This actually happened the day before yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to post it until now. The last day I was riding, last Saturday, was when it started acting up. It would play some songs, but then not others. It would happen to entire albums not song by song. When it would get to an album that it couldn’t play, it would actually try to play each song, but be stuck at the beginning of it for a few seconds, and then go on to the next track, which would do the same thing.

This was a bummer, but not a huge problem. When I listen to my iPod most of the time I’m putting on Hammer Bros., Have Heart, or The Freeze, and all of those bands still worked.

Then my iPod wouldn’t turn on any more. It would start to boot, showing the Apple logo for a moment, then turning the back light on as usual, but never getting past this point. I forced a reboot several times, without any luck. If I tried to go into the diagnostic mode, that would work fine, but after rebooting from that it would go back to the previous state.

When I got to Pat’s, I tried hooking it up to his computer, but since its a Mac formatted iPod, it wasn’t recognized. I left it plugged in there for a while anyways to let it charge, but that didn’t seem to help much.

I then left it plugged into the wall charger overnight. In the morning I checked on it again, and it was at the screen you see when you turn your iPod on for the first time, which asks you what language you’d like to use.

When I saw this, I knew I was in trouble. I answered the questions and looked at what music was left on the iPod, only to find that it was all gone.

I thought about hooking it up to Pat’s computer to get some of his music, but again, its formatted for Mac, so that was no use. I could have formatted it to PC, but really just didn’t have the time.

So now its in the mail, headed home with two long sleeve shirts and a polar fleece that I definitely don’t need any more. I haven’t used any of then yet, and I doubt I’ll be needing them down here. They didn’t weight all that much, but were just real bulky, so by sending them home I was able save some room in my trailer and have some nice padding for my iPod while it shipped.

It does stink to not have music anymore, but I only listened to it every few days, so its not a huge loss, and I’m sure that Apple will fix it since its still under warranty, so there’s no problem there. Better it happen now than four weeks ago.

It took 25 days of riding, but I finally found it. At Red Bluff Landing there’s a rope swing, a bridge to jump off of, and some nice shade to hide in. The perfect spot to stop for lunch!

The river was lower than usual I’m guessing because the rope swing wasn’t nearly far enough out to be used, but it was still plenty deep to be able to jump off of the bridge.

I got here around 1:30, and was just dying in the sun. Being the first day back on the road, and then having to contend with this hot weather, even for this area, I decided early that I was going to take these next few days easy. So when I rode past this spot, I knew this was were I had to spend my time. I swam around for a bit, jumped the bridge a few times, and then took a nap in the shade for a bit while I dried off.

Its about 3:30 now, I’m hoping to make it another 20 miles or so before stopping for dinner, and then ride a bit more for a total of 50 – 60 miles for the day.

Its really hot out and Pat just threw a fire work at me. Its not even noon and its already over 95. I guess tomorrow is supposed to get up to 105. I’m not looking forward to that, but its supposed to cool off after that, so that will be good.

The last few days have been a lot of fun, even though I was really tired most of the time. I’m guessing that was due to riding 211 miles in the two days before getting here, and all the time we spent in the hot heat.

The beaches here were awesome. The water temperature is perfect; cool enough to be refreshing, but not too cold that you have to get out after a few minutes. And there’s always good waves.

Going back on the road is always such a hard moment. Having to constantly re-adjust between having friends, luxuries like air conditioning, showers, and varieties of food, and riding close to 100 miles a day and sleeping behind churches has probably been the hardest part of the trip. If I only slept at a house for a night and kept going it definitely would be a lot easier, but I wouldn’t have near as many stories or enjoyed the trip as much, so doing this is necessary.

My next goal is the Florida boarder. I’m guessing it should take me about five days to get there. Once I’m there I’ll have to start planning my trip back home so I can make it in time for my job interview on the 12th (it was on the 16th, but they had to move it up). I’m hoping I can make it to Orlando, Florida before having to turn around but I won’t set that as a goal just yet. For now its to the boarder and everything after that is a surprise!

Ready. Set. Ride!