AskHoyle

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  • Sedona to quartzite

    In the evening after my MLK Day hike a light rain started which continued throughout the night.  The public road I’d parked off was no worse for it by the morning, but the weather was no longer conducive to hiking.  I did some work and then made some miles southwest through a squiggly route that looked scenic on the map.  I expect it would have been, but after a short climb I ended up directly in the rain clouds, now called fog due to the change in our relative positions.


    I briefly visited a cute town called Jerome, including having my picture taken through a kaleidoscope, in a store dedicated to that, namely Nellie Bly’s Kaleidoscopes.  I needed to press on so I did, with the hope that the view would clear.  What should have been a scenic drive was a slog up and down twisty curves in the haze.  


    Eventually I rolled out onto the floor of the desert, with scattered saguaros around arrow-straight roads dividing nothing from not much.  I went through a no-stoplight town called Hope, followed an instant later by a sign saying “YOU’RE NOW BEYOND HOPE”


    The sun started to set behind some mountains and another sign “Entering Brenda” also amused me.  I rumbled down a “paved” road in the vast BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands around Quartzite, aiming for a camp called ParTR (a variant of RTR, a vanlife get-together happening this week.)  I wasn’t sure where exactly to go but I saw a cardboard sign that said SINGLES NERDS and I figured it was a good bet for me.  I’m resting and writing this and trying to talk myself into some socializing.  I’m going to stop now and post this to help with the motivation.


    H

  • Sedona day 3

    In every location there is a people density below which mutual acknowledgement is required.  Close to the parking lot we have achieved critical density to make interactions rare, but the crowds fall away as the trails diverge and the difficulty increases.


    A kid about kindergarten age speeds past toward me, his feet desperately trying to find the pedals.  His dad following behind, to me, “Ah! He recovered…” Then to him “Well done Mark!”

    An elderly woman rides a nice looking bike uphill. She’s loaded for bear, and it doesn’t look like it’s her first trip.  Her bell sounds like a windchime.


    The trail wraps around but I can see people above me and I wanted to find my own path. Shortly I mount a particularly prominent blob which calls out for sitting.  If the sun were out it might not be ideal, but today it’s the right spot.  I snack.


    Dried banana tastes too much like banana in those pieces that didn’t get dried enough.  I like bananas, but these fall into an uncanny valley.


    Today I’m climbing Bell Mountain, the Hershey’s Kiss of the valley, a dollop of red pudding plopped into a lumpy cone.  I can see the highway bridge again, though this time it points vaguely towards me.


    I spent some time in a very pleasant conversation with a barefooted local before pushing up the slope, picking my route nearly randomly at distance but carefully up close.  Micro and macro decisions don’t always align.  


    I’m far past the end of the trail now, heading up paths which exist despite the map. Mostly I’ve been finding my own path, sometimes zagging around one side of a giant stone blob, sometimes the other.  In the last bit there seems to be only one viable route.  I’m not at the official mountain top, but I’m on a lovely spire that doesn’t look like it will collapse soon, in human scale timelines. Probably.


    I’m still very nervous about heights. I was never afraid of them until I visited the Grand Canyon about eight years ago.  Something about the immense dropoffs was off putting, knowing that if I fell I’d have plenty of time to think about it on the way down.  I’m not incapacitated by the fear, after all I have 270 degrees of view to the valley both far below and at the same time, three little feet from me.  But it feels different now, my stomach trying to pull itself to safer altitudes through my ass, and my breath never fully caught.  


    I made my way down as I did up, with trails a vague suggestion.  It’s important not to trample the dirt here, but there are plenty of rock surfaces to bound among.  The trick is to avoid being rimrocked: unable to go either up or down safely.  Interestingly I’m much more comfortable going down here, but there are places where you can’t see what’s next and avoiding those is my objective.  


    Across the small vallley I sit in a seat of power, a waterfall between two trees, only there’s no water today to carve the ledge.  It’s the perfect height and has a backrest, and I’m facing the mountain I just climbed.  I’m playing a game called “find the trail” since I’m far from the official route, but there are lots of options.


    I feel alone on this mountain as I try to skirt it.  And then I find a hair tie.  Fortunately Sedona is very clean, very little trash, so I’m compelled to pick this up. I keep forgetting to bring a garbage bag.


    Despite the traffic noise from a mile away, I can still hear people talking and crying on the other mountain.  I’m far away but all the exposed rock reflects sound.  


    I didn’t get rimrocked but I got wrongrocked, unable to proceed without trampling the fragile crusty dirt and microorganism habitat.  I loop back. The trail is below me, I need to find a safe way to descend. Fall lines are usually good, where the water slowly divides the mountain.  Probably slick when wet, but that’s not today.  Still the occasional puddle has tracks next to it.  Any dirt there is thoroughly churned and undisturbed by my feet.  Plus, plenty of rocks to hop, each slowly rolling toward the someday river.


    I’ve made it down to the trail, the sting in my thigh telling me I strayed too close to something green and pointy.  


    This trail loops around the mountain and doesn’t go to the top of anything, so it’s not heavily traveled.  I’d definitely be in the “must greet” range of the human density scale, but I’ve not been within a quarter mile of anyone for hours.  Also, it’s getting late in the day again and I expect most have moved back into areas with running water and flush TVs.


    It’s overcast today, so there will probably be no brilliant sunset, just increasingly darkening gray.  I need to be mindful of the time again, though at least today I remembered my headlamp.


    Here there is a large dome, a single blob of red, with rounded sheer sides and a row of eyes at the top.  Its face flakes in thin sheets like the bark of the wizard trees below, revealing rawer red after sloughing lichen gray.  


    The trees begin to smell rain and I, in turn, them. The gray deepens. I choose the shorter tine of the fork.


    The second mountain I ringed today is lately called the Courthouse Butte, and the trail I’m ending my hike with is called the Big Butte Loop, depending on who you ask.
    I made it back to the the RV before the all-the-way dark.


    H

  • Cathedral Rock loop in Sedona.

    I’m on a red promontory over an ocean of conifer green, speckled with patches of red rock and dust. This varies with height and slope till there’s only the occasional spot of green, some sturdy sunwashed succulent, sucking dropped dew from the rock it slowly splits.  


    A man chuffs his way past on a bike, chain whirring and gears clicking as he crosses the slabolisk framing the base of my view from Slim Shady trail.


