Silicon Valley Redneck

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Eighth

05-08 Sep 2016: The Voyage Home

Monday morning - well, Labor Day, so not a proper Monday, even for those not currently on vacation - is time to depart the Nashville vicinity and make for some intermediate stop on the way to the train station.  It's a seven-hour-or-so drive from the motel to the station in Galesburg, and we need to be there in time to return the car and catch a train at 1638, so all in one day seems like a bad idea.

Without much sightseeing, but not making great haste, we arrive in Peoria a bit after 1700 and get settled into a motel.  Check the evening Internets, walk next door for dinner, run a load of laundry, and it gets to be time to zonk out.  The Sunday-morning sore throat and sinus crud got worse earlier in the day, and maybe a little better by evening.  A passing thing?  We shall see.

A rumor floats up from the muddled memories of the last few days: some portions of East Tennessee are reportedly Fed Motels, going back at least to the 1930s.  Revenooers check in, but they don't check out.  Presumably they find enlightenment and change careers.

Tuesday: Spend most of the morning being lazy, what with the summer cold approaching its peak; vacate the lodgings just ahead of the 1100 deadline, and make for Galesburg.  Stop to refuel people & car in... Knoxville?  Yep.  Then stop at a car wash to get the vehicle all nice and shiny, then off to the rental place to return it.  What with it being so clean, no one notices the slight additional scuffing of a wheel or two.  And, off to the station to await the westbound train.

Tuesday-Thursday: Another long train ride.  Either the train is much shakier this time, or this cold has my balance messed up.

The transition sleeper car seems not in quite as good repair as the outbound one... and the crew seems rather less alert and professional and more, well, off in its own world and kind of goofy.  It's not just the train crew; ground logistics seems to be off, too.  No mushroom gravy for the signature steak dinner; no vegetable filling for the omelet.

One does meet some nice people on the train.  And some Interesting Characters.  There's a hillbilly couple moving from North Carolina to Colorado in search of opportunity, perhaps in the cannabis business.  The man notes that people in Tennessee are so much more polite than anywhere else in his experience.  (I'd noticed this too, and Heinlein's comment on a polite society is not a sufficient explanation, though I suspect it's a factor; I kept noticing obvious Rough Men being deliberately non-confrontational.)  I probably would have been considerably more social had my voice been in proper working order.

When the train stops at Reno, there's a knock on the door of our roomette.  It's a detective with some drug-interdiction thing.  Seems that buying a one-way ticket at the last minute raises flags.  But, other than the circumstances of the ticket, we don't fit the profile of the droids he's looking for, and we don't admit to having large quantities of cash (mostly spent on the trip, anyway) nor weapons (does a Swiss Army knife count?), though I do mention a partly-used retail box of pseudoephedrine, which matches the state of my voice.  (Actually, we have quite a variety of drugs along, none of which have any known recreational value, aside from caffeine and dextromethorphan.  Psst!  Hey, dude!  Wanna score some Losartan?  6-Mercaptopurine, maybe?)

As the train approaches the end of its run, the crew seems in a great hurry to get back to the barn - looks like we'll be reaching Emeryville about an hour ahead of schedule.  Um.  That'd be about 1510 or so, instead of 1610.  I hadn't noticed when I booked the trip that there was a 6-hour wait for the 2215 bus to San Jose, which now becomes a 7-hour wait, all to arrive in San Jose just before midnight and try to get a taxi.  Seven hours to kill, while dragging luggage around?

Out with the cellphone; ask if my father can rearrange his schedule to pick us up in Emeryville.  He can, but has to retrieve the dog from the groomers first.  Hurray!

Once we get to the station, an Amtrak chap comes looking for us to ask if we want to switch from the 2215 bus to the 1715 train, which maybe is what I should have booked in the first place, but I explain that we've made other arrangements, and that the bus driver shouldn't panic when he finds himself two passengers short.

Eventually (what with the dog and traffic - how had I managed to forget Bay Area traffic?) my father arrives at the station to transport us home.

Home!  A place where a proper shower awaits!  And a bed that isn't lurching in all directions!  Also, cats.

Cats are in hiding.  After a moment, Southmoon cautiously peers around the corner from the office, looking very much like a frightened little wild animal.  Then Huckleberry appears, wanting to play.  Eventually, Top Hat emerges from her hiding place behind the reclining chair.

By next morning, the cats are somewhat back to normal, though Southmoon seems determined not to let me out of her sight ever again.

Now I gotta sort through the mail.  And rest, and get back on Pacific time.  And rest.

Next week, many trips to electronics recycling.  And a huddle with my banker (seems I have a new personal banker assigned; the old one left a while back).  Also, work.

Hey!  Despite all the southern-restaurant meals and the general lack of morning walkies, I seem to have lost five pounds!  Another fifteen would put me back in my healthy range, and better able to cope with a warm and humid climate.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Seventh

01-04 Sep 2016: The Westward Migration

So, one last full day in Knoxville.  We checked out the Ijams Nature Center and vicinity: that's quite a nice park, and a fine big quarry lake.  It was too hot (by 0930, even) to do proper exploring, but we wandered around a few trails.  Definitely a place to visit repeatedly during cooler weather, or after I burn off some of the polar-bear insulation.

Then some random touring around, and off to Parrot Mountain, Just Because.  I kinda get the impression that the proprietors are a tad religious.  Whatever: it's a nice place to walk around and look at the birds.  Some of the ones in the feeding area had very strong opinions on the subject of shoulders, and had to be encouraged to return to their proper places.  Then there were babies - for sale!* - just waiting to be petted or offered an opportunity to climb up and nibble on ears, glasses, and whatnot.  The baby macaws weren't yet coordinated enough to step up on a hand, but two of them got sufficiently ambitious to climb out of their box around closing time.

(Randomly touring the area east of Lenoir City gets scary.  You never know when you'll have a run-in with some old lakebilly in Bermuda shorts and boat shoes, brandishing a Benelli and shouting "Git off'n my golf course!")

Friday morning was time to start heading West, by way of Cookeville.  So, by scenic routes from Sevierville to I-40, then onward, with a stop at Cumberland Mountain State Park just because there was a sign along the freeway pointing to it.  (Looks like a nice place for a family weekend, or midweek break: rent a cabin for a couple of nights, do some fishing and maybe boating, that sort of thing.)  In Cookeville, check out Cane Creek Park (another nice place to walk, play Frisbee, or whatever), then find a motel and settle in for the night.

