Good morning, America How Are You? 🇺🇸
I was so annoyed when mom wished me a nice camping trip. I absolutely despise the term, as I associate camping with campgrounds, you know that urban kind of living with recreation centers and campers parked every six feet with a few spiny trees between each other rather than a driveway and a fire pit on some dirt road in wilderness.
I so hate calling my nights in the wilderness camping 🏕️. That term annoys me because that’s not what it’s about. It ignores the stars, ✨ the wildflowers 🌼, the hours reading 📖 in the hammock and thinking. 📚 Or playing with the camera 📸 taking pictures and thinking. Or just spending time in the woods, the wilderness. I might not have that off grid homestead without vinyl siding yet but I can still spend my weekends in the wilderness. 🔥 Have fires and freedom to burn things!
A million white flowers in a field in the sky, 💐 says the Kaleidoscope song as I smell in the incense up here in the wilderness as I wander in the fields of gold and purple as autumn gets underway. The grass and woods is so dry but I had a very small fire 🔥 last night after feeling around the grass and trying to light it with a lighter. And then I waited until dark for a camp fire and extinguished it with water before dead. Fire risk is high but not as much as a tinder box as I feared at first with the dry grass but I wouldn’t burn anything unattended or during daylight hours when it’s not easy to spot fire brands.
I so love the wild country outside of Rennselaerville 🐐 both the views of the mountains, the people and the homesteads. I so fell in love with the ramshakle hunting cabin for sale out here a few years back now, but ultimately decided against touring because it’s too far from work. Plus it’s still New York State with its shit gun laws and burn bans. Sure wash out your plastic bottles and dutifully separate out your paper 📃 for for recycling, ♻️ me I’d much rather save the scraps for the hogs 🐖 and burn the rest. 🔥
Mornings are dark this time of year 🌄 and it was cool to start out the day but it’s warming quickly with the sun coming up and the wind slackening. Feeling good, maybe a bit jittery but the wake and bake with Dragonfly Just Peachy 🍑 🐲 is pretty darn amazing. It’s the insane 33% THC to 9/10th percent. Fun stuff. Those clams 🦪 were good years, I’ll finish off the rest of them this afternoon with more onions 🧅 and sweet corn 🌽.
I kind of wished I went to the Adirondacks this weekend ⛰️ but it’s still beautiful country up here in Rennselaerville. Maybe in two weeks, I was reading the restrictions after LASIK really aren’t what I originally thought 👀 especially one week after the procedure. I’m thinking maybe October 4th through Columbus Day heading north ultimately to the St. Regis Canoe Area by the holiday weekend and kayaking 🛶 and riding the Adirondack Rail Trail with maybe some time at Horse Lake, Bog River Flow and Lows Ledge.
While I think my next rig will likely be a Taco 🌮 truck, I’m still trying to make peace ✌️ with something so small. Going to have to be more strategic with packing gear and necessities and mounting electric equipment. Going to move all the solar stuff over but I’ll probably mount the inverter and control circuitry in the bed with a line up to the front to pull power from the alternator when the engine is running. 🔌 I’ll use a voltage sense line and monitor the voltage from the alternator and solar panels to detect if the starting batteries should be connected or not. Fuse taps and switched fuses are rare on modern vehicles. The rig I build now should serve me through retirement and the start of my off-grid homestead.
Hard to believe next Saturday I’ll wake up and take off the protective goggles 🥽 and be able to see without the irritation of contacts or glasses 👓. I will have perfect vision forever. Maybe my eyes 👀 will be irritated for a while and I’ll need eye drops but science is an amazing thing. People don’t trust scientists anymore but I’d argue often the underlying science is good even if some scientists are super woke and ideological. Doesn’t mean that their research isn’t advancing society and when viewed in context with other competing views doesn’t offer valuable insights. The laser technology for LASIK is just amazing.
Dutton Ridge
I often find myself sitting quietly on the stone wall at the backside of Rennselaerville State Forest overlooking Dutton Ridge and the hollow where Hauverville sits. It’s just a rural hillside with a luxury house built into the hillside and then a rural road with some houses, some trails, I think a horse farm but I don’t know it was decades ago now when I got my truck stuck up at Dutton Ridge State Forest.
The luxury house does nothing for me, I’m sure the horse farm is fine. But I do dream some day of living deep rural, in an off grid homestead with livestock. Not in New York. I was reminded about the stupidity the other day buying ammo and my views on burn barrels are well known. It was better back in the day. But there are many rural places that are not New York.
Beautiful autumn afternoons with the relatively low sun angle light my imagination even further. Something about how the low sun angle illuminates the hollow, but truth is both for solar and growing crops I’d much rather have the sun. There is something fun and special about the small towns – I’d never want to live there in favor of hills – but they’re a good place to do business.
