Current Location: Still in Albuquerque, NM, N 35 05.500', W 106 39.997', elev. 5002 ft.

So what was the big surprise? A few days ago, my friend Constantino sent me a link to the Trinity Site, the site of the very first nuclear bomb detonation, very close to where I was in New Mexico. However, he said "too bad you won't be able to go, it is only open twice a year". It is in fact open the first saturday in April, and the first saturday in October every year. However! Today, July 16th 2005, is the 60th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons test, and so the site was open to tourists. And Constantino is extremely jealous. I happened to be here due to lucky timing on my part. I'm not a proponent of a nuclear arsenal, but am very interested in the atomic age from a historical and scientific standpoint. (The history of science and how certain discoveries were made and the people who made them is a favorite subject of mine, though not necessarily the actual science itself).

I got up really early, because I had heard that the site is open only from about 8 AM to about 1 PM. I left Carrizozo at about 7:30, and made the 60 mile drive to the entrance to the Trinity Site (N 33 40.622', W 106 28.541', elev 4923 ft.) via US 380. The entrance is at the air force base, and from the air force base it is another 17 miles to the site. Security was very high at the air force base, as there many uniformed, armed, military guards. There were several signs and many reminders not to remove artifacts from the site, particularly trinitite, the glass mineral that formed due to the intense heat of the detonation. I was handed a pamphlet detailing the history, and an insert about radiation exposure at the site. I was particularly interested to find that radiation exposure for a one hour site visit is only about one sixth the exposure you would get for a chest X-ray, and one half to one fifth what you'd get on a cross country site. Also of note is that there are many naturally occurring sites on earth that would give you larger radiation exposure.

I have to admit, from a neat place to look at standpoint, I was a little disappointed with what Trinity had to offer, there wasn't even a crater, as the crater was bulldozed in the 1960's. However, from a historical standpoint, the place can't be beat, as well as the fact that so few people have ever seen the site. I would guess the number of tourists on the day reached the thousands, but more than half of those I talked to and overheard lived close by and had been there on more than one occasion. The only remnant of the original detonation is a leg of the tower used to hold the bomb. (It was detonated 100 feet in the air to simulate being dropped from an airplane, and left a crater 8 feet deep).



Leg Remnant



Monument marking the detonation spot



Fat man bomb model, similar to what was detonated at Trinity and over Nagasaki

Here are the rest of the photos of Trinity Site. Interesting note of trivia, the title of the article is a famous quote attributed to J. Robert Oppenheimer (the leader of the Manhattan Project), but is actually from the Bhagavad Gita

After leaving the Trinity Site at about 10:30, I traveled west on US 380 until I reached I-25, which I took north to Socorro, NM. In Socorro, I headed west on US 60 until I reached the Very Large Array at about 1 PM. You may have seen the VLA in the movie Contact, in the big scene where Jodie Foster discovers signals from an alien intelligence. In reality, the VLA is not capable of SETI projects. The Very Large Array is a set of 27 huge radio telescopes, forming a Y that can be set up in four different configurations (the longest of which has an area of over 30 miles and a radius of 13 miles) and are used for deep space exploration, and looking at the components and origination of the universe. I took a fascinating tour of the facility, run by a scientist from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). He discussed a lot of the practical uses of the VLA, and technical specs and current projects. A lot of what he discussed was over my head scientifically, but fascinating, which was great, considering I am more scientifically inclined than most people I know. In my opinion, the VLA is probably the best scientific instrument in the United States, as it is providing the most data in understanding the universe and physics, and is an excellent use of our tax dollars. Plus, as you'd expect, I took some photos. I spent way too much time at the VLA because it was so fascinating. I left at 4 PM, and headed back east on the US 60, and headed north on I-25 until I reached Albuquerque.

In Albuquerque I got a motel and rested for a while. Someone in Roswell had told me I definitely needed to check out the Albuquerque Tramway up to the peak of Sandia Mountain. He said it was the best $15 he had ever spent. So I decided I would make the trip in time to see the sunset. Unfortunately I took a bit of a nap, and by the time I reached the base of the peak, the sun was setting, and there was about a 10 minute wait for the tram car, and another 15 minutes of trip up the mountain, so the good sunset photo was taken at the 6000 foot base elevation, not the 12000 foot peak elevation.



The Sandia Tramway is the longest tram in the world, and very spectacular, and well worth the $15. The top of the mountain is part of the Lincoln National Forest, a huge forest that covers much of northern New Mexico. The ride up was very thrilling, the weather is very different at the top of the peak, much colder, and this creates a lot of weather. I could see a lot intense, spectacular lightning on all of the surrounding peaks. The lightning was beautiful and humongous, and made me feel very small, very tiny, like when you ponder the universe and your insignificant place in it, but unfortunately, I was not able to capture it with my camera. I did get a few interesting shots though. At the top of the peak there is a gourmet restaurant, and the views and the food would make for a very excellent romantic dinner. Romance was definitely in the air as almost all the passengers on the tram "flight" were young couples.