    “Do you remember this from the video?” A later biker says to their partner.


    I move on, many miles to make today.


    I watch them descend on their bikes and start thinking of the features I’d want on one.  A bike bell that sounds like a windchime would be cool. Also kick-ass brakes and wide tires.  


    When I stretch my ankle across my shin my left knee pops out.  I just learned a thing I can’t do anymore.


    Left turn on the trail turns me into the sun.  I adjust the tip of my hat and pull up my collar a little on that side. Onward.


    Mountains are connected by lines of energy, the path becoming the path, drawn with feet and tread.  


    The next biker is going the other way, on only his fat rear wheel.  Next “three behind” then “two behind” then “one behind” as they speed past, the rest all using the customary number of wheels.  Makes sense who’s leading.


    I’ve found another color.  I’m overlooking the valley I was just circumwalking, the rolling hills topped with a carpet of bristling grass, or what passes for it in the desert.
    Beyond I can now see the highway with cars full of people looking at me, and not knowing.


    I learn the color of the wettest mud, and the drier, darker mud, deceptively chunkier with deep tread marks; it’s actually hard and has good traction.


    The trail is very steep here, and crowded, with lines forming and operating, following the instructions of invisible traffic lights.  I’m earning my views now, scrambling with hands and feet up the vee of the rock face. 


    I spent quite a bit of time sitting in the crotch between the two peaks at the end of the Cathedral rock trail.  It had been a steep but relatively short climb, but I was sweaty all the same under my long sleeved wool hoodie.  Leaving it on prevents flash cooling my skin, and it dries it out.  


    The wind felt great as I watched people take photos of each other on a ledge that looks perilous in photos.  I waited for a while myself, behind a group of about a dozen Dutch students and some others from ASU, one of which was definitely a Malfoy.  


    I asked the guy behind me to take my pictures, since that seemed to be the most sensible protocol, and was followed by most before me.  In part I chose him because he had a big camera and was talking about cameras with a friend of his.  Sadly this was a mistake, as he took the most hilariously bad pictures possible, given the lighting and position.  I almost waited in line again, but in a weird way I am more find of the ones I have. 

    He broke the cardinal sin of shooting directly into the sun without knowing how, and also the sin of not knowing how. Pro tip: the lens needs to be shaded to avoid washing out the image. I do this with my finger frequently, if there is no handy tree.  Put your finger somewhere easy to crop out in case you get a piece of it, which is sometimes impossible to avoid for given space-time coordinates and vectors. 

    Also sometimes it’s good to move somewhere else. Moving around lets your eye fall on different things in combinations with more or less Feng and/or Shui.  The photos he took are devoid of either, and any of my normally visible facial features.


    The wind picked up and the Dutch students started descending, and I realized it was my time as well.  Heading back down was much easier than I had anticipated.  It felt like skiing moguls of dusty rocks, scrambling like a spider made of human, butt over rock, supported by all four leg tips.


    Rounding the end of the mountain and descending some switchbacks, the view quickly changes. A wet story is being told here, in a tongue of babble.  Red rocks still, crashed among bare white barked trees, and well washed grasses gripping those rocks that made it to the river, during this chapter.  The smell of animal drifts down a gully, currently dry.


    Where it deepens I took off my shoes and waded to my ankles on the soft sandy bank.  The cold cured me of any desire to swim in it today.  I stuck my wool socks back on my wet feet and they warmed up in seconds, the small volume of the droplets a much easier mitochondrial challenge than that of the frigid flow.


    Here in the shade on the back side of my afternoon challenge is a valley of ancient conifers, their gray bark peeling and flaking.   These are Ent wizards.  Red bark like raw flesh peeks from beneath the flaking scabs.  Their bodies are swirled violently, a vortex of fiber, tips twisted into wands and staves of magic.  


    This one’s bulk lost a battle to insects long ago, but one edge has become a trunk of its own, like a tendon on a neck.  It’s using its former tower as a guide, but becoming gnarled in the process, a heavy contrast with the conical spire of wooden insectorium.  The living branches wrap like arms around an unwilling dance partner.


    Realizing the impending sunset I pressed on.  Realizing that I hadn’t looked at a topographical map, I climbed an unexpected mountain.  It was a downhill-only double-black diamond trail. For bikes.  I was going uphill and dodged a few experts.  It would be perilous on a bike, with thousand foot drops punctuating miscalculation or bad luck.   I had to press on after dark, which sped me up because it forced me to stop taking pictures.


    Now to rest and recharge both phone and body.


    H

  • Sitting under trees in Sedona

    Mountains live very long lives.  They speak slowly.  It’s tricky for us temporarily tenuous tidbits to tune in to their tales.


    Unless we sit. 


    This is a really good place to sit down.  This twisted tree has shaded many sits, here on this hill, just high enough to peek over the pines in the valley separating me from the hulking storytellers.  


    Their noses and toeses form spires, the places where the story has been told the most.  The drama between them is heard in the choruses of crashing cascades and of frequent furious wind. 


    This spot affords a view the trail below, a great feature if your food crosses there.   Today it’s hikers, though there is a distant rumbling sound that’s suspiciously similar to a purr.  Stay tuned to find out if I get eaten.


    Sign language must have been a big advantage to families of hunters, since it would give a younger brother means to annoy his elder without spooking the game.  


    “You’re so quiet, I didn’t see you.” Says the lady, whose husband walked their well behaved dog ahead of her, their matching canes clicking on the red rocks as they descend.


    “There was no reason to make noise.”

    .

    After a snack of dried orange slices and water, the sun told me to move on as the shade betrayed.


    Only a few steps higher and I can see other trees, their dusty desert green telling today’s edition of one river’s tale and just where it pushes the valley lower.  


    A bigger tree frames a view of a broader valley, and inside it, crumbling columns of its former fibers explain its eventual end, as a source of shade.  A dusting of finer powder indicates internal insect infestation.  This tree, you see, is living in the “dead” part of its lifespan.  It has shaded many.


    Higher, rounding the corner, a chest-high platform becomes a seat, where yet more neighboring storytellers show steep sides scoured by wind, man, and the other animals.  I don’t need rest but there is a shortage of perfect sitting spots and it would be a shame to waste this one.


    Confident that it will be here on the way back down, I continue.


    This hill should not be hurried.


