SuperDuty truck.
I went to Walmart yesterday, 🛒 to get some needed food and supplies for the coming week and continue to prep the pantry for Big Red’s retirement on Wednesday. I got a box of laundry soap flakes – I debated about laundry soap versus flakes but I think it’s easier to measure out a cup of them, and toss them in a reusable 🧼 container before going to laundromat. Soap flakes were in recyclable paper. While liquid laundry soap and pods are the rage, I think bar soap or flake soap is much more sustainable and less toxic, and a heck of lot lighter to carry when I’m lugging that bag of laundry down the road to laundromat. And a whole lot less plastic to pretend to recycle or turn into black smoke. I’m really trying to cut back on plastic, and non-recyclable things as part of my sustainability journey without a vehicle. 🔥 I mean it’s just trash if you can’t burn it.
I’ve gone into deep dive on to what is best way to buy a truck, 🚚 and how leaving the car-free lifestyle can benefit me by giving me time to make my decision and not buying until the end of Quarter 1 in late March. 🗓️ By then the road salt will be done, dealers probably won’t want to keep plow trucks on their lots, and sales quotas. Plus, if I do a lot negotiations over the internet, and do it slowly, the balls in my court. 🏀 In February, though I to catch a bus, climb in and test drive maybe an F-250/F-350 in the configuration I want, then carefully look at dealership inventories online over the next month, and start making offers in second half of March. Let dealers know I’m interested in their products in February with a plan to buy by end of quarter from them, if the price and model is right. Learn to be flexible too – the difference between the F-250 and F-350 is pretty small, and the appearance and features packages are relatively small too. Don’t like the wheels, but get a good price, I can always get new rims later on, especially if I do 35s or 37s with a leveling kit. I like the color red, but other colors probably will work for me if the price is good. Just not fleet white. I was hoping I could find a book at library 📙 detailing the ins and outs of different pickup trucks, but I might get a book on car buying for more info. I figure this month, January is the one to research. Then February, test drive.
I should call Meadowbrook to see if I can get milk delivered in reusable glass today. 🍶 That would be another source of plastic trash eliminated. I’ve never had milk delivery, but would be good way to boost my sustainability, and fresh local farm milk 🐮 is certainly delicious in ice cold glass. I don’t drink the amount of milk I used to – mostly coffee and cooking so I could probably just get by with like a half gallon of week. Definately get whole milk if I do it this way, dairy fat is fine in moderation. Dairymen at least want you to believe whole milk cuts your appetite so you eat less other unhealthy things. 😋
I also put in $15 in gas in the tank for certainly the last time, ⛽ as I was low and I will probably drive into work on New Years Eve, leaving work early, then get whatever remaining supplies I can think I need at Wally World, take Red for a bit of drive, then he will be parked at my parents house until spring. 😔 I made sure to leave my windshield wipers up so they didn’t freeze to the windshield. I swear Big Red is driving pretty good, though on those tough bumps I do fully feel the frame flex, and I know it’s living on borrowed time. I do in some ways regret not having him welded, but I know I can build a better rig, if not quite a high or big as Ol’ Red. I think the Ford 6.8L will offer similar fuel highway economy performance as t he lifted SIlverado without the oil consumption issues. And if it uses more gas but is super reliable, it’s fine, it’s not a commuter vehicle.
A lot of roofs don’t have the design capacity to hold solar panels due to weight. In addition, solar can pose fire risks when installed on a roof – most commercial solar arrays operate upwards of 1,000-1,500 VDC and being direct current, a bad connection is much more likely to continue to arc over and overheat compared to a similar alternating current connection. Moreover, solar connections are outdoors, exposed to water and UV. Installing solar on roofs can damage roofing materials and cause leaks of connectors aren’t propery sealed. It’s not to say you should never do roof top solar – but it’s like green roof, it only works in certain places and can be challenging to do in other locations.
Truth is we have an over-supply of agricultural land out there. We have flooded the markets with cheap commodities, many farmers farm as much to keep their land in their family then to make a profit. Solar can provide a good check – most solar is done as a 40-year lease, with clean up bonds filed against the solar farm – and includes a restoration plan back to agricultural use. As seen in Madison County, restoration plans work – the farm land previously used for wind turbines at end of life was restored to agricultural use when the turbines were removed. Even for a full-build out of solar, it is unlikely to use more then 1-2% of all agricultural lands. Solar panels do not vote, they do no produce traffic or noxious fumes. There may be some 60 Hz hum, impact on scenic views, but probably a net decrease in pollution due to less use of fertilizer and pesticides. Growing crops or even hay is hardly an ecologically benign activity, even if it looks familiar.
