North Coast Travelogue: 4/22-4/24

Headed yet again to San Francisco on Sunday. We'd had some rain and I the forecast was for scattered and diminishing showers. I checked doppler radar as I usually do. It showed what seemed to be scattered, but heavy showers, the way I saw it. The also appeared to be limited to Humboldt County.

To my surprise, there was hardly enough rain to bother turning on the windshield wipers, until we got to Garberville. I found the rain there rather pleasant, as it was relatively warm out. I told the wifey they should taper off as we headed south. That didn't happen.

We kept hitting shower after shower. It became rather annoying because it wasn't heavy rain, for the most part, and I had to keep adjusting the windshield wiper speed as they seemed to being going either too fast or too slow.

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Stopped at the Moss Cove rest stop between Laytonville and Willits. I noticed a couple madrone trees with some branches that looked like they had some sort of blight on them. We'd parked in the same spot nearly every time we stop there and I'd never noticed that before. I wonder if that was some variant of that Sudden Oak Death, or whatever it's called?

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Best gas prices, once again: Safeway in Willits. $3.22 a gallon, if you use your Safeway card.

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Just north of Santa Rosa the rain really started coming down. Visibility was greatly reduced. It was good to see other drivers slowing down due to the conditions. I've seen people up here flying along as fast as they can during heavy rains, even in the safety corridor between Arcata and Eureka.

The rain petered out after Santa Rosa and that was the last we saw of it.

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Get to the Cathedral Hill Hotel. First thing I do, after unloading some stuff and sterilizing the room, is try and check my e-mail. I try and connect to ATT Wifi and seem connected but my browser keeps saying Page Not Found or some such.

It's not unusual to have such a problem so I try again, checking my wifi program. It says I'm connected, with a strong signal but I still can't get anything with Firefox. Finally, I notice my wifi program says something about authenticating my IP address or something along that line. I let it do it's thing but it keeps saying it's failed to authenticate whatever.

I disconnect and try again numerous times. Nothing. I wonder to myself if maybe ATT WiFi might be down. Nope. It can't be. It says I have a strong signal.

I start wondering if the problem is with one of my wifi connection programs and start screwing with them, disabling one or both of them numerous times while screwing around but manage to enable them again.

I'd left the laptop with the wifey while she was in the hospital a few weeks ago. My brother- in- law brought it back to Eureka with him when he went down to pick her up. I'd wondered if he tried to use it and messed with some settings? Nope. Everything seems ok.

Maybe ATT WiFi is down? Nope. I have a connection. It's just not letting me do anything.

Finally, after pulling my hair out for forty five minutes trying to connect, I decide to finish unloading the truck. As I pass by the front desk I ask one of the clerks if there's been any complaints about the Wifi; "Yes, ATT's been down for over a week. They've had their tech people come in twice but they can't figure out what's wrong...".

ATT Wifi's down? Now why didn't I think of that?

The helpful clerk also says he'll give me a key to their Business Center for no charge, since ATT's down, and they have a DSL port and a computer for guests to use there. Cool.

After unloading my stuff, I go to check out the Business Center down on the Mezzanine. It's a small room with a Dell computer and a FAX/ Copier/ Scanner. There's someone already in there so I decide not to intrude. I realize this could be a problem if everyone in the hotel wants to check their e-mail at the same time.

I go back a little while later and nobody's in there. The computer's been turned off. I power it up and am surprised at how fast the computer boots. I'd brought my laptop thinking I could just disconnect the cable from their computer and hook it in to my laptop but thought that might be kind of rude.

Despite suggesting to Ed Denson that it might be prudent to carry an ethernet cable with him while traveling, so he could connect to hard line DSL, I'd never followed my own advice. I figured I could go across the street and buy one at Circuit City, but I didn't want to buy another cable. I have three at home.

I also wondered if I'd need a password to login to their network. I finally went back down to the front desk and asked and they said anybody could hook up. No need to log in. They even offered me an ethernet cable to use- no charge. What a bunch of folks!

So, I managed to pretty much have full internet access for the two days down there. The downside being fighting for space in the Business Room and having to lug all my laptop stuff down there and set everything up whenever I wanted to use my computer. I guess I shouldn't complain about that. At least it's not my old Humboldt County Laptop (Archives March 4, 2006) I had to use the first time I went down there.

But, at least I was able to keep some things up and not have to rely on those public mac machines on the UCSF campus. I hope ATT gets the Wifi there fixed before I go down again.

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Got back into Eureka a couple hours later than usual on Tuesday. We had to go back to UCSF on more time Tuesday morning, adding insult to injury. Could have ended up worse though and at least we got home before dark.

As we approached Eureka from the south, we saw the smoke from a fire that turned out to be at a motel on McClellan Avenue. Worrier that I am, that just made me wonder what might be wrong at our house when we get home.

Everything was fine.