A Note To The Granddaughters

A Note To The Granddaughters

I left the Dallas area last evening about 7:00 p.m. -- getting lost only once due to construction.

I crossed the New Mexico state line earlier this morning. I stopped for cat naps along the way over night.

The huge red rubber ball -- the sun -- is incredible as it sets over west Texas, and then again, as it rises over east New Mexico. It's really incredible. It is huge. It looks like it "is right there" -- close enough to drive to. It is amazing that from another spot in the Milky Way, the sun would be just another star. It's just amazing to think of the energy that is being generated. Talk about solar warming.

As I mentioned before, McDonald's has free wi-fi but no outlets; Starbucks has both but not as easily found.

I stopped at a McDonald's a few miles back but the line was very, very long -- a bus had just pulled in and it appeared all 40 travelers were getting breakfast. So I posted a short note and moved on.

This is incredible! A McDonald's with both free wi-fi and an outlet. One outlet. Someone else had discovered it; they looked like regulars but by the time I got my coffee, they had left. So, free wi-fi, and a chance to recharge the computer. Don't tell anyone, but it's the Santa Rose, NM, McDonald's off I-40. If corporate headquarters finds out, the local operator will get a note to remove the outlet. I think I will leave an extension cord with six outlets so that more people can access it -- LOL.

And a nice break.

It's supposed to be a bit cooler than the seasonal "normal" in this area -- in the Amarillo area it will only reach the low 80's. I don't know the forecast for Albuquerque.

A couple weeks ago I showed Arianna how to skip rocks when we walking around Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts. Lo and behold, there's a front page article in today's WSJ on skipping stones: in competitive stone-skipping circles, a rocky debate:

Among competitive stone-skippers, nothing makes ripples like a disagreement about regulation rocks.

The latest dispute in this sport for people who skim small stones across water is over imports used in competition.

At the Mackinac Island Stone Skipping & Gerplunking Club championships, some believe participants are supposed to source their equipment from the pebble-lined beaches of this Lake Huron island.

But there is growing concern that some competitors in America's oldest stone-skipping competition this July 4 are bringing rocks from other places that offer an unfair advantage.

Enforcing a ban on imports "would really level the playing the field," says John "Skippy" Kolar, the 55-year-old chairman of the club, who calls himself a stone "purist."

Importing stones "renders a disadvantage to the local people," he says. There is also an environmental concern: "You may be bringing in an unwanted traveler that exists on that stone that would do something drastic in the Great Lakes." 

The WSJ even has a video of stone-skipping. I'm impressed.

For reading I brought along several books, including John Steinbeck's The Log From The Sea of Cortez. I read it slowly. It's a great book. Young readers should be introduced to it before reading his other more famous works. One does not have to read the entire book: the introduction, the notes, and a couple of chapters, that would be enough.

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Some observations on the trip so far:

Not much traffic. Not even very many trucks. I'm on I-40 now, having picked it up in Amarillo. The trucks are driving much more slowly than I would expect. Maybe their speed limit is different than that for automobiles (75).

The most-often-seen branded truck: Fed-Ex -- two so far. No Wal-Mart trucks. One USPS truck and that one was trailing the FedEx truck.

As pretty as the Appalachian Mountains were, I really enjoy the flatness and desolate landscape of Texas and New Mexico a whole lot more -- probably reminds me of North Dakota a bit more.

One of the highlights of the trip last night was to see a couple of BNSF trains just west of Ft Worth. Warren Buffett really, really lucked into a great deal when he bought that railroad.

Oh, and another highlight: I saw NASCAR's Texas Motor Speedway, just about the same time I saw the BNSF trains. They are widening the highway from a divided four-lane highway to what appears a 12-lane divided highway leading into the motor speedway. Just joking. They are enlarging the roads there significantly, but probably not 12 lanes. That's high on my list: to see a live race, probably a Saturday race which must be a whole more inexpensive and a whole lot less busy.