Passages, Small, Medium, and Large

“All things must pass,” as a once-young and alive man once sang.

The changes came one by one. On Monday I cracked 99K miles on my 2001 Jeep Wrangler. That I’m still under 100K miles for a vehicle I’ve owned for 17 years is a source of amusement to my son, who remembers me driving him to pre-school in it when we lived in Alaska. Later, in Colorado, he’d be driving it himself to Civil Air Patrol meetings, and then to work, before purchasing his own conveyance.

Despite the relatively low mileage, this Jeep and I have a lot of history together. We’re about to turn that corner, though. So I pulled over and took a picture. And then got right back on the road, because time isn’t stopping, and I, with any luck, still have miles to go before I sleep. Many, many more miles.

Yeah, she’s long overdue for a detailing. Weather’s warmer now, so there’s no excuse.

Tuesday is when the sandhill cranes left. Most of them, that is, I was surprised to see one large flock heading north at dawn on Saturday morning. I had watched them heading north from the wildlife refuge south of town at dawn, and coming back to roost at sundown for a month already. Tuesday was the day I didn’t see any come back in the evening. I think it’s safe to say they’re done for 2019.

In this video you can hear the strange trilling they make as they fly over. They’re chatty little things.

The arrival of the sandhill cranes on their migration back north is a sign of spring in the San Luis Valley, and of especial interest to Monte Vista where I live. The city hosts a Sandhill Crane Festival the second weekend of March and outside interest appears to have grown in leaps and bounds with each year. At least one churl on Facebook has had to point out twice that I know of that farmers here hated the racket the cranes made so much they would fire off cannons to frighten them away. Not everything has to change for the worse, thank God.

Wednesday was the first day the temperature cracked 70°F (21°C), making it the first day of the year in which I worked with my office windows open.

To think I’d had some posts in draft lined up in which I was going to talk about the passing of the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards as major media events. I may yet finish the one on the Super Bowl, if only out of fond remembrance for Super Bowl parties past.

There are other cultural passages going down. Many institutions we presumed were immortal are dying of cultural and technological obsolescence. I find it all very fascinating, but in writing this I realize I have to keep my eyes on the real prizes. The sun, the sky, my wife, my children, my cats, our house, our vehicles, the world immediately around us. We can work out from there, but quite honestly, most of what’s in the news is someone else’s problem. 

Farewell, March, and the first quarter of 2019. I’m a little bit closer to finishing my last book. I need to get a lot closer. See you in April.

All photographs in this post Copyright © 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

The Difference Between Coke and Pepsi Explained at Last

I never for the life of me could tell the difference between a Coke and a Pepsi — unless one tried mixing that Pepsi with rum, and, holy chemical spill, Batman! What is this foul poison (and will it work on broadleaf weeds)? 

Pepsi is the Great Deceiver. The godly mojo of the rum forces it to reveal its true evil nature.

From the Wholesome Memes of Traditional Morality Facebook page.

Kafka Would Know Better Than To Get Into That Thing

More fun with flying cars. It’s an obvious tale, I know, but some people may need reminding of how these things can go.

Promotional art from Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc.and Copyright © to them as well. Call it Fair Use or cross-promotion, it’s all good. Forget that long-dead neurotic Czech, you know you want to ride.

In the news recently was one of those pieces you wonder isn’t a straight-up press release. It’s the same feeling I got reading information technology trade magazines in 2009, when they were crowing about SAAS (software as a subscription service) and everything being done from “the cloud” (someone else’s server). To the detriment of consumers used to paying one fat fee up front for software they can still use when the Internet goes down, some of this actually came to pass.

Ten years later I’m reading aviation trade magazines and there’s quite a bit of buzz for eVTOLs, short for “electronic vertical take-off and landing.” In plain, non-jargony English, electric helicopters. These aren’t your standard single big rotor on top with a smaller stabilizer rotor at the rear, though. In place of the rotors are six ducted fans that tilt like a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey for flight. 

As high-end CEOs and the like have had rooftop helicopter service taking them to the airport for some time now, I’m guessing this is about bringing this service to The People™, or at least the middle managers. It’s notable that the transport-for-hire company Uber is putting a lot of money into eVTOLs. I can see this becoming the new limousine service in which people of lower income ranges can splurge to show off for special occasions, prom season, etc. Here we are on the rooftop of the Foo-Foo Arms getting ready to board our ride to the airport for our honeymoon. #HighStylin #HatersGonHate #YouWishYouWasUs 

View from the rear seats of the cabin of the Bell Nexus. These lovelies will seat four plus a pilot.

Now imagine a warm spring evening. You call for an Uber. You arrive at the rooftop pad in time for the flying taxi to alight. The turbo fans hum softly on standby as you approach the hatch and flash your credit card, a special screen on your smartphone, or whatever is required to identify yourself. The hatch pops open and slides back. You duck inside.