Also time to figure out how we're getting home.  Amtrak shows the trains right around what I'd figured as the return time having no sleeper accommodations: not sold out, but just not being an option at all.  Eh?  A day or so later, the roomettes are available, but expensive.  A little earlier, sold out.  Several days earlier, as in this Tuesday rather than next Monday, there's one-each roomette available, at the cheap price.  Oh, well: grab it.  This means hardly any time in the Nashville area, but such is life.  I'd been pondering the possibility of taking a plane out of Nashville instead, but that would have been yet a different bundle of headaches.  This way, we just have to deal with trying to make connections in a short time, and returning the rental car at the expected place but unexpectedly early.  And I get back to my desk early, which is maybe a good thing given that there are multiple projects that need working on, and I can only do a limited amount, on one of them, while afield.  Oh, and we're in the crew car again.  I guess that's a good thing, though it does mean a long walk through steerage to the dining car.

Traffic in Cookeville is significantly congested, even at random hours during the day.  Curious.  Also, there's a lot more variety in ethnicities; I'm not having that "where did all these white people come from?" sensation.

Oh, and that traffic?  On a couple of occasions, I'm waiting to make a left turn and oncoming traffic, despite having a green light, stops.  Joy finds this mystifying, and looks for explanations.  I'm guessing that the drivers there are just being nice.  Seems to be quite a bit of local culture to adjust to.

Saturday morning, another walk around Cane Creek Park, then a generally Westward drift toward Lebanon, Hermitage, or whatever.  Drive through Granville, for no particular reason, and Carthage, and Rome (which seems to be in much worse shape than Carthage, Cato the Elder notwithstanding), then randomly down to Cedars of Lebanon State Park and check out a couple of trails, then look for an Asian market in Nashville; it seems to be dead, so on to K&S World Market, which is very much alive if a bit heavy on the Spanish-speaking parts of the world.

Then, time to look for lodgings.  Next day's activities are around Hermitage.  The motels around that area, or around the airport... get really bad on-line reviews.  At least the ones with halfway plausible prices.  Claims of bedbugs, meth labs, drug parties, pigs, goats, peasants**, dirty sheets, and a general lack of any sort of standards.  This includes the one where we stayed two summers ago; it was OK then, but the reviews from the past few months are dreadful.  Have they really gone so far downhill so fast, or is this some sort of review-bombing by the high-end chains?

Anyway, we end up in the Quality Inn in Mt. Juliet.  Quite expensive by my standards, but it is a nice room.

The Cedars of Lebanon hike conveyed some geological knowledge which helps make sense of what I was seeing in the satellite views of some properties in places like Brush Creek.  I wasn't so sure about that land; looked like its bones were sticking out - and, indeed, the local geology in a lot of places around here has limestone sticking out and hardly any actual soil.  Makes for nice scenery, but quite useless for gardening.  Given another few million years, it might develop some decent soil, but that's rather beyond my gardening horizon.

Dinner (or perhaps third breakfast) at the nearest IHOP.  Food is good; service is on the slow side.  Joy thinks all the employees show signs of being, er, mellow.  (I wouldn't know; I've somehow managed to get through life without any actual exposure to cannabis products.  Apparently I look like a clergyman or something.)  Could be worse; rumor has it that Silicon Valley executives (and managers and coders and cocktail waitresses) run on crack cocaine.

Sunday morning begins with low-grade sinus crud.  Is the air in Nashville too much like back home, or am I coming down with a cold?  In any case, time to break out the pseudoephedrine, which I hadn't touched so far this trip.

Look at the map; spot Long Hunter State Park.  Good place for morning walkies?  As it turns out, yes; there's a nice 2-mile trail around a lake.  My current footwear isn't all that well suited to paved surfaces, but whatever.

And, darn: that mansionette out by Sweetwater that we both liked now shows as pending.  Oh, well: properties on the market come and go, and there's always the possibility of renting a moderate-sized house in town for a few months while waiting for Just The Right Deal.

(Hm.  Few days back, I noticed that a property out by Oakdale that had caught my eye earlier, and that had then gone to Pending, was showing as re-listed on Zillow.  An agent we'd been dealing with was annoyed at this, as his computer, with the direct connection to MLS, still showed it as Pending.  Now I look again, and not only is Zillow showing it as an active listing, so is everybody else, including realtor.com.  Innaresting.  Well, buying time is absolute-minimum a month out, and two months seems more plausible, and we have that train reservation for Tuesday, so we're not going to bother the agent again, go running back to Oakdale to take a look, etc.)

After noon, make connections with Oleg and Amie (also Gremlin, who was on very good behavior today).  Some chatting, an outing to a German festival in a park (interesting, but the afternoon weather was awfully hot), then off to Pied Piper Creamery to cool down before we had to buzz off so Joy could go to a yoga class.  Crowd at the German event was ethnically mixed, and everyone seemed to belong.

Conversations with Oleg get interesting.  That three-eyed flying alien critter he's contemplating has a decidedly unusual means of locomotion, which is (as I figure it) probably close enough to plausibility not to lose readers (though perhaps just far enough out to send the hard-core engineers and physicists scrambling for their slide rules).  Also, he put forth a few engineering challenges, one of which I may have more-or-less solved already (sorry, no details here; it might become somebody's product).  And some social leads, and potential business leads (one of them potentially huge, in an incremental way).

On the way back, I notice the AT&T building in Nashville.  Looks to me like one tower of a bridge, but where's the other end?

 

* Or, perhaps, for indeterminate rent; you "buy" one, take care of it for a decade or two, decide that it's just too much for you, and return it to the sanctuary.

** Anyone else remember Henry Morgan?

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Sixth

30-31 Aug 2016: Isn't the water supposed to be on the outside?

Busy Tuesday!

We had a look at three properties, in Powell, Far North Knoxville, and Corryton.  The first two were disappointing - much work needed to get the houses even vaguely habitable.  The one in Corryton was a surprise; the listing on the 'Net was somewhat unprepossessing, but in person the house was very nice indeed, even if it does have vinyl siding.  The land, hm.  It wasn't at all clear exactly how much and which land is included (and the Knox County on-line public-records system is much less helpful than the state's version, used for counties that don't have their own), but it was certainly very pretty.  So, between that and the one in Sweetwater, we've now seen two examples of quite plausible house-and-land options that fit the projected budget.

[Update: The boundaries of the Corryton property get even more confusing if one looks at Google maps; according to Google, House Mountain State Natural Area starts just back of the detached carport, making the listing's claim of 15 acres more than a little suspect.  But... the county's map shows the House Mountain park-or-whatever being a totally different shape from what Google has, without actually being actually useful for seeing how the boundaries line up with the various private property lines.]

