turning south relo to Beulah Valley, CO
timing of the relo
Yesterday was my 14th day at the previous spot. I do my best to stay aware of and respect those limits. I pushed it by 6 hours this time.
- it would be hot in town on Thursday (90s) but a cold front was coming in overnight. This would make it more comfortable for doggo as I ran errands.
- the cold front was bringing full overcast and rain. Driving on Friday would allow the alternator to maximally support the meager solar
I pulled out of the spot at 6am and headed down the mountain on that terrible, hateful road. Never again. At least it was cooler: the van said it was 44F outside.
USPS
First stop was the post office in Palmer Lake. Not only were they open at 7am (!) but the worker bee was motivated and efficient. (!!) I think it was a case of a person in a small town being grateful they had a federal job with bennies. Rock on, sir.
It was the scooter plates and registration so I’ll be able to dork around on it this time if it dries up.
reprovisioning
I’d planned to hit wally world later but the mail center (below) wouldn’t open until 9am so I had some time to kill. When I saw a walmart I called an audible and headed over.
Got some staples, snacks, dog food, and a fridge full of perishables. ~$150. If this Alpicool ever dies I think I’ll look for a larger fridge, a dual zone so I can store ice cream and freeze meat. Powering it won’t be a problem.
I couldn’t get into an optimal position to repeat walmart wifi, but it was enough to update the phone and laptop, as well as about half of the YT videos I had queued up.
package pickup
The mail center I like in Colorado Springs receives from all carriers and charges $5 for pickup. Very fair. Worker bee here is top-notch, too.
I got an amazon package and a reloading package from Graf’s. Worker Bee says she orders from Graf’s, too. :-)
fuel x 2, water
Stopped at a Shell that had a water spigot. Started the water then filled the van tank. I also filled the scooter tank while I was there.
Planet Fitness
Last stop in town was at PF. Once again there were no parking spots conducive to fast repeating. But I finished up the rest of the videos. And took a hot shower (desperately needed)
boondocking spot
I moved about an hour SW and only to ~8,000ft. It’s going to be cool for at least a week so I didn’t want to be at 9k. Thank doG the road up this mountain was good. Some slight washboarding in places but otherwise very nice for steep dirt.
After turning off the FR onto the two-track leading to the boondocking spots it got muddy. Is this the first time I’ve been in Real Mud since putting on the KO2s? Don’t remember, but they worked great.
I found a spot and used Sun Surveyor to find maximal sun between the trees. It’ll be cool enough I’m not worried about sitting in the sun.
Lots of litter from inconsiderate campers. I stacked the empty Amazon boxes in the fire ring and put all the paper litter on top. Done deal.
OTA
Out of habit I rescanned the MythTV tuners in case there were any usable OTA signals up here. Looks like I have the local Fox and Public Television affiliates.
the thermal printer
I dorked around with the thermal printer. The listing repeatedly talks about A285M printer and the manual sends us to https://a285m.labelife.cc/ to get the drivers. There’s a zip of linux drivers but there are no PPD that mention the A285M. Closest hits are the first two in the list: A886.ppd A887.ppd. Nothing with 285 in it at all. I tried both and neither worked.
I went back to scour the listing and saw that some commenters were referring to it as M835. Hey, that driver is one of the available PPD. Installed that driver and the settings started to look like the printer specs.
Tried printing: no go. Errors in the log like Could not draw this page at all didn’t exist in google. After a while I stumbled across this comment on a Raspberry Pi forum that mentioned libcupsimage2. I went to install that and apt mogrified it to libcupsimage2t64.
I’ll be danged, it works.
Still messing around trying to understand the whole thing but I’m getting some usable notes-to-self on receipt sized paper. I also tested whether I could write on the paper and I could. This will help with my planning because I “think” better on paper where I can annotate the current version of the document. .