Goodbye Loft, goodbye 5 Howe

Two of us moved in; 5 of us moved out. Hard to believe almost 7 years whizzed by... so many memories made in this space.

Turns out the midnight deadline was not only for the lease running out but also for the start of the storm. At least the Jimny hasn't turned into a pumpkin...

Last minute

Like true South Africans. Our lease runs out in just under 4 ours.

According to our schedule

According to our schedule, everything has been packed and moved.

According to our schedule....

A hectic day of moving

Rented a trailer longer than our car, and moved all our big junk to storage.

Dust bunnies and scary dirt traps remain.

Where are you?

I haven't had time to test it really well, but using https://aprs.fi/ and http://wsprnet.org/drupal/ I hope to be able to keep a fairly up to date log of all the places we visit in real time.

The idea is that between cell phone, vhf and hf coverage there should always be something out there that can pick up our location. I've written something using the Google App Engine that will poll for my position once a day and make it available on https://whereami-167313.appspot.com/ (there should be a link to it on this blog).

Time will tell if it's going to work or not. It depends on me setting up a RaDAR station and sending out a beacon when there's no other coverage. It also assumes that the code I hastily threw together works. It also assumes that I'm able to update it with HAM call-signs I get assigned in the countries I'm visiting while we're on the move.

Last mountain bike ride

Today and tomorrow is 'move day'. Everything (including two cats) is going into storage.

 I saw two porcupines on my last mountain bike ride. They were like ghostly shadows floating across the road as I came down into Newlands from Rhodes Memorial.

Shots

Adina, on weasling out of getting the Typhoid shot the Automobile Association recommends for Botswana and Swaziland: I'm trusting the Canadian government more than some random South African agency!

Party party party

Note to self: Next time, remember to invite people to the going away party.

You can't go that way...

The route we planned for our 1st week might not work! The Biedou river pass may be flooded this time of year.

Motor vehicle insurance

"Due to the immeasurable level of the risk as per our telephone discussion, Underwriting has decided not to accept the risk of cover. They cannot calculate the premium rate risk and therefore...
"

Uh oh!!! Last minute scramble to get motor vehicle insurance!

Amateur Radio License - Lesotho

I now have an amateur radio license for Lesotho.

ZP8SAS

Adina says I have my priorities all wrong.