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In between all this political activity I have also been doing sports things. I waterskied a few times recently. Election day, when the water was 56 and the air was 65 and sunny. And twice the previous week, once when the water was 57.5 and the air was 75 and sunny, and once when the water was 57.4 and the air was 60. I wear a 3mm wetsuit. My neighbor does not have a wetsuit, and so he just jumps in the cold water. I think he is nuts! We did discuss how, if he were to have a heart attack due to the shock of jumping into cold water, I would have trouble pulling him back in the boat. He's younger than me, but not by that much. My neighbor took a video of me skiing Tuesday, but it's in Apple proprietary HVEC mode, and I probably won't ever get around to making it into a portable format suitable for putting on the Internet.

And in the morning of the second day that I was in Maine, I woke up quite a bit before I needed to for getting to the canvass headquarters, so I drove the car to a fast charger on the outskirts of town, plugged it in, pulled my bike out of the back, and went for a 6 mile bike ride on some rural roads. So I have now bicycled in all the New England states except Connecticut.

This one's a doozy! I am in Maine knocking on doors for Troy Jackson. I've never canvassed before. I drove up last night, to Lewiston ME where it's a two-fer because the house race is also competitive, so we are supporting Matt Dunlap as well as Troy Jackson. I will also be here tomorrow. Tuesday I need to be back in Massachusetts because I am working the polls again so I'll drive home in the evening. The group I'm with, People Powered Maine, has targeted some specific unaffiliated voters (people who are not members of any party), with some additional criteria I don't recall that they used in their selection for us to canvas, at this point primarily to make sure that they actually do go vote.

I got to the meeting place at 9:30, where they were just bringing materials in from the car so I helped unload. People trickled in until about 10, and then there was a sort of vague training. There were about 15 volunteers. We went around the room saying who we were, how much experience we had with canvassing, and some other icebreaking questions. Some people have been doing this for decades; I was the only completely raw newbie. There was a little role-playing of what happens when you knock on the door for various scenarios and how the conversation might go. Then they handed out "turf", which was a list of specific houses with specific people to knock on doors about.

They have an app for that. (Strangely, this app is called miniVAN, and I actually had a little confusion about how "no, I drive a compact SUV" for a moment. I got straightened out quickly.) The app does not suck; it has a little map of your area with all the houses in little bubbles, and you click on a bubble and it tells you about the people you're supposed to talk to, and when you click on the people it has a little dialog about whether you could reach them or if they were supportive or if they refused to answer questions or if they had already voted and other such. We ended up with maybe one house in ten in an area, and each area had 20-30 houses to canvas. In the morning I went with somebody else as I was quite nervous about the whole thing. This was useful because I got to experience "most of the time they're just not home", and not be too distraught about that, but we also got to have some conversations and the guy I was with guided the conversations for the first couple of them but then let me be the one knocking on the door and starting the spiel. In the afternoon I decided I could handle it on my own. I actually had the easiest canvas possible: there were 20 houses, and 15 of them were not home, three of them had already voted for our guys, and two of them had already voted but declined to tell me for whom.

A couple of the not-homes might have actually been there, but there was a big "no soliciting" sign, and I decided not to solicit. One of the signs said "no religion, no politics, no salespeople". Technically we are not soliciting, because were not selling anything, but I'm sure that the conversation would not go well if I opened with that statement.

I would drive to a neighborhood, walk around and knock on a few doors, drive to the next neighborhood and repeat. I had a brief moment of panic when I had parked in a cul-de-sac where there were 3 doors on my list, and after the third one, walking back to the car, I discovered my handbag was not on my shoulder. When somebody's not home, we have a card that we leave with our talking points, which I had on a clipboard that I was carrying, and I was thinking "I must have put my handbag down while I was unclipping a card", but it wasn't on any of the front porches where I had left cards. Turned out, I had left it in the car. Fortunately, nobody figured this out and so they didn't get in and drive off.

It's surprisingly exhausting. There's a lot of emotional lead up to pushing the doorbell. Because you don't know what's going to happen when it opens. Sometimes it's a ring doorbell, and somebody at the training suggested that we should just start talking to the ring, because it's possible that it will be recorded, and it's possible that it could be listened to in real time by a person who might consider opening the door.

