Around the world with a shoebox
I don't remember where I found this prompt, but it struck me as an interesting question: "If you were given a free plane ticket around the world and a single shoebox for luggage, what would you pack?"
The shrewd, calculating side of my brain immediately responded, "Define 'luggage.' If the shoebox is my 'carry-on,' do I get a 'personal item' like a purse or a backpack as well?"
If the answer to that question were to be "yes," well, that really kind of takes all the fun out of it. For the sake of discussion, then, let's say that anything I take with me (barring the clothes on my back) must fit in this shoebox. Obviously, I can't bring everything I would need; I would be able to purchase and discard most things along the way. So what would I wish to have on this trip that is (a) small enough to fit in a shoebox, and (b) expensive and/or difficult to obtain?
After some thought, I think that my shoebox "priority" items would be the following:
Passport
Wallet (including the usual ID, credit cards, etc.)
Cash
Contact lenses and/or glasses
Digital camera (with an extra memory card)
Extra space might go to my
Neti pot, and a couple of extra pairs of clean underwear and socks.
I'm ready to see the world!
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Labels: imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel
Once More to the Lake
Summertime, cool morning air, the idyllic lake surrounded by towering trees: this is one of those iconic, near-perfect experiences which, once passed, we wish could have stretched for just a little longer.
"I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen ... as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral."
(excerpt:
"Once More to the Lake" - E.B. White, 1941)
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Labels: imagine yourself here, literature, ponderings
OK, I think my brain just exploded
This particular recurrence of Exploded Brain Syndrome may have been caused by the
sheer awesomeness of this photograph and the accompanying news articles.
Just, uh, wow. I cannot summon the words to describe just how
incredibly awesome this is. It's like my childhood dreams about flying.
Read:
>>
"Rocketman flies over Alps with jet-pack strapped to his back">>
"Holy Jetpacks, Fusion Man! Swiss Man Flies With Own Wings"--
Labels: engineering, imagine yourself here, travel
Culinary excellence
A little while ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy dinner at the
Flagstaff House Restaurant here in Boulder. I was impressed by many things: the location, the food, the service. This was a dining establishment the likes of which I had never experienced previously, and it may be a long time before I do so again.
The one thing which struck me most, however, was our waiter; he was a perfect gentleman, and unlike any waiter I had ever encountered in real life. Maybe "handler" was a better descriptor for his role. Regardless, what really impressed me was his commentary on every single menu selection we made: "Excellent." I'd say, "I'd like the quail, please," and he'd respond with, "Excellent." My sister would say, "Can I have the rabbit loin?" and he'd reply, "Excellent." Every single time. It seemed so very high-society, and sort of quaint in a very classy way.
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Labels: food, imagine yourself here, ponderings
Wanderlust
I've got it bad. I have always romanticized the adventure of traveling: cruising down the open highway, rolling across the country over railroad tracks, making a brand new journey. Perhaps this is part of the reason that I prefer not to travel by jetliner; on the road or on a train, you get a real sense that you're actually traveling. I love looking out the window and discovering a new panorama at every moment. I want to freeze every one of those moments and remember it, treasure it, because who knows when I might pass this way again; for each moment I have experienced, every place I've ever been, one thing remains true: I came, I saw, I moved on. And while it's nice to slow down, maybe even stop for a while and really experience a place, I want to keep moving, because there's something new another mile down the road, around the next bend.
Every single time I cross a set of railroad tracks, see a train, hear a train engine's horn, I want to follow those tracks, I want to catch that train and see where it takes me. Interstate highways are a perpetual temptation; I usually manage to curb the impulse, and I pull off at my planned exit and go wherever it was that I meant to go, but I always think,
What if I just kept going? San Francisco, here I come. Or Cheyenne, or Chicago, or Albuquerque, or whatever else may lie ahead.
The open road: the steady hum of the engine, the rhythmic rumble of pavement under the wheels, milemarkers ticking away the distance, an endless stream of asphalt stretching ahead and behind, land spread out wide all around. Every now and then I find that I have come unexpectedly into a moment that is almost a kind of nirvana; in those moments of near-perfection, I could just keep following that road, going onward forever.
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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel
Car accident injuries
Before your next car accident, let's consider some of the myriad factors that affect how things may or may not go horribly wrong.
