On Sunday I rode down 600 miles with my parents and their two dogs to Eureka, in northern California. We are staying with my Aunt at her apple farm for a week, and my parents will attend their high school reunion. Unfortunately, cousins Mike and Matt are south in Fresno and Los Angeles.
Also unfortunate is the internet connection, which has improved somewhat over time, but still is quite lacking. A few years ago it was a noisy 28k modem. A few months ago it was unidirectional satellite (with DirecPC), so the downloads were faster, but uploads were still over the modem. Now it is with bidirectional satellite (again with DirecPC). It is not as fast as I hoped. The bandwidth appears to be much less than 128 kbps, which I thought was what the provider advertised, though I now can't find any numbers on their website (they just say broadband). The latency is just awful:
Pinging www.chanceofrein.com [66.114.146.249] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 66.114.146.249: bytes=32 time=1194ms TTL=51
Reply from 66.114.146.249: bytes=32 time=1116ms TTL=51
Reply from 66.114.146.249: bytes=32 time=866ms TTL=51
Reply from 66.114.146.249: bytes=32 time=1659ms TTL=51
Ping statistics for 66.114.146.249:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 866ms, Maximum = 1659ms, Average = 1208ms