Arizona's Texas CanyonOur trip towards the Oregon Coast began early this morning. The first seven miles of our journey was in the state of Texas. Coincidentally, it took about seven minutes--which is about right.
From there we crossed the southwestern half of New Mexico without incident--or so we thought. It wasn't until we stopped on the westernmost edge of The Land of Enchantment--just before entering Arizona--in the town of Lordsburg, New Mexico that I came to realize I had inevitably altered my and my wife's future on this trip forever! That's because I discovered as I was getting out of the car at the N.M. State's Visitor Center a huge blue stain on my leg.
To allay all fears of a subdermal hemmorrhage, I discovered the blue rubbed off on my hand (and everything else that came in contact with my leg, my shorts, hands, pen in my front pocket, etc.). Rather than something internal, I had suffered the effects of a leaky ballpoint in my shorts pocket.
Ironically, the blue blob did NOT stain the outer part of my blue shorts, but the car keys that I'd put in my pocket with the leaky pen, then removed and handed over to my wife after my discovery stained her hands which stained her jeans. Things were getting bluer by the minute.
But that's not the point I wanted to make here. No, in the time it took to isolate the invading blob of ink, unpack a new pair of shorts and change, wipe down everything that had come in contact with this runaway ink and save the world from becoming bluer than it already is, a total of thirty minutes had elapsed. I realized everything that happened on this trip from here on out would be at least 20-25 minutes later than it would otherwise have been have.
The first time that really hit me was just minutes later at "Texas Canyon" in Arizona (see picture above). Yeh, I know, that sounds confusing. But had the ink pen not leaked, we would have missed "Randy", the three legged eight year old German Sheppard who lost his front right leg 7 years ago at the age of one.
And therein lies the conundrum of the leaking ink pen that made me change my shorts, that made us later than we would have been otherwise. Of a dog and his owner we wouldn't have met if the pen hadn't leaked. There's major implications in this. Or so I ponder. Has our future been irrevocably altered or are we working past it, smoothing out the wrinkle that caused a bump in our day, delayed us 20 minutes and altered everthing thereafter?
From there we crossed the southwestern half of New Mexico without incident--or so we thought. It wasn't until we stopped on the westernmost edge of The Land of Enchantment--just before entering Arizona--in the town of Lordsburg, New Mexico that I came to realize I had inevitably altered my and my wife's future on this trip forever! That's because I discovered as I was getting out of the car at the N.M. State's Visitor Center a huge blue stain on my leg.
To allay all fears of a subdermal hemmorrhage, I discovered the blue rubbed off on my hand (and everything else that came in contact with my leg, my shorts, hands, pen in my front pocket, etc.). Rather than something internal, I had suffered the effects of a leaky ballpoint in my shorts pocket.
Ironically, the blue blob did NOT stain the outer part of my blue shorts, but the car keys that I'd put in my pocket with the leaky pen, then removed and handed over to my wife after my discovery stained her hands which stained her jeans. Things were getting bluer by the minute.
But that's not the point I wanted to make here. No, in the time it took to isolate the invading blob of ink, unpack a new pair of shorts and change, wipe down everything that had come in contact with this runaway ink and save the world from becoming bluer than it already is, a total of thirty minutes had elapsed. I realized everything that happened on this trip from here on out would be at least 20-25 minutes later than it would otherwise have been have.
The first time that really hit me was just minutes later at "Texas Canyon" in Arizona (see picture above). Yeh, I know, that sounds confusing. But had the ink pen not leaked, we would have missed "Randy", the three legged eight year old German Sheppard who lost his front right leg 7 years ago at the age of one.
And therein lies the conundrum of the leaking ink pen that made me change my shorts, that made us later than we would have been otherwise. Of a dog and his owner we wouldn't have met if the pen hadn't leaked. There's major implications in this. Or so I ponder. Has our future been irrevocably altered or are we working past it, smoothing out the wrinkle that caused a bump in our day, delayed us 20 minutes and altered everthing thereafter?
Stay tuned.
8 comments:
A wrinkle in time, eh? well, there is that infamous "desert time dilation factor" to consider as you continue. As you pass through the Coachella Valley (which includes Palm Springs), you'll be following the San Andreas fault line, notorious for time disturbances.
But you're already making excellent time to have crossed the Colorado! Now you'll be seeing some of the canals, many of which follow ancient Amerind irrigation lines (local P.S. tribe is appropriately named Agua Caliente, further up you'll see the Morongos & Baronas who are passing on ancient indian lore through slot machines). hmmm, perhaps your pen had morphed into a dowsing rod as you neared The River! D.K.
Oh funny, DK. So today we'll be crossing over those irrigation canals huh? Would those be the same canals they saw from Mars years ago and mistook as evidence for intelligent life on Earth?
And I love your analogy of the Morongos and Baronas (I think I went to school with some of their kids) passing down ancient lore through slot machines. I think I've experienced some of that in my past. Mostly their "lore" consisted of erasing American heroes like Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, etc. from my wallet in a kind of reverse-pay-as-you-go history.
Actually, I think I'll avoid LA and take the backroads to Bakersfield.
oh Shoot DK beat me to the Wrinkle in Time line...and I am confused, so am I late by 20 minutes or on time ( for once in my life?) and I am glad that you were rescued from a Blue Catastrophe...and I do look forward to the Oregon Coast Adventure....
I'm confused, too, or this is not a linear travelogue...how can you be traveling westward through New Mexico today, when you were traveling westward through Arizona yesterday? Is this a deliberate attempt to f**k with our heads?
BTW, I think you are smoothing out the wrinkle in time...there is a law of conservation of time which was theorized in a SF short story by Fritz Leiber...the title escapes me but DK may be familiar with it...the gist of the story was that the universe does its damnedest to set things the way they should have been if we succeed in altering events...
So, I hate it when I can't remember stuff and went digging through the library for the story...I'll be damned if I didn't find it in 5 minutes, re-published by Robert Silverberg in an anthology...
actually, it's called temporal reluctance or the Law of the Conservation of Reality and it's from a story called "Try and Change the Past"
Maineiac: Okay,okay, what's the deal here? Reading your comments, I became confused. So I backtracked and reread the last couple of days and...and...you're absolutely right!
So if your message confused me, my blog REALLY confused me. Thanks for pointing that out.
To the best of my knowledge, there was no linear discontinuity intended, but I sure as hell don't know what happened there.
But listen, Maineiac, when I see Americans the slowest to be evacuated from Lebannon and having to pay their way home from Cypress, the president of the united