So I'm finally getting the replacement laptop set up. I picked up the biggest drive I could find at Microcenter and am now configuring a workstation environment. As luck would have it, about 15 minutes ago, a small reseller contract for Personal Stock Monitor got signed and will require me or Anatoly to do some code. Figures. Maybe I should go away more often.

I went down to REI and picked up some bear repellant. I keep having visions of being on the Dalton Highway broken down waiting to become bear food. I don't have any real expectation that the repellent will work all that well, but at least it's something if "bad things happen".

At this point I'm pretty set on the northernly detour through Pennsylvania. There's a town with a persistent coal mine fire that might be interesting to see. It's a bit of a detour on top of a detour up to the Aerostich warehouse. Since these will be my first targets, I don't know what kind of mileage I'm going to be able to do. I'm guessing that I'll start out doing 300 per day or so and build from there.

It seems that for at least the first part of the trip I'll have plenty of places to stop, almost too many. For the latter really lonely part of the trip I'll have far less. I find myself wondering how far will I get? Will my body give out on me? I don't have that extreme sense of confidence that I normally have doing things like this. I'm not sure why.

It's been pretty hot lately. The car thermometer today read as high as 97. Ouch.

The next couple of days will consist of more running around and scrambling trying to get everything ready combined with visiting friends, my business partner and paying a visit to my mom. Time is very tight and there's so much prep work that I wanted to have finished which just isn't.