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beer isn't easy to find on the NY Thruway
Monday, February 3 2025
location: Mulberry Street, Rochester, NY
I didn't feel motivated to get out of bed until about 9:00am. I then made the bed, leaving all the bedsheets in place, likely to be slept in next by Gretchen.
Downstairs, I found Maryann watching the news and doomscrolling on her MacBook. She was drinking the coffee I'd brought and had an extra filter apparatus for me to easily make a cup for myself. She asked if I'd been following the news and I said I hadn't. To that, she said, "Now would not be a good time to start." I then told her about the one strand of news I have been following, the success of the Chinese chatbot Deepseek and how its flung American tech stocks into the toilet and tech bros into a funk. I said it was weird rooting for the Chinese, but that this was the only good news in a depressing news environment. Maryann said that indeed it seemed like the only power center with the ability to counter Trump is China, and she wondered if this meant we had to start rooting for them.
At first Maryann didn't think she had anything to put on the bagels she'd brought. But then it turned out she had some delicious nut cheeses, which worked great on the bagels. I thought the Wegman's bagels were pretty good, but Maryann lived a lot of her life in Manhattan, and she observed, "You can tell these are upstate bagels." From then on, I referred to the bagels as "bagel-shaped objects." After that, Maryann said she had work to do, so I said no problem. Usually it's me making the excuses to get out of socializing, but not this morning.
I had to move my car off the side of the street it was parked on before 11:00am, so I took that as my time to set out on my own for the rest of the day. I was driving down Monroe Avenue when I realized I hadn't taken the leftover pizza, so I had to return to Maryann's to get that.
By then I had the better part of two hours to kill before the next thing I needed to do today, which was to attend the inspection at the Alliance Avenue house. I thought maybe I'd blow some time in a coffee shop, and a potentially good one was called Hydra on Monroe Avenue. I parked a little beyond it first and just up and down Monroe for several blocks taking in the neighborhood. At this point Joy Tarder called me again, and of course I answered, expecting her to tell me that my mother had died. But no, instead she was trying to work some manipulation on me to get me to come down to Virginia as soon as possible. She started by apologizing for trying to tell me when to come to Virginia, which seemed weird, because she hadn't done that. But that was what she proceeded to do. She said something about how the people at the old folks' home were puzzled by why she hadn't died yet, and someone had the idea that she was "holding on" because she wanted to see someone. And that person, Joy Tarder thought, was me. This seemed preposterous to me; my mother is essentially brain dead at this point and is only holding on because her organ systems are choosing to go on, for now at least. But I didn't say anything but "huh." Then Joy proceeded to natter on about some anointing oils she'd bought to use on my mother when she passed, which of course seemed like a total waste to me. I'm not the least bit spiritual, while I think Joy Tarder might be a little New Age in addition to her base level Christianity. It turned out that Joy was in the room with my mother at the time, so she had me talk to my mother. I told her that I loved her and that I was in Rochester dealing with a "beautiful house" that I'd bought. Joy then told me that my mother had made "no response."
I eventually went into Hydra and ordered an oatmilk cappuccino, which I sipped there while playing my version of Spelling Bee on my phone.
When I was done with that, I still had an hour or so to kill, so I drove up and down various streets near Alliance Avenue developing my sense of the neighborhood and, later, looking for a place to piss. All this time to kill in the Subaru finally compelled me to figure out how to set the clock in the console, which has always been at least ten minutes off for years. It turns out that it is all done using paddles on the side of the steering wheel, though there are a lot of distracting features in there that get in the way, such as the ability to set a "birthday." (Why would anyone do this in a vehicle?) The place I ended up pissing was somewhere along Pinnacle Road where it passes along the edge of a forested park.
I arrived at the Alliance Avenue rental a little early to try to improve the fluorescent lighting in the laundry room. But then the tenant drew my attention to the non-functional doorbell, which I'd been using, unaware it doesn't work. (The tenant's yappy little dog, though, worked nearly as well.)
At around this time, the building inspector arrived. She immediately started gushing about how beautiful the house is. She said she could smell that it was nice house right at the door and that she was even willing to take her shoes off, something she normally doesn't do. We started in the attic, and along the way she saw a need for handrails on both the stairway up the second floor and on the one up to the attic. All the smoke detectors I'd installed worked great, and there were no other problems outside the basement. In the basement, the inspector saw a few minor problems: electrical boxes that needed either plugs for their holes or unperforated plates. There were a couple missing breakers in the circuit breaker box that also needed their voids plugged. All of these things seemed like the kind of tasks I could complete today, so the inspector said that all I needed to do was sent her pictures of the completed items by the end of the day and they'd never make it into the report.
We then walked around the outside of the building, and here the inspector found a problem that she considered more serious: the riser cable carrying electricity from the power line to the meter in the basement was old and a tiny bit frayed, and she said it needed to be replaced. She said this would be expensive, and it was too bad we hadn't caught it in the inspection, because we could've gotten a discount on house. This kind of took the wind out of my sails, but real estate is full of these sorts of hidden landmines.
