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a change of plan due to Powerful's terrible decisonmaking
Monday, July 3 2023
location: Mulberry Street, Rochester, NY
[REDACTED]
Mariann had left her house this morning to do whatever it was she needed to do. We would be leaving Rochester today, and the first stage of that process was to leave her house. We stripped the bed (even though we'd somehow managed not to besmirch it), loaded all our stuff into the Bolt, and drove to Voula's Greek Sweets, a Greek bakery with lots of vegan options. It was a busy place this morning and there was only one woman dealing with customers in the dining room, so it took awhile for us to place our order. But then the food came out right away. The vegan gyro and cup of black coffee I'd ordered was excellent, by the way, but I didn't much care for the spanakopita. Meanwhile, Gretchen was loving her lemon potatoes.
We decided to take a different route back to Syracuse from the one we'd taken from there. In an electric car, it's always ideal to take more direct routes that cause you to drive more slowly (since much of the battery charge is used to fight wind at interstate speeds). So I thought we should take Route 104, which runs parallel to the south shore of Lake Ontario about three miles to the south (and about fifteen miles north of I-90). Unfortunately, that route ended up being rather ugly, with lots of businesses along the way and a fair number of stoplights. As we approached Syracuse, we were listening to a podcast where a young (17 year old) non-binary person named Aiyana Goodfellow was interviewed about their philosophy of animal liberation. Goodfellow claimed veganism was an "easy" way for a person, particularly a white person, to feel like she is "doing something." But Goodfellow said that being vegan ("performing goodness") was nowhere near enough. They made some good points (and their articulateness and erudition at that age was impressive), but their lack of concrete examples of what "to do" was maddening.
The plan this afternoon was for us drive to our cabin and spend the night there, as Powerful, our house sitter, had said he could stay at our house in Hurley an additional night. The drive from Rochester to our cabin is about 190 miles, meaning we'd have to stop somewhere along the way to recharge. When planning our route this morning, we discovered that one of the Electrify America stations in Syracuse is very close to a vegan soul food restaurant called Our Vegan Corner, so of course that was where we decided to do our recharging. Fortunately, there wasn't much trouble with the first charger we attempted using, so we got that going and then went off to find Our Vegan Corner. It was almost directly across the street (Brighton Avenue). When we arrived, nobody was at the counter, so we looked at the menu, which was full of many things I like to eat. Eventually the youngish proprietor came out from the back and told us all about the business. It had been started by his father. It's all vegan, of course, but the proprietor admitted that he himself is not vegan; he said he has crohn's disease, which requires him to eat red meat. Gretchen proceeded to order $80 worth of stuff, including a bucket of both cauliflower and oyster mushroom fried "chicken," two sandwiches, black bean soup, collard greens, macaroni & cheese, fries, and corn bread. While the proprietor headed back to the kitchen to make our food (he was siging along to the music, which included a Hall & Oates song), we turned our attention to our phones.
This was when Gretchen saw a text from Powerful. He said that he hoped it was okay, but he had a woman over visiting him at our house while he was there house (and dog/cat) sitting. He also said who this woman was. At this point it bears mentioning that Powerful is a terrible judge of character and routinely surrounds himself with unsavory people. In this case, though, we already knew that the woman in question, Shanelle, is bad news; back a couple months ago when Powerful happened to randomly see us in Albany and called Gretchen for the first time in months, he'd specifically mentioned Shanelle as part of a group of bad influences who had led to his desperate situation back in February and March. Powerful doesn't know that we know how bad things got, that ultimately someone in his life (maybe Shanelle, or maybe an even sketchier friend of hers) managed to wreck his car, the one object with value that he had in his life. In any case, we were horrified to learn that Shanelle was now inside our house. Gretchen immediately decided to abort her plan to spend the night at the cabin, since there was no way she could do so without gnawing anxiety about the situation back in Hurley. She also told Powerful that he and Shanelle were to vacate the house as soon as possible, that she had changed her plans and would be coming home tonight. She then pointed out to Powerful that he was still on probation with us (I don't know what term she used) for the stunt he'd pulled back in February, when he'd used one of our credit cards without permission, and that inviting a known terrible person into our home was a clear breach of our trust.
