Desert Adventure I: Arrival and Southbound

I love Ativan. Seriously. I am seriously terrified of flying. Like once, I walked onto a plane to board, realized that it was a cylindrical aluminum coffin, walked off, rented a car, and drove the nine hours to where I was taking a class. Needless to say, the four hour flight from the East Coast to Salt Lake City was causing me some anxiety. So, after answering my doctors question "What seems to be the problem today?" with "Airplanes.", I got myself nice shiny prescription for Ativan, which I hope might enable me to visit some far away friends without having to worry about spending the duration of the flight in sphincter-puckering terror.

My brother and I arrived at the airport about 0515 carrying huge duffel bags containing our packs, food, boots, and everything that we would need for the trip. It'd been so long since I had flown I had not seen the automated check in kiosks. We checked in there, paid for checking out bags, then went and turned them in. My bag weighed 49 lbs., one pound shy of an additional fine. Once we checked in, I took the first of my Ativan. It went to work fairly quickly, as I remember singing stanzas of operas as we waited to pass through security. After clearing security went to the gate and waited for our plane. As we were waiting for the plane, I realized that I was still pretty uncomfortable, so I took another Ativan (I had two for each way), which was a good decision. Our plane finally taxied in and we boarded, though about 20 minutes late. As we stowed our stuff and buckled in, the Captain came on, made some disparaging remarks about the crew that apparently forgot to bring him his airplane, and then announced "We're running about 20 minutes behind, but fortunately we have a jet plane, which can go fast, and we're going to do that. I'm not worried about the fuel burn. Everyone will make their connections." Nice! This cut the 4 hour 45 minute flight down to about 4. Sounds good to me. And then we took off. The Ativan did its job, because frankly, I don't remember very much at all about the flight. Except thinking that the little TV thing on the back of the seat pretty much kicked ass because it had a Google Earth like display on it that I could use to see what part of the country we were flying over.

Once we landed, we got our stuff, got the car, and headed south towards Zion, UT and Arches National Park. Upon leaving the airport, you know you're not on the East Coast anymore, and thank God for that. There are mountains, and sky. Big sky. And geology. And it's just good. We made one stop on the way out of town to pick up some stove fuel that we couldn't take on the plane and were on the way. We angled southwest on a state road for about two hours, though we had to pull over and get a nap a little ways in, me getting over being stoned, and both of us pretty damned tired from the hour we left.

So we finally got to I-70, which is, somewhat ironically we felt, just outside the town we went to high school in, 2,100 miles to the east. What made this particular stretch of road way better is that the speed limit is 75 MPH. Which pretty much kicks ass. And about the time you hit the interstate, the road opens up into valley and mesa country. And it is incredible. So we drove through the desert with the radio up, trying to keep our maintain our lane while we were busy ogling the scenery. We finally arrived in Arches, which was a far different experience that I was expecting.

Here in the east, not many people seem like they go to the parks. I never have a hard time to find a parking space when I want to go backpacking or hiking, even at a popular place like Old Rag. Arches is more like a museum than it is what I think of as a park. There is a road through it, and almost all of the "attractions" are within a couple of hundred yards of that road. And there are people. Lots of them. Most of whom would be naturally selected if they went into a real wilderness. At first the structure and the people really bothered me. What the hell are all these people doing in what should be my backcountry. But then I kind of came to the realization that the infrastructure was really doing a good job to preserve the park, and that without places like that, there are a lot of people who would never see some of the incredible things that you can only see when you haul your duff off the couch and get out of doors. And maybe a few of those people might one day grow up into real outdoorspeople.

We saw a couple of things, then decided that we were hungry and tired. After examining the possibilities for camping in the park (zero) we decided to head into Moab, get a hotel where we could get a good nights sleep, and find some dinner locally. We checked into a decent place then went out for food. Moab is a pretty cool town. There always seems to be something happening there; bike races, or four wheeler races, or rock climbing, something. And they make damn good pizza. After eating our fill, we returned to the hotel, loaded and organized packs, then turned in looking forward to the real start of the trip the next day.