Sandia peak dwarfs and dominates the city of Albuquerque, and makes for a beautiful skyline. Albuquerque to me was an awesome city, perhaps one of my favorites in the US. I would definitely recommend the city for anyone looking for a romantic four day weekend trip. There is enough isolation that you'll feel you've gotten away, and there are so many wonderful things to do in an around the city and as far away as Santa Fe 50 miles distant, but that's tomorrow's adventure. Photos of Albuquerque from the Sandia Peak.

I do want to mention that this trip has made me tremendously reflective, and even more observant than I already was. I haven't really been a reflective person in years, though I feel I've always been pretty observant, getting more out of my senses than most people. I definitely pay more attention to background sounds, sights, smells, and vibrations than I know other people do. I have always considered myself observant. Some people think observation and perception are synonyms, but I wouldn't say that if you are observant you are necessarily perceptive. Traditionally, I'm someone who can see all the clues, all the evidence (the observant), but not necessarily be Sherlock Holmes and put the clues together to find an answer (the perceptive). I feel this trip has helped me take that step to better perception. I almost feel like a real writer, cataloguing the bits I take in with all five senses and trying to portray that to the reader, even if the reader is only me, five years from now when I try to remember just what the heck I did with my life in summer 2005.

Current Location: Albuquerque, NM, N 35 05.500', W 106 39.997', elev. 5002 ft.

On Friday, after posting, I walked around downtown Roswell, NM. Rowsell is a very interesting city.


Because of the streetlights downtown I assumed Roswell would be a huge tourist trap sort of place, with several attractions and junk stores dedicated to the UFO phenomena, and the events of July 4-8 1947. I was pleasantly surprised that although all the tourism of the city surrounds the UFO phenomena, the city does not go overboard. There were a few stores selling memorabilia, and only one real UFO attraction, the International UFO Museum and Research Center (IUFOMRC). The IUFOMRC is situated in an old movie theater in the heart of the city.



To my very pleasant surprise, the museum is free to the public, and is therefore highly recommended. I dropped several dollars into the donation bucket, and also paid $1 for the museum audio tour, just because of my surprise at it being free. The first thing you notice inside the museum is a large map of the United States, and another of the world, where visitors are asked to put in pins from their home location. The map is cleared at the beginning of each month. I was there on the 16th of July, and already the USA map had thousands of pins. The museum claims they are there to present the plain facts of not only the famous Roswell incident in 1947 and the subsequent government action, but also the plain facts of the UFO phenomena in general. They invite the public to draw their own conclusions about the evidence and what exists in the in universe. I think this is a noble aim, but I do think they tend to steer to one side of the UFO argument :)

Here are the facts of the Roswell incident.
1. Something crashed on July 4th 1947, 40 or so miles outside of the city.
2. The military recovered the crash debris on July 6th and 7th, and told the media a "flying saucer" had crashed and bodies were recovered.
3. A few days later, the military stated that the crashed object was a weather balloon, and retracted their previous statements about flying saucers and bodies.

The IUFOMRC does a fantastic job of separating themselves from the crackpot, tin-foil hat segment though, and sort of set themselves up from a scientific standpoint, stating merely that there are objects that so far traditional science has not been able to explain, but that traditional scientists aren't trying to even study this phenomena. A walk through the research center of the museum shows this scientific side, as you will find volumes of eyewitness accounts of strange occurrences, abduction studies, and debunked "evidence".

While I'm not going to say I believe UFOs are aliens visiting earth in space craft, I will say that the phenomena is something I have enjoyed from an entertainment standpoint over the years, hearing the various arguments on each side. I do believe the universe is too great and life is too hardy for us to be alone, and I do believe that there are plenty of physics problems in our own backyards which we do not yet have explanations for. The idea of alien visitation is improbable but not impossible, so I have an open mind.

The museum itself is a little run down, and lacks a certain clean visual style, as many of the exhibits are merely bad photocopies of newspaper articles, which unfortunately lends the feeling of something un-authentic, but the place is well worth the price of admission. Here are the photos I took in Roswell, all are of the IUFOMRC. I had a neat surprise, as one of the very first exhibits detailing the initial UFO fever in 1947 had a photocopy from my hometown "newspaper" (I hesitate to call it that) the Salem Evening News.



I left Roswell at about 3:30 PM, and headed west on US 380, and eventually southwest on US 70 and US 54, until I reached White Sands National Monument. I got there at about 7 PM, and I was afraid the monument would be closed and I'd have to visit it on saturday, but lucky for me, not only was it open, but they had several evening programs. Driving into the monument there are nothing but huge white sand dunes. If not for the cactus and desert plants, you'd swear you were in Troy, NY in the middle of winter. In fact, they even allow sledding, and sell saucers at the ranger station. It is an amazing site, very picturesque and photogenic.

