I didn’t know it at the time, but Trippin’ is such a good title for this segment because every week is always such a trip, fortunately, or not, in so many ways.

Health Challenges

Covid came and went in our house, yet again, and once again, thankfully, it left the sick recovered and me and Russ untouched.

Computer Issues

Computer issues remain. On advice, I bought a second hand replacement, went with Lenovo because the lack of support for the manufacturer defect in my MacBook Pro left me unexcited about giving them more high end dollars, especially for a new model year laptop. I don’t like to buy new model year cars either. It’s not just that I’m feeling the sting of a design idea that wasn’t durable, high end dollars are also in short supply.

The Lenovo hasn’t solved the problem. The price was really good. but It was wiped, and it wasn’t evident that the computer needed a new battery. Even with replacement batteries, the replacement will fit inside a reasonable price for the machine, but the batteries are on a slow boat from China and I expect to still be using the loaner for at least 6 weeks.

The loaner had issues too. My tech guy waved his magic re-install and made that go away, but I’m sure every reader knows how Dead in the Water it feels to be in deadline mode and waiting on one laptop problem after another to resolve. I have better access to my files now and will be putting pictures in posts again.

We’re slowly but surely moving back into a place where we’re ready to take off should the project fund, considering all of the above, that feels like a big achievement. I’m thankful that I haven’t logged the hours we’ve put in up to this point. There have been personal rewards in getting out there with a goal. I’m going to say that it has been worth it no matter what happens, but it might be harder to stick to that outlook if I had logged our time and resources spent. I suspect it would be overwhelming to know.

I don’t expect to deal with many of the kinds of equipment failures and challenges we’ve had, especially recently, once started. We’ll have worked out the problems in out personal equipment and the project equipment is actually designed to be used the way we plan to use it.

The Rides

There’s been glorious fall color these past two weeks, but not as much photography as we will make sure to get when the project is running for realz. Saturday we had everything charged, but forgot the go bag with it all inside. We were late getting out and didn’t go back for it. We won’t

Halloween always seems to be a day when I get a “best ride of the season” kind of a ride in. I can remember way back, some years I know it was Halloween when I had that ride because I barely got back in time to hand out candy. This Halloween didn’t disappoint, the color was on fire. I expected rain to have knocked out a lot more foliage than it had. I didn’t take a lot of pictures. The one downer was more rain than I expected. I cut the ride shorter than standard.

One thing there has been a lot of the season is suspended leaves. Fall leaves hanging on a spider web used to be rarity. I remember the first time I got a shot like that with my camera,I was in Japan, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just looking. I was in a deciduous forest and the leaf was a Maple. There as nothing to differential it from a Georgia forest in the photo.

Now with the Joro invasion and their extra strong web silk, these kinds of shots are easy to find. It wasn’t the shot I was going for, but I got a great one of my granddaughter’s face when she realized why the leaf was suspended in front of her! Strands of web will be there for days or weeks and accumulate a string of leaves instead of the odd and fleeting singleton. Hope you enjoy the pictures, they will get better as we go along.

Have a Glorious Day and we’ll see you on the trail!