    It turns out it’s a stage and an altar in addition to being a work surface and sitting spot.  There’s no sign, but, since I am one, I can tell how humans would use it.  It would be a great place for proclaiming things, the tiers of round red platforms putting IMAX to shame, though admittedly with fewer cupholders.


    The pareidolia, or the spirits, are strong here.  I can see both valleys from the crotch between the spires, the mountain’s exposed rock sloping gently downward in all directions.  Here stepped, there smooth.


    I went walking among the mouths and mandibles of the speakers.  The tongues of the Titans now left with gaping maws.  That which was said was said and the evidence slowly slides down the sandy slope. The story takes a healthy toll.


    I followed what are mostly game trails to a large rock spit like a watermelon seed from above, covered in tree seed hullls and near matching sandy bumps, stuck to the rock like pearls poured across it, silted in place.  The stippled tongue of stories past.


    Further, after the requisite sit, I found I had come to the end of my journey.  An ancient tree, on top alive, verdant with tiny needles, underneath pointy with larger implements, curved daggers of itself, peeled away in layers by the forces of the mountain, the wind it makes, and the water it furtively guides, made for me a shelter, enclosed in its Schrodinger’s limbs.  I sat, but not long.  I’m starting to crave my own sustenance, not satisfied with water and Clif bars.


    The end of a journey begins a new one.

    I decided to try climbing the spire. I got on top of the big head but decided I was too short to be comfortable getting back down, and the consequence of an error would be dire.  Meanwhile the red dust kept reminding me that the red rocks are impermanent.  The head will speak soon. Its spindly neck supported me, and ten thousand pounds of rock temporarily.


    After furthering my attempt to sit under every tree on this mountain I decided to descend.


    “If it’s negative and it does not serve you, let it go.”  That was said by the man playing the recorder from this same peak earlier.  Right now I’m continuing my practice of letting go of places I haven’t been, such as the peak of that spire.  I judge the fear as not negative, and I feel it served me and my continued existence as an unmaimed part of the mountain’s story today.  Meanwhile there are plenty of places to go, and a restaurant is one of them.  


    H

    Im

  • Cottonwood

    I keep meaning to write, and promising people I’ll write, and then not writing. I think the trouble at this point is that there is so much to say that I don’t know where to start. So, I guess I’ll start right now, which is as good a place as any, I suppose. I have the distinct advantage of not having any data coverage on either of my cellular networks, and it’s too early to go to sleep, so here I am. Of course I won’t be able to post this till later, but that’s the easy part.

    Big Bend National Park has restrictions on boondocking, otherwise known as dispersed camping. That means even though the park is over a thousand square miles, I’m forced to find a spot in the limited campgrounds or “not camp.” There’s some curiosity around that definition, since the park doesn’t actually close, so in theory I could be stargazing by the side of the road and accidentally fall asleep. Although the regulations are pretty dumb, I’m doing what I can to abide by them, and so I rolled into Cottonwood park just before noon. Fortunately there were several spots available, and I claimed one by parking in it temporarily, leaving something in it during the day, and filling out the self serve envelope, into which I deposited $20, since I couldn’t come up with $14 without shaving down a krueggerand. Happy to have the spot, I locked my as-yet-unused camp chair to the picnic table and went for a walk.

    I went down to the river, that being the Rio Grande, and found it to be at least River Pretty Big, at this point. I ate a sandwich I’d bought in the morning from two crunchy folks running what they call a French Grocery in the town of Marathon, where I spent last night. Marathon is also the home of the absurdly overpriced diesel fuel topping off my tank, and the White Buffalo Bar, a nice but snooty restaurant where I’d had dinner. It was one of those places where the waitress is overly helpful to the point that I felt rushed to vacate my table, the bones of my $27 chicken unpicked. It was the kind of place where you’re supposed to eat chicken with a fork, which I could tell because there were two of them and they were needlessly heavy. I was keen to move on anyway lest I end up in the newspaper for stabbing the elderly man at the next table in the eyeball, with a heavy fork, for advocating genocide against “all the injuns.” To her credit the mom at his table told the kids to pay no attention to their grandpa, but I do feel that a right good murder would have made a stronger point. Also, I’d left my good knife in the RV, and since I hadn’t ordered the $49 steak, I wasn’t provided with a scalping knife. Pity.

    After my sandwich lunch I went for a walk along the river. The chalky powdered sand was broken up by hoofprints, clumps of tall sturdy reeds, and the charred remains of scrubby bushes. The reeds hadn’t been burned so the fire must have been a growing season ago or more. Across the river I saw some Mexican horses, on account of them being in Mexico. I was unable to distinguish their dialect.

    Having had my fill of that, I returned to the RV and drove it to the westernmost end of the park. On the Mexican side of the river here there’s a prominent ridge overshadowing the river later in the day. In the morning when I drove into the park I’d seen a canyon clefting the ridge, and had mentally added it to my list of places to go. I hadn’t had time to build any sort of plan beyond making a beeline for the Cottonwood campground, once I’d heard from the ranger that all the reservable spots were… reserved, so I was pleasantly surprised when the western road led me directly to the cut I’d seen earlier.

    In fact it’s called the Santa Elena Canyon, at least by those of us who don’t know how to say Canyon in Spanish. It’s the spot where the Rio Grande cut through the aforementioned mountain range, and therefore where the international boarder jogs southwest. There’s a trail which crosses Terlingua creek, on a gaggle of river stones, then precariously up and over a steep ridge. The trail is sufficient, but if you lost your step you’d slide swiftly into the shallow swale below, certainly sustaining serious injury. Past that point, the path proceeds placidly, with paved pediments preventing precarious plodding.

    There’s an amazing array of tumbled boulders, imbued with the shells of ancient oceanic organisms in one layer, and ferrous fingers in others. Polished bulbuous greys with suspiciously plant shaped impressions contrast with sharp shards of shale and sandstone and quartz. In the steep canyon walls one can make these out barely, but up close among the crashed varietals the rocks invite close reckoning. I took lots of pictures, stuck my finger in the silty river and hit Mexico with a less interesting rock.

