War on (Islamic) Terrorism: Two NY State Views

New York City Trendy Gotta get gas mask and cipro. I'm scared of high rises. All these weapons are scary, we need more arms and gun control. Do any of those Muslims walking around here have a bomb strapped to them? Shit, can't park anywhere near anything important I hope they don't attack us again! Bush and Sharon are just as bad and the Christians should quit egging on the Muslims, you gotta respect other cultures.

Adirondacks Shit, when are those fairies going to shut up so we can blast those towel heads and get our boys back quick. Gotta get more ammo and some tnt. They attack us with airplanes and human bombs and those liberals are crying about handgun control, get a grip! I hope they come up here, the hunting seasons are closed and I want to try the new Mini-30 I got for Xmas. Shit, in Albany they got all the good parking blocked off by the capital. After we finish off Iraq, its (Saudi Arabia, North Korea, France) next, we're on a roll! Personally I don't care if they worship Satan himself, but those towel heads better learn to respect other cultures, like ours!

Gettin Stuck, Upstate Style

I went for a little drive up the Adirondack Northway, I-87 north, from my Albany suburb of Latham to Warrrensburg in Warren County. After getting the twin essentials of gas and coffee at the all night Cumberland Farms(I love good chain gas/conveniences like them, only our free enterprise system can produce this, imagine the Soviets!) Cut to the chase: I got stuck on a seasonal town road in the Town of Stoney Creek, Warren County in the S.E. corner of the Adirondack Parks. In case you didn't know, there's tons of snow and -25F temps these days. Seasonal road means no winter maintenance so it' doubles as part of the local snowmobile trail network in the winter. So, I found that my all-wheel drive Eagle Summit doesn't cut it on uphill narrow snowmobile trails and got stuck about 4:30 AM. So I roughed it in the back till about 8:30, always have blankets and sleeping bags with me. The first guy I met was pretty disabled so all he did was drive me into the hamlet to the general store, Emericks. I warmed up on cafe and a breakfast sandwich. The lady who ran it presented my dilemma to the local workers. After it warmed up to about -5F, the lady told me to walk down the road to the Town of Stoney Creek Highway yard. But another one of Emerick's customers picked me up in his Jeep Cherokee and we almost got the Eagel free with a tow chain until he almost got stuck and I ditched it again. So we went back to the Town of Stoney Creek Highway yard and got the supervisor on the case. Since it was a town road, he felt obligated to help unstick me. So he sent a payloader up there after we mounted chains on it. But the payloader almost got stuck and had to turn around, tearing up the trail with his 30 ton rig. Then the guy with the Jeep got come-alongs from the Town of Stoney Creek Highway Department and he got me out of the frozen rut and I got it about 150' downhill till it ditched again. So I went back and tried to enlist more help. Then I returned to my stuck Eagle, built a fire and ate lunch and read. Then the Warren County Sheriff and the Town of Stoney Creek Highway Supervisor drove up to the end-of-plowing turn around and ambled up. The supervisor had a 3/4 ton diesel 4x4 Ford pickup and he got me me with a chain, three times! till I was free. My new wife was understandably angry and releived when I finally called her in Warrensburg from the Cumby's where I filled up at 4:00 am. It was five pm then!


This is how you get treated in the Adirondacks when you are stranded. People are so cool up there. Even the sheriff was helpful and all he did was check my plates; no snooping or let's see some i.d. crap like the assholes around here. In the Capital District, most people are assholes period. Most of them work for the state and they have sort of a Mandarin attitude with pygmy brains and surely demeanor. My throttle cable snapped in the middle of US 9 a mile from here and not one lazy asshole got out to help. Around here, I'd have to pay some local wrecker shyster to yank me out and the cops would be itching to write tickets and harass me. The highway supervisor there just asked me to vote for him if I ever moved up there; sure thing, vote early, vote often! He even told the people who maintained the snowmobile trails to lay off since it was his road not their trail. I gave the jeep guy a good old pair of ski gloves to assuage my guilt at tying up about 10 man-hours of local labor. It's the cool rural parts of New York State that I love, we all hate the city types and all the lawyer/psychiatrist/social worker/leftist radical crap that emanates from our state's more notorious cities. DOn't you just hate it when some flatlander acts like you should know some goombah in Nassau County.

