lazy Saturday

It's been a fairly quiet, fairly lazy Saturday. The major issues for today revolved around doing laundry (I decided against it), purifying water (done, but will do it again this evening), recording some video segments for my long un-updated YouTube channel (done), and setting up some sort of shade close to camp to allow me to endure the 92-degree heat (done).

Being alone like this is unbelievably refreshing, though I'm not particularly tempted to cavort naked through the scrub. I still get visits from the occasional pickup truck; more and more, I suspect the people aren't fishermen so much as randy couples looking for a make-out spot, which is why they flee: what would fishermen have to fear from me? Speaking of fish, there are some huge specimens in this river, and they swim right up to the riverbank. I almost wish I had a fishing pole.

The solar charger has been doing yeoman's work for me; I finally realized that the secret to getting a lot of charge is to keep the BlackBerry off while it's loading up on the charger's stored power (duh). When I'm in a motel room, I normally charge the phone and use it at the same time, which creates the illusion that the phone charges rapidly even when being used. In reality, a wall socket practically pours electricity into the BlackBerry whereas the solar charger can only manage a trickle. This is why the phone needs to be off.

Even though I've been resting for much of the day, I'm fairly achy. I'm glad that tomorrow's walk will be only about twelve miles; managing more than that would be problematic.

So far today, the most exciting event was my encounter with the black widow in my backpack. I tried to take a picture of the spider, but I'm not sure whether I got a clear shot. I ended up chasing it down and killing it, because I can't afford to have something that dangerous crawling into my tent or my other possessions.

So that's the update for now. Gonna turn the phone back off and let it recharge some more now.

Cheers.


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