Most days are overwhelmingly positive, and I try to focus on that.
Even days where something goes wrong makes for a good story. I always tell people that you never recount the story of riding with a tailwind for eight hours, perfect weather and a slope downhill.
You tell the story of when it snowed, everything was freezing and wet, but you pressed on. Eventually, you warmed up in a gas station, chatted with the attendant and moved on.
Still snowing.
Setting up camp with frozen hands, but the experience makes for a good story.
And then there are crummy days. That strange part of the multi-faceted "how is your day" spectrum that is just... crummy.
This is one of those days. Maybe because I had a wonderful time exploring Sioux Falls, and got comfortable. Or the perfect storm of things being off enough to annoy you, but not wild enough to make it fun in retrospect.
Corn fields all day, every day.
I started the day with a mild case of food poisoning. I'm constantly interacting with public infrastructure; gas station restrooms, restaurants & fast food joints, water fountains in parks (thanks for telling your story Mom...). Who knows what caused it, but I felt ill all day. I'm pretty sure it was a gas station in the middle of nowhere that I picked up some food.
I also left my sunglasses somewhere. Honestly, I don't know where they could be; I try to be extremely diligent keeping track of important possessions. But even with the few possessions I have, I managed to loose something critical. They are not prescription glasses, but the world is very bright, especially on a bike.
Except today of course; I didn't realize they were gone in the gloomy weather until too late.
A water tower!
I setup camp in a disc golf course, well off the beaten path. There was a nice pavilion with picnic tables and the scenery was beautiful.
It was just filled with mosquitoes.
Ok, I can deal with this.
I put netting over my face and a long sleeve shirt on.
After dinner, I holed up in my tent, wanting to watch a movie that I downloaded offline to Netflix. I use Netflix, and two other apps with offline capabilities to have TV shows and movies to watch. It's the perfect way to unwind in the evening, just before bed.
But the app crashed with the error message, device failure, please reboot. The issue wasn't unique to Netflix though, all three apps had the same issue. Must be related to my limited connectivity; maybe the apps all share a library that handles offline content... So I contacted Google Support.
After going through the first few steps of troubleshooting, clearing caches and what not, they instruct me to remove my primary account on the phone and re-add it.
I ask them, will this account be my primary after I add it back to the phone, I have two other accounts on this phone. They say yes, there won't be a problem.
I should have known better.
Not only did the second account assume the primary role, but I couldn't reconnect to support. The new primary account was for G Suite, the original primary attached to plain old Gmail. So, here I am trying to explain what happened to a brand new support person, that cannot access the previous chat logs.
And Netflix still won't open.
And all my photos have been duplicated. I guess that is better than the photos disappearing.
Some days you meet incredible people, see breathtaking sights and have the most enlightening experiences. Some days go unexpectedly south, but you reminisce about it with a smile.
And then there are these sort of days, better left forgotten.
Oh, and did I mention there was a headwind the entire time?
Joe