(no subject)

Next time I get a sleeper, I'm packing my own food. There's a saying about not worrying about your next meal, but I'm realizing in that ordeal that rich people very much do fuss about their next meal, double checking their reservations well in advance and being most upset if there is any problem with their reservation. I managed to get one take out vegan chili lunch but otherwise just ate exactly five microwave cheese pizzas with my own money. For some harebrained reason, without warning, meal times got shortened to two hours, which threw me the first night, then the second night, I was thrown by not realizing I had to have my order in before dinner service started or I'd be snowed out. Any time literally virtually every other person but me is implicitly aware of these things, I'm always kind of amazed. I counted five sleeper passengers including myself dining out of pocket in the cafe car. One was Dutch but not Amish (who Wikipedia is telling me are Swiss Actually). He could be forgiven for not realizing how uncivilized we are.

Bike ride was beautiful and dark and foggy. Attempts to slim down baggage partially slimmed down baggage, but many of the things I left I should not have, so I can't call it a success. The Light and Motion headlight is bulky and awkward with the cable to the battery pack, but the little headlight I brought was near useless. I hadn't appreciated the actual difference before, probably because I only would up using the little light in the city with streetlights. Changed the trailer hitch and didn't bring the old one which was a mistake. Thank goodness for compression straps with which to lash. The Light and Motion light is bright and runs for a long time. I kind of thought I'd just have to change batteries often, but not even.

For some reason, I didn't leave myself any coffee beans. I'm miffed. I've never flubbed that before. I have some emergency coffee grounds that are horrible and I cannot remember how I came in to possession of them, some emergency instant coffee, and some emergency caffeine pills, so I'll survive. Mostly I'm just surprised at myself failing to do a good thing I'd been pretty solid on.

Coyotes were out.

Coming in to the station in CA, a skinny white kid with dreads was getting help fixing his ticket. Various people were sitting around outsite blazing up. One middle age hippy lady was kicking a hacky sack around by herself and practising tricks. A foreign kid who mentioned Algeria on a phone call was riding his skateboard around while waiting for the train. California is extremely not New York, though in the Albany NY station quite randomly once I saw a chubby well dressed black man meet a white man, open a case, plug in an amp to the wall, pull out a bass, and let go some killer riffs for a few minutes before packing it all back up and walking out together, so there's that.

Even the Chicago Amtrak station was a breath of fresh not having your asshole in a knot air.

One of the trailer wheels flatted pretty early on. Was half considering ordering the Schawlbe Marathons in 12" for the thing earlier but decided not to spend the money. For some reason, my reaction was just "oh" instead of even a single thought of trying to fix the flat. I probably could have fit everything in a full set of panniers except no rear rack eyelets. The bike got roll-on service which totally worked, so the bike bag got panniers and the trailer which pretty well filled it up. Four panniers would skip two flat prone tires, an annoying hitch, and the bulk of even the small trailer. I also at (maybe exactly) one point remember it being cold here. It is not cold here. I rode in shorts, t-shirt, and wool pull-over. My luggage contains no fewer than two sweaters.

Managed to log a good block of hours on the train, which is probably really what killed any joy of being on the trail, but still way behind. Much to do in general.

(no subject)

Immediately after I left previously, the network cam setup failed. That was not the first time it failed virtually immediately, with a record of the Yi Home camera itself failed within an hour. So I got to find out why. The access point is plugged in to a timer that reboots it daily. The timer was working. The USB charger plugging the to the timer had a bad connection. Bumping the charger caused the access point to flicker on. To avoid the micro-USB (which never connect well for me) from dropping out, I'd Sugru'd the cord in place and verified operation over some time but I hadn't counted on the wall plug being a weak link too. Nothing fucking works right.

But the two Yi cameras were sitting there with their little red light blinking which I guess counts for something. A lot of energy in general goes to adding redundancy.

I put together a low-bilge dewatering system with a diaphram pump, toy industrial 12 volt timer, battery, and solar panel, but didn't have much time to test it much beyond that it was coming on and doing some charging so not surprised that that didn't work. That's partially redundancy and partially trying to keep any water off of wood. Shore power is not necessarily reliable.

Caffeine levels are high. It's going to hurt coming down to one 3 cup (small but not tiny) mocha pot a day.

In this immediate little stretch of uncovered dock, three boats are now gone, including Nicholas' beautiful Alberg 30. Nicholas was a cool dude too so sad to see that. Lives in the mountain with wife from Mexico and kids, does odd jobs and plays gigs as a musician, has sailed all over. Another was some short run small race boat that some people who didn't know how to sail bought. Then the Ranger 27 tweaker had is gone but his Pearson is still there, now with a sail cover on it. He liked the Ranger better because it's faster so I wonder what happened there. The other remaining other boat is a bulbous Hunter 27 with an outboard by design and no side deck that came in about the time I was last out, owned by an older couple.