September 11th – Twenty Five Years Later

It’s hard to believe at this point 25 years ago, it was the second week of my freshman year in college. A Tuesday, Primary Day 2001, I learned about the September 11th attacks as I was getting ready to leave for college, a bit late because I had to drop off Dad as he was dealing with my Grandfather who was increasingly struggling with his Altimizers disease. I remember getting to Statistics 1 class, that room in that 1950s building that was painted orange, a CRT television on wall where I saw the attacks.

Time marches by so quickly but also so slowly. ⏳Classes were cancelled for the day after the attacks, I ended up going up to Partridge Run, poking around High Point Road, marveling at the silent skies free of airplanes and jet trails after the attack. 🛩 The blue 1994 Plymouth Sundance, the first car I had before I got the Ford Ranger in 2004, Big Red in 2011, and now the Super Duty in 2026. I was disappointed the person who said they were interested in Big Red did not show up. 🚚 Red started up just fine, I drove him around a bit on the lawn and a short distance down the road, turned off right away, no smoke and ran smoothly. 😀

It’s been a few weeks since I last went out to visit my parents, as I was out during Labor Day Weekend. Good to see Mom and Dad, as while I look back at September 11th and think it was 25 years ago, Mom keeps reminding me she hopes to live long enough to see a world after the Trump Presidency. 👪The thing is I know that’s not very long, the mid-terms are less then two months away now, and Trump will be fading fast as he becomes the lamest of ducks, and will be gone by January 2029. ⏳ Just something for the history books. It’s a reminder that I might only have 40 or 50 – maybe less chances to talk to Mom and Dad – and gain their wisdom before they’re gone. Certainly neither has 25 years left in their lives. I watch them grow older every time I visit. 👵

The plan is to follow up with the other people who have been contacting me about the truck this morning, and work from the library for the first half of the day. 📨 I will ride down there around 9 AM, work until noon time, come home, then ride out Five Rivers and work there from a picnic table. It is a nice day, clear, moderately cool, much like that September 11th a quarter century ago. 👨‍💻Campaign committee work will keep me busy all day, it’s best not to try to do both jobs from my state office in Menands but focus on the prior. Just a lot of data jobs to run and data to process.

I really want to get rid of that old truck, and supposedly one other person really wants it but I am unable to work with his number at this point. 🤑I need the money but could do without it for now. Eventually the truck will sell, and I should be doing more to follow up with people but I’m busy and it’s not always easy to do it without internet access at home. And work is just non-stop, I already have several emails I need addressing. 🤖 Part of the reason I’m staying home this weekend is both to focus on work and re-think my truck selling strategy, and be available if people want to start up the truck. And it looks like rain come Saturday night into Sunday. Maybe that’s the real reason. And I want to save fuel. Maybe clean and not rush around. Plus I have a campaign plan to edit over the weekend.

I really didn’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about NYC or urban life, having grown up in Westerlo, attending Greenville School District. New York City had at their time just closed their landfill, shipping their garbage upstate and other places and ending many of their less profitable recycling programs for newspaper and glass. ♻️All while us Upstaters had burn barrels, recycled our cans and glass. If anything, I kind of felt NYC got what they deserved. 🛢 Years later, I am not sure if that’s totally fair to view all NYC residents are money-grubbing billionaires and porn stars in a lockdown, there really is some great diversity in cities. 🌇But I really resented the lockdown and security bolstering after September 11th, if anything I thought it was a money and power grab to make the cops and contractors rich at the cost of our freedom. 👮‍♀️ If anything I lamented about September 11th, if was the loss of freedom due to government restrictions, rather then lives lost. I’ve always valued freedom of life. 🆓 Live free or die, I used to listen to the Easy Rider Soundtrack a lot in my college days. I’ve got nothing ma to live up to. For them that must obey authority, that they do not respect in any degree, who despise their jobs, their destinies, speak jealously of them that are free, do what they do to be, nothing more than something, they invest in. Those were the days back in college, not that I’d ever want to go back to those days even if it was before the burn ban. 🧒

Speaking of freedom, next week though Thursday evening I might drive out to Vermont, set up camp and do an overnight and work remote from Bennington Library and/or camp on Friday and maybe Monday too. 🏕 Probably just Prospect Mountain Road, as I have cell service there and it’s relatively close to Bennington for access to the library. I want to sell Big Red but I also don’t want to be stuck in town all autumn trying to hawk my truck, plus I just have so much work to do. 🏘 It’s so little money though now that I’m down to asking $3,500 at this point, I almost feel like if I go below it, I might as well just donate or scrap it, and eat the loss rather then destroy my autumn sticking in town and stressing out over the rotted out old truck. 🍂 Truth is I just want it gone at this point.

I’ve been porting my mail processing script to work both on my Windows work laptop and my personal laptop. 💻 As much as I like my old laptop and it has all my tunes on it along with other scripts, I really should be using my work laptop for work stuff, and the work laptop is much compact, and my 10-year old laptop sometimes has screen connector issues, so I’m loathe to bump it around on my bicycle. 🚲 The work laptop also has access to VPN and an all day battery, which is good when I’m working remote. 🐺