[Update 2: I later found a higher-res (i.e., somewhat legible) version of the boundary drawing included in the listing; it is indeed 15 acres, including the old barn, and mostly extending back into the forest.]

Then a late lunch, a short rest break, and off to meet up with Cat Faber, whom I know from USENET and a con or two (Consonance, and maybe Baycon, back in the day).  She took us canoeing on a quiet little bay of Cherokee Lake, in a trio of beautifully-crafted wooden canoes.  Which she'd made herself.  From scratch.

Well, it took a while to get everything together (including affixing one canoe to the roof of the rental car without damaging anything) and get to the lake (above 27 MPH, the straps made a thrum-thrumm-thrummm-wub-wub-wub sound on the way out; on the way back, they sounded like a Flash Gordon rocket-ship, so I kept looking around for Ming ships, just in case).  Then get the canoes off the cars, and into the water, and people into the canoes, and... hey, these things do handle nicely!  And: oh, wow!  A double rainbow!  Wait, didn't we see one of those back in Indiana, just before that huge storm hit us?  And: is that rain we're feeling?

We didn't get a fierce thunderstorm, but it did rain fairly heavily for a few minutes as we sheltered from the wind.  Then, soggy, we had a nice paddle around, admiring the scenery and various birds.  As the sun set, 'twas time to return to shore and pack everything up.  (The rental car has a back-up camera, which turns out to be handy for parking spaces and also boat ramps!)

The little fishies in the shallows of Cherokee Lake like to nibble on feet.  My feet, anyway.  It tickles considerably.

It did get a mite late, and they roll up the sidewalks early 'round these parts, so finding dinner turned out to be a challenge, but we did find an open eatery (Cardin's Drive-In) on the way back to the motel.

Then, Wednesday.  Out to Kingston to look at another property that's kind of out of the projected price range, but might be of interest, especially if there's room to haggle.  Apparently it's for sale due to a divorce.  The house is glorious, with some oddities; the land (just under 20 acres) is nice, though the pond is rather small and murky.  Oddities?  Well... it seems to have been partially fixed up, before the process was interrupted (bonus room over garage partially drywalled; one of the upstairs bedrooms partially repainted).  The partially-repainted bedroom has three closets; the door of one appears to have been smashed open from the inside after someone was locked in that closet - yes, the door can be locked from the outside.  Something to do with the divorce?  Or... well, that sort of lock (and why was there a lockable knob on a closet door anyway, never mind being installed wrong-way-out?) can be inadvertently locked, and the door closed, and then one is locked on the wrong side of it, so it could have been a solo mishap.

Anyway... glorious, as I noted, but the price is out of bounds.  Seems it's been on the market for 2 years now, with no takers at that price; the agent who showed it to us suggests that if it doesn't sell soon, it'll likely go to foreclosure, and I speculate that the mortgage sets a price floor.  Oops!  Probably go much cheaper at foreclosure auction.

But, well... there's a fair bit of opportunity for haggling the price down on the mansionette we looked at first, and that could be made glorious at not too great an expense, so the total cost of acquisition and improvement on that one would be considerably lower, leaving money in the budget for a detached workshop and some industrial-strength landscaping.

Then we took a look at a couple of senior-living places.  Much more spacious and luxurious than the ones in the Bay Area!  Also, much less institutional-feeling.  Dunno if my parents could really be persuaded to relocate, but the existence of a senior-resort-type place with apartments nearly the size of their house, and set up for a range of lifestyle options from mostly-independent to total care, is a useful datum.

Wednesday afternoon, laundry.  Pesky chores!

Dinner was the IHOP "Split Decision": pancakes and French toast and eggs and bacon and sausage.  If you're having breakfast for dinner, might as well overdo it.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Fifth

28-29 Aug 2016: Around Knoxville

Not much exciting, as such.  We've been doing some sightseeing, and stopped by the Home & Garden Show yesterday - it wasn't much, and I'm always disappointed when I realize that HGTV isn't HGTTG, but we did learn a little there.

We're currently staying at the Clarion Inn in northern Knoxville; the accommodations are decent for the price, but the Internet connectivity is spotty.  At least part of the trouble is the Wi-Fi access point itself (random disconnections), but there may also be a lack of shared bandwidth on the motel's 'Net connection. [Tuesday morning update: Just after I extended our stay for a third night, the door of the room wouldn't open.  The lock flashed its green light, but the door remained somehow locked.  The clerk suggested turning the handle up instead of down.  That worked.  Down had worked up until that point.  Is there an "invert door handle" bit in the access code on the key cards?]

We went to Scapenet Foxfire Mountain Adventure Park, mainly because Joy wanted to check out their 335' swinging bridge.  Apart from the bridge, we walked on some of their shorter and more exciting rope bridges, and hiked up to the waterfall (which was about as much hiking as I was up to, in the heat).  We encountered a serpent on the path!

Not being familiar with the local species, I found a suitable stick and poked the critter until it slithered out of the way.  Didn't seem very excitable.  Alas, it didn't occur to me to take its picture while it was posing nicely sprawled across the trail with its head in the light.  (Hm.  A bit of searching suggests that it's a good thing I didn't pick it up.  But just stepping over it probably would have been OK.)

We didn't do any of the zipline things, either.  Maybe next summer.

As the afternoon drew to an end, we checked out the Sunrise Supermarket, out on Kingston Pike.  It's not exactly the 99 Ranch, but since the nearest of those is in (checks the Internets) yup, still Texas, well... I guess it'll do.

Been noticing a fair few Rebel flags around here.  I though East Tennessee was Union?  And some driveways are bracketed by flagpoles, one bearing the U.S. flag and one the Rebel flag.  Haven't seen one of these, though.

Tomorrow, looking at a few North/Northwest Knoxville properties (alas, the really interesting one in that area, and another out to the West, are now pending sale), and try to make connections with an old acquaintance.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Fourth

24-27 Aug 2016: Dandridge and Vicinity

We'd passed through Dandridge in the previous Fit, and (especially what with the lake and all) it seemed worth a closer look, including actual official Looks at some properties.

The people who live here do seem to like it, but prices for the sort of property I have in mind are a tad rich for my budget.  Still, we got in touch with a Real-a-tor^©, and set out to look at three places.

First up: a tad small, but OK-ish in general terms.  Needs a bunch of updating, and some minor repairs, etc.  It's an estate sale, and there's a lot of Stuff there, including, e.g., some old partially-dismantled car in the basement.

