It looks like from the radar and forecast that maybe I won’t be going out to see Mom and Dad today but maybe they can do tomorrow on King’s Day if the weather is bad today. It’s winter, it snows. Otherwise, Tuesday at 6 AM, it’s out there with my laundry bag and powded laundry soap waiting for the bus to wash my clothes.
Oh you sad poor individual without a car, having to take a bus to laundromat at 6 AM. 🎽 Like the colored and poor – and those on the pogey. I so love that word. See what happens when you listen to Canadian Country music. You want to buy a SuperDuty and slap on an Alberta Proud bumper sticker. Have you ever thought about buying a 20-year old Honda and a plastic house with a washing machine that breaks every two weeks in the basement? 🏡 Don’t you know, we can slot you into one of those houses for a low, low down payment 💰 and rather then making your landlord rich, you can make a bank and town tax collector rich.
Once the sun comes up, I’ll probably go down to Hannaford and get whole wheat flour, frozen fruit and few other things. 🥞 Yesterday was kind of a bust riding over to Market32, everything is over priced and the SEFCU VTM money printing machine is gone.🏧 Got my carrots 🥕 and they were good in my red lentil-carrot soup I made last night, but the cornmeal pancakes 🥞 this morning weren’t the same without sufficient whole-wheat flour, but I am thinking I want to bake some bread besides the usual pancakes, 🍞 as I don’t buy that crap comes wrapped in plastic at the store. I think I liked plastic better when I could burn it, that said, I don’t really like eating all that toxic crap wrapped or the smell of burnt plastic.
Besides grocery shopping with my bike, 🛒 it will probably be mostly a home day assuming I don’t go out to see the folks. 📚 Do more reading, I don’t know maybe go for another ride out to Five Rivers or somewhere else – I could do a longer ride out to Hollyhock or even Blodgett Hill, depend on my mood today. ☺️ 🚲 Who knows it’s still winter out for a few more weeks and the way I look at it, the more learn the better off things will be. Try not to get too chilled through today. There is always the space heater or the heated blanket, or gasp – I could actually turn the heat above 50 degrees. It’s not like I’m using gas in truck that doesn’t have plates anymore. I don’t have my laptop home, so I won’t be going to the library today to surf the interwebs. 🖥️
Rode out to Price Chopper in Slingerlands to get $1 bills just so I had them handy when I went to laundromat in the future, but the SEFCU ATM is no longer in the store. Disappointing as the VTM there was only place in Slingerlands and Delmar that had singles and $5 bills. I was looking at one of the 3/4 ton pickups in the lot – a Chevy – and was thinking soon enough I’ll have a big Ford like that.
Maybe smoked some weed before heading out, and I forgot to get whole-wheat flour when I was there but did get carrots and more apple cider vinegar. I can’t believe how fast the ACV disappears around this place, but then again I find myself splitting a bottle between work and home nearly every week these days. Red lentil soup with shredded carrots, onions, peas and a bit of garlic powder and salt. Delicious and very filling. To be decided – how gassy it leaves me later on.
Rode out to Five Rivers on what turned out to be a beautiful evening. Mostly because I like looking at the cows and rural landscape. Someday I’ll have cows if that’s what I want. Walked around for a bit, snapped some pictures. While cooking down the red lentil soup, I watched more videos on car buying, roll playing and stragety. I also thumbed through the weekly news magazines on Libby, mostly so I could be informed when Mom starts questioning me on the news. I should read more of the books that I have on Hoopla before there due on Wednesday. Tomorrow I’m going out to visit Mom and Dad, and do my wash there. It will be good to get out.
I found myself getting upset about the lack of Ford SuperDuty XL trucks an extended cab at DePaula and Metro Ford so I could test drive one next month. Actually DePaula has one, a red one without skid plates and a rear-locker, but that’s not what I ultimately want. Every other dealer not on bus line has them, but I wanted to test drive one before striking up dealer. I guess a regular cab or crew cab SuperDuty isn’t going to drive much different then an extend cab. Lockers and skid plates don’t matter for test drives on the highway.
I was so angry and probably depressed about this morning, 😡 🛻 even though I’m not planning to take time off until after Presidents’ Day in four weeks to test drive a few trucks at local dealerships that I can either bike or get a bus to. DePaula and Metro are easiest to get to, as they are on Red Bus Plus line, but I can ride to other dealerships, or honestly rent a car or ask people for a ride. But new cars aren’t like houses, they don’t have to be close to work or home, so once you’ve seen one, it’s just a price and package you’re looking at, and you can get one anywhere you’re willing to get to take delivery. Most of the outlying dealerships have those extended cab trucks I’m leaning too, with the skid plates and lockers. Heck of it is, the more you research, I might change my mind again on the truck I actually want to build my next rig around. Remember, originally I wanted an regular-cab long bed.
If I’m going to spend big bucks on a truck, then I damn better get the one I actually want. Otherwise, I should just get a 20-year old Honda Civic. 🚘 They’re so frugal for delivering pizzas 🍕 out the back. Truth is while I sort of think I should test drive a SuperDuty before I buy one, not that I think they’re going to be much different then a lifted Silverado, I do think I will ultimately buy through a dealership over the phone/internet where I have home front advantage and can study the paperwork before signing to make sure I’m actually getting a fair deal.🤝 Plus I don’t want to hear from dealerships about how what I really want is a F-150 half ton with a Supercharger and digital displays everywhere, because you know, I don’t actually know what pickup truck I want. Buy online, and you can click delete. Goodbye. At least I slept soundly last night, no ads listening to podcasts at two AM for “Can’t sleep at night, what you need is BETTER HELP and SO-FAT MATTERESSES!”
