The birth of our first child was a moving experience. Sometimes I forget just how moving it was until I hear a song my wife and I used to sing to our infant son.
He’s grown up now, with a child who will soon herself be grown up. So much has happened in our lives and my children’s lives that it is easy to forget how young parents feel about the creation of life. But something as simple as a song can bring it back, almost as powerfully as if we were reliving it anew.
In college, I picked up the guitar and probably spent more time playing it than I should have. But it was an exciting time to learn guitar music, thanks to the popularity and talent of folk singing groups like Peter, Paul, and Mary. I bought and played as much of their music as I could, and well remember a live concert in Atlanta, Georgia. I was enthralled.
As it turned out, my guitar playing helped attract the attention of the girl who eventually became my wife. When our son was born, and we first laid eyes upon that child, that song, The First Time, seemed so appropriate. In fact, for us, it still does.
I’ve never heard it played for an infant or a young child, but it is entirely fitting with the exception of one word. (We sang, “Kissed your face” instead of “kissed your mouth”).
By the time our son was born, there were two popular versions, the Peter, Paul, and Mary version of the Scottish original, and the fabulous Roberta Flack version. Both of those versions are made available here.
If you have a baby on the way, or a young child at home, listen to the lyrics and the melody and see if you don’t agree with us that this music evokes an emotion difficult to express in any other way.
Result of a FreakingNews Photoshop contest. Image credit: Matro1. Click for original link.
Even a child can appreciate the strangeness of watching the broad, glistening side of a dinosaur lumbering past the bedroom window. Fortunately the creature paid me no heed; it didn’t pause to look in the window, just kept moving on, quickly disappearing from view.
I lay there, frightened I suppose, but all I remember in detail very many years later is the remarkable sight of that moving mass of ponderous flesh. I didn’t see its head or its tail, just its massive hulk of a body sliding along the side of the house as close as could be without touching the house wall, or ripping off the roof. I sensed somehow that the dinosaur was not carnivorous; likely a plant eater, perhaps a brontosaurus, and thus no immediate threat to me.
I frankly cannot tell if that image was a flash of a dream, or a waking hallucination.
I was maybe seven and much more interested in cowboys and Indians than dinosaurs. I was not a toy dinosaur collector, and neither were my friends. In fact, I think this was long before kids, or adults, knew enough about dinosaurs to be fascinated with them. And yet there it was, gliding quietly and smoothly past my bedroom window.
That image lasted maybe four seconds, and yet those four seconds have lasted a lifetime — literally.
If my brain is at all typical, then it seems to me that visual images occurring spontaneously and transiently in six and seven year olds are perhaps associated with a growing and rewiring brain. However, as an adult my most remarkable memories are of similar dreamlets, extremely vivid dreams lasting but a few seconds, just as did the imagery of the dinosaur walking past the window.
Due to my being an adult I can’t explain them by remodeling of my brain. So perhaps there is something unique about them that has nothing at all to do with age.
They are certainly varied, and seem to have nothing whatsoever in common with my actual life. For instance, one dreamlet was of launching off a tall spire in a crystal city, and gliding on wings in an obviously nonhuman form, in a non-Earthlike place. That was probably the strangest, and yet most interesting five seconds of my life.
Another dreamlet, hypnagogic in that I was falling asleep, lasted maybe only a second. In it I clearly saw a white car veer directly into the path of my car, and what had to be an unavoidable head-on collision.
For some time I was on the lookout for white cars (Do you have any idea how many white cars there are?), but years have passed since then and I am still very much alive.
I’m well aware that no one wants to hear about someone else’s dreams, unless they’re being paid to do so. But that is not what this writing is about. Instead it’s about the strange events called dreamlets, moving images that pop into our heads when we are not concentrating on anything in particular.
I suspect we all have them, but due to their brevity few people talk about them. They really aren’t open to interpretation, at least in the same manner as more prolonged dreams which have been interpreted by psychoanalysts like Jung and Freud, and a host of modern day analysts.
Arguably, the most modern discussion of these dreamlets is by Professor Charles Tart who has built a world-wide reputation on such matters. And yet he, like me, is reduced to only asking questions. In a recent blog posting he mentions a few potential explanations for dreamlets, some of which would be considered bizarre by most readers, but admits that none of them seem to match his experiences completely.
What interests me about his writing, however, is the fact that what he experiences during meditation and what I’ve experienced spontaneously share points in common. That leads me to believe these events are generalized throughout the human population. In other words, you may remember events similar to the dinosaur passing by your window, and may wonder what that was about. This posting, then, is to tell you that you are not alone. Unfortunately no one has authoritative answers for you.
