Month: October 2017

For me, I-10 across the southern states is a series of bridges.  My trek west began near Pensacola with the long, low expanse across the (surprisingly) blue waters of Escambia Bay, a train running beside me on the sister bridge.  Next it was across the north shallows of Mobile Bay (AL), past the USS Alabama, with a glimpse of the Austal shipyards and the Battle House Hotel building (the shape of which is rumored to be inspired by the S-61) before ducking into the George C. Wallace (yes, that George C. Wallace) Tunnel under the Mobile River.  This is followed by the four-ish-mile expanse over the marshy delta of the Pascagoula River (MS), followed by (just after Stennis Space Center, which back in the day had a great fly-in pancake breakfast) a swoop over the Pearl River. I have always enjoyed these low trestle bridges, and this day was no exception.

At Slidell, Louisiana the highway turns south, and the I-10 Twin Span led me over an east section of Lake Ponchartrain, depositing me near NASA’s Michaud vehicle assemble facility*.  The sky was clear, there was a (again surprisingly) fresh wind off the Gulf, and I was making good time; all in all a good day.  The Almonaster Bridge provided a good view of New Orleans, and it felt nice to be able to take in the sights.  After a quick stop for some snackies I turned south on 310 towards LaFourche Parish and a previous nemesis: the Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge.

The Hale Boggs Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge (those are the ones with cables fanning from towers to the deck like this one in Boston**) that arcs 158 feet (that’s 16 stories, yessiree) above the Mississippi River.  The first time I drove it, back in 2008, I was dizzy with hyperventilation as my car first pointed towards the sky and seemed to hover above the bayou before regaining speed on what felt like a super-duper-sized playground slide.  During my last visit to Galliano (on my first westbound leg, before my time in monastery) it hadn’t been much better. But I had been fine on those rail bridges in France, I told myself.  This day it was going to be different.

The first sign something was up should have been the ambulance.  It passed me, on the shoulder, as the highway straightened on approach to the bridge.  Traffic has slowed a short while before, which offered the opportunity to watch the flashing lights make their way up the incline, over the curve, and out of sight.  As I put-putted past the middle school it was joined by a Highway Patrol vehicle, then one from the local police, then a truck from the local Fire-Rescue unit, sirens and horn blaring to nudge impatient (and somehow unprepared) drivers out of the way.

Now the deal with me and bridges is this: for some irrational reason I worry that if I look out over the side my hands will inadvertently follow my eyes and I will bounce over the wall or drive through the railing into the air, and finish the sequence with a spectacular plunge into the waters below.  Or, even worse, that someone will hit me at high speed and the impact will throw me over the wall or through the railing and into the air, again to finish the sequence with a spectacular plunge into the waters below.  But today that seemed to be behind me.  We were over the rail yard at the beginning of the bridge, and I was fine.  We inched past the Last Exit Before The Bridge; I had this down.  But then, about halfway up the bridge, I realized that I could see the red and blue flashing lights of the emergency vehicles again.

That They. Were. Stationary. At. The. Bridge’s. Crest.

As we climbed, we zippered into a single lane, the left lane, furthest from the railing.  As we got closer, I could see them; about half a dozen cars, all with mild to severe damage, scattered in various positions across the right two lanes of the bridge.  Gaaack!  Some folks were out of their cars, gesturing as they told their stories to the officers.  Others were still in their vehicles, being tended to by first responders.  And what was this?  Fresh scuff marks (and was that a chipped segment?) along the retaining wall?  It was my bridge nightmare come to life (sans the fini flight), splayed across the road beside me.

I felt my stomach tighten and my breath shorten.  Juststareattheplateofthecaraheadofme.  Juststareattheplateofthecaraheadofme.

Youcandothisyoucandothisyoucandothis.

Drat.  Foiled again.

*https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/michoud/overview.html and https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/08/nasa-versus-nature-august-29-2005/

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_P._Zakim_Bunker_Hill_Memorial_Bridge

It was decision time.

I was back in the Florida panhandle where Marigold had graciously opened her home to me once again.  We had quickly settled back into a routine of cook, clean, tend to the little ones, walk the dog, and repeat.  But this time there was an edge to it… the programmed part of my adventure was complete and I had nothing on the horizon.  So it was cook (three times a day? plus snacks? seriously?), clean (how is it possible for three small humans to generate this much laundry?), tend to the little ones (including the budding physicist*), and…

One big part of this sense of foreboding was that my car registration was due in less than a month, and this re-registration required a legal permanent address.  I had expected this to come naturally, an extension of opportunities that would present themselves during my journey, but so far… nothing.  All I had was physical exhaustion from my travels, and compromised sleep cycles from my time in France.  Florida had me glowing constantly in the heat, and any inadvertently exposed skin was covered with itchy bug bites.  It was decision time, and I wasn’t sure I would make a good one.

