Won’t be quite pitch black at 6:30 when the bus comes and I’ll have fresh wash before work. I’ll shower and have a quick breakfast and then git r done.But that’s for tomorrow.
I’ve been watching more videos on how car salesman get r dun selling cars , even more nervous that if I go to the dealership next Monday I’ll leave with a Honda Civic and not the Godzilla Holstein that I want. Truth is that I can’t worry that much, I don’t even have car insurance currently and it would take a few days for the money to transfer. Really what I want is to look at one of those big trucks up close, climb in the cab and maybe do a test drive to see if this is the direction I want to go. Of course the first two posts Facebook has to show me is one about how their fuel pump died in their big Ford and how bad the gas mileage truly is on the big gassers. I know when a step onto the auto lot, I am not forced automatically to hand over $60,000, and if I burn the bridge with that one dealer there are at least 94 other Ford dealers within 150 miles, still I’m nervous with all the psychological tricks salesmen get you to buy. After watching many hours of videos on real-world interactions with dealers, I’ve been studying how auto salesmen deal with customers who walk, and how they sell more cars. I’m glad though I don’t have to deal with the snow with a vehicle right now, cleaning off the snow, but can just slog through the snow to the nice warm bus stop.
Tomorrow will be an early day on the bus, and besides riding down to laundromat, I’ll probably bus it to work as there is a hearing about yet another development in the Pine Bush and one on Wednesday too. Going to rain and snow on Wednesday, so I probably won’t be biking it in until Thursday and Friday, and still be f-ing Second Avenue which I guess beat riding the bus. I just want the snow off the rail trail. Putting in the request today for the voter files, and hopefully we can start processing that soon at work, and move forward on that. Other then that, yeah, work my way through the week. I have enough clothes I probably could wait a few days before catching the bus to the laudromat, and I was considering how much I could potentially carry on my bike. Wash ain’t heavy but it’s kind of bulky, but I fell like I could load enough clothes on the back of bike then avoid waiting for buses. That’s one way to do it, but it’s going to be cold tomorrow, and it’s a lot of bulk to try to load into that box on my bike.
Snowing today so I’m busing it but whatever the bus is warm and I’m getting to work. On snow days like today it’s nice to live in the city. Smoke alarm went off this morning, I was surprised, but probably it’s particularly steamy in my apartment from making rice yesterday. Yesterday was a pretty boring day, read some, rode to Walmart and got groceries, and explored the Schiffendecker Preserve. It was good to get out for a little while. Made up rice with shrimp and veggies. Had more split pea soup for lunch, breakfast was eggs and veggies. Then pretty much just hung out didn’t do much. It was a very quiet weekend, just whiling the winter away. I probably should have done more, but it turned to a sloppy rain by afternoon, and I wasn’t gong to ride in that crap, plus I’m really trying to learn as much as I can before I ever step into that hostile territory next week, and start working out a deal for my next truck in March. If it fails, I’ll keep looking in April, chances are I can’t get banned from working from all dealerships, there is a lot of them. Or maybe I get a Toyota if all the Ford shops now refuse to work with me. Do I over analyze everything, study every flaw of the Godzilla and 10R140 and every mechanical failure, while sometimes losing the forest for the individual trees? Sure yeah, in the end it will be a nice rig whatever I buy, and it’s not like I am under any real pressure, I’ve made it nearly two months without a vehicle and there is no reason I can’t keep doing this for the foreseeable future, though I want a good, reliable truck by the time it warms up to get back to wilderness.🛻
Lately there has been a lot of talk about the successes of Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD. Why is MADD not a potent political factor any more?
Besides, their successes at eliminating drunk driving making their organization obsolete, their failures at preserving the National Maximum Speed Limit have been under reported.
Well, a lot their failure as an organization was their disastrous campaign to preserve the National 55 MPH speed limit. Their Save the National 55 Speed Limit campaign became their focus of the organization and it was a focus that may have felt noble to its members but it was one that was not popular with the public.
Motorists like driving fast on the expressways. MADD for years pushed for tougher penalties against speeders, they were outright rebuffed in conservative states and in liberal states, the tougher penalties still were widely ignored. Motorists ignored the law and judges for the most part rarely gave tickets beyond the mandatory minimum. Radar detectors and CB radios allowed people to rat out the bears.
So no, MADD wasn’t a success at their second campaign that went up strongly against motorists desires for faster driving, even if they’re first campaign was quite sucessful.
In a little bit I’ll ride my mountain bike to Wally World and stock up on groceries before the hordes of people go racing in to beat the Dire Emergency Snowstorm Homeland Extreme Disaster.