If you have an interest in learning more about these brief events, then you may find Dr. Tart’s blog stimulating.
I was recently reminded that almost everyone who is literate and has access to a computer and Internet connection has used Google to find something of interest to them.
The way I was reminded of that was from Google Analytics which gives me feedback on this blog. Over a period of a few days I witnessed a curious rise in the number of hits on a tongue-in-cheek description of a faux energy company (Cosmic Capacity Corporation) that purportedly sells personal black holes.
Typically, the draw of a sample of my dry humor is low. So why should there be a rapid uptick in interest?
Well, I’m just as mindful of national security as the next person, so as I witnessed the first wave of unexpected interest my thoughts were that bad people were trying to expand their knowledge of potentially dangerous devices. After all, anything that could make most anything disappear, and if detected, evaporate itself beyond all trace of detectability must be of interest to criminals.
But whoever they were, they weren’t stupid: they caught on quickly that the posting was a ruse. Stay time was approximately 30 sec.
However, over the period of a week, the numbers continued rising, and then fell just as quickly back to their normal near-dormancy levels. Something strange was going on.
A Gaussian curve-fit to the Google Analytics data, January 20 – 28, 2013.
The limited data I have points to a total of 333 hits occurring with an approximately Gaussian (normal, Bell-shaped curve) frequency between January 21 and 27.
With that realization, I may have now solved the mystery. When I looked at the timing and shape of the rise and fall, a memory was triggered of college student life.
From strangethoughtsbyjohn.blogspot.com. Click to go to the link.
I have no way of knowing if this is true, but let’s assume that on Monday the 21st, over 300 students attended the first of the week’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes on introductory science in a large University. The lecture hall was packed when the professor announced that a paper on Personal Black Holes was due on Monday week.
On that day (Monday) ten students hit Google and immediately found my blog posting on Personal Black Holes. The next day 25 students hit the site followed on Wednesday (perhaps encouraged by a reminder in class) and Thursday by a much larger group of students. On Friday, 35 procrastinators did the same thing.
I don’t think I would be wrong to suggest that after a Friday night spent in college recreation, Saturday was a day of hangovers and recovery. (Yes, I am speaking from personal experience.) No one hit my site on Saturday, and I imagine the majority were resting, or perhaps writing.
On Sunday, it appears that three late-bloomers hit the site, and the rest were preparing their paper for Monday.
Early Monday morning, one desperate procrastinator hit the site. I can just imagine the student screaming, “You have got to be kidding! This is a joke?”
Yes, it was a joke, a fact the average student figured out in 39 seconds before moving on.
Government and industry is constantly pressing for metrics, ways to measure business success other than from sales. The problem with metrics is that figuring out what to do with the numbers is not always obvious . What do they represent?
Since my site is not a business, and does not earn me a cent, I normally pay no attention to its metrics. However, this time, after moving beyond my initial alarm, I felt that I might be gaining insight into the hidden “research” trends of young college students. As a scientist, that intrigues me.
It would be more intriguing if someone discovered that A students were the first to turn to Google for answers. I’m sure Google would find that satisfying.
It could of course be just the opposite. Perhaps top students hit the library first and then follow up with Google search as a last check. Actually, that result would surprise me, but arguably it cannot be ruled out.
Lastly, it could be that my college class hypothesis is completely wrong. It could be that Chechen rebels were exploring ways to solve their political/military problem, but somehow I doubt it.
As we scientists are trained to say, more research is needed.
Have you ever watched a local sailboat race from the shore?
It’s not exactly an adrenaline-pumping spectator sport. On the boats of course there is plenty of excitement — shouting, sometimes cursing. But from shore, all the on-boat drama is missing.
GoPro cameras have ushered in a new era of taking the viewer into the action. And based on the action that I commonly see on the Internet, that action is not of local sailboat races. It is instead full of speed and thrills. The penultimate example of testosterone-driven thrill-seeking, in my opinion, is the dangerous sport of wingsuit flying, always perilously close to terrain.
The visual rush is not subtle. You are left with the impression that any second you’ll witness a fatal crash. You leave the video thinking that the flyer is one very brave, very skilled, and very lucky person. Or else you just think they’re CRAZY!
But honestly, I’d love to be that crazy— just once anyway.
