no eclipse yet but...
Apr. 7th, 2024 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujSo we are having our eclipse adventure.
It started out kind of a mess. I had a Turo car reserved for a year or so, and occasionally communicating with the host. In fact, my last communication with him was him wishing me a good flight yesterday morning. However, when I landed, I found he had canceled the reservation, while I was in flight and unable to do anything. Thus, I found out when I turned my phone back on after landing.
So I called Turo, and spoke to a customer support person, who said they would rebook me on some other car in the area, but they had to find one. Then there was some mishap with the phone and so I had to call back and of course I got a different representative, but they also were able to work on this, and this person didn't say "I'll call you back", but left me on hold while they worked, so that was better. Happily, they said that I would not have to pay any difference in price for the new booking. Which is good, because I'm sure the guy canceled because he was able to get many hundreds of dollars more, because he did not have eclipse surge pricing in place back when I originally reserved. Unfortunately, the car they got was a half-hour away, so we had to get a Lyft there, which of course we did pay for. Also, the car is a piece of junk. Apparently some fly-by-night used-car dealership called "Cash for Cars" figured out that they could put all of the cars they had for sale up on Turo for this weekend!
It is a 2014 Dodge Charger. I don't know how bad the gas mileage is; I'll find out when I fill it. The check engine light comes on periodically, because it runs very rough at low speeds, so as you accelerate away from a stoplight it tugs and gasps, and if it recovers within a few seconds, then it doesn't turn on the check engine light, but if it takes a while before it recovers then it does turn on the light for the remainder of the trip.
And then, on the way back from the grocery store after we finally arrived at the Air B&B (which is perfect) I was stopped by a cop. I saw the cop as I was driving by, but I was going 31 miles an hour, and I was pretty sure that the speed limit on the road was larger than 30, so I just tootled on by. But, then, there was blue lights in my mirror. Turns out that the little lamp over the license plate was burned out, so that was "probable cause" to stop. The fact that it was a muscle car probably made the cop very excited about getting to stop me. In fact as he was approaching the car he addressed me as Sir before he looked at my face, assuming that no way would a woman be driving this kind of car. I was very polite and I explained about the whole "it's a Turo" thing. Of course, it's a car dealership car, and so it doesn't really have a license plate. It has a temporary tag. But I explained about picking it up from "Joe's used cars", and stuff. I didn't go into the whole "we got screwed and this was a replacement" drama. Anyway, we had a nice chat about the eclipse and where I was staying and so forth and he elected not to give me a ticket. Happily, I believe we will not be driving at night again on this trip. I did text to the owner of this car about it, and he said "you could stop at an auto parts store and give me the receipt and I will reimburse you", but I'm really, just not.
Then, today was awesome. We started out with a trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park to see dinosaur tracks which are in the harder limestone riverbed, the river having eroded some softer rock to reveal them. They are not always visible; if the water is too high then you can't see them. We did have to wade, but not too deep, and we had brought waterproof sandals for the purpose. It was pretty darn cool.
Then after lunch (with the groceries purchased on the aforementioned trip with the interaction with the local constabulary) we headed to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, which is a wild animal park of the inverted zoo type where you drive around in the animals' pastures. We paid for "guided tour", which means we got to ride an open-air bus with a tour guide and 20 other tourists. It was totally awesome; they do the usual thing where they pretend to "not change animal behavior", but then they give you a little cupful of food to toss out of the bus for various animals which might be nearby, and some of the deer really know about this and they start running on the bus appears because they know it's treat time. Others of them care less, but we could still see various animals in the distance, and sometimes the fairly near. Our tour guide was really great. We know a lot in my family in general about science, and we are not shy, and so the questions that we ask our sometimes more complicated and technical than normal humans, and she nailed them all as far as I could tell. (Obviously she could of been making up the genus and species of things that I might not know, but I'll bet she was right.)
Then, because I hadn't really gotten exercise looking at dinosaur tracks, and especially sitting in a bus, Ken and I went back to Dinosaur Valley because they have hiking trails. Unfortunately the hike we planned, the trail was closed, but we did some other brisk walking around. And then dinner was Texas barbecue takeout.
Tomorrow, not looking all that great for the eclipse with the cloud cover, so there will be some stress, and there might be not seeing the eclipse, which would be sad. There might be some last-minute attempting to drive to space between clouds. And there will be some teeth gnashing about the fact that it looks like Vermont might have perfect weather, and so we could of like stayed closer to home... But at least we've done the thing "don't hang your entire trip on the eclipse; find other stuff to do" pretty well, considering we're in the backwoods of Texas.
There is also some chaos going on with Jocelyn; she was supposed to be here this evening, but she hasn't left Austin yet. So she's looking to arrive at 1 AM. Hopefully they will get in safely and without waking the rest of us.