After what he'd done in February, I'd decreed that Powerful was never to be left alone in our house ever again. But then, in recent months, it really had seemed like he was doing well and was getting his life in order, so I'd been okay with him house sitting while we were in Rochester. I expected he would go out of his way to prove to us that he really is trustworthy. But no, the guy makes terrible decisions. Initially he responded to Gretchen's horrified texts that Shanelle "has his heart" and that he wants us to meet her. But then when it was clear that we found her deeply objectionable, his replies became extremely terse or nonexistent. Perhaps he was embarrassed; I know I would be.
The food took much longer to be prepared than Gretchen and I expected, which made some sense since much of it was being made from scratch. But at least it gave our car plenty of time to charge. By the time we made it back to our Bolt, it had been charged to something like 93% (which is hard to do at a fast charger, as the Bolt's charging electronics gradually slow the charging rate once the battery is at 80%).
It's a two hour drive from Syracuse to the cabin. For part of that drive, Gretchen chatted with our Portland friend Gilley, who had delayed a flight to the east coast after possibly being exposed to covid at a party (she'd hugged someone who later tested positive). From her description of her symptoms, it sounded to me like Gilley probably had covid and was going to have to cancel her trip. [And my suspicions would be proved correct.] Poor Gilley; first she gets laid off from her job (thanks, Pew Charitable Trust!) and then, when she tries to take advantage of her joblessness by going on vacation, she gets covid. This meant Gilley would not be visiting us and not seeing the cabin, at least for a few weeks.
Google Maps decided we should exit the Thrway near Little Falls and take small roads from there all the way to the cabin. One of the smallest of these roads was Mindenville Road, which was part of the process of getting to the north of first the Thruway and then the Mohawk River. We were really confused when the directions had us turn from Route 5 onto Route 67. This is something we do all the time when approaching this area from the east in Fort Johnson. But this intersection didn't look anything like that intersection (and we were, it turned out, 21 miles west of Fort Johnson in a village called St. Johnsville. Later, studying the map, Gretchen would see that Route 67 connects Fort Johnson to St. Johnsville via Johnstown (that's a lot of Johns) across a large southward bend in the Mohawk in and around Canajoharie.
Our route took us through Amish country, which lies southwest of Johnstown (and, according to Mariann, in some places between the longer Finger Lakes as well). I kept expecting us to pop out onto a familiar road near Fulton County Community College, but we didnt' arrive at a familiar road until just south of the Meco intersection west of Gloversville.
As we approached the cabin on Woodworth Lake Road, we saw some pedestrians (I waved), which wasn't surprising (since July 4th is the biggest occasion at the lake every year). (Part of the reason we'd picked July 4th to visit friends in Rochester was to avoid some of the people Gretchen has come to dislike in the lake's homeowners' association.)
Christine, my first-cousin-once-removed, had stayed at the cabin with her new boyfriend on Friday night while we were in Rochester, and they'd left things in a tidy state for us.
After unpacking, we both walked down to the lake just to say hello. But there was so much activity at the docks (particularly at Joel's and Ibrahim's) that Gretchen didn't want to go out onto our dock for fear of having to interact with someone. So she returned to the cabin, and I followed shortly behind.
After our Bolt had a little over 100 miles of range in its battery, Gretchen decided to start her drive back to Hurley, leaving me at the cabin (without a vehicle!) until her eventual return. She'd have to stop for a brief fast charge in Albany, but she wanted to get on the road as a way to deal with her anxiety about how Powerful and his terrible girlfriend had left things at our house. Anything is possible with that woman, including her rifling through our stuff to get our credit card information, so you can be sure we'll be keeping an eye out for unexpected charges.
I ended up staying up pretty late at the cabin. This was partly so I could be up when Gretchen got home so I could get a full report and not have to be anxious myself. Gretchen got back at around 9:00pm and reported that everything was normal, although she would later notice that Powerful had taken a tray that she loves onto which she'd put cupcakes she'd made to celebrate Powerful's birthday (which was on Saturday). After I had the news that nothing terrible had happened back in Hurley, I celebrated by taking a nice relaxing bath.
I always have at least one day each week during which I take no drugs or alcohol, and that day this week was today. I'm always a little surprised when I am able to sleep well drug & alcohol free, but it's actually the case that I seem to sleep best when I haven't taken drugs or alcohol.
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