We take off on our trip in less than a week. This Sunday we will head south to Auburn and spend some time there. The following Tuesday we will drive to Los Angeles and on Thursday we will be on the train headed for points east. The ultimate destination is NoirCon 2014 in Philadelphia. Right now I’m typing this post on my laptop, a serviceable Toshiba Satellite running Windows 7. I have a hard time with the cramped keypad and have always found laptops difficult for this reason. I’m not much of a typist—years of practice have improved my skills somewhat—and I need space for my “search and destroy” technique. I’ll have to get used to it as I’m bringing the damn thing along for the journey. I hope to post regularly to this site and hope you’ll follow along. I’ve always kept a journal when journeying but they’ve always been the pencil-and-paper kind. This is the first time I will be using the computer and all the modern things like WordPress and Facebook that come along with it. Should be fun. Except for the numerous typing mistakes.

I’m also bringing a camera. Since I still have a “dumb” phone (and the cheesy 2 megapixel camera that comes with it) I decided to buy one for the trip. Off to Wal-Mart I went, it’s the only place in Yreka that you can get decent electronics. I found  a compact little Nikon (the Coolpix S3600) for a hundred bucks. It fits easily in a pocket and has a 20 megapixel resolution. My 8GB SD card fits it perfectly and the Satellite has a card slot as well so it’s all good. My big Canon PowerShot SLR is much too bulky, and being a few years old it “only” has a 10 megapixel capability. The Canon is a real camera for serious photography, something I don’t really do. I’m about as good with cameras as I am with keyboards. My main criteria for this purchase was size. This Nikon fits in the palm of my hand. It seems pretty easy to operate and should be just fine. I’ll post up lots of my amateurish snaps for y’all and try to make the bog posts reasonably interesting, OK?

The next item on the checklist is packing. I don’t like to carry a lot but with the fall weather coming I’m not sure exactly what to prep for. Raincoat, hat, and compact umbrella for sure as I expect we’ll get some rain. I understand that places other than California have rain. I’ve no idea how chilly these places (like Chicago, our first stop) will be this time of year. Sure, I can check the forecasts, but temperature doesn’t tell you much. A 50ºF day here in Yreka is not as cold as one in the Bay Area as the climate here is mostly sunny and dry and there is much more relative humidity down there. At least we’ll be in civilization so if we need something we can pick it up without much trouble.

Be seeing you!