Needless to say, especially in a rural area, I would not put solar on a roof but go for a rack mount system. Much easier maintenance, fire safety, lower lifecycle costs with a ground mount. No need to remove panels to replace a roof. Loose wire, broken panel, snow on a panel? A small step ladder can likely be used for servicing. Granted, in suburban and urban areas you don’t always have room for a ground mount, but outside of cities, ground mount is clearly the way to go.
You know I like my freedom. To come and do as I please. But I’ve also thought about settling down, finding people to hang out with who have common interests.
Espeically now that I don’t have a vehicle, I should spend more time on weekends trying to meet up with people, find things to do as winter progresses.
Truth is that I am very concerned about what is happening in our country but I’m not very interested in political activism at this point in my life. I voted for Trump based on the obnoxious gun control and some of the more extreme environmental views on the left and let’s be honest some of the financial liberties and lack of personal responsibility professed to on the left. Truth is Trump kind of at one level represents that freedom I want at my off-grid cabin, the kind that the liberals want to restrict by banning things like guns and burn barrels in favor of plastics recycling, electric perfect temperature heat-pump climate control, and cars full of enormous colorful screens that remind us how much fuel we are saving in theory.
Things had just gotten rather unsettling during the President Biden years. While he was a decent man, he didn’t inspire hope and he didn’t seemed rather not up to the job. Inflation was bad, especially gas prices, but everything else just seemed to push upward during his years. The economy was good in all years but 2022, but while paper values went up, things in life seemed to stagnate, and it always seemed we were one step away from the next big recession. Truth is it seems like the left just wants to leave us numb in comforts wrapped in plastic, in denial about the real world that is full of problems.
Looking at my replacement for Big Red, I can’t help but reflect back on the malease that set in post-COVID time period. Not certainly all Joe Biden’s fault, indeed many of the policies that have made cars (and all other societal institutions) so bad came decades earlier – the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and subsequent tightening of safety and fuel economy standards in 2010s – and the high tech revolution brought forward by touch screens and powerful microprocessors. All things that have dramatically inflated vehicle costs and forced technology which at least in my mind is very suspect like turbocharged very small block engine to overcome pumping loses. Maybe I reject technology but I also feel like things are getting more complicated and worse for relatively non-existance fuel improvements. And it’s not just cars that have gotten bad – houses have many of the regulatory-generated flaws of modern cars, zoning and codes are just insane. They’ve made houses too expensive, too comfortable, and in reality too safe and waste generating. Conservatives might not have the answers, but liberals in their effort to keep people safe and green have done such harm to society.
Maybe because I am more of a low-information voter, despite being a Democratic political insider, I was unaware of the most awful things Trump said and did on his rise back to power in 2024. Honestly though, politicians say a lot of things, but don’t really mean it. And even the worse behavior in office is tampered down by the diverse sources of political power in our government. Trump is a maximalist, as his critics and supporters point out, not afraid to use power as he says fit. But somebody will start to apply the brakes to him, it’s going to happen. I could be angry, activated, but I choose to be another passive victim of the times we all live in. I am just stuck in the malease. Skeptical as hell. But Trump does do a good job into tapping into how broken American is today, how government rarely serves the people as it comes up with yet another mandate to make our air cleaner and our lives safer in theory, even when the practice leaves people to dubious to say the least. Maybe the motto of the decade is, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions”.
I do read the NY Times and lots of news magazines from the library. And I do read and listen to audiobooks about contemporary topics like climate change, pollution, and waste. And poverty. Maybe the books on poverty are what I am most fearful of, as I feel so poor even if I know I could live a much more prosperous life but I am frugal in search of owning my own land and that off-grid cabin. And apparently another big truck. But I also enjoy getting away from such things, reading about cabins and goat farming and homesteading more general. Something reading about cattle diseases or electrical wiring is somewhat removed from today’s bigger urban problems that are so disturbing, maybe because I realize I could fall so far.
I think my parents have attended some of those anti-Trump rallies. Myself I shrug it off, I don’t love the President but I can’t keep thinking what is alternative? More gun control, more badly broken safety and pollution controls on cars and houses? Just whining, pretending to make things better, and more colorful dashboards? More plastics recycling! That will solve the problem we are told! Not owning a television, I don’t see the orange man blasted into my apartment in high-resolution color, spewing hatred and xenophobia. I don’t keep up on the latest TV shows, I like seeing real off-gridders and dairymen on Youtube rather then some made for TV production. And just learning how real systems work in reality, and not the colorful screens that everybody is trying to force down our throats with enormous full color views of the President in all his most problematic views.
