Personal

Yeah it’s raining out I’m going to drive my big jacked up truck to work for one of the last times. It’s hard to believe those days will be coming to a close in 12 days, when I’ll park it at the parents homestead, take off the plates and surrender them to DMV and cancel my car insurance.

At one level, it seems like hardly worth the effort to cancel my car insurance and return my plates for maybe four months, 🆕 but I want to start anew, with new insurance with properly adjusted deductibles and compare policies. I heard my credit union has some good rates. Any new vehicle is likely to be vastly more expensive to insure, so I don’t just want to transfer over my existing policy. I can invest that $200 or so check I get back from my insurer for the remaining months on my policy. I know it’s a pissy amount of money for the hassle but it seems wasteful to continue to insure a junk vehicle that can’t any longer be driven on the roads legally.

I think it’s fine to drive in, as nothing has changed 🔍 since the inspection even if they did poke loose some of flaking the rust during the inspection. It will survive another 12 days, though I should be easy on the bumps, lest I break the bed from the cab. I guess at this point it doesn’t really matter as I’m going to junk it or sell it at fire sale prices to whatever hillbilly owns a welder and it can be their dream jacked up truck with some bondo. 🛠️ I mean it only has 118k on the odometer, and I did regular oil changes, fluid changes, and transmission change at 50k. And the lifters don’t even complain that much except when it’s really cold and they stop when they warm up. A lot of issues could be fixed with some welding, bondo, and maybe some general TLC I’m not willing to give it.

Of course, as I mock all the 20-year old Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla drivers, 🚘 they point out how they have a half million miles on their blocks and how little fuel they use. ⛽ But then I point they drive their pissy little cars from their suburban homes to everywhere, every day from the Big Box Shopping Mauls and suburban office campuses. They sit for hours and hours each week on the freeway. I still prefer busing and biking it, 🚲 🚌 even if it’s slow, and living the urban life while I still have to work. And once I own that off-grid cabin, sure I’ll drive to town once a week to get farm supplies and other things I can’t grow or produce, 🥕 but it certainly won’t be a daily driver. Just all those traffic lights 🚦 really grind in my mind. Plus the cops waiting in hiding to rape you behind every bush. 👮

I can tell myself I haven’t made up my mind about getting an government-agency spec F-250 regular cab long bed 4x4, probably red, 🛻 but it depends what color is avaliable locally, preferably somewhat used. It just sucks that so many of the 1/2 ton trucks and even mid-size trucks are these tech-laden overpriced Cadillacs that have flimsy engines and look like your driving a computer. The 2020s are the modern 1970s! An era of land yachts with lots of fake luxury and government compliance equipment, that suck. I mean, Trump isn’t wrong about how we’ve enshitified cars in recent years with regulations. I’d much rather have to get out to unlock the hubs then have auto-stop shut-off and displacement on demand.🔘 The DoD lifters on my Chevy 5.3l outlived my jacked up trucks frame with the salty weather, but it wasn’t always apparent that would happen, and other drivers have had much worse luck. It doesn’t help that all the new cars come with blowers and turbo chargers, and engines the size of two plastic soda bottles and use oil as thin and unlubricating as pure water.  I am looking at Toyota Tacomas, but their so small and pissy. All of them are now that quad cab, I want I want a regular cab, and getting a Tacoma with a manual stick shift is like getting a unicorn. I am afraid I’d burn out the alternator with my electric loads, and where to stick all those batteries and can I get more then one 100 watt panel on the roof? Plus, I have so much camping gear these days. But the fuel economy is so good. ⛽ But I don’t plan on buying a daily driver, I’m okay with living in city until I can retire to that off-grid homestead.

I don’t fucking know, but honestly. 🤷‍♂️ I just need to make sure I have my pantry well stocked before it’s those days after I’ve surrendered my plates to DMV and canceled my car insurance. I can bike a lot of places, but it’s not going to be as convinent as going to Wally World and leaving with $100 worth of groceries including big bags of rice and beans.  It’s good knowing I have options, and I don’t have a car payment, just one big check to cut, 💵 but it’s money I won’t have going forward once it’s spent. But then I look at the Capital Gains over the past few years, and I’m like does it really matter? I know, it’s money I could spend on cattle and manure spreaders, solar panels and burn barrels. I think I spent around $40-45k for Big Red between the truck, cap, lift kit, and everything else, though money was worth a lot more back in the day. How fast those days come and go. Still it’s going to be different not owning a vehicle for a while, though it will be fun riding my mountain bike and climbing in and out of big ol’ pickup trucks after not driving for a few months. Honestly, if I spend an extra $10k or so to get the truck I really want, spread out over 15 years it’s far less then most people piss away at restaurants, cable television and home internet, 📺 or for that matter on all the plastic crap they buy at Amazon and then pay to get hauled off because they don’t burn it or drive it themselves to the transfer station. Don’t you know, you can afford trash pickup with free plastic recyclings, cable television and to heat your apartment at 72 degrees rather then 48 degrees? Or even buy a plastic house! 🏡 But alas I know the burn barrel smell too well. Plastic is bad news even if it does burn hot.

I’ve not been sleeping well as you can see, 💤 and all those ads for financial managers, SUVs and plastic houses, really grind my gears, ⚙️ along with ads for electric cars, solar panels, and all that sustainability crap. I get most people with Red regular cab F-250s have a George Bush or these days a Trump bumper sticker, and probably don’t ride city bus or their mountain bike to work. And I keep think about frugality, 💰 what is the responsible thing to do, but the advertisers keep pushing more plastic houses with solar panels and SUVs down my throat. 💭 At least I know my sanity isn’t that bad learning that all the wallowing I’ve been feeling in my truck wasn’t in my head, it was the rotted out frame, even if the colors and shouting people in the ads still confuse my brain, though limiting my Facebook and watching YouTube videos in Brave Tube have helped restore a bit of my – See What You Need is BETTER HELP! Oh gawd, let me listen to the rest of this Ian Tyson song, an then shower 🚿 and drive my big jacked up truck to work one of the last times.