I’m glad I didn’t make any plan for today, it would have been blown from the git go. As I’ve mentioned before, I cut a lot of chains when I left Jackson, it was necessary at the time and helped bring me to where I am today. One thing I’m glad I don’t deal with anymore is client support. No past clients have my contact information, other than the old email and phone number I used in Jackson for nearly three decades. I can’t even begin to guess how many people have that number. No matter how long they’ve held my card, it’s always a priority when they call.
It never starts with hey, how you doing, are you available at the moment? In any case, I’m glad for the quiet of no phone calls- as anyone that reads knows, it’s hard enough for me to do what I am trying to plan to do in my life, much less the distractions of other peoples demands for my time. Today, I got a text from my sister bright and early. A week or so ago I finally shut down my old businesses last webserver. The last paying client was removed from the machine over a year ago when I shut down my website hosting and computer business in May of twenty one. I hadn’t been working on a acquiring new clients since eighteen.
It took me over the year in twenty two- after I was able to do anything, to get my own website- this website- up and running. I’m not quite the same as I was before, I’ve written about this before, no more click click done. Once I had this site running elsewhere (another VPS managed by myself) before I left Jackson (as obviously this platform has been essential for my plans to write!) cleaning up the the old business servers dropped from my priority radar.
It came to light recently as the business bank account has bottomed out, causes an untold yet number of minor catastrophes. Well, I suppose they would have been, yet knowing that was coming, I’ve acclimated and migrated. New Mexico was unfamiliar territory, yet I can survive outside in winters here, whether in my car or in my tent. In any case, here I am, and here I don’t have to here that phone ringing with a lot of people calling about priorities that I haven’t been able to handle for over a year.
In hindsight, it actually worked out well, shutting down my business the season before my accident (at the time planning a life of full time travel funded by skydiving.) The last six months took care of the residual business contracts that I had and at the close of the twenty one season, I was primed and ready for my next adventure.
Never would I have guessed how that worked out.. I’ll digress before I begin that rant.
Anyway, that last server went down.. days later, a call from my sister. Her website, sadly unpaid for years and supported on the server by other clients, had gone out with the bathwater.
Long story short, she thought she could help out by just.. paying for the website hosting she’s gotten free for a decade. Nice coincidence with this occurring, is the first opportunity slot for directly a bit of this story has been taken. The first sponsorship (already almost six hundred words) went for three hundred dollars. Ninety nine more sponsorships available.
Nice to get some cash, really, really nice to get some cash. Yet, it did through me off my game today. A wind storm was coming, and my shelter was not holding, having lost the morning, I was fighting against the wind all day to keep the tarp tent erect. And the winds were only up to forty five. I worked for an hour or so on it, and could not get it to quiet. The billowing tarps sounded like thunderclaps inside. Beginning to trigger a headache, I grabbed my trek poles and went out for another walk.
Maybe the shock of surprise tech support or the frustration with the wind, I walked to be gone. First I walked up to the day use area, only point three five miles straight up the hill, from there another trail to, then another around the established campground, then back off trail again back to the primitive area. Almost two miles in total, and some pretty rough off trail action too. These trek poles are amazing – I could never do this without them, yet with them I can walk like a four legged spider, picking and stepping though the brush.
At one point walking down a trail, I saw a stone move across the trail in front of me in the blink of an eye. Knowing I saw something, I scanned the ground. Can you see him in the first photo? How about the second? Kind of looks like a bearded dragon with the beard or maybe a fat tailed gecko some with some nice spikes on his skull. Shortly after getting back to my site, I saw a bunny too- the first here at Brantley lake, yet he was way too fast for me to get my camera. The gecko, he would be absolutely still as long as I was looking and was wicked fast when I turned away- a great model to let me get my camera within six inches of him.
And that camo.. wow.
After getting back from the big walk I went to work on the tarp tent again with a new technique I’d though of (rolling the seams,) and that seemed to work well. By five I sitting and ready to relax before dinner.
Then the wind hit again. Glad the tent was ready, and it was- from the west. Yet, now the wind switched to come from the East, my weak side, for the last hour of gusts before dusk.
Back to work on the tarp tent, yet the result is worth the effort. Still a little noisy, yet now almost completely airtight once I button it up at night. Stew for dinner tonight so that I could run the stove for longer. That helped keep it over fifty in here for an extra hour or two. Now, forty six degrees, predicted low tonight of thirty eight I think.
Any, not how I planned the day- wait, I didn’t plan the day.. and this is what I got.
Pictures of real live gecko? And check out that bridge. Did I mention it when I wrote about my first walk here at Brantley lake, when I was at site nineteen the first night (that I searched to evict BLiMey the mouse.) I walked the trail far enough from that end to see the bridge, yet I was way too timid to try to go down that hill. I legit did not think I would get back up it. Today, three weeks later (and with a pair of trek poles now) I saw the bridge, crossed it and blazed up that hill.
Time to rest.