Slave to technology

Muncie to Marion, Indiana Wednesday, May 12, 2021

I barely slept last night, worried about losing all of my data. How silly. One of my favorite movies is Deliverance, and the scene where the Burt Reynolds character is bragging about being a survivalist. “The system’s gonna fail” he says, as he impales a fish with a bow and arrow. The character is insufferable, but he has a point. I was perfectly capable of getting around with a paper map in days of yore, and taking pictures with my film camera, but using the technology is intoxicating. This is the price.

Even though the recording last night said that Apple Support would not open up until 11, I tried calling at 8. I got another angel, Josh, who sat with me for three hours while I successfully restored my previous back up. He was so clever. Even when we had to break off the call because I was updating the very phone we were using, he had me make a video-only Face Time connection on my iPad, hold the phone in front of it, and scrawled messages on the screen, with arrows pointing me where to touch. In response, I wrote my questions on paper and held them in front of the phone. With this Rube Goldberg technique, we got it done. He stayed with me until all the apps loaded, and we tested them to make sure they worked. Like you, I consider contacting Technical Support to be worse than having a root canal, but this guy was amazing. I wanted to leave a glowing review, but no link was forwarded. If you can see this, thank you Josh!

Bottom line, I have recovered everything except for the photos of the Indiana highpoint I had taken on Monday. Just a silly thing, really, but I went ahead and bought some rice and will keep the old phone in it for a couple of more days. I also stopped by Verizon to get a new screen protector, and had fun hearing stories about Ball State from recent grad Eric. I also saw that Muncie was the home of the National Model Aviation Museum, sadly it was closed. Darn, I had built dozens of model airplanes in my day, but these were the ones that you could actually fly by radio-control. It would’ve been fun to see them.

All of this kept me from hitting the road until almost 2. Today will have to be a half-day.

Back on the wonderful Cardinal Greenway, but there was a big hiatus where the Adventure Cycling maps (yes, I’m back on their routes) had me go to back roads. Most of them were smooth, but there was a 5 mile stretch that was particularly rough, and pointed right into the wind. The road was smoother in dead center, and I could increase my speed by 2 mph, but this required me to look constantly in my rearview mirror, since cars were speeding by. It felt so good to get back on the blessed Greenway.

So here I am in the town of Marion, Indiana for the night. I always try to find something interesting about the towns I pass through, so I found this tidbit from Wikipedia: “Marion is the birthplace of actor James Dean and cartoonist Jim Davis. It was the location of the wedding of actress Julia Roberts and singer Lyle Lovett in 1993”

Hmm. If I hit all of the destinations I hope for, I will be seeing James Dean’s life from start to end. Just my luck.

Distance 34.8 miles, 1,150 total. Time 4 hours with stops. Elevation gain 524 feet.