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Rain for Sunday? 🌧️

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Maybe the days of wilderness smoking weed, and hick towns that smell like cow shit are coming to an end at least for this weekend as it looks like weekend is trending wet. So no going to Schoharie? Saturday still looks okay but we know how this all changes.

Kind of unfortunate as there is only three summer weekends left before Labor Day Weekend 📆 working remote from Hardwood Hill. Maybe I’ll check out the firetower lighting when I am up there that weekend, but I also know that’s kind of the end of summer and things rapidly get cooler in the autumn, though this might be a fairly cool autumn regardless. Hoping the following weekend to this weekend, or maybe that least weekend of summer before Labor Day to do one last trip to the Potholers. 🏊‍♂️ If I’m not heading out into the mud and muck this weekend, maybe I should at least wash the mud off the SuperDuty from camp.

Things are getting caught up at work, 🧑‍💻 though I am still tired. 🥱 I am having a lot of trouble adjusting back to city life. Continuing to work on trying to sell Big Red, people express interest but I’m struggling to close the deal. 🤝 I was tired last night, bike derailuer cable was sticky, I got that freed up, headed to bed and laid back, I had zero energy. Rode to work and back home yesterday, 🚵‍♂️ but that’s all I could do. I actually thought I had event to go to last night and meetings downtown, but I got the day wrong on the calendar. 🗓️ I guess sI was confused as the email came in during vacation, I glanced at it but mostly ignored it. Truth is I’m really struggling at the city 🏙️ life again. I miss those days in the woods, camping out with the cows 🐮 in the National Forest.

Eggs for for breakfast 🥚 finishing off the last of the big bottle of salsa I had and adding it to the white bag to turn into smoke and fire soon enough. 🔥 I glanced on the label and saw it was No. 7 plastic ♻️ not that matters much for me. Actually started talking to Google Gemini about my thoughts about trash burning and freedom, 🗑️ found it to be a much more insightful conservation that made me think far more then my analyst I hired like 5 years ago and paid $25 bucks for nearly each wasted session. After $125 plus all that time spent in his basement, I got nothing out of it besides being looked down as a knuckle-dragging redneck who illegally burns his garbage 🛢️ and drives an enormous creaky old pickup, and how wonderful liberalism is if I only came around the corner to join him. 🩺 I kind of don’t love doctors at all, though on my list to have done is my yearly physical. Could be Lyme disease or something worse, but I think it’s just the struggle to get back on the schedule. I was about 15 minutes late to work yesterday, 🚲 but whatever I’m the big boss man around that place. It’s just been so busy. 🤖 The great thing about AI is it usually comes around to your way of thinking, and will provide you evidence to reinforce your existing beliefs after challenging you a bit. I see a blog post coming on.

The bike shift cable sticking is annoying me, ⚙ but hopefully with some lubrication and adjustment I will have a smooth ride in. Started having issues on vacation, 🚲 but there is always something a bit broken or off on the bike. Maybe come winter when it’s really bad for riding and the bike shop mechanic is slow, I should have the gears and cables all tuned up and the wheels trued up. Won’t get me a new bike, but would make riding much more pleasant. Sometimes I defer maintenance too long. 🤷‍♂️ It just seems like everything is an expense these days, and money goes out a lot faster then it comes in.

Thematic Map: US Median Household Income by Census Tract
Terrain Map: Albany Pine Bush 1952 High Resolution

Shadows of the Finger Lakes, Echoes of the City

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Eleven days in the open country disappear the moment you cross back into the urban grid. Behind me, the Finger Lakes are fading into memory, leaving only the ghost of a camp routine that feels entirely detached from the world I woke up to on Monday morning. Out there, the days had a rhythm dictated by the sun and the weather. I remember the slow, heavy movement of grazing cows in the distance, their deep moos drifting lazily across the grass into camp. Evenings belonged to the soft, rhythmic flicker of the campfire against the dark canopy of trees, and afternoons were spent plunging into the icy, clear water of the gorge, washing away the summer heat. 

Monday brought a jarring end to the quiet. The transition back to the office was amplified by the cold frustration of a crumbling infrastructure. Checking the new schedules revealed yet another round of service cuts from the transit authority, making the city bus even more inconvenient for a working commute. It is an exhausting reminder of public neglect, leaving passengers to wait longer on hot pavement just to get to a job. The work itself offered no soft landing—just a relentless rush of unpacking data, setting targets, and trying to steady a ship that kept moving while I was away. 

By Tuesday, the weight of the city felt heavier. There is a deep, bone-weary fatigue that comes from trading the sweet, rich farm smells of the open country for the grime of city life. The contrast is sharpest in the small, mundane tasks. Instead of swimming in a pristine gorge, I am back at the local laundromat, watching clothes spin in a plastic tub, surrounded by the rumble of industrial dryers and the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs. Outside, the air is thick with the noise of backfiring cars, rumbling trucks, and the endless hiss of traffic. 

Riding the mountain bike into work today offered a brief reprieve, a small way to clear the head and keep the pollution down. Having additional staff on hand helped tame the chaos at the office, too. The remaining days of summer are slipping away quickly, and the high cost of fueling up the SuperDuty means future trips will stay closer to home. But the pull of the woods is still there. Plans are already spinning for a Friday escape—maybe a weekend run out to Schoharie to dive into the Mine Kill Pool, to hike, to ride the trails, and to sit by a fire under a wide-open sky once more.

