The Northward Contrail

The only way around it is through it

Yesterday after work I had my dental appointment.  It's safe to say I wasn't exactly doing cartwheels at the thought.  It had been almost six years since I'd been to a dentist, and that's not necessarily by choice (blame, instead, an ambiguous insurance plan).  I was there ahead of time and ready for the worst.  Fortunately, the dentist is a guy about my age who's low-key, with a good sense of humor.  Better still, his office is right next to a submarine sandwich shop, and the aroma of baking bread is all through the office.  If that won't soothe me, nothing will.

It's interesting to note what's changed the last six years.  I'd been through an ultrasonic cleaning before, so that didn't surprise me.  (I was, however, surprised that the dentist didn't need to use a jackhammer and demolition charges to clean my teeth.)  What was new to me, though, was the way bitewing X-rays are done now.  Gone are the little shards of film I hated.  The evil-looking X-ray gun remains, but now the images are digitally processed, and it was cool to look at those on the screen overhead.  A cleaning and a polishing later, things are better. 

Well, almost.  The doc comes in and spends a few minutes poking around in there with his dental explorer, and I find out the carnage of the last few years.  There's four starter cavities that need attention, and there's also a tooth I somehow damaged, and it's missing a little chunk.  That would explain the occasional little dull aches near the back of my mouth.  Mercifully, it's over soon (and I mean soon; this guy is quick).  The doc says he can extract the affected wisdom teeth, or he can repair them.  I opt for the latter. I get the option of splitting the work up over a couple visits, or doing it all at once.  Nope, if I'm going to be numb and getting drilled and filled, let's do it all at once.  So in about a month, I go back for a dental marathon.  Am I looking forward to it?  Nope.  But, to be honest, I was looking at anything short of a root canal as a victory.  It'll be good to have these little stray aches and pains dealt with, too. 

Chasing the rabbit (or the Beetle?) down the hole

I can really tell the semester is grinding along for another reason: my indifference to many things regarding my field. Sure, my interest in the historical end of it is as strong as it's ever been, and any time I find new footage or new airchecks or anything like that, I'm a kid in a candy store. But contemporary stuff, like I'm supposed to keep up with? I can't get into it. Intellectually I know I should be digging into the think pieces in the latest Columbia Journalism Review, keeping up with the latest developments in my field of teaching. But it doesn't seem to stick. I get enough of it to be conversant, and enough of it to keep my courses reasonably contemporary. But I feel inadequate, compared to my peers. Other folks in this field can talk about the latest developments, and where the future of journalism will be, until they're blue in the face. But I have no such aspirations. I'm too happy looking in the rear-view mirror. I'm much more interested in what Cronkite or Huntley said 45 years ago than in what's going on in the blogosphere.

:: Yesterday I talked about the internal debate about Baby's bent wheels, and what to do about it. That got me thinking about other possibilities for down the road when I'm able to divert a little money to other fun things, and can finally get started on a project car. Granted, I already have two project cars back at the old home place, but to be honest, I'll be content for a while if I can clean them up, stabilize their condition, put a shelter over them, then gradually fix them up. I'm more interested in their preservation at the moment.  (What kind of shenanigans can you get into with a '79 Caprice, anyway, especially one you don't want to trick out?)

Nope, my thoughts turn to something smaller and more sporty. In my wilder moments, I've daydreamed about owning a Porsche 911. I'd have thoughts about finding a decent used one, old enough not to be too expensive but young enough to have plenty of life in it. (Also, old enough so that I can avoid the harsher end of our state's draconian property taxes on automobiles, especially those of higher value.  That's part of the reason why I drive a nine-year-old car.)  But three years of reading the tech questions in Excellence magazine put the kibosh on that.  You're looking at parts and maintenance costs that approach those of a small aircraft. (That's a story an acquaintance of ours learned the hard way. He was all excited about the deal he got on a 944 -- until the car needed substantial repairs and he got the estimates.)

So I don't have the budget for that, I'm afraid. Instead, I've often looked at the other end of the German spectrum, the VW Karmann Ghia. It's a nifty-looking little car, and I've had a soft spot for Volkswagens for a long time, and its roots in the Beetle mean...well, you can figure it out. Or I've thought about an early Toyota Celica, one like Janet Guthrie drove back in the day. Where's it all going to head, if anywhere? I don't know, and it won't be anything anytime soon, if ever. But it's fun to daydream about. I stumbled across this really neat website last night, and that's not too terribly far from something I'd love to do.

