Covid Journal, Day 305: Internet Limbo and Road Trip

Cold and snowy. The same as it's been since Friday--flurries, occasional a little accumulation which melts off quickly, then more flurries or occasionally rain. Definitely inside weather. Temperatures in the low 30's during the day, and not much change at night.

Well. I often brag about my internet service and how good it is, and then wham, it goes down. For days. 

At first it was a network outage, but now it seems the problem is with our equipment and the tech can't be here til Wednesday. 

So this old dog is learning new tricks. I had eBay sales that needed to be shipped, but without my computer, how could I get to the printer to print them? There is, it seems, a way. Actually two ways.

First I found that I could buy the labels on my phone and download them. Then I could hook my phone to my laptop via USB, and eventually get the labels to download to the laptop and thus to the printer. It took a lot of time, and I could not find a way to adjust package weight if it needed to be done, so some had to ship as they were, a little over the weight I'd entered when I listed the items. I think the Post Office will bill me for the overage, but I hate having them have to do an extra step.

Then a Facebook eBay group with lots of younger people told me I could make a hotspot with my phone. I'd heard of this but was absolutely clueless how to do it. Much finagling this morning and this afternoon, a useless call to the ATandT store where I bought the phone, more finagling and finally it's working. Fingers crossed. 

Technology is amazing, and sometimes an amazing and total pain in the patooty.

And then there's the old tech--our septic system. Suddenly the toilet does not want to flush. Larry spent a few hours of quality time with the snake, with no luck. So now he's digging up the lid to the septic tank, and probably we'll have to get it pumped out. Guess where out little stimulus check is going? Down the toilet, literally. 

But despite all this hassle we have had some fun. I bid on another online auction and we picked up our stuff Saturday in the beautiful little town of Mount Hope, in southern WV. It was a squally day for travel, lots of white-out snow, then sun, then snow, etc, etc. But the roads were fine and it was nice to go to a town in this state we'd not yet visited. With my storytelling we have literally been all over the state and seen hundreds of little towns and communities so I was surprised to find we'd not been to this one.

A few pics from our trip:

On the way down, it was pretty snowy, but not much traffic.

It was a pleasure to see the Capitol dome finally cleared of scaffolding and tarps. Apparently it needed a lot of structural repair, which has taken a couple years to complete.

In the town of Mount Hope, there is evidence everywhere of a prosperous past, with many beautiful homes and businesses.

And this was the source of the prosperity: The New River Coal Company, which mined the regions rich seams of smokeless coal. Larry talked to one old miner in the town who said he always worked in coal seams that were 6 to 8 feet tall, a luxury to a coal miner. Often they had to crawl in seams as low as 24 inches.

We think these may have been company houses at one time, owned by the New River Company. The above photo is the building that must have been the company store, and is now a church.

This large, stunning building must have once been a hotel. I am not sure what its use is today; perhaps apartments. 

Sadly, this town, like many in Appalachia, is dying out. It looked like the downtown might have been on the verge of a new start, because there were several businesses that looked as if they'd opened recently, only to have to close because of the pandemic. The auction was the sellout of an antique store that was closing up shop, and most of Main Street was empty storefronts. So sad.

A few miles away, we saw a former stripmine site, or perhaps one if the new infamous mountaintop removal mines. Churches are everywhere in the coalfields, with good reason. It's a dangerous occupation.

And on the way home, several whiteouts made drivig interesting, but not dangerous as there was little traffic and people slowed down. These squalls would last maybe 10 miles, then it would be clear again.

And at home the next day, we had several beautiful snowfalls with the sun shining. A sparkly sight indeed.

Yesterday morning, we were covered again with a light snow cover. Today is more of the same. January weather for sure.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.