Map: Battery Diagram

Mays Point Bridge Dam

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No, Mays Point Road never used the Mays Point Bridge Dam to cross the river. [1]

While the structure strongly resembles a standard overhead truss highway bridge, it was built strictly as a piece of canal engineering rather than a public crossing. [1, 2]

The reasons behind this layout highlight the unique engineering of the area:

1. Built Exclusively for Equipment

The overhead bridge structure was never meant to hold vehicular traffic. Its only purpose is to support the heavy electric winches, walkways, and machinery that canal workers use to raise and lower the heavy steel gates (Boulé gates) into the Seneca River. [1, 3]

2. A Rare Exclusion on the Canal System

When New York built these movable bridge dams between 1906 and 1918, engineers initially thought about dual-purposing some of them for vehicle traffic. However, doing so was highly impractical for most locations. Across the entire state canal system, only two movable bridge dams were ever actually configured to carry public roads (the bridge dam at Tribe Hill and the one at Scotia/Lock 8 on the Mohawk River). The single-span dam at Mays Point was not one of them. [1, 4]

3. The Actual Road Crossings

Historically, vehicles on Mays Point Road (County Road 105A) crossed the nearby Clyde River waterway via a distinct wooden timber stringer bridge built in 1929 (which was later replaced in 2003). For traveling north-south over the main Seneca River arm, traffic has traditionally relied on the nearby Route 89 Bridge. [5, 6]

The Bridge Dam remains entirely closed to the public and is restricted solely to New York State Canal Corporation personnel. [7]

[1] https://www.facebook.com

[2] https://www.instagram.com

[3] https://www.youtube.com

[4] https://www.youtube.com

[5] https://historicbridges.org

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org

[7] https://www.facebook.com

Thematic Map: Log Homes of Albany County
Map: Stone Dam Lake Trail

Tuesday, Tuesday. 🚵‍♂️

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I should be able to ride my bike in today, which is good as I have meeting downtown later. It was good I bussed it in yesterday though, as it started raining. That said, I missed the earlier local home, which actually was running on time as construction is once again winding down on Delaware Avenue.

My gawd Delaware Avenue is still rough 🦮, as I drove my F-350 SuperDuty down to Hannaford to get my weekly share of groceries wrapped in plastic and soon enough to be poop and black smoke, but don’t tell a liberal. I’m already ready to get out of the city, indeed I am half seriously thinking about heading out to Schoharie for the weekend after work on Friday, though it depends if anybody wants to look at Big Red. 🛻 Hoping for a quieter day today at work today, so maybe I can stratagize with the Google Artificial Insemination service and post Big Red on a few more sites.

Carrot pancakes 🥕 🥞 with a bunch of frozen fruit 🫐 this morning, because that’s good and I got it at the store. Also cooking down some kidney beans 🫘 for meals this week, in part to mix with the rice I had yesterday. Trying to more of the healthy thing, not that it was that bad on vacation but I was kind of lazy at times 🥱 and drank more beer and smoked more weed then I probably should have. And the SQL selections at work yesterday were crazy, made me had to think, my brain 🧠 still a bit foggy from vacation. 🌸 And all I can think about listening to Karen Dalton, wandering through a field a wildflowers. At least I get to ride in this morning, 🚵‍♂️ assuming the bike works good, and then it’s off to the meeting downtown at 2 PM.

So three weekends left before Labor Day Weekend. 🏕️ That’s why I am thinking Schoharie is a good choice for this weekend, and then maybe next or week after for the Potholers one last time this summer. 🛻 I just got such a late start this summer building the SuperDuty but now for the most part things are working good with the solar and all that good stuff. 💡 It’s not to say I won’t have many adventures come autumn 🍂 – I’m planning to do several long weekends working remote plus that trip to Ohio/Pennsylvania/West VIrigina 🦌 in November – but swim season usually ends Labor Day Weekend, at least in the developed swimming areas plus the days rapidly start getting cooler and much shorter as we get into September. Labor Day is as late as it gets this year, falling on September 7th. 🌇 Already sunsets are coming much earlier.

Well kids, I need to drain my beans, 🫘 and finish putting up the clothes, shower 🚿 and get on Blackie the Mountain bike and ride to work. Trying to do the healthy thing, which reminds me to add to my list, calling the doctor about the yearly physical, as they changed affllations and did not schedule the one for this year when I did mine last September. Plus, I need to add to my list 📋 things like figuring out where I should get my truck oil under coated and plan to have an oil change done at the dealership. It’s going to cost more then my local mechanic or certainly doing it myself, but the way I look at it is the SuperDuty warranty is like 5 years, and based on amount of miles I drive if I do an oil change every 5,000 miles that might be 5-7 over priced oil changes, when it costs $150 to fill the gas tank of the SuperDuty. 🛢️ And then they can preform recalls and everything is documented in the Ford app, no paperwork to hold on in case the engine does blow up not that Godzilla or Minizillas Gen 2 do that very often. That said, come 2031, I will be changing my own oil, it’s super easy to do on the SuperDuty though I’ll want a long funnel as the engine is low under the hood. Then I get the used motor oil to start fires, 🔥 but also don’t tell a liberal that.

Map: Green Mountain National Forest North
Map: Green Mountain National Forest South