Vacation Week 2023
10/09/23 07:34
It’s our first day at the lake here in Lake George. Why is this font so small? Did you see that beautiful Heron on the dock this morning just before sunrise? I swear to God it stopped by just to say hello. It was looking here and there, craning its neck right and left, preening its feathers, and probably keeping an eye out for an early morning meal. If the windows in this damn place were a little clearer and had fewer screens in between me, my binoculars, and this beautiful specimen on the dock, I might have gotten a good picture to share with the missus and the Ev man.
It’s our second year here at Sandy Bay, and we’re staying at the same place. While it’s fun to stay in different places each year, we also like returning to places we’ve enjoyed. This is one of those places. Maybe it’s because we’re right on the shore with the lake literally steps away. Sandy Bay is a popular destination for boaters during the summer months, and things start to slow down after this weekend (Labor Day weekend) when cooler temperatures mean fewer boaters here. Did I mention that there is no public access to the pristine waters of Sandy Bay other than by boat? For those lucky enough to have a boat on Lake George, a limited number of buoys are available daily to tether to. It’s first come, first serve.
Weather-wise, it’s supposed to be a warm week here on the lake. With any luck, it will be less hot and humid here on the lake if that is what the forecast calls for. When I say hot, I’m talking about mid-eighties. I’m not sure what they are calling for in terms of humidity. I’m also not sure it matters since we can take a dip in the lake if things go sideways weather-wise. I’m a little disappointed that the owners of this joint didn’t leave us with a 5-gallon jug of spring water for the dispenser in the kitchen. We found everything else in great shape, so that’s good. I’ll pop down to Walmart today to see if I can’t pick up a 5-gallon container of Poland Springs water. We prefer that to the Primo water that we found here last year, which I think is a purified version of some local tap water. Here’s hoping that these jugs of water are interchangeable when it comes to the dispenser sitting in our kitchen.
I brought my bike on vacation last year but didn’t get on it even once, so I didn’t bother bringing it this year. It seemed less burdensome somehow, and I didn’t miss worrying about the damn thing swaying around wildly on the back of the car with every turn or bump in the road. One less thing to worry about is always a good thing. What’s up with the lack of a screen in the bathroom window here at the camp? The missus is not happy. And where is my coffee cup, if you don’t mind me asking? You say you packed it in the towels so it wouldn’t break? We only brought 10,000 towels, so which one did you tuck it into? Help me out here, sweetness. My morning coffee has come and gone, and still, no coffee cup.
I don’t know why, but the missus has a hair across her tuckus when it comes to the Walmart in Queensbury. She won’t go into the store for whatever reason. I guess that means on my own when it comes to going in for the Poland Springs water. The Ev man is probably uninterested in going into the store for maybe unrelated reasons that I’ll not go into here. God help them if there is something they want in Walmart. Not that I feel the need to go out of my way to have them join me in the store, but I’ll also not reward them by going into the store with their shopping lists. That’s not the way it works. The funny thing is, the missus is just fine with our Walmart back home. That’s what I don’t get. They’re all cut from the same cloth if you will. If you’ve seen one, you know what they all look like. Just get over your damn selves. There, I said it.
Monday-Labor Day 2023
My God. It’s barely after 7 in the morning, and the first three or four boats have already arrived here in Sandy Bay. The fear of not having a buoy to tie up to in one of Lake George’s most popular boating and swimming destinations looms large in the minds of these early arrivals. If today is anything like yesterday, every buoy will be taken, and most will be here for the entire day. It’s almost a sun-up-to-sun-down kind of thing for these hardcore Sandy Bayers. I said to the missus yesterday, where do these people go to the bathroom? I know some of the larger boats have toilets, but that may well explain why you occasionally run into warm spots when swimming in the bay. As long as that is the only thing I run into, I’m good.
The first boat on the scene here in Sandy Bay was a large pontoon boat with a sole occupant. Was she securing a spot for a larger group expected later in the morning? I’ll keep an eye on the pontoon boat during the day to see if that theory holds any water. See how I did that? It’s also of interest that the pontoon boat tied up to a buoy that secures another boat that, in our experience, always ties up to that same buoy. I watched as the “other” boat arrived shortly after the pontoon boat arrived, and they looked incredulous that some other boat beat them to their favorite buoy. If you know anything about the regimens of retirees, and this is my take on the two older folks who lost their buoy this morning to the pontoon boat, they don’t deal with change very well. Despite the fact that every other buoy in the bay, maybe some 30 buoys in total, was available to tie up to, the retirees tied up to a buoy right next to the pontoon boat with the sole occupant. Who does that?
I think it’s also true that a few of these boats are part and parcel of a larger group, or social circle if you will, who come together as a collective here in Sandy Bay to spend time together during the summer months. I’m guessing that most do not have homes on the lake, and they keep their boats at local marinas or use one or more of many launch sites on the lake to put their boats in every time they want to go out on the lake. Don’t get me wrong, these are beautiful boats we’re talking about. These are not your run-of-the-mill runarounds with a 25-horsepower Mercury outboard hanging perilously off the transom. I’d be happy to call any one or more of them my own. I have no boat, so I’d take any one or more of these boats in the shake of a lamb’s tail. Does that make any sense? Retirees aside, this bay on whose shores we share at least for the upcoming week, is just the kind of place you want to take your kids for the day. Temperatures are going to be in the upper 80s today, so yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.
