Lake, NY state 9.1

Well, after another beautiful vacation stay at my parents’ place on the lake, a small disaster befell us on our trip home. The Tortoise decided that it was upset at me for neglecting to fill the oil and coolant, and the thermostat blew up on us. Luckily we were only 30 minutes away from my parents’ place, so we were able to get it towed back to a good garage and be on the porch sipping vodka tonics four hours after the first sign of steam. Yesterday, after a morning of freelance work and worry over getting Jen to Rochester, we found out that it was only the thermostat and a hose, and I had not in fact fried a piston. $173.88 lighter, we packed it up for the second time in two days and made our way homeward to a house of worried, hungry cats.

I’ll probably write some about the trip in a day or two, but for right now I’ll just mention one of the first things that I think of: Crossing the street in front of my parents’ house to try to take a picture of the stained glass window at the church in bare feet, at 10pm, realizing that there were no cars in either direction on Main Street, and that the Big Dipper was huge, clear and hanging over the village.

Thinking about catastrope this weekend got me jump-started today into ordering the drive and enclosure that I was thinking about; after some figuring I felt this was the best bet. (I was considering making an old 8500 a server, but decided not to support any more legacy equipment.) It will be good to have a definite backup solution in place.