Strapping in, you hear the faintest whine rising inside the cabin as the fans spin up and the craft lifts gracefully from the top of the skyscraper to the sky. (The noise reduction factor is a major selling point for eVTOLs.) There is no pilot, but those are just for the reassurance of tourists and the prom kids, anyway. For the sake of avoiding collisions with the many such craft in use about the metro area, air traffic control is regulated by sophisticated, self-teaching, super-adaptable software. The voice command “airport” is all you need to get going. I imagine one saying it directly into an app on one’s phone, all the better to facilitate accounting of who’s riding and how the ride is paid for, whether on the company dime or monthly billing. Voice recognition software would provide another level of security. 

Full-tilt boogie. No deafening whup-whup-whup, either. Just hummin’ along.

The sun winks behind the horizon. Yellow tatters of clouds fade to orange across the deepening blue. You look down at the angry red taillights of the traffic glowing like so many demonic eyes from the abyss of the concrete canyons below. Heh. Better to look towards the sunset those poor drones are missing, despite moving only inches per minute.

You chuckle to yourself. “Drones.” That’s what some people still call these remote-control taxis. Irony or coincidence? Coincidence, of course, because it’s clearly a case of one word meaning several different things...it’s then that you realize something’s wrong.

If you lived here...it’d be awful nice.

You’re moving at a wrong angle to the sunset. This isn’t the way to the airport. You pull out your phone. No signal. Which makes no sense, because you have to use your phone to communicate with the taxi.

“Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened,” says the pleasant female voice from the surround-sound speakers. “Emergency landing protocol in progress.”

You fight back panic, and listen for what could possibly be wrong. All six of the ducted fans are working fine. You don’t smell anything burning. You look towards the setting sun, now well off to your right. 

In the long minute you’ve been off-course you note you’ve passed several rooftop landing pads on this side of the city. “Why can’t we land there?” you wonder. The voice recording repeats, and you realize you’ve been squirming against your belt and shoulder harness.

At last you begin to slow. There’s that sound as the ducted fan housings swivel upwards to face the sky, the fans themselves reversing for landing protocol. They sound like they’re working fine. So long as you’re over a pad, all’s well that ends well. You look through the window and down.

A crescent shape blacker than the encroaching night stands about the pad. You recognize the strange bristles as your eyes focus in the dark. They’re none other than the downward-pointed rifle barrels held by law enforcement officers in full tactical gear.

“Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened,” the pleasant female voice repeats from the surround-sound speakers. “Emergency landing protocol in progress.”

Your seat belt and shoulder strap are locked. 

Your phone still reads no signal.

You’re descending to the pad.

Your eyes become level with the darker-than-darkness of their body armor. You can’t see them, but you know those rifle barrels are up and pointed straight at you.

What can this possibly be about? Why did they jam your phone? Who could they have possibly mistaken you for?

Your hands are already on your head as the hatch doors on either side pop open and slide back, and the first officers approach. You can only hope they don’t beat you too badly before you have a chance to clear this up.

Please remain seated with your seat belt fastened....

Terms of Ensmearment

All insults are better in French, the language with the built-in lisp!

This must have been the seventh or eighth time I’ve had to look up soi-disant while reading on the Internet. No wonder I keep forgetting to use it like a proper midwit who knows his popular French phrases. It means “self-styled, so-called,” and of all the phrases in which a writer should use (so sayeth I, the Great Infallible God of All Writers, but you know what I mean) the plain English meaning instead, this is one. You’re trying to bust on someone for being fake while looking like you’re trying hard to fake looking intellectual. A soi-disant intellectual. 

Come to think of it, all intellectuals are self-styled and so-called. 

We’ll stop here.

Gotta love the example they used. “Hey, I resemble that remark!”

Spring Fever, 2019 Edition

“And just like that, winter was over.”

February was a day short of done and we didn’t need to run the wood pellet stove that night. For a psychotic moment I felt a little sad that Winter 2018-19 was drawing to a close—it had been a very good Christmas and a not entirely unproductive New Year—but I’m happy not to have to run the kerosene heater in my office in the morning.

The three days in a row of 50°+ F (10° C) have gone a long way towards melting off the snow that’s lingered since the storm we got on New Year’s Eve. We’ll have a low temperature of several degrees above freezing Thursday morning, a number we’re lucky to get for the high temperature in either February or January. 

So, I’m calling it. Winter 2018-19 is finished. Sure, maybe one more single-digit degree cold snap awaits, and I certainly hope we get more snow. But the week-long death-freezes which would make the furnace run nearly non-stop if it weren’t for the wood pellet stove are behind us. We’re good until November.

♫”There’s a feeling I get/When I look to the West/And my spirit is crying for....♫ dinner.”
My traveling for the sake of traveling days are long done, thank God.