I signed up for a sunset walk through the dunes. The tour was given by a geologist who was as much in awe of the place as the tourists were. The sand is gypsum, which dissolves readily in water, and in fact, can dissolve on our skin. Gypsum is the main component in drywall, and also can be found in consumables such as lipstick, toothpaste and ice cream. White Sands is about 250 square miles and the next largest open air gypsum collection in the world is only 8 square miles, because of the conditions required for open air gypsum. The gypsum has to have a source (it is completely surrounded by mountains, which provide the mineral). It has to dissolve in water (there is a lake near the monument), but the water can't escape the valley via a river, or else it would take the gypsum with it. The lake has to be dry quite often, so that the dissolved crystals can move about via the wind. This creates the dunes. The sand is very fine, and because it is white, is cool to the touch, even in the very hot sun. The sunset tour provided many geological insights, and many great photo opportunities.





This article title is a lyric from a very famous song, and I thought it was neat in conjunction with the top middle photo

You can view all the magnificent (if I do say so myself!) photos here.

At some point in the park, I realized that the white sands and the quite of the desert and the harmony all around me was a great place to sit down and enjoy myself, and sort of space out and meditate, so I did that for a little while. Shortly after the sunset tour ended, there was another program deeper into the monument, a short video with the history of the park, and the missile range to the north of the park. The park is just a small part of the White Sands desert, the rest of which is owned by the military, the White Sands Missile Range. In fact, sometimes access to the park is restricted and US 70 can be closed for up to two hours at a time when military operations are being conducted. The video explained that there are upwards of 900 debris fields just within the park itself, including missiles, bombs, and crashed planes. The end of the movie was, oddly, a tribute to the shuttle Columbia and its astronauts. There is a NASA installation close to the monument, and apparently, Columbia's first mission (the first space shuttle mission, actually) landed on the sand in the missile range. At the very end of the video, the park ranger gave us all a surprise. I lucked out with the timing of my trip, because the surprise is something that is only available a couple times per year, and only a handful of people have ever seen it. I will detail the surprise in my next post, as it involves a bit of a drive, and my saturday activities.

I left the monument at about 8:30, and drove out to US 70, and from there, drove north on US 54 to the east of the missile range, until I reached Carrizozo, NM, where I stopped for the night. (I also set up the telescope and looked at the amazing sky for a while). Driving through the desert at night with the windows down and no cars or towns for miles, is something I'll always remember, and something I'd recommend for anyone. The serenity and the peace makes you feel that this is your place, your country, your time. You feel ownership, and you feel belonging. Time and place are usually owners of us, but not in the desert at night.

Current Location: Roswell, NM, N 33 24.458', W 104 31.398', elev 3606 ft.

On thursday, I left Van Horn, TX and headed north on Texas 54, which met up with US 180 near Guadalupe Mountain National Park on the Texas, New Mexico border. I stopped briefly in the park, and took a photo or two, but the park is mostly trails, and no driving route, so I continued north on US 180, which turned into US 62 in New Mexico. Within 40 minutes, I was at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, where I spent the bulk of the day.

Carlsbad (N 32 10.520', W 104 26.582', elev. 4398 ft.) was excellent. Entrance was $6 for the main self guided tours, but the fee was waived with my National Parks Pass, though I did pay $3 for the audio tour. Carlsbad is a living cave, meaning it is still forming, and very wet, unlike Mammoth Cave, which is dry for the most part. The formations in the cave were astounding, supposedly the most beautiful in the world (though I've only been to two caves). Once again, I took a lot of photos. The entrance to the cave is huge, but the smell emanating from the cave takes some getting used to. The smell is caused by the swallows who inhabit the mouth of the cave during the day (the park rangers refer to them as the day shift), and the evening shift, the famous bats of the park.



The audio tour detailed the history of the park, and the geology, and gave plenty of warnings about not touching the formations.



At about 5 PM, I finished touring the caves, and had about 2 and a half hours to kill before the big bat show. Both of my camera batteries were dead, so I went back to the car and charged them while driving the dirt road scenic loop of the park. The park is on top of a huge cliff, (maybe a mesa or plateau I guess), and four or five hundred feet below is nothing but desert plains for hundreds of miles (at least in one direction). It was a breathtaking sight to witness. The photos do not do it justice.

I got the camera batteries all charged up, and went to the cave amphitheater at about 7:30, where the rangers started to go through an educational program about the history of the cave bats, and ecology of the bats. This lasted a while, and slowly but surely, the swallows finished going into the cave.

At about 8:10, about 10 or 15 minutes before sunset, a small amount of bats started to come out of the cave. They begin by flying in a huge circle near the mouth of the cave, swirling and swirling, it looks like a mini tornado. Thousands of bats started pouring out of the cave, still flying in circles to pick up speed to launch. All of a sudden some break off from the circling column and fly off in a huge clump, a swarm of bats. Thousands of bats, streaming away, looking like dancing smoke. The moon was out and very bright and the sky was purple, and the visibility for the bats was astounding. This is was one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen. The park rangers estimate about 400,000 bats stream out of the cave every night (a far cry from the 8 million when the cave was first discovered). The bats are helpful for insect control, as they eat about 2 and a half tons of insects every night, in a radius up to 30 miles from the cave.

