Long Beach WA!

I started my long weekend with a nice trip to the coast with Loki. The weather turned out to be absolutely perfect, temps around 70F and clear skies with only moderate wind. I didn’t make any special plans so this was just a quick day trip. I packed the cooler into the van with drinks snacks and sandwiches so I didn’t have to fight the crowds around any restaurants.

Loki had a lot of fun sniffing all the things, but he was moving very slow. The soft beach sand really made his age apparent, but we persevered and managed to have a good time. At the second stop there was almost no one there so we were able to hang out for a good bit then take a second walk out to the northern section of the beach. At this point Loki only wanted to wander around so It took a bit of work to get him to follow the trail to the beach.

I have managed to get a short video cobbled together and I am uploading it to Youtube now (link to video https://youtu.be/Q57IkF2nUQs). This was a great start to a lazy birthday weekend and hopefully I can get a video from the next day where I roamed the sights in Longview WA put together soon.

Beautiful day off

Well I have got a wonderful day off while swapping between days and nights. The smoke that has plagued us for the last few days seems to have cleared up and a bit of a breeze makes the warm day feel good. I still had chores to do like grocery shopping, meal prep and a bit of cleaning. I have managed to get the shopping done but am putting off the rest until later tonight seeing as I have to stay up late to transition to nights anyway. For now I have taken the old fat bike out for a cruise around town.

My fat bike properly secured waiting for me to finish my coffee.

I stopped at the Mill City Grill for a wonderful lunch. I got the barbecue bacon cheese burger with garlic truffle fries and enjoyed it on the shady outdoor seating area. Good food and a wonderful atmosphere coupled with a little bit of people watching. While there are not a lot of people out and about here in Longview the downtown area always seems to have at least a few characters around. After lunch I circled around the Lake Sacajawea Park for a slow cruise on the fat bike. While I took Loki for a short loop around the park in the morning while it was cool he is no longer able to make the full loop like he used to so I took my time to cruise the full circuit. I made a quick stop back home to pet Loki who was hiding in with the AC before setting off again, next stop was Red Leaf coffee for a cool coffee drink. This time I went with a blended Rocky Mountain Mocha which is basically a coffee flavored desert. While enjoying my frozen treat I am updating this blog.

I look confused even though I am the one taking the photo…

Nice little area to cool off and edit a blog.

Hopefully the rest of this day goes just as well as the start. I see a lot of hiding in the AC with Loki for for me today, but maybe something worthy of a real adventure will happen. I have 3 nights a hard turnaround back to days and 7 day shifts in a row after that. Wish me luck!

Saw this Smart car with huge off road tires on my walk with Loki last night after work and felt compelled to share it with everyone.

Starlink in van testing

I have had my Starlink mini dish mounted via suction cups to the sunroof of my van for a while. I have been just powering it off the DC power point in my center console and off a small battery pack if necessary. Until now I have had to choose if I was bringing the big Jackery 2000 unit or only having power available when the van was running. For most things this is not too big of a deal however there have been a few shorter day trips that I would have liked to bring my electric cooler and hang out somewhere for a day. This meant not only loading the cooler but also the much larger and super heavy battery pack, not such a big ask for a weekend trip to the woods but much more annoying for a day trip. It also meant that if I wanted to use my Starlink at work I was limited to the 2 hrs that my small pack could do or again loading up the large pack. As such with all the OT I have been working I have purchased a middle ground battery, the Jackery 500v2. This unit has a 500W AC inverter and 500wh battery, meaning I can run both my fridge and Starlink off it at the same time. This smaller unit is also much easier to move around and doesn’t take up much space making it easy to leave in the van most of the time. With the AC inverter built into the van it doesn’t take much more than an hour to top the battery back up meaning a short drive between locations can almost fully recharge it.

Starlink mounting looks decent and is out of the way, protected and still very functional.

So far in today’s testing I have been using the Starlink for about 6 and the battery is just above 75%. It is looking very promising for my more short term trips.

Lastly I am going to throw in a photo of some cats lounging around that taunted Loki on our neighborhood walk after work yesterday.

Loki almost didn’t notice these guys on the walk.

So it begins

This site is just getting off the ground. I am not familiar with website coding so I have opted to use a simple website generator from Squarespace. I am hoping to add brief overviews of my adventures to this blog section. Giving people a place to look in on how things have been going. Today I have been trying to enjoy my one day off between nights and days this week but unfortunately for me the chores don’t stop just because I have been at work a lot.

I managed to get a good walk in with Loki this morning before it got warm. The weather started as a pleasant 62 F and overcast and has since transitioned to mid 80’s and smokey. Loki has been moving better since he got a shot at the vet to help with joint pain but he still doesn’t have the 5 mile walks of the past in him anymore. He even took a good stumble today and got his face all covered in dirt. I am not sure how much longer he has, the cancer has made quite a tumor on his left foot and given his age and the area the vet did not even recommend surgery.

After the fun part of the morning the chores hit. First was catching up on mowing the lawn, I have neglected this chore and while it has not really rained and I don’t water my lawn the grass still grows. My front and side lawn were previously kept decent by my neighbor Ciro, but ICE picked him up and so he has not been around. Then it was off to get my hair cut. While the top is getting thinner the sides just keep growing sort of like my lawn. I stopped for fancy lunch at my favorite teriyaki spot (Ichi 12) for my usual teriyaki chicken and gyoza. Picked up some dog food and treats before heading home.

It is mid afternoon now and so I got this blog going. Next is grilling my chicken for the next work week and hopefully a bit of time on the spin bike. While an outside ride would be fun there is a good bit of smoke out there and it is hot, unlike my nice air conditioned house.

I don’t have an set plans to update this blog with any kind of regularity, but I will try and updated it when I have something on my mind.