At some of the doors there was literature left by "the other side", and literature left by people stumping for state-level offices, some of whom I figured out were on "our side". A couple of people said things like "we're aware of all the issues, and we've been visited by a lot of other people." Sometimes you could tell which side they were coming down on, but mostly you couldn't.

In the morning, there was one older guy who was obviously an independent thinker, who railed on about how the current system is so broken and he has his own ideas about how to get rid of all the political parties because they are all poison (and he's right, the DNC is terrible and entrenched). He did plan to vote, but he wouldn't tell us who for. And I really just don't know. It seems to me like you should vote for "not Susan Collins" if you want things to be better, but he said "she's going to win". This was early on with the other canvasser, and so I was just following his lead and he was just kind of nodding and smiling at this guy; I wanted to say "she doesn't have to if people vote for Jackson". Maybe I should have. There was another guy who described himself as an aging hippie, and I was thinking that he was thus going to be on our side, but when we did hand of our literature he looked at it and said "oh these people" in a kind of dismissive way. I don't know. He complimented me on my pink hair.

All of the volunteers are imports from Massachusetts; quite a number of them from the Amherst area. I asked some of them if they knew Ken's sister, who had lived there for many years, but I guess Amherst is actually pretty big, and none of them had.

I don't know if I'm going to do this again. I'll go tomorrow because I said I would. But in future elections, will I go knock on doors in other states again?

It froze on Saturday night, 29F. One of my squash plants seemed to be thriving, so I put an ice chest upside down on top of the leafy bits and put a light blanket over the vine parts. It worked! The other two squash plants are now very dead, as opposed to simply kind of struggling. It's unlikely that either of these baby squashes will turn into something big enough to eat, but I figured I'd try to save them.

I also covered my tomato plants with a tarp. That did not work quite as well, because it was hard to get the tarp sealed, and it also didn't provide as much insulating capacity as an ice chest, so there are some frostbitten parts of the plant. I overpicked the previous day, many of the underripe tomatoes. But there are still some tomatoes that have some orange out there so perhaps we will manage to harvest them. I will not go to any trouble next time there is a frost warning; I will just be done with the garden.

Yesterday I did a crazy (for me) thing. I've met several of Jocelyn's friends as they have come over during the summer to do lake activities, and at one point they were talking about going to a rave after being at our house, and I expressed interest in "so what is that anyway", and so one of Jocelyn's friends invited me to a rave yesterday.

It was much tamer than I expected. It was very late. It started at 10 PM, but we didn't get there till 11:15 because "nobody goes that early", and they were right. There were only 10 other people there. By the time I left around 12:45 there were maybe 20-25. The whole thing was very late for me. It was in Cambridge, which is a 45 minute drive, and so I didn't get to bed until 2. The event ran until 4am! Yow.

The venue was this kind of seedy basement dance floor. It was dark, and there were little red and blue colored lights in the ceiling, but they were very low budget. A couple of them had the ability to somehow be tied to the beat of the music, but mostly they were just static. The DJ had this huge board with about 50 little knobs to adjust different feeds, and he actually had turntables onto which he put actual vinyl records. But then he didn't just play them. Instead he fiddled with them by picking up the needle and putting it down briefly, and then moving it. And he played with the speed of the turntable by holding his finger on it to slow it down or pushing on it to speed it up. Strangely, I could not tell what effect this was having on the music. Which was heavy bass beat with a bunch of different treble beats overlaid on it, both of which changed as the DJ fiddled his knobs.

It had the vibe of a 70s high school dance. People were grooving to the music in their own space. (Of course there weren't any slow dances. Kind of duh.) Some people were somewhat vibrant in their dancing (I like to think I'm such a person but maybe I just look like a dork). Some people danced like Trump, just vaguely swaying to the music. I saw a couple of guys with gray in their beards, so perhaps I wasn't the oldest person there, or even if I was, at least I was not twice as old as everybody else. (Maybe they were creepy old guys.) Some people were obviously on a date, because they were holding hands, and other people you couldn't tell if they were with anybody. Two people were there with poi, which is a circus thing with these balls on a string that you swing around in patterns (not the food). The balls were lit, so they made nice color streaks when they went quickly, and also you could see them at all. When I noticed them, I wiggled my dancing so I could see them better, and when they took a break I wiggled back to near Jocelyn's friend.