Occupants:- Front
>> Outboard only: driver and passenger- Rear
>> Outboard (2) and centerImpact/collision types:- Front
- Rear
- Side
- Oblique (bi-axial)
- Rollover
Vehicle safety features:- Seatbelts
>> Lap and shoulder belts
>> Belt auto-catch mechanism- Head restraint (headrest)
>> Height and distance away from head- Seat
>> Frame stiffness (resistance to bending and/or failure)
>> Seat stiffness (cushioning; resistance to loading by the occupant's torso)
>> Contouring (when the seat is loaded by the torso, how will the shape and relative stiffness of different sections of the seat affect the forces that build up on the torso?)- Airbags
>> Front, side, etc.Other factors:- Safety feature performance
- Internal structural failure
>> Displacement of vehicle components (e.g., if the door panel fails, you might end up with a piece of sheet metal in your ribcage)- External structural failure
>> Penetration of extravehicular objects into interior space (e.g. tree branches, signposts, meteors)- Occupant orientation at moment of impact
>> Is the torso twisted? Are the legs crossed? Etc.- Occupant's voluntary reactions to impact
>> E.g. bracingSome possible injuries and causes:- Steering column impact injuries
>> Usually seen only in frontal impacts; unique to driver position- Upper extremity injuries
>> Usually due to occupant bracing- Lower extremity injuries
>> Especially prevalent in frontal impacts; usually due to compressive loading- Whiplash-related injuries (neck)
- Head injuries
>> Especially prevalent in side impacts; can occur in frontal impacts due to poor shoulder belt performance- Torso injuries (thoracic, abdominal, pelvic)
>> Especially dependent on belt and seat performance- Injuries due to excessive loading of shoulder and/or lap belts
Now, doesn't that just make you want to go out and get into a high-speed rollover crash?
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Labels: engineering, imagine yourself here, travel
Sunrise over the Nevada desert
Once upon a winter morning, in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, I come to realize that the desert can be startlingly beautiful in its own way.
There is a hint of the pink-tinged, gold-warmed edge of dawn in the sharp, cool, dry brand-new-morning air. Dusty white frost powders the scrub brush, clinging low to the packed, sandy earth; sparse and brown-green, sagey, yellowed, the brush has a marathoner's wiry robustness, scrappy and thin like the deep, hidden water that the desert so jealously hoards. Thin, delicate sprites of clouds hang wispily around the mountaintops, the kind that burn away before the dry warmth of day. The sun works up slowly, hardly enough for warmth but enough to paint the brown, gullied mountains in a sweet, sugary, candied-fruit shade of orange-pink. It glimmers, shimmers, little baby heatwaves illusioning through the raspy dry air. Thin ice barely covers the green creek that winds in that corrosive, sinewy, side-twisting way through the painstakingly eroded gully in the flat spread of land ahead of the foothills. A low, single-wire fence gives substance to some hypothetical line through the desert; the fence is no taller than the scrubs, just man's attempt to toe a line in the shifting sands, no good hindrance to anything save a few plodding cattle and the uprooted vagrant tumbleweeds.
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Labels: imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel
Appalachian mornings
A typical early morning in the Appalachian Mountains has its own slow, distinct charm. A wide, still river slides placidly along beneath its shroud of mist; vaporous fingers trail languidly through the reeds along the water's edge, silent over the marshy ground, settling stealthily into the hollows -- lying in wait, perhaps, or merely in molasses-thick lethargy. Thin white mist floats over a dirt lane, fills the fresh-plowed furrows in the quiet fields, hangs like smoke under the trees, swirling in the low spots between the worn hills like an old banjo tune. The morning light is soft and diffuse in the solid humidity pooling near the ground, blanketing but not quite touching, hovering shadow-like, light and airy, between gravity and evanescence, smoking down out of the slowly warming air.
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Labels: imagine yourself here, ponderings, travel
Zen for geeks
I used to write a lot of poetry. This was something I scribbled on paper a couple of years ago. I came across it the other day, and just reading it left me with a pleasantly relaxed mindset.
It's untitled, but I like to think of it as a kind of poetical zen (for geeks, and other people who think too much).
I could spend hours
right here,
lying among the flowers,
breathing in the air:
sheer, sunlit atmosphere.
Breathe deep --
the flowers love to share --
and worries lose hold
on the edge of sleep,
as if this fresh earth smell,
both new and old,
is some chemical debonder
of stress;
it soothes as it wanders,
permeating
and percolating
with feather-light caress,
until every care
diffuses through the shell
of my skin, to the air,
to be lost, finally,
inconsequently.
If I wait
a long, long time, maybe
it will permeate
all of me;
and I just might
sublimate
and float away,
my very DNA
taking flight
to come apart
sequentially,
the tiny atoms of my heart
mingling with the atmosphere
to be Breathed,
essentially,
through the very lungs of Earth,
my double-helix unwreathed
in a kind of rebirth;
and fade to black,
from whence I came,
lacking form to hold my name --
carbon to oxygen and back.