Next: a bigger house, with a decrepit old barn and a big brick 2-bay RV garage with an apartment upstairs.   Turns out to be a foreclosure.  Whoever changed the locks apparently didn't coordinate with the selling agent, or maybe just botched the job: the key in the lock box doesn't work on the deadbolt on the front door, which in any event is not properly installed and wibbles around loosely (but not loosely enough to "persuade" with any implements we have handy, and I left my lock-fiddling tools at home).  We do, however, find our way into the detached garage, which is full of cobwebs and in dire need of cleaning, but it has two garage bays, a room of some sort, and a half-bath downstairs, and two bedrooms, a full bath, and a kitchen upstairs.  Yeah, could be a fine upstairs office & lab / downstairs machine shop.  But we can't get much idea of the state of the actual house.

Last: that one we'd driven by earlier.  Land looks plausible.  Workshop-with-apartment looks plausible, though we can only get into the apartment, and that only because the tenant is home.  The key in the lock box doesn't work on the house doors, and the house tenant is out.  On closer examination, part of the back wall of the house has a discontinuity; apparently that wing used to be the garage, and has been converted to a laundry / mud room  by bricking up where the garage door used to be.

So... in terms of properties that fit my current search parameters, Dandridge isn't looking quite so promising.

Also in these days: look around a very little bit of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (no entrance fee, so stopping by for a little hike is no big deal); check out a couple of farmers' markets (the one in Newport doesn't appear to be alive, having a banner displayed but no booths, cars, nor other signs of activity [Added: it's open on Wednesdays, and we weren't there on Wednesday]; the one in Dandridge is alive but occupies an awfully small parking lot); and have a look around the Sweetwater flea market (that one's worth remembering; there's some decent merchandise on display, and the prices are mostly reasonable).

Somewhere along the line, I notice that black people 'round these parts don't seem to be very well integrated; I see them (well, some of them) acting like Aliens Among Us, trying to look harmless and inoffensive.  This is vaguely worrisome.

Sometimes we use Joy's iPhone for navigation.  The nav chap pronounces some place names oddly; while I know the K in Knoxville is supposed to be silent, I didn't think the N was too.  "Oxville"?

Rumor: It is reported that trendy exercise classes in the upmarket suburbs of Knoxville may be followed by social cannabis sessions in the parking lot, and that none of the locals consider this the least bit unusual.  I have no first-hand information on this matter.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Third

22-23 Aug 2016: Sweetwater

In fact, we arrived here yesterday, by way of Asheville and Dandridge.  In Dandridge, we happened across the visitor center, where a friendly guy who'd long since lost his Berkeley (.ca.us) accent plied us with informational brochures and historical tales... including the 1943 (?) German plan to blow up the dams at Douglas and Cherokee lakes.

The town seemed nice, and that big lake sure looks inviting.  We drove past one potentially interesting property (nice brick house, plausible outbuildings, 11 acres, kind of hilly).  Might want to take an official Look at it later on.

Arriving in Sweetwater in late afternoon, we checked into the motel and took a cruise around the edges of town.

This morning, we took a stroll through downtown (such as it is) and the edge of a residential area.  Felt like Middle America - not quite like the neighborhood in Fargo where my father grew up, but generally low-key and safe.

Then, a drive past a property we'd both, independently, noticed on-line.  Fair-sized brick mansionette on a bit over 12 acres, set well back from the road, with a vast expanse of front lawn / hayfield and a patch of woods at the back.  Based on the view from the road, Joy got all excited and insisted on calling an agent and arranging to see the place properly.

In person, it's not as daunting as it seemed from the listing; there's a lot of space, but it's divided into three levels (main, upstairs, and basement).  Three bedrooms and two full bathrooms upstairs; kitchen, dining room, two den / family room type things, and a half bath on the main level (also laundry / mud room); carpeted rec room and uncarpeted unspecified space in the dungeon.  Also, an un-cooled room above the garage, reachable via a secret passage from one of the upstairs bedrooms.

With the space all broken up like that, there's no sense that I'd have to hire a butler, put on a tie for breakfast, have snooty rich friends over for cocktail parties, or any of that nonsense associated with big fancy houses.  And the 2-room basement would probably work well as office and electronics lab - the clean workspace.

What it lacks is a dirty workspace; the garage would do initially, but stuff like welding and painting should really happen in a detached building.  Also, it would be nice to have the garage available for parking cars, instead of being full of machine tools and contraptions under construction.  Have to see what the budget looks like, and have a chat with a contractor.

The property is owned by some sort of real-estate LLC that apparently bought it cheap almost a year ago and fixed it up for sale.  The fixery-uppery is... odd.  Some current issues are to be expected when it's been vacant for a while (e.g., paper-wasp nests).  But, some of the sliding windows don't open (with a reasonable amount of force) on account of the frames having been sloppily painted, while other, similar window frames haven't been painted recently.  The banister of the upstairs staircase is wobbly.  The door to the HVAC closet doesn't close properly.  So many fiddly details!  It has a vintage intercom, possibly original equipment.  I don't know if it works, but perhaps the wiring could be used for a modern replacement (if only to carry power to spiffy shiny comm panels with Wi-Fi for communication).

And I really would like to have one full bathroom and one room usable as a guest bedroom on the main level.  Equipping the media room with a convertible sofabed would address the latter requirement, but having only a half-bath would be problematic for any non-stair-capable houseguests, or for me should I come down with a case of Horrible Leg Pain again (or a broken leg, etc.).

Afterward, we went to look at another property, with over 17 acres, mostly wooded.  That one, hm.  Joy wasn't thrilled with the layout of the house.  The basement smells like a place where someone's been working on cars, and indeed is full of motorcycles, ATV, old VW bug, and so on.  The fields (and driveway!) haven't been  mowed in a long time.  There's a largish pond, but it's murky - could be from the recent storm, or maybe there's a problem.  Apparently the owner(s) moved out in a hurry and didn't clear out all the stuff, so... well, it'd be a possibility, but there'd have to be quite a bit of negotiation, haggling the price down and establishing either disposal or ownership of all that Stuff.  (What would I do with three racing motorcycles, anyway?)

In any event, I won't be making an offer on any properties during this trip - or, rather, it would take a combination of a really incredible deal and some highly creative financing.  But that mansionette sure is tempting.  I'd have to refrain from putting a sign out front naming it Epic Neener Factor.

