As I mentioned yesterday in the weekend update, our car is at the shop, not safe to drive, waiting for a part to be delivered. After 4 days of no vehicle I decided to rent a car for a couple of days as we have shit to do, plus we both have appointments Monday morning. The math on rental car vs. Uber was a wash.

I hopped on the city bus for the 3 mile ride to the airport, and upon arriving stood in line for 15 minutes while the 2 Budget/Avis agents dealt with a grand total of 3 customers. When I got the front I was told that there were "no cars in the garage" and that I could have a seat and wait and eventually maybe somebody would return a car and I would get the rent the car I had reserved the day before.

Cue Seinfeld. That bit was broadcast in September 1991. So it was already enough of a recognized problem then to be worthy of pop culture skewering. And here we are 34 years later, and the problem hasn't gotten better, if we are being generous. If we are realistic, it's worse. Budget tried to blame it on the storms in RVA yesterday. Apparently a bunch of people with afternoon flights decided to skip the flights instead of returning their rental cars in the rain.

Right....It could have been 78F and sunny, and they would not have had a car for me.

There were 8-10 people ahead of me in the desperate suckers line. Unlike all of them, who were visiting RVA and thus needed transportation, I could say FU to Budget and just go home. The bus was leaving in about 10 minutes so that is what I did. I canceled the reservation on my phone and rode the three stops back to the bus stop closest to the house.

At that point both my wife and I really needed to get out of the house, as we had been home bound without a car since Tuesday. So we walked the one mile to the local pub for dinner. While walking I realized that the last time either of us had walked one mile for a dinner date was college. Fish and chips, a burger with fries, two beers, and an iced tea didn't cost $55 after tip in college though.

In grad school (and undergrad) I was taught that a market with notoriously bad customer service was just begging for a competitor to come in and do things right. However, that was before the corrosive effects of private equity were well understood. Any real threat to the current market would just be purchased and killed. See the tech industry for literally dozens of examples.

Anyway, I rode the city bus for the first time yesterday, and I did a college like date (in spirit, if not in price) with my wife. We will be home all day, because you know, we don't have wheels.

Note: We live at the very end of the bus line. Getting to the airport is easy via bus. Getting downtown or anywhere else we might want to go in RVA via bus is 90 minutes each way.

I was out in the yard before 8 AM mowing to beat the heat. I did not beat the heat. (I mow with a human powered reel mower, so no noise to disturb the neighbors.) Last weekend was Independence Day in the US. But given that the government and about 1/3 of the citizens have abandoned the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, I certainly did not feel like celebrating. We were camping, but otherwise did nothing specific to celebrate.

While at the campground, the airbag light in the truck came on warning us that the passenger airbag was not arming. I figured it was the sensor that detects if a full sized human is in the seat, which is a cheap part. When I dropped the truck at my mechanic Tuesday he told me it is the airbag control module, and that I should absolutely not drive the vehicle until it is fixed. There is a chance that the airbags will just all blow while I am driving, or not blow at all in an accident. Unfortunately, it's not a cheap fix (are there any cheap car fixes these days?) and the part is in short supply. So as I type this on Saturday morning the truck (our only vehicle) is still at the mechanic. I'm hopping on the city bus this afternoon to go to the airport and rent a car, as we have shit to this weekend, and we both have appointments on Monday morning.

BTW, after this repair I'll be at $6100 on car repairs this calendar year. I bought the Edge in 2020 with 92,000 miles on it, and it's been fine until this year. But that is a big bill to deal with in a year when I'm had job issues and now I am starting a business. I was supposed to head to Asheville this weekend for DrupalCamp, but as I have no wheels that got nixed. 2025 just refuses to give me a break. I was curious, so I went and looked at what I could buy for $10K. (The $4K the Edge might sell for, plus the $6K I've spent on it this year, assuming they can get the airbag module.) I can not get a better vehicle for $10K, so in hindsight the decision to keep fixing the Edge is a good one.

Onto the links.

Kerri wrote about not getting the the current trend of people tracking every detail of their life. That struck a chord with me as I too have zero desire to track much of anything in my life. My wife bought me a smart watch for my birthday a few years ago, and after two weeks I returned it and replaced it with an analog watch. She also has the most adorable dachshund.

This article takes a more realistic look at the digital nomad life. It's not all hanging out at the beach working on your laptop. That really shouldn't be a surprise. That said, I am looking at a 4-6 week trip next summer where I work from the camper as we visit every National Park east of the Mississippi river that we have not yet visited.

Martha Wells, author of the MurderBot books, is not expecting true AI anytime soon. BTW, if you have not watched the MurderBot series on Apple TV, it is well worth a one month subscription to binge. It's ten 30-minute episodes, so you can easily knock it out over a weekend, or even a rainy day.

Ryan (who I met when he sent me an email via my blog over 20 years ago, and it turned out we lived in the same neighborhood) has added a blogroll to his site. I need to do that.

This post was composed while listening to Jukebox the Ghost.

And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.

The food pyramid is just a suggestion.

For a recent cigar and bourbon pairing, I reached for a couple of familiar old friends: Isaac Bowman Port Barrel Finished Bourbon and the Oliva Serie V Melanio.

The Isaac Bowman is produced by A. Smith Bowman Distillery, located right here in Fredericksburg, VA. Despite the distillery’s proximity, their core expressions can be surprisingly hard to come by — even here in Virginia. The Isaac Bowman Port Finish, fortunately, is generally found on store shelves, but that doesn’t make it any less desirable.