I like the fact that the buoys in the bay are just far enough offshore to ensure the privacy of the homeowners on the lake. There are no “stay off my lawn” signs, per se, but you don’t see people straying all that far from their tethered buoys and onto or near enough to the shore such that anyone would issue a warning or sorts. There is a sumptuous and elongated stretch of wooded shoreline along the southernmost shore where parents can wade in with their toddlers or play pirates with their older children if and when anyone gets antsy. I see a surprising number of boat owners who have their dogs on board. How does that work, exactly? I saw one chap wading in waist-deep water yesterday while towing his dog, who was standing on a raft behind him. It’s also interesting to watch the traffic of boats throughout the day that enter the buoyed section of the bay looking for a spot only to drive off disappointed that every buoy has been taken. Yes, it’s true. The early bird gets the worm. Your momma was right.
If I had to guess, I’d say that there are probably 30-40 buoys in the bay that people can secure. It’s first come-first served. There were a couple of Lake George police boats around yesterday, but they didn’t seem to be bothering anyone. I suppose they could have asked to see a registration or two or maybe cite someone for having too many souls on board their crafts. I’m pretty sure they weren’t looking for boats that had been reported stolen or maybe responding to reports of drunk drivers. I also didn’t catch wind of any illicit marijuana smoke, and that would not have gone unnoticed sitting as we are practically a stone’s throw away from the nearest buoy. Yes, I said a “stones’ throw away. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have the local constabulary in the area to ward off evils or evil-doers should they decide that it might be more fun to get into trouble than not. The demographic hereabouts is decidedly Caucasian and maybe middle to upper income, so it might be grist for the mill where the topic of racial and income equity and equality come up in the conversation. I don’t know that that’s either here or there, but let’s just call it “contextual.”
Wednesday-Labor Day week
Oops, missed writing in my journal yesterday. It might have something to do with the fact that I messed up my back. Well, maybe not my back, but something internal. Every time I cough or sneeze, it’s just excruciating. It’s bowl-over excruciating, truth be told. What the hell could it be? Is it the beginning of the end? Of course, I can’t really cough or sneeze, so I’m doing my best to avoid either or both of those things. I’m on vacation with the family, so I’m also trying not to let it interfere with stuff. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, Johnny. You can do this.
News reports say Jill Biden has Covid, and the old demented geezer of her husband, Bumbles, is walking around the White House wearing his mask. No sooner did that come out in the news, and no sooner did that lesbian Haitian spokesperson of theirs step up to the podium in the White House Press Room to announce it all, than did we see Bumbles arrive in person wearing no mask whatsoever to award some guy a Medal of Honor or something. The hypocrisy of these freaks is just astounding. Who the fuck do they think they’re kidding? I’m not even sure that there was one person in the audience at the ceremony wearing a mask. Someone didn’t get the memo.
We’re a year out from the 2024 presidential elections, and I’m thinking that the Democrats think that if they roll out a new variant now and scare the bejesus out of people that they can keep just enough people home on Election Day that will allow them to steal the election. Or, if they can gin up their absentee ballot machine to enroll the dead and the millions of other illegal voters, then there is no limit to what they can steal. Just think of all the damage that they can continue to do if they walk away from the elections with a so-called mandate. It won’t be a mandate, of course, and the American people know it, so the polarization in our country will continue unabated.
Here’s hoping that Bumbles and his stooges in the White House can only do so much given the independence of the states under the 10th amendment to our Constitution. I guess if I feel bad for anyone, I feel bad for the children who will be forced by leftist school administrators to wear masks while in school and, God forbid, take jabs and boosters that will have them dying at record rates. You know that not a day goes by when we hear a story about this or that young person just keeling over and dying. We all know it’s because of the MRNA vaccines, which they’ve known all along to kill young people. Maybe that’s been the goal all along. How many IQ points will our children give up this time around because Bumbles and his Democrat party want to “win” another election? It’s all about the power. It’s always been about the power.
What are all these stories we’re hearing about Chinese saboteurs and their activities around some of our secure military and other facilities? They say that this is precisely what happened in the days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I guess Biden’s Department of Justice is more concerned about White Supremacists and moms and dads who voice their opinions at school meetings than they are about Chinese infiltrators. You could even say that they are enabling the infiltrators if you consider the fact that they are walking into our country across our southern border at the invitation of Bumbles Biden. If you consider the fact that the Chinese have paid the Bidens millions of dollars over the years, you might say that they are getting their money’s worth. That would make the Bumbles and his entire family wholly-owned assets of the Chinese Communist Party. Have we become a satellite of Beijing without so much as a shot fired? It certainly would appear that way.
