That weeks long car trip

I've just spent the last- many hours reading about american presidents.

Partly that helps to make me more informed, but also it's got me following the slippery slope of this one thing begets the next and the next making the current political landscape the result of something happening centuries ago. This, of course, was always the case, what with time generally moving forward (at least that's how we, as a collective, experience it- I'd rather not speak to the individuals experience) but when things jump out in hindsight as so blatantly connected, it feels weird. Mostly it's that jumping out that feels weird. Things shouldn't jump out at you.

Two for flinching.

Probably an hour and a half ago, approximately when that jumping out occured, I had the image of America as a hot, barren, boring desert that I had proto-formed in me not from any obvious political maneuvering from an outside party, but from family "vacations" of travelling through the states (the quotes around "vacations" aren't meant to indicate these trips were terrible, just that the more prominent ones were us in a car moving, not vacationing, from one side of the continent to the other, but these trips were virtually identical to a road trip vacation, so I'm categorizing them as the same)

anyway- that american image immediately yielded a counterpart- that part of the road trip where you wake up, you realize that you were sleeping after all (it's impossible to sleep in a car!) and you half heartedly focus on where you are or may be, and like in a pulp detective story you've got a bright orange light beaming in through the only nearly drawn blinds that leaves a bar of that dim light square across your eyes, and then goes away, and it's back, and goes away, and it's back, and goes away, and you finally turn your head to see that it's the highway lights, that you're getting close to Toronto, or London, or Vancouver, and you feel like you're almost home. And if you are almost home you get really tired, because you know that the final ten minute stretch will go forever, and when then finally passes you have to drag yourself out of the car, drag your pillow, wait for dad or mom to get to the door and open up so you can scramble for bed, trying to hold onto that tiredness you still had in the car even as that tiredness is saying "I'm not going anywhere".

OR if you aren't even close to home, maybe you don't live in a city right now, or this is a city somewhere in that central time zone, and it's 2 in the morning (according to SOME watch, but maybe we can get that hour back if we go far enough...) and you've waken up and because you're so very far from anywhere you are now totally awake, and can't believe you were ever asleep in the first place (it's impossible to sleep in the car!) and you look at whoever is driving and this was a long time ago.

*Long breath*

I sent a message to a friend of mine just a bit ago about seeing a movie. At the end I paused and thought about our past times together, and all the things this person has done for me. Maybe not a lot in the grand scheme, but important to me. I ended the message with an out-of-nowhere 'thank you', that can be taken as just an ideosyncratic send off, a 'you'rs truly,' that feels off but is still just a good-bye, when in reality it's a 'thank you for this and this and this...'

I'm 70 pages from finishing this book on "birdmen", the history of guys trying to make like Icarus. Okay, well, they often succeed in making like Icarus, in that 99.9% of them are killed doing some incredibly hairbrained jump with a set of wings. I'll have to come back with the names of some notables, there's a lot so it's hard to remember. Clem Sohn was a sort of grand daddy of the 20th century bat-men, and there was this guy... I forget. He was the next big name. And Sutten (I'll get back to whether that's the correct name/spelling later) was both a parachutist/birdman- but was just about the only modern one mentioned thus far to be an engineer who, you know, TESTED his equipment before jumping out of planes. Something which really helped with the whole not dying thing.

Ugh. It's 4:53 in the morning (and that's only because of the hour of saving grace provided by the clock change) and I haven't acomplished anything today. My beard needs some serious upkeep and attention, something it hasn't been getting for about the past two weeks.
Don't worry, that doesn't include neck beard shaving. I've got that beast well in hand.

Did I say yet that I miss a bunch of people? 'Cause I've been thinking it this whole time.