We still need to check out Dandridge in more detail; also Powell, Clinton, some areas with Knoxville addresses, and so on.  And maybe take a drive through Ten Mile, which might be regarded as an outlying area of Sweetwater.  Then there's the area roughly between Cookeville and Lebanon, and not too far off the Interstate; gotta explore that too.  And there are people to visit in Nashville.

 

Bugs.  Bugs!  There are bugs here.  Noisy cicadas in the trees: zillions of them.  Weird big things that I don't have a clue about (multiple species).  Giant Leaping Banana Spiders in the grass, or whatever that ground cover was downhill of the second house.  (These were banana spiders in the sense of being yellow and vaguely cylindrical, not in the sense of arriving in shipments of actual bananas.)  Paper wasps, bigger than the ones in Sunnyvale.  Eek!  But I'm sure the cats would have a blast chasing them.  Especially the ones that light up.

 

There's a business here called Sweetwater Scrubs.  Sells medical clothing, apparently.  No relation to Wormwood Scrubs.

 

Also down the road, where we keep passing it, is a mobile-home dealership with a banner advertising something for $24,900.  So I look it up.  That's for (as one might expect) a single-wide, 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 765 square feet.  With all kitchen appliances, central heat & air, delivered (within 80 miles) and set up.  Egad?  A piece of land to plunk it down on will run ya another coupla grand, I suppose, unless you're just looking to add a guest-house, office, or low-end rental to property you already own.  Then there's site prep, utility hookups, all them details.  Doublewides run more, but it's amazing what's on offer in the $50K~$70K range.

Though, actually, I need to be asking what a 30x50 insulated workshop building on a reinforced concrete slab would cost....

 

Pondering: Methinks the county records for that mansionette may be misleading; either that, or I've misperceived or misremembered some details.  I was under the impression that it was a 1-story house with an attic and basement, recently converted to having upstairs bedrooms and a basement rec room.  But!  The geometry of the main-floor rooms, and the absence of a full bath on the main floor, point to the upstairs having been the main living space all along.  So in fact the LLC that currently owns it hasn't done all that much work; probably just a kitchen & bath remodel, some floor refinishing, and new carpet, leaving the banister wobbly, the basement fireplace fans looking peculiar, and so forth.  Probably some leverage for negotiation there, knowing what they paid for it last year.

Tennessee 2016: Traffic Report

Rush hour around Knoxville.  Monday morning, a bit past 0830.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Second

21 Aug 2016: In Which We Arrive In Tennessee

After Georgetown, we proceeded by a mixture of Interstate and secondary highways into Tennessee, through Harrogate, Tazewell, Bean Station, Rogersville, and Kingsport, and ended up in Johnson City for the night.

Rogersville and Kingsport actually looked fairly nice on the way through (on a rainy Sunday afternoon).  Kind of a long drive to industrial civilization, though.  Were I planning to retire and/or become a hermit, I'd likely consider that region, but that's not the plan at this stage.  (There is a totally awesome property on the market, up by Kingsport, but... well, just too far afield.)

Tomorrow, I guess, it's down to Asheville, Just Because, and then back toward Knoxville.  The route takes us by way of The Place Of The Single Overgrown Goldfish*.

Oh, yes: you can get a surprisingly good meal at the Cracker Barrel, for not much more than Taco Bell prices.  Lunch was the Country Dinner Plate, with lemon pepper trout, corn muffins, a smallish sweet potato, and pinto beans.  The beans were merely OK, but the trout was very good indeed.

* Apparently this isn't what "Unicoi" means.  The official meaning is "foggy" or some such thing.  I like my version better.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the First

18 Aug 2016, 0dark15: It begins.

Actually, it began even earlier, but the cab was scheduled for 0315.  We had to be ready well before then.

Preparations went back a week or so,  but we'll skip over that.

Anyway!  Cab from home to the San Jose train/bus station; bus to Emeryville; California Zephyr to Galesburg, IL; by ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome, er, pick up a rental car and make for points Knoxville-ward.

First time I've been on a serious train trip.  We had a Superliner Roomette, which is decidedly cozy, but not horribly expensive, and is a huge improvement on, say, sleeping in a coach seat amid the, er, unwashed masses.

So, the train thing.  The roomette includes meals, and the food is good.  The service is good.  The restrooms are cramped.  There isn't space in the roomette for more than a couple of what in airline terms would be carry-on bags, so the suitcases (what Amtrak calls carry-on items) get stowed below, accessible but not entirely convenient.

We somehow missed hearing some important early announcements, including the call to lunch, but the very helpful attendant got that sorted out for us.

The roomette has one-each 120V outlet, marked "razor only", though the attendant assured us that it was OK to use for other things, such as cellphone chargers and laptops.  The coach cars have something like two outlets per seat; go figure.  The clever little folding table is big enough for a laptop but not a mouse in addition; this turns out to be of little consequence to me, as I can't actually use the laptop (nor, indeed, read a book) while the train is in motion.

Motion, yeah.  We've been off the train for 10 hours now, and the ground is still moving.  Maybe after a night in a bed that's not wibbling around with four degrees of freedom my senses will be back to normal...?

Quite a variety of passengers, including a large Amish contingent.  Actually, more than one Amish group, boarding at various places.  Also some Indians (dot-type), Japanese tourists, and assorted Mundane-Americans.

Lotsa Amish families in view this trip, both on the train and elsewhere.  Women in funny hats, men with scethrogs, kids looking like something out of a good-old-days-in-America dramatic presentation.

Random observation: Amtrak has some weird restrictions on what can be transported.  Like, no archery equipment, even in checked baggage.  Eh?  Maybe it'll go off in the baggage car and depressurize the train?  Or, by not allowing archery equipment on board, we avert the menace of marauding Indians (feather-type)?

Anyway... arrive at Galesburg slightly ahead of schedule, which is good, 'cause the car-rental place closes at noon on Saturday (and isn't open at all on Sunday), and, with the train scheduled to arrive at 1141, the timing was a bit worrisome.  The car I wanted was "something like a Corolla"; the car Enterprise offered that seemed like the right category was "something like a Chrysler 100"; what they actually had was a Chrysler and a Corolla.  We took the Corolla.  It seems to be fine, except for the lack of lumbar support, which becomes an issue for me if I sit too long.  Oh, and the CVT takes some getting used to, even relative to the Prius.

After a lunch break in Galesburg, hit the Interstate.  Stop for dinner near Cincinnati.  After dinner, get back in the car, and 

   KER-WHOOSH!

       It do get a mite damp all of a sudden, don't it?