Once the inspection was over, I told the tenant I was going to try to fix all the things the inspector had found this afternoon, but that I'd need to go get supplies. And then off I went to Home Depot. (I wanted a sense of where it was, having been to Lowes yesterday.)
In the electrical section at Home Depot, I found several contenders for possible circuit breaker hole plugs, though none were narrow enough to plug a half-height gap from a narrow (half-inch-wide) half breaker of a kind I'd never seen before. So I ended up buying the only breakers Home Depot sold that would fit such a narrow space, figuring I could use that for a plug. I also bought a range or plugs and plates for the other electrical problems. For a handrail, Home Depot really only sells one kind, a solid rail of made of hemlock. The tenant had said something about wanting it to match the other wood, which I thought it would once stained correctly.
After strapping a sixteen foot length of handrail to the roof, I was feeling weak and emotionally fragile. There was no way I'd be able to do all this work I needed to do this afternoon! At that point I ate a slice of cold leftover pizza, and that gave me the energy to keep plugging away.
Back at the Alliance Avenue rental, I proceeded to cut the handrail into the necessary lengths using a small handsaw I'd just bought. Then I sanded the ends to give them a more finished appearance. I'd been fretting about finding studs in the plaster walls of the stairways, but the screws securing the handrail hardware always managed to find a solid material to screw into in all the places I sent them, suggesting there was a dense pattern of lath behind the plaster. The main problem during this phase of the afternoon was the constant yapping of the tenant's dog, which wasn't doing my mood any favors. I'd offered to be introduced to the dog in hopes that might make the barking stop, but the tenant had said such an effort would be futile.
In a surprisingly short amount of time, I had both handrails installed and photographed. Then I could go do the relatively minor electrical tasks in the basement. Fortunately, that half-width circuit breaker was of a type compatible with this circuit breaker box, so between it and one of the rectangular plugs, I brought the circuit breaker box up to code. (Of course, I managed to let the cover slip at some point and it killed the main breaker, but that seems to happen about 20% of the time even with the best of equipment.) The other electrical issues were similarly easy. After taking pictures of my fixes, I was done. I told the tenant I'd be getting out of her hair and went off to the Forester to email the pictures to the inspector. The time was 4:45pm.
And then I started my long drive back to Hurley. At the time it was 37 degrees and raining, and I really wanted a road beer. But I didn't exit the Thruway to get one until I got to the vicinity of Seneca Falls. That exit looked like it had a lot of businesses associated with it, so I was confident I'd find beer there. The first place I went was Love's Travel Stop, which is sprawling business catering to truckers, offering showers, CB equipment, and energy drinks. Surprisingly, though, they didn't sell alcoholic beverages, which kind of blew my mind. I know drunk truckers is not what anyone wants, but a trucker who wants beer is going to find it. Next I tried going into the big Exxoon gas station across the street. They had beer, but it was beer from the 1980s; they had Budweiser, a clamato-based hard beverage, and Yuengling. But they didn't have a single IPA. The closest beer they had to something I drink these days was Stella Artois. So I left empty-handed. Finally, I tried driving north beyond the sprawling Del Lago Casino, but there was no civilization in that direction, so I got back on the Thruway.
I'd remembered seeing the beautiful brick buildings of Canajoharie stretched along the Thruway, so when I came that way eastbound, I took the exit and soon ended up at a quirky little gas station/convenience store called Betty Beavers Fuel Stop featuring a buxom beaver-faced humanoid mascot. The Forester had less than a half of a tank at that point, so I filled it up using a pump that didn't have any credit card functionality; Betty Beavers is so old-school that you must pay inside like we did back in 1987. (And for those inclined to gas up and flee the scene, there are multiple signs mentioning cameras.) I looked in the Betty Beavers store for beer, but yet again, they didn't sell it. I ended up getting a cup of coffee instead.
Knowing there'd be place to buy beer along the scenic route through Middleburgh, I took the Fultonville/Fonda exit and headed home that way, as if I'd just been visiting the cabin. I eventually stopped at the Stewarts in Middleburgh. They not only had beer, they had a beer cave, and I was able to buy a 12 pack of Hazy Little Thing, which is sort of my Budweiser at this point. I didn't crack open my first road beer until I arrived at the 55 mph sign south of Middleburgh. My second road beer conformed to my usual road beer rules for this route, which meant I couldn't crack it open until I was at the traffic light in front of the Cairo Hannaford.
Back at the house, it was good to be home, and soon I was drinking some sort of gin-and-herbal-tea concoction. Later I scooped up some more snow and made myself another stranded loon. Gretchen and I discussed the situation with the inspection as well as my plans for visiting my dying mother. I decided I needed a day of not traveling, meaning I would be leaving for Virginia on Wednesday at the earliest.
The gas pump at Betty Beaver Fuel Stop. Note the sign about the presence of cameras and the lack of a credit card reader.
Click to enlarge.
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