A work in the park
November 15, 2020 Filed under Uncategorized
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.
I wonder which hotel key manufacturer copied off the other?
The Blue Hole is a swimming hole.
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.
Lovely grass.
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.
Looks like yet another flat tire...
Getting out the gear to fix a flat.
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.
Not a fun headline.
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.
Pizza prepared for travel.
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.