    As I was leaving the sun was setting, so I set out for a side stop before settling in. The canyon was previously overlooked by two families, the Dorgans and the Subletts, as they tended their herds from high above the valley in adobe abodes. These survive in ruin, straw sticking out from stacked bricks, some exposed after the collapse of the coating. The wooden archways of the facade framed idyllic views in the failing light, as the warmth of the day rapidly receded. I took lots of pictures, trying mostly to capture the breadth of the sky, an impossible task, for a screen smaller than THAT.

    As I returned to the RV I encountered a man and a rotting rig I’d passed in the morning as it puttered along. He is from Dallas and has been here nearly every winter around this time since the 60s. This explains the ancient RV, but more importantly he advised me to follow a long hiking loop to see a picturesque part of the park called the Basin. I’ll be getting up early and pushing hard all day to follow this track, but it correlates well with my guide, so I’m in. Besides what else have I got to do tomorrow but see what I can before I have to go find internet and get back to work?

    I didn’t bring my actual backpacking pack, but I should have enough room in my 16L day pack for water, food and a few other things. He said it was 17 miles, which is more than I’ve ever done in a day, but there are a few ways to shorten it if needed. I’ll be waking up early to get to the ranger station when it opens. I need to buy some more portable and dense food, since I won’t have room for a stove to prepare the mountain House freeze dried packages. Worst case I’ll pack a bunch of peanut butter sandwiches, which will keep me from dying, at least in one way. I’ll drink a ton of water before I go and carry all I can. It’s not hot out at all, so I feel like I will be ok.

    Supposedly there is WiFi at the ranger station, so I’ll post this then. Meanwhile I need to sort out dinner and get to sleep early.

    Happy New year!

    H

  • Board games at PAX Unplugged

    Board games at pax unplugged, and not much else…

    Time for another short flight, after a three day weekend at PAX Unplugged.

    My friend was there with her new boyfriend, and he hadn’t played modern board games before, so much of this weekend was spent introducing him to various styles of games.

    Friday we started with Azul, a tile drafting and placement game, which I like better than the second iteration, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, which I learned at BGG in Dallas. It’s a neat tactical game which has a strong ability to screw your left hand neighbor. I was the subject of some screwage by the new player, who enjoyed that aspect of the game immensely. I did well anyway, as I’m pretty familiar with the game, and I tend to be good at spatial games.

    I forget the order of the rest of the day, but we played String Railway Transport, which is a Japan-only release, and a follow up to String Railways, which I’ve not played. I’m a big fan of this one, since it’s a pick up and deliver game without any economics. Each turn is represented by one of the six strings of your color, which you lay down carefully between scattered paper city squares to create routes. Then on your turn you can move cubes based on action points, then collect the cubes to make sets of different colors. I did well, but I never upgraded my train to gain more action points, which was intentional but probably led me to fall short of the win. I was very efficient with my turns, but it wasn’t quite enough.

    We played Las Vegas, which is a light dice rolling game that’s easy to learn. It has a lot of table talk and lobbying, which is generally best ignored, but sometimes succeeds in changing someone’s decision. In this game you roll a handful of six sided dice, and then choose a set of them to put on a casino of the same number. So if you roll three threes you have to put all three on the 3 casino spot. Each turn you roll your dice again so there is no long term strategy, just tactical response. Once everyone is out of dice the round ends and the person with the most dice on a given casino wins the highest value scoring card. The second card, if any is taken by the next most dice, etc. The trick is that any ties are discarded, so when two people each have 4 dice and a third person has one, the one wins. This makes for some interesting interplay.

    We played Spyrium, without the newbie, which is a worker placement game without any blocking. The placement spots are between the cards in a 3 by 3 array. You place meeples and later remove them to get money or cards in exchange for the money. I liked it better than I remember liking it.

    We played On Tour, which is a new route building game. Each player has a personal dry erase board of the United States, with most adjacent states connected by dotted lines. Each turn three cards are drawn, showing regions such as “east” and a state such as Florida. Then two d10 dice are rolled, e.g. 37. Each player decides to put a 37 in one state in an indicated region, and a 73 in another. At the end of the game a route is drawn using only increasing numbers. It’s quite different and pretty fun. It plays any number of players, since it’s essentially a solitaire game, but the base game only comes with 4 boards. They sell more boards, but that quickly drives up the cost. I feel it should come with 6.

    We played No Thanks, which is one of my favorite filler games.

    We played Qwirkle after dinner, which is sort of like Scrabble with symbols instead of letters. You build out the same way in a common area, scoring points for added tiles similarly, though more simply. Tiles in a row must either be all the same shape or all the same color, with the opposite feature being unique within a string of tiles. It’s also a fun filler, though I think I like Qwirkle Cubes better, which allows rolling the dice on your turn to try for a more useful face.

    Sunday three of us played It’s a Wonderful World, a card drafting game which feels a bit like a streamlined 7 Wonders. Cards drafted are either “recycled” for a displayed resource or moved into a production area to have other resources deposited on them. When completely filled they become part of a production engine. One neat feature is that production happens serially with each color going in turn, white, black, green, gold, blue. This means if you build a blue-producing card using a black cube then the blue card will produce later in the round. This is a fun puzzle! There are a couple of other rules but not many. It’s a very solid drafting game with nice art.

    We got back with our group of five to play Irish Gauge, a train themed stock game. It looks like an 18xx game, but is much simpler and plays pretty quickly. It’s a lot more like Airlines Europe (or the earlier Union Pacific) than 1830 or Steam.

    Last we played Queendomino, which is a more complicated version of Kingdomino. I enjoyed it, but I am more likely to play Kingdomino, since it’s simpler, with the same core mechanism. The complexity added in Queendomino is worse for new players and isn’t clever enough to engage heavier gamers. I lost horribly since I mostly ignored the new mechanisms.

    Three of us played while two rounded up some food from Reading Market. We wanted to be sure they went since the other three of us had been many times in past years. It’s quite a spectacle, and the food is varied and good. It’s along the same lines as the Quincy Market area of Boston.

    We ate quickly in one of the hotels, checked out and called a car. I watched some football with my friend before his flight to Seattle and mine to RDU.

    Well, I’m back on the ground safely. That’s all for now.

    H

  • StaRV

    Short flight so this will just be a short catch up.

    I drove the RV down from my home in Massachusetts last Tuesday night. I started Tuesday because Wednesday was the day before Thanksgiving and a notoriously bad travel day. I made it to the second rest area on the new Jersey turnpike, having accomplished my target of getting past the Hudson River, and sleeping less than 100 yards from the world’s worst hot dog. It rhymes with Schmathan’s.

