Digital Wanderer

Пока во временном режиме, но сервер поднял (второй раз, хехе).

За то время, пока он был в дауне, съездил в Аризону, покатался на велике ещё раз. Больше ничего значительного не произошло.

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Since I brought up the store, I'll say that they have a big selection of juices and ice cream here, and there are even juices “not from concentrate.” They taste good, I especially like the Simply Grapefruit brand. They're not cheap for us, but for the locals they're tolerable – about 4 bucks for 2 liters. Ice cream costs 5 bucks for 1.42 liters. They often have sales where it's literally half price. And it's worded trickily - “Buy one get one free”. In reality, you can just buy one, the price will simply be halved.

Soda in restaurants comes from fountain machines: they make it on the fly by adding syrup to tap water. It tastes unpleasant, reeks terribly of bleach. But in the store, popular sodas are expensive, around 1.7 dollars for two liters. Or 65 cents for a can from a vending machine – I buy those sometimes. We also have a so-called Vending Machine at work, meaning a machine that sells chips, cookies, and chocolate bars. It's a buggy device – it refuses to dispense certain items, so you end up having to scarf down all sorts of peanut butter. This, by the way, is a very popular traditional American crap – give it a try if you ever get the chance.

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I was lent a Specialized carbon road bike and I went for a ride around the nearby William B. Umstead State Park. The park is named after a governor of North Carolina (where I reside). The governor didn't actually get to govern – he suffered a heart attack after his inauguration, was sick for two years, and died. Why they'd name a park after such an unlucky guy, I don't get.

My bike wasn't a great fit for the gravel paths of the park, but overall it turned out alright. The paths, which are called bicycle trails, are very packed and of good quality, so you can even ride them on a roadie. There aren't many paths in the park, and the park itself isn't very big, at least by my cycling standards. It's funny that when we drive to work by car, we have to go around it, but on a bike, I could just cut through the park for only 12 km. I need to think about how realistic that is. There's a shower at work, but grinding on a bike for half an hour in the morning in 7-10 degree weather doesn't sound very appealing.

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