Two weeks have come and gone since I retired Big Red. And I still hear form people, but if you don’t own a car, how will you do X, Y, Z? Don’t you know buses are exclusively for the colored and the poor, those old buses –they’re so dirty and so slow. I keep hearing from people that in one point in my their lives back in the day, they did not own a car, and life was so tough and miserablewithout a car, riding the bus with the coloredand poor.
So yeah, maybe I should have kept it more of a secret that I retired Big Red. 🛻 Obviously I would have liked not to have the gap over the winter, but regardless I planned to retire Big Red in April before the Michigan and Wisconsin trip. But honestly I don’t care, the three only real issues in the interim months are trash/recycling – store and use roadside bins, wash – laundromat early in the morning or when my parents take me out there, and visiting the parents for Sunday dinner – they can pick me up for a visit or skip that for now. Honestly, that was the only things that have changed without a truck during these winter months. ☃️ Maybe I would have done a winter camp out at Rensselearville State Forest and had a fire, 🔥 but my feet get cold so easy these days, and especially when it comes to going out to Charles Baker it looks like their would be too much snow to get out there. Plus see I’m more or less following the law, 👮 by not burning shit I’m not supposed to and even washing out and recycling plastic. ♻️ So I’m almost a greeny. 💚
Last night that meeting over yet another development in the Albany Pine Bush 🌲 🦋 just dragged on and on, and by the time I got home it was 10 PM and after eating dinner and settling down to bed, it was almost 11. I was up around 5:45 AM this morning, which I much later then usual as I couldn’t sleep anymore but honestly I’m tired and will probably just sink behind my desk in the office though I already have work piling up my desk 🖥️ based on the emails I’ve gotten over the night. It’s fine it will get done. 🚴 The rain has mostly pulled out, it was warm enough last night that I think at this point the rail trail should be mostly ICE free ❄️ so it should be good for riding in I hope. I’ll grab it off of Elsmere Avenue so less riding if it turns out to still have some ice remaining, but I’m hoping it will be good for the foreseeable future. 🦵 I love riding in, it leaves me feeling so pumped when I get into the office. Same thing too riding back after dark to get the local bus home, it’s much nicer then walking laps in the Plaza. It was crazy 🤪 last night at the Empire Plaza with everything going on when I was getting my steps 👣 before meeting Lynne and heading over Builder land for the meeting.
I realize part of my situation is the virtue signaling I’m doing saying how wonderful it is I don’t have a vehicle 🚙 👉 🚍 🚲, while looking at listings for big-assed Ford SuperDuty pickups. Not that I’ve done that much of the later, though I sure have spent a lot of time studying how to buy a car and get a fair and reasonable price as dealership. Honestly, I just find striking up an auto deal to be so much fun, but that’s because I’m a two-decades plus, hell closer to 25 years at this point, quarter century veteran of Albany Politics when I consider my internship at StateWatch. I just enjoy the personalities and power dynamics, and how people sometimes spin things. There are probably a few crooked dealerships out there, but many of them may mislead or spin things to make the sale. 🤝 People despise such things, but honestly it’s part of the game of getting shit done. 🤡 The stories I can tell and the many books I’ve read about politics and power. I mean, really I’m not so set on Fords or even SuperDuty pickups, and I do see the disadvantages of various models like the Ford 10-speed auto, while also seeing the benefits of simpler XL trim and having a big-burly assed truck, even if it is a gasser both for cost and reliability reasons. 🛻 I was browsing the listing of Ford dealerships on Ford website, and there are 49 within 50 miles of my house, probably if I go out 100 miles and pick up Utica and Syracuse, down to Newburgh, it’s closer to 100+ Ford dealerships. So yeah, if a dealership doesn’t want to work with me, refuses to give me an out-the-door price with all taxes and fees attached, or is otherwise really pushy, I can just hang up on them.