I took pictures of various things today, and perhaps I will post them at a later time.
It started out kind of a mess. I had a Turo car reserved for a year or so, and occasionally communicating with the host. In fact, my last communication with him was him wishing me a good flight yesterday morning. However, when I landed, I found he had canceled the reservation, while I was in flight and unable to do anything. Thus, I found out when I turned my phone back on after landing.
So I called Turo, and spoke to a customer support person, who said they would rebook me on some other car in the area, but they had to find one. Then there was some mishap with the phone and so I had to call back and of course I got a different representative, but they also were able to work on this, and this person didn't say "I'll call you back", but left me on hold while they worked, so that was better. Happily, they said that I would not have to pay any difference in price for the new booking. Which is good, because I'm sure the guy canceled because he was able to get many hundreds of dollars more, because he did not have eclipse surge pricing in place back when I originally reserved. Unfortunately, the car they got was a half-hour away, so we had to get a Lyft there, which of course we did pay for. Also, the car is a piece of junk. Apparently some fly-by-night used-car dealership called "Cash for Cars" figured out that they could put all of the cars they had for sale up on Turo for this weekend!
It is a 2014 Dodge Charger. I don't know how bad the gas mileage is; I'll find out when I fill it. The check engine light comes on periodically, because it runs very rough at low speeds, so as you accelerate away from a stoplight it tugs and gasps, and if it recovers within a few seconds, then it doesn't turn on the check engine light, but if it takes a while before it recovers then it does turn on the light for the remainder of the trip.
And then, on the way back from the grocery store after we finally arrived at the Air B&B (which is perfect) I was stopped by a cop. I saw the cop as I was driving by, but I was going 31 miles an hour, and I was pretty sure that the speed limit on the road was larger than 30, so I just tootled on by. But, then, there was blue lights in my mirror. Turns out that the little lamp over the license plate was burned out, so that was "probable cause" to stop. The fact that it was a muscle car probably made the cop very excited about getting to stop me. In fact as he was approaching the car he addressed me as Sir before he looked at my face, assuming that no way would a woman be driving this kind of car. I was very polite and I explained about the whole "it's a Turo" thing. Of course, it's a car dealership car, and so it doesn't really have a license plate. It has a temporary tag. But I explained about picking it up from "Joe's used cars", and stuff. I didn't go into the whole "we got screwed and this was a replacement" drama. Anyway, we had a nice chat about the eclipse and where I was staying and so forth and he elected not to give me a ticket. Happily, I believe we will not be driving at night again on this trip. I did text to the owner of this car about it, and he said "you could stop at an auto parts store and give me the receipt and I will reimburse you", but I'm really, just not.
Then, today was awesome. We started out with a trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park to see dinosaur tracks which are in the harder limestone riverbed, the river having eroded some softer rock to reveal them. They are not always visible; if the water is too high then you can't see them. We did have to wade, but not too deep, and we had brought waterproof sandals for the purpose. It was pretty darn cool.
Then after lunch (with the groceries purchased on the aforementioned trip with the interaction with the local constabulary) we headed to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, which is a wild animal park of the inverted zoo type where you drive around in the animals' pastures. We paid for "guided tour", which means we got to ride an open-air bus with a tour guide and 20 other tourists. It was totally awesome; they do the usual thing where they pretend to "not change animal behavior", but then they give you a little cupful of food to toss out of the bus for various animals which might be nearby, and some of the deer really know about this and they start running on the bus appears because they know it's treat time. Others of them care less, but we could still see various animals in the distance, and sometimes the fairly near. Our tour guide was really great. We know a lot in my family in general about science, and we are not shy, and so the questions that we ask our sometimes more complicated and technical than normal humans, and she nailed them all as far as I could tell. (Obviously she could of been making up the genus and species of things that I might not know, but I'll bet she was right.)
Then, because I hadn't really gotten exercise looking at dinosaur tracks, and especially sitting in a bus, Ken and I went back to Dinosaur Valley because they have hiking trails. Unfortunately the hike we planned, the trail was closed, but we did some other brisk walking around. And then dinner was Texas barbecue takeout.
Tomorrow, not looking all that great for the eclipse with the cloud cover, so there will be some stress, and there might be not seeing the eclipse, which would be sad. There might be some last-minute attempting to drive to space between clouds. And there will be some teeth gnashing about the fact that it looks like Vermont might have perfect weather, and so we could of like stayed closer to home... But at least we've done the thing "don't hang your entire trip on the eclipse; find other stuff to do" pretty well, considering we're in the backwoods of Texas.
There is also some chaos going on with Jocelyn; she was supposed to be here this evening, but she hasn't left Austin yet. So she's looking to arrive at 1 AM. Hopefully they will get in safely and without waking the rest of us.
I took pictures of various things today, and perhaps I will post them at a later time.
