from rscottjones

One of our favorite travel purchases of the last year were several handheld fans. We bought them for our 100-day Adventure, figuring we might want them during our 24-day overlanding safari through Africa.

And boy did they come in handy—they were perhaps the best purchases we made for the trip. We used them constantly, not just in our overlanding truck (which lacked both AC and fans, even in 90+ degree humid weather), but also just for general air movement in tented camps and hotel rooms (even in fancy destinations like Singapore or Dubai).

Jen’s of the age that involves hot flashes (she old), and so they’ve also come in handy since our trip, for those random moments when things suddently get hot. We now bring at least a couple on every trip we take—whether for our tent or a hotel room—and I assume they’ll earn a weekly spot in our stadium bag at upcoming ASU football games.

I bought four different colors (and two sizes), mostly as a way to differentiate which ones might need to be charged. They’re all shaped like bears, so each become a different kind of bear: a brown bear, a black bear, a polar bear, and—because of its mint color—an Irish bear.

Anyway, we tried a whole slew of personal fans, from the handheld variety to the hanging neck variety, and returned everything else. These bears were the best ones, and by a wide margin, and also among the least expensive. Here’s the link to the larger and smaller varieties on Amazon, in case you’re interested.

We’re heading out this weekend for eight days in Ohio and Pennsylvania, with the primary goal of marking off 11 national park units for Jen. We fly into Cleveland, where we pick up a hybrid rental car and make our way to Dayton. From there, we pop down to Cincinnati for a MLB ballpark she needs, then make our way over to Western Pennsylvania. There are five national park units in the region, plus we’ll catch a game at the ballpark in Pittsburgh. From there it’s back towards Cleveland, where we fly out the following weekend.

What we hope to see, if things go as planned:

• Dayton Aviation Heritage NHP
• William Howard Taft NHS
• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center
• Great American Ball Park (Cincinnati Reds)
• John Parker House
• Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers NM
• Hopewell Culture NHP
• Hocking Hills State Park
• Friendship Hill NHS
• Fort Necessity NB
• Flight 93 NMEM
• Johnstown Flood NMEM
• Allegheny Portage Railroad NHS
• Horseshoe Curve NHL
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater
• PNC Park (Pittsburgh Pirates)
• James A Garfield NHS
• Cuyahoga Valley NP

There’s not much on this list I haven’t already visited, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy my time nonetheless. This is a replacement trip for our canceled Canadian Rockies adventure, so it’s naturally going to underwhelm in comparison. But I love me a road trip and it’s hard not to enjoy exploring other parts of the country, so I’m still looking forward to the time away, especially with my favorite person.

Speaking of Jen, she’s starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for her NPS quest, so we’ll likely prioritize park trips for her until she finishes. If we’re successful in this itinerary, she’ll have fewer than 40 units left (whoa!), within range to finish as soon as Labor Day 2027. In fact, she’s already plotted out a possible schedule that would get to the finish line by then.

But we also have plenty of other travel goals, so perhaps she’ll spend a bit more time on the quest. After all, it’s way more fun to have a quest you’re actively pursuing than to have finished a quest. It really is all about the journey, not the achievement—I can personally attest to that.

Flickr was one of my all-time favorite social networks. It wasn’t “social media,” but still part of that early period of social networking, before anyone tried to monetize their following or influence public debate. It was simply about connecting with others who shared your interests. I haven’t been active on Flickr for many, many years now, but apparently I hit the 20,000 photo and 500 album mark On This Day in 2014.

On this day in 2012, I visited…

the “Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota,” which is the World’s Largest rolled by a single person. The ball is within a locked pagoda and the museum was locked, but with some internet sleuthing and a public personal facebook account, I managed tracked down the phone number of someone who could help us. We managed to get an emergency personal tour of the museum, and even got to sneak inside the pagoda to check out the ball up close. I have now seen all three of the Worlds Largest Balls of Twine.

Of course I was going to visit this twine ball after hitting the other two (now three) competing ones. I mean, there was an entire Weird Al song devoted to it! And besides, one of my fav amateur videos on Youtube is:

a much more poorly produced family tribute video for Weird Al’s song “Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota."

