I am minutes away from stepping foot onto the largest still-functioning vehicle I've been on so far while on this planet.

Gotta say, I've got The Apprehens.

We are on the Pacific Surfliner, heading south. We're running alongside the ocean.

There are actual surfers in the water.

Amtrak, baby: they really go all out to do what's advertised on the side of the tin.

Bad Idea: "protein ice now available for your morning iced coffee beverage"

Worse Idea: "supercharge your iced latte with Monster Energy(tm) Power Ice!"

Absolutely Terrible: "large diet soda, ice with extra gut flora correcting and stabilization!"

Lazyweb Taskmaster: identify a network bus or signaling proto that allows two microcontrollers (like an esp32) to regularly beacon one byte to each other without the use of a dedicated hardware component (like an I2C controller), for at least 4 physically distinct buses per microcontroller, using no more than 3 GPIOs per bus, before I finish driving the Grapevine to LA.

Your time starts now.