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people a little more iike us on the lake
Friday, July 26 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
This morning after Gretchen had gone for a walk with our neighbor A, we loaded up the Chevy Bolt and drove up to the Adirondack cabin. We stopped on the way at the Hannaford in Cairo, something I do frequently but which Gretchen had never done before. All Hannafords are a little different, but Gretchen was impressed with the Cairo one, especially when she saw them stocking an obscure brand of vegan icecream. We were there mostly just to get Choabani oat milk, a bag of frozen fruit, and several pints of vegan icecream, with the hope that if we put it all together in an improvised insulated bag (as all our actual insulated bags were occupied), we could get it to the cabin before it melted (it turned out that we could, for the most part). We also stopped briefly at the Love Shine Tea Shop in Schoharie for vegan bagel sandwiches and other snacks. But we were so flustered when we saw Neville had once again lowered the car's windows while it was parked on the side of busy Route 30 (we'd left the car on so the dogs could have air conditioning), that we almost forgot Gretchen's wallet.
In keeping with normal practice, I let Gretchen and Charlotte out at the gated entrance to Woodworth Lake so they could walk the last mile to the cabin, during which time I put away all the stuff requiring refrigeration. There was a lot, because Gretchen had prepared several meals for guests we'd be hosting on Saturday and Sunday. When Gretchen and Charlotte arrived, they immediately went down to the dock to catch the sun before it set behind the trees (something that happens at about 3:30pm). I headed down to the dock a little later, encouraging Neville to follow me (which he did). I brought a beer, the good camera, and the big mattock so I could install some steps in two steep parts of the new, more direct, dock trail (which I will be referring to as the Mossy Rock Trail, due to a particular boulder along the way). After installing three or four steps in each of the steep places, I went down to the dock, climbed onto the black innertube, and cracked open a Hazy Little Thing. Not long after that, we saw a couple people set off in an aluminum canoe from the public dock. As they passed within a couple hundred feet of us, we waved at them, not knowing who they were. Somehow a conversation was struck up across the water that continued for awhile. It turned out that they were the people whose car we saw parked at the existing cabin just inside the gate on the edge of Hines Pond (that is, south of Woodworth Lake Road about a mile from our cabin). They were a somewhat older retired couple, with the man, Dan, being the treasurer for the homeowners' association. They said they'd been living in their cabin all summer, with the plan to live on the coast in North Carolina near one of their daughters in the winter. Fairly early in the conversation, they mentioned apologetically that they'd been forced to use Elon Musk's Starlink technology, as that was the only way to get the internet at their cabin. A few other things they said (such as references to things heard on public radio) sent us the signal that these were people from the leftie side of the political spectrum, so perhaps there actually are a few people in our homeowners' association who have property here because they actually appreciate nature (instead of just wanting to come here to make loud noises). They talked about the various places in the area they've found to go to, such as a microbrewery in nearby Meco and, of course, Mountain Hut Pizza in very-nearby Bleecker. It was when they asked if we'd had Mountain Hut Pizza that Gretchen explained that we hadn't because we're vegan. They then said they were vegetarian, and that they thing they couldn't give up was cheese. So of course then Gretchen told them about all the advances that have been made in vegan cheese, and invited them over "in an hour or so" so they could try some. They said they would be coming over, and set off to finish their canoe outing.
Back at our cabin, our new acquaintances arrived just as they said they would, and we all ate vegan cheese out in the screened-in porch while discussing various association spats and political machinations. Dan and his wife said that his one issue with some of the association members is that they're always wanting to install overly-aggressive security, such as an electronic entrance gate and beefed-up surveillance. Dan couldn't understand the reason for this, since he'd never seen evidence of any crime around the lake. (I remember, for example, Ibrahim leaving a bunch of expensive tools out, completely unsecured as he was building his A-frame right near Woodworth Lake Road, and, as far as I know, nothing was ever stolen. (Now, or course, he has a state-of-the-art multi-camera video surveillance system, but that came later.) Dan also mentioned a spat with Ed, the guy in the log cabin further west on Hines Pond (Ed had let us charge our Bolt there soon after our cabin was assembled) over the running of a powerline. (I'd remembered Ed complaining about this from his perspective, and this was the first time we had heard the other side of the story.) We also gave Dan and his wife a tour of the house, and, since Dan is an engineer, I showed him the systems in the basement, including my custom remote control equipment.
After they left, Gretchen and I had a dinner Gretchen made from pasta and red sauce with a side of sauteed mushrooms.
After dinner, I hung three large paintings that had arrived at the cabin earlier in the week while we weren't there. They were by the Texas artist Eli Halpin, who paints flattened magical worlds densely populated with numerous animals staring serenly at the viewer. Gretchen has a lot of her art already, but none quite this size. They're technically prints, not paintings, but they look like paintings. The paintings were so big and heavy that I hung two of them from screws going into drywall anchors. The paintings had been out in the rain in cardboard shipping boxes, but this didn't seem to have damaged them.
Later, down in the basement, I made an important improvement to my SolArk Copilot software. Now it was measuring the length of the data packet it was parsing to see if it was a full 745 bytes in length. Sometimes the code that finds the packet in the high-speed serial stream gets confused and truncates it, resulting in zeroed-out data for some or all of the inverter values. This new code would hopefully keep that from happening. As I worked, I listened (as I usually do when in the basement) to WFNY, which typically plays fairly musty pop music. But tonight they played Creed's "Can You Take Me Higher?" and I have to say, it's a pretty good song, despite all the hate.
Gretchen with Chalotte and Neville on the dock this afternoon.
Click to enlarge.
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