As an official twine ball aficionado—yes, I’ve visited all four of them (each of which involves a fun story), and even owned BallsOfTwine.com for a while (a never-quite-launched project dedicated to fun Roadside Oddities)—I really loved that video.

It’s extremely amateurish, which is a critical component of its charm. The camera work is terrible, the “actors” aren’t exactly hitting their lines, and the husband clearly owes his wife immensely for putting up with the whole thing.

And of course, it’s an entire damn song, a seven-plus minute song, dedicated to a Twine Ball, so of course I’m in. Did I mention that it seemingly wasn’t even produced for distribution? Nope, this was a passion project, pure and simple. A “Great Family Adventure,” as they called it in the opening title. The only way we can watch it is because the sister of the protagonist uploaded it to her own Youtube account.

Circling back on our new foldable travel cooler, I’d like to report that it worked GREAT. It folds small, stays rigid in the car, and keeps drinks cold until the next morning’s ice refill. It also fits perfectly in those hotel ice machines. It’s earned a spot on “hotel” road trip packing list.

Super bummed to hear that Tucson’s venerable Summit Hut is permanently closing after more than 5 decades of business. We ventured down to Summit Hut several times to gear up for our 100-day Adventure Around the World last year.

How it started:

Summit Hut began its entry into the outdoor retail industry modestly in 1967 when two fifteen year-old friends, Jeff Conn and Summit Hut, Ltd. President, David Baker, collaborated to offer a special order service for Tucsonans who desired backpacking and mountaineering equipment. The boys conducted business from their bedrooms and stored the inventory under their beds. In 1968 David, a senior in high school, bought out Jeff’s interest in the company and rented a 150 square foot room attached to a small bicycle shop across the street from their high school.

How it’s going:

But the past few years brought a combination of pressures too great to overcome. Rising costs, brands selling direct, new big-box competition, the push for lower prices, shifts toward online shopping, and a changing customer base all played a part. Summit Hut ended up in a tough spot-too big to run super lean, but too small to compete with national chains. We looked at every possible option, but in the end it just wasn’t sustainable.

What we’ll miss:

What we’ll remember most isn’t the challenges-it’s the community. The friendships made, the stories and trail tips shared, and the trust you gave us over the years mean the world to us. We’ll also deeply miss being part of the broader outdoor community-hosting and joining events, supporting local non-profits, and connecting with so many people beyond the store. Those are some of our best memories, and we’re grateful to have shared them with

I really like this “bullet point travelogue” that @chadkoh posted. I’m terrible at posting detailed trip reports, so something like this could work well for me (even as just an interim post).

I stopped by AAA today to grab a few maps for this weekend’s trip and snagged this road atlas for only $8.

Being of the web domain owning type, I naturally use a variety of custom email techniques to make life easier. One of these ways is having an email address that forwards to both my wife and I. This is particularly useful for “shared” accounts, like a streaming service or our internet provider or a hotel rewards program; basically any “simple” account that we both might want access to (especially for 2FA login codes). It’s rarely a problem for it to be a simple email forward, instead of a full-on email account with an inbox and smtp.

After my dad passed away last year, we discovered that he had a small investment account with Vanguard that we had totally missed when we had taken over his finances almost 5 years prior (haha, whoops!). We had assumed the account balance was zero, as the last statement he had added to his file folder indicated, and we never noticed any statement to the contrary. But alas, there was indeed a balance; not much, but enough to spend the time to claim. We’re guessing that he had accidentally switched to electronic statements, and well, those must have all gone to his spam folder for the last decade or so.

Jen was handling much of the paperwork after his passing¹, but as the heir, I’d need to complete a bunch of the tasks to claim the money. We normally use separate email accounts for financial stuff, but this was just going to be a simple “send me whatever funds are in the account and close it” type request, so I used a shared email address. That way, I could take care of the transfer and she could still have access later for any other paperwork and tax reasons.²

Well, the transfer process was much, much more of a hassle than it seemed like it should have been, and I ran into roadblock after roadblock, error after error, run-around after run-around. Thoroughly frustrated, I gave up and just opened my own Vanguard account, which allowed me to transfer the funds much easier, for what seemed like dark pattern reasons. Whatever, at least it’s done.