Here are some photos.



Bats, the night shift

Here are the rest of the photos.

I also took 4 short movies with my camera, and two of them came out really well. (Better than I expected). Here are the links to the videos. The videos are similar, but taken from different magnification. Carlsbad, while no my favorite national park, it ranks up there. I highly recommend going to see the bats (they are in the park from March to October.)

I left the park at about 8:40 and drove north on US 62 / US 180, and caught US 285 in the town of Carlsbad. I drove north on US 285 to Roswell.

Current Location: Van Horn, TX N 31 02.248', W 104 51.407' elev 4134 ft.

Yesterday I spent the day in beautiful Big Bend National Park in southwestern Texas. The park is very remote, it was a 134 mile drive south from Fort Stockton on US 385 to the park. The road to the park was specked with lots of roadkill, and the requisite buzzards and crows feasting on the roadkill, but very few cars.



The long road in

I had the windows down for most of the drive in, because there was some cloud cover, and at the higher elevation, the temperature was about 70 degrees F, and just beautiful driving weather. About halfway to the park, I got my first glimpse of roadrunners (Hot-Roddicus Supersonicus). Roadrunners are a bit smaller than expected, about the size of pigeons, but damn, they are fast. They run along looking for lizards and insects on the ground. I also saw some larger lizards running across the road, and some type of rodent too, probably chipmunks. A short while after this, I started to see bigger dips in the road as I was coming down into lower elevations, and the dips on the road all had flood gauges, big markers on the side with marks up to 5 feet to show a driver how flooded the dip might be during a flash flood. And then I ran into one of the craziest rain storms I have seen in my life. Rain on the edge of the desert is very odd, it was powerful, yet short. I was sure my car was simply going to blow off the road, but it only lasted about 2 minutes.



The rainstorm

Shortly after the rain, just south of the town of Marathon, TX, I came to a border patrol station, but southbound lanes did not have to stop. Marathon, TX had the highest gas prices I have yet seen on the trip, $2.52 for regular octane.

When you first get to the park it is as though you are driving to Jabba's Palace. Driving down the park road, I was simply thinking to myself "oh my god". I have run out of superlatives to describe beauty, so just know, it was one of the most beautiful places I have seen, and it ranks second on my list of national parks, behind only Denali National Park. I started going nuts with photos, and took 277 shots for the day, 120 of which I posted on the web. By the way, I take all my photos in super hi-res and shrink them down for the web, so if there are any you would like to see at a higher resolution, just email me and I can see what I can do.

For wildlife, I saw several deer in the Chisos Mountains part of the park, however, I wasn't fast enough with the camera to get any of them. I even saw a little baby bambi deer, very cute!



Second photo is a self portrait for the doubters to prove I'm actually on this trip :)



More Mountains

The park is desolate, I saw maybe 12 to 15 other cars the whole day, in a park the size of Rhode Island. The park has lots of high altitude and low altitude spots, and has a lot of exciting switchbacks to drive on. I had some empty water bottles in my car, and they would buckle and make noise as I would drive into the lower altitudes.



I came upon a spot in the park named Mule Ears Peak.

The park follows a long swath of the Rio Grande river, and you can see Mexico on the other side, only the river is in a huge canyon, named Santa Elena Canyon. You can see the canyon from 16 miles away from the Sotol Vista Overlook (N 29 12.885', W 103 22.634', elev 4261 ft.), and it looks tiny, but as you get there, you just drive up to this huge wall, three or four hundred feet into the air, and it is sheer, and astoundingly amazing.





Any Mexican that can get into the US from here should be granted citizenship and given a job in Special Forces

So it was completely beautiful. Aside from the deer, I saw many great desert plants, as well as some eagles, jackrabbits and more roadrunners. At one point I almost ran over a really long, red snake.



Cactus



Wildlife

At the end of the day, I left the park via a 14 mile dirt road> I thought the road was a loop back to the main park road, and would save me some time, but it was very bumpy and took close to an hour to get through in my car, lots of rocks, crossing dry river beds. Something that should have been done in a 4 wheel drive vehicle, although it was appropriate, driving through all that dust, that Dust in the Wind by Kansas came over the radio. At one point I saw a huge animal in front of me, which I though must have been a coyote (Road-Runnerus Digestus), but when I got a closer look, I saw it was the largest jackrabbit I had ever seen, bigger than a lot of dogs. I was amazed.

Once back out on the main park road, I met up with Texas 118, which I took north to Study Butte, TX, on the western edge of the park and then west on Texas 170 to Lajitas, TX. Just after the town of Lajitas, I met back up with the Rio Grande and entered Big Bend Ranch State Park. It is here where I saw the most amazing site of the day, two wild horses on the Mexican side of the river.



