Caroline spent the day following up on job opportunities and I worked on this blog and did laundry. Doing laundry, I watched clips on YouTube of the previous day’s NFL games and basked in the glory of my first fantasy football win of the year. I’m a little football obsessed these days, to say the least. Myself and three of my oldest friends have a very active group text where ninety percent of the content is Bills/football related and the other ten percent is us lying about how cool we were in high school. In the drought years by the middle of October the Bills would usually be like 2-4 and I would check out, choosing to use my Sundays for other things. I like the Bills being relevant much better.
In recent years I’ve stopped buying music and like
everyone else I’ve started to stream. I chose YouTube Music as my service
provider since it came with the bonus of eliminating commercials on the YouTube
video channel—nothing is more annoying than having a clip stop twice in three
minutes for a commercial. YouTube Music could be organized better but all-in-all
its been pretty good.
Being in the van I knew there would be some issues as
we came west getting cell service, but it’s been way worse than I expected. Six
weeks prior to leaving for this excursion my trusty iPod from 2008, Big Black which
stored some 16K songs went to its final digital resting place in the sky. I
hadn’t used Big Black much in recent years due to streaming, but it was a
reliable alternative when I would be without internet service.
This made it imperative that I upgrade my phone with a hard drive where I could store music, podcasts and books when I would be
offline. I had a removable memory card on my previous phone but to use it you
either had to be born after 1998 or have several post graduate degrees in
computer science. My new phone is a refurbished Samsung Note 10 with 256gb of memory—I
took a chance on a refurbished one because I can’t bring myself to spend a thousand
bucks on a new new phone.
Much to my delight on the Note 10 there was no removable
memory card. In fact, after watching some videos on how to use the internal
256gb of memory I noticed a “Downloads” folder on my YouTube music app. And get
this, as if by some kind of magical digital alchemy for people born before 1998 without
any post graduate degrees in computer science all I had to do was hit that download
button and presto, any album or playlist would be directed and stored in the download
folder. It was so easy.
This was huge for me. While I like contemplative moments of silence as much as the next guy, I need the stimulation provided by music, podcasts and books. It’s part of the reason we chose to travel this way. I love being on the open road rocking along to a favorite playlist or listening to a podcast. With all the spotty internet, even at the Staywise, the downloading process has been slow but we’re getting there.
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When Donna was done with work we went to the Ute
Museum. It was set up in an excellent manner with just the right mix of
muti-media presentations and artifacts.
Like all genocide stories the experience of the Ute
Indians is both tragic and inspiring. The museum laid out the long history of
the Ute’s who occupied what now is Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona in a
nomadic fashion for the last ten thousand years. From the way they respected and
lived in harmony with the land to the valiant way they fought white aggressors
to the measures they are taking today to preserve their culture.
A cool little place definitely worth checking out.
Home
How we got here...
An Ode to Fire and Donna
Chronological Posts From The Road
Going Mobile: What We Learned
Our Rig: A Pictorial Essay
Enjoyed reading about the Ute tribe. Will do more research!
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