Dancing with the weather

This is probably obvious, but it's the first real experience of it that I've had, so I'm going to talk about it. There's a big difference between watching the weather from one particular location (or from a couple of particular locations if I'm planning to fly somewhere), compared to watching the weather while both I and the weather are moving across the country. It's different tactically and it's different emotionally.

Before this trip, my thinking was that if I'm mobile and paying attention, I should be able to avoid weather I don't like. But I was thinking about the kinds of distances and weather patterns I'm used to in California or Indiana. Seeing what happened in Texas this past week has humbled me.

To a large extent, I escaped winter this year. Yes it was very (single digits) cold when I hit the road for my trip, but I've missed all the snow and ice and most of the rain and wind. That took some planning at first, but then it was easy to do after I got West of Abilene. Then on the return trip I had to start watching the forecasts carefully again at about the same point. At the time I thought I just hated Hico, but in hindsight I think maybe my gut was picking up something quite different. If' I'd kept to the plan I had when I got to Hico, I would have wound up in the severe weather that swept through Texas and then on through Alabama, Georgia, etc., over the weekend. I would have been where the storm chasers all headed to take videos like this (taken in that part of Texas over the weekend):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XikCggQNfHs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpcpnWM0oSw

Instead, I was Northeast of there, enjoying boring weather and snapping a photo of this heart-shaped mistletoe-laden tree:


It's the luv tree 😍😘💋💘

Soon I will be back home and switching back to a stationary frame of mind. I'm really curious about what that will feel like after this immersion in being on the move for about eleven weeks.

One more thought for today: Walking at dusk last night, I saw a sliver of the moon in the sky and remembered the last two full moons that happened while I was traveling out West. Was the most recent one I remember really the most recent one that happened? It seems so long ago now, and I have been so out of touch with the moon the last couple of weeks while I've focused on getting back East. But I consulted a lunar calendar and yes, it really was the most recent full moon when I was in Gila, Bend Arizona looking up at the sky. There's another blue moon this month (second full moon during a calendar month), just like there was in January. There was no full moon at all in February. I'd never heard of this before. It's called a Black Moon and it only happens about once every 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_moon

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apalachicola and Tupelo honey

Image
The fog thickened and the air cooled after I left Mexico Beach headed for Apalachicola, but soon after I arrived at this charming little town, the sky cleared and the sun came out to make a crisp, cool afternoon for taking a walk. The town Christmas tree was still on display down by the waterfront: I had started to think about Tupelo honey when I was considering staying overnight in Tupelo, Mississippi, back when I started planning this trip. Everything I knew about Tupelo honey is that there's an old song that talks about it. When I hunted up the youtube video for Tupelo Honey, the only part of it that sounded at all familiar was the hook.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klSQUdPTU0A  My guess is that it's one of those songs I only know about because of the ads for collections of hits that used to play frequently on TV when I was a teenager. They would play the hook of each song then move to the next one. It left me with the impression that I knew the songs when I'd
Read more

It's crop dusting season! (And apparently blue fruit loop season too)

Image
In Arkansas I saw two crop-dusters on the same day, both flying back and forth over the highway I was on. One passed no more than 20 feet in front of me, and maybe 10 feet over me. With those distances, it sure looks like the plane is headed straight for me... The second also was headed my direction but the timing was a little further off, or possibly just as close but behind me instead of passing right in front of me. The first one was an ultralight, and looked a lot like this (only bright yellow):  http://www.zenithair.com/stolch701/pic09/crop-spray.jpg and the second looked more like a regular small plane. When googling for crop dusting images, I was surprised how many of them were related to articles about crashes. Glad I didn't see that before I saw the planes headed toward me! I think that the people who stayed in my hotel room prior to me in Jonesboro, Arkansas were professional hotel housekeeping testers. The housekeeping staff at the hotel failed the test, but I passed!
Read more

Pipeline under construction: Seismic crew ahead

Image
Driving across Western Texas, I was reminded of how I used to think that someday I wanted to cross an ocean on a ship to get a sense of how big it actually is. Now I'm not so sure about that. Without landmarks to gauge speed by, how would I really get a sense of the ocean? I'd know how long it took, but would I really be able to perceive speed and distance? I have enough experience with flying to get a sense of how big an area is by how long it takes to fly over it in a commercial airplane, and I definitely get a sense of it by driving, but I'm not sure I could really grasp speed and distance if all I can see in every direction for days on end is ocean. Western Texas feels kind of like the ocean for a little while. I only drove about 3 hours to get from Pecos to San Angelo, but while I was in the desert with no towns in sight, it felt huge. I have a map of Texas that lives in my mind and I know how little of the state I actually saw compared to that whole map. What I did
Read more