After some cautious driving through a most impressive thunderstorm, we reached a non-rainy area, and eventually reached a motel in Georgetown, KY, where I'm composing this.  We arrived here just behind another large Amish family.

Bedtime now.  Past bedtime.  Tale to continue as opportunity allows.

Home again...

Got home about 10 this morning, after stopping in Bakersfield for the night.

First priority is to say hello to the cats.  Southmoon and Top Hat are in the living-room window, looking wild and scared.  Top Hat holds still for being petted, but seems confused.  Piggy comes out and acts like everything's normal.  Huckleberry comes out and acts scared.

Within half an hour, the youngsters are remembering who we are, and Southmoon is purring.

Now it's midafternoon; Southmoon is being more demanding than usual, Huckleberry is acting almost normal, and Top Hat has parked herself on my duffel bag so I can't unpack it.  None of them wants to be picked up, especially Top Hat.

I think Huckleberry and Southmoon may have gotten in the habit of playing rough with each other, and will need some re-training with regard to the use of teeth and claws where exposed pink skin is concerned.

Anyway, second priority is to shuffle cars, such that the almost-new (if rather bug-encrusted) rental is safely in the driveway and positioned for washing.  Gotta get the Prius and the Jeep out of the driveway.  Start the Prius: after almost a month sitting there, it hesitates for a few seconds as it struggles to pump up the hydraulic system with the not-recently-charged aux battery... but then it starts up OK.  With no alerts.  No Check Engine light, no Master Caution, no Red Car With Exclamation Mark.  Huh.  Maybe it needed a vacation?

Later, make a shopping run, in the Prius.  No warning indicators.  Sounds a bit odd... but the traction battery is a bit low, and maybe it's working to recharge it.  I expect I'll take it for a little spin on the freeway tomorrow and see what happens.  (Never had it above 42 MPH today - indeed, not over 35 - so hybrid system function didn't get properly tested yet.)

So: rental car unpacked, refrigerator partially restocked, office doorway back in operation, workstation rebooted, normal spam filtering back in effect, all bill-like envelopes opened and no unexpected, nor late, bills found.  Now I gotta do some restin'.  Later, after Top Hat decides to lie somewhere else, I'll unpack my luggage.

Update, Friday morning:

Cats are mostly back to normal, except that Southmoon seems to have gotten the idea that the bed is off limits.  Did Grumpy Old Piggy chase her off during our absence?

Prius is not back to normal.  It claims it's fine - no fault indications, the status display shows all normal, gas mileage is normal - but it just feels draggy, and there's definitely noise that wasn't there before - gearbox noise, maybe?

Off to check its precious bodily fluids, just in case something either didn't get filled up properly at the last service or got dumped during the subsequent drive.  Absent something obvious, it's off to the shop at the next opportunity.

Update 2, Friday afternoon:

Returned the rental car.  Retrieved Tinga from the vet, where she'd been staying.  Made an appointment for the Prius for Monday morning, with a rental car (a different one) so's I can get around conveniently, what with Monday being a trying-to-get-back-to-work day.  Some Internet searching suggests that the noise may be the result of an expensive mechanical failure for which there may be a partial secret warranty or something: a known failure mode related to an omission in the maintenance schedule.  Or maybe it's something else... to be diagnosed.

Update 3, Monday morning:

Prius is in the shop.  Getting around for the moment in a Chevrolet Malibu (I keep wanting to give that a Bugs Bunny pronunciation) from Macaroni Marconi Hertz.  Just heard from the mechanic: transaxle failure, no extended warranty, $5100, not sure when the parts will be in.  But, they'll pay for the rental car in the meantime.

Oh, well.  With the new transaxle, it should be good for another few years, especially if it eventually gets relegated to the role of secondary car.

And a good moderately-used Corolla around here would run almost three times as much, so... guess I'll keep the old thing running, and quick-like scrounge the cash to pay next month's huge credit-card bill.

Ah, California!

Land of the low-flow showerhead!

(And these precede the current drought. Hate to contemplate how the next-model showerheads will work.  Or won't.)

In other news, my chronic sinus crud reappeared with a vengeance somewhere around New Mexico.  Maybe I'm allergic to something common throughout the western U.S.?

An Observation regarding Door-Knobs

So there's this new trend to replace stodgy old round doorknobs with modern lever-style door handles.  Supposed to make it easier for those with limited grip strength to open doors, or some such.

The humble doorknob  has a definite advantage, though.  I mean, apart from being resistant to those of limited grip strength, such as cats.

You can hang a do-not-disturb sign on a doorknob, and it will stay put.

Can't say as much for these newfangled things.  Got no sign retention worth mentioning.

Real(i)ty check

OK, so still hanging around the Knoxville area.

Plan "D", or thereabouts (all plans and their designations are nebulous) involved buying a sensible little house, more or less in town, for basically pocket money, and using it as an Interim Base of Operations while getting disentangled from California and then searching for just the right country estate.

Well.

The ones that, from the listings, appear habitable, and are really cheap, can be rejected out of hand on the basis of Internet research, which soon shows them to be in high-crime areas.

Then there are the ones that appear to be eminently habitable, under $50K, and in low-crime areas.  Drive through the neighborhood, and you see well-kept yards, people out and about, and... er.  Do I want to be the first melanin-deficient denizen?  How would the locals react to the yuppification menace?

So, look for mixed-race neighborhoods ('cause the Klan hates my kind too, ya know). Bargain-basement houses there are bargain-basement for a reason.  Often several reasons.

Out in the sticks, same thing.  Looks like getting something decent (and not in a ghetto, however nice) runs well north of $60K.  Maybe $80~100K for a nice house, in a suitable neighborhood.  Cheap compared to Silicon Valley, but far from impulse-purchase territory.

So, long's we're out in the sticks doing drive-bys of cottages, let's do a drive-by of a good-sized rural property (one in the middle of my projected country-estate price range) that's out that way, about 45 minutes from the edge of Knoxville.  Find it on the map, look carefully for the driveway ('cause it's well screened from the road), and pull into the driveway for a quick look.  Yup, as advertised, there's a nice-looking house there.  With people on the front porch, looking at us.  Busted!  Before we can get away, the inhabitants (renters, living there until such time as it sells) invite us in for a look around, and a tour of the land.  And... it's not a total dream property, but... for a price that, back home, would just about get you a single-wide on a rented space?  Yow!  Double-digit acreage, part cleared, a little pond in the woods, a pretty big house in good (currently-lived-in) condition, and a little house that's been a rental and just needs a little sprucing up.  And there are two options for land-line Internet.