Going to be a little wet riding in but probably not too bad. ☔ I guess I should bring extra socks in case my feet get wet, as old Erie Boulevard reverts back to the canal on rainy days. Bike trail will be wet but hopefully not too icy. 🥞 Onion and cornmeal pancakes this morning with some turmeric, salt, oatmeal and whole-wheat flour for fiber and bite. I need to get carrots 🥕 again, this weekend I’ll do that when I go shopping. With Martin Luther King Day 👑 it’s going to be a three-day weekend, and not terrible weather so I have multiple days I can ride my bike to the store, maybe even go to Walmart but I don’t have any specific needs there, and I’ ve gotten to like Hannaford App where I can make a shopping list, and the app orders everything by aisle and tells me the price and any coupons I’m eligible for before shopping. 🛒 Kind of nice to bike there, even if I don’t like driving on Delaware Avenue with all the cops and red lights 🚨 when I had my truck. Been going through those black beans I cooked up yesterday for lunch and dinner. Used to be black beans were tougher on my stomach 😲 then pinto beans but I’m so used to digesting them at this point, they don’t really give me any gas or bad smells. 🫘 I always get accused of being some kind of a vegetarian when I point out to people that while steak 🥩 and whole milk 🐄 are tasty, and I’m all for supporting dairymen and cattlemen who work the land, 🧑🏻🌾 neither one are exactly health foods. I’ll have to see if Dad will pick me up for a visit this weekend, otherwise on Tuesday morning before work I’ll take bus down to the laundromat 🧺 bright and early. I don’t mind. Other then that, maybe ride out to Voorheeesville or Five Rivers for walk around. Going to be mostly cold enough and snow free for good hiking. 📚 And maybe do a bunch of reading.
When I own land, I want as simple and small of home possible, as I want to spend my money on the land and not the building. Acreage is more important then square footage, and indeed a small home would be easier to clean and more difficult to accumulate things. If you don’t have room, you can’t buy it. While certainly a hot shower, refrigerator, gas stove and oven, and wood fireplace are essential, I am willing to give up most other things within reason. Obviously I would want room to have a table where I can walk on my laptop, some place to get up and stretch on a rainy or cold snowy day, and a relatively comfortable bed.
A smaller building is easier to heat and maintain order in. Less distance for things to break, and I really don’t want to have utility electric or internet service at my building. I’d rather be a long-ways back from the road, so I have my privacy and not be causing a nuisance with neighbors with my music or fires. I want things as simple as possible, both for low cost and sustainability. I want to make as few trips as possible to the landfill, use as little coal, oil or propane in support of my home. Have some solar power, but not a large set up — just enough to keep a few LED lights on, have fans for cooling or moving heat around, charge my phone, laptop and other USB appliances.
I do think many of the tiny homes you see online are pretty gaudy with stainless steel refrigerators, fancy woodwork and paint jobs. Or they are so tiny, something easily moved on wheels. That’s a bit too small for me, but a nice hunting-cabin style property would be nice, especially way back off a road, only accessible by four wheel drive, quad or snowmobile. I don’t need a lot of space, but I do need something that is decently well insulated and dry to make it through the inevitable rainy and snowy periods. Better insulation is more wood saved, less wood to split and feed into the stove and fewer carbon emissions, after all.
Natural wood is good as is natural materials. I don’t want to pollute my own land and I don’t want to haul much waste to landfill. While natural products can be less efficient and suspect to rot and degradation, they are obviously much preferable to the synthetic plastics that are common on modern houses. I remember years ago when I was a children, when my neighbor got a new double wide delivered — and they burned the scrap vinyl siding. Nasty! There is definitely a balance to be struck, and it all depends on what the property I like ultimately has on it.
But it’s not tomorrow. I have a few years to continue to think about it all. I have time to continue to read and learn, and research into solar and batteries by scientists across the world is only going to produce better, more reliable products that will be cheaper. They’re is a lot of benefit to all this research going on in reducing carbon footprints, as it also means better products will be coming on the market for off-grid homes. Time is on my side.
Whatever as they say, rain is expected to start around 11 AM and continue through the afternoon before turning to ICE and SNOW come tomorrow morning, but probably not too much slop tomorrow but it’s unclear if I can ride in tomorrow.
Yesterday was a Tuesday, pretty much uneventful day. 🚲 Rode in yesterday via Corning’s Hill as I wasn’t sure if the Rail Trail was ice free and I didn’t want to bang up my bike riding over pock-marked ICE and honestly I’m okay doing Corning Hill, not that I love crossing that slip ramp at NY 32 / US 9W interchange or the merge where I have to get over on my bike in traffic, 🚦 especially when the traffic light isn’t cooperating. South Pearl though is much better since they repaved it last year. Less then a month before I can ride home in evening due to sufficient daylight, as long the bike trail is free of ICE.