    The next day the drive was pretty good, though I broke one law for sure and maybe another. I went through the Baltimore harbor tunnel, not realizing the propane tank on my RV precludes that route. Apparently propane tanks are banned from most tunnels because propane is heavier than air and it would settle in and never leave. There are different rules in some tunnels but most have some restrictions. Live (thankfully) and learn I guess.

    The other probable transgression was the commuter lane bypassing traffic between DC and Richmond. It had digital signs and mentioned a hefty toll but no specific HOV restrictions. My only other passenger was a Batfrog, and I don’t think stuffed cryptids count. I was very happy to be in that lane, as the main road was backed up for many miles.

    Regardless I remain uncaught, which is just as good as being innocent, if you believe the GOP defense of tRump. If caught I could just draw a passenger in with a sharpie anyway.

    This flight is 53 minutes, according to the captain, who probably should be believed, no matter what Jim Jordan might have to say about it. A short hop in a CRJ200, which I think is the thumb-destroying model that took me to Paducah. It has, if you recall, overhead bins the size of a preteen girl’s jeans pockets. This time though I was ready with my sleek backpack, which is four rows ahead over aisle 7, because I’m back in group FU, aka Basic.

    Strange though that on this flight I am allowed a carry-on plus a personal item, vs the last time in Delta Basic when I wasn’t. My bagception works well regardless. The turducken of bags, a sil nylon Matador 16L inside the svelte outside bag. The Matador holds what I would use in the plane, and slips easily in and out of the back pocket of the bigger bag. Even the bigger one, a Timbuk2 Jet is still quite small, at 30 liters, and will fit under airline seats which don’t have some obstruction underneath, such as a video entertainment system or Rudy Giuliani. I pack light.

    40 minutes left, as the surprisingly well distributed eastern seaboard lights slide beneath me. I think it’s because the air is clear and I can see any dim light rather than only cities. It looks a bit like the sky is reflected by the ground. I took a photo but airplane pictures never match what I see with my eyes.

    Really remarkable, eyes. Too big a subject probably for 36 minutes, but I’ll try. Every square millimeter, and most round ones, are awash in an immeasurable spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Anyhow you look you find them, though only those that wiggle to particular tunes twiddle our optical meat enough to tease meaning out of darkness unaided.

    Each photon of light is both unique and the same. Predictable but chaotic, for years counted dozens to billions, a wave state has propagated in your direction. Other directions too, nearly all of them, space being what it is, empty to a rounding error. To the entire universe, eventually, subject to light cones and the backs of too-tall heads at concerts. All other light from all other things as well, bounces, stumbles and gravitically lenses in your direction, to be bent again, inverted and focused on a nerve built for the purpose. If you don’t blink.

    A few faint photons fallen from firey furnaces flit frantically for you alone, or no one, ever. Our opportunity to observe optical oscillations opens only for us. Big brains bask beneath balls of brilliant burning brimstone, alone. Look up.

    Told you it was a short flight.