--
Labels: imagine yourself here, literature, philosophy, ponderings
Snapshots from the travel diary
Free time? What's that?
In early August I spent a week travelling by train around the western U.S., and I thought I might share some of my journey. I had a notebook with me, so when something particularly struck me I scribbled it down.
Western Colorado: As the conductor tells us on the train, the section of the Colorado River between Granby and Glenwood Springs is known as "Moon River" because -- can you guess? -- rafters like to moon the passenger trains. Generally they're too far away to really get an eyeful, but you can see enough. If you can believe it, this has been only the second (and third, and fourth...) time I've been mooned. (The first was on a bus with my high school soccer team.)
Eastern Utah is rolling flatland between distant reddish-brown buttes, colors muted by distance like a watercolor painting. Short, dry grass with a rust-colored hue covers the ground, like an old carpet being taken over by radioactive mold, complete with worn bald spots where the dusty earth shows through.
The desert west of Winnemucca, Nevada, reminds me of a Pacific atoll: mounds of dry dirt, with clumps of scrubby green and brown plantlife clinging to the tops, rise in little groups out of the pervasive spread of gray-brown mud, baked to a hard, flat, cracked finish. Between the island groups lie wider expanses of flat gray mud, dried tight and crinkly under the glaring sun.
Roseville, California, is orchard country, dominated by neat rows of lush green trees on a gently-rolling landscape. Irrigation canals meander along from orchard to orchard, riding trussed aqueducts over sunken hollows and pastures. Oddball palm trees start to crop up here and there, their strangely tufted tops rising above the other native and imported greenery.
Descending from Oregon's Willamette Pass, the train winds down through evergreen-carpeted mountains, dwarfed by towering pines and firs on either side. The forest is dense, the spaces between the trees filled in by a thriving undergrowth that seems almost tropical in its lushness when compared to the dry, sparse pine forests of home.
Highway 26 west of Portland, Oregon, turns into a quiet 2-lane road once we leave suburbia for the dense evergreen forests of the rural foothills. Late in the day, the landscape of moss-covered tree trunks and rich undergrowth fade away into deepening shadow. It looks cool, shady, lush, and
old, the kind of place you might find Bigfoot lurking off the beaten path. Early the next afternoon, under bright daylight, the deep green forests practically glow; what little sunlight filters down through the canopy makes the different shades of green all the more vibrant and rich.
We spent the night in Seaside, Oregon, and had free time this morning. We thought about the various sightseeing things we could do, and decided that all we really wanted to do was roam the beach, which is what we've spent the last 2 or 3 hours doing. We found a bunch of sand dollar shells and a few live ones (they were kind of furry, and came in various shades including dusky greens and purples), pieces and clumps of kelp and seaweed, crab shells and disembodied legs and claws, a few jellyfish, and patches of sand washed with glittering black minerals. The air is cool, only in the 50s or 60s, and the ocean water is cold, and it strikes us that the ocean air doesn't smell strongly of salt like we were accustomed to on the Atlantic seaboard. (My theory is that this is due to significantly lower humidity here.) My feet are slightly numb, having been in the water almost the whole time; earlier in the morning I was almost wading, wandering along the shore in water up to my knees, but later I stuck to shallower water so my pants could dry a bit. I rolled up my pant legs as far as they would go, and they still got soaked by the waves, and I can't bring myself to care all that much, because I am just so content. At home in Colorado, sometimes I miss the ocean like you wouldn't believe.
Entering the Rocky Mountains in western Montana, the train follows part of the Flathead River eastward for a while. I sit by a window, watching the clear, blue-green water winding through its channel below the railroad tracks; it is at times shallow and wide, rippling over a pebbled riverbed, and at other times it seethes as frothy white rapids, or flows clear and smooth through a deep, narrow channel. Glacier National Park is pretty but hazy, due to wildfires in the area, and we don't see anything worth special mention. I suppose we've been spoiled by the clear, grand vistas of the Colorado Rockies.
Between the Rockies and the Mississippi, the country seems to have been painted with broad strokes of homogenous landscape. North Dakota looks a lot like central and eastern Montana, which looks a lot like Nebraska and northeastern Colorado: semi-arid prairie farmland. Minnesota and Wisconsin look like Missouri and other areas thereabouts: wide, green farmland, lots of deciduous trees, thriving corn and wheat fields, tributary waterways here and there, and of course the wide, placid expanse of the Mississippi River.
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Labels: imagine yourself here, travel
Restless night
I got very little restful sleep last night. When I first went to bed, the house was still pretty warm, so I tossed and turned for a while before I got comfortable enough to nod off. Then I dreamed a lot. And then, shortly before 3:30 in the morning, I woke up abruptly hearing a momentary burst of noise; it sounded like loud voices over a radio.