When I watch such videos on YouTube I get the sense that I am a spectator at a blood sport event. There is beauty and grace which I admire, but ultimately I know there is a risk to the participant, as evidenced occasionally by the literally rib-splitting, pink mist endings to some of those flights. We enter into the action, but comfortably in front of our TV or computer screens with no personal risk to ourselves.
Arguably we are really not so different from the crowds at the Gladiator games, or for a more modern though fictional example, the Hunger Games.
What I like about the new class of miniature, high-definition video cameras is that they allow us to video what we love doing and then share it with the world. That’s nice, but unless what you do is high speed, endearingly cute, or down-right funny, it may be difficult to attract viewers.
I’ve uploaded flying videos, including the high-definition video below, but they are not exciting. Instead, they appeal, I think, to those who simply love flight: the visual sensations of landing, of entering clouds or skimming cloud tops. That type of flight is the way the FAA expects pilots to fly — safely. Yet safe flight is also capable of generating visual sensations that secretly thrill even highly experienced pilots, and keep them in love with their profession.
On the other hand, the adrenalin-packed videos that high-definition cameras provide can entice some pilots to fly unsafely, simply to titillate the cameraman and the viewer. I suspect the pilot in the following video got a high viewer count but I also suspect his wings are about to be clipped by the FAA.
I am very unlikely to engage in risky flying simply because it looks thrilling when posted on the Internet. I want to keep my license; it is a treasured privilege to be able to fly. But also because I’ve lived long enough to know it is quite a different thing to watch a Miss Universe pageant, and quite another to entertain a pageant contestant when she shows up unexpectedly at your door. The thrill may be more intense in the latter case, but the personal risk may be far greater; especially if your significant other meets her at the door.
It was the time of Gorbachev and Détente; an uneasy and foolish Détente if you asked a certain Russian officer, which I did as we rode from the GKSS-GUSI deep diving facility in Geesthacht, Germany back into town. It was June 1990. The Russian did not know English, and I didn’t know Russian, but the German driver understood my English enough to translate for the Russian. Gorbachev must have been out of his mind, that officer said.
A short time later a Naval Officer scientist and two technicians on my team from Bethesda, Md left Lüneburg, where we were staying, and headed to Berlin for the weekend. After an extended rainy period, the weather was finally gorgeous, and we soon found ourselves at the dividing line between East and West Berlin, surrounded by East Germany. That line, marked by the Berlin Wall, was a stark reminder of the red curtain that lay scant yards away from us.
It was an exciting time, because the Wall had already been breached the previous November, and visitors and townspeople alike were chipping away at the hard concrete, trying to eradicate the Wall and scavenge historical souvenirs.
We were no exception, although that is not what we had planned. This was simply an opportunity too good to pass.
Another opportunity appeared as a break in the line at the Brandenburg Gate. Police were allowing people to cross over into East Germany, without restraint, apparently.
While others in my team were picking away at the stubbornly dense concrete of the Berlin Wall, the young Naval Officer in civilian clothes and I sized up the situation and decided that since Détente was running at fever pitch we might as well get a glimpse of the wrong side of the Iron Curtain before it changed forever. The Germans waiting in line to cross over were excited about their newfound freedom and encouraged us to join them. “No problem,” is what they said.
There is something about those two words that always seems ironic, in retrospect.
So, with no formality at all we found ourselves walking down almost deserted streets on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate, on the Soviet side of the Berlin Wall, walking past depressingly gray buildings, with the only color being a red Aeroflot sign on a travel agency. From the looks of it, no East Germans were traveling that day.
It did not take long for the novelty of our new geographical freedom to wear off, and so we returned to the casual opening through which we entered the forbidden zone.
The only problem was, the guards wouldn’t let us back through.
Well, that was unexpected.
I suppose our dismay was obvious to the guards who knew just enough English to be dismissive, and the young Naval Officer must have had visions of his career coming to a swift and inglorious end, probably in some East German prison. I, however, am an optimist, and when the security guard muttered something in German about Check Point Charlie (I had heard of it before from some spy movie or other), we set off to rescue ourselves from our accidental confinement.
Check Point Charlie was only about two kilometers away, but a very tense two kilometers. The East German gray buildings took on a somber hue as we passed — not like battleship gray, but more like prison gray; Soviet prison gray.
I’m not sure what my Naval Officer friend was thinking during that walk, but since I had led him into this tight situation his thoughts might have bordered on the murderous.
On arrival at the East Berlin side of Checkpoint Charlie, we could clearly see the American side, which beckoned just a short distance away. But, first, we had to negotiate our way past an East German border guard.