One Piece at a Time

Three months.  Doesn't seem like it's been three months, but I suppose it has.  I've stolen the title for this post from Mr. Johnny Cash.  Not so much because I'm doing something big one piece at a time, but because I like the line "One day I devised myself a plan that would be the envy of most any man."  I don't know that this is totally true in this instance, but it appeals to my own personal sense of drama.

So the other day I was riding back from work at Bush League Consulting, thinking about how much I really hate working there.  Not because it's such a terrible place to work per se, but because I hate what I'm doing, or maybe not doing.  I'm so miserable that it keeps me from doing a good job sometimes.  I need to insert, as sort of an aside that will be relevant shortly, that I have been considering joining the Coast Guard Reserve.  There's a few reasons for this, but they're not really important at this point.

Anyway, I was hating work, and thinking of the absolute dearth of other jobs that I would actually like doing around here, and the idea struck me:  If being a reserve officer pays enough, I can just QUIT my job, and not have to take another one; i.e. be a stay at home dad.  I did the math, and between the savings realized by not having child care expenses, paying off a couple of bills prior to my quitting, and the Reserve pay, which I have tentatively verified, in terms of cash flow, we might even be a little better off than we are now.  Win all the way around.

Now, I suspect that the five of you who actually  see this blog are thinking that Grey has finally stepped off the deep-end he's been flirting with for the past year or so, but I actually don't think this is the case.  There are a number of potential positives that I see:

• I get to stop hating what I'm doing;
• Maintaining the house, which I have to do anyway, becomes my job.  This is positive in that I hope it might alleviate some of the bitterness I direct towards my spousal unit (who is a mobile disaster) if I'm not having to be house keeper after already working 50 hours a week;
• It would give me more time with my kids; particularly the new one, whose beginning and arrival have been particularly "traumatic", for lack of a better way to put it, and;
• It'll give me some time to lay out the economic storm until I can find something i really enjoy again in a couple of years, while still contributing positively to life.

So I'm going to go talk to a recruiter next week.  See what sort of needs they have, where I might fit in.  I'll know a lot more after that.  I've rambled a bit here about needing to effect some sort of change in my life, and I'm hoping that this might be a place to start.

Inquisition

I have often wondered about the seeming loss of inquisitiveness, of self awareness, that seems to be the state of many of the hominids around me. Sheeple, as my brother might call them.  I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine (who doesn't read this blog), who, in spite of being a fairly bright guy, is pretty much a lift wing hippie.   

- Before you tune out, this is not going to be a political rant, even if it seems like it's going to go that direction. - 

I pointed him the direction of an interesting essay I had read that gave a quantitative approach to how our taxes are broken out.  I gave him a while to read it, then asked him what he thought.  He replied, and this is damn near verbatim, "I though it was OK until I saw the numbers, then I pretty much stopped reading.  It's just easier for me to hate the upper class."

I was stunned.  Really.  Now, his political inclinations at this point are pretty much irrelevant.  What pretty much stopped my heart was his refusal to dig into an issue he found challenging, and his willingness to just march on blindly carrying his prejudices.  And he's a smart hard working guy who I have a lot of respect for.  And he's not the only one.  Not even close to the only one.

Talk to your average person about religion.  And again, I am not trying to attack any particular

 view point, but a mind set.  When asked "Why do you believe...?" the response is often "Because my pastor said so." or "Because the Bible says so."  Well crap buddy.  I heard your pastor say that you need to buy me a steak at Ruth's Chris.  Let's hit the road.

But really, where did it all go?  Where did the 

drive to inquire, and discover, and seek truth, go for so many of my "colleagues"?  Am I imagining that it was ever even there in the first place?  Are there no longer Mallorys around saying "Because it's there."?  Or if there are, are they all employed by NASA or CERN; and there's no room for your average dumb geologist to try to be something a little more than a bipedal sack of water going unquestioningly and unflinchingly through life?

God, I hope not.  If this is the only chance we've got at this thing, shouldn't we all try to make it be as rich and full as we can; up to and including digging into the challenges, seeking the truths even if they stretch us or surprise us.   Maybe do that thing simply because it is there and needs to be conquered.  And I can't imagine doing it the other way.  In fact, it appals me.  The need and ability to stretch ourselves is what got us off the savannah in the first place, and has brought us this far.  Now, standing at a cusp, it'll be what carries us onward, if we choose to keep looking.