    H

  • Beerplanes or something

    Ok I have a beer dilemma.
    I was at the Two Roads tap room in the BDL airport, and I got a Road2 Ruin which I always enjoy. Then I had a Two Juicy, another double IPA on tap.
    I rated the Two Juicy for the first time and gave it a 4 (out of 5) on Untapped. I have had it before but apparently not rated.
    I rated the Two Juicy a 4. Then I went to rate the Road 2 Ruin and I was thinking 3.75, but I had previously rated it a 4.25. dilemma.
    Both were really good though
    I rated Road 2 Ruin a 4, dropping the score from 4.25
    But I like it better than the other, by the end of it. I think it’s that they’re both great, but differ based on mood. Or in this case a pastrami sandwich and horseradish chips.
    Fretting over imaginary internet points is a first world problem and a good one to have.
    —
    My flight was boarding when I arrived at the gate. Since I’m in group FU, I took a seat.
    Basic economy again. I don’t like this trend. I get a full size carry on this time though. Which I don’t have.
    I have instead a smallish backpack carry on, a 38 liter Red Oxx convertible bag instead. I don’t convert it.
    It’s a clamshell design so it’s easy to pack. I can stack my shirts flat at the bottom and button them up around a bundle constructed of the rest of my clothes.
    Plus it has room for a couple of board games, if they are smallish, or if there’s only one then medium is ok. Many times I’ve stuffed games into larger games like Russian paper dolls… which are rectangular.
    I expect they may still force me to gate check it.
    Nope, plane had plenty of room. Groups 7 and 8 went super fast. I’m pretty sure there are not really 9 groups. They just say 7 and 8 to make group 9 feel worse.
    It’s 5 or 6 rows forward to the wing exits, for future reference.
    I’m not used to flying American. The seats are trying to be fancy, with leatherette and bulbuous cushions in ill-advised places.
    Fortunately I have a kick-ass inflatable pillow made by Sea to Summit to use for lumbar support. I inflated it only a little (on the second try) and it helps a ton. I’ve got another like it which goes around my neck. Both are supplely soft, a sort of spandexy nanofleece.
    As a result I’m magnificently comfortable, or so I can pretend for 4 and a quarter hours of skybussery.
    I’ll let you know how it goes.
    Being uncrowded as it is, and such is the hope of any groupniner with a largeish backpack or a smallish carry on, my middle seat magically transformed into a window seat, on account of there being no one already sitting in it. Score 1 for seat karma
    –
    Who made these machines we fly in? By whose hands to we prevail, aloft? Which piece of titanium turbine blade will bump the MTBF statistics a notch. Hopefully somewhere the F else.
    Really though we depend on these things, this technology we created. A mud hut is technology and there’s always been rain. And piece of hut is less likely to go through your head at four hundred miles per hour. Ergo, airplanes are safer than mud huts.
    The fallacy here is that not all factors are considered. They never can be, so all is fallacy.
    The fallacy up there is that we all go out, our light that is our life. Snuffed by shingles. Or staph, or stroke. Or in impossibly bad ways, like being shot two years ago at a country music concert in Las Vegas by an ammosexual fuckwit with a stack of guns and not enough sense. And then taking two years to die. Today.
    The truth is, I don’t know her life either. Maybe her injury brought her family together. Life is pretty weird that way. It’s easy to think we know what should be.
    Usually we’re right of course. I’m pretty sure everyone who has ever been shot in the history of ever would tell you they’d prefer not-shot, if given the choice any time up to and including time traveling to unshot themselves.
    It would be good if we would just, like, stop shooting each other. We have enough flying projectiles without that. I’m looking at you, starboard wing engine.
    We’ll save a lot on time machines.
    –
    This is my new favorite pilot. He gave us all the information we need and then said “this will be my last scheduled announcement”. Praise cheesus.
    I feel the pressure in my ears and sinuses at the same time as I feel the pressure of the now-inflated neck pillow squeezing in on my most important vascular system components. Or at least those favored by vampires and villains, as visually viewed on video, Vivian.
    One day a Vivian will read this, and to her: Carly Simon says hi
    I don’t know any Vivians. In this timeline.
    Full face yawning is a thing. Eustachian tubes are one thing, but stretching out your whole fucking face is key to successfully avoiding Schroaderfords Syndrome, which is what makes your head hurt during long flights, and is a thing I just made up. I’m not kidding about the face part though, it’s totally a thing.
    I hear it’s the dryness of the air too. My buddy used to bring a humidifier with him on business trips. I thought he was nuts. I still think so. He also turned the heat on in the summer.
    –
    Not accepting cash is a dick move to people who have shitty credit. Not that I blame the airline. Nothing grosser than having money hands touch food that’s going in your face hole. It’s reasonable risk mitigation. But, yeah, dickish.
    I suddenly want to do an rf sweep of this airplane. My data is safe though, I took the free mini pretzels and water. My tray table is the “other airline” photo in anyone else’s marketing materials.
    I’m studying for my CISSP, which means I am thinking about risk differently. Semi quantitatively analyzing. Occasionally objectionably overtly avoiding attending against any effort of ego. Id is impishly invasive.
    Indeed it in summary involves intense inculcation in internet instruction, interspersed with internet distraction.
    –
    That’s not all that’s been on my mind. I’ve been having intense dreams which wake me up early. 620, 520, 420 am. What’s weird is remembering them, which I wouldn’t unless writing was wrung from uncaffienated and underconscious neurons. In the second case, that of 520am, it was a nightmare.
    –
    I dreamed I was in a haunted house. A rotting Victorian hulk, slumping heavily into the withering wheat wafted by a wailing westard wind.
    Dark, it was, and cold. Devoid of color, due to disensorous retinal goo.
    *English language learners: many of the things I say are not words anyone else will understand. I was going to say they’re not words at all, but once i spray them they stays then.
    When the dream began, I wasn’t afeared of ghostery, believing not in apparitions. But among the creaking floorboards, their threats of failure both heard and felt through tenuous toes, stepping slowly and eyes blinking, in an effort to amplify them, I saw shadows move from the corners of my eye
    And
    everything
    stopped.
    I awoke in a hospital, modern and bright,
    with a competent, pleasant nurse to my side.
    She told me I’d been hurt, but I’d be ok,
    They preferred to sedate me a bit for my pain.
    She left with a smile, and into the frame
    a medical GUI, a dosing machine.
    It counts down the list of injections she’d set
    Then red it turns on the third one down
    Overdose it says, then blinks to confirm
    I try to call out, but my throat is unable
    The first two drugs work on that part
    Then through the wall the grim reaper phases
    A cloud of grey and black,
    Formed but not solid
    Ephemerally invulnerable
    Opening onyx arms
    To pick me up like a child
    And I could not scream.
    —
    —
    When I awake from nocturnal brain garbage theater I’m prone to fall back asleep. I’m pretty good at going to sleep actually. I have a lot of practice. Pretty much every day, sometimes more than once. So I sure as shit didn’t want to fall back into that situation, and I knew myself well enough to otherwise engage myself.
    So I wrote.
    For hours and over breakfast and in the car ride to the place where my friend’s friends were. I’m glad I did.
    I’m always glad when I write, it’s just not always easy to untangle from the dopamine spiders to actually get to writing though. Flights are a reprieve.
    (*I know I can get wifi, please STFU)
    So ok, it’s metagaming. I’m playing with the system, turning the knobs by telling myself that my attention must be affixed as thus. Unplugged but still squinting at a screen.
    The Amish may be on to something. Connectedness has definitely evolved us in unexpected ways. Better or worse for the discrete organism, and unpredictability for the collective. We are all one meta-thing. The only known one of those. So, keeping it working is pretty important.
    I don’t think hating each other’s differences is healthy. Lots of species died. Most of them. Practically all of them. Even the smart ones, neanderthal, homo allthethings.
    #HomoAllTheThings
    Hah!
    –
    Anyway I hope whoever is working security on automatic injection interfaces is good at their job. And I could recommend a compensating control.
    Avoidance is one way to mitigate risk. The decision that the possible gain isn’t worth the expanse, followed by the walk away. Sometimes that’s for the best, when not-cliff-diving. Then again you have to weigh that perilous plummet against the unlived experience of not having ever been cliff diving.
    I’ve been cliff diving. In high school a bunch of us went to a quarry, and there was a tree platform there we jumped from high over the already profound precipice. The water wasn’t like pavement, it was like ooblek or however you spell it. Non Newtonian. Hard.
    Though, I expect it compares favorably to tandem landings under a reserve chute. Someone told me a story about that this weekend, but I’ve forgotten who. I spoke to a lot of people this weekend, but I’m also bad at that.
    At remembering conversations, as to what was said by who when. Whom? Grammatically corect while inharmoniously incorrect. Language languishes without textual twists and metered merriment.
    –
    We, this thing, this collective of all knowledge running on imperfect hardware with no standardization, we are one by our language.
    Of many, though, we are. Each of us resonates in a particular way across the four dimensions of meat space. Engaging others. Inducing others to harmonize, ideally. Stirring around in the pot of humanity, making waves of thought and action.
    All at different amplitudes across ages. Some echo eons, as our Khan’s, both wrathful and, also quite wrathful.
    More though by kindness of deed and dote.
    These, while nameless to the Khanquored, are not so among friends.
    –
    It takes literally no effort to not be a dick to people. Some of them really work at deserving it though, but aside from them, meaning during most human interactions, it’s really not hard.
    But being friendly is hard. It takes energy, and lots of it. Being outgoing is laborious. Much labor is laudable, so this alone isn’t enough to contraindicate it. In fact I highly recommend it, when enough spoons are left over from elsewise stressors.
    Still, connection makes us us. It is the glue and twine that loops our lives in little loci, with added over-arcing flight paths and route maps. We’re hyper connected and it’s a dangerous internet out there. We define our lives indelibly, subject only to the failures of memory, digital and neural. And fashion.
    The organism moves on, from grumpy cat to yelling at cat. To whatever meme is in fashion five minutes from now when you read this. Or five millennia.
    That’s the fuck of it all really. Small bits of writing endure. More now, thanks to the decline in fashion of book burning. One good EMP though and it could vanish. A pattern dissolved, dispersed, diffused, defused. After all, I’m flying in a metal tube in the air, my patterns are pretty vulnerable to rapid unexpected disassembly.
    But read is different.
    Writing read is writing transmitted. A thought compressed, chopped to bits, checksummed and CRCd, copied achronally. Careless of eternity, while carried at C. Or at sea, enbottled post-quill. Which one has the best chance of survival? The meme in the bottle or in the air? Which will end awash and unnoticed, pattern scattered?
    But when received the purpose is fulfilled, ears itch with new knowledge. Fingers twitch and scratch ideas into objects. Eyes open to new views, valuing varied vistas.
    Which is pretty much just views in Spanish, but doesn’t mean quite the same thing in English.
    I took Spanish in high school, so I’m not qualified to discuss etymology here. Not that I ever am, whatever language I’m presently abusing. Or anywhere else either, for example Spain.
    Yeah that haiku again. I forget from last time, but the moment happened again. Happens always. When the plane’s tenor changes, engines relaxing, wings pitching forward ever so slightly. That’s what a haiku is. A moment.
    Fun fact: everything is in this moment. Or that one.
    No, that one.
    Look, If you keep trying to grab one you’ll never catch it.
    –
    We spend our lives walking backwards. The future is behind us. Another language taught me that. We see only our past, as it quickly recedes from us, losing focus in the wash. We’re profoundly unprepared for our future, so much that we don’t recognize it when it arrives. Once we can describe it we’ve already fallen out of reach, unable to touch it.
    Now, though, is the thing we can touch, Xeno notwithstanding. But only if we’re looking around us instead of behind.
    Landing for serious now.
    H