Wild horses and sunset. There are actually two horses in the photo, but you can only clearly see the tail of the second, the rest is hidden by the plants

So it was an amazing day. I exited Big Bend Ranch State Park on the western end in the town of Presidio, but it was dark at this time. I proceeded north on US 67, and met the border patrol checkpoint at about 9:30 pm, just south of the town of Marfa, TX. The border patrol only stopped me very briefly, long enough to check out my license plate and talk to me to make sure I didn't have a Mexican accent. They didn't check my trunk, or even look in my vehicle with a flashlight before waving me through. In Marfa, I met up with US 90, which I took north and west to Van Horn, TX on I-10. Today I am headed to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, about 120 miles north of Van Horn in New Mexico (and I gain an hour when I pas sinto Mountain Time!). It doesn't appear that I will end up in El Paso, as I plan to head north to Roswell, NM after Carlsbad, and then west through New Mexico.

Current location: Fort Stockton, TX, N 30 53.927', W 102 54.261', elev 2754 ft.

No, I'm not on my way to Zihuatanejo. I did have a great day on tuesday though. I started out in San Antonio, where I visited the Alamo, and then San Antonio Missions National Historic Park. Then I drove west on I-10 for about 300 miles before stopping for the night.

I guess I'm now officially in the West TM. I haven't camped in a while; Texas has just been too hot. Though tonight I did go for a walk and realized out here in the pseudo desert, I would have had no problem with the temperature. Oh well, I watched the All-Star Game instead of camping. Hopefully, I'll be able to camp wednesday night. I'm also looking forward to getting a lot more use out my telescope, now that I'm far away from the light pollution of the east. The telescope was an unexpected, completely awesome gift from a great friend. I even witnessed him get sentimental for the first time, when he surprised me with the gift during my last week of work. Thanks pal, you know who you are.

Driving in Texas, in the eastern part of the state, the lanes on the highway are divided by reflectors only, no painted lines. Driving in Texas, you read signs on the side of the road that remind you to Drive Friendly. Driving in Texas, if you are coming from the east, you see your first signs that read Speed Limit 75 MPH. Driving in Texas, in the western part of the state, you glimpse hardy, stocky trees and plants. They are spread expansively, each giving the next plenty of room to grow. They are not tall trees, but not short. Juniper and Yucca and Acacia and Cypress and Mesquite. They are green and healthy and thriving, and they rank among some of the hardiest species on our planet. Driving in Texas, you are part of a magnificent desolation (to steal a quote from Buzz Aldrin), it is best to traverse quietly, and leave no trace. Driving in Texas, you can see great wind turbines, stretching scores of feet into the air, spinning furiously, never stopping. And you can see little oil derricks, pumping their little hearts out, never stopping. Because of al this, driving in Texas is like you're driving through a movie. And driving in Texas, every once in a great while, when pumping your gas at a truckstop off of the interstate, you will run into a caravan of 30 or 40 German men, stopping to refuel their vehicles, make use of the restrooms, and pick up snacks. You can tell by the way they interact with the cashier, that their grasp of English is not very strong. You can tell by the way they handle their currency that they are unsure of the value. And you wonder what the heck they are doing at exit 412, in a caravan of 15 to 20 cars, 100 miles from the nearest city.

The Alamo was a great place. I can always tell I'm going to have a great day when I find my destination quickly. I found $2 parking in the heart of the historic district of San Antonio, just two blocks from the Alamo. Entrance to the Alamo is free to all; the place is administered by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. They receive $0 dollars in taxes or funds from the federal, state or local governments. The Alamo is funded 100% through donations and proceeds from the gift shop. The place is in amazing shape too! It is just as nice as any national historical monument or park I have yet been to on this trip. For those that don't know, the Alamo is the site of the fort where 200 Texas soldiers lost their lives in 1836 , in some of the opening battles of Texas trying to secede from Mexico. The siege of the fort lasted 13 days, before the 200 defenders were finally overrun and slaughtered by thousands of Mexican troops under the command of dictator Santa Anna. Most of the soldiers were colonists from the United States who were seeking new lives and opportunities and have a hand in creating their own government. Rebels all, and the Alamo today is an excellent tribute to them.



View the rest of the San Antonio photos here.

After the Alamo, I made a quick drive down the road to San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, and took a few photos of the mission buildings. The missions are remnants of the Spanish conquerors of the 15 and 1600s, and were fortifications for different religious orders such as Franciscans and Dominicans.



Exterior, interior, and fresco

After the national historic park, I ventured west via I-10, and just drove and drove for a solid 5 hours. At one point I saw a sign for a Fort Lancaster, which is now a Texas State Park. I ventured off the exit, and saw a sign that read the distance to the park was 11 miles, and it was a scenic road. I drove down that road, wanting to catch some glimpses of scenery, and I wasn't disappointed. The first half of the journey, there were ranches on either side of the road, fences that stretched forever in both directions. Tons of wildlife too, I saw a coyote. I saw 4 or 5 huge jack-rabbits (with little white cotton tails and huge ears). I saw buzzards. I saw some really gangly, tough looking squirrels; they looked as if they had survived a nuclear winter. And I saw a family of elk (though I think they were part of one of the ranches).