I mean the cops are shooting and brutalizing the colored and poor, 👮 and I’m here worried about cab configurations and skid plates on SuperDuty trucks. As that will save democracy! Unh-uh, it’s amazing the first world problems one has. But don’t you worry about having money to buy a plastic house, they’re very good investments those plastic houses we’re told, and you can buy one in a nice neighborhood that doesn’t necessarily smell like cow shit, 🐮 and be close to work and drive your 20-year old Honda Civic there. 🚙 But I can’t even have a burn barrel or goats out back. 🐐 Honestly, usually the local cops are quite polite, the officer the other day stopped and let me cross the road on my bike, at rush hour. And while I bitch about them not doing snow or ICE removal from the bike trail, though the second half of the week haven’t bad and we’ll see how hard crusty and icy the snow we get today makes the rail trail come Tuesday.
At the same time, I keep reading about how poor most Americans are, 🇺🇸 how most people would struggle to pay a $400 unexpected bill and things like mortgages, car payments, and monthly subscriptions are a part of life. People talk about car payments sucking, but honestly when I get my rig, there will be at most two car payments – the down payment and paying off the loan the next day with a lump sum if dealerships force me to play that game to get a good price. I just make sure I know all the finance costs and run number carefully. 🏡 I’d buy a house if I could find anything that wasn’t plastic crap with an actual reasonable amount of land, anywhere near the city, but no such places exist, and certainly none without the burn ban or the gun ristrctions. I guess it’s really a first world problem to have, and not having my money tied up in a house and all the home maintance and commuting costs, allows me to save more towards that off-grid cabin. 🐐 🛢️ 🏠 🌲 I am still bitching about the $120 utility bill last month, but actually my energy usage was less compared to 1 year ago, the December bill is often highest I think because I’m often home then, doing more cooking. And I do like my electric blanket even if I do keep the heat at 48 degrees. The kilowatts and therms were about the same as last year, but the price of gas and electricity has gone up. And it’s going to be higher too if I’m home and not camping this winter, but I won’t have gasoline or insurance to pay either.
Maybe I’m bummed out a little about not being able to head out of town for the long weekend, 🏕️ but even if I had gotten some random 20-year old Honda Civic, it wouldn’t have a camper shell and truth is this weekend is expected to be pretty cold and gray. Next winter ❄️ if I have the new rig, I’ll have a diesel heater and winter camping will be great. Have a fire at night, and then climb into the comfortable warm truck cap, not having cold toes. 🦶Honestly, that night camping on Christmas Day was so bitterly cold up at Rensselearville State Forest, hardly could recommend that at all. 🎅 I like having fires and burning shit rather then washing out the bottles for recycling, ♻️ but I’m kind of turned off from winter camping at this point.
Today though, I do want to ride over to Price Chopper 🛒 and get some $1 bills from the money printing machine they have there, along with some more flour, maybe carrots and other supplies. I miss having carrots 🥕 in my pancakes. 🥞. I also want to have some cash so Tuesday, if I need to do my laundry before work at the laundromat. Not sure if I’ll be visiting my parents this weekend, it depends what Mom and Dad want to do as I don’t have a car. Probably do most of my shopping though on Sunday or Monday at Hannaford, as I really like their app, though I could also ride over to Walmart if there was anything I needed. Thinking about making a pot of chicken soup with some canned chicken, frozen vegetables and rice 🐔 I have anround the pantry but I also want carrots for that. I’m going to need more apple cider vinegar, it’s hard to believe how fast that gets drunk these days. 🍏 I just so love the flavor in water, and keeps me drinking water like a cow. 🐮 They say it’s healthy, but delicious.
Felt so good today after that evening ride, with just enough light to make it home before dark, I decided to go for an evening walk and then came home, had some more black beans, corn, onions, cornmeal, and dash of salt and stevia fried up in olive oil. Then had a couple of glasses of water flavored with apple cider vinegar.
Truth is I was excited to be able to ride home at around 5 pm and still have daylight. Soon enough I’ll be able to ride every day the bike path is free of snow and ice both ways to work, completely avoiding the local bus. It was nice going out for the evening walk, which I haven’t done much in recent years, because with riding to work, I usually figure once I’m home, I’m done for the day.
I also wanted to stop and look at the stars at the dark part of the path near Preska’s Dairy and Delmar Bypass, think and pause to think if I had Big Red I probably would have gone out to Rensselearville State Forest or Burnt-Rossman and camped for a few nights. That said, I’m not in that much of a rush to winter camp.
It was nice being back downtown with my colleagues, the meetings were good and the diversity training hasn’t changed that much over the past 20 years now. Just be respectful and decent human beings. Honest. I guess it’s good to keep up with the law changes under Trump not that it changes much in state government. I’m actually hoping next Friday they also have a meeting, and I can leave work early enough to at least ride both ways that day. Certainly by early February with the headlights I’ll be able to ride both ways to work and avoid the bus both ways, assuming the rail trail is free of snow and excessive ice.
Alma Pond is a 36-acre reservior east of Bolivar just north of the Pennsylvania border on the Honeoye Creek. Public access is provided from the north shore on Four Mile Road. There is a hand launch for small boats such as canoes and kayaks. Largemouth bass, black crappie, bluegill, pumpkin seed, yellow perch, carp, brown bulhead and nothern pike can be found in this lake. The eastern half of lake is UTM 17, the western side UTM 18 so be careful with a GPS.