That guard, whose uniform bore alien-looking DDR patches, frowned deeply when examining our “papers.” We did not have a visa for entry to East Germany. We clearly did not belong in East Berlin.
So close to the freedom of the American Sector, and yet so far away.
“You will have to pay.”
Mind you, the word “pay” can have many meanings, most of them neither easy nor pleasant.
Hoping with my usual optimism that he meant paying with money, I next asked, “How much?”
Looking at the American Sector from the East German side of Checkpoint Charlie.
“Five Deutschmarks.”
We had Deutschmarks, but they were West German DMs. “Not a problem, I’ll take those,” he said with a broad smile.
Of course, we understood that West German DMs were worth much more than GDR (German Democratic Republic) currency. But if that was the price for our freedom, it was a price we were more than willing to pay.
That night as I was speeding my friends back to the relative safety of West Germany, I kept encountering slow-moving, tiny little cars, called Trabants. In fact, I almost ran over one before its image in my rental car’s headlights made clear what it was.
The Trabant, Communist era East German car, also known as Trabis.
“That’s odd,” I remarked.
Trabants were a ubiquitous East German car, but I didn’t know that at the time.
If I had, the next sign, a sign for a Baltic Sea town just ahead, wouldn’t have been such a shock.
We had missed a turn and had been driving for over two hours North towards Rostock, still firmly in the depths of Communist East Germany. As I turned around and headed South I was hoping our auto, ostentatious by East German standards, was not advertising the fact that, once again, we did not belong in East Germany.
It was late when we returned to Lüneburg, tired and perhaps a bit wiser. But at least we had all collected a bit of the infamous Berlin Wall to remind us of the fragility of freedom in an uncertain world.
A piece of the Berlin Wall with a rebar impression near the bottom.
Reconstructed Neanderthal. Click to go to BBC source.
Recent science has revealed that we, Homo sapiens, may be carrying genes from the Neanderthals, like the model on the left reconstructed from a nearly complete skeleton discovered 100 years ago in France. But what about our other genes, those contributed by our family ancestors?
The quest for family roots is old, and has kept genealogists, amateur and professional alike, engaged in a fascinating search of discovery.
That quest has even been politicized, for at least the last five-years, with the public clamoring for information about the roots of presidential contenders. Fortunately for us commoners, information of our forebears is easy to obtain, in comparison, because of its lack of political sensitivity. This search is eased in part by the help of the Mormon Church.
I’m not a Mormon, but if you’ve spent any time at all on the planet lately, you’ve probably heard that a U.S. Presidential contender is, namely, Mitt Romney. My take on Mormons that I’ve known personally is that they are really nice people, with a strong interest in family … and genealogy. I like to think I hold those values in common with them.
They used to say you are what you eat. But now that the war between nature vs. nurture has quieted down, we recognize we are largely what our genes define, with a good bit of good parenting thrown in. But it’s the genes that interest me the most. Supposedly we share 95-98% of our genome, our collection of genes, with Chimpanzees. Well, as I look in a mirror, I realize that remaining 5% is pretty darned important.
And so out of an abundance of curiosity, decades ago I began transcribing my Grandmother’s family history notes into early DOS-based computer databases. Before long I began to see an interesting panoply of historical faces staring back at me.
I soon learned that the Church of Latter Day Saints had extensive libraries chock full of family files, and due to the Mormon fascination with all things family, my database rapidly grew. With the advent of the Internet and family file sharing, the numbers of known ancestors grew exponentially. That’s when things got interesting.
Game Stalker … Photograph by Jim Richardson, National Geographic – “Gordon Muir, a renowned game stalker on the island of Jura.”
My Clark(e) ancestors were Scottish, and after coming to the U.S. in the 1700s from Jura, Scotland, they settled in North Carolina. They were thus Southern.
Being Southern led to a conflict between one ancestor, a tall well-educated man who published a Tennessee newspaper, and a carpetbagger during the dark days of Civil War Reconstruction. The abusive carpetbagger threatened my ancestor, publicly, and got shot dead in the process. Unfortunately, the carpetbagger was unarmed at that moment, and carrying a weapon was illegal for the Southerners. That was problematic.
Nevertheless, my ancestor was eventually acquitted. I think the 19th century lesson was, don’t do wrong to a Scotsman, even one in America.
In Scotland, on the Isle of Jura, there seemed to be little to do except make whisky, drink whisky, fight whenever it seemed useful, and contribute the 5% of their unique genes, as often as possible. Not a bad lifestyle, in my opinion.