All of a sudden, the ranch land petered out, and I came to the start of a huge canyon. Peering out over the top, it appeared the bottom was 300 to 400 feet below, just an amazing, astounding site. (Bear with me, I've run out of adjectives already on the trip.) The rest of the drive to the Fort/State Park was a drive down the side of the mountain into the canyon. It was about 7 PM, so unfortunately, the park at the bottom of the canyon was closed. But that's ok, because I whipped out my camera and took photos every few hundred feet, all the way back up the canyon.





At the top of the canyon, there was a picnic area where you could get the best views, so I got out, and saw a magnificent cactus, I had to take it's photo as well.



You can view the rest of the day's photos here. On wednesday, I am headed south to Big Bend National Park, and then west to El Paso.

Current location: San Antonio, TX, N 29 24.915', W 098 30.369' elev 775 ft.

About 8 years ago, shortly after my graduation from high school, I stopped wearing watches. Remembering back, I have no idea what possessed me to do this, but I do remember it being a momentous decision. Did I do it for cosmetic purposes, so I would get an even summer tan? Did I do it for practical purposes, so that it wouldn't get in the way, and get dirty at the deli I worked at? Did I do it because of an abundance of time displays around me (on computers, cell phones, in the handheld device I used at my other summer job, reading electric meters)?

I have long considered the decision to go without a readily viewable timepiece an important one for me, and it has affected my life tremendously in the past 8 years. When you aren't bound by time, you lead a more free existence. When you aren't bound by time, you have fewer deadlines, and more procrastination and leisure time. I'm not saying I'm not bound by time to some degree still, but without a watch, I am certainly not a slave to it either. I don't feel the pressure of a schedule, the pressure to meet the demands of time. By and large, this has been a wonderful experience.

However there are some negative aspects to living a timeless existence. The most important, the one that affects the people around me the most, is tardiness. I am routinely late for appointments by five or ten minutes. I was chronically 10 or 15 minutes late to class and work. I am almost always on time for important events, events I am nervous for, once in a lifetime events, events where punctuality is imperative, but for the most part, I am late. Secondly, my ability to guesstimate timetables has gone way down hill. For instance, if I tell someone I will be at their house within 10 minutes, they should add 10 to 20 minutes onto the time; for some reason I am guesstimating at best case scenario, rather than thinking about worst case scenario. I am occasionally ridiculously late. I can't prove the third negative aspect, but it feels as though time passes by faster when you are not tethered to it. This is hard for me to be objective about because our perception of the passage of time is that it gets faster and faster as we age; I just happen to think that timelessness makes time pass by all that much faster.

This is all relevant, because without a watch, I started going to bed later and later, and as a result, waking up later and later. I would roll out of bed at the last possible minute, take a shower, often skip breakfast and arrive to class or work 10 or 15 minutes later than I should have gotten there. I quickly shifted from being a morning, rah rah get up and go get 'em person morning person to being a creature of the night. I would love to get back to that, but as you get older, it is harder and harder to change your habits. I've never been good at changing my habits in the first place. Now, without a job, I routinely find myself going to bed at 2 am and waking up at 10 am, as if I am back in college. And because of this, I have started to lose sight of the purpose of the trip a bit, which results in me trying to put myself on a schedule for the trip as a corrective measure. For instance: go to Johnson Space Center by such and such a time, leave by such and such a time, be in Dallas by such and such a time. This takes some of the fun out of it. But I think I am back on track. It took a suggestion from my future brother in law Adam to wake me up to the fact; to remind me I am on a once in a lifetime trip. I don't have to get everything in, I have to enjoy myself. The best way to do that is to step back and bask in the moment; enjoy the moment. If you do that, moments become truly timeless, because you will remember them forever.

On a somewhat related note, I found this interesting article on Fark.com that seems to suggest time passage perception originates in our eyes. Whether it does or not, at least there are scientists out there studying it. For me, my perception of the passage of time has always been an interesting, if scary subject. It is very scary to me that an hour today feels like ten minutes of college time, and maybe a minute of time from when I was very young. Time seemed so slow back then. I remember sitting in high school classes and wondering how I'd ever get through a 42 minute class period. Today, I could probably do about 10 of those with no breaks and not bat an eyelash.

Its amazing what you think about when driving for 6 or 8 hours straight. Sometimes I find myself not thinking at all, or 'waking' from that hypnotized state, where you sort of come back to reality and don't have any recollection of the last 15 minutes of driving. A lot of times I wish I could write and drive at the same time. It would save me from having to stay up all hours of the night writing, or delaying the start of my day's activity to write. Don't misinterpret me, I enjoy writing, and it is a vital component of the trip, I just wish I could multi-task with it. Driving and writing are the two things I really wish I could overlap.