One week from now the big snip will be done 👀
I’ll be high as fuck on drugs from the surgery, wearing protective goggles and not able swim or bike for week, but it will be good to be finally done with glasses. My contacts more and more bother me these days, and the cost of contacts keeps going up as are visits to my awful chain-store vision shop where they don’t even have an optometrist on-site – clerks check you in the the optometrist serves half the country remotely via tele-medication.
Surgery is a cost and there are some risks, but for the number of years its expected to last, paying $4k and a few hours and maybe days of misery and restrictions are worth it. It’s less then I spent installing the lift-kit on my truck that is almost junk ten years later. And in theory my life won’t be junk in 10 years but will last several more years into the future. I am not saying I don’t enjoy having a big jacked up truck for as long as I had it, but having good vision for the next 30 years without having to deal with contacts and glasses will be worth it. Contacts are so expensive and such a pain. Especially now with all my issues with dry eyes, especially when I’m singing along with that Brewer and Shipley song.
Taking Friday Off 🏕️
I took today off not because I needed to or had big bold plans outside of a few nights camping and some other personal business to attend to but I figured I have the time. Use it now rather then burn it up at the end of year by taking unnecessary days off or giving it back to state for nothing.
I was able to get clams at Price Chopper this morning. 🦪I had some of them for lunch, they were pretty tasty with lots of mushrooms, sweet corn, onions, and of course zucchuni. Waited until after 7;30 to run to Price Chopper then wasted time by returning cans and catching the guy at the seafood counter first thing. 🐠 They hadn’t put out any yet but he got them out from the back.
Then I headed out to Mom and Dad’s house to feed the cat. 🙀 Then I headed out to Bear Swamp Preserve. 🐸 Usually it’s super swampy there but today wasn’t too bad because it’s been so dry. A few swampy places but it’s the first time I’ve ever done the loop trail in full, 🐛because not only is a lot of the trail overgrown and hard to follow, but also the beavers did so much damage to what was once the farthest north wild growth of Rhododendrons. 🪷 The beavers with their flooding and deer 🦌 took them all out and turned what was once a large Woody Marsh once famous for it’s Rhoddendrons into a fairly ordinary swamp.
Things are super dry and windy at Rensselearville State Forest. 🌲 Unless that wind dies down there is no way in hell I’m having a fire. 🔥 The grass is dry and it’s windy. really the drought is much worse here then Albany or where I was in Vermont. I don’t mind not having a fire, it wasn’t a bad thing to stay home last night, 🌃 despite being a beautiful evening. I got an early start today, and did my laundry and got enough groceries to start out next week.
Rolling the bike out to my truck this morning, 🚲 as I was packing for camp I discovered my tire was completely flat. When I got up to camp I discovered the wheel was well out of true. I tried re-inflating the tube, hoping the fix-a-flat would work. 🛠️ Then I patching the tube but it wouldn’t hold air so I got the extra I carry on me out. ⚱️ Probably the patch and rubber cement needs to dry. I also trued up the wheel with my spoke key so I’m good to ride in a bit. But first those clams, and maybe a quick toke on that recommended stuff from Northern Lights. 😁
Lunch Break
At lunch time today, I rode my bike up to the Waterviliet 4th Avenue Park and sat by the river and read for a while. Such a serene day out. Maybe I should have left for the Adirondacks tonight but I need to go out to my parents house to check on things and I honestly don’t feel like such a long trip – and I have some personal business to attend to in the morning. Maybe it’s my anxiety about my old truck with my parents out of town, but I don’t feel like heading north. Probably going to miss the good colors but they’re faded with dry conditions this year – and there is always next year. Next year I’ll plan on taking every advantage I can of remote work on Mondays and Fridays, and it will help if I have a better laptop and a new truck by then. My laptop is fine but like my truck, it’s really on it’s last legs with the screen connection causing it blank out at times, the battery replaced many times, and Windows stuck on the slow har drive.
I have that pot that I got from Northern Lights last week but never broke into it as I had some left over from summer vacation. I really don’t do much more then an occasional puff up at camp so it lasts a long time. Certainly I’m not a daily user. Supposed to be strong stuff so I’ll be real careful to enjoy it in moderation. Hopefully it won’t cause so much wicked dry eye. I’ll be glad when I’m done with contacts. Technically Tuesday is the last day, but I might stop wearing them on Monday to be sure my eyes are fully recovered per-surgery. I do hope they have clams at Price Chopper tonight – or maybe I’ll stop in the morning and also visit Stanton Farm Stand for a few extras on the way to camp. Gas I’m good on. Figure set up camp early, get clams a boiling, and then ride and hike for a while in the afternoon, spend some time reading and relaxing, maybe visit a preserve or two on the way out camp, or maybe wait until Sunday.
