Sunday, November 26, 2017
Today started off a bit slow. A good night’s sleep was a big bonus, but that led to a late start on the day. Unfortunately the weather for long bike rides is beginning to turn against me. I doubt that I will make my 1000 km goal for the month, and that is okay, because it has been a great stretch, and I will have a lot more time to ride through the Winter here in Europe. I don’t feel like risking my health to ride in bad weather, and my legs are definitely getting stronger, but there is no rush to build muscle or endurance quickly, and particularly at the risk of injury or illness.
So I decided not to ride early because it was going to rain (which it did), and instead went to the Taranto Archaeological Museum. I really wish I had gone there before the castle. It was a great museum and Jinhee would have enjoyed it even more because of the great mosaic floors.
One of the bits that made the experience more enjoyable is that the displays included English. Such a nice change around here. As well, many of the relics are very, very nice and the Mosaic floors are stunning.
In fact, they have so many Mosaic floors, they just hang them on the wall like carpets. 🙂
After that visit, I returned to the boat as the sun peeked out and then prepared for a short bike ride. Jinhee has returned to Toronto for a few days between meetings and was running around finding things Canadian to bring back, so I prepared a shopping list for her. I really appreciate her putting the time into finding stuff to make my next few months here more comfortable and enjoyable.
Ultimately I did get on the bike and the roads were mostly dry. I moseyed about and found lots of dead ends, but in the end completed over 50km (of a planned 30 or so), and ended up riding for about 40 minutes in the dark on strange roads. Luckily I always keep a red light on the back of my bike and I packed two headlamps just in case. It all worked out.
The castle below was on my route (just outside of State), and I wonder how old it is. I passed a few ‘castles’ today and they look more late reformation period than many others, but around here there is so much, it could have just been designed this way to sustain an image.
Those of you who have listened to me drone on about my love for cycling know that one of the things I appreciate is the thinking time I get on the bike. I often solve problems while riding. Problems that seem beyond me or are very convoluted. Today, was one of those days.
Home Free is beset by a water pressure problem. The pump continues to lose pressure, and that means that we have to turn off the water pump to keep it from running endlessly at times, and it takes time to prime the pump after the water has not been used for a while. Luckily I know a couple of minor details about plumbing from a childhood in the wilderness and working on a house or two.
The problem is that Home Free has a very complex ‘house’ water system, with lots of ways to consume water, and only one way to provide water. That means that identifying where the air is entering the system is near impossible and I can spend a lot of time ripping the boat apart and trying to find a leaky hose or faucet or whatever.
Today it occurred to me that if I time how long it takes for the pump to lose pressure at various spigots, then it may help me to identify where the air is getting into the system. In that way I can focus my efforts on a particular area. Tonight I will run some tests to see if this gives me more information about the location of the problem. I would really like to get the water system figured out very soon, even though it is not critical. (We can carry about 1500L of water and we can make 80L per hour, so this is just an annoyance).
That’s it for today, the rest of the evening will involve food and water system debugging.