blog of Intrepid Wanderer

This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you might find here; graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets, proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching, valuable information on living off the land... if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try slashdot instead.

You can consider my Del.icio.us links an extension to my blog, as are my LifeTango goals and my other to-do items. My to-buy list is also public, but only for sharing any useful ideas that might be there; I'm not requesting charity, neither do I offer it.

You can find me easily in google searches, as jcomeau, jcomeau_ictx, or jcomeauictx. There are lots of other jcomeaus, but AFAIK I'm the only jcomeau_ictx out there so far.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments, reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post. If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me, jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject' line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the spambasket unread.

This RSS feed may or may not work. Haven't fiddled with it in forever.

2023-08-26-0312Z

Just for the record: my home-brew bicycle trailer, which I've had downtown for about 2 weeks, locked to one of many bicycle hitching posts, disappeared today while I was out making the rounds. I'm guessing the police cut the lock and took it to their holding pen again, as they did almost 14 years ago when I first got here.

I don't think I'll go fetch it this time, though. It was pretty junky anyway. They can keep it.

That's my current state of mind. It may change. [comment]

2023-08-04-0631Z

Went to Novato to get some work done at Panera. But they closed at 8 instead of 9, which is what Google showed as their hours. So, I packed my stuff and rode back along the SMART path to Grant and Redwood for the 101 north. Another guy showed up later with a bike, and I was a little worried that there might be some contention for the bike rack, even though I was there first. But as it turned out, there was no space at all in the bike rack, so we were both out of luck.

I had brought nothing in the way of warm clothing, and this being the north bay area, the fog had already cooled everything to an unpleasant chill. So I said to the other bicyclist in broken Spanish that I was going to attempt the bike path to Petaluma. He was going to Santa Rosa and would take his chances with the next bus.

Of course, I "knew" the bike path was still under reconstruction from the mudslides that happened last winter while I was in Mexico. But, mirabile dictu, though the road was still closed, they had reopened the bike path, daylight hours only. No matter, I took it. Partway down the road, my headlamp/taillamp battery died. I started walking it. The closest thing to a real barrier was a row of closely spaced traffic cones just before the bike path proper which leads up to the landfill overpass. But that was easy to walk or bike through. When I got up to the overpass, I dug around in my pouch and got out my backup battery pack, and a USB-C cord, which I had just started carrying a couple of days ago. Plugged it into my headlamp and I was good to go on the road again.

When I got to San Antonio road, there was another glitch in the matrix: a sign saying the bike path was closed, pointing to a detour to the right. But I couldn't, in the dark, see any detour to the right. So I continued on the path I knew, straight ahead. There was a barrier to climb over at the entrance to the path going under the freeway, and barriers to go around getting onto Petaluma Boulevard South at the other end, but otherwise the path seemed perfectly usable. Just another example of how Caltrans hates bicyclists, I guess.

Anyway, I got home about two hours after I started. Not bad at all. [comment]

jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

2023-08-26-0312Z

2023-08-04-0631Z