blog – wright
It has been an interesting week. We — Pete, Erin, and Lucky — have temporarily left Florida, and are almost at Cape Cod for a family shin dig this weekend. I have made heaps of long trips by boat, but this is the first by RV. There are many similarities but also a few differences, and we have a new best friend named Sam!
Sam Walton has “passed” as they say, but his impact on travelers is huge. We have covered a big percentage of our miles in the time after dinner, say 7:30 p.m. to 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and have never failed to find a safe spot to stop and get to sleep for as long as we needed, with no need to fight either the morning or evening rush hour traffic near any city. (New York City is an AWFUL place to drive regardless of time — terrible roads, way too many aggressive drivers, and hideously expensive tolls! We may take back roads all the way home to miss NYC!)
We have not bothered to try for motels that may be full after midnight, because, like a turtle, we carry our home with us. Sam left us safe parking lots in almost every city or large town. We get to sleep, eat, and sleep, and can buy anything we need at whatever Walmart in the parking lot we wind up staying in, for free, for a few hours before hitting the road again. We have booked into a campground in Brewster for three days for the family get-together.
GPS has made expert navigators out of anybody over about the age of 6 years. Which is fine, when all goes well! However, when planning long routes or voyages, especially while trying to avoid obstacles that may be 100 or more miles away, at sea or on the land, you should have PAPER maps and/or an atlas or chart book.
You can save a LOT of hassles by being able to see both large scale and small scale mapping at the same time.
At sea it is even more important because you do not have road stripes and signs to help you stay oriented.
I took a fair bit of physics at Georgia Tech and have recently made some observations which have enabled me to come up with what I intend to make known as “Wright’s Law” which shows a relationship, to date rarely discussed, if at all, between space and mass. More on that next week.
Good Fishing — Peter B.
P.S. Sam’s WiFi is also GREAT. We are a good 200 yards from the store where I picked up a pint of blueberries this morning and I have a good strong signal!