  • Nothing in Particular

    I don’t really have a topic in mind that I want to talk about. I have plenty on my mind, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about that yet.

    I’m flying again, back to Atlanta for one night. I’m already regretting not making it two, but I made my decision some time ago and past-me must have had his reasons. I’m flying for business, slowly racking up points on JetBlue. I seem to hate them less than most others. Today so far the only annoyance is a TV that won’t work and also won’t turn off. It has some sort of seizure inducing flicker instead, presaging the chaotic heat death of the universe in a low res LCD. I won’t live that long, even if I succeed in uploading my consciousness to the cloud. Meanwhile to keep my meat brain from shorting the fuck out I’ve made good use of the snack menu as a sanity shield. Left neighbor’s is off, but right neighbor’s suffers the same fate… Passed my persuade check and that one is covered too now. Bonus: he suggested taking a picture and asking JetBlue for a voucher for my troubles. I’m sure my pull as a blogger will help… I have practically tens of readers.

    Flights are usually not stressful to me once I get to the gate. Prior to that I am a stress ball for more than a day. I lose track of time easily and being late for a plane has annoying consequences. Today was worse because I cut it close, arriving less than an hour before takeoff. Mostly because I decided to visit the Renaissance Faire to support my friend who had written a book they were showing. Also, to see some friends who were visiting and others working there. I arrived less than an hour before I had to leave, but it wasn’t my first trip this year so it was ok. It helped that I was in the RV and I just camped out in their parking lot after arriving last night, but I had some work to do when I woke up that delayed my entry.

    Before that was a mostly unhurried trip up from rural Pennsylvania, which I can confirm was a right good choice for William Penn. There I visited a couple of friends who I seem to see once a year on this same weekend, ever since they moved.

    Continuing my reverse chronology, that was but a short jaunt from the instigation of my travel: another game convention weekend. This one was Traveller Con USA, to distinguish it from the one in the UK, where the extra L comes from. It’s a small one, something around 65 people, but tightly focused on a single game. Three guesses what it’s called. As a small convention it’s easy to get to know people from year to year. As people arrived Thursday night our table at the bar was repeatedly extended amid flurries of good natured razzing. It’s like coming home to a house of 20 older brothers, each with stories to tell from the past year.

    Now that I’ve reached the end of the beginning I’ll return to the middle: the games. They’re all four hour slots, and there are two Friday, with 1 to 5 being open and unscheduled gaming and 7 to 11 the first scheduled one. Saturday has three slots and Sunday has one. Last year during the open slot I ran a pickup game of Scum and Villainy in a Traveller setting. This year I played in a game a friend ran wherein we were stranded in space and had to mine fuel to rescue ourselves before our life support ran out.

    I just realized I skipped the explanation of Traveller, but I’m pretty sure everyone reading this has been in proximity to me for more than a few hours, during which it is highly likely I’ve already explained it ad nauseum. If not, ask me sometime you have a few hours to spare. Maybe I’ll write about that specifically sometime.

    Throughout the day I was distracted by my need to finish planning the game I was running Saturday at 08:00. I had done 80% of the mental effort, that of creating the character concepts and their interrelationships, and 20% of the administrative work, which consists of making standees, character sheets and actually writing some stuff down. In the end the worry paid off, as it tends to, when and only when it’s directed towards productivity.

    Many people struggle with anxiety and worry, but it’s important to understand that it is perfectly healthy in moderation. My brain was trying to tell me something important. It wasn’t dangerous in any physical sense, but an RPG is a collaborative story, and the GM is the hub on which the spokes are attached. I don’t have to be the whole wheel, but we won’t roll if I don’t do my part. My brain was reminding me that I wasn’t done with my commitment to my players, and the worry was a result. It was right, in that if I hadn’t heeded the warning it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. So, thanks brain for making me spend the effort.

    I find thanking my brain helps a lot. It reminds me of my friend who thanks her dog when it barks in alarm at a noise outside. It’s a productive way to acknowledge the value of the signal, even when it’s not needed. Once acknowledged the dog and the anxiety are often silenced. The trick is to learn how to recognize whether our own intrusive thoughts are valuable in the moment.