I don’t know who these so-called Proud Boys are, but they have been in the news lately and in a not-so-good way. One by one, they seem to be getting outlandish prison sentences for their activities related to January 6th. I think they were charged with being insurrectionists or something along those lines, which I guess is what Biden’s Department of Justice is using to justify the long prison sentences. Just so you know, I think the January 6th business was a complete scam and set up to bring down Trump and render him unqualified to run for a second four-year term. Remember those stupid Congressional hearings the Democrats held? It was a damn kangaroo court to give themselves an air of righteousness. We still don’t have the numbers of FBI agents and other stooges from other Intelligence agencies who fomented the madness of the crowd that day. They were all in on it.
I think the people who harmed police officers or did other egregious things that day should pay a price. The people who just went in and out of the people’s house, which may be trespassing, shouldn’t spend even a day behind bars. What about Terrio, who I think is Hispanic or black and was charged and tried as a White Supremacist? Did I mention that he wasn’t even in town that fateful day? They sentenced him to 22 years in prison yesterday. Are we supposed to believe that he actually tried to overthrow the government? It’s nonsense, of course. His crime was supporting Donald J. Trump for president. His sentence was a warning to anyone who had or has any ideas about supporting Trump or Trump-like characters going forward. The Bidenistas put their political opposition in prison, pure and simple. And yes, it’s banana-republic-level stuff. That’s how these Marxists roll. When they tell you who they are, listen up.
Thursday - Labor Day week
Mutha’s. These Marxists are trying to take Trump off the ballot so people can’t vote for him in the primary. Who the hell do they think they are? When is this bullshit going to stop? When will someone step up and tell the Marxists that their wet dreams of holding power in perpetuity in our great country are a wet dream? Nobody is going to tell us who we can and can’t vote for. I guess someone in Colorado has filed a lawsuit, so we’ll see where it goes. The Supreme Court will have to step in at some point and restore some semblance of sanity to a world gone mad. It’s Orange Man Bad on steroids.
I love it! Mayor Adams of New York City is warning that the city of New York, better known as the shitty of New York, is losing its luster under the weight of tens of thousands of illegal aliens flooding every neighborhood in the once great city. Texas and other border states are shipping their illegal aliens about as fast as they come across our borders to sanctuary cities like New York. Adams is on the stump telling anyone who will listen that every neighborhood is under assault and no neighborhood is safe from the influx. Good is what I say. Fuck them all. I hope they become an inescapable sewer as the sanctuary cities that they are. Keep shipping the feral dogs in until every curb is a pillow and every sidewalk is an open toilet. Biden is fulfilling his promise to open our borders, and every last one of you 81 million fools who voted for this demented fuck are getting what you voted for. God help the legal residents of NYC.
I’d like to think that Trump, once in office for his second four-year term, will assemble the largest and most robust deportation force ever conceived in American history. Things may be so bad by the time he gets in office that mayors like Mayor Adams will be singing Trump’s praises like there’s no tomorrow if he can deport every last piece of scum allowed into our country by Biden and his minions. You’d think a president of any political stripe wouldn’t have to start his term with such a back-breaking workload but thankfully, Trump is and may be the only president that is up to the task of doing what it is that needs to be done. Maybe that is why the Democrats are doing everything they can to keep the man off the ballot. They don’t want to fix the problem. Hell, it’s just one more marginalized constituency as far as the Democrats are concerned. Were it not for the marginalized communities and their endless demands to feed at the trough of big government, there would be no Democrat Party.
Who is that fool in Biden’s Administration whose name I can never remember and who is now threatening the North Koreans for working with the Russians to defeat the Nazis in Ukraine? I think of him as the “soy boy.” He’s just another pussy in Biden’s inner circle who is hiding behind a pussified military and sounding like a fool on the world stage. Does he even realize that North Korea is a member of the BRICS organization of some 40+ nations, including China and Russia? The soy boy isn’t just threatening the Hermit Kingdom, he’s leveling a threat against a rather ominous coalition of countries that might not look kindly on the rabid ramblings of one of Biden’s mouthpieces. Whatever happened to Biden, who ran for president in 2020, promising to restore our reputation on the world stage as a force for the better? You know, the leader of the free world bullshit. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re pariahs on the world stage, threatening nations and imposing financial sanctions on countries whose politics and actions we disagree with. We are hardly a force for good. That has to change in 2024.
It’s been a hot week here at the camp on Lake George. Temperatures have been in the mid-eighties almost every day. I read that some school or maybe school system in Massachusetts is closing today because of the heat. You can’t make this shit up. If anything, the school systems should be able to provide students with a reprieve from the heat, assuming they have air conditioning. Keep the damn students in school where they belong for chrissakes. Maybe this is one of those school systems where they’ve now imposed mask mandates, and that, I suppose, could be suffocating, to say the least, if you have to wear a mask in that environment. I guess I’ve just never heard of things closing down because of the heat. It’s almost like they’re looking for reasons to close the schools. Or are they looking to continue the assault on childhood education that they began during the COVID craze in 2020? Just keep dumbing them down until they’re functionally incapable of contributing to society in any meaningful way.
