The lease went through on our new apartment at Lakeside Apartment Living. Took livestream on a tour of the heavily wooded area with “hammock park” and fire pit and free places to put paddle boards. Doris is super excited since they are ripping up all the carpets and she requested they put white vinyl so that it doesn’t get funky and attract dog hair. The downside is that we have to pay three months of rent for two apartments at the same time (well over 3000 dollars). Doris will have to move the streaming server in August by herself while I am scheduled to be at the Grand Canyon. Let’s hope that goes well.
So I reached out to the marathon web site and they responded enthusiastically that I can definitely livestream down Emigration Canyon with the runners. In fact, they sounded like they would be disappointed if I don’t do it. Then it occurred to me, this might be the first time in history that this historic marathon has ever been livestreamed. There’s very spotty phone signal in that canyon and modern journalists haven’t really caught up with the livestreaming technology (as was evidenced by my livestream of the Pride parade in Charlotte being better than the official news channel stream).
I’m kinda conflicted now. I had planned on camping at a mid-point in the canyon and biking down the single track trail that is the actual path where the Mormon pioneers walked to enter SLC for the first time. It is rough terrain though, so I don’t know.
Yesterday I plugged in the solar panels and had 150w of input. The Starlink was consuming 50w maximum. This immediately convinced me to figure out how to carry these 20 lbs panels on the bike. My daily consumption of power for my work laptop, phone, Starlink, and Orange Pi is about 140 watts. This means that as long as there is sun I consume none of my battery capacity. In fact, it might well be possible to do this entire thing with a 500 instead of a 1000 if I bring the panels. That would cut about 15 lbs of weight. Still, the Starlink Mini will be the next generation of DNB trailer for me. It will very easily only need a 500 (or even less) and not take up near the same space.
Realizing that the solar panels will keep me 100% powered up and that with filtered water sources all I need to carry is food I will soon attain 100% off-grid independence allowing me to do things like the TaT and GDMBR routes where there are several days without contacting other humans. So long as I carry my SpotX in case of absolute emergencies I should be fine.
This is so cool it is a little frightening. If I actual manage to learn to fish and eat foods available in the wilderness I could successfully work as a technologist while being several hundred miles from the next human being. This might sound ambitious at the moment but it seems that the next level is visible after I unlock this one (established routes with towns and plugs, etc.).