Since I hadn't any idea what really to expect, and how safe it would be for me and my stuff, I wore a light jacket that I didn't care if somebody stole (other than being cold walking back to the car), and street shoes that I didn't care if anybody stole (other than not wanting to walk outside in my dance sneakers), and leggings that had a little tiny pocket for a phone, a car key, and a tiny wallet that just had my ID, a credit card (not my main card), and $20. Nobody stole my stuff. Jocelyn's friend said that the space is actually very safe, and it seemed like that was correct. Nobody was smoking or obviously doing drugs. I smelled pot smoke on one person as they came in the door, but nobody was doing it there.

It cost $33, which is a little steep, but there was an early bird deal for about $20 if you sign up much earlier. I had a really good time. I haven't done that "vibe to the music" dancing in a while. Probably won't go back, because it's very late and kind of far.

On the way back to the car, walking through Central Square in Cambridge, there's a lot of ne'er-do-well types hanging out on the street. There were three women chatting with each other and one of them greeted me as I walked by and asked how I was, and I said "I'm great, I just went to my first rave", and they were excited about that and so we had a conversation about raves and doing things even though you are old. Probably I should have dug out my tiny wallet and given them some of my cash, because probably they were homeless. But I didn't think of that until after I got in the car. But the conversation with strangers with kind of also a high point.

...for both cherry tomatoes and bicycle miles. The tomatoes have surpassed the bicycle miles as of about a week ago (I didn't actually check then, I just had the idea to check today.) Today we stand at tomatoes 1842, bicycle 1738. This will happen for a while longer and then the tomatoes will quit and the bicycle miles, while reduced, will continue. Thinking that the tomatoes will win, possibly by a large margin.

Stood on the new bridge; our message was "fed up? Vote!"

Still haven't got around to contacting the 350 mass people.

Occasionally I worry about the collapse of civilization and "how will I eat". Not enough to be a full-blown prepper, or to learn to shoot a bow and arrow to take down the many deer, geese, and turkeys that traipse through our yard, but apparently enough to learn how to eat acorns.

I did some research on the Internet (there's a lot of other people doing this), and yesterday I gathered some acorns. It's apparently a mast year where the trees drop a billion more acorns than usual, which makes raking more difficult, but it sure did make it easy to gather several pounds of acorns.

All the websites start with "dry your acorns" or "crack your acorns". But I started with "wash your acorns". The aforementioned wildlife poop all over our yard, and while I tried to gather my acorns from a place that was not obviously completely covered in deer poop, I'm sure there was some. There was also a lot of leaves and dirt mixed in with the acorns, even though I tried to brush the leaves away.

I started with a 5 gallon bucket which I filled with water, and stirred so that the leaves floated to the top. A bunch of acorns also floated to the top. I had read about this: there's a bug which lays its eggs in the flower, and then as the acorn develops around the egg, the larvae hatch and eat the ready-made food! Leaving the acorn empty shell and thus floating. The larvae actually drill their way out, so there is also a small hole. One of the websites said "it's kind of like Alien". It took a few washings and dumpings to get most of the floating stuff out. But that left dirt in the bottom, which was more difficult because it was a similar density. I ran it through a colander, but some of the dirt pieces were too large. So there was an annoying handpicking stage of separating the acorns from the dirt. Then I put them in soapy water and agitated thoroughly with my hands before rinsing.

Now I have them in some trays, drying. The Internet is conflicted on how long I should dry them. Some people, who live in places like Arizona, just say "dry them in the sun". I live in New England, and it's late September, and there's not as much sun, and what there is, is not that warm. I would rather not put them in the oven, just for "native verisimilitude" (although I do plan to use a food processor in the end). So I think I will just leave them out for a few weeks and try cracking one periodically. I tried cracking one, and it was difficult to crack because the shell was springy, and even after cracking was hard to peel off. Then I tried a nibble, and it was pretty bitter. There's a whole process for that.