    For example I could be stressed out right now, sitting in my sky chair. I could start with the simple understanding that gravity spends every waking moment trying to squash me into the Earth. I could wonder whether the engines are as functional as the TVs. I could think about hijackings or lightning. I could make myself miserable every moment of every day if I wanted to. Instead I work very hard not to choose that misery. It doesn’t always work, but it does more than it doesn’t, and since life is just a series of moments spending more of them unmiserable is winning.

    This bit here is Buddhism, or whatever you want to call it, since nothing he said wasn’t said by someone else at some point. I find it easier to hold on to when it’s labeled, but when held lightly it can be seen everywhere namelessly. So, lightly then and without labels I’ll continue.

    Some of you may be asking how. How to stop thinking the thoughts that make us miserable? Well you can’t stop, so step one is acknowledging THAT. That’s a hard thing to swallow, but it’s actually good news. It turns out our brains are a cacophony of voices, thoughts, ideas and distractions, and that’s OK. So step one is accepting that you’re a weird twisted temporary lump of goo powered by chaotic flickers of electrons. You’re ok.

    You have the thought, the impulse, the fear and… then what? What do you do next? Do you yell loudly at the barking dog in your head? Take a guess what effect that has. Chemically it’s a cocktail, but the brain bartender reaches for the cortisol first. Cortisol: The preferred cordial of fighters and flighters everywhere, guaranteed to get you out of a jam, in .04% of situations! Step right up everyone and chug the anti-rampaging-wild-boar drink, it goes great with confined spaces like airplane seats!

    On second thought, maybe try to save that drink for when you need it. If you have accidentally imbibed, it’s hard to step off the ride, but you sure can’t do it by drinking more. I find that looking at my body as though I wasn’t piloting it helps. Oh look! That guy is clenching his jaw, and tensing his fists and hey… It looks like he’s getting ready to fight a boar! The good news is that cortisol peaks only take about ninety seconds to clear out, but only if you don’t have another swig. So once I am aware of what I’m doing physically I just change that. Deep breath, unclench, de-boar. It turns out that changing the physical response usually short circuits the chemical cycle. And then I say thanks to my brain for practicing boar defense protocols, which could be really damn important some day. This too is Buddhism but that also doesn’t matter.

    Ok but what if there is a boar? Or really what if we don’t know whether or not there is? That’s when we have a conversation with ourselves. It helps to have a script, since cortisol is a hell of a drug.

    1. Is this real?
    2. Is this now?
    3. Is there anything I can do NOW to change this NOW, or have a measurable impact on a likely future NOW?

    So, first: Can I see, smell or touch a boar at this moment? Did someone I trust just inform me of any imminent boar attack? Did they sound serious, or did I just arrive at a game convention?

    Second: Is this a thing happening now, or is it just leftover boar tracks? Am I just remembering something? Am I simply listening to a story my brain made up? Maybe one it’s told me before? Would an objective observer, undosed by the bartender, scream at the movie screen that I should run for it?

    Third: What, in all seriousness, can I do at this moment to deal with the boar situation? Can I spend my time making a spear? Building an anti-boar fence? Buying an automatic anti-boar-invasion machine gun? Don’t answer that one.

    What about the plane crash, is there actually anything I can do? Yeah, turns out there is, and the flight crew instructs you about it every time you get on a plane. Do you listen? I do, and I count rows to the nearest exit. Plus, I keep my shoes on, my feet on the floor, my head back, and my seatbelt tight during takeoff and landing. That’s all I’ve figured out, feel free to let me know if you have other ideas. Once I’ve done all I can do I thank my brain for working to protect me and then I pull out my phone to write to you. Or read a book or listen to a podcast, or otherwise do anything else at all but pointlessly fuck up the next few hours of my life drinking cortisol cocktails. There are a million ways I could die today, the plane is just the one most likely to make the evening news.

    Behind me a child has a meltdown, because his sister closed the window thwarting his airborne boar defense. Ten minutes of screaming and sobbing later and he’s back to his video game. Pictures of boars are less scary when you can hit them with pictures of Spears. (Google capitalized that and I’m leaving it in, in support of her own famous meltdown. Rich beautiful young women are probably surrounded by hundreds of vipers and boars. We don’t often see them, but they do. I don’t blame her in the slightest. )

    Engines spooling down,
    Gravity begins to win,
    Probably safely.

    Quick apology,
    Sister forgives his outburst,
    Crisis averted.

    Still no sign of boar.

    H

  • Footprints

    Where does man search for meaning? Man in the way that Neil Armstrong said and possibly meant. How quickly things that are profound become routine. They started counting the “important” Apollos at 11 and stopped at 17, after everyone else tuned their TV dinners to another station. A giant leap it wasn’t, sorry to say, or at least one too few made, them that saw us for what we are: a pale blue dot, full of kings and heroes and despots and in the end, so much ash. Seen from outside we are small and remote and fragile. From inside more so, but less seen.

    The bootprints left behind are entombed photographically, probably actually upoetically scattered by the ascent engine into a permanent scar. Permanent in our lifetimes, at least, so small and remote and fragile. Even all of our history stretches hardly back at all, from the perspective of the pock marks.

    Most of us aren’t so lucky. Our prints are lost faster in a sea of meaningless others, lacking Tranquility. Instantly awash, unnoticed, we scrabble along the surface of our sphere.

    Sometimes though our imprints are carried by others for a while to be put down elsewhere. Sometimes those carried are all that is left, our collective consciousness cajoled into contorting this way or that in a momentary flash, or the echo of a remembered tune. Sometimes it’s sticky, as in the ability to carry fire, to raise water by it, to explain either and argue amongst us. Sometimes it should be but isn’t. Sorry, Neil, a new era it wasn’t, it was a new same, plus photographs of footprints.

    Still, an echo, little or big, is carried in each of us of all of us, for what are we but words and stories and memories? We are pattern making machines, repeating and reap-eating and re-peating machines, each time imperfect. Prone to error and superstition. These machines we are we carry around, bumping into each other, depositing bits of each other. Echoes. We can know almost nothing that wasn’t first a part of someone else, save what we conjure from fragments and smash out of clay or marble or malaprops. The makers have it figured out, I think. Their knitted socks wear holes but only in the walking.

    H