Now what would I do with it?  Would I go racing?  I doubt it.  I like to watch racing, but I don't like beating other people myself.  I'm my own competition.  I'd really be content if I could find a track, take some classes in high-performance driving, and see what I could do.  It'd really be not that different from the stuff I was doing in the back yard 25 years ago on the go-kart.  Only it would be more expensive, of course.

:: The big overpromoted festivus of football comes up this weekend, and brings with it another logo that looks like it should be on a beer can. I haven't liked the Super Bowl logos for a long time. They have looked progressively sillier. Nope, as a card-carrying nerd, I much prefer this proposal for a new Super Bowl logo.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

The new semester is starting to get into its normal hum, and I'm already well into the mental defenses I keep.  There's a lot outside of work that I'm missing, and I've noticed that I've missed it, but, as usual, I'm indifferent to it.  I realize I missed it, and otherwise I'd be a little bummed to have missed it, whether it's an interesting article or a television show or whatever.  But, during the school year, I have a reaction best characterized as "indifferent."  This is about the same time that I stop really tasting food (because it's a fuel stop instead of something to pause and savor) and that I find I'm too busy to listen to sounds that would otherwise interest me.  It's unfortunate, yes, but there's work that must be done, and I'm bound to be interrupted at any moment by another crisis, whether real or perceived.  (Have you ever noticed that when you need something from somebody else, it's a low priority to them, but when somebody else wants something from you, it's like it's the most important thing in the world to them and woe betide you if you dawdle?  Just saying.)

So this has left little time for daydreaming and fun stuff.  Though sometimes I sneak something in, just for giggles.  Since I found out last month that my little car has two bent wheels, I've been considering just outright replacing the wheels and tires with something a little more sporty.  Maybe make Baby look a little like a GT car.  I got to thinking about this again over the weekend, because the 24-hour race makes me daydream about race cars and what all.  And if I can't (yet) have a race car, what's to keep me from feeling like I'm driving one, eh?  And while BBS or OZ Racing wheels are a little too spendy for me, you can find some that look pretty similar for much less.  By the looks of it, I'd be looking at about $1000 or so for a set of wheels I like with matching tires, mounted and balanced, ready to bolt on the car.  Hmmm.

All that opens up a whole can of worms.  For instance, Baby has front disc brakes and drums on the rear, and to me it looks goofy to have sporty wheels and tires and those big drums behind them.  So I'd also be looking at replacing the rear brakes wholesale.  While we're at it, replace the front units so it's consistent all the way around, in appearance and performance.  And, heck, while we're under there and have everything apart, why not tune up the suspension?  All this for a car that's coming up on 85,000 miles and is almost nine years old.  The value of the parts I'd put into the car would approach (if not exceed) the resale value of the car itself.  And it'd also be in a car that's underpowered, with an automatic transmission.  It'd be like putting a 911 Turbo rear wing on a '75 Beetle.  So, no thanks.  The more I think about it, the more I'd rather put that money into other things...and the more likely I'd take a car that's perfectly reliable and performs very well, and screw all that up.  Nope.  Maybe for a project car I'd try it, but not for my daily transportation.  I'll find a couple of factory replacement wheels somewhere that aren't bent, and go from there. 

How fast do you want to spend?

I'm slowly going through the pictures and everything from this weekend.  We shoot a lot of pictures when we go to the Rolex 24.  If you're lucky, sometimes you get a real keeper or two of a shot.  When I have the camera, I do a lot of bracketing, hoping that if I take ten pictures, one will turn out pretty good.  On the other hand, hubby has the golden touch.  The picture up above, of the #01 Lexus Riley fighting the ultimately victorious #58 Porsche Riley, was taken by him.

Sometimes hubby and I have daydreams about various fun, money-losing enterprises we'd get into if we could.  One such fantasy is fielding a team in one of the sports car series, and while we were killing time in the stands before the race Saturday we talked about it again.  We've come up with a name for our team and identified a sponsor or two we'd love to snag.  Between the two of us, we know enough people who have been involved in motorsports at various levels that we have a start on a pit crew and a driver team.  We're in pretty good shape.  Now all we need is one of those ones with a bunch of zeroes behind it and one of those funny "S" symbols that has a couple lines through it.  That's all we really need, just a little money.  To give you an idea of what we'd have to do, here's an article.  (Though some folks in the know say those estimates are low by at least 30%.  Emphasis on "at least" there.)