More blog posts to come in the future as this project advances!

Monday we had the tree removed that had dropped a limb near my head earlier this summer. I took some photos. I also took a video where they were actually dropping a piece, but that will be a lot more effort to deal with because it's 30 seconds, and the interesting part is five seconds, and probably it's too high resolution for just looking at on your screen randomly and so it will be too many megabytes. So, just stills today.

We told them we wanted to save the wood for fires, and they said they would cut it into "manageable pieces", but their idea of manageable is a little different than mine. It will be a challenge to chop these things up into small enough pieces that we can move them. Maybe our tractor will help with the moving. We do have a chainsaw, but not a huge one.

Early stages, they have only dropped a little bit of the leafy bits


Later, tree much shorter and more leafy bits on the ground


The good bits, some of those pieces are at least 3 feet across, possibly more. We will have firewood for a long time, assuming we manage to chop it up.

Remember that new-to-me spare recumbent bicycle I got last summer? I spent some time on it recently, and it is now rideable. It was kind of rideable before, but there were some issues with the gears which were fixed by taking the shifter apart and cleaning everything. I also greased everything that ought to move, and added reflectors etc. So I've been riding it! I put about 15 miles on it over the past couple of days, trying the gears out on various steep hills. With some trepidation I went down a long steep hill as well, and the brakes seemed to do the job. I don't have it hooked up to an odometer yet, so I'm keeping track so far by riding on routes I know the length of and writing it down. Unfortunately it's annoying to hook up the odometer wiring harness, so I can't really swap easily. It requires cutting and replacing cable ties, and wrapping the wiring around the forks etc. Not something you want to do every day. There are also some other things which I only have one of which are hard to swap.

I was excited to discover that there is an adapter gadget you can put in a wheel so that you can use Presta tube on a Schrader wheel, and I have ordered those, so I will be able to use my current tubes, and not be annoyed by Schrader. (Although, Schrader has recently gotten the news about having threaded valve stems and a little ring on the threads so that you can keep the tube from disappearing inside the tire when you try to fill it, so maybe it's not as terrible, as long as you make sure to get the right tubes. Meanwhile, I recently had a Presta tube that did not have a threaded valve stem and the little ring, and I was mightily upset about this! I mean, Presta keeps the air in a little better, so it's still superior, but the major reason I like it better is because of threaded stem.)

Not sure when I'm going to switch. My old bike is still rideable, though it has developed an annoying habit of jerking if I start in the middle front chain ring, because some of the teeth are worn, and if you start in a higher gear you have to push harder and there's more chance of slippage. So I have to remember to actually shift to the small chain ring whenever I stop, or starting is a crapshoot. Plus there is a ton of rust everywhere. I'm sad that I spent a bunch of money a year and a half ago revamping the brake system, and now I'm just going to junk the bike. But there's a lot of junk involved.

Currently I'm thinking that I will switch in the spring. That way any rust inducing winter riding will go on the old bike. I'd also like to have a slightly lower lowest gear. That will require changing the rear cluster. Maybe in the spring before switching I will take it to the bike shop and have them do a real tuneup and get me a new cluster.

I went to my primary care about my back a couple weeks ago, and he didn't have any ideas. He had me get x-rays so the spine center would have them when I go next week. He also recommended going to PT. I was like "but we don't know what to ask them to do" and he said "sometimes they have ideas". So I went to PT. She poked at me and had me do some things and naturally when I tried to demonstrate the problem it didn't happen. It didn't happen at the primary care either. I don't know if I'm doing something different when I'm trying to make it happen because I know it's going to hurt so my subconscious gets in there and refuses. Anyway, the PT gave me some random exercises to stretch the lower back and strengthen small muscles in the lower back. She also did some massage work, and did say that there was quite a lot of tightness in the area. So now I have some PT appointments, and I get to waste 20 minutes of my day on random exercises. As usual, many of them have relationship to yoga poses. And I had in fact noticed that it didn't happen as much if I'd gone to yoga recently. So maybe there's something to be said for all the stretching. We'll see what the spine center says. Maybe it really is not skeletal.