personal news

I took wing this morning for Laramie, Wyoming (by way of Denver), and found myself feeling that I was redoing the trip to Ohio. We flew within sight of the south shore of one of the Great Lakes, and for a while, I thought it was Lake Erie. But then I realized I couldn’t see any of the islands, so that had me stymied for awhile. Finally I found a map of general routes in the United airline mag, and decided that it was a portion of Lake Huron or possibly Lake Michigan, and that we had passed well to the north of Lake Erie.

Something new for me on this trip was a feature United has added: one of the headset channels was Air Traffic Control piped in from the cockpit, so I could hear everything the pilot was hearing. As a private pilot (even if inactive), I found this fun and illuminating. I was puzzled for a time as I heard plane after plane talking to Cleveland Center, then heard ATC tell the aircraft to “contact Cleveland Center” on 12x.xx frequency. (Cleveland Center is actually a wide-area control center located in Oberlin, Ohio; or at least it was when I toured it as a high school student a long time ago.) Finally I realized they were handing the flights off from one controller to another in the same center, each controller responsible for a different sector on a different frequency.

When we reached Denver, I heard our Boeing 757 pilot announce that he was on right base for the runway (which means the runway’s on his right, and he’s flying at right angles to the runway heading, to intercept and turn onto the final approach path). Everything from there on in sounded exactly the same as it did when I landed tiny Cessnas at Hanscom Field, including the taxi instructions. Somehow I thought it would sound grander and more arcane. But nope, pretty much the same.

At Denver I met up with the rest of the Launchpad Workshop group, and we all rode together to Laramie by van and car. We settled in, had dinner at a nice brewpub, and will start the workshops tomorrow (Monday). I don’t have internet access in the apartment where we’re staying, but will at the science center, so I guess I’ll be doing email and blog “squirts” during the day, and reading and composing in the evening.

“A blank page is God’s way of showing you how hard it is to be God.” —Anonymous

We got home in one piece from the Ohio trip, and had a very full week with our energetic young niece and nephew. They’ve gone home to California. But I’m about to head off myself, to the Launchpad astronomy workshop in Laramie, Wyoming, where I’ll be soaking up interesting stuff about the latest in astronomy along with a dozen other writers. I’ll try to post from there, if I can, but I’ll just have to see if I have the time (and easy internet access) to do that.

I’ll wave to you all from the plane as I fly over!

I’m posting this entry from my sister’s computer in Ohio. We got the car fixed on Monday morning, thanks to a fine Pakistani gentleman at Meineke Muffler in Rochester, who was honest and competent and said I did not need the $600 part that Pep Boys said I needed. An hour’s work and a hundred bucks later, we were back on the road.

We had a great time at Cedar Point (just one day, instead of two, but that was probably enough). My daughters accompanied me on the Millennium Force–the 300+ foot high roller coaster–plus the Magnum, the Mantis, and the brand new Maverick. I didn’t have time to ride the Dragster, which was slightly disappointing because it was my chance to ride a genuine railgun; the cars get shot down a straightaway by a linear induction motor (just like the proposed space launchers), then straight up 400+ feet into a near-suborbital loop, and then right back down. Mainly I wanted to ride the railgun. But, come to think of it, the Maverick used a similar but less extreme railgun launch up its first hill, and another in the middle, so I did get to ride one. My young niece and nephew had a ball, the highlight being young Lauren’s overcoming her fear to ride the Disaster Transport–and then coming back for more.

After that, we checked into the Kalahari Waterpark Resort, where we were welcomed generously and treated like honored guests, and I held the most successful book signing of my career. Blog-reader Tsmacro came all the way from Michigan with his fiance to say hello, which was great, and many people wandering through the activity center stopped and chatted and bought books. I never would have expected it, but I sold far more books than I ever have at a bookstore or convention signing, and had lots of nice conversations with folks from all over the map. Thanks, Kalahari, and Karen who invited me to come!

We’re wrapping up the trip with visits with relatives, and will be beelining back east on Saturday–with a stop, if we can possibly swing it, to see Niagara Falls on the way. We must be home this weekend–and after that we can rest from our vacation!

Well, when I didn’t get a blog entry written before we left on our trip, I figured that was it for a week, anyway. I didn’t expect to have internet access, because we were to be camping for the first four nights and riding roller coasters at Cedar Point. That was the plan.

On Saturday morning, we hit the highway from Boston, bound for Ohio and relatives and Cedar Point and a book signing (July 4, 3 – 6 p.m., Kalihari Resort, Sandusky, Ohio). I’d gone to great pains to get the car and ancient camping trailer in shape, and it was all paying off. The trailer lights worked, the young nephew and niece had arrived to swell our numbers to 6, and we got off only a few hours late. The weather was mild, temperate, we took it easy, and we made it over the transmission-killing 7-mile hill on the Mass Turnpike. It was all going well. Until we got to Rochester, NY.

That’s where we exited the NY Thruway, headed for a campground and a detour to Niagara Falls in the morning. Unfortunately, the exit road from the Thruway had a big fissure which we hit—BAM! I gulped, and then the roar came. Suddenly our car sounded like a Mack truck with a bad muffler. Something had broken in the exhaust system. On a Saturday evening.

We limped along until we found a Pep Boys auto repair center, which had just closed. But the sign said it would open Sunday morning, so we rumbled on a little further, found a hotel, and hunkered down for the night. This morning, I got the news: a broken exhaust crossover pipe, and no replacement available on Sunday. And so, instead of setting up camp at Cedar Point tonight, we’re holed up at a Holiday Inn in Rochester, praying that the part can be found tomorrow morning. We’re on a very tight schedule, planned to the day, so every day we lose at this end is gone from the trip. If you don’t hear from me in the next few days, that probably will mean we got back on our way. So everyone—I hope you don’t hear from me in a few days!

Stay tuned!

“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

Last weekend, my daughter Lexi graduated from high school! Huzzah!

In all the last year of getting ready to send her off to college, it only very recently hit me that she was about to be a high school graduate. Wow—when I thought about that, somehow it seemed more profound and life-changing than merely (!) heading off to college! To celebrate, we took her out and got her a new laptop computer, which—by the time she leaves for college in August—she will have configured to her taste. (It’s also given me my first glimpse of Windows Vista, which at first glimpse doesn’t look all that different from Windows in Days of Yore.)

You go, girl!

(While her sister follows quietly at a distance, plotting her own course into the future….)