:: Ad astra per aspera  Those who know the history of American space exploration know that the last week of January and the first day of February bring three grim anniversaries: the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, the Challenger accident in 1986, and the Columbia accident of six years ago.  NASA's Day of Remembrance website has a Flash presentation that pays tribute to the 17 explorers who lost their lives in these accidents.  (From the archives: You can see a picture of Pad 34's ruins in this post, and a quiet little floral tribute here.)

Racing around the clock

 

We're back from this weekend's travels.  If you're a regular reader of the ol' blog, you know what happens this time each year, and that we go to it.  This year's had a thrilling ending, and I'm sorry we had to miss it.  (Note to the folks in the head shed: This 3:30 start time ain't cuttin' it.  Some of us have to be back home for work the next morning.)

I'm still sorting through my thoughts on the weekend, and there's a lot here that requires doing today, so I'll post more when I have time and inclination.  In the meantime, here's a couple of pictures that hubby captured yesterday before we left, during some of the last driver changes.  Up top, the #02 Lexus comes in, and you can see Scott Dixon (the guy in the helmet, center of the picture) about to come over the wall to drive the closing laps. 

Below, Juan Pablo Montoya awaits his turn in the #01.

And away we go

Off on the journey this weekend, as soon as I can weasel away from work.  Maybe I overprepare a bit, but I had my bag packed yesterday afternoon, all the better to double- and triple-check everything before time to go.  I hope I can settle down a bit once the trip is underway, take it a moment at a time, and enjoy it.  I wish I could lose the travel version of the two great days in a boat owner's life: the day it's bought and the day it's sold.  Anyhow, Monday's entry, workload allowing, should provide a synopsis of how the adventure went.

:: I keep seeing ads and inducements for the Women in Aviation International conference in Atlanta next month.  The latest was in this morning's AOPA e-mail newsletter.  I'm a woman, I'm involved in aviation (to a certain extent), and Atlanta isn't that far away and I know my way around that city pretty well.  So why don't I go?  Because I'd go there and feel like a giant phony, that's why.  It's either that, or I'd see these perky young ladies just out of high school who have been flying since they were fetuses and have already logged about 14,000,000 hours and are type-rated on 17 different aircraft, including the Spruce Goose and the DC-5.  Meanwhile, I'm not getting any younger, I've logged an embarrassingly-low number of hours, I stumble on the simplest radio calls, and it's all I can do to not taxi a 152 like Otis Campbell.  As I told hubby a few months back during some deep conversation, I have this constant fear of being called out as inadequate.  (Maybe it's that, or I'm afraid I'll act like Liz Lemon did during the Six Sigma retreat last night.)

Pondering perpetual motion

More travel coming up this weekend.  This whole last month has seemed kind of like a blur, and it's had its share of travel.  Much as I enjoy travel, inertia is hard to overcome.  I also get a little nervous being away from home, too, wondering if everything is okay back home.  On any given work day, before I leave for the office, I check three or four times to make sure I've turned the stove off after making my morning coffee.  (I don't drink enough coffee to justify hauling out the old Mr. Coffee machine, and much as I'd love to have one of those Keurig or Tassimo machines, that's a lot of money for a single cup.  Nope, it's instant Folgers for me.)

I don't know why travel does this to me, but it does.  A trip comes up and I get a little nervous thinking about the things that could go wrong.  But I go, and usually make a decent time of it.  On occasion I really hate going back home, because the place grows on me (that's what usually happens when it's time to come back from Alaska, or last year when it was time to come home from the KSC adventure.)  Still, there's the relief that comes when I'm back home.  Then I unpack the stuff I got on the trip -- no matter where you go, you always accumulate stuff on the journey -- and think about the time I had, and wonder why I didn't let myself enjoy it more than I did. 

It's such a contrast to how I was earlier in life.  I'd happily get in the car and drive hundreds of miles just for the sake of going somewhere or doing something.  I did some epic travels in my graduate school days.  Now, though, I'm a little too task-oriented, a little too "let's get this over with, accomplish the mission objectives and not risk more than we have to."  Sort of how Frank Borman ran Apollo 8.  I focus a little too much on "it's going to be eight hours on the road" or "gosh, do I really feel like spending nine hours cooped up on an airplane?" (and, man, let's not get into what's going to go through my mind when the time comes to visit New Zealand, shall we?) and not enough on the stuff that should matter.