Blueberry pancakes 🥞 this morning, I was looking at how good I look in the mirror health-wise. Getting old, but then again I was looking at pictures of Pamela Anderson after seeing her interview in Newsweek or one of the magazines I was reading on Libby. 📖 Man, she is so old at 58 years with wrinkles, it was a long time ago when I would watch her on Baywatch at my Grandparent’s big chest colored TV as a kid. Mostly thumbed through magazines last night on Libby, did a little reading and more listening to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929. I am actually surprised, Sorkin while on the liberal news speaking tour, has a decidedly conservative views when it comes to covering the Great Depression, he is a lot my sympathetic to Hoover and critical of Roosevelt and especially Alfred Smith then you might think.
Truth is I don’t hate riding the bus, 🚌 it gives me more time to read, though I find I don’t care to listen to audio books on the bus, as it can be difficult to concentrate on them unlike on the bike, as I find myself flipping through the news or doing other things when on the bus if I’m not reading an actual E-book. 📚 But I also like how pumped I feel when I ride my bike to work. Just waiting for the black beans to get finished up on the stove in a few minutes, 🚿 then I’ll shower, and head off to work. 🌲 Another public meeting on development in the Albany Pine Bush, assuming Lynne is willing to drive in the rain I’ll probably be there this evening, otherwise I’ll walk laps in the Plaza and then catch that local home. If I have to catch the local, I actually prefer the 5:40 PM bus because it’s crowded not that I could get the 5:10 PM local bus with the shuttle 🚀 transfer or the bike ride downtown after work. Then I figure I have my steps in, have dinner and head under the heated blanket.
Honestly, I don’t mind the warmer weather of late, ♨️ it just makes everything at home feel much less cold. I’ve been keeping the heat at 47 or 48 degrees as in this weather that’s mostly above freezing or just barely below, I don’t worry about he pipes. I get that gas heat isn’t that pricey, but it’s still money that I could be putting into my SuperDuty or some day that off-grid cabin or manure spreader. 💩 You know I had to stick that line in the blog post. Going to bring in an empty milk jug 🍶 to toss in the recycle bin 🚮 on the way in, it’s funny how without a truck or trash pickup, you think about every piece of trash, and how you’re going to get rid of it. 🗑️ Taking kind of a break from the deep dive into building my next rig, 🛻 but even yesterday I did take a brief look into heater ports for a camper shells, the Car View website for invoice pricing and other info about some of the various trucks I’m considering and dealer listings. But it’s still 10 weeks out until I buy, so I don’t want to spend all my time studying trucks.
One danger understated with the aggressive ICE raids and the detriotating relationship between the states and federal government is the risk of accidental or intentional gun fire between different agencies. Both have a responsibility to protect the public, but as political and policy motives depart, increasingly different law enforcement agencies may find themselves on opposite sides of a gun.
The risk of a ICE agent or state policeman getting killed by the other agency is only growing. If there is a lot of public outrage after such a situation, then it’s likely their would be an arrest and trial, potentially with the states and feds ending up on the opposite sides in court. While people assume federal superiority, it’s not clear that’s how it would work out – and there is always the risk of Civil War between a state and feds.
Maybe the risk of Civil War is overstated. Trump has less then three years left in his presidency at this point, and it’s almost certain whoever replaces him will be less aggressive towards the states. Cooler heads can prevail. It’s not that I’m embracing the abuses of ICE, but I do worry that a Civil War could impact are far greater slice of the population then the more limited operations of ICE harassing and abusing both immigrants and citizens. The current policy is not good but outright war and shooting between the feds and states would be far more harmful to public at large.
A few months back there where those Real Estate ads I was looking at that said, “Picture Yourself Living Here” next to screenshot of various houses that real estate agents had for sale. At the same time, I got thinking about what 14 years from now will be – namely the spring of 2040. Indeed, I know most likely the pickup truck I buy now will be what I drive up to state retirement with 30 years in.
After driving my Mom and Dad’s little Honda SUV with all the electronic toys, and climbing back into my big jacked up truck, I realized it would be mentally hard to go back to the mini-pickup truck full of screens like those Toyota Tacomas and other mid-size trucks are. At the same time, I don’t want another half ton truck as I think they’re the worse of both worlds – all the EPA fuel economy and safety crap – but in a big an bulky, underbuilt package. If anything if I’m retiring Red, I want a bigger truck, something I can stuff 35 inch tires under without lifting. A big bed for stuffing a week or two worth of camping gear and traveling across the country. Simple, reliable components, traditional engines without Superchargers or boost to cheat the EPA standards and cause premature failure. A real truck, which you only get once you get above 6,000 lbs with the HD trucks.
