Burlington, Day 2

Yet another day of clouds and wind that keeps all boats rocking at the dock. The map shows us in a little peninsula surrounded by wildfire smoke. If needed, we can run the AC Fan (which filters incoming air) with closed windows but not needed so far.
We enjoyed a long walk on a paved trail that follows the shore north along the lake plus another walk into town to check out the alternative boat ramp, which won't work well for us. There is a notice at the preferred ramp that the USCG will close it this weekend for an exercise, so we have to plan around that.

Next to the marina stands the steel framing of an old dismantled 1860 power plant that was converted to run on wood chips rather than coal in the 1960's (this is Vermont, after all). When it was replaced by a modern plant the steel frame was retained, according to the cheerful enthusiastic murals, for reasons that make absolutely no sense.
Advantages:
Maintaining 1860 steel framing is expensive to taxpayers and provides jobs for the homeless, who have no other job skills other than complex grinding ops while balancing on beams five stories above ground
Prevents that land from being used for anything that would be productive to or make money for Burlington, VT
Beside a lovely RR siding with RR oil tank cars as far as the eye can see...it's way more expensive than pipelines; which are much safer and cheaper and result in lower consumer energy costs. NO ONE here would want THAT!

Disadvantages:
NONE! It's a WIN-WIN for everyone who Matters!
When Warren Buffet (my favorite 'Olig-awk') spent trillions buying up and building RR oil cars because he foresaw that, we said 'maybe we should get on that bandwagon'...too bad we didn't.
End energy rant.Read more