Yesterday I spent most of the day at home, 🌬️ l made pea soup 🥣 and some homemade bread, emptied out the compost, did a little cleaning and a lot of reading and watching YouTube. I’ve not been great about reading, but in part because I’ve spent so much time studying dealer stragety and various pros-and-cons of trucks. Next Sunday is March, I’ll be studying the manufacturer incentives then to know what’s avaliable when they are released. 🔎 Then probably that following Monday, I’ll run over a car dealership to look at and test drive a truck before heading into work. 🤝 I don’t want it to be all day thing, I’d much rather negogate and study options over the phone with the Internet Sales Manager then in a dealership, but I want to test drive at least one truck before I lay down a deposit. I would like to close the deal out during the month of March, but if I don’t find the truck I want at the price I’m willing to pay, I can go longer – but I also do want to get a truck so I can order a cap for it relatively soon.
With that wind, I decided not to go to Walmart, but soon this morning, I will hop on my bike and ride over shortly. Just to stock up before the crowds and get some exercise in. I am not expecting much snow today, but probably tomorrow will be quite snowy. Tuesday morning before work I’ll head down to the laundromat. As bus it in, I don’t expect the snow storm will have much of an impact on my commute, maybe if it’s really bad they’ll close the office but whatever. If the shuttle does not run, there is always the local bus to catch. I guess if the office is closed, then I can do my laundry tomorrow afternoon once the snow let’s up. Still it’s not good for riding to work on bike trail any time soon, though I still think we will see more snow melting with March soon enough underway. Maybe walk around the Schiffenberg Preserve for a while, or maybe go out to Five Rivers later in the day. But I don’t have any real plans for today as of now. Maybe make some cornbread up to go with the pea soup, sleep and read a bit.
I took a bus and the walked out to a car dealership in New Jersey, out past some long abandoned factories. Big long abandoned industrial buildings and earthy and smelly, rundown farm land. It’s still winter, quite bleak and gray. I’m looking at these big pickup trucks and then it’s time to go home. Somebody suggests I take state subsidized commuter rail back to New York – it’s only a few bucks as it’s subsidized. I ride a few more stops then expected until I get to this scenic crossing over a river – scenic except you know for lots of electrical lines. I get off at the station there, and there is a scenic viewing platform, but of course the real scenic view of the river is highly blocked off with restricted area signs and chain link fence due to the electrical infrastructure. Big signs put up by State of New Jersey discuss how green the commuter rail is, being powred by the hydro dam right below my feet.
Deciding to walk the rest of the way downtown, I step into this vast underground college campus, officially it’s an affiliate of Rutgers University as I’m still in New Jersey. Vast lecture halls, all underground. I pop into a lecture hall briefly and then head back out needing to get back to the Empire Plaza and downtown. So I follow this tunnel back to the Empire Plaza, running into this long time political activist from a lifetime ago – some left wing group I used to hang out with in my college days. We talk as we walk to the Empire Plaza, the mystery level I’m completely unfamiliar with. I arrive after going what seems like miles to what appears to be the Empire Plaza but an unfamiliar level. Looks like the Concourse but this is a different, lower level. There are some signage but it’s confusing. White walls, brass, concrete I beams.
What would you know by now I need to go to the bathroom. There is a sign to the bathroom, down the stairs to an even deeper more obscure level of Plaza. At first I walk through an abandoned cafeteria, tables roped off in caution tape and a hastely posted “Posted No Tresspassing” sign like you might find on a farm. Then I find another bathroom sign that directs me through another hallway, a set of stairs to another cafeteria, this one a knock off of Pizza Hut from the 1970s, full of state workers in pin stripe shirts eating what appears to be thin microwave pizza and round plates of colored flat jello, each quarter of the plate a different brightly colored jello, red, yellow, blue and green. I am at a loss, the next bathroom signs appear to point a broom closet.
I ask one of workers and he looks up from his plate of flat colored jello and he points me down another corridor. I walk past the Office of State Purchasing from Women Owned Alpaca Farms. Who knew the state had an agency that only purchased from women owned Alpaca Farms? I guess fiber for state agency uniforms? Down another hall, set of a stairs. I see a even more state offices, the hallway narrows further, as this part of the building is very old and not accessible to people with disabilities. Apparently this part of the building was never updated to accommodate persons with wheelchairs. Past more filing cabinets and cubicles. This is a very old and dated interior, so deep in the Plaza few people ever see it. And I keep following that signs promising me the bathroom, deeper, and deeper into lower and lower levels of the Empire Plaza I never knew existed.
A few weeks back I joined a few Facebook groups on Ford SuperDuty trucks, one of them is the 7.3L Godzilla enthusiasts forum. Unfortunately most of the posts lately have been reasons that you really don’t want to buy the ginormous engine – lifter failures, bad transmissions, and people getting far more horrendous gas milage then even I estimated.
Truth is it’s one of the most produced commercial truck gas engines produced in America, and many people use them to pull heavy loads over mountains, idle all day, and otherwise work them hard. Far harder then I would, and it’s good to see the other side and no potential risks and downsides of the enormous trucks. Any mass produced vehicle, no matter how good quality control is, there will be some lemons. But I also take in context – I won’t likely ever run a lift kit on a HD truck and probably will be happy enough even with close to stock tires. With factory parts, and simple engine, it will be much easier to get repairs done unlike my old lifted truck.
