Ah the smell of the North Albany Sewage Treatment Plant and riding past the garbage recycling plant off of Southern Pearl Street. But it’s still a nice autumn mroning for the ride in, with my hopes of being in the office by 8 AM so I can done some in-person work before my next trip ut to the wilderness, probably this weekend.

A beautiful morning, and I wish I was still out in the wilderness, 🌳 but I have meetings downtown today and Thursday. Lunch meeting today, but I was told it was pizza 🍕because Thursday’s lunch from Cardona’s was big bucks. I guess you can’t eat like a king always, and I’ll burn calories riding up the State Street Hill. It actually makes me quite sad to think that the days of summer squash including zucchuni are but done, though now I’ll have to start baking bread, making more soup and rice dishes. I am hoping on my bike ride home to stop at Hannaford , get more onions and frozen veggies. Trying to make sure I maximize my healthy eating as sometimes I get so much junk food at the campaign committee.

It’s good to be riding back downtown, after all that downtime on the bike for maintence, which I probably should have held off, but replacing the chain and cassette ultimately will be protective of the crankset, which is where the money is to replace. That said, I do want to give it some serious thought about measuring the chain slack and replacing the chain before I also need to replace the cassette too due to wear. But I concede when the chain is worn, you almost have to replace the cassette. Fortunately, it’s not that expensive to do both, but it seems kind of wasteful. I just wish the chains would last longer, it’s something I need to research further, but I concede I do put a lot of miles on that mountain bike commuting — roughly 500 miles a month. Still it’s cheaper and healthier then motoring or taking the bus. You forget how expensive gas, even if you don’t drive a massive jacked up truck like I do.

Of course with the nice weekend ahead, I am definitely thinking about heading up north to the Adirondacks for the Moose Festival and to enjoy the color which likely will be close to peak by this weekend. No gurantees, but with the past few days having been fairly cool, I expect decent colors up north. And the thing is you wait another week, if we get even some of the hurricane rains up north, the leaves could be mostly stripped of the trees by then and things looking quite bare and November like. And that doesn’t seem particularly nice. I definately want to get a hose so I can use both the propane heater and camp stove at the same time. I am thinking Thursday after work I’ll run to Lowes and get it, but it depends I guess on the timing of such things.

I was totalling up my investments and savings for the year, and things are looking good with the economy having been roaring ahead. Literally I compared this September to last September, and my savings increased at twice the rate of my salary. I am sure though a recession is coming, so not all of those gains are real and I will probably have to replace Big Red in the coming year, but whatever I get will be a lot smaller and more fuel efficient. But even small trucks are big bucks these days. I really could buy a house if I wanted, but with things locally, I don’t like the options and I’m not sure if I’m convinced I want to build in New York. That said, I will be sending the payroll department an updated W-4 to withhold even more of each paycheck, as I’m sure the taxman is noticing how much I’m accumulating in an untaxed wealth. As much as inflation sucks, I do like the inflated values on my investments and savings. Of course, if I didn’t spend the past six months dreaming of buying a house and not investing more money, I would actually have even more of a gain.