More travel & tech thoughts

 I’ve been off work for twelve weeks - twelve! I had to count twice to believe it. Okay .. this is week 12 and it’s only Tuesday, but still. 

Travel thoughts: 

• I did my road trip and RI/TX trips. I’m in the final third of my Canada trip - it’s been pretty evenly split between city (Toronto) and cottage time. Toronto time has been quite similar to my Portland time - some social, some lazy hangout solo time (mostly with books, though I did watch all the show Severance). 
• This week and next I’ll spend Friday through Wednesday in Quebec City and Montreal, and I’m excited for both! Then I have one more day in Toronto, and head home (with a side swing to see a friend in Milwaukee, WI). 
• It’s been a nice split of active and lazy time; people and solo time; and the weather has been decent, if too hot in Portland and too sticky/sweaty in Ontario. But…I guess that’s summer! 
• I’ll be glad to be home for 2 weeks and wish I had a bit more time there, but I didn’t want to leave Canada any sooner. 
• 4 weeks from today I’ll be en route to Kenya - O!M!G!
• After that I have Senegal. Then: Zurich, Milan, and Rome - I think. Those 3 cities/8 days in Europe will be with a friend, and we have Zurich lodging sorted but nothing else. I think we can do it on the fly - it’ll be late October, so we may want to be flexible and follow good weather. She might visit me for a day or two while I’m in Portland, so we can do a little more planning. Otherwise… it could be interesting! I definitely want to keep my head in Africa while I’m there, and not spend time thinking about Next Things. 
• After Rome… I’m not sure. I have to figure out if I’ll be home Nov 8 so I can vote, or if I need to figure out international absentee online voting. At least I have total confidence Oregon will make it as smooth as possible. 
• It’ll be possibly not-great weather for touristing, and I may well be ready to be home. But while I’m in the area, it might be cool to visit, say, Portugal - but we’ll have to see what my money situation is too. 

Technology thoughts:

• I switched to Google Fi and it’s working fine with my iPhone. I did blow out the data when I was road tripping earlier, but my wifi options were limited to none so .. oh well. 
• I’m a little worried I’ll run into issues while traveling - they have some fine print about only letting you be international for 90 days before they want you pulling cheap US data:
• If a majority of your usage occurs outside the US over a consecutive 90 day period, you may have your international capabilities suspended.
• I don’t know if my 2 weeks in the US will be a reset for the counter, and if so I’ll be ok. If the 5 weeks in Canada are held against me …then I could lose my data access at the end of October. Or as late as mid-November? 
• Until today I haven’t used my iPad and keyboard AT ALL. 
• But today it was easier to add tags and comments to my photos than it would have been on my phone. 
• So there is still a decent chance I’ll bring them to Africa but they’ll be pretty buried in my stuff. I think.