A work in the park

Nick was fast asleep when I awoke.  I knew he’d been up late on his phone, so I took pity and got dressed in the bathroom to cut down on noise.  Then I grabbed my work stuff and rode out in search of a good spot for programming. I almost left the room carrying a hotel key from the previous town, but spotted the difference at the last minute.

There was one coffee shop in town but it was closed on Sundays.  Arr!  I found a McDonald’s instead and bought a few of their sausage biscuit things.  They were terrible, but filling, and also came with a huge cup of ice water which I sipped all day.

In the late morning I got a text from Nick:  “I guess it was my turn for a pecan pie incident.”  Turns out the menudo had given him nasty indigestion and he’d been stuck in the bathroom for part of the night.  Ouch!

I worked in a park area for something like 5 hours, slowly figuring out how to implement “cut,” “copy,” and “paste” on my vessel-viewing user interface element.

After reaching a checkpoint in my code I chatted with Nick’s mom about his college application status.  He had a few things to do still.  Perhaps there would be time today, or farther ahead on the road.

On the way out of the park I discovered another flat tire, so I sat down and changed it there.  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be getting any of these flats if I had the usual “Marathon Mondial” touring tires, but running on 100psi street tires for a tour was a worthy experiment and I was glad to be doing it anyway.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a store and bought more water and some chocolate, then went to the Mexican place from yesterday and got a chimichanga and a salad.

Back at the hotel Nick had the laptop open and was working on his college essays.  I shared my food with him, then encouraged him to order a pizza so we could wrap up the slices and take them along tomorrow.  It would be 58 miles of the same featureless terrain as yesterday, and I wasn’t sure we would find more food.

A pizza arrived, and after chomping it for a while we wrapped the remaining slices up.

Nick went out on a walk.  He discovered a tank sitting in a field across the road from the hotel and took a bunch of selfies inside it, which was highly amusing.

By the time he got back I was tucked into bed.