The Freeze is On!

Took a Subaru down to Noo Joisey for Grumme, well my new bride drove it as I folllowed in the Billy Goat. Of course, the Rhodes Scholar Grumme got Nob Hill spelled as Kob Hill in Roseland Township, NJ. So Mapquest gave me Cobb Terrace, but we psyched it out with help of a street resident. Then we overshot the turn by a couple miles an not one of the immigrant gas jockies ever heard of this huge Nob Hill townhouse project. I turned up a service track and saw three deer, right there in the heart of the suburban-urban sprawl. Compared to this, Cohoes is the deep woods. It turned out this Tzui was actually a J.A.P., well not really but being negative never the less. I saw the mezzuzah on the door and said to her husband that I expected a Chinese woman not a Yid. He was cool and was relieved. I mounted the four tires on it and checked it out good before we left Glenmont, NY. I guess they figure that when you buy a car from Upstate NY, they send the mechanic in camo with his wife to deliver it. The Billy Goat ran like a pro but guzzled gas, with the NJ Hunting Club-Adirondack Chapter bumper sticker.

You always know when you get to CT, the speed limit drops. CT is such a kill-joy state that for the 1/2 mile that I-684(from White Plains to Brewster) crosses into Greenwich, CT, the dicks posted it at 55, while the NY stretch is 65. I-84 still sucks cause CT does everything on the cheap and we all pay triple for it, especially that road thru Danbury and the rest of the cities.

Hi-Peaks

The last two trips I returned via NY 73 to the Northway. I slept a few hours in the trailhead parking lot in Keene Valley. What really impressed me, besides the -30F cold was the droves of snow shoers and mountaineers in force. Someone was actually waiting for my space as I pulled out. Back in the day, there might have been two cars max in the winter. Now, it's a road not a trail into the High Peaks year round

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Last Sunday, not yesterday, I drove out to first Booneville and Tug Hill to really see snow. Did I! It was like a sled in the old Escort, when I opened the door, snow blew in. I spent the night skulking around Booneville, skiing in the parking lots while the snow never stopped. I found a wash bay place that was still under construction. But it was cover and had a heated concrete slab! Still, it was a rude awakening at 10F below. Then I drove through to my NY 30 via old NY 28 in Blue Mountain Lake. There must have been five thousand sledders in Old Forge-Thendara. In the hamlet I stopped for gas and coffee. Someone ran in and said there were sleds on fire so I paid and raced down NY 28 to the flames a block away. Some Moe & Rons from Rochester put a kerosene-electric torpedo to heat up a plastic, rubber gas and oil filled snowmobile, fairly predictable. Four uninsured, gassed up sleds blew between two old wooden houses. Lucky we got it out before any of the houses were damaged. The column of black smoke and orange flames were quite impressive, but unlike the movies. In the movies, when gas tanks blow, they pep it up with a few pounds of C-4. Face it, sledders are dumb! The sleds were a total slag heaps when the flames were doused. Old Forge was quite depressing, it's a huge resort town crawling with Jerseyites.

But once I got into Hamilton County, the scenery and road got better. Not muched happened, except Eileen and I got married in Saint Armands on Mt. Pisgah in the justice's house in our socks. It was a ten below white out day, normal Saranac Lake. The Escort's right rear strut tower rusted out and it blew through the speaker above it. I nursed it home carefully on a cold slushy night. Now I have the Eagle Summit. With all wheel drive, 2.4 liter 16 valve 4 banger and five speed, it eats up the backroads in comfort compared to the Escort. The Escort was a great simple car that got always better than 30 mpg, but it was simple. Which was a virtue for repairs but not for comfort. Parts for that Escort were always the cheapest.