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a snake and a biker gang
Thursday, July 7 2022
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
It was a hot, sunny day and it was thus appropriate to hear the first dog day cicadas of the year. This is an indication that we've entered the peak period of summer, and it's not as ominous as the chanting of the katydids, which fortell the coming of fall.
The monthly cleaning crew came a little before morning scrum, and while they were vacuuming and what not outside, I mentioned to Joe the lead developer that I need more work. I enjoy not having a day filled with tasks, but it doesn't seem sustainable. He definitely seemed like he would've preferred that I not have given him this problem to solve, and he quickly found me some tasks to do. But it seemed like it would've been worse to remain as idle as I've become.
At noon today I drove to the Uptown Hannaford to return beer cans at the deposit robot. It worked for seven cans and then broke down, so I left all the other cans I'd brought for someone less fortunate. I then bought a so-called Russian Imperial Stout and a new kind of vegan pepperoni pizza made be
Tattooed Chef.
At Herzogs, they didn't have the 2.5 by 3/8 inch galvanized hex bolts I wanted, so, after confirming on my phone that stainless steel won't have a galvanic reaction with galvanized steel, I bought stainless steel versions. Herzogs also had stout steel brackets in stock suitable for dock building for a fairly good price, so I bought four of those in case the additional work on the structure of the floating section of dock calls for them.
On the drive back from town, I came upon a large black snake lying in Dug Hill Road just south of its tightest turn (as it goes around the old stone house on a knoll near Hurley Mountain Road). I didn't want the snake to get run over, so I stopped the Bolt in the middle of the road to block any arriving traffic and got out and tried to prod the snake with the only tools I had handy, one of my feet. The snake immediately coiled up like a cobra and acted like she definitely would strike. But she remained in the road. As I went to find a stick or something to better coax the snake along, she slowly started heading back east, towards the knoll. She was out of the road completely when a gang of men riding eight or ten Japanese motorcycles arrived, all of them passing my (for them) mysteriously-stopped car on the right. When they were all past me, I continued driving home.
Gretchen went to meet up with Kate and one of Kate's friends named Kaycee (there are three Kaycee in Gretchen's life these days) to watch a theatrical performance over at Bard. But it ended up being canceled, so they went somewhere to eat icecream instead. That's something women of a certain age find to be the perfect way to spend an evening in July.
When Gretchen returned, it was about 10:00pm, but nevertheless we carried through on a plan to immediately drive up to the cabin, where we'd be spending a very long weekend. I did the driving, and we arrived at our cabin just after midnight. Once there, we immediately went to bed.
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