First off, we (me, wife, newish dog) drove the Taco to the pan handle of Florida for a week of leisure. The location was more for my wife than it was for me. I like the mountains (you can take the boy out of WV, but you cannot take the WV out of the boy) but the wife likes the salt life so once a year she goes and sometimes I go with her. A few times over the years she has gone with friends. Suits me fine.
The week was nice overall. We were 3 miles from the closest anything (food, entertainment, shopping) and 20 miles from our favorite places to eat. I was glad I took my bike because not only was I able to keep up with the company sponsored fitness challenge, but I could do some Ingress (what little there was on the island) at the same time.
The trip was a chance for me to try out two new items I purchased on Amazon. The first and most important was a tonneau cover for the Taco. I picked up a tri-fold cover for $200 shipped, which was $50 cheaper than I had seen it before. This was a different brand but the reviews were all good. It worked well enough but there is small gap in the back near the glass that caused some water to get in under the cover but it was minimal.
The second item was a bike mount for my mobile phone. Playing Ingress on my bike is fun but without a mount, it is dangerous. I have already wiped out once because of this. The new mount worked very well and holds my Moto G quite securely. The only complaint I have is the side mount blocks the "down" volume key but that is a minor issue.
The dog did well on the trip, mostly. She became figitity after a few hours of driving so we had to stop to let her stretch her legs. A few times she tried to climb up in the front seat, which was dangerous but my wife,who was not driving at the time, took care of her. The dog finally began to enjoy the water after only 3 trips to the beach. She is a hound and we were not sure how she would adapt. With no place to let her out to do her business, I had to walk her every time she needed out. It was not too bad but she got me up most every morning at 4 or 5 AM to go out. I just took my meds, grabbed my phone, a poop bag, and a flashlight (it is dark at our end of the island) and headed out. The one good thing about the 4 or 5 AM nature call was I could sneak up and hake the portal that was just inside a private area. During the day, if you crossed the line a guard in a nearby guard shack came out an ran you off, politely of course. At 4 or 5 AM, it is too dark for him to see anyone 50 feet from his well lit shack, so I did my hacking there at those hours. I have held that portal for about 3 weeks. I am hoping to make it 60 days. Mostly likely I will not, but I can dream.
Almost all the Ingress portals on the island were in the center and we were at the farthest west public part of the island. Any further west was private. The far east end of the island is a state park with a few portals but since you have to pay each time you enter the park, I just stayed out. Only a small number of portals are there anyway.
So I hopped on my bike each morning and rode to the center of the island, hacked, linked, upgraded, and fielded the portals then rode home, putting in about 10 miles or so each morning. Those rides, plus the ones I did at home (planing Ingress in evening in the town where I live) allowed me to meet my fitness challenge for biking (240+ miles for the month).
The food we had on this trip (mostly lunch since it was a little less expensive) was OK but not as good as I have had in the past. I never had the chance to eat any scallops (my fav) but I did have some baked oysters a couple of times. As a matter of fact, I had seafood every day that week.
Ingress Update: I am at Level 11, with 6.6 million points. For the first time since I started playing this, I am short both points AND badges to level up again. I currently need two more Gold badges and it looks like unless I either field and link like a madman or I go in search of a lot of new portals, it will be months before I level up again. This folks, is where it starts getting hard. I have reached Silver in almost all badges (that I am not already Gold or Platinum in) but I am quite a ways off from getting those two more Gold.
Since I have been busy with work, a week long vacation, a weekend camping trip, and other things, I have not been overly active on the weekends like I normally am. I noticed a few of the other agents in the Resistance have started working in my neck of the woods, which I am sure is driving Hockey Family crazy. A large part of the city is blue and it appears the Hockey Family is fighting hard for a few portals nearby. I can see HockeyMan does a lot of work south of us, where he works but I don't see any real farms (of any high level) there.
Our little L7/L8 Cemetery was taken down again the other day. What I find odd about that was it was not linked/fielded up so the toads would have to waste a lot of get for little return. I usually avoid taking down farms that don't have links/fields because of this but maybe the people who took it out were bored. They did not link it up and they did not defend it well so I am not sure of the reason to take it out. I had a few L6 XMP's to spare so I unleashed those to kill some resonators (working for my badge) but left it mainly untouched. Hopefully the people who took it out will continue to battle for it...I could use the points.
One nice thing about my vacation was it allowed me to farm a lot. I am not sure why but when I farmed lower level (3-5) portals, I got a lot of shields and a surprisingly large number of AXA's and ADA's...enough that I have been using them to flip portals instead of wasting my supply L8 XMP's. There have been a couple I have flipped more than once, simply because I can. I will slow down when I get low, which might take a while since I have accumulated so many.
I have been farming as much as I can and hacking any portal that I come across, even if it is low level. Farming nothing but high level portals only gets you high level gear and believe me you will want some L4 Reso's if you run out! I am currently holding on to several L3 and L4 reso's to help fill our portals.
The biggest surprise for me was all the MUFG containers I have gotten in the past 3 weeks. I had (at one time) 11. I know it is just a random chance but it sure has been interesting. Of course I just recycled most of them...how many can I actually use?
My ALS has not been bothering me much but my hand is getting weaker and I noticed my left leg slightly give out on me when I tried to run across the street. That was a little scary but I did not fall. I just stumbled a little and recovered.
Well, the hand is tired so I need to give it a break.
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