Here is one of the beautiful sights I saw today as I made my way through my Monday.
June 2016
Carey’s Corners.
While I’m out my morning bike ride I allow my mind to wander a little bit. Sometimes I reflect on a dream that I had before waking up, sometimes I think about work, a lot of the time I think about flying. But once in a while I just let my mind go into full geek mode and allow myself the freedom to think about anything that might pop into my head.
One of my favorite places to ride in the morning is along Main Street in the nearby village of Whitesboro. Whitesboro was in the national news earlier this year when the village’s citizens decided to keep the official Village Seal, depicting a settler wrestling a Native American. Some find the depiction to be outside the guide rails of political correctness because it looks like the settler is strangling the Native American. I wasn’t present at the wrestling match that inspired the seal, so I’ll refrain from comment on that.
Main Street used to be NY Route 69 before the building of what is today’s Oriskany Boulevard. The boulevard is the result of the filling in of the original Erie Canal, which passed through the village long ago. With the relocation of Route 69 onto the new roadway, Main Street was bypassed to a certain degree. New bridges were built and other roads were relocated. Today there isn’t much traffic on Main Street. Much of the retail establishments moved to the busier boulevard long ago. The homes along Main Street still have their early 20th century majestic appeal, though I believe some of them have been converted to multi-tenant dwellings.
At the west end of Main Street, just west of the village boundary, a short bit of roadway was built to connect Main Street to Oriskany Blvd. The remaining portion of Main Street was turned into a No Outlet roadway. In the picture above, I’m standing on that bit of roadway, near what remains of the small hamlet of Carey’s Corners.
I don’t know much about Carey’s Corners outside of the fact that it was prominently listed on old maps up until the late 1950s. I believe there were several buildings demolished for the building of what carries Route 291 over the adjacent railroad to the north. What is currently labeled as “Carey Road” (another dead end roadway) probably made its way onto present-day 291 (what used to be Route 12C until 1972) to take one out of Carey’s Corners to the north.
Little bits of highway history like this make me wonder what today would be like if we as a society didn’t develop such a fondness for automobiles and the building of the modern day Interstate system. Would life be as fast paced as it is today? Would many of us be living in crazy high high-rises while others still lived a rural life out in the country? Would suburbia as we know it be a thing? Shopping Malls? Big Box Retailers?
Many things changed in the mid 20th century with the drive to move out of the cities, follow the freeways and set up life in the suburbs. I really do wonder what life would be like if that mass migration hadn’t taken place. I’m sure the United States would be a markedly different place to live today.
Skaneateles, New York.
Skaneateles is considered the eastern gateway to the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York. Situated along US Route 20, this charming little town is at the northern end of Skaneateles Lake. Strolling amongst the charming village green along the lake shore, it is evident that there’s a bit of money in Skaneateles. As I understand, the Baldwins (Alec, Stephen, et al) and the Clintons (Bill and Hillary) enjoy spending some down time in Skaneateles.
In case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “Skinny-atlas” when using the typical flat Central New York accent.
Earl and I spent the day relaxing today. We had the top off the Jeep, we drove amongst back roads and we just spent some quality time together. It’s a downtime weekend for us after about a month of traveling and being focused on our careers. One of our stops was in Skaneateles.
And it was a wonderful day.
You Won’t Believe What I Wrote.
Click bait articles are really starting to get on my nerves. You know those articles that start with “I Couldn’t Believe What Happened Next” or “You Won’t Believe What He Found In The Toilet!”? Those are just the tip of the iceberg of the infestation that has taken over the Internet.
I was perusing through the Apple News app this morning when I noticed a black and white photo of four women. The caption read, “a photographer takes the same photo of these four sisters for 35 years and the results are incredible. Click for more.” Now, the caption is rather click-baity with the “the results are incredible” tag, but the photo was moderately appealing and I read into the caption thinking that the pose was consistent over the time frame indicated. Wrong! This was simply a photo of the four women in a random pose, one per year, with some sort of Photoshop filter applied to it to give it a Vaseline smudge look to it. Of course, to see each photo you had to click to the next page (1 of 35, 2 of 35, etc) and there was a barrage of ads accompanying each page, complete with blaring video and sliding Javascript.
I didn’t even make it to page three when I feverishly backed myself the hell out of that hole. I then found I couldn’t get back to the main Apple News app which angered me in an irrational manner. If Apple hadn’t locked me into forcing the Apple News app on my iPhone with removing the ability to delete the thing, I would have promptly removed the app, never to gander at Apple News again. Instead, in a fit of frustration I threw my iPhone down onto the bed and jumped up to write this blog entry.
