Personal

The industrial coffee machine violently broke in office, spraying water and flooding the kitchen and hallway and the covering old Italian guy with hot water who so diligently is making it starting at 7:30 every morning. It was fine, I told myself, I popped some extra-strength caffeine pills before riding in to make up for the three-times reheated coffee beans in my percolator pot at home.

What a cruel joke for the first day after the time change. The hell of it is a few weeks back somebody broke the machine, and they had did a full restore on machine, and then the water line blew up on the first day after the time change.

And that ruined my sleep like so many other things last night. While I don’t abuse Red Bull like one of the other directors – who sends emails and files financials at 3 AM – it’s pretty damn bad with my abuse of caffeine. I mean I bought the pills to avoid peeing on road trips and get extra happy smoking pot in wilderness, but I find myself taking them at times needing it to get moving and feeling good yesterday with the time change. And it wasn’t like it wasn’t a beautiful spring day. There is hope, like there is every spring before the swarms of black flies descend on the woods. I’m looking forward to some good nights in wilderness and some good fires. Nothing beats camping in woods, having daily firees and not looking at all trash accumulating in the bin.

Truth is there has been so many things on my mind. That replacement left-front gear shifter lever I pulled off my other bike which I knew was already not in much better shape then broke one went bang as I was shifting into high gear last night after climbing out of the hollow past the Van Dyke Preserve. It was loose and the dust cover was missing, and I knew it would fail at some point soon but it was an interim solution. I will order a new part today – they’re not expensive and I have locked in high range so I should be able to ride both ways to work today. But that was the first annoyance, knowing that today is supposed to be one of the nicest early spring days of the year.

Rode out to Bender Mellon Preserve after work and then to Five Rivers before dusk. Probably over 30 miles on the bike yesterday. All was good, for the most part until I climbed that last hill getting out of the hollow when that old shift lever gave way. It’s fine, I rode home in low gear range the rest of way. I knew that was going to break. The front wheel is still out of round from trail riding and the back tire makes a clicking noise, though I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the tire and not the wheel – I think there is torn cord in tire from riding rough on ice earlier this year. When the tire is fully up to pressure and after riding smoothly for a while I don’t get any noise. Or maybe I’m thinking the fix-a-flat gets kind of lumped in one location, and that makes it ride a bit rough. The rear tire probably will be shot by May or June based on number of miles I ride, so I’ll probably just live with with the noise for now, though I probably should see about getting front wheel trued, though it’s not that annoying, and it’s not like it’s not going to get bent up the next time I’m riding trail hard.

I’ve been listening to this audio book on sustainable home building, and it’s mostly about building a suburban home with LEED certification. You know, that 5,000 square foot with the latest high-tech gadgets to supposedly save energy, compared to an un-green certified 5,000 square foot home. The whole book is super woke – it’s all about feel good greenie shit and really doesn’t seem to offer much of use to myself when learning about building and homes for that off-grid homestead I want to build or buy. While they talk about the big recycling bin and the solar panels, they don’ t talk about how much electricity or garbage collection is needed to sustain such an operation.

The idea of those big suburban houses with heat pumps, and central heating and cooling just repulses me. I would think a single room, heated by a woodstove in a 500 foot cabin in woods and windows that open in summer would be so much more sustainable. Do the fully off-grid thing, really emphasize energy conservation then rely on scammy things like grid-tied solar and heat pumps, that not only make you pretend your being green. Rather then pretend plastic recycling, just avoid as much plastic as possible by raising as much of your own food, burn what remains, go to the transfer station once a year or dig a hole bury deep and cover with rock, dirt and manure.

And the hell of it is when you listen to podcasts late a night there are basically two types of targeted advertising companies every 5-10 minutes in the podcast – CAN’T SLEEP? You NEED BETTER HELP! Or Talk Nation. Did you know that 988 operators are standing by if you need to talk? Mattresses there for sale! It’s a blow out! Sleep better tonight if you come to our 24-7 show room before 8 AM this morning!! Not only will you get your mattress before bed time tonight, we’ll haul your own to the garbage mound on the outskirts of town for FREE! The ads are worse at 3 AM on the podcasts, and when your trying to sleep, you don’t want reach over and play with your phone with the bright blue screen to skip them.

I started listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast then It’s All Politics late into the night, them discussing how America is going to crap and the bottom is economy. It’s not a bad thing in my perspective, as I think we consume and toss way too much stuff  – I am more then willing to pay a little more if it encourages people to buy less plastic shit. Went to bathroom but was unwilling to get up – too tired. And then after the endless ads for Better Help I ended up reading about Word Salads on the internet – most famously associated with schizophrenia but also so many of the infamous songs and poems of the Beatnik Generation and Psychedelic Pop. It’s sometimes a lot of fun to do free association and jam words together, just because they seem groovy. Admitly, that is probably far from a mental health condition, that’s more from smoking grass or having fun. Much different then the homeless man at Empire Plaza that yells at you for supporting the New World Order that is run out of the local pizza shop.