May 28-30 - very different days

May 28 was, of course, the 300k.  We met at the Tim's next door to the motel around 5:30 and headed out at 6am.  Trev and I headed out together; Charles had to get something out of his car.  I didn't see him again that day.  I rode with Trev for about 15 minutes, through Barrie and then out to Ridge Road, and I never saw him again either !  He was a little slower on the slight rises and I just plowed on.  He fully expected to be the Lanterne Rouge for the day.

I really expected to see Charles coming up behind for the first couple of hours and then wondered if he'd gotten around us in Barrie.  I didn't find out until my ride was over, because I didn't check email, that he'd quit early.  He wasn't feeling on top of his game, stopped at a MdD's in Barrie to fill his water bottles -- he'd forgotten -- completed about 13km and then turned around. 

Trev slogged on through the day getting further and further behind, but of course I didn't know that either.  He got to the penultimate Control -- Alliston -- around 11 and wouldn't have left there until 11:30 and figured that he was going to miss the 2am time limit with still 50km to go.  He took a taxi back to Barrie.

I had quite a good day, finishing in daylight.  The weather was great, the route is relatively flat and I just kept rolling along.  I had thought that 14:30 would have been close to a personal best but it wasn't even close.  10:something is hard to beat for a 300k !  That was one of my Florida rides.  I had quite a number of 12:something and 13:something rides.  That said, I was happy with my day.  I felt good.

With that finish, I was home by 11:15.  I had filled up my coffee mug at the urn in the Comfort Inn lobby - after all, I missed breakfast there ! - and only stopped briefly for fuel at the 214 service center south of Parry Sound.

Cassie was up waiting for me.  What a dog. 

I got a call early on the 29th about the Xplornet upgrade.  They were coming that day ! Where is "he" coming from ... North Bay, and it's "she" ... ok.  Well, 6pm rolled around and no show.  Grr.  I called Xplornet and they said to let them know if the appointment was missed ... well, says I, it's 6pm, and I left it at that.

Around 7pm, guess who shows up.  Amazing.  However, within a half-hour or so she was on her way, installation complete.  Without my help, however, she'd have still been here; ok that's an exaggeration.  She had no idea how to attach the dish to the pole but I worked something out, McIver that I am, combination of the existing setup and the new.  The inside part was easy, swap modems, attach her laptop and get it "provisioned", as they call it.

There's good news out of all this.  Our speed is up by a factor of a few times.  I'll do some benchmarking tomorrow morning.  The angle of the dish is such that it doesn't  point towards any of the trees anymore; we're in the clear.  All's well !  Latency is about the same.  That's to be expected.

Sandy is happy now that she can watch The National on her ipad during the Stanley Cup Finals.  I should be able to watch Netflix, but I haven't tried that yet. 

Our original supplier was Hughes, with Xplornet being the reseller.  Then they contracted with the Vianet people for generation 2.  Now it's back to Hughes.  I don't care as long as it works and keeps getting faster.

I spent a good chunk of today working on the Linux 16.04 upgrade.  The only way to do this is with a clean install.  I successfully did that on a spare drive and I'm now doing the entire thing on my boot.2 drive.  It may take another day before that's completely up to snuff and then, if I'm smart, I'll do the original drive while I still remember how to do it !

I did get into town and pick up gas and got that weed whacker going. Sandy raked a bunch and now I've got to deal with that.  She also went out in the kayak. 

Onward ho !