And then there is the issue of cost and complexity of LED headlights and taillights with all of the sensors. I was reading the Ford taillights are upwards of $4,000 to replace the broken part. That said, the XL models – like the XL Off-Road still have the halogen bulb lights which are certainly much cheaper to replace. Maybe that’s the case for staying away from the appearance package and not having the fancier headlights and taillights. That said, solid state units are certainly quite reliable and in a few years it’s certain you’ll be able to find junkyard parts much cheaper. And maybe there are Chinese-knock off parts that would work, especially if STX I get doesn’t have the fancy cameras or sensors. And is the 6.8L and 10R100 that much worse then the 7.3L 10R140? I don’t really need the extra umph for towing, and the destroked Minizilla is said to be nearly as powerful or maybe even better then it’s up sized version and the 10R100 shifts smoother. I guess it depends what is avaliable and for what out the door price.
Truth is I am probably over-analyzing it, and whatever I get for a truck will serve me well over the next 15 years. Even limiting yourself to F-250/F-350 gassers, the options seem numerous. And the big Fords are relatively simple engine designs with lots of space under the hood for repairs compared to a lot of cars these days. You can’t prevent all tragedies or loss, insuraning against every rare case quickly gets expensive and is not financially wise even if sometimes you do have to bite the bullet, cut a checkand deal with whatever life throws at you.
, even more nervous that if I go to the dealership next Monday I’ll leave with a Honda Civic and not the Godzilla Holstein 
that I want. Truth is that I can’t worry that much, I don’t even have car insurance currently and it would take a few days for the money 
to transfer. Really what I want is to look at one of those big trucks up close, climb in the cab and maybe do a test drive to see if this is the direction I want to go. Of course the first two posts Facebook has to show me is one about how their fuel pump died in their big Ford and how bad the gas mileage truly is on the big gassers. 
I know when a step onto the auto lot, I am not forced automatically to hand over $60,000, and if I burn the bridge with that one dealer there are at least 94 other Ford dealers within 150 miles, 
still I’m nervous with all the psychological tricks salesmen get you to buy. After watching many hours of videos on real-world interactions with dealers, I’ve been studying how auto salesmen deal with customers who walk, and how they sell more cars. I’m glad though I don’t have to deal with the snow with a vehicle right now, cleaning off the snow, but can just slog through the snow to the nice warm bus stop. 
and one on Wednesday too. Going to rain and snow on Wednesday, so I probably won’t be biking it in until Thursday and Friday, and still be f-ing Second Avenue which I guess beat riding the bus. 
I just want the snow off the rail trail. Putting in the request today for the voter files, 
and hopefully we can start processing that soon at work, 
and move forward on that. Other then that, yeah, work my way through the week. I have enough clothes 
I probably could wait a few days before catching the bus to the laudromat, and I was considering how much I could potentially carry on my bike. Wash ain’t heavy but it’s kind of bulky, but I fell like I could load enough clothes on the back of bike then avoid waiting for buses. That’s one way to do it, but it’s going to be cold tomorrow, and it’s a lot of bulk to try to load into that box on my bike.
so I’m busing it but whatever the bus is warm and I’m getting to work. On snow days like today it’s nice to live in the city. Smoke alarm went off this morning, 
I was surprised, but probably it’s particularly steamy in my apartment from making rice yesterday. 
Yesterday was a pretty boring day, read 
some, rode to Walmart and got groceries, 
and explored the Schiffendecker Preserve. 
It was good to get out for a little while. Made up rice 
with shrimp 
and veggies. Had more split pea soup for lunch, breakfast was eggs and veggies. Then pretty much just hung out didn’t do much. It was a very quiet weekend, just whiling the winter away. 
I probably should have done more, but it turned to a sloppy rain by afternoon, and I wasn’t gong to ride in that crap, plus I’m really trying to learn as much as I can before I ever step into that hostile territory next week, and start working out a deal for my next truck in March. If it fails, I’ll keep looking in April, chances are I can’t get banned from working from all dealerships, there is a lot of them. Or maybe I get a Toyota if all the Ford shops now refuse to work with me. 
Do I over analyze everything, study every flaw of the Godzilla and 10R140 and every mechanical failure, while sometimes losing the forest for the individual trees? 
Sure yeah, in the end it will be a nice rig whatever I buy, and it’s not like I am under any real pressure, I’ve made it nearly two months without a vehicle and there is no reason I can’t keep doing this for the foreseeable future, though I want a good, reliable truck by the time it warms up to get back to wilderness.🛻
but whatever. If the shuttle does not run, there is always the local bus to catch. I guess if the office is closed, then I can do my laundry tomorrow afternoon once the snow let’s up. Still it’s not good for riding to work on bike trail any time soon, though I still think we will see more snow melting with March soon enough underway. Maybe walk around the Schiffenberg Preserve for a while, or maybe go out to Five Rivers later in the day. 
But I don’t have any real plans for today as of now. Maybe make some cornbread up to go with the pea soup, 
sleep and read a bit.
