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pizza on the dock
Sunday, September 28 2025
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
This morning as I was still drinking my coffee and solving Spelling Bee, the dogs suddenly (and with great purpose) went out through the pet door, seemingly to spend another several hours mining chipmunks somewhere. I thought it better to give them (or at least Charlotte) a proper walk, so I took them down the Lake Edward Trail. Initially Neville seemed like he was coming, but he never even made it across the driveway. I decided to go off trail to the south before I even got down to the wetlands at the bottom of the slope to the west. There are a tight series of ridges and valleys there that were somewhat interesting to both Charlotte and me. But it didn't take long, though, before I was in sight of some of the "redneck" camps along Woodworth Lake Road (that is, people forced to use the public dock because they have no lake frontage while never scraping together enough money to do any more than bulldozing a circular clearing in the forest.) I then turned back north, walking along the bottom of the hill (where there is a surprisingly large marsh full of some sort of tall rush or grass). I gradually climbed the hill as I went, eventually ending up back in the vicinity of the cabin.
I then returned to the Meshtastic project, this time having ChatGPT help me through the process of writing a Python script to place on the Raspberry Pi to take LoRa data and arrange it in *-delimited strings to send to my existing ESP8266-Remote backend. After some back and forth (including a huge headache caused by inconsistent indenting; that's my big problem with Python), ChatGPT delivered me a script that didn't throw errors. But it didn't actually log any of the data being transmitted by my other Meshtastic nodes either. I figured that debugging that would take me hours, so I shelved it for the time being.
I then turned my attention to notching the northeast corner of the rails in the upstairs deck so I can later install a post tight in that corner.
Later I returned to the dock and set out again on the paddleboard, this time confident enough to bring both a beer (which I'd taken last time) and a camera (which I hadn't). That loon with the grey patches on his cheek was still out there. I'd begun to wonder if perhaps he wasn't old but was just in the process of transitioning to his winter coat, which is drab and grey.
When I returned to the cabin, I put in some effort to clean up the place and organize what I needed to take back to Hurley. Meanwhile Gretchen was driving back from Rochester. She arrived at the cabin a little after 4:00pm and had food with her, in this case a medium pizza from Squatcho's made specifically for me. I heated it up in the toaster oven and brought it down to the lake. (Gretchen had set out for the lake before me, but I almost caught up to her because she was barefoot and walking gingerly. I was also barefoot, but my feet are tough.)
Down at the dock, Gretchen told me how things had gone in Rochester with the new tenant, who seems like she might be a little on the dumb and high-maintenance side. She'd also met her husband, who seemed like a bit of a dud, but she'd taken a shine to his younger brother, who has long hair and seems to be trying to break out of his stifling conformity of his rural Texas roots. Gretchen also had gossip about Rochester people I've actually met, particularly the thruple. It seems they are in the process of ejecting its one male member. Apparently the two others, both morbidly-obese vegan women, only wanted him for his bank account and his semen. Now they won't even let him see his baby.
After I'd sobered up enough to drive, I began my drive back to Hurley, this time in the Forester (which Gretchen had taken to Rochester). Since Neville had run out of his anti-inflammatory medication, I took the dogs with me, leaving Gretchen all by herself at the cabin with the Bolt.
For the first half of the drive, I felt a nice buzz from the kratom tea I'd been drinking. When I stopped at the Stewarts in Middleburgh to get beer, I decided I should also wash the windshield, both inside and out, as it became an opaque smear of light whenever headlights shined upon it. I then went into the Stewarts to get both beer and more hot water for my kratom tea. At the line for the cashier, I got behind a skinny Hispanic man, and when he turned around to look at me, he had a look of terror in his eyes, probably wondering if I was an ICE agent. I hate living in a country where people who look a certain way can't go out in public without a feeling of existential dread. By this point I was wondering if maybe I'd drunk a bit too much kratom tea. But the moment I was driving again, the feeling returned to being one of pleasant exhilaration.
The oil light came as I neared the Kingston exit on the Thruway, so after I took the exit, I went directly to the Quickchek near the traffic circle and found myself behind a large number of people in somewhat strange attire, many of whom had their hair done up in braided mohawks. It soon became clear that this was a group of Native Americans heading to some sort of pow-wow (or whatever the term is for their particular tribe(s)). After I added a quart of oil ($9!) to the Forester, Charlotte jumped out of the car and started running around the outside of the gas station. I wasn't too concerned, but I pleaded with her to please get back in the car. She was confused at first but then hopped in, but not before one of the Native Americans asked if she bites. Then I overheard someone else talking about what a sweet name "Charlotte" is for a dog.
Back home on Hurley Mountain, I ate some more pizza and started drinking booze. I ended up staying up until at least 11:00pm, which is a bit late when I have to be at work at 7:00am.
Neville and Charlotte. Click to enlarge.
New England aster with the rising sun. Click to enlarge.
A hoverfly and a monarch butterfly on New England aster near the southeast corner of the cabin. Click to enlarge.
New England aster. Click to enlarge.
Medeola virginiana. Click to enlarge.
A big chunk of the cliffs west of the cabin fell over at some point. Click to enlarge.
The loon with grey patches on his cheeks today. Click to enlarge.
Initially I thought this was because he is old. Click to enlarge.
But he might just be in the process of getting his winter plumage. Click to enlarge.
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