Normally I would have brushed this off as the vestiges of a dream, but this time my dog jumped up with me. I don't know if she was just responding to me sitting up so suddenly, or if we both heard the same thing.
But at that point I couldn't just brush it off, and I had been soundly jolted out of sleep, so I grabbed a big flashlight and did a tour of the house, double-checking the screens on the open windows upstairs, the window latches on the closed windows in the rest of the house, and the locks on every door. My dog, after her initial start when I almost fell out of bed, was relaxed. She probably thought I was crazy, wandering around the house in the middle of the night. If anyone else saw the lights going on and off in different rooms, I'm not sure what they thought.
After that I went back to bed, and the dog settled down again on the floor next to my bed, but I lay awake for a long time and just listened to the night until I eventually fell asleep.
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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here
Being and becoming
Sometimes I wonder about the experience of blindness. It is not something easily imagined; I can close my eyes and wander around my house, counting steps up to the second floor, trailing my hand along the wall to my door at the end of the hallway, tapping my fingers on the edge of my bed and then letting go, stepping out across the carpet, trusting that I didn't leave my shoes in the middle of the floor, reaching until my hand meets the edge of my dresser: and then there's a slight feeling of relief at having completed my journey without bruising my shins along the way.
Even when I do this, as I move through the house with my eyes closed I am picturing the walls and furniture around me, drawing on my visual map of the rooms for navigation. My mind's eye pictures my desk where I left it this morning, and lo, my hands find it exactly where I imagine it to be.
I do this sometimes in the morning; I fix myself a cup of coffee and, if I'm feeling brave, close my eyes while I'm still in the kitchen. Holding my coffee cup carefully in one hand, up at the level of my chin so as to not accidentally knock it against an out-of-place chair, I feel my way out to the foyer with my free hand, find the doorknob and pull the door open, step down onto the porch, and close the door; then I edge forward, feeling with my feet for the edge of the porch, and carefully step down, and sit gingerly on the edge of the porch, every movement controlled and slow so I won't lose my balance if one element in my surroundings is not exactly where I think it is.
And still I can picture the journey, though the chairs around the kitchen table provide some excitement, because I'm never sure where they are. I run into them frequently. Sitting on the porch, I can picture the front yard and the houses nearby; I picture cars on the street where they are habitually parked.
All this, the things I picture because I have seen them before, they fall into place as in the world of "being": this is the way I imagine things to be. I take it on faith that Colorado has not cracked in half, that there is not, in fact, a new Grand Canyon in place of the houses across the street. Immediately, I am only aware of the elements in my environment that I come into direct contact with: my coffee cup, the kitchen chairs, the front door, the porch, and the tiny square of sidewalk on which my feet are resting.
I can't be sure that the trees in the yard are actually there until I hear leaves rustling in a breeze; this enters into the world that is "becoming," the world of action and movement. I hear a car driving down the street, tracking it from left to right as it passes the house. The front door opens behind me; someone steps onto the porch.
"What are you doing out here?" I recognize my mother's voice.
It's a good question. I'm enjoying my coffee; I'm paying attention to the feel of sunlight on my skin; I'm imagining what I might see if I weren't temporarily blind.
When I open my eyes, I see one of our neighbors across the street, weeding a flower bed. I can't hear her over there; until now, she didn't exist in the world as I was aware of it. Only now does she enter into the picture.
There are other things I missed, too, because they weren't "becoming" in any tangible way.
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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here
Soccer Moms and My Future?
Sometimes I imagine what motherhood will be like. I have these scenes in my head of getting up in the morning, making sure my kids have their homework together, getting their lunches ready to bring to school, packing them into the car and seeing them off; scenes of family board games after dinner, of parents and kids all crammed together on the couch to watch a movie. I even see myself cleaning the kitchen in the middle of the day, doing laundry, picking the kids up from practice.
I want to be a soccer mom, in the most general sense of the term: not necessarily a mother of soccer players, or even of athletes (though that would be a plus), but my kids will play an instrument, or play a sport, or take ballet, or sing in the school choir, or something. And I will go to every recital, every game, every concert.
There will be family picnics on weekends; Sunday visits to the grandparents; bedtime stories; cookie-baking lessons in the kitchen degenerating into cookie dough feasts; trips to museums: things that families do.
I imagine all these things, and I have great hope in the future.
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Labels: imagine yourself here, my future
Snowflakes
I was driving home yesterday evening. The outside temperature was well below freezing; I could see my breath as a frosty plume in the air inside the car, and it kept fogging up my glasses. Stopped at a red light, I was examining my road-scummed windshield when I noticed a snowflake sitting against the glass. It was about a quarter-inch across, perfectly symmetrical, etched in finely feathered frost. I can't remember the last time I saw such a perfect snowflake.
This was the second time this week that I really noticed the snow for its unusualness. Just a few days ago, when I went out in the morning to clear the snow off my car, it looked cottony, like the kind of fake snow you'd expect to see drifting across a stage - light and fine, like loosely spun cotton candy.
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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here
"Ashes, ashes..."
Volcanic snow.
Why not? A particle of volcanic ash is an amorphous (glass) fragment of coagulated minerals. A snowflake is just a crystalline lattice of water molecules.
In the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, a mushroom cloud of ash was ejected 15 miles into the atmosphere. The mountain spewed ash for about 9 hours. Three days later there were ashes falling on the east coast of the U.S.
Most of us are used to some snowfall now and then; how many people have gone out and shoveled blankets of ash off their driveways? They had to jump on that quickly, because ash can develop the consistency of concrete when it gets wet. (Talk about completely ruining the gutters on your roof.)
Volcanic ash also conducts electricity; an approaching ash cloud may look like a thunderstorm. And it carries the accompanying scent of sulfur. Can you imagine? Hellfire and brimstone are coming to town. Wow. Oh, and this ash would be extremely abrasive, so you wouldn't want to get it in your eyes -- or breathe it into your lungs. (Remember how it turns into liquid cement when it comes into contact with moisture?)
I have been out in a few driving snowstorms, when the wind is up and the snowflakes sting your exposed skin like the tiny high-velocity ice pellets they are, and you can't see ten feet in front of you for the blindingly furiously swirling whiteness. Can you imagine being caught in an ash storm? Imagine the air filled with a driving sleet of rock shards, the smell of sulfur invading your nose; your eyes start getting that nasty gritty gummy feeling, your throat stings and you can taste a tang of blood on the back of your tongue when the abrasive ash particles start making microscopic tears along the inside of your mouth. The air feels thick when you breathe it in, the sunlight has disappeared, and you're surrounded by this gathering darkness, heavy and invasive and suffocating.
Imagine.
This could be approaching hell on earth, if it was possible to begin to imagine such a thing.
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Labels: imagine yourself here, science
Snowdust
I was driving south along the Front Range this morning under a thick bank of clouds when the snow flurries started coming down. It was strange, seeing the snow against a blue sky to the south, the sun breaking through cloud banks over the eastern plains. The snow dust was doing its smoky, snaking dance over the highway pavement. By the time I got into south Boulder, the neighborhood streets were white and the snow had stopped, and the sky overhead was a beautiful early morning blue.
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Labels: everyday, imagine yourself here
Mornings
I wish there were more hours in a day. Then I could get everything done that I do now, and I'd be able to get in my required 8 hours of sleep. I like mornings, as long as I'm well-rested.
That's right, I'm a morning person. When I have the time. I love my bedroom in the summertime, when I leave my window and curtains open to the sunrise. There is nothing quite like waking up, sans alarm, to warm sunlight on your face and a cheery birdsong drifting on the air.
I think my perfect morning would happen like this:
I wake up, comfortable, well-rested, before my alarm goes off, with the pleasant realization that I have no obligations for the next few hours. Winter or summer, the temperature in my room is perfect: I'm not shivering, but it's just cool enough that I'm happy to wrap myself in a light fleece pullover and step into a pair of cozy slippers. The sun is barely risen, the house is blanketed by that peaceful quiet of early morning. In the kitchen, I turn on the coffee maker and set the oven to preheat. There are biscuits, ready-made, waiting in the fridge. I stand in front of the sink and stare out the window at the lightening sky. Hopefully there are some birds poking around a feeder in a tree. My dog (or cat) comes wandering into the kitchen after me and settles down on the floor at my feet after a brief pet on the head. When the oven *dings* (yes, I like ovens that *ding*) I slide the pan of biscuits in and set the timer (which also *dings*). By now the coffee is done, so I pick my favorite mug out of the cabinet and pour myself a nice steaming cup of hazelnut. One spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk (or cream?) later, it's perfect. So I stand against the counter and smell my coffee (mmm, hazelnut) for a few minutes while I stare out the window some more and watch the birds. Right about now, someone (mom? dad? sister? husband, someday...) comes into the kitchen, lured by the smell of hazelnut coffee and baking biscuits. I get a hug and a "Good morning."
Why can't all my days start like this?
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Labels: everyday, food, imagine yourself here, ponderings
