Influencers Are Spinning Nicotine as a ‘Natural’ Health Hack – The New York Times
Spring on Vac-kay 🌷 ❄️
While my phone is warning of snow showers this morning and mercury was 31 degrees and I turned on the heated blanket this morning, it could be worse, I can remember a few weeks back. Still after several 70 and 80 degree days, and things rapidly greening up all around, it’s a painful reminder that summer is not here yet. The warm coffee and blueberry pancakes help a lot with that tangy ginger warming up in my mouth.
Another work week ahead, 😀 on Friday Old Smokey gets his bed liner installed. Then just waiting for the truck cap. The first half of the week is expected to be fairly cold but then seasonable by the second half with rain coming for the weekend. ☔ It’s fine, this past weekend was pretty nice especially on Saturday but also Sunday evening was decent but chilly once the rain pulled off. No vacation for me, got to work all week so I have more money to dump into the SuperDuty as a poor desprate individual, while all you drive back and forth in your 25-year old Honda Civic to your plastic house with a recycling bin in suburbs. Listening to Karen Dalton’s Are You Leaving for the Country, remembering those very wet, cold and rainy days riding trail at Horseshoe Lake stoned out of my brain, taking in all those autumn colors last autumn. 🍁 Fun times on that final big trip with Big Red.
Riding in today and tomorrow most likely, 🥕 need to get Cider Vingar and carrots this evening, as I hate plain water and pancakes without carrots in the mix. 🥞 When you get used to having every meal with a lot of fiber that makes things crispy and filling, it just tastes so empty and plain without them. Those pancakes were good this morning but without the carrots, really felt not super filling. 🎂 Wednesday is not only Earth Day 🌎 but also Administrative Professionals Day, 🖥️ so I’ll have to get some cupcakes or other treat for the team in the office and have a meeting. Also there is a planning board on Wednesday, so I’ll have that to go to. Friday I have to drive early up to Adirondack Off-Road outside of Schenectady with my mountain bike, 🚲 drop the truck off to get the big spray-in bedliner done, then hop on an express bus 🚍 downtown and from there ride over to the office. 🏢
Went out and visited Mom and Dad last night, 👨👨👦 it was good and cleared out so I did a quick jog up Bennett Hill before dark. Came back over Plank Road, I was happy to see the bridge has a posted weight limit of 12 tons so I can take Old Smokey over it legally. I’ve discovered more then a few roads are off limits in town where I live due to signs either saying “Weight Limt 3 Tons” or “No Commercial Trucks”. Old Smokey is registered at 3 1/2 tons, and has commercial plates. That said, most of the roads also have “Except Local Delivery” and I doubt the cops would follow you along the road to see if you’re just passing through, especially on just a 1-ton pickup. Still I try to follow the law when I think cops 👮 might be looking. It’s stupid, it’s a gasser pickup, and only 1 1/2 inches longer then my lifted Silverado. There was a surprising amount of color on Bennett Hill, and it wasn’t pungent with the stink of cow 🐮 then I expected for spring time, but it looks they’ve already disced the cow shit into the fields. 🚜 Planting season is probably only a month away.
The Mirror Tells A Story I Didn’t Authorize
The mirror has begun to tell a story I didn’t authorize. At forty-three, the gray hair isn’t just a change in pigment; it’s a physical clock, a silent metronome ticking away the seconds of my “freedom years.” As I look at the map, tracing the long ribbon of asphalt from Albany toward the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I realize this isn’t just a road trip. It is a pilgrimage into the great northern forests, a search for something solid before the complexities of midlife claim my schedule entirely.
In my professional life as a Data Services Director, everything is abstract—election cycles, spreadsheets, and the digital hum of a world that feels increasingly disconnected from the soil. The Midwest, by contrast, feels tactile. Popular culture paints it as reserved and conservative, but I see it as a place of manufacturing and forestry, where people still make things from the earth. I need to stand in those woods for a week, maybe longer, to remember what it feels like to be anchored to the land.
The drive alone is a meditation. Two long days behind the wheel of my F-350 SuperDuty, stopping to sleep in the state forests of Chautauqua or the Allegheny National Forest, crossing through the rolling miles of Ohio until the air turns crisp with Michigan’s lakeland chill. But as I plan the rig and check the gear, a shadow hangs over the excitement: the knowledge that this may be one of the last times I can simply go.
Time is tightening its grip. Every dinner with my parents includes a subtle, or not-so-subtle, reminder that they are aging. They speak of a future where I am the one holding the keys to the homestead, the one responsible for the goats, the hogs, and the dog. My mother measures time in political cycles, hoping to see the end of an era, but I measure it in the deepening lines on their faces. I see a future where “getting away” is no longer an option because animals need feeding and parents need care.
The homestead is a complicated inheritance. It’s five acres, grid-tied, and nestled among “good ol’ boy” neighbors—not exactly the off-grid wilderness I dream of. In New York, even on agricultural land, you’re hemmed in by burn bans, gun restrictions, and a cultural bias against the very things—hunting, trapping, fishing—that make rural life meaningful. I think of my truck; it’s a beast in city traffic, but it would be perfectly at home towing cattle trailers on those five acres. Yet, even that future is uncertain. A nursing home could drain the estate, or family dynamics could shift the ground beneath my feet.
This trip to Michigan, then, is a reconnaissance mission for the soul. I want to see how they live in the North, to learn the layout of the land so that when retirement finally comes, I know where to plant my roots—somewhere the restrictions of the East Coast can’t reach.
Summer is coming, but I can feel it slipping away even as it arrives. I am building my rig not just to travel, but to outrun the clock for a little while. I need to see the Great Lakes and the deep timber of the UP while I still have the strength to wander, before the duties of the homestead and the weight of my own years turn me into a permanent fixture of the land I’m currently trying to escape. Time is ticking, and the road is calling.
Super Werid
Two werid things on the SuperDuty that I had to Google to understand.
- How to open the back glass – switch is on the roof by the up fitters (so random!)
- How to use the heated mirrors (they are wired to the circuit for heated back glass so rear defrost on heated mirrors on)
Friday spray day!
Friday I’m having a spray-in bedliner installed on my truck. Factory bedliners are fairly uncommon plus most are crappy plastic or poorly applied and the factory markup is not much of a savings over having a third party install often a superior product.
I debated about getting a bedliner but I don’t want gear to slide around or have cold aluminum to be touching at camp. I have a rubber mat but it’s much too small as it’s sized for a Ford Ranger. Sitting back in the truck bed I realized how much trucks without really bedliners suck. I looked at plastic liners, mats and bed rugs but spray-in is the way to go. Not that much more expensive. It’s the toughest option, provides good traction for loads. And it’s somewhat safer than camping on bare metal in a thunderstorm.
It obviously had to be done before the cap is installed. The cap – an ARE MX Camper Shell with the side screened windoors that open – should be installed in late May. Very similar to the old rig, moving the solar panel and kayak rack over. Then to move over the batteries, solar, shelf to the new rig. With the big powerful dual alternator on the SuperDuty I plan to upgrade battery storage and solar but for now the plan is to wire it up with future expansion in mind.
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