Is it me, or does every photo of every criminal we see in the media these days appear to be, and I’ll just say it, a person of unknown origin and without a legal immigration status? I’m not talking about petty crimes here. These are the worst crimes you can imagine. These may be petty crimes by the standards of the countries from which they came, like Columbia or other South American shitholes, but they are clearly not petty crimes by our standards. I’d like to think that some statistician or other could make a good and convincing case for deporting these criminals, be they Americans or not, due to their inability to assimilate into American society. They clearly have no regard for the letter of the law, and they are essentially lawless by their very actions. I would extend this grouping to include the people storming our commercial enterprises in smash-and-grab crimes and every last ingrate who thinks that carjacking is a victimless crime. We’ve all seen the videos on YouTube. We know who they are, and we know where they live. Let’s round em up and move em out.
I’ve been in the water here in Sandy Bay every day since we arrived last Saturday. I like to go in after the last of the boats leave their buoys at the end of the day, although I sometimes can’t wait that long. It’s the first time ever that I’ve done this so faithfully. I guess it just feels good. I’m not sure it has much to do with the heat, but I might be less interested if the weather were cooler. I can walk out quite a distance before I’m even waist-deep in water, and the bay’s sandy bottom feels lovely beneath my feet. What is with all of the dogs on the boats this season? It’s looking more and more like a doggy park than a human sanctuary, but maybe it’s just me. I like dogs, so I’m happy to see them enjoying themselves in the water. I suppose some bay dwellers leave their dogs at home, which seems senseless when you can bring them to your favorite watering hole. And God only knows Sandy Bay, in all its glory, is big enough for everyone and their dogs to come and partake of everything Sandy Bay has to offer.
Truth be told, I don’t really swim here in the bay, even though I know how to swim. I’m much happier just wallowing in the warm water and pushing myself from spot to spot with my feet. The very act of properly swimming is much too demanding for my taste. If I weren’t in the water for whatever reason, I might be just as happy to dangle my feet in the water off the end of the dock. I’m not so sure that other people here in the bay, when and where they do congregate day after day, don’t disagree with me. They, like me, seem to be just fine with diving or flopping around in the water without the requisite arm strokes seen in more seasoned swimmers, of which there seem to be very few. I suppose some folks hereabouts don’t even know how to swim. The good news is that you don’t need to know how to swim when the water is waist-deep until you’re well out into the bay. The baby Jesus knew what he was doing when he created this place of unparalleled beauty and reprise.
Well, it was a splotchy week for journal stuff this past week. We got sidetracked by losing electricity on Thursday night and never got our electricity back until Saturday morning. It came back partially on Friday night, but only certain outlets worked, which I'll never understand. Nancy and I were awakened early Saturday morning, around 1 a.m., when trucks from the power company rolled through the neighborhood. That was a good sign. Everything worked when we awakened around 7 a.m. or so. That was good because we had to be out of the rental by 10 a.m. We were filling up our toilet tank with lake water so we could flush the toilet, for chrissakes, so that wasn't much fun. Did I mention that we had to throw out all the food in the refrigerator? Who wants to take a chance of coming down with some sort of bacterial something by eating food that's gone unrefrigerated for too long?
I told the missus that I thought it might be nice had the rental owner, knowing what we might have gone through with the electricity out and the rates we were paying to stay in his place for the week, that he might have offered us to stay an extra day. As far as we knew, it was the end of the season with no renters coming in after us, so I thought it might be magnanimous of him to make the offer. Not only did we not get any offers, but we never heard a peep from the guy. It's not like he wasn't aware of it. The entire area was down, including the area nearby where the owner operates a marina. I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. As someone who rents their vacation properties to folks like us, would it be too much to ask that they have a generator backup in the event of a power outage? We left the place cleaner than we found it, so you'd never guess we had an issue were you to walk in as either the owner or subsequent renters. That's just how we roll.
The Ev man's childhood friend, Noah, joined us midweek and stayed with us for the rest of the week. The guys probably drank a little too much and partied a little too much, but none of it spilled over in a way that gave us cause to complain. It's been a good ten years since we've had Noah join us at the lake. Noah can be an effective Ev-whisperer when we're otherwise not on the same wavelength as the Ev man. You'll also not find a more even-keeled lad than Noah. I don't think I've ever heard him even raise his voice in a fit of anything. We rented a boat out of Yankee Boat Rentals in Bolton Landing, which was fun. We got in a morning of fishing on Friday when fair winds sent us drifting down the eastern side of the lake. We all caught fish, some bigger than others, some more than others, but it was all good. I released one of my fish only to have a gull swoop down and snag it off the surface of the water just as it was getting its bearings. It was an easy catch and release, so I was surprised to see it not just swim away.
If you discount the thunderstorms at week's end, the entire week was pretty warm and summer-like, with temperatures in the eighties every day. I might have preferred cooler temperatures, but that's just me. Why do you think I like to go up there in September? The damn leaves had started to turn, and you could see entire mountainsides of foliage changing before your eyes. The water temperature in Sandy Bay was just right, and all four of us spent as much time swimming in Sandy Bay as we possibly could. Noah was off snorkeling while the missus and I did more wallowing than anything else. The Ev man went in here and there and seemed to enjoy himself, which was good. Before I forget, Canadian nightcrawlers are not nightcrawlers. Next time round, we're getting real night crawlers. The big, fat, juicy ones that the fish in Lake George prefer. We should have known better than to buy our bait in Walmart.
