Good Evening on this Sunday Evening. I hope you weekend went smoothly and you had a relaxed weekend. The stars are beautiful tonight. It is currently 44 degrees and clear this evening. Feels a bit warmer than that without the breeze. Inside it’s not bad at 70 degrees – I don’t expect to turn on the heat before the nights drop below 25 degrees. Certainly today turned out to be the better weather-wise then was estimated earlier in the weekend. Tonight will have a low around 40 degrees with higher elevations getting the first hard frost of the year. The warm days of a few weeks ago seem to be far behind us.

I do like the smell of wood-smoke that your starting to smell in small towns around now that the temperature has dropped. Wood-smoke seems to scream fall, and represents cooler weather, with kind of a throwback to an earlier era in quaint New England and Upstate NY. I grew up in the country, and I know that wood-smoke isn’t just quaint and nice smelling, but a necessity to stay warm and the product of a lot of hard work cutting trees and splitting wood. But in the sense that Thanksgiving and fall colors are nice, wood-smoke is kind of nice. The heck with it being a pollutant in some urban areas and valleys.

That said, we aren’t looking at a really frigid week this week. Lots of sun for most of the week, with seasonable conditions. Mid-60s all week and a chance to possibly hit 70 later in the week. Not too bad for the first week of October in Albany. The cooler conditions might mean we actually see some good colors in the higher elevations by next week. It’s weird this year, it seems like some of the lower elevations and some just random colder or more shaded places are getting color a lot earlier then other places. I still can’t get over how little color there was at Moose River Plains two weeks ago – this is until I got home and pulled up the red channel in the GIMP imaging program.

Today I decided to go up to Mount Greylock in Massachussets. Gas is cheap. I thought about going to either Partridge Run or Beebe Hill State Forests for a walk with my shotgun, and see if I could drop some squirrels. But I decided against it, as I didn’t want to bug the bow hunters out there, and decided to go to Mount Greylock instead. I have to admit though, I didn’t hike all the way up the mountain, preferring to park at the last free lot as you head up the mountain and taking the 4/10th of a mile hike to the top. Still climbing over those rocks with my ankle was a bit painful from time to time. I’m fine walking on flat surfaces, but I still don’t have all my ankle strength back for climbing over rocks. Mount Greylock was nice, and seeing the hang gliders up there was pretty neat. That said, it was pretty crowded at the summit with a chilly breeze. The colors weren’t all the great, with greens prevailing along most of the mountains around Adams, Mass.

Later on I decided to hike to Stony Ledge. That hike was a mile and a half from the parking area, but it was it was a nice hike on a gravel roads. Colors were pretty tame with lots of green remaining at Stony Ledge, but it still was a nice a hike. Still, I hadn’t been at the Stony Ledge since December 2010, so it was nice to get back up there, and see the views in more seasonable conditions. Being that the entire hike here was a gravel road, my ankle didn’t give me any trouble whatsoever. A lot of people up there too, so it wasn’t really a quiet sitting on the ledge.

Today I didn’t get my tires rotated or truck inspected because the local lube joint said they couldn’t fit a truck as high as mine with the cap and lift kit in their garage. My truck is only about 7’8” and was about 7’ with the cap before the lift kit was put on, with the stock height at 6’4” but I guess the quick lube places have low clearance. I was a bit annoyed, because I really wanted to get the truck inspected and tires rotated today. I’m overdue with the tire rotation and I would like to maximize the life on the tires on my truck, because those 35-inch tires aren’t cheap. That said, I like my big jacked up truck, especially on long cruises in the country. Going to rotate the matching spare on it because that will give me a little more life in case one tire starts to wearing out early, and I won’t be putting a full-tread depth tire on while other ones are worn. For safety reasons, it’s actually good to use and replace the spare when the tires all wear out, as tire rubber ages just sitting around. I once put a brand new spare against a worn tire on an axle, and it proved to not ride very good, which is why I want to keep all the tires with about the same tread-ware.

I will call around tomorrow, I’m hoping one of the local garages can just rotate the tires and do the inspection on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. I definitely want to get it done before I go my trip next weekend. I have the spare tire off and in the bed of my truck, the hub caps off, and I tested all the lights on my truck, so I know it should pass and not take a long time once I find a shop that can handle my big truck. I know Watkins Spring in Albany can do it – as they did the alignment, but I’d rather go somewheres locally like Gochee’s in Delmar or maybe Town Line Auto in Greenville, as I’m driving out and staying at my parents house to do chores while they are on vacation.

Saturday I wired up two new lights under the truck cap, little blue spot lights that add a little more light under the cap near the shelf. I decided not to project them on the gun rack, but pointing up from the shelf to kick more light on the ceiling, which provides enough light to see around the truck cap and gives a little ambiance without consuming more then a half an amp or so. Combined with the light bar under the gun rack, set to a different color, they look pretty darn cool. I got a new switch block to replace the big bulky switch I had for the overhead LED lighting in the cab with a small, sleek power bus with built-in switches for controlling all the different lights from location. That said, the LED light bars have a separate switch to turn them on and select their color – they default to be switched off about 30 seconds after you disconnect them from power via the power bus switches.

I also got the spare tire off which proved to be a process because like usual I forgot how the spare tire hoist thing works. Once I got the manual off it wasn’t a big deal. I also took the hub caps off, because I figured it would be one less thing for the shop to have to do and mess up. I also feared something might get broken in their rush. The caps weren’t difficult to take off, but they did require four bolts each to remove, and some of those bolts required the assistance of the jack handle to get enough force to get them freed up. Those Rockstar wheels look weird without the hub caps, but I will put them back on once I get the tires rotated.

Continuing to get things packed and are working on a packing list for things I need to bring. I usually don’t make a packing list, but I didn’t want to forget things. So many things on the list – I’m over 50 items already. I mostly cleaned out the truck this weekend, at least the cab which was getting a mess with random reading materials, tools, fishing gear, and other stuff kind of just getting piled up in the cab. I also smelled something rotting back there, so I was kind of interested in getting things cleaned up so I could find it. Cleaned out a lot leaves and stuff from truck. Cleaned up the kitchen and bathroom a bit so when I return my apartment won’t be that icky.