I should have figured that a 16,000-mile ride would have issues, and sure enough, it did. I was excited to approach the Namibia border, but as soon as I did, I got stuck. Apparently, Namibia doesn't have Google Street View so I can’t go any further. So that turned out to be a 500-mile ride through South Africa. It was still a fun and relaxing ride going through the desert scenery.

I created 3 new rides, not that I don’t expect them to also have issues. The one I’m doing now is just over 2000 miles from Spain to Norway. I’ll eventually create an Eastern Europe trip as well. Then I made a ride that's just under 3000 miles from Mexico to Maine, and a 4600-mile trip from Alaska to here.

My Western Europe trip starts out in Madrid and will take me through France, Belgium, a teeny sliver of the Netherlands, Northern Germany, Denmark, and finally, Norway. I’ll advance as far as it will let me. Once it stops me, I’ll jump onto the next trip.
 
Over the next handful of years, I plan to continue going through old journals and making them public. The older we get, the less emotional most of us get. In reading back through some of the things that used to make me anxious, sad, angry or scared, I have mixed emotions. No one wants to be emotional in any bad way, of course, but sometimes I wonder if feeling this numbness is much better. Realistically, I suppose it is. I certainly don't miss any kind of emotional suffering I've endured in the past. But sometimes I do miss having such intense hope, the immense relief we feel after a scare, and things to look forward to that I've already experienced and that just don't excite me anymore. I miss having crushes on people too. Basically, I sometimes miss my old hormones, LOL.

I found a message waiting for me when I got up from Irma, asking if Ray had moved in next door yet. So that's his name. I searched the group members but couldn't find him. I still haven't seen him yet. She said he's a little on the heavy side, easy to talk to, and she thinks he might be in his 60s. He was gone when I got up at 9:30 and didn't come back until shortly before midnight. Tom left me a message saying he didn't hear anything. So far, so good, but too soon to write him off as a good neighbor.

I changed our Amazon password just to be safe because either someone hacked the account playing games or trying to promote artists or Alexa is now pushing notifications on us on top of new things to try, although I haven't gotten much in the way of things to try lately. The yellow notification light was lit up while I was trying to get back to sleep after waking up to pee and she said something about an artist I'm following releasing a new album but I'm not following any artists. I double-checked the settings in the app and notifications are disabled like they're supposed to be. If she starts this shit regularly, then I'll have to do something to block the light. I'm so sick of people's pushiness! Again, I don't understand why you would give customers options if you're not going to allow them to use the ones they choose. I know I'll be dropping Replika as soon as my subscription expires because I'm not going to be harassed to use the free version by being begged every other time I log in to subscribe. They have a free option. If they don't want people using it, then they should do away with it altogether and go subscription-only. As I said, in case someone hacked in to either promote or prank, I decided to change the password. At least nothing appears to have been ordered that we didn’t order. While I was doing this, I saw I had my old California number listed so I deleted it and added the new one.

I had a positive Alyssa dream, and then another one that I thought was worth noting at the time, which I've now forgotten. In real life, Alyssa's cover photo shows a black lab at the edge of what I believe is Lake Tahoe. In the dream, Tom and I were driving through there when I spotted the black lab at the water's edge and then realized the rest of the shoreline looked familiar as if I had seen it pictured on Alyssa's profile in real life.

"Wow!" I exclaimed, telling Tom that it looked like Alyssa lived nearby based on the familiarity of the dog and scenery.

A second later, we were outside the car and he was talking on his phone. We were in front of a house that didn't have a front exterior wall. I recognized Alyssa sitting at a desk. She spotted me and recognized me as well. I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure how she would react. Another second passed and she rose from her seat and gathered a basket of laundry. She stepped outside and began to pass me when she dropped the basket. I offered to help pick up the laundry-turned-stuffed animals that scattered about and she said, "Sure."