It was a lazy Wednesday with a lot of reading 📖 and relaxing, floating in the tube on Foster Pond ⭕, I went for a ride along No Tan-Tanko Trail slinging cow manure and watched the sunset, listening to the bullfrogs and crickets and cows 🐮 along Ballard Pond until fairly late into the night. Today it's off to Penn Yan via the Keuka Outlet trail!
Sunday, August 4th I will be driving back to Albany as summer vacation comes to a close. Labor Day is early this year, it is September 2nd. I plan to work remotely on August 30th from Speculator and will likely end my summer the traditional way on Harmon Hill off Old Military Turnpike.
That leaves three remaining weeks in August. I assume one will be wet and rainy, good weather to stay in town. The remaining weekends will likely be allotted as follows:
Come September I plan to work most Fridays remote and will need to camp places with good cellular service. Rensselearville State Forest, Speculator and Green Mountains National Forest, specifically Somerset Airfield Road and Prospect Mountain Road are good locations for that.
Already warm in Dresden though cool down by Seneca Lake and I expect the Kueka Outlet Trail in the gorge to get nice and cool. Got clams and corn for later, the key will be to keep them cold in the heat. Might buy even more ice in the evening. As much as I want float on Seneca Lake, I’m realizing I’m pretty close to Geneva at this point and I should check it out. That said, it’s hot!
Maybe I can put the tube out at Seneca Lake State Park and float there without Robert Moses’s men yelling at me, I think they closed the beach a few years back due to water pollution in favor of splash pads on the beach. That said, I find the Northern Finger Lakes area to be flat and boring!
A quiet day ahead as I plan to stay around camp, as the morning started out wet and it will be showering on and off all day. I want to spend the day riding my mountain bike, laying back in the hammock with an e-book or two, then later on floating in my tube on Foster Pond. Couldn't get clams yesterday but that's fine.
By nine o’clock I want to be heading to Dresden to ride to Penn Yan via the Keuka Outlet so I can get candy store and touch both Seneca and Kueka Lakes with the front wheel of my bike.
That’s the major plan of the day. 🚲 It’s not the longest ride, each way might take an hour or so on the bike based on my experience last year. Plan to leave camp around 9 am, swing by Tops mostly to see the have clams 🦪 and I’ll stop and get sweet corn 🌽 and other produce on the way up to Dresden. After the ride, I’ll probably head back to the Glen and float for a while on Seneca Lake, ride some of Rock Cabin Road and explore Catharine Creek Marsh 🐸 and maybe get ice cream at Glen Dairy Bar. 🍦 I guess Spotted Duck 🦆 is better, it’s locally produced homemade ice cream but I think I like more of the traditional soft ice cream. Didn’t have a fire 🔥 last night, want to have one tonight both to cook up clams and roast sweet corn if possible but also take care of the overflowing garbage bucket with all the corn cobs and crap. Things I would mostly otherwise compost if I wasn’t in the wilderness. 🗑Plastic on the other hand, makes a good fuel for the fire. ♻ Don’t tell a liberal about life in BFE especially in Penna. 😂 On Tuesday night, a racoon got into the garbage and spread it all over, 🦝 probably due to the sardines cans.
Yesterday was a lazy day of reading 📖 and relaxing, thinking 💭 a lot about the world around me as I enjoyed some White Wedding 💒 far more than the Critical Mass pot. Rain showers mostly ended by mid morning. ☔ Though we had some rain mid afternoon while I was Potomac Ponds and ended up heading back to camp and napping. 💤Network tech from work called with more questions about the robo call system 📞and I shouldn’t have taken that call after spending that time with Puff the Magic Dragon 🐲. I realized it was a mistake once I hit connect as I couldn’t remember anything about work, but after I explained I was on vacation 🏖 he said he would follow up next week when I was back in the suburban office. 🏢
Floating on tube was a lot of fun on Foster Pond ⭕ watching the clouds in the sky. 🌤️ Fish 🐠 kept nibbling on me and yanking on my swim trunks, or was it the snapping turtle 🐢 or the muskrat which burrow along the shore. 🚵 Around seven o’clock I rode the No-Nan-Tanko, muddy from the rain but still fun. 🌇 Cows weren’t as interested in me last night but maybe because I had only been in one pasture so I didn’t pick up the smell from the other pasture. 🐮 Bike does smell like cow manure this morning. 💩 Sat by Ballard Pond for a while watching the stars ✨ appear in the sky as it darkened, listening to the bullfrogs, 🐸 crickets 🦗 cattle mooing. 🐄
It’s August. ☺ I have a lot planned for today before vacation is done, so best to get on it as today won’t be as lazy as yesterday and thunderstorms are bound to arrive by afternoon when it gets really hot out. I got my ten books 📚 out of Hoopla but after ordering them I wish I had got another book out about Cannabis and rebuilding old houses but I ten other books out to read first on homesteading, growing pot, computer programming, Appalachia and wilderness adventures with Edward Abby. And people accuse me of being a straight with my Don’t Tread on Me Flag. 🚩 Happy August!
One of the most pompous things that American governments like to do is describe its actions as the actions of “the people”. This has bothered me for a long time.
While America does host elections and public participation is an important part of American government, it’s a serious misnomer to claim the actions of the government are the actions of the people, especially the body politics of a whole. Those who choose and are allowed to vote in our country set the guard rails for how both legislators and government employees act but citizens as a whole have very little say in the day to day operations of government. They can protest against the actions of their government and put elected officials on notice that they may be voted out of office but ultimately have very little say in the day operations of government.
Even American Democracy isn’t necessarily cracked up to what it claims to be at times. American elections are almost a choice between a Democrat and a Republican. There are primaries but they are only open to party members. And even if you have a candidate you like who becomes elected to office he or she is just a compromise. Your unlikely to agree with all of their views. And elections are full of rules and regulations that bend the will of the voters, so things are much less democratic then one might think.
I am not saying we should get rid of democracy, but I do think the actions of the state are not the actions of its people but are the result of actions of the many bureaucrats and the regulations they promulgate both formally and through practice.
You know, I am not minding this sometimes rainy showery morning, taken slow, smoking a bit, reading a lot. Doing some short bike rides around the forest, observing nature and the landscape. I still have time to do some floating on Foster Pond too if I want.