(continued from Episode 15)
The above image shares a poetic bit in the far from poetic town of Gravellona Toce. I took it when the weather was still kinda bearable and walking to the supermarket was doable in the morning. Now it's mid 30s for the last days with zero wind and a lot of humidity. When I say a lot, my non air conditioned attic is boiling but the dishes stay wet on the tray post washing. Back home in Athens they dry at a fraction of the time it takes here even at lower temperatures.
There's certain things that are nice when wet but weather is not one of them. Give me a dry heatwave in exchange of this suffocating nightmare anytime. I trade a few C more for less humidity without second thought. Only thing I can do in this hell is work on my laptop at the balcony:
No, it's not that cool. I can't picture the mosquitoes. You see, on a hot wet and windless weather like this they go crazy. I already look like a clumsy junky with all those bites on my skin but the attic indoors is unlivable. And the only fan that it has is more noisy than a WWII fighter plane.
I take the chance of these inactive days to do some archive job. One of them being reupload pictures of mine on my blogspot from my 2023 4 month motorcycle trip cause I just discovered that for some reason they were placed with lower resolution. And as you may know blogspot is ghosted by Google since ages ago so the interface is laughable and I have to do them one by one.
1st world problems one might say but turns into a bit of 3rd one when... my laptop dies. I left it outside at the balcony as I wasn't working indoors anymore, woke up next morning rushing to work again and no power, nothing. One could suspect humidity but there's a roof over the balcony and the surfaces didn't look wet to suspect so.
So...what am I gonna do? As usual, try to repair it myself:
As you can see, in the absence of proper screwdriver I use my good old semi cannibalised Swiss knife. No, its screwdrivers don't match either so I use its knife instead to do all those screws. Nothing visually suspicious, I try a few tricks, nothing works. Dead. Brilliant... not only I'm heading South to even worse weather tomorrow, I'll have to spend my time on this thing which as long as it stays dead I have so much stuff that I cannot do.
I start as early as possible in the morning trying to avoid as much hell as I can. From 8 to 10 am the weather is fine but anything after that is definitely not. Not sure the heat killed my laptop but most probably kills my camera from time to time and the following video is all I manage to salvage from my today's ride:
On the good side, when I arrive at Castelnuovo Rangone I am welcomed by a super hospitable host. Claudia has pre cooled my place with the AC and although I travel solo she has filled my place with edible goodies enough to prepare breakfast for a regiment. I am easily convinced that I'll need those pleasures under such weather conditions while trying to repair my laptop. And at some point it works!
Yes! The damn thing started. What did the trick? I disconnected the touchpad. Weirdly enough, the keyboard doesn't work but who cares, I'll find one. I shut down the laptop with my mouse and ask Claudia if she has a spare keyboard. Unfortunately she threw away one days ago but sends me a store with cheap Chinese stuff. Great. Until laptop is dead again....
Swiss knife out again, back cover out again and I start disconnecting parts of the laptop hoping to find the faulty one. Hard reset doesn't revive it either. Why dear? I mean, I had plans to buy a new machine anyway before you died but couldn't you wait a few day for me to get you back home and rest in peace?
At the end of this far from exciting day I have the burden of 300+ kms on my back plus the efforts to fix the damn thing so I drop on my bed like a brick, feeling stiff like a brick. Sleep isn't great either and I wake early with all those "what if" in mind. I decide to take a walk before the weather melts me down again so 8am I'm out after a nice breakfast due to Claudia's generosity and Italy's respect for my belly.
Funny to realise I'm staying one breath away from Jack Kerouac's road:
This is Castelnuovo's downtown:
Looks like the have some sort of cinema festival here at this square honouring the pictured guy:
Italy is a country that feels like the set of a movie scene anyway.
Fancy some graffiti?
Or some visual art?
The local park is not bad but the sun already cuts me like a laser so I take some shots before I rush into the shade again:
I think some of my laptop thoughts were heard cause even machines have a soul hence in one of my later attempts laptop awakes again and I am able to type all this stuff now. One thing I know for sure is that I won't shut it down till I leave this place next week. Unless it shuts down itself for good :)
So that's it for now folks, see you on the next one!
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