Archive for July 3rd, 2023
Pickle faced
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is in a bit of a mood at the moment. Nothing special is going on, just in the midst waging war with that most intractable and stubborn of all the enemies I’ve ever encountered – myself. Bah.
Forgive any dark outlook or prognostication this week, I’m in a mood.
The good news is that no matter what torrential and self referential hellscape might manifest twixt the ears, life always needs tending to. It was time once again to give the Mobile Oppression Platform a drink of the fuel it craves, and I got lucky when the tracks across the street from the gas station I frequent were suddenly occupied by a passing freight train operated by the Wheeling & Lake Erie outfit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The M.O.P., which is how I refer to my Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, gets an absolutely science fiction level of gas mileage – just as promised by the manufacturer. Topping off the tank gives me an unbelievable 560 miles of range. According to the analytics in the dashboard, which I’ve confirmed by real world reckoning, I’m getting about 39 mpg. This is working out for me, as the car is a necessity in these parts.
I’ve also finally figured out how to get Google Maps to offer me driving route options which use local rather than highway streets to get where I want or need to go.
In the case of the need for a constitutional ‘short walk’ here in Pittsburgh recently, that route involved me driving through the central business district and then over to the waterfront trail found on the north side of the Allegheny River, nearby the former Heinz Factory, from HQ in the South Hills community of Dormont.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Heinz has been converted over to housing, and there’s several attractive but quite expensive (by Pittsburgh standards) domiciles available for lease. I think they also do Condos in there, but who knows. The last thing I want to do in my dotage is live in the center of a city again. HQ is about 6 or 7 miles south of the Heinz Factory Lofts, and it’s a 2 story house, in a suburb with my very own driveway. I’ve got deer regularly walking around in the yard, and there’s a family of ground hogs living under the yard. We’ve got Chipmunks too, and every kind of bird you can think of is regularly spotted – including eagles. Just the other night, something huge skulked through the yard, but all I saw was its shadow. Might have been a Squonk.
As mentioned, a section of the ‘Great Allegheny Passage’ trail runs through this section of Pittsburgh, which also offers up a safe parking spot for that great gas mileage car of mine, so I ended up wandering around for bit and burning up a bit of shoe leather while wandering in this section.
Back tomorrow.
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