So.  Entry-level houses that sound too good to be true?  Are.  But those mini-farms out there?  So far, for a sample size of one, those could be for real.

The details of Operation Bug-Out remain in flux, but overall plausibility got a big boost this afternoon.

Footnote: We passed various Open House signs, and were thinking of making the rounds, to see what's out there in town.  But then we noticed a common theme.  Seems open hice around here happen on Sundays, from 1400 to 1600.  That's it.  So, making the rounds?  Not gonna happen.

What the world needs now

Just a couple of throwaway ideas, being as how I don't have the connections to get them into production... and, hey, maybe they exist and I just haven't seen them.

I've got a double-walled (so, somewhat insulated) plastic cup with its own swirly straw.  It has a standard-sized base, to fit a standard automotive cup holder.  So far, so good.  But! Being regular-soda-sized on the outside, it's quite small on the inside, so filling it with ice & water in the morning doesn't keep me supplied with cold sippin' water for the day... not even to lunchtime.  How about making these things in large & jumbo sizes, keeping the standard base dimensions?

Relatedly: is anyone making a car with Peltier modules in the console cupholders?  Wouldn't it be nice to have the ability to keep drinks cold, or hot, or one of each?  If automotive consoles were of standardized dimensions, this could be an aftermarket item, but I fear it really needs t be a factory goody.

Sevier weather!

OK, so we were in Pigeon Forge, but the weather arrived via Sevierville*.

Yesterday evening, we took a stroll from the motel to a restaurant, which turned out to be several long blocks.  As we got there, it was quite cloudy, with lightning in the distance.

Indoors, well: it was a good time to be indoors.  Outside was getting downright windy.  And rainy.  And lightningy and thundersome as well.

And the restaurant's teevee started showing occasional alerts from the National Weather Service.

And my phone started making tornado-warning-siren sounds.  And other people's phones did likewise.  And we all pretty much ignored them.

Dinner having been consumed and paid for, we were faced with the dreaded Outdoors, where it was wet and windy with an abundance of lightning about, and the tornado warning still in effect.

After getting some plastic bags from the helpful restaurant folks, and wrapping our not-so-waterproof personal items, we made a mad dash toward the trolley stop, sheltering briefly at a Wendy's along the way (no customers present, and the staff weren't too sure about staying open).  We arrived at the trolley station safe, but well soaked, waited for the trolley which eventually arrived, and were transported most of the way back to our motel.

Then another scamper across the street, or creek, or whatever it was, and a hasty stop at the car for the duffel bag with my dry clothes in it.

More stormy into the night; come the dawn, the storm had dissipated, but the creeks were noticeably higher and muddier.

The locals say such a fierce and protracted storm is uncharacteristic.  (Haven't had one of them say it's just Thor watering the crops, oddly enough.  Perhaps Asatru hasn't caught on here.)

* Which apparently isn't pronounced like "severe" anyway, but what the heck.

A few notes on budget motels

The WiFi is often flaky.  Extremely so.  And entirely unsecured, in many cases.  Good thing I boosted the data limit on my cellphone account* a few days ago, so tethering for on-the-go access is a reasonable option.

Bring your own Kleenex® brand kleenices.  Motels these days provide off-brand kleenices, or none at all.

Also, shampoo is pretty much BYO.  Soap?  Provided, but not necessarily very good.  TP hasn't yet deteriorated to BYO status, but it's getting there.

Currently in a Motel 6, well under $60 at this location.  Good furnishings, room layout and electrical outlet locations a bit inconvenient, soap generic, no shampoo nor kleenices.  Ice machine works; WiFi unreliable but somewhat usable.  Haven't tried the mini-fridge nor nuker, nor the big honkin' CRT TV.

Additional, non-motel:

Saturday @ 0915 is peak-busy time at the Waffle Hose.

Soft coolers have their place, but a trip though a humid climate isn't it.  Shoulda brought something vaguely airtight.

* Verizon's price per gigabyte is outlandish.  Really, $10 per extra gig?  My normal household use averages probably 2 gig per day, figuring in normal home + work usage, streaming vids, and the occasional mongo download such as a collection  of Linux images.  In choosing a place to settle, availability of land-line Internet connectivity will be a big deal.

New friends

Had dinner* last night with Greg and his wife Tracy; Greg has lived and worked in various places around the world, put in his time in Silicon Valley, and ended up settling down in Hermitage.  He likes it here (as one might guess, being as how he chose it as a place to settle), and offered much useful advice on places to visit, and places tornadoes don't tend to visit.

Then, this morning, a chat with Oleg, who's every bit as much a Character in person as he is on the Internet, and a heck of a nice guy too.  Again, much insight gained... including aspects of Tennessee law and culture that, to a Californian, are downright jaw-dropping.  In a good way, that is. And someone who has a cat that comes right up to strangers and gets playful? Must be doing something right, even if Gremlin's idea of play is just a little toothy.

Seems like a fella could build up a social network around here real quick.

This afternoon, a cruise around regions vaguely northeast of Nashville; very pretty and a little hilly.  As the Sun was setting, we went for a stroll along the Stones River Greenway, among foliage and fireflies... hurrying a bit to get back as the evening thunderstorm was closing in.

I think I like this place... apart from the warm & humid weather, and shedding 20 pounds or so would probably help with that.  Just gotta avoid the cold sugary drinks.

Meanwhile, back at the budget motel: the WiFi here is exceedingly spotty, and my new Droid-O-Phone updated its firmware this morning and suddenly it appears on USB as a CD-ROM instead of an MTP device (or, old school, USB Storage).  WTF? Is it now an only-works-with-Windoze interface?  And here I'm trying to get some photos off the phone so's Joy can send them to her daughter.

Update: If I launch the Win XP VM and give it the phone, it sees the MTP device (which it doesn't know how to use) and the CD-ROM device... which it thinks is empty.  Linux at least sees the imaginary CD in the imaginary drive, with the Windows installer on it.  I don't remember what I had to do to get this MTP stuff working at home on my workstation, but it looks like I should have duplicated it on the laptop before leaving.

* At Logan's Roadhouse.  Good food, reasonable prices (especially the special deals), and... Joy's dinner didn't arrive with the rest.  The manager came to our table and explained that her salmon had leaped off the plate and gone scampering across the floor, so they were preparing a replacement meal with a less lively portion of salmon, and dessert was on the house.

Elsewhere for the nonce.

Currently in a green and pleasant place that feels like America.

Details later, and maybe pictures.

