Tuesday evening. I just had to double-check what day this was. Gotta love the vacation life!

Today, I slept in and then forced myself to go outside and visit a local mining landmark. As it turned out, that was a fine investment of time and energy. The shortest path was closed for vehicles, so I drove a bit away, and then spent 75 minutes fighting the shrubbery before I finally found the place. The mine has been abandoned since the 19th century, so there was just a hole in the ground, mostly covered by age and debris. I did, however, find a ton of calcite samples. Not sure if any of them are museum quality per se, but they’ll make for a fine paperweight.

The walk back was on the highway shoulder, without fighting the branches and the topography, but a wee bit longer. All in all, I spent four hours hiking around with my heavy backpack (I might have overprepared), and I think I’ll be mighty sore tomorrow. Still worth it, though.

The local radio has some interesting, purely Canadian sort of news: a guy went blackberry-picking and got eaten by a black bear. Another guy broke the local speeding record with 144 km/hour. That’s just 89 miles an hour, which is actually slower than some of the posted speed limits in the Nevada desert, along the loneliest highway between Reno and Las Vegas… It’s strange to have to limit myself to 90 km (56 miles) per hour on local highways. It definitely beats walking, but it’s sooo sloooow.

I’ve only really been vacationing for just two days now, but it’s such a refreshing change of pace from, say, sitting at home playing my MMORPG for 48 hours. (Sorry, ESO, you know I love you.) My facebook friends and family are living vicariously through my updates. I hope they also find something to distract themselves with. Even with everything that’s happening, 2020 need not be a total loss.

In covid news… The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control is recommending using glory holes to prevent face-to-face contract. They stole that from New York’s advisory a few months ago but decided to clarify. (The NY version merely mentioned using walls as barriers. They’re subtle that way.) This story has been making rounds for a few days now: Russian hackers tried to steal the data on vaccine development from just about everyone. This cuckoo approach (steal, don’t develop) kind of sort of worked for them in the past: after all, the Soviet Union stole the nuclear bomb secrets instead of doing their own research. Dishonourable but effective.

And with that, I’ll lie down, get some well-deserved rest, and read more Dresden Files – or watch more of the strange German TV show where actors look entirely too much alike. Cheers, y’all.