You’d think I am set on getting a Ford SuperDuty. I don’t want to get a Dodge Ram HD or Chevy Silverado HD as I’m dubious on the reliability of both those makes which I feel like have too much high tech sensors, especially after my recent experience, and I have good memories, the bad brakes problems somewhat faded now of my old Ford Ranger. But I really am not. While at one level I’m not super concerned about fuel economy, as this will primarily be a recreational vehicle as I live in city, I do know at some point I’ll have to buy a house and commute though if the truck is paid for with cash I can always finance or buy a second vehicle for communte. And if gas prices really surge, it could put a damper on my trips. I also hate how challenging driving a big pickup truck in those occasional times I have to find a parking spot in city lots, though I suspect the backup camera well help with that, though big trucks still turn poorly and take a lot of room to turn. And those occasional times navigating narrow city streets and back country roads. Probably won’t off-road in my big truck, but anything nice I’m not going to bang it up on trail. Trails are best for mountain bikes and ATVs. If I want to motor-ride in the backcountry, I should buy a quad not a pickup.
And there is also the cost. HD trucks, even basic gassers, are much more expensive then high-trim mid-size and full-size truck. You’re getting a lot more steel and engine with a SuperDuty then a Ford Ranger or F-150. While $10,000 or $15,000 isn’t that much of a difference spread over 10 to 15 years, that is still money that will be gone, unable to be saved or invested. With my salary after decades of hard work, it’s not that big of a difference, it does give me pause as a frugal individual. But of course, this does give me a lot of room to camp, and I won’t need a lift kit if I decide to run 35s and only a leveling kit for 37s. And just the general added cost of driving such a big-assed truck with fuel consumption, especially if gas prices go back up. But then again, I’m no longer impoverished, I work hard and make good money. And it will give me a lot of joy, spending nights camping out back of it, and driving roads and trails. The money thing really bites me, knowing how much cheaper those mid-size trucks really are. And how the Taco trucks are supposedly quite reliable, though not as good as they once were before the adopted blown engines and all the electronic safety gadgets as required by the EPA and NTHSA.
Maybe I am too down on new cars and the mid-sized trucks for their blown, I mean supercharged, tiny engines that use boost to get reasonable acceleration while minimizing fuel consumption at least in the eyes of the EPA. All those sensors in the passenger trucks offer confort and safety, reducing insurance rates and making it less likely you’ll crash. I mean collision detection does seem like a good idea when it works. Getting hit on the expressway sucks. But I just worry they will break and fail, though those HD trucks even in their base configuration are still loaded with sensors and technology. The era of 3-on-the-tree is well beyond us even in poverty-spec Town Park Department trucks. Maybe I’m just getting too much into the mind of outdated mechanic thinking, when the high-tech wonder trucks technology baked into every Tacoma, Ranger, and Colorado really does save fuel and lives, while not greatly reducing reliability. But I can’t help but question that. But maybe it’s just an excuse in my mind to buy a Ford SuperDuty, the big truck I’ve always wanted and prenteded to have with my lifted half-ton Silverado.
And when I do own that homestead, a 8’2″ bed would be great for hauling hog and cattle panel flat in the bed, an HD truck could haul loads of feed in the bed or tow a horse trailer full of feeder hogs or steers with ease. Most of SuperDuty trucks I am looking at have the plow/camper package, so I would have the electrical and brackets to buy a snowplow for cleaning the driveway of future land I might own. A used plowed put on the SuperDuty when both I and the truck get close to retirement could be a good second life for the truck, even beyond when it’s still road worthy due to frame rot. That said, I’ll be fluid filming my truck and making it smell sheep farm come next autumn for sure. But maybe I shouldn’t invest too much in a future that is uncertain, when right now I’m still just looking at a reliable camping rig to see America before those days when I’m stuck at home shoveling manure, feeding hogs and breaking ice on water troughs. Really, I know my time to travel is limited, and I should get the rig that best suits my need to travel while I’m still young.