Thank you Apple for the motivation to bury the app in a “do not use” folder and subsequently get on with my day. I have just now stopped cursing myself for falling for a click bait article.
It’s bad enough that I’m constantly fed ads from Sheryl Sandberg and her ilk of pictures of toes that are having a heart attack or a woman peeling her face off to make her 85 year old haggard, haggy face look tighter than a snare drum in an effort get me to buy something. But these click bait articles, which I am normally intelligent enough to outsmart, are really getting on my nerves, especially when they’re starting to appear on “reputable” news sites like CNN (which indicates the real motivation for Wolf Blitzer and his magic wall). Journalism my ass. I don’t even read some halfway decent blogs anymore because they’re so populated with ads that the content takes only a third of the page and there’s things moving all over the place when I’m trying to focus on the “content”. The local newspaper is famous for things sliding around if you don’t pay some outrageous amount for their dubious content and then said content contains headlines such as “Mayor Makes Startling Discovery in His Lunch Pail”.
I know I’m starting to sound like the cranky old man that sits on his virtual front porch, but I miss the days before the Internet Infestation of ads. Honestly, I can take the little Google Ads that appear in a small box. I can take a two-to-three screen slide show of photos and commentary pertaining to a news item prefaced with a reasonable headline, “Citizens Protest Lunch Conditions at City Hall”. But these headlines that I won’t believe, that will astound me or that have nothing to do with the actual content of the article have got to come to a stop.
Stop clicking on them, please.
This Time.
This could easily be my theme song. Here’s an acoustic version of “This Time” by DJ Antoine. Vocals by MANU-L.
Just lay your eyes on the night
Don’t you stay there, don’t you
Seems like the world is the same
Right just as before
Why don’t we step out of line
Let’s just have a good time
Forget about the yo do’s
And open the doors
This time
You should take me away
To a new place
Where we just might
Keep an eye on the sky
This time
We’ll be crossing the lines
Take you somewhere new
Let’s do it
This time
This time
We keep on hitting the road
No excuses, No rules
We steal the show from the moon
And don’t you say no
We stop at nothing at all
Take a chance now, right now
‘Cause now I’m losing control
I’m ready to go
This time
You should take me away
To a new place
Where we just might
Keep an eye on the sky
This time
We’ll be crossing the lines
Take you somewhere new
Let’s do it
This time
This time
Doorless.
Last night I declared to anyone within earshot that it was time for me to take the doors off the Jeep. I always look forward to this moment because it means that it’s warm in this neck of the woods, and that doesn’t happen a lot. Luckily Earl was the only person within earshot. I told him to put on his pants and a sweatshirt because we were going to drive to the thriving city with the doors off.
It was a chilly night but off we went and it was a lovely experience. I’m happy that we were smart enough to put on hoodies or something of a similar nature but it’s such an awesome experience to see the road whizz by right beneath your feet.
I’ve co-opted a spot in the garage so I don’t have to put the doors on when it rains. I’m looking forward to exploring the sunshine over the next couple of days.
Three in 30.
Today is the first of June. Folks around me will hear me burst out in song in random intervals today. I will be singing, “June is bustin’ out all over, all over the meadows and the hills.” Then I’ll hum a bit because I don’t remember the lyrics at this point, and then the words will be back with “Because it’s June. June June June. JuUUST becAUse it’s June, June, JUNE!” I never appeared in the musical “Carousel” but we sang songs from it a lot back in the day.
With the arrival of a new month I have decided to embark on a “3 for 30 days” challenge. I am trying three things for the next 30 days to see if it improves or detracts from my current lifestyle.
1. I’ve completely given up Facebook for the next 30 days. It has been removed from my mobile devices. I would modify the network at home to block access to Facebook.com but since I’m not the only one that lives here that wouldn’t be fair to my spouse or Jamie.
2. I’ve moved my exercise beyond pedestrian activities for the next 30 days. I am writing this after having just completed a 76 minute bike ride. In tandem with this I am giving up diet potions and elixirs that promise I will shed weight without doing anything. They’re all lies.
3. I am going to do something in my blog on a daily basis. Even if it’s a picture of a particularly adorable cat.
30 days challenges are always fun for me. This is my first time going for the triple on a 30 day challenge but I’m feeling particularly optimistic this time around.