The plan had been to spend time as a monastic, either in Santa Fe or Marin, but during my time at the two Zen centers I had encountered a deep hostility towards the military and veterans, the same hostility they claimed to be against and above.  As I criss-crossed our nation, other possibilities had presented themselves as possible places to land: Albuquerque, home to the Jolly Green schoolhouse** and a University of New Mexico professor whose research interested me; Paso Robles, its rolling hills close to my family and childhood friends; Mojave, the west coast home of the commercial space program; central Florida, hotbed of military and civilian user experience design and familiar from my grad school days; Okaloosa county, near Duke Field, Hurlburt Field, and friends from my time at Nellis and Osan; and Las Vegas, so many good memories and great hikes. Now it was crunch time and I had to pick one.  I went down the list: no existing support structure, too expensive, too meth-y.  Orlando and all its ‘lakes’ was too wet; Hurlburt and Duke, once sources of support, now felt gloomy.  Left on the list was Vegas, the home I had promised to return to once my grad school adventure was complete.

My bones ached and wobbled as I carried my boxes to my truck.  I was tired of driving, long hours of black pavement, vibrations from the road fatiguing my body.  I wanted a bed to call my own, a kitchen to create in, a space that didn’t change from week to week.  I had gone to monastery hoping to re-connect with my true nature, expecting to find a gallant adventurer.  Instead I had found a deep homesickness, but for a place and time no longer available.  I felt lost and broken, in much the same way as I had sixteen years before, when my life had been torn apart on a hill just outside Area 51***.  I was  going home, not in triumph as I had expected, but in what felt like defeat.

Once the truck was full, Marigold’s dog, Zipper (who had entertained me with walks each evening), did her best to block the door, registering her opposition to my departure.  With tears in my eyes and a kiss on her cheek I placed her behind the baby gate so I could leave.

I pointed my truck west, and drove towards the next leg of my adventure.

• http://www.hollybrunelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DSCN1864.jpg

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/58th_Special_Operations_Wing

*** https://lasvegassun.com/news/1999/mar/16/few-answers-in-crash-cause/

After an overnight in Roissy and another (coupled with breakfast with a friend) in Washington DC, I was back in Florida, this time Orlando.

The trip back had gone relatively smoothly: the TGV to Paris was on time as was the flight to DC.  At Dulles there had been a bit of a hiccup: while waiting for my checked luggage, residue of the boar sausage in my packed lunch attracted the attention of a cocker spaniel who just happened to be an officer with the Department of Agriculture; after a quick look through the rest of my backpack I was allowed to continue on my way.

The plan was to spend a few days with my friend Nebraska*, catching up with her and doing some housekeeping items.  But I was in for a treat: my tales of orienteering (land navigation with a topo map and wet compass) had caught her son’s interest (ROTC cadet who will henceforth be referred to as ‘the Pup’), and as luck would have it, there was a permanent course near her home.  So one morning we dug my compasses out of my bag, downloaded and printed the maps**, and drove to the local park where the permanent markers were hosted.  Once there, I provided a quick tutorial (map symbols, what the markers might look like) in the shade of some mossy oak trees; and then we were off. The first control was a quick find on the other side of a wide field; the next one was a bit more tricky, tucked in a hollow behind a stand of palmettos.  Her son took to the sport right away and we soon fell into the pattern of him leading the way and finding the controls (with an occasional assist from this old goat) with Nebraska and me lingering behind, catching up with what we’d been doing since my visit on the outbound leg.  After stalling at the fifth control (we mistook one road for another) we quickly recovered, making near straight approaches to each of the final three markers***.

But our fun was not over.

Once back at my truck, Nebraska checked her messages and found one she needed to follow up on.

So while she returned her call from the shotgun seat and the Pup explored some nearby exhibits, I sat in the driver’s seat and sipped from my lukewarm bottle of water.  The wildlife around us was active: an armadillo exploring the base of a nearby tree, some squirrels quarreling among the branches above, and a herd of heron-like birds strutting along the road.  While I did find the birds interesting, my attention focused on the squirrels, and soon I was reminiscing on all the fun times I had watched my late dog Chewie ‘play’ with squirrels.

“Hey!”  Nebraska was shooing something out of the car, one of the birds, a large, cheeky, scarlet capped fellow who had wandered up to the open door and poked his head into the cabin.  Chastised, he came round to my side of the truck to see what I was up to.  After giving me a long hopeful look and the door behind me a few exploratory pecks (there are beak dents to remember the day) he abandoned us to interact with a pair of females nearby.

“Is that a Sand Hill Crane?” Nebraska asked once she had finished her call.   Glory of the smart phone, we quickly verified ‘yes’.  “Oh my God!” It turns out that during her childhood in (you guessed it) Nebraska, and every winter her parents (both university professors) would bundle her and her siblings up for a drive to the Sandhills, a series of grass-stabilized sand dunes between I-80 and the Pine Ridge Reservation.  Once there, they would huddle in the cold with binocs, scanning the hills for a glimpse of the Sandhill Cranes as they stopped over during their migration.  She couldn’t wait to relay to her siblings that here in Florida they came right up to the car asking for a snack.

Alas, our time together quickly came to an end, and I was soon on the road again, beginning my final (at least for this trip) trek west.

* Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

** High-quality map available via the ‘Permeant Course link here:  http://www.floridaorienteering.org

*** You can learn more about orienteering here: https://orienteeringusa.org  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienteering