Red Eye to Oregon

Sitting in the Seattle airport at 5:00 am is not my idea of a fun time. At least I got a free upgrade for the flight between Anchorage and Seattle. Unfortunately, the flight wasn't long enough to get much sleep. The flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage was on AS 52, and was a combi (half freight half passengers). I sat next to a couple on vacation returning from a couple of days in Barrow. They were telling me all about the tours they took and had a lot of questions about the aurora. Fortunately, I still remember some of the physics of the aurora from my grad student days at the university. I'm on my way to Oregon to spend some family time. The farm where my dad grew up has been sold in California and I'm meeting up with other family members for a time of sharing memorable experiences on the farm. I modified the Google Latitude settings to show more accuracy and downloaded an app called Longitude on my phone that will do updates automatically based on a schedule. When we actually head down the road, I was going to increase the update frequency and see how well it works. Right now it shows me sitting in the middle of SeaTac. When I tried it at the University, it had me sitting at a cell tower. I guess the gps couldn't get a good location. On the drive down to California, the problem will be AT&T data availability.

I've managed to got in some riding since I've been back from Barrow and have been trying to focus more on my cornering. I noticed that this summer, I've been reluctant to lean very far. I guess I don't trust the link between the tires and the road. This has been especially true with the wet roads we've had lately. I picked up Proficient Motorcycling by David Hough at the rally and started going through it while in Barrow. Lots of material there and not enough of a riding season to practice.

Interesting, I'm at PDX and Google Latitude has me across the river in Vancouver, WA. Maybe that's the nearest cell tower. Probably no gps signal inside the airport.

Amazing! There is wireless network access on the HUT Shuttle to Corvallis. I didn't expect that at all. Unfortunately, that means that I'll not get much sleep on the 100 mile trip.