It looks like I will be able to get a reasonable amount of exercise here with very little riding on highways. The Des Plains river trail runs for 31 miles through various Lake county forest preserves. It’s also much nicer to ride than the bike trail I found last week that runs farther east, requiring less riding on highways to get to and having been designed as a trail as opposed to a converted rail line. Having things like hills and curves sure beats riding in a straight line for 10 miles then turning around and doing it again. I never thought I would look forward to small elevation changes but around here it’s hard to find real hills to climb. Generally the highest thing I can see around me is one of the many water towers that dot the landscape.

I just love technology. I have my cell phone tethered to my old laptop as a modem by bluetooth. All I have to do is tell my computer to dial and it seizes control of my phone to get me a network connection. As long as my phone is somewhere in this booth I should be able to get a connection. All this without getting the actual phone as a modem service either. The Samsung A900 can be used with the regular internet on your phone service from sprint thanks to a perfectly timed tip from my brother.

Here is a flickr gallery of HDR shots of a plane graveyard out in Mojave.

I have been meaning to write up some of my experiences and thoughts from my drive out to Wisconsin. In all it wound up being just over 2400 miles from my place in Santa Cruz to the faire here in Kenosha, WI and I did it in 6 days total. The vast majority of those miles were in the last 4 days where I averaged 500ish miles per day.
Day 1: Santa Cruz, CA to Sutter Creek, CA
The drive out to my bosses house should have taken about 2.5 hours according to google maps but between traffic and me not making good enough notes about the directions it took nearly 5 hours. Not much of note aside from finding that there is a castle on the biggest hill in the town of Ione. I tried to take a picture of it but I was driving at the time and the light was fading so it did not come out. The castle is part of a youth correctional facility according to the kids of my boss.
Day 2: Sutter Creek, CA to Davis, CA
I decided to go visit my friend Angel in Davis before heading out on the road fro parts unknown. We went for a walk around town and explored their arboretum and some of the UC campus there. It is a nice campus and I liked how everything was setup for bikes on campus. I got pictures of a couple of uninteresting statues and a modern building who’s function I have forgotten. We visited the soil science lab where she works and played in the playground on the way back to her place. We had dinner at the Bistro 33, it was good but probably only really worth going for drinks and munchies though.
Day 3: Davis, CA to Toole, UT
This was about 600 miles and I was on the road for 11 hours total including stops. There was not much to see past Donner lake although there was a nifty new building at one of the truck inspections facilities in Nevada that I would have liked to take a closer look at. It’s also interesting how just at the CA/NV state line the highway suddenly gets much better and stayed in great condition all the way through the state. In Toole the motel I stayed at was right next to a flying J truck stop and had the only non fast food place that was open at that time of night. Eating there was a bit of and experience in it’s own right. THe first thing I noticed was that the plastic cups that they use for water and drinks there are the size of a large or extra large drink at a fast food place, and they offer free refills. I ordered some combo meal thing for $10 that had a meal and an appetizer. I soon found out why truckers are often so fat. The appetizer was enough to fill me up and the actual meal was huge, fortunately my room had a microwave so it was breakfast too.
Day 4: Toole, UT to Big Springs, NE
Only 9.5 hours on the road this time. Not much to note but again I stayed in a motel near a truck stop. The big surprise here was again in the restaurant where I found an ashtray on my table. I had totally forgotten that people still smoked in restaurants, it was somewhat of a challenge to find something on the menu that did not involve bacon, gravy or being fried.
Day 5: Big Springs, NE to Davinport, OH
This was the 4th of July and I came out to my car in the morning to find that one of my tires was completely flat. Fortunately being right next to a truck stop meant that there were service guys working 24/7 and they fixed lots of tires for trucks so they were able to fix mine at a decent rate. The landscape of Ohio was far more interesting than Nebraska but thats not saying all that much. I did manage to see a few fireworks from towns that bordered the 80 as I was driving by at ~80mph. I wound up eating at a Flying J again and one again found that there was tons of food and friendly service. My room sucked though, it was the most expensive of all of them and was the smallest. The water from the tap was nearly undrinkable it had so much chlorine in it.
Day 6: Davinport, OH to Kenosha, WI
I didn’t take notes this day and by then everything was running together anyways. Until I was nearly in Chicago I had not strayed out of sight from Highway 80. One of these days I’m going to take the train down to check out the sites there. Got to the faire site and started working on the booth. We cleaned lots and painted for the first 2 days. Now that I have been here for 2 weeks I have a relatively comfortable living space set up and a workable internet connection.

I finally have what appears to be a stable internet connection again. It’s been only 2 weeks and I have felt serious withdrawal from it. I hope to get my pictures and whatnot posted early next week. I doubt that I will have any time to do that this weekend. The help that I hired for the booth here is probably not going to be able to work this weekend so it’s going to be crazy for me.
Now to get back to polishing all the pewter flasks and tankards before opening tomorrow morning.

I made it to the faire site today after some 2400 miles. I have pictures and more to say, but posting from my cell phone is tedious. I expect that monday I will have the time to sort out abetter connection.

It has been a crazy 4 or 5 days for me but I’m all packed for my 2 month trip. This stuff always seems to take twice as long as one would expect. I’m sure there is stuff I’m forgetting but I’ll have to deal with it as it comes up.
I have many more things I would like to say about this whole process/adventure/whatever, but neither the time nor focus to do so right now. More updates once I get settled in.

~2400 miles to go

As an early birthday present from my parents I finally got myself a new digital camera today.
I have gone to the complete opposite side of the camera spectrum with this new one. I went from a Sony DSC-700 that I bought in April of 1999 (Old enough so that the only links Google was providing were companies selling batteries for it and the one to digicamhistory.com) to a Nikon coolpix s200. This new camera weighs a bit more than the battery of my old one but not much. It is also a small fraction of the volume of my old camera. For allot of years my cell phone was bigger than it is.
I should have lots of interesting things to see in the next couple of months and I hope to have lots of good pictures to go along with it.

I should be packing but the Internet is just so distracting.
A few photos of objects that normally produce flame but these have been edited to have water splashes instead.

I was just offered and accepted the job of managing the Singletree booth at the Bristol renaissance fair.
This is both exciting and scary for many reasons.

I will be spending the summer out in the mid west as opposed to a beach side town in California
I will be 2200ish miles from everyone I know
I will be finally be getting farther east than the southwest on this continent. I have been to Europe ~6 times, Alaska and Hawaii 2x each but the family trips never went that far east.
I will be (hopefully) making lots of money. Singletree has a good product line and I’m getting a good commission.
I will need to start my journey east in the next couple of days.

My plan for the summer had been to enjoy the fact that I’m a student and get the whole summer off by playing lots of disc golf and riding my bike. Generally avoiding responsibility and goofing off. Hedonism and Vice being the guiding principles I was going for. But I suppose there will be other summers for that still. It will be years still before I finish my engineering degree.

Still this is something I have wanted to do for a while. I have been doing fair for quite a while now and it will be interesting to see it from the perspective of a merchant.

Yikes, so much to do now! Planing and packing. Planing and packing.