It’s our second year here at Sandy Bay, and we’re staying at the same place. While it’s fun to stay in different places each year, we also like returning to places we’ve enjoyed. This is one of those places. Maybe it’s because we’re right on the shore with the lake literally steps away. Sandy Bay is a popular destination for boaters during the summer months, and things start to slow down after this weekend (Labor Day weekend) when cooler temperatures mean fewer boaters here. Did I mention that there is no public access to the pristine waters of Sandy Bay other than by boat? For those lucky enough to have a boat on Lake George, a limited number of buoys are available daily to tether to. It’s first come, first serve.
Weather-wise, it’s supposed to be a warm week here on the lake. With any luck, it will be less hot and humid here on the lake if that is what the forecast calls for. When I say hot, I’m talking about mid-eighties. I’m not sure what they are calling for in terms of humidity. I’m also not sure it matters since we can take a dip in the lake if things go sideways weather-wise. I’m a little disappointed that the owners of this joint didn’t leave us with a 5-gallon jug of spring water for the dispenser in the kitchen. We found everything else in great shape, so that’s good. I’ll pop down to Walmart today to see if I can’t pick up a 5-gallon container of Poland Springs water. We prefer that to the Primo water that we found here last year, which I think is a purified version of some local tap water. Here’s hoping that these jugs of water are interchangeable when it comes to the dispenser sitting in our kitchen.
I brought my bike on vacation last year but didn’t get on it even once, so I didn’t bother bringing it this year. It seemed less burdensome somehow, and I didn’t miss worrying about the damn thing swaying around wildly on the back of the car with every turn or bump in the road. One less thing to worry about is always a good thing. What’s up with the lack of a screen in the bathroom window here at the camp? The missus is not happy. And where is my coffee cup, if you don’t mind me asking? You say you packed it in the towels so it wouldn’t break? We only brought 10,000 towels, so which one did you tuck it into? Help me out here, sweetness. My morning coffee has come and gone, and still, no coffee cup.
I don’t know why, but the missus has a hair across her tuckus when it comes to the Walmart in Queensbury. She won’t go into the store for whatever reason. I guess that means on my own when it comes to going in for the Poland Springs water. The Ev man is probably uninterested in going into the store for maybe unrelated reasons that I’ll not go into here. God help them if there is something they want in Walmart. Not that I feel the need to go out of my way to have them join me in the store, but I’ll also not reward them by going into the store with their shopping lists. That’s not the way it works. The funny thing is, the missus is just fine with our Walmart back home. That’s what I don’t get. They’re all cut from the same cloth if you will. If you’ve seen one, you know what they all look like. Just get over your damn selves. There, I said it.
Monday-Labor Day 2023
My God. It’s barely after 7 in the morning, and the first three or four boats have already arrived here in Sandy Bay. The fear of not having a buoy to tie up to in one of Lake George’s most popular boating and swimming destinations looms large in the minds of these early arrivals. If today is anything like yesterday, every buoy will be taken, and most will be here for the entire day. It’s almost a sun-up-to-sun-down kind of thing for these hardcore Sandy Bayers. I said to the missus yesterday, where do these people go to the bathroom? I know some of the larger boats have toilets, but that may well explain why you occasionally run into warm spots when swimming in the bay. As long as that is the only thing I run into, I’m good.
The first boat on the scene here in Sandy Bay was a large pontoon boat with a sole occupant. Was she securing a spot for a larger group expected later in the morning? I’ll keep an eye on the pontoon boat during the day to see if that theory holds any water. See how I did that? It’s also of interest that the pontoon boat tied up to a buoy that secures another boat that, in our experience, always ties up to that same buoy. I watched as the “other” boat arrived shortly after the pontoon boat arrived, and they looked incredulous that some other boat beat them to their favorite buoy. If you know anything about the regimens of retirees, and this is my take on the two older folks who lost their buoy this morning to the pontoon boat, they don’t deal with change very well. Despite the fact that every other buoy in the bay, maybe some 30 buoys in total, was available to tie up to, the retirees tied up to a buoy right next to the pontoon boat with the sole occupant. Who does that?
I think it’s also true that a few of these boats are part and parcel of a larger group, or social circle if you will, who come together as a collective here in Sandy Bay to spend time together during the summer months. I’m guessing that most do not have homes on the lake, and they keep their boats at local marinas or use one or more of many launch sites on the lake to put their boats in every time they want to go out on the lake. Don’t get me wrong, these are beautiful boats we’re talking about. These are not your run-of-the-mill runarounds with a 25-horsepower Mercury outboard hanging perilously off the transom. I’d be happy to call any one or more of them my own. I have no boat, so I’d take any one or more of these boats in the shake of a lamb’s tail. Does that make any sense? Retirees aside, this bay on whose shores we share at least for the upcoming week, is just the kind of place you want to take your kids for the day. Temperatures are going to be in the upper 80s today, so yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.