Anyway, if you want to talk about this with me, I'll be over there, looking over the edge of that horizon.

Request the Pleasure of Your Attendance...

Well, I haven't felt particularly "writey" the last few weeks.  A combination of work busy and general lethargy towards this pursuit I suppose.  I should make myself feel worse about that, but really can't.  I keep telling myself that this blog has to be about something, but really, it doesn't.  Just a pursuit towards something to try to make myself a little broader.  Not that I need any help with that!

But I digress....  I was driving in to work at Bush League Consulting (actually, that's an excellent name, I will keep it) on Friday morning, and I noticed one of our overhead traffic signs reading something to the effect of "Heavy traffic on I-95 and I-66 in DC on Feb. 20 for inauguration traffic."  OK.  You have to drive an hour and a half to get to I-95 from that sign, and then another hour and a half to DC.  To me this is not unlike announcing on the aforementioned sign "Montreal rush begins at 1400, eh."

What this got me boiling about early in the morning is that I can't listen to, or read, the news without some mention of the damned inauguration.  Now, and I don't really care about your political affiliation,  hear this:  THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THIS COUNTRY IS NEITHER RESPONSIBLE FOR, NOR ABLE TO FIX, ALL OF ITS WOES!  OK, caps lock screaming completed.

We have elected a President, not a messiah.  We also have three houses of government, so news flash here, the President can't do anything without the assent of Congress.  So please, enough with all this.  Would it be possible for us to understand how our government works well enough for us to move the hell on and get with the business of of running the country?  And give me my NPR station back.

Thanks 

Question of the Day

When I have a little bit of a buzz on, I can play guitar like Eric Clapton.  At the same time, GN'R sounds just as brilliant as a Bach cantata.

What does that say about my guitar playing?

Cult of Personality

I left college with a decent handful of psychology classes under my belt.  Part of this was a genuine interest in psychology, though I admittedly took all of my classes with the cute pysch professor who could sing the hell out of some blues.  But I digress...

One of the things we did early on in one the classes was a Meyers-Briggs analysis or our personalities, which I suspect most are familiar with.  I am an ISTJ.  That's introverted, sensing, thinking, and judging.  Typical scientist.  And there isn't  much wiggle room in the analysis.  I tend to peg the extreme ends of any personality test I take.

The other day while chatting with a friend I was introduced to Typealyzer.  The hook of this website is that you drop in your blog address and it will make a Meyers-Briggs type analysis of your personality type based on your musings.  Being one for an experiment, I dropped in this address and out came ESFP.  That's extroverted, sensing, feeling, perceiving.  Seriously?  Seriously.

Now, truly, this thing could be full of garbage, but there is at least some base level of interest in that it must queue in on words, phases, or styles that suggest personality types.  This got me to wondering why, at least in the "eyes" of some random web analyzer, I write in a style that is reflective of a seriously different personality.

I know I use this blog to mull though things out loud, as a chance to wrote something that isn't a technical document.  You know something that (attempts) to speak with metaphor, reflects maybe a little of who I'd like to be.

And that, right there, is the rub, and what occurred to me after a while.  I write who I want to be. Clearly I write what I want to do, where I'd like to be, but who I want to be is maybe a little bit of a different story.  I've always been one to think that I am pretty comfortable in my own skin.  After all, at this stage in my life, my personality is unlikely to change, except possibly to get a little stranger, which is probably bad news for the people around me.

Really, as I think many of my past posts have reflected, it's not really the personality style, but the idealized life style of an ESFP  that I've been writing about, and that is making the Typelayzer get a little mixed up.  Maybe I should feed it a Compliance Status Report and see where it goes from there.

So maybe this little thing is meaningless; maybe it adds a little more weight to the argument that I need to make some changes in the heading of my life.

GenderAnalyzer just can't decide on me.  What does that mean?

The Year in Review

I typically would rather say more useful things here, but sitting here alone in the office, having endured a couple of more parting (hopefuly) pokes to the eye, I'm afraid I only have one thing to say:

Fuck 2008.