Vanlife meetup group today. I was a little, OK a lot, outclassed by the real vanlife guys but I did have the honor of having the highest MPG rig there.

Harvested almost all the peas in the garden. I've been snacking on them every time I go water, so there was some 'loss' but this is still probably 800f what was grown. So with $1 worth of seeds + time + water + labor I've managed to grow 50 cents worth of peas. Humm...

Replaced the battery in the van preemptively. It was still 'fine' but the terminal kept corroding so we know it's out gassing nasty stuff and I didn't want it to die on the trip next week (wow it's close). Here's the photo from 2019 when I replaced the OEM battery as well. Notice how nice and shiny stuff was 5 years ago:

Writing Excuses retreat trip complete!

Everything worked out, the van, the CarPlay widget, the new fridge battery, the shower caddie thing, the laundry bag... if anything wasn't 100 0t was the travel guitar. More on that later.

Obligatory odometer rolling over pictures.

A spreadsheet of the fuel used on the trip. I have all the cost info per fill-up but didn't put it into the sheet as I wasn't recording it as I went. No big deal, we don't really care about each stop just the overall average.

On the way out I stopped by to check out Sneaky's new store. They were open, but hadn't had the official grand opening yet. Ruger gave them 4 rifles to auction off and a whole bunch of random things for drawings. He gave me this challenge coin from the raffle prize table. It's really heavy and well made, probably better made than the LCP MAX...

Two brief stops on the last day, didn't go into Buds but did go into the knife store. The knife place is huge and has an amazing inventory, but it's very much a tourist trap with 1000s of kids running around. Made for a miserable shopping environment, and the counter people kept pestering me. I suspect they figured out I was the only real customer in site, everyone was just exercising their kids and wasting time.

A picture of the van in travel mode, something I took to share on the vanlife meetup group page as they wanted a pic of the inside of my van. No one thought to do that as I was the first to demo my rig and it also wasn't setup to travel (no bed, fridge, etc).

My road food thing worked out very well. 6 days on the road, and only 1 fast food meal. It was a treat on the last night. The pot worked for ramen, and my ham and cheese wraps were satisfying, as the cheese and crackers and other stuff from the dollar store. I took advantage of the included breakfasts at the hotel, no reason not to get waffles if they're right there.

Lots of traffic snarls, lots of construction, a lot of accidents. I now see how those single car rollovers happen, people driving way to fast for their skill, panic swerve and over they go. Couple of rear end things on the freeway too, I assume they happen when someone flies up on a slow car that just pulled out to pass a truck. Almost got hit a few times myself; the guy coming up at 90+ really does come out of nowhere.

One of the hotels had this outside. Missouri, go figure.

At the retreat!

And officially badged.

When we were checking in they were talking about the 'health and safety' people, two staff that were assigned to do whatever should there be an accident. Since we were kinda out in the middle of nowhere and most people didn't have cars, I let the head chick know that I had a small trauma kit in the van and could flat transport someone if we had to get them to a hospital. She seemed happy to know that.

Later during dinner she came up to me and said that someone's luggage was locked, the TSA farted around with the lock and it was jammed and she said that if anyone could break a cable lock off it would be me. Interesting take... if totally true. I weakened the cable with the multi-tool pliers/cutters and then put the van tire iron in as a lever and just twisted until it snapped. Took me longer to get the stupid tire iron back into the hiding hole than it did to deal with the lock.

A few common writing spots, the outdoor patio which worked until the bugs found you, and the main writers room.

There were miles of trails around the property, most of which I didn't explore. Too many ticks. I just walked patterns in the parking lot when I wanted to take a break. I did go on the marsh walk after applying a lot of bug spray.

A little reverse photobomb here, I hopped in the background of the photo. The chick with the red hair is an 'influencer' and was there for free so she had to shill for the conference the whole time.

Some sample food. Everything was pretty good, no issues with the variety or quantity or quality.

A total words written contest, which I didn't win but I did participate in. I did get a "pi" which is writing 3141 words in any 24 hour period. I didn't think I could do that, but two back to back really good sessions and I was at 3400-ish words. Supposedly anyone who got 'pi' is going to get access to the 'pi vault' which has sample unedited manuscripts (so you can see what pro writers start with as a first draft) and a bunch of other things. Haven't seen access yet, but they said it might take a week.

Very few people appreciated my joke about which of these is the true grail. Humph.

Another win, the macbook cover. It picks up finger prints really easily but also cleans easily and makes me feel better about carrying this new one around.

Last thing, I stopped in Mason City, Iowa and had lunch with my Apple work wife (Liz) who retired out that way as her husband has family there. I totally forgot to take pictures of anything, or a selfie with her or whatnot.

Using leftover junk from a box of parts I've been saving "just in case", I built a high quality chicken cooling system. They're panting a lot at night on the roost, this may help. Or not, but it's something.

Out scanning the barn and coops with the thermal widget. The woman is running more fans, so she's worried about everything burning down. Easy enough to look for hot spots.

The warmest thing in the coop is the power supply at 107F and the chickens. Their heads and feet are 103F, feathers are much cooler which means they're doing a good job of insulating... which is not what we want in the summer.

I saw that Harry's had one of the charcoal colored satin PRS SEs on their web site and I convinced the woman to go look at it with me. Wasn't planning on buying anything, but I wanted to see what it looked like in person to even tell if it was something I would want to track down later when I was ready to test.

I compared it to some of the normal gloss finish SEs in the $850-1100 price range and while they looked nice they didn't feel nice to the touch. The gloss wasn't sticky exactly but it felt... I dunno. My cheap fender feels like hard plastic, which parts of it are but the body is gloss finished plywood (basically). The PRS felt, funny. I dunno, not bad just not what I was expecting.

The satin finish is super boring, but to the touch it feels like my satin finish Taylor. Very un-electric. It's also lighter than the regular SE (less layers of wood) and a touch smaller. I tried a bunch of them and the woman said that this one looked 'like me' for some reason. I just asked her and she said it's because it looks like some piece of wood I would find and make into a guitar. It's also almost sorta BBQ black, my favorite spray paint color. Anyway, she said I should just get it because it seemed like the right thing to get:

It's $500, and if I decide I don't like it I'm sure I can dump it for $350 or something pretty easily, they're not very common yet (this was the only one Harry's had) and unlike a $350 squire or Ibanez, this is a PRS. That means something.

The neck is well shaped and very smooth without feeling like plastic, and the tuners are metal. Frets seem well polished and the ends aren't sharp, knobs are fine. The next step up has another center pickup but I didn't want single coils, I wanted a double humbucker setup like this so I would never use that center single coil even if it was there. You can split the two I have into singles via the switch and pop-up tone knob, which I tried and didn't like the tone of so my guess that the setup I wanted is correct.