Jay’s Note: This is part three of a running two-week adventure log for RAGBRAI. Each day I’ll be posting a journal entry and some pictures from our trip that begins in Virginia, lands us in Iowa for a bike ride, and then eventually gets us back to the East Coast. Part two is here.
We’re out. Lexington to Buckeye Lake, Ohio, day one of the drive.
I set up a server rack in our house about a month ago in preparation (in part) for our trip. Inside, I have a local server running my own small language model, as well as acting as a thin client for my AI harness(es) that I’ve built for external models. Practically, what this means is that no matter how bad my internet connection is while I’m out, my server will always be doing work for me (I use mosh to maintain persistent connections). I’m even using it right now to help me publish this post. Pretty cool.
Not only is my server running at home for me, but so are the other new automated tools I recently installed in my house. For instance, after running some electric from the furnace to our new learning thermostat, I’m pleased to report that our house has moved toward greater energy efficiency. Lamps and outdoor lights now turn on and off automatically, hopefully keeping the skunks and other unwanted rodents away. That sort of thing.
But my server rack is my favorite part of the house, and its capacity continues to grow as I add to the stack. I’m able to connect to it via mobile hotspot or the Starlink Mini that’s mounted to the trailer while we’re out traveling. That’ll come in handy later when we get to RAGBRAI and all of the cell towers start shutting down.
And on that note…
We left today from Lexington, Virginia at 11am on our way through West Virginia and into Ohio. Not too bad of a ride except for all of the up, down, and side to side. Lots of terrain to cover in West Virginia. Somewhere along the way we also realized that we hadn’t purchased a new E-ZPass for our car, so ended up paying cash at tollbooths the old fashioned way.
We ate a late lunch at 2pm in a Kroger parking lot (very classy) just before hitting Charleston. Peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and apples. After picking up gas at their station we took a quick walking break, then hit the road again about 30 minutes later.
We got to the Buckeye Lake KOA at around 6pm Eastern, had a quick dinner, set up camp in less than 20 minutes, and walked around to check out the campground. There were giant chess and checkers boards set up, so we played a little bit before heading back to camp.
So far, all of the gear seems to be in great shape. The rooftop tent came straight out, the girls’ tent set up fast, and the fridge, AC unit, etc are all good. This was expected, but there’s always some worry on a first trip out for the year.
Tomorrow we break camp and head out to Starved Rock in Illinois. The ride should take around nine hours including stops, which should get us there right around 4 or 5pm CST. We’ll spend a little extra time there to check out our old favorite places, then head to Iowa and toward RAGBRAI.
No bonus commentary on stuff I’ve been reading today. It’s been a long one.