They have parks here.  Real parks.  With amenities, no entry fees, and, amazingly, no crowds (must be the low population density).

And the roads, so far, have all been well maintained.  It's almost like the gas taxes go to keeping up the roads, instead of paying for mass-transit pipe dreams.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with _______________

Once again, I attempted to set forth on a voyage of discovery, whereof details after it happens.  'Twas originally planned for last September, then this April, then June, and finally Today.  All the previous attempts were derailed by work and/or family events which cropped up and kept me at home.

Well, today was the day... and we got as far as Lodi* before the Prius (NHW11, 2002, a bit over 200K miles) lit up its check-engine light.

OK, so first thing in such a situation (given that it still seemed to be running fine, and that I'd fed it just a few hours earlier): pull into a parking lot, re-seat the gas cap, and try restarting the engine several times.  Nope; still get Check Engine, Master Caution, and Red Car With Exclamation Mark**.

Look up the nearest Toyota dealership: a bit under 2 miles.  Drive there.  No technicians available, but a helpful service manager (whose name I managed to forget, or I'd mention it here) grabbed his personal (non-Toyota) OBDII dongle and pulled the codes: P3125 and, if I recall correctly, P3130.  The generic tester couldn't provide any further information, so he went and looked at his computer, and I asked my Magic Elf Box, and we both came to the conclusion that It Was Bad, that the car was at least temporarily drivable (with some prospect of making it home), and that making a run for home and risking having to call AAA was a better bet than staying in Lodi until a technician was available and the car could be diagnosed and parts could be ordered and installed, i.e., Tuesday-or-so.

And thus it comes to pass that I'm writing this at my own desk; whatever was wrong didn't fail catastrophically in the hour and a half it took to get home from Lodi.

So now I'm looking at P3125, and there are many subcodes, some of which are well over $4K to fix, while some are much cheaper... and P3130 is an inverter cooling system malfunction (I did check, back in Lodi, and the inverter coolant reservoir is full).

The usual dealership has a most uninformative website, but offered me a next-available-appointment of Wednesday.  No.

The nearest dealership (not that much nearer, actually) has a live person answering the phone, longer service-department hours, and the possibility of getting it looked at Monday if I bring it in at 0700, so I guess that's the plan.

And, just in case it needs a new $4400 inverter module... I'm looking at the DIY instructions, and maybe I'll call around to some junkyards.  If there still are any in this area that haven't been bulldozed for high-density development.  I don't think eBay is an option, given my schedule constraints.

It does appear, though, that the expensive P3125 subcodes tend to be accompanied by obvious symptoms, such as rough running.  I didn't observe any such things.

It's at times like this I wish the Prius had a decent set of steam gauges - even virtual ones - instead of an ID10T light.

And it reminds me why my toaster*** controllers keep a fair amount of detail in the event log... and why I get frustrated when end-users (who commonly define the communication protocol) don't give me enough status bits to return important diagnostic information.

Update, Monday morning: Took the car to the nearest specialist.  Had some communication difficulties, of the form "phone number ended up off by one on the work order, so I didn't get a call."  Called in when I noticed this.  Problem is the inverter coolant pump, which is expensive to replace but nowhere near as expensive as the inverter itself.  Also getting the oil changed early, so it doesn't come due while on the road.

Meanwhile I have this Cool Idea for a comprehensive virtual steam gauge panel that would listen to the CANbus and present interesting parameters (in particular, any that were out of whack).  But... gotta pay big bucks to the CANbus Buyers' Club for the list of standard codes, and then negotiate with each car manufacturer for access to the secret list of vendor-specific codes and their associated data (and the normal range for each item).  So, not something I'll be doing anytime soon.

Update 2, Monday afternoon: Just to make times even more interesting, the garbage scow (being my '89 Jeep Cherokee, which is currently Joy's transportation) developed a cute new problem: apparently there had been issues with the ignition lock for some time, and suddenly it started jamming in the RUN position.  It'd turn forward, toward START, but not back toward OFF.  Turning it forward until the starter ground its teeth and then quickly back would, however, get to OFF.  Ugh.  I just spent a while poking at it, after administering a dose of cleaner & dry lube... and discovered that the problem had gotten worse, and also that it had worn all the teeth off Joy's key (which was still accepted as a starting token).  My key, when I tried it, wasn't letting go no matter what, nor would the lock allow OFF as an option.

Well, turns out that the way to stop the engine is to disconnect the negative lead from the battery and then try to crank the starter (the headlights aren't enough of a load, though I didn't try the high beams).

With electricity absent, I wiggled my key forth & back several times, and nothing jammed... though it's not clear what caused the jamming, really.

We'll be needing to run an errand or two in the Jeep this afternoon, so I'll be leaving the tools for disconnecting the battery in the back.  Just in case....

I guess the old beast will be needing a new lock cylinder Real Soon Now, but today isn't the day.

Update 3, Tuesday evening: Got as far as Elk Grove.  Check Engine, Master Caution, Red Car With Exclamation Mark.  Also, performance fell off, apparently (Joy was driving at the time), and the engine seemed to be revving much higher than usual for freeway cruise.

So, head for nearest dealership.  Can't even get the codes looked at until tomorrow at the earliest.  Ponder, discuss.  Joy heads for Cameron Park with her daughter; I call AAA and use my 100-mile long-range tow plus 8 miles to get the Prius back in front of my house.  (By this time, the fault seems to have cleared (no lights, and the car behaves normally at parking-lot speeds), but driving it a long way seems inadvisable, especially as I don't know that the fault codes were.  What's that "Multi-Function Display" for, anyway?)

Anyway: tow truck ride goes smoothly; the return trip will suck.  Driver's a nice guy.  Tip him some cash and a bag of backyard avocados.

Then call Hertz.  Got a Corolla or similar lined up for tomorrow morning, and a lift to go pick it up.  Prius fixery can wait until later; this trip is kinda now-or-never.

It's almost like the Prius has a phobia about leaving California.  I try to explain to it that there are Prii in hillbilly country, too, and that outside California it'll get Real Gas, not the oxygenated junk, and it'll be able to get 54 MPG again, but it just isn't believing me.

And, looking at the after-hours activity?  I'm glad I didn't hedge my bets by cutting another leg off the pig ahead of Intel's quarterly earnings statement.  The recent gain was based on optimism about earnings, but it seems to have outperformed even the optimism.  Up almost a buck and a half after hours, forsooth!

* Not an old Norse god.
** Not an Eastasian delicacy.
*** If plutonium is copper, I work on toasters.