Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
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Remembering Site 37, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 7, 2009
Front tire balance
I rolled out early this fog shrouded morning to breakfast at the Pecos River Cafe before heading across the street to Forrest Tire to see when they might have time to rebalance the front tires. Forrest Tire got me right in and computer balanced them.
I haven't had a chance to see what effect the balancing made. Today was very windy and with the headwind heading back to Brantley I couldn't tell.
More on my loss of Verizon service at Site 42 yesterday
I set up on Site 42 again tonight, thinking I'd survive the night without an internet connection and head out tomorrow to either Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM above Las Cruces or to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM south of Alamogordo. But sitting here looking at the 3-4 bar signal (both EVDO and 1X) on my cell phone I was puzzled by my inability to connect to the internet. On a whim I unplugged my USB modem from the WiFi router I use and plugged it directly into the laptop. Bingo!. Huh?
I normally have the modem plugged into the router and use a Wilson amplifier to boost the signal into the modem. If memory serves, I've read that sometimes amplifiers can cause disturbances to a cell system that negatively affect the signal to other customers and even to other carriers using the same tower. Is it possible that this area with its oilfield service trucks running all over the place that there are more amplifiers in use here than in most areas and that perhaps Verizon deals with amps differently here than they do elsewhere? I'm not savvy enough about this stuff to know what's really going on but I'll take my new found connection, thank you very much.
As I write this I have the modem plugged back into the router, the amplifier is turned off and the signal is fine.
I'm staying put
Now that I have my ongoing mechanical crises subdued for a while I need a break - I'm going to stay on here for a few days of R&R.
Night camp
Site 42 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
- Verizon cell phone service - Access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies with many drop-outs.
- See a list of the nights I've camped at Brantley Lake State Park
- Locate Brantley Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- Go to Brantley Lake State Park website
- Locate services on my Resources map
- Check the weather here
When Hope Dies
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no.