Texas is still really hot, oppressively hot. I haven't wanted to spend much time outside at all here. I am in San Antonio now, and will be visiting the Alamo on tuesday. On monday I pretty much drove all day, south on I-35 from Fort Worth. Despite being a huge state, I have seen fewer out of state license plates in Texas than any other state. My next major destination will be Big Bend National Park in western Texas, and perhaps a quick border crossing in El Paso. I guess you can just walk across to Mexico on the bridge; less of a hassle than driving, especially when you consider how stuffed full of junk my car is (potential Mexican hiding spots). The border patrol would love to pull out all my stuff, and I'm pretty sure they won't put it back neatly.

A few quick programming notes. Exit 4 has come online on the left hand side of the website there. The section is called Jonathan Sheldon: Manifesto, and is intended to be quick, autobiographical, often comical blurbs that offer insights into me. I'm sure a lot of you will find that very boring so you don't have to read. For me, it is more a timeline of the witty one-liners I come up with, or a snapshot of how I felt about the world on a particular day so I can remember at some later date. Finally, I haven't contributed a song to the Jon Sheldon Across America Soundtrack in a while, so I am going to do two at once. Track number 4 is I Woke Up In A Car by Something Corporate.

So here I am
Here I am
Well I woke up in a car
I traced away the fog
So I could see the Mississippi on her knees
I've never been so lost
I've never felt so much at home
Please write my folks and throw away my keys
I woke up in a car

I really like this song, it encapsulates the wonder and the fear and the delight and the crazy people you meet on a long road trip. You really start to question yourself, question what you are doing and why you are doing it. But then something comes along and reminds you and all is right again.

The fifth track on the soundtrack is Highway Star by Deep Purple.

Nobody gonna take my head
I got speed inside my brain
Nobody gonna steal my head
Now that I'm on the road again
Oooh I'm in heaven again I've got everything
Like a moving ground an open road
And everything

The soundtrack is getting pretty eclectic!

Current location: Arlington, TX N 32 39.417', W 097 08.015' elev 390 ft.

Texas is a remarkably beautiful state. Its hot, and there is little shade, yes, but Texas is beautiful, and full of beautiful people. Thanks to cartoons and politicians and various other sources, I had this stereotype in my head about what Texas was, and that included a lot of sprawl, a lot of depleted, treeless plain and desert, and a lot of fat ugly redneck dullards, and while some of that might be true in some places, it is not everywhere, at least not in the eastern part of the state. Compared with a lot of places in the South, Texas is a cultural and intellectual Mecca. The people are friendly, educated, and a delight to talk to, and even though Houston supposedly is the fattest city in the US (Dallas 5th and San Antonio 10th), I haven't seen many overweight people at all.

The southern part of Houston is Texas' 22nd congressional district home of rep Tom DeLay as the numerous signs let you know. (You'll notice the district is an odd looking shape, not necessarily contiguous, as are many of the congressional districts in Texas in order to get Republican majorities in more districts.) Space Center Houston, the visitor center next to Johnson Space Center, is located here, south of Houston, but technically part of the city.

I got to the space center in mid-afternoon on friday, after driving around Houston some during the daylight hours (I had only seen it at night). The entrance fee was $22.50 including all exhibits, so I paid and entered. Immediately, I started to regret my decision to come here, because the JSC visitor center is a lot more oriented to kids than KSC is. Don't get me wrong, I really like kids, in limited numbers, but the visitor center was a place designed to allow parents to just let their kids run amok. At least 40% of the exhibits at the visitor center were interactive exhibits designed exclusively for kids, including the largest "playland" type of maze/slide thing I have ever seen. 3 stories high lots of ladders and tubes and rooms to get lost in. It definitely looked better than the maze in the Chuck E Cheese of my childhood. So I was bummed that there was a lot less for me to see than at Kennedy, and the things I could see were filled with kids.

I got in line for the tram tour, which takes you onto the Johnson campus. The first stop is the original mission control, where the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and some shuttle missions were controlled from. It is a historic place, and yet, hardly anyone was paying attention. The tour I was on had about 120 people, and we were sitting in the original viewing room used for the missions, but people were all tuning out the presentation we were given. In addition to these people not paying attention and having side conversations, there were at least 6 babies in the room, and they were all screaming at the top of their lungs. Just sitting in my chair, straining to pay attention, I was growing increasingly angry at these people. One person even had the nerve to give his baby a pack of tic-tacs, which the baby proceeded to shake for a full minute before the guy realized 30 people were glaring at him. I just can't understand why someone would tote a baby around on a very hot day and torture 120 other people with it. I understand the parents probably want to get out and do things, but find a babysitter or stay home. Don't go on vacations where you won't be able to have a babysitter, until all the kids are at least 5 years of age.