I like the fact that the buoys in the bay are just far enough offshore to ensure the privacy of the homeowners on the lake. There are no “stay off my lawn” signs, per se, but you don’t see people straying all that far from their tethered buoys and onto or near enough to the shore such that anyone would issue a warning or sorts. There is a sumptuous and elongated stretch of wooded shoreline along the southernmost shore where parents can wade in with their toddlers or play pirates with their older children if and when anyone gets antsy. I see a surprising number of boat owners who have their dogs on board. How does that work, exactly? I saw one chap wading in waist-deep water yesterday while towing his dog, who was standing on a raft behind him. It’s also interesting to watch the traffic of boats throughout the day that enter the buoyed section of the bay looking for a spot only to drive off disappointed that every buoy has been taken. Yes, it’s true. The early bird gets the worm. Your momma was right.
If I had to guess, I’d say that there are probably 30-40 buoys in the bay that people can secure. It’s first come-first served. There were a couple of Lake George police boats around yesterday, but they didn’t seem to be bothering anyone. I suppose they could have asked to see a registration or two or maybe cite someone for having too many souls on board their crafts. I’m pretty sure they weren’t looking for boats that had been reported stolen or maybe responding to reports of drunk drivers. I also didn’t catch wind of any illicit marijuana smoke, and that would not have gone unnoticed sitting as we are practically a stone’s throw away from the nearest buoy. Yes, I said a “stones’ throw away. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have the local constabulary in the area to ward off evils or evil-doers should they decide that it might be more fun to get into trouble than not. The demographic hereabouts is decidedly Caucasian and maybe middle to upper income, so it might be grist for the mill where the topic of racial and income equity and equality come up in the conversation. I don’t know that that’s either here or there, but let’s just call it “contextual.”
Wednesday-Labor Day week
Oops, missed writing in my journal yesterday. It might have something to do with the fact that I messed up my back. Well, maybe not my back, but something internal. Every time I cough or sneeze, it’s just excruciating. It’s bowl-over excruciating, truth be told. What the hell could it be? Is it the beginning of the end? Of course, I can’t really cough or sneeze, so I’m doing my best to avoid either or both of those things. I’m on vacation with the family, so I’m also trying not to let it interfere with stuff. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, Johnny. You can do this.
News reports say Jill Biden has Covid, and the old demented geezer of her husband, Bumbles, is walking around the White House wearing his mask. No sooner did that come out in the news, and no sooner did that lesbian Haitian spokesperson of theirs step up to the podium in the White House Press Room to announce it all, than did we see Bumbles arrive in person wearing no mask whatsoever to award some guy a Medal of Honor or something. The hypocrisy of these freaks is just astounding. Who the fuck do they think they’re kidding? I’m not even sure that there was one person in the audience at the ceremony wearing a mask. Someone didn’t get the memo.
We’re a year out from the 2024 presidential elections, and I’m thinking that the Democrats think that if they roll out a new variant now and scare the bejesus out of people that they can keep just enough people home on Election Day that will allow them to steal the election. Or, if they can gin up their absentee ballot machine to enroll the dead and the millions of other illegal voters, then there is no limit to what they can steal. Just think of all the damage that they can continue to do if they walk away from the elections with a so-called mandate. It won’t be a mandate, of course, and the American people know it, so the polarization in our country will continue unabated.
Here’s hoping that Bumbles and his stooges in the White House can only do so much given the independence of the states under the 10th amendment to our Constitution. I guess if I feel bad for anyone, I feel bad for the children who will be forced by leftist school administrators to wear masks while in school and, God forbid, take jabs and boosters that will have them dying at record rates. You know that not a day goes by when we hear a story about this or that young person just keeling over and dying. We all know it’s because of the MRNA vaccines, which they’ve known all along to kill young people. Maybe that’s been the goal all along. How many IQ points will our children give up this time around because Bumbles and his Democrat party want to “win” another election? It’s all about the power. It’s always been about the power.
What are all these stories we’re hearing about Chinese saboteurs and their activities around some of our secure military and other facilities? They say that this is precisely what happened in the days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I guess Biden’s Department of Justice is more concerned about White Supremacists and moms and dads who voice their opinions at school meetings than they are about Chinese infiltrators. You could even say that they are enabling the infiltrators if you consider the fact that they are walking into our country across our southern border at the invitation of Bumbles Biden. If you consider the fact that the Chinese have paid the Bidens millions of dollars over the years, you might say that they are getting their money’s worth. That would make the Bumbles and his entire family wholly-owned assets of the Chinese Communist Party. Have we become a satellite of Beijing without so much as a shot fired? It certainly would appear that way.
I don’t know who these so-called Proud Boys are, but they have been in the news lately and in a not-so-good way. One by one, they seem to be getting outlandish prison sentences for their activities related to January 6th. I think they were charged with being insurrectionists or something along those lines, which I guess is what Biden’s Department of Justice is using to justify the long prison sentences. Just so you know, I think the January 6th business was a complete scam and set up to bring down Trump and render him unqualified to run for a second four-year term. Remember those stupid Congressional hearings the Democrats held? It was a damn kangaroo court to give themselves an air of righteousness. We still don’t have the numbers of FBI agents and other stooges from other Intelligence agencies who fomented the madness of the crowd that day. They were all in on it.
