That and they are promising a dire emergency winter snowstorm super homeland disaster emergency. Or whatever the colored television is calling it these days. Mom got another remote for her television, and I pushed more buttons and it changed the channel on her SmartyPaints television and got to the next channel about ICE burning immigrant babies in Minnesota and how to lard up your dinner menu with more fat, salt and sugar. Or whatever they’re trashing your mind and stomach with these days.
Even with the two plus feet of snow coming, ☃️ it’s actually a nice calm morning. Still cold and in the single digits, but without the breeze it feels much warmer. 🚲 I want to get some carrots 🥕, bananas 🍌 and oatmeal so I might ride out to Price Chopper this morning, mostly because I want the exercise. I doubt I’ll be doing much riding on Monday, and probably Tuesday will be difficult to ride to work. I was looking at my credit card bill, and noticing how much I’m saving not having a vehicle, as I tend to buy less groceries due to needing to haul on bike and not having an easy way to take trash to transfer station. 🗑️ It’s so much easier in the summer when you have a fire every few days or weeks. 🔥 I haven’t bought any Greek yogurt or fake sugar-free syrup since I retired Red, in part because of the problem of getting rid of containers, as we all know especially No 5 plastic doesn’t get recycled even if you toss it in the designated bin. ⛽ And while I don’t drive much in the winter, haven’t had any gas bills since I fueled Red up at the end of year. And got $275 back from my insurance, which brought my bank emergency savings account back up to balance. 💳
Yesterday, Dad picked me up and I went out to visit the folks. 👨👨👦 It was nice to visit for a while, they made up riggis and had a little party for my 43rd birthday. 🎂 It seems like only yesterday, I was doing some camping and skiing up at Rensselearville State Forest for my birthday. How fast time comes and goes. It feels good though at this point, being in much better shape, 🫃🏻 eating healthy food 🍏, riding my bike to work much of the year, 🚲 and watching as my savings and investment grow, as I inch closer – year by year – towards retirement and owning that off-grid homestead. Going past the house next door that I toured a few years ago, the people who moved in had a rip-roaring bonfire 🔥 going yesterday before the snow. It could have been mind, but it was a werid parcel with only 5 acres, no wood stove and limited wood lot, right on the main road with another residential in holding, so not only would I have been careful what I burnt, there would be the road noise, risk of livestock getting on the road, though it did have a nice barn for pigs and goats and outdoor sink for butchering. 🐐 🗡️ But it looks like the new owners are enjoying it, and I still have the cash that would have gone into it. And honestly, I like living in city, especially now without a vehicle. ☃️ No snow to shovel or cars to clean off for me.
This morning, I am heading out to Price Chopper in a bit. 🚴 Not because I have any essentials to pick up, but I want the ride for the exercise before the snow starts to pick up. It’s cold but I want the exercise as once snow comes, it’s going to be deep and likely stick around for a while based on the forecast. 🌨️ Going to be Corning Hill for the bike ride in, and probably delayed buses on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday until the snow emergency and they get Delaware Avenue cleaned to the point where the buses aren’t blocked by cars parked way out in the middle of the road. 📚 Then I need to get some books out of the Libby or Hoopla to read, and most studying up on car buying strageties and Ford SuperDuty trucks. I don’t want to call the truck I’m buying an F-250 or F-350, as for my purposes the difference doesn’t matter much as I’m not planning to buy such a heavy trailer that I need a one-ton truck axle but if that’s what’s available in the package and price I want over the 3/4-ton truck axle, there is no difference besides a stiffer ride, as all other equipment is generally the same.
One of the areas I’ve been watching a lot of is videos of real people negogating 📺 car buys with hidden recorders, and what makes an effective deal 🤝 literally saving thousands of dollars 💵 while getting the vehicle you want. And now I’ve started to study window stickers more, and under what the various trim and features packages really mean. With those HD trucks so you have so many different configurations as people use them for everything from hauling cattle to plowing and towing trailers to the oil fields. What do I really need and want? How much do I care about appearance? How do the various features work on the modern Fords? All questions I am trying to answer. 🙋 Like while I had heard the the hill descent feature is fantastic on extremely icy roads, I had no idea how it worked. The manual lockers and hubs are great, and while I had some idea how they worked on Ford I learned a lot more watching YouTube. What tires do I want? While they’re a consumable item and OEM tires are crap even if they are AT, it’s something to consider as they’ll likely be what I’m driving on for the first four or five years of the truck’s life.