Sunday, April 20, 2003
Fish and Gaim
Presently staying with my friend Catherine in Santa Cruz, and while swapping travel stories she told me one that happened while she was cruising around England on a barge. Wait, rewind that, you were doing what?
Yeah, you can rent little barges and cruise all over Europe, it turns out, via the inland canals and a system of hand-operated locks. Here are some of the navigable canals in the Burgundy region of France:
And a little 2-berth boat:
Not quite affordable by myself, but with a few people it starts looking quite reasonable... Catherine went with a total of six people (larger barge) and said it came to a little more than $20/day/each. That's your accommodations, transportation, and a kitchen! I haven't found any quite that cheap, but in that ballpark. Anybody have recommendations for barge rental companies? I'm thinking it would be fun to cruise around France for maybe a month, give or take a few weeks. Anybody want to join me?
In other news, I finally broke down and looked into IM. I tried to get simonfunk, but the name was taken(!). Then I tried a more obscure one--loudgreenfish--and that was taken too!! So on a lark, I tried the password I used with loudgreenfish elsewhere and discovered it was my own account, which had been automatically snarfed up from yahoo or something. No such luck with simonfunk, but I'm somehow still suspicious that I'm stumbling over my own tail there. How would I find out?
So, anyway, I'm now on AIM as loudgreenfish. But I have no audio on this
computer so I'll probably never know when someone's IM'd me. I'm using
gaim by default (Linux). Suggestions for better Linux clients welcome.