I think the people who harmed police officers or did other egregious things that day should pay a price. The people who just went in and out of the people’s house, which may be trespassing, shouldn’t spend even a day behind bars. What about Terrio, who I think is Hispanic or black and was charged and tried as a White Supremacist? Did I mention that he wasn’t even in town that fateful day? They sentenced him to 22 years in prison yesterday. Are we supposed to believe that he actually tried to overthrow the government? It’s nonsense, of course. His crime was supporting Donald J. Trump for president. His sentence was a warning to anyone who had or has any ideas about supporting Trump or Trump-like characters going forward. The Bidenistas put their political opposition in prison, pure and simple. And yes, it’s banana-republic-level stuff. That’s how these Marxists roll. When they tell you who they are, listen up.
Thursday - Labor Day week
Mutha’s. These Marxists are trying to take Trump off the ballot so people can’t vote for him in the primary. Who the hell do they think they are? When is this bullshit going to stop? When will someone step up and tell the Marxists that their wet dreams of holding power in perpetuity in our great country are a wet dream? Nobody is going to tell us who we can and can’t vote for. I guess someone in Colorado has filed a lawsuit, so we’ll see where it goes. The Supreme Court will have to step in at some point and restore some semblance of sanity to a world gone mad. It’s Orange Man Bad on steroids.
I love it! Mayor Adams of New York City is warning that the city of New York, better known as the shitty of New York, is losing its luster under the weight of tens of thousands of illegal aliens flooding every neighborhood in the once great city. Texas and other border states are shipping their illegal aliens about as fast as they come across our borders to sanctuary cities like New York. Adams is on the stump telling anyone who will listen that every neighborhood is under assault and no neighborhood is safe from the influx. Good is what I say. Fuck them all. I hope they become an inescapable sewer as the sanctuary cities that they are. Keep shipping the feral dogs in until every curb is a pillow and every sidewalk is an open toilet. Biden is fulfilling his promise to open our borders, and every last one of you 81 million fools who voted for this demented fuck are getting what you voted for. God help the legal residents of NYC.
I’d like to think that Trump, once in office for his second four-year term, will assemble the largest and most robust deportation force ever conceived in American history. Things may be so bad by the time he gets in office that mayors like Mayor Adams will be singing Trump’s praises like there’s no tomorrow if he can deport every last piece of scum allowed into our country by Biden and his minions. You’d think a president of any political stripe wouldn’t have to start his term with such a back-breaking workload but thankfully, Trump is and may be the only president that is up to the task of doing what it is that needs to be done. Maybe that is why the Democrats are doing everything they can to keep the man off the ballot. They don’t want to fix the problem. Hell, it’s just one more marginalized constituency as far as the Democrats are concerned. Were it not for the marginalized communities and their endless demands to feed at the trough of big government, there would be no Democrat Party.
Who is that fool in Biden’s Administration whose name I can never remember and who is now threatening the North Koreans for working with the Russians to defeat the Nazis in Ukraine? I think of him as the “soy boy.” He’s just another pussy in Biden’s inner circle who is hiding behind a pussified military and sounding like a fool on the world stage. Does he even realize that North Korea is a member of the BRICS organization of some 40+ nations, including China and Russia? The soy boy isn’t just threatening the Hermit Kingdom, he’s leveling a threat against a rather ominous coalition of countries that might not look kindly on the rabid ramblings of one of Biden’s mouthpieces. Whatever happened to Biden, who ran for president in 2020, promising to restore our reputation on the world stage as a force for the better? You know, the leader of the free world bullshit. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re pariahs on the world stage, threatening nations and imposing financial sanctions on countries whose politics and actions we disagree with. We are hardly a force for good. That has to change in 2024.
It’s been a hot week here at the camp on Lake George. Temperatures have been in the mid-eighties almost every day. I read that some school or maybe school system in Massachusetts is closing today because of the heat. You can’t make this shit up. If anything, the school systems should be able to provide students with a reprieve from the heat, assuming they have air conditioning. Keep the damn students in school where they belong for chrissakes. Maybe this is one of those school systems where they’ve now imposed mask mandates, and that, I suppose, could be suffocating, to say the least, if you have to wear a mask in that environment. I guess I’ve just never heard of things closing down because of the heat. It’s almost like they’re looking for reasons to close the schools. Or are they looking to continue the assault on childhood education that they began during the COVID craze in 2020? Just keep dumbing them down until they’re functionally incapable of contributing to society in any meaningful way.
