November 17, 2006
The travel gods are angry ...
After several smooth trips, including notice that for the first time I've flown enough miles to earn frequent flier status on two airlines, Texas has proven my downfall.
After flying commercial into San Angelo for our meeting there, we took a chartered Net Jet to Abilene, which is usually an awesome way to fly (no security lines, plane leaves on your schedule, cool rectangular bottles of Fiji water). But strange winds blew into Texas the previous evening.
I'm fairly numb to turbulence and getting bounced around in the air so I didn't take much notice of it or get too freaked when our fearless beancounter started getting a bleached white look about her.
As we passed over a windmill farm somewhere between San Angelo and Abilene, I was amazed by how incredible it looked from 20,000 feet in the air, sprawling for miles across the West Texas emptiness.
I pulled out my camera to take a photo, and that's when I realized how bad the winds were. I couldn't hold the camera steady enough to click the shutter as the plane bounced around. It was hard just keeping the camera pointed out the window, and I gave up after several turbulent attempts.
After a landing that can only be described as jarring, we got off the plane. The gusts were blowing me around, almost knocking me off my feet at one point.
Our fearless beancounter clearly was ill, and the thought of flying in this again later in the day from Abilene to Wichita Falls had her rattled. After a little coaxing, we convinced her that it would be better to rent a car and drive it. Whatever doubt remained about the decision was blown away when we heard reports that 18 wheelers had been blown over in Wichita Falls.
But the beancounter's conditioned worsened as the Abilene meeting dragged on, and after it went longer than we'd planned, we decided to stay the night, get up early and drive to Wichita Falls the next morning. The fallen beancounter would fly straight home, skipping the drive and next meeting.
But the travel gods struck again, this time in a particularly hateful manner. We found out one of our execs in Wichita Falls had died the night before after a battle against cancer. Clearly this was no time for a budget meeting, so we changed plans again and pointed the honking big Dodge Durango SUV we'd rented toward Dallas, where we'd rebooked our flights to get out earlier. I was hoping to get to San Diego (my next stop) early, work out in the fitness center at the hotel, get room service and catch up on some work.
But it wasn't to be. This time, the plane had mechanical problems, forcing a three-hour delay while they tracked down a new plane. And when they finally loaded us on board, they realized the food carts wouldn't fit because this was a "differently configured" jet. So we delayed for another 30 minutes while they moved the food and drinks to new carts and loaded them on board.
And now ... now we're flying west toward San Diego, into an incredible sunset and orange wisps of cloud. Truly sublime. But I'm sitting here trying to enjoy the view and wondering what deus ex machina will emerge tomorrow to thwart my attempt to get home ... If only the next misadventure would blow me to the island of the lotus eaters.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:00 AM | Comments (2)
November 12, 2006
Hunting season ...
I took the dogs to the lake yesterday and today, but the two hikes were strangely different.
Hunting season appears to be in full swing. As we walked yesterday, what sounded like shotgun blasts rang out and rolled through the valley like ball bearings careening around a metal bowl. Some sounded so close it unnerved me a bit. I don't know what's in season or what they're hunting, but they were definitely firing away.
After the shots died away, I could hear geese rising in the distance. I kept watching for them to come into view, and finally they emerged in the gray sky, but the flock was disheveled and splintered into several staggering groups. They clearly were rattled by the gunshots. Maybe they were the target of the gunshots.
And this morning, it was eerily quiet. The gun blasts were distant, muffled, and even the birds weren't making noise. I looked up to see a flock of geese in perfect V formation floating silently overhead. Not a single honk to be heard.
Posted by Bob Benz at 6:12 PM | Comments (1)
The Road
I finished Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, The Road, last week. This was one of those books that stayed with me. Its post-apocalyptic imagery haunted my dreams and thoughts while I was reading it, and I kept returning to it when I was in the midst of other things. Very distrubing, but unlike most of McCarthy's work, it ends with something that can only be described as optimism, though that word is a stretch in a tale of a man and a boy making their way south through a withered husk of civilization that's fraught with cannibals, ash and sunless vistas.
I've also become addicted to HBO's The Wire, a bleak chronicle of inner city Baltimore. There's a character named Bubbles who pushes a shopping cart packed with junk through the bleak streets. I couldn't help but make the comparison to McCarthy's novel, where the nameless protagonist and his son also push a shopping cart through a landscape that is frighteningly similar ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 5:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2006
Steel City, Silicon Valley ...
I stumbled across this great description of Pittsburgh in Richard Parker's review of new biographies on Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon in the New York Times Book review:
"... the violent, exploitative and dankly polluted world of coal-and-steel Pittsburgh, the Silicon Valley of its day."
Never thought of it that way, but Pittsburgh was in many ways the cutting edge of the Industrial Age in much the same way Silicon Valley has blazed the path into the technical age.
Posted by Bob Benz at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)