“Elementry physics, a beam of energy can always be diverted. Are we there yet mommy?” –Flynn, from the movie “Tron”
That’s about how I feel right now. Turns out the March of Dimes walk I was supposed to do communications for wasn’t on Saturday, it was on Sunday. So I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn on Saturday for nothing. After driving over there, not finding anyone, calling Kip on the radio a few times and hearing nothing, and then coming home, I was now awake enough (and it was around 8am) that there was no way I’d be able to go back to sleep and get the rest I didn’t get overnight. So I hung out in the apartment a little bit, and then heard Dan calling Paul on the repeater. After Paul didn’t answer, he called me. Turns out he was on his way to the club shack to climb the tower and get the rotator off the one mast, and Paul was supposed to meet him there. I talked with Steph for a bit, figured out our plans for the day, and then headed over there to join them. Good thing I did, since Paul never showed up (we didn’t hear from him to find out what happened). Got the rotator down, and then I headed home, and Steph and I went down to South Jersey to return the scale she bought. After a little driving around behind the store, we ended up in the pines, and by this point I was in a bit of a bad mood. Tired, cranky, and just alltogether not feeling very sociable. Stephanie talked me into staying in the pines for a bit and doing some four wheeling, and I did. And I started to feel better. Funny how that place can just turn my mood around.
After hitting a couple trails, and getting back out to the highway, we came home and had dinner. I went to bed a little after 22:00 since now I knew I had to get up early, and had already nixed a lot of sleep I could’ve had Friday night.
Sunday I woke up and went to the park again. This time there were people around too :> I hung out and helped Gary and Gerry setup a portable HF station idea they’d had, and it worked very well. Then I got assigned to a location on the walk, Checkpoint 3. It was kinda neat, for one thing talking simplex with everyone, and being in a completely directed net (Even if I could see the other person from my location, I had to communicate with them through net control, not directly to them). My only problem came around the same time the walkers starting coming through my area (which was the last checkpoint on the walk), and that is the fact that there were no bathrooms near this checkpoint. I heard someone at CP1 say they were packing up, so I called control and asked if someone might come over to relieve me for a few minutes. CP1 called in and said he could do it, and then control gave the go-ahead. A rather painful 5 minutes later and Joe showed up, and even let me borrow his truck so I could get there faster (not bad for someone I’ve never met before). After the trip out and back, Joe and I manned CP3 until there were no walkers left, and then we headed back to control. Helped pack up there, and then stood around for I’d say an hour chatting, about 7 of us in a circle. It was nice, in some cases to put a face to the name, and to meet some people that I hadn’t heard on the air before then.
I took a nice hour-long nap yesterday afternoon at one point, and ended up staying up until 00:00 to watch a show on Comedy Central. Oh well, so much for getting up early on Monday, time to set the alarm for 9 again so I can get some sleep. Now I’m just about ready to head in; doesn’t look like much happened over the weekend, just a few people whose accounts were closed and now they’re noticing that they can’t login. That could be interesting.