Is it me, or does every photo of every criminal we see in the media these days appear to be, and I’ll just say it, a person of unknown origin and without a legal immigration status? I’m not talking about petty crimes here. These are the worst crimes you can imagine. These may be petty crimes by the standards of the countries from which they came, like Columbia or other South American shitholes, but they are clearly not petty crimes by our standards. I’d like to think that some statistician or other could make a good and convincing case for deporting these criminals, be they Americans or not, due to their inability to assimilate into American society. They clearly have no regard for the letter of the law, and they are essentially lawless by their very actions. I would extend this grouping to include the people storming our commercial enterprises in smash-and-grab crimes and every last ingrate who thinks that carjacking is a victimless crime. We’ve all seen the videos on YouTube. We know who they are, and we know where they live. Let’s round em up and move em out.
I’ve been in the water here in Sandy Bay every day since we arrived last Saturday. I like to go in after the last of the boats leave their buoys at the end of the day, although I sometimes can’t wait that long. It’s the first time ever that I’ve done this so faithfully. I guess it just feels good. I’m not sure it has much to do with the heat, but I might be less interested if the weather were cooler. I can walk out quite a distance before I’m even waist-deep in water, and the bay’s sandy bottom feels lovely beneath my feet. What is with all of the dogs on the boats this season? It’s looking more and more like a doggy park than a human sanctuary, but maybe it’s just me. I like dogs, so I’m happy to see them enjoying themselves in the water. I suppose some bay dwellers leave their dogs at home, which seems senseless when you can bring them to your favorite watering hole. And God only knows Sandy Bay, in all its glory, is big enough for everyone and their dogs to come and partake of everything Sandy Bay has to offer.
Truth be told, I don’t really swim here in the bay, even though I know how to swim. I’m much happier just wallowing in the warm water and pushing myself from spot to spot with my feet. The very act of properly swimming is much too demanding for my taste. If I weren’t in the water for whatever reason, I might be just as happy to dangle my feet in the water off the end of the dock. I’m not so sure that other people here in the bay, when and where they do congregate day after day, don’t disagree with me. They, like me, seem to be just fine with diving or flopping around in the water without the requisite arm strokes seen in more seasoned swimmers, of which there seem to be very few. I suppose some folks hereabouts don’t even know how to swim. The good news is that you don’t need to know how to swim when the water is waist-deep until you’re well out into the bay. The baby Jesus knew what he was doing when he created this place of unparalleled beauty and reprise.
Well, it was a splotchy week for journal stuff this past week. We got sidetracked by losing electricity on Thursday night and never got our electricity back until Saturday morning. It came back partially on Friday night, but only certain outlets worked, which I'll never understand. Nancy and I were awakened early Saturday morning, around 1 a.m., when trucks from the power company rolled through the neighborhood. That was a good sign. Everything worked when we awakened around 7 a.m. or so. That was good because we had to be out of the rental by 10 a.m. We were filling up our toilet tank with lake water so we could flush the toilet, for chrissakes, so that wasn't much fun. Did I mention that we had to throw out all the food in the refrigerator? Who wants to take a chance of coming down with some sort of bacterial something by eating food that's gone unrefrigerated for too long?
I told the missus that I thought it might be nice had the rental owner, knowing what we might have gone through with the electricity out and the rates we were paying to stay in his place for the week, that he might have offered us to stay an extra day. As far as we knew, it was the end of the season with no renters coming in after us, so I thought it might be magnanimous of him to make the offer. Not only did we not get any offers, but we never heard a peep from the guy. It's not like he wasn't aware of it. The entire area was down, including the area nearby where the owner operates a marina. I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. As someone who rents their vacation properties to folks like us, would it be too much to ask that they have a generator backup in the event of a power outage? We left the place cleaner than we found it, so you'd never guess we had an issue were you to walk in as either the owner or subsequent renters. That's just how we roll.
The Ev man's childhood friend, Noah, joined us midweek and stayed with us for the rest of the week. The guys probably drank a little too much and partied a little too much, but none of it spilled over in a way that gave us cause to complain. It's been a good ten years since we've had Noah join us at the lake. Noah can be an effective Ev-whisperer when we're otherwise not on the same wavelength as the Ev man. You'll also not find a more even-keeled lad than Noah. I don't think I've ever heard him even raise his voice in a fit of anything. We rented a boat out of Yankee Boat Rentals in Bolton Landing, which was fun. We got in a morning of fishing on Friday when fair winds sent us drifting down the eastern side of the lake. We all caught fish, some bigger than others, some more than others, but it was all good. I released one of my fish only to have a gull swoop down and snag it off the surface of the water just as it was getting its bearings. It was an easy catch and release, so I was surprised to see it not just swim away.
If you discount the thunderstorms at week's end, the entire week was pretty warm and summer-like, with temperatures in the eighties every day. I might have preferred cooler temperatures, but that's just me. Why do you think I like to go up there in September? The damn leaves had started to turn, and you could see entire mountainsides of foliage changing before your eyes. The water temperature in Sandy Bay was just right, and all four of us spent as much time swimming in Sandy Bay as we possibly could. Noah was off snorkeling while the missus and I did more wallowing than anything else. The Ev man went in here and there and seemed to enjoy himself, which was good. Before I forget, Canadian nightcrawlers are not nightcrawlers. Next time round, we're getting real night crawlers. The big, fat, juicy ones that the fish in Lake George prefer. We should have known better than to buy our bait in Walmart.