Fast forward a year and we haven’t done anything with the account. But I get lots of email about it. Countless marketing messages and account updates and blah blah blah. There’s seemingly no way to unsubscribe on the email message, and there are no account settings that I can find that govern these types of email notifications either. The messages simply ask you to email them if you want to change your settings:

If you prefer not to receive emails of this type, simply email us. Please do not reply to this message to opt out.

The word email is a custom “mailto:” link, which must have some account-specific tracker. But unfortunately, that means that I need an actual email account, not simply an email forward.

This is frustrating; they should have a web-based way of turning this stuff off, too. But I get why you need to email from the actual account email address for basic security reasons.

Unfortunately, this means I have to establish a full email account for that shared email forwarding address, which is going to require a whole bunch of steps.

But, I’m sick enough of getting these emails and figure I may run into this issue in the future, so I start the process. I set up the website on my email hosting service that allows me to send properly encoded emails from your site. Part of that verification process involves, naturally, changing some of the DNS records at my domain registrar.

So I head over the registrar and add the various records. Then wait a few minutes, click verify and…well, looks like I need to wait a bit longer for the records to propagate. So I set an alarm, and come back and try again. Nope, not ready yet, apparently. Rinse and repeat, many times. Gah, I’ll check again tomorrow. Nope—still not working. So I delete and re-enter the records, and try again the next day.

Still not working. Gah!!

Oh shit, I know why! I set the nameservers to my hosting company even though I don’t have site up for that domain. So I was changing the records at the wrong place.

Ok, let’s try this again. I log in to the hosting company and start adding the records there. I click verify, and wait, come back later to click verify again, still no. Wait a few more hours and try again. Nope. Repeat that waiting process for the next several hours. Delete the records and try again. Still a big fat error.

Sigh. So I give up for the day.

The next day, I’m back at it. I can’t believe this thing isn’t working. Why am I still using this fucking company?!!

And then I notice. I had changed the DNS records of the wrong domain at the hosting company. Now, it’s a very similar domain name to the one I needed to change, so perhaps an easy mistake to make if you’re rushing and already irritated. But also: it’s the wrong one. Of course it wasn’t working.

I added the records to the correct domain, and voilà—it immediately works. IT WORKS!!!

So now I had the email set up, I just had to wait for Vanguard to email me again so I can click that damn unsubscribe link. All that work, and I’m finally to the point where it finally, finally pays off.

And then, just a day later, Jen comes into my office with a suggestion. We have an investment account that we opened for my bestie’s daughter. We “tax” ourselves every major trip we take (plus birthdays), and invest the money on her behalf, so that her daughter can take a gap year or at least a big trip after high school.

Jen suggestion is that we keep the Vanguard account, and use it for the daughter’s travel account instead of the one we currently have it in. That would make things easier, as we can then more easily designate the daughter as a beneficiary of the entire account in our wills, and it’ll make record-keeping easier for us, too.

Which makes complete sense. But it also means that ALL OF MY WORK WAS WORTHLESS. Because we’ll still need to get those damn emails.

It looks like there are still nearly a dozen obvious AI clones of my kayaking guidebook on Amazon.

Each of them features:

• an improbable title (often with multiple colons),
• an author name with a middle initial (many with a misplaced period), - a photo that’s very clearly not the Salt River
• they’re all much longer than you would expect for a normal guidebook (122-124 pages), except that it mimics the length of my own (I included a lot of additional information and history that few guidebooks would incorporate)
• they’re all listed at $11.95 or $12.95 paperbacks (mine is a $4.69 ebook).

I give the book away for free on my website if you join the email list for the Alliance of Salt River Paddlers, so it’s pretty obvious how they got the copy to run thru an LLM.

I didn’t write it to make money, and it’s not clear that anyone has actually bought one of the clones. But I still find it annoying. And I wonder how many other small author ebooks are cloned this way.

Here comes the haboob!!

I rode my bike here, so guess I’ll be staying for another round or two 🍻

edit: and…it’s officially blocked out the sun.