Historic Mission Control

The next stop on the tour was the Space Vehicle Mockup Room, where they have several full size mock ups of various parts of the space shuttle orbiter, and a full size mock up of the international space station. This building is where astronauts practice shuttle missions, extra-vehicular activity, docking procedures and even emergency orbiter evacuation. On the tour you can potentially see real astronauts practicing for real missions, and there was a lot of activity in the room. This is probably the coolest part of the JSC tour, but unfortunately the other people around me kept bumping into me and wandering into my photos. One family with about 6 kids in their teens was even physically hitting each other. I'm not sure if they looked at the exhibit at all.



Because of inclement weather, this was the end of the tour. Normally we would have stopped at a hangar that includes Mercury and Gemini rockets and a Saturn 5 rocket, but luckily I have seen those at Kennedy. At this point I was a bit frustrated and perhaps a little cranky from the heat as well, so I quickly toured the rest of museum. I saw some space rocks, and a wall which included the mission photo of every mission flown in the history of the space program. I attended a short film that supposedly simulates on a low level the vibrations and sound of the shuttle launch, with a quick presentation afterwards where you find out just how excited the employees are about this week's return to flight, as they detail its mission. On Wendesday, if all goes as planned, the shuttle will launch mission STS-114, the first flight in more than two years. I am excited too, and sort of wish I could drive back to Florida to witness it. It'll have to wait for some other time. Space Center Houston / Johnson Space Center photos here.

On friday night, I drove north on I-45 towards Dallas, but at about 8 PM, I ran into an awful traffic jam. It lasted 2 hours, and in all that time, no vehicles came from the southbound lanes of the highway (though there was an adjacent frontage highway that the southbound traffic had been able to turn onto). If not for the traffic jam, I would have made it to Dallas on friday night, but I ended up stopping for the night at about 11 PM, somewhere in the middle of Houston and Dallas. On saturday, I got up and drove about an hour and a half to Dallas. I got a motel room in Arlington, somewhat near Ameriquest field, and I was tired so I just sat in the air conditioning all afternoon, watching the Live 8 do-over coverage on MTV. The coverage ran uninterrupted, no commercials, no VJs and was very enjoyable. I got to see almost the whole 5 hour MTV show, except I missed U2 in the begging, and most of the Paul McCartney set in the end as I left to go to the ballgame.

Ameriquest field in Texas is across the street from the original Six Flags. Six Flags over Texas is a huge theme park, I could see rollercoasters and other rides for about a mile in one direction. I got $5 parking and the ticket for the game vs. the Blue Jays was also $5 for the furthest seat away. I never made it to my seat, but the game was pretty much sold out, so it was difficult for me to find a closer seat. Ameriquest field was built in 1972, so it is a bit older than today's modern parks, but still a very nice looking place. Because of its age, there are quite a bit of obstructed view seats due to support columns that you wouldn't see in a park built after 1990. The ushers at the stadium were especially vigilant. I'm not sure if this was because the game was sold out or not, but twice after finding an "empty" seat, an usher came around checking people's tickets, and I had to get up. Everything is bigger in Texas and the stadium is no exception, the part outside the field itself is huge. I would say it is 1 and a half city blocks from the entrance gate of the stadium to the seating area, just a ton of space for people to mill about in. Even though they are in second place, Texas has a really spectacular team, 4 all-stars and a few other players who could potentially be all-stars. I would say Texas is my second favorite baseball team right now, and their shortstop, Michael Young is one of my favorite players. Kenny Rogers was pitching the day I was here, and he got quite an ovation from the crowd as he entered the game, and very few boos. I guess a lot of fans respected the apology he gave this week after hitting a camera-man last week. The game was enjoyable, as the great Rangers hitters put a lot of runs on the board. Heading into the 9th, it seemed as though the Rangers were a lock to win, leading 12-3. But the Blue Jays made a game of it, coming back with 7 runs in the 9th inning, before the Rangers finally finished off the game 12-10. Photos of the game.

Last week, I had decided to finally get new tires put on my car, something I have been meaning to do since before I started on this crazy trip. But I wanted to work my schedule in such a way that I'd be able to get a few baseball games in before the All-Star break starting monday, so I made sure I was able to see the games in Houston and Arlington before getting my tires. I am getting the tires put on now, that's actually where I am writing this entry from. I got a lot of chores out of the way too while waiting, catching up on some bills and balancing my bank accounts. The reason I didn't get the tires before the trip was because I felt I could squeeze about 5,000 more miles out of the old ones. Additionally, I tried looking at tires one day while still at work, and I asked one of my friend's opinion on how I should approach it, where I should go, etc. and before I knew it, about 5 people had come over and chimed in with opinions, and they were all arguing back and forth with each other on what I should do, in my cubicle area, no doubt disturbing people sitting around me. I appreciated the help, but I was definitely overwhelmed on that day. Anyway, for the three of you who want to know, I got Fuzion ZRI BL tires from Firestone.