I’ve long been a fan of port-finished bourbons as companions to full-flavored cigars, and the Isaac Bowman is no exception. The bottle bears no age statement but is believed to be aged in oak for 4 to 5.5 years, followed by a 3 to 6 month finish in port barrels sourced from both Virginia and Portugal (using a mix of American and French Limousin oak). It’s bottled at 92 proof (46% ABV).

The port influence is immediately evident on the nose, offering notes of dark cherry, sweet apple, and vanilla. The palate carries those same port-aged qualities forward — delectable hints of sweet fruit, brown sugar, creamy vanilla, and a touch of mild spice. The finish is long, warm, and very satisfying.

The Oliva Serie V Melanio has made more than a few appearances in these Musings and on my Instagram feed. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t have either the Serie V or Serie V Melanio — usually in several vitolas — resting in my humidor. It’s a versatile, well-rounded cigar that pairs just as well with whiskey as it does with beer or coffee.

This cigar features an Ecuadorian-grown Sumatra wrapper over Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos, including Jalapa-grown ligero. Medium to full in body, it delivers a beautifully balanced profile of peppery spice, caramel, coffee, sweet nuts, and chocolate. The lingering mouthfeel is creamy and smooth.

This particular stick was from a box of Robustos I purchased in April 2024. It was brimming with the expected rich flavors and maintained an excellent, cool burn from start to finish.

The combination of the cigar and the port-finished bourbon was an absolute delight — perhaps one of the best pairings I’ve enjoyed in recent memory.

Cheers!

Trip: 51
Nights: 175-177

After losing my job at the end of May I canceled both June camping trips out of some Calvinistic ethic that I should not be in the woods having fun while unemployed. I fixed that for July by starting my own company, so now I am never employed or unemployed. I'm Schrodinger's Sales Consultant. So we went camping for the July 4th weekend.

We went to Douthat State Park. We were there in peak COVID in summer 2020. We met friends who got an AirBnB nearby. It poured rain the entire weekend. Our BBQ dinner with friends ended up happening in an unused picnic shelter at the State Park, after we spent the day hanging out in the camper due to the weather. The weather was much, much better this time. It was 90+ and humid in RVA and by the time we got to Douthat 2.5 hours later, it was low 80s with comfortable humidity.

We had an added complication of having to bring our 13-15 year old dog camping. He was camping with us once 5 years ago, and he was fine. But he is essentially allergic to planet earth, and we had free weekend pet sitting, so we just didn't ever bring him along. Our pet sitter has a new job that has him out of town most weekends, and Teddy's medications are complicated and the consequences of screwing them up are extreme, so we don't trust anybody else to deal with him. So Teddy gets to go camping.

Our fears about Teddy and camping turned out to be unfounded. He was great. He's old and not very mobile these days, so we can't take him hiking or even for much of a walk. Maybe we need a baby stroller to push him around. At one point a Park Ranger stopped by the site due to complaints of an unleashed dog chasing kids. He looked at Teddy and said, "I don't think he's the dog we are looking for." The Ranger also warned us to be careful on the bridge into the campground, as someone ran off it the previous night. (see photo below.) The bridge is sketchy and I get nervous pulling my little 14 ft. camper across it. I don't know how the guys driving a Dually with a 40 foot Airstream do it. Also, Teddy doesn't seem to understand that if he's already outside, he doesn't need to wait for us to take him out to pee. Not once all weekend did he walk to the grass and lift his leg. He waited for us to take him to the grass every single time.

We got into camp Thursday evening and after dinner got a fire going and we hung out at the campfire until it burned out, then headed into the camper for cards and board games. On Friday we went birding in the AM in the campground, which was also an experiment in leaving Teddy in the camper. I assume he was just sleeping in the camper, but whatever he was doing, he was quiet, which is what we were hoping for. So we can leave him for short periods of time without him causing a disturbance. After lunch I went out for a 5 mile RT hike to a waterfall that was more of a water trickle. Friday night was a repeat of the previous night, campfire/cards/bed. Douthat is fairly remote, there is no cell service in the park. However, I did not expect it to be so remote that we didn't hear a single firework on July 4th. I'm sure the many dogs in the campground appreciated that. Teddy's hearing is mostly gone so he would not have noticed them anyway.

On Saturday I did another hike to a waterfall that had little water. Blue Suck Falls kind of sucked. It's a big exposed piece of rock, so I bet it is quite spectacular during Spring runoff season. On July 5th 2025, there was maybe a few gallons a minute flowing, so not so spectacular. It was a very pretty hike though. I birded along the hike and picked up a few warblers and watched a crow harassing a Broad Wing Hawk, so it was a good hike overall. After that I just lounged at the campsite. It was a very mellow camping weekend. Saturday night was a repeat of the previous two nights.

The drive home on Sunday was uneventful.

Douthat is a wonderful state park. The trails were very well maintained. I only had to deal with a single blow down in two days of hiking. It's one of the original Virginia state parks, so the campsites are nice sized, if not particularly level. The beach area looked very nice, although we did not do any beach time due to having Teddy with us. The camp store and grill had the essentials and you can rent canoes, kayaks, and paddle boats a a very reasonable hourly rate. We didn't leave the park the entire weekend.

Next camping trip is to the Snowshoe ski resort in WV for a blues and brews event. We are mainly going because the Saturday night headlining act is Robert Jon and the Wreck, one of my favorite bands. I will leave you with a couple of sample tunes.

Oh Miss Carolina

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