Home again!

We made pretty good time coming home, and as we came up I-17 to Flagstaff, I mentally weighed the advantages and disadvantages of traveling a route north up highway 89 and then east along highway 160 that was 40 miles or so shorter than retracing our steps, taking I-40 east to Gallup, New Mexico and then driving up through Shiprock and Farmington. Short won over fast, as fast isn't that much faster.

The last time I had traveled this route was the last time I visited my late brother in Phoenix, and while I couldn't tell you all of the little things that have changed, the scenery is still pretty magnificent.

We made good time over this "northern" route, too, and pulled into Durango at 5:30 pm (we had left Pto. Peñasco shortly after 6 am) where we stopped at the Office Depot for some supplies.

Twilight on roads around here is particularly hazardous, because deer become very nearly invisible in the dim light. That, combined with their natural innocence (some might call it stupidity) regarding fast-moving vehicles when they decide to cross a road is why you see a lot of deer carcasses along the side of the road.

Shortly after setting off on the last 60 mile leg of our trip, a small group of deer decided to cross the road in front of us. I was in the passenger's seat (the "death seat" my mother used to call it), and I felt more than saw the deer as the distance between us closed. Galina was braking the car as the gap (and our side view mirror) disappeared and metal, muscle, and momentum did their thing. We ended up stopped in the middle of the road. The guy who was tailgating us managed to stop in time, too.

We pulled off to the side of the road, and learned that the deer had survived the impact to run away with its group. (Hopefully, its injuries were minor and won't cause it to die a lingering death some time from now.) Besides our mirror, our door took a pretty good dent that I was able to undo by yanking on the door handle.

An incident like that tends to focus your attention as you continue driving home. By the time we got home, we were completely exhausted.

* * *All of the catch-up I had been planning on doing last week never got done. (And I'm not exactly certain that's necessarily a bad thing.) So it had better get done PDQ this week, as theoretically, at least, I'm leaving for Kazakhstan on Friday.

Cheers...

No Baikonur for you!

My services will apparently not be required for the upcoming launch campaign. That was the final word this morning, so I've canceled the plane ticket and started beating the underbrush for work. I am a little disappointed that the tentative nature of the assignment wasn't disclosed up front, but life is full of little disappointments.

Looking on the bright side, I'll be home for the foreseeable future, which is always a big, bright plus.

* * *Has LJ ever had a one-time password feature? (It sure would come in handy, especially when logging in from locations that are just asking to be pwn3d - if they haven't been already - having in mind the "Internet room" at the resort in Mexico.)

Cheers...

*Not* my LJ Idol entry...

The subjects for this week's LJ Idol essay are "Getting Involved" and "Flying."

It's a crazy world, but I can come up with entries for both that are... a little out of the ordinary.

Still, I got to thinking about the latter, and that got me thinking about something I've wanted to do for a long time, and that's write a response to one of my favorite poems, by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., High Flight. I wanted to write something from the perspective of someone who has flown at the controls of an airplane, although not in the way that Magee did, or in an aircraft comparable to his.

And I knew I could not go to sleep until I had written something.

      Response to High Flight

To you, who slipped the surly bonds of earth
And passed too soon from life into God's care,
Know this: emboldened amateurs of worth
Maneuver yoke and rudder through the air
In craft that cannot stomach fancy flights,
Yet which - when all is said and done - do fly.
They ply above the plains, and lakes, and heights
And let us straining mortals kiss the sky.
We've learned the rudiments of trim and flaps,
Of slips and stalls and carburetor heat,
And plotted out new courses on our maps.
And in the end, we've gained a state so rare:
We've chased the wind and felt the world complete,
And know we've shared your footless halls of air!

Consider it a first draft.

Cheers...

UPDATE: I could not get this out of my mind, so I continued to tweak the poem and did made it a part of my week 5.21 essay in the LJ Idol competition.