Some Scotsmen signed an oath of Loyalty to the King of England before leaving Scotland and emigrating to the Unites States. Some of those so-called Loyalists ended-up on the wrong side of the U.S. Revolutionary War.
I admit, some of my Scottish ancestors made bad choices, but they did so with conviction and a sense of honor. A promise made is a promise kept.
The record shows that both Scottish and American women shared a perilous lifestyle, arguably equal in finality with warring Highlanders. The birthing of babies occasionally ended in maternal mortality. Oddly enough, the genes usually won out, because when a mother died, her younger sisters oftentimes were the next to marry the grieving husband. The family genes stayed together, or so says the historical records.
Sir. Henry Hobart
As time went on, the wary North Carolina Scots finally began choosing those with a British ancestry as mates, so the blood lines did not remain isolated for long.
Families have a way of romanticizing their lineage. For instance, I’d always heard that I was related on the maternal side (Harrison) to the unfortunate President William Henry Harrison who died after only 32 days in office. After years of casual researching, there is no relationship, best I can tell.
But I did discover a potential connection to Sir Henry 1st Baronet of Blickling Hall and Chief Justice of Common Pleas Hobart, circa 1500s. (Blickling Hall is reputed to be the most haunted home in the U.K., haunted by the headless ghost of Ann Boleyn.)
I would be impressed with myself, thinking I came from such a distinguished Englishman. But then I realize that his genetic contribution would be like adding a single drop of chocolate syrup to a tanker truck full of milk. We’re a long ways from ending up with a truck full of chocolate milk.
So what is the relevance of all this esoteric knowledge to our daily lives? Well, to the Mormons it’s very relevant, for religious reasons. It’s their way of extending salvation to lost souls; an admirable motivation.
For the rest of us, the relevance is less compelling, unless you enjoy discovering stories like those I’ve shared. It’s like seeing a reality show with an entirely new episode revealed each time you turn on the computer. And in the rolling credits of this show are people who happen to be in some way related to you, contributing the parts of you that make you unique.
Personally, I think history is much more interesting when it is your own.
I sat on the edge of a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheeses, calipers in hand, measuring the diameters of a random sampling of plastic balls within the pit.
I suppose I stood out, an officious-looking adult wielding a precision instrument in a place designed for fun. So much so that a father attending his child asked me what I was doing.
I was measuring the ball sizes. I explained that if the balls were too small, and a child became covered with them, then the void space around the balls, the contorted empty volumes that represented places where air can be exchanged, would be too small, making breathing difficult. That made sense to the father, and he seemed pleased that I was looking after his child’s safety.
A child is almost completely covered by balls. A single hand is sticking out, and part of a face can be seen.
Contrary to the way it seemed, I was not a corporate inspector for Chuck E. Cheeses. I was also not a government inspector. But I was curious, gaining information for ideas I was developing about the breathing resistance imposed by particles of various sizes. I was acting, as it were, as a freelance scientist investigating flow through porous beds.
Consider the circumstance where a person is forced to breathe through a mass of balls, as in the illustration below. You can see, better than in the case of the ball pit, that if the balls become too small, or smaller balls fill in the void spaces between larger balls, then the person would be at risk for suffocation.
copyright John R. Clarke.
Advertisements for balls sold for ball pits point out the safety advantage of larger balls for children under age 3. The smaller children are obviously more susceptible to tunneling deeper into a pit of balls, some of which may be piled to two feet or deeper depths.
Balls of 3.1 in. diameter are touted as being ideal for three-year-olds, whereas other popular sizes [2.5 in. (65 mm), 2.75 in. (70 mm)] are not. The 3.1 in. ball is almost twice as large, in terms of actual volume, as the 2.5 in. balls.
A problem awaits a child if the ball pit has poorly sorted ball sizes, especially a mixture of larger and small balls. As shown in the figure to the right, well-sorted balls provide a porosity (airspace for breathing) of over 32%, whereas a mixture with balls fitting into the void spaces between larger balls can reduce void space down to about 12%. That would not be a good plan for a ball pit.
It also is not a good plan for the Namib mole.
The Namib Golden Mole is found in one region of Namibia because of the peculiar characteristics of the sand in that area. The sand grains are surprisingly homogeneous in size, and as the illustration to the right shows, similarly sized particles have a relatively large porosity. For the mole that means that when they burrow deep into the sand to escape blistering noonday heat, they will not suffocate. They can breathe through the sand.
If the sand were of mixed grain sizes, which is more typical of sand dunes, then porosity would be low and the mole would not be able to burrow deep enough to avoid the African heat without suffocating.
So, quite unexpectedly there is a connection between the uniform size of plastic balls in a ball pit and the survival of a mole in a faraway African desert.
You never know where scientific curiosity will lead you.
As will be shown in an upcoming blog post, the topic of breathing through porosities in packed beds is relevant to diving with rebreathers or breathing through chemical absorbent cartridges in gas masks.
With a sardonic sneer typical of the glistening-haired, easily-bored waiters in upper crust restaurants, he poked a neatly manicured finger into my menu. “It’s right there. You chose carbon dioxide or methane.”
Even though that conversation is imaginary, it is true, apparently, that in certain parts of the country where fracking is popular for extracting natural gas from the ground, there is some risk of that gas being forced into aquifers feeding wells intended to provide potable water.
Obviously water infiltrated with dissolved methane should not be used for cooking on gas stoves. I don’t need to explain the consequences.
And no doubt, drinking methane containing water could turn the high-school males’ risky game of flatus ignition into a pyrotechnic event competing favorably with the energy release of flaming napalm.
Although the Environmental Protection Agency seems to be silent on the issue, the AMA has recently posted their concern about fracking, for medical reasons. Not all of those reasons are proctological in nature.
Having been an observer and worker within the medical science community for many years, I have only two thoughts that might cheer the energy industry.
The first is that sometimes the medical community makes an issue of things that the human body produces, like cholesterol. Cholesterol is vital for a healthy nervous system. In fact, it is so important that the body makes it, just to make sure it has enough. So why do I have to deprive myself of dietary cholesterol which accompanies the finest food in the world; like lobster, fried fish, and filet mignon? Because supposedly it’s bad for me. That’s what they say, even though my body is producing prodigious amounts to keep itself healthy. Non sequitur is the phrase that comes to mind.
I have nothing against physicians. My father was one, as is my son. Some of my best friends are physicians; and one of them alerted me to this news item. Arguably, physicians have even saved my life.
As the son of a physician I grew up reading the Journal of the American Medical Association … which was almost as entertaining to a young boy as National Geographic. But I don’t understand the profession’s concern for methane in water. After all, methane is colorless and odorless, and does not react with biological systems. What goes in, comes out, unperturbed.
Like cholesterol, the human body produces methane. Methane is produced by bacteria in the gut (so-called methanogens) whose sole purpose is to live well and prosper in the low oxygen environment of the large intestine, and as a byproduct of that anaerobic life style, produce methane. Methane now actually seems to have some purpose in the gut; it stimulates the human immune system. So, apparently, it has a biological purpose. Without it, one could argue, we would literally get sick.
OK, there you have it: my two thoughts that might cheer the energy industry.
But since I don’t anticipate a check coming in the mail from the gas companies, now I’ll share my scientific opinion, of sorts. I once was a fellow in the Water Resources Management Training program at Georgia Tech. (Curiously, the director of the program was named Dr. Carl Kindswater, presumably originally Kindswasser. In German, Wasser is water, and best I can tell, Kindswasser is amniotic fluid. So in a sense it is truly water of children.)
I honestly don’t know if the ironically named Program Director spoke German or not, but I suspect that if he did, he might respond thusly to the story of fracking product found in our precious, and clearly mismanaged, fresh-water supplies.
“Sind Sie aus Ihrem brennenden Geist?”
According to Google, that would mean, “Are you out of your flaming mind?” Somehow, that phrase seems entirely appropriate.
By the way, I always take water without gas, just in case.
Some people command your attention, without effort or intention on their part. For the few seconds that it took for her to walk past me, the lady pilot was one of those people.
She was an attractive blond, and tall, and her posture in no way diminished her height. She walked with poise and purpose, chatting and smiling to another pilot in those Navy Blue Delta Airlines Uniforms. The fact that she had four stripes on her shoulder, indicating her Captain’s rank, immediately explained part of her purposefulness. The fact that she was, or appeared, young, in her early to mid-thirties, spelled out her competence, which I sensed immediately. It was doubtful she could have risen so quickly through the ranks unless she excelled at her job.
The fact that she was attractive is not what separated her from the other women in the Atlanta concourse at that same moment. There were lots of pretty girls there. Her bearing was as if she was in Command of a U. S. Navy heavy Cruiser; that’s what separated her from the rest.
As I later sat in a window seat of our Boeing 757 being readied for departure to Pittsburgh, I saw that the blond Captain was indeed in charge of a heavy cruiser; a 757-200 (FAA registered as N604DL) parked beside us. I watched her as she climbed down the steps of the boarding platform and performed her inspection walk around the aircraft she would be commanding. If she is like most pilots, she would also be admiring the beautiful machine she had the good fortune to fly, while thinking about her responsibility for the lives of the passengers who would soon be boarding.
N604DL on departure, from the Flight Aware web site.
She must have made that walk thousands of time in her career, but every little part of the aircraft visible to her was examined. The fact that most of those parts loomed far above her attested to the size of the aircraft, and made her job more difficult. But she took her time, being fully devoted to her work.
I once asked a Captain and First Officer pair how it was decided who would make the walk around the aircraft. The wise-old Captain said it depended on the weather; and the experienced first officer agreed, smiling broadly. That day in Atlanta the weather was fair, and not too hot, but I got the feeling that lady pilot would do that job regardless of the weather.
A Boeing 757 cockpit. Click to enlarge.
As I watched this Delta Captain make her rounds and return up the stairs to her office, the 757 cockpit, I thought that I had just witnessed a nascent cinematic moment. But this pilot was no movie star, in all probability, although I’m sure she could have been, if that had been her ambition.
And then in a three-second flash of irony, I saw her on the video screen no more than 12 inches away from my face. Our 757 crew was playing a video safety brief, and in the closing frames that blond pilot looked back from her left seat in the cockpit of a Delta jet and said with her easy smile, “Welcome to Delta.”
As I later reached my hotel room in Pittsburg, I opened up Flight Aware on my iPad and found that N604DL was nearing its destination of Las Vegas. I smiled, thinking that Delta’s passengers on that flight were willing to gamble on the slots and card tables, but they didn’t have to gamble on their flight. They had an ace in the cockpit.
If you are interested in a career in commercial aviation, you might find a blog posting on the Delta Airlines web site of interest. It’s written by an African-American female who was a copilot for Delta at the time of the writing. It describes how she ended up in the right seat of a major commercial carrier.
I began the trip with the following adage firmly in my mind: “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” Admittedly, at the time that apocryphal quote might not yet have been uttered, but I was nevertheless well familiar with the principle.
The trip was an end-of-the-school year ride from downtown Atlanta to Prairie Village, Kansas on a 50 cc piston displacement Honda motorcycle. I don’t know of anyone else who has tried it, but I can attest, in hindsight, that it is a risky idea.
But it was adventuresome, and adventure was what my twenty-one year old mind craved after spending another school year trying to force college physics into my head. But I knew there was no way to get permission. I would just show up at my parent’s doorstep, and accept the consequences later. Considering how it turned out, that was a reasonable plan.
A stroke volume of 50 cc is minuscule for road bikes. It is in fact approximately equal to the cardiac stroke volume of a typical nine-year old child’s heart. No nine-year old I know is capable of carrying a 145 lb college student on his back for over 800 miles. Not even close. But that was what I was asking that little Honda to do, and it made a valiant effort to do just that. Of course I had to help by not exceeding 35 mph.
The logistics had seemed doable; 862 miles at 35 mph yielded about 24 hrs of driving. The Honda dealer advised me to keep the speed no higher than 35 mph since the top speed for the little Honda was 40 mph. I was also advised to stop about every 30 min to an hour to let the engine cool down. That seemed like reasonable advice, to which I adhered religiously, except for one time.
In late May headed northwest I should be able to count on almost 12 hours of daylight. So I would leave Saturday AM, and arrive late Sunday. Just to be sure, I’d allow three days and tell my parents to expect me Monday evening.
They assumed I’d be flying commercial.
Route to the Mississippi River (from Google Earth). Click for a larger image.
Due to the low top speed of the 4-stroke, overhead valve Honda engine, the trip was planned for small, two lane roads. And that path laid out for me a route through small towns of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, a sliver of Kentucky, and Missouri with colorful names like Natchez Trace, Bible Hill, Howes Mill, and sometimes curious names like Boss, Minimum, Meta, Enon, Chloride, and Topsy. I travelled through towns so small and out-of-the-way that Google’s Street-View cars still haven’t found them all.
A sign of things to come happened soon after I entered hill country. Having spent much of my life to that point in eastern Kansas, I was starved for vertical relief. When I came across an inviting road-cut during one of those down-times, when the engine was cooling, I set about to climb the road-cut, just for the fun of it, and perhaps to scout the road ahead. It was a scramble, loose rocks slipping beneath my feet, but eventually I worked my way to the top. But coming back down proved more daunting. For some reason the slope seemed even more crumbly than on the way up. As I was pondering which way to step, a car, one of the very few I had seen on that road, pulled up below me. The driver asked if I needed help.
How nice. Of course I said I was fine, but thanks, and they drove off. After all, unless they were angels with wings to pluck me off the rocks, what could they do?
As they made their way around the bend, out of sight, my next step was not good, at all. I started sliding, turning around instinctively to grab something solid, and managed to open a 5 in. long tear in my corduroy pants with the only solid rock I unfortunately found. If I had not been wearing tough cloth, that tear would have been in my leg.
Upon reaching the bottom where my bike rested, I motored on, thoroughly embarrassed by my naiveté.
As my first day of travel neared an end in a respectably-sized town, I dragged myself up the steps of an old two-story house with a “room to rent” sign in front of it. And that is where I met my first angel.
As the elderly lady came to the door, she recoiled slightly at the sight of the young man with pants with unintended earthen streaks on them, and a long tear hanging open. After hearing my story, of the young son heading home on a wimp of a scooter, her sense of mothering must have overcome her sense of caution. She fed me and let me shower and sleep in her house that night.
She didn’t have wings, but she might as well have.
Route through Missouri (From Google Earth). Click for a larger image.
I met the second angel the next day, on Sunday. Early that day I ran out of two-lane road. There was simply no way to continue on my way without a hopefully short run on an interstate highway. You may not have noticed, but most interstates in the U.S. have a 40 mph minimum speed limit. My Honda had a 40 mph speed limit too. So I set off, hugging the right edge of the road, just barely meeting the legal speed limit. When semi trucks passed me I was able to draft them for a few seconds, feeling myself accelerated up to maybe 50 mph by the truck’s suction. It was exhilarating.
But probably not too good for the bike. Not long after making my way back to two-lane country roads, the engine began to run roughly. And it’s top speed was declining noticeably. My scooter and I limped into a small town on Sunday afternoon, and I set about to find some help. Stopping at a gas station I was sorely concerned with my seemingly hopeless predicament, until one of the men sitting outside pointed to his small engine repair sign propped in the gas station window. Well, a 50 cc engine is a small engine, and if he was willing to help me out, I was willing to let him.
The fact that his man might have been an angel occurred to me when he started taking apart my little engine, on Sunday afternoon mind you, and found the problem was due to a broken piston ring. No problem, he happened to have a ring that would fit a small Honda piston. What are the odds of that?
I learned a lot that day about small engines, and about the kindness of small town folk who are accustomed to coming to the rescue of those in need. I paid the man the pittance he asked for, to cover the cost of the piston ring, and hit the road an hour or two later with a revived engine.
Hickman Ferry (photo credit Buddy Rogers)
Upon reaching the Mississippi River at Hickman, Kentucky, I and a semitrailer truck were parked at a ferry ramp waiting on the next ferry. We had a long wait ahead of us, and the mid-day heat was becoming oppresive. Just as I was surrendering to the inevitability of a long, hot wait, the truck driver opened up a small access door in the back of his semi and pulled out a cool watermelon. He had an entire load of them, and with a wink he confided that one wouldn’t be missed.
I’ve never had any better watermelon than that one.
On Monday, the last day of my planned trip, I still had 350 miles to cover. At 35 mph it would be doable in daylight if it weren’t for those incessant cooling down breaks. But as I inched across the map of Missouri I knew I would be arriving in Prairie Village Kansas after dark.
Unfortunately as dusk was approaching, the headlight which had been burning for safety nonstop since my departure from Atlanta, died. Truly, the thought of driving into Kansas City traffic at night without a headlight was simply untenable, not to mention illegal. So I made the decision to press on without the engine cooling spells. I would try to beat nightfall to my doorstep.
Two things brought my trip to a premature end. I pulled into a truck stop in Raytown, Missouri, on the outskirts of Kansas City, as it became fully dark, and as one of the engine valves decided it was too burnt to continue.
The phone call home that night was intense.
Even though my Dad offered to pick me up, I told him I’d make it the rest of the way on my own; which I did. The next morning after a short bus ride home, I walked up to the house and received the dressing down I deserved.
At home at last, Prairie Village, KS. The tear in these same pants had been repaired by the time the photo was taken.
But as the emotion of the moment wore off, I could see a little smile of pride, and wonder, at what his son had done.
My Dad and my bride, after I'd matured a little, and graduated to a 350 cc Honda.
By the way, after the bike was repaired, it was shipped back to Atlanta, not driven.