:: Your papers are not in order  Speaking of travel, I forgot to mention my adventures last week with passports.  Long ago I intended to get mine, but for various reasons, it never happened, and years passed.  It has been on my list of things to do for too long.  It finally ended up on my list of "stuff I gotta get done this year."  So I completed the application online, printed it out, and got all my stuff together (thank heavens I took the time to get some copies of my birth certificate a few years ago, right?). 

The one thing I still needed was a photo.  That ended up being the real challenge.  Do I have them take it at the post office?  Do I have it taken at the drug store?  Do I do it myself?  What do I do?  I tried to get a colleague to do it here, with our special lighting rigs and everything, but we had trouble getting an acceptable background.  I went to the drug store, but they didn't appear to be doing it during hours I was available.  I finally punted and made an appointment at a nearby post office, and decided to pay the extra to have it done there when I submitted my application.  I figured I'd let it be the problem of someone who does this regularly.

So last Friday I went over and kept my appointment (as it happened, the guy had processed three applications that day before mine, and I was the only one who had scheduled an appointment).  I always get nervous when I have to do something official like this, like I'm in grade school and the principal's looking over my Permanent Record^tm.  The guy has me come back for my picture.  He's a round guy with magnificent, Jack Donaghy-caliber hair, and he's happily chatting away with me all the while.  There's a pretty nice government photo-taking setup back there, with nice lighting and everything, and on a tripod before me is what appears to be a Sony Mavica with a serial number in the single-digit range.  It looks like a silver cigar box.  But it performed just fine, and I got an acceptable picture.  It's nothing I'd want more people to see than they have to (is there ever a passport photo anybody is proud of, especially since the directive of the mandatory neutral expression?), but it'll serve the purpose.   

Anyhow, all my worries were for naught, and the hardest part of the whole deal was writing the two large checks afterwards ($40 to the Postal Service for the photo and the acceptance agency fee, $75 to State for the passport itself).  All my documents were in order, and the application's now in the hands of the folks at State.  I don't know when I'll get my passport, but I really don't need it urgently anyway.  I'm more relieved to finally have it done, really.

:: Today's Network Time-Killers  The AV Club shows the adventures of an insanely-detailed figure of our new President.  And, if that's not enough, here's some history behind the Mac boot beep.  File that away in your mental looseleaf.

Take me to your leader!

I overdosed on inauguration coverage yesterday, as I tend to during coverage of important news events (did I just hear in my head Harry Kramer reading a CBS News/Western Electric bumper?).  But it was all good. 

My favorite moment by far, though, was at the end of the inaugural parade.  That's when NASA brought through the STS-126 crew and the next-generation lunar rover.  That was just plain slick.  (As it happens, that's not the first time astronauts have been a part of an inaugural parade; the Apollo 7 spacecraft and crew took part in 1969.)

Renewal

It started to rain last night.  Then, overnight, the rain gave way to snow.  Right now, the snow's still steadily drifting down, and everything's getting covered under a gentle white blanket.  I took the picture above about 8 am our time, and it's picking up as I write this. 

The higher-ups wisely called off work for today early yesterday afternoon, once it became obvious we were in for some dicey weather (well, dicey for us, where an inch of snow may as well be one foot of it).  That's good enough for me.  Besides, there's history to watch today.  The pictures transmitted from Washington this morning, of the hundreds of thousands of people waiting for the inauguration, have been nothing short of exciting, and even though I'm as skeptical of politicians as anyone else, it's still been a more than a little moving to see.  I can remember back to watching Reagan's first inauguration in 1981 as a schoolkid, and I've seen most of them since, and I can't remember this kind of excitement or anticipation, or this kind of electricity in the air.  It is a moment that feels historic, and as a historian I'm grateful that I'm alive, in this country and in this moment, to watch history happen like this.

We don't get snow here that often, and on a day when the snow makes everything feel new again, it seems a particularly beautiful day for watching the country stage a peaceful transition of power. 

I hope this is a good sign.

Remembering

Dr. King's birthday is officially observed today, and considering what happens tomorrow, it has a little more significance than ever before.  It's well worth your while to read (and view, if you can) the "I Have A Dream" speech in its entirety.  It's like a symphony: yes, there's the famous bit of a movement that gets played as a sound clip or a music cue, but play just the little clip and you lose the majesty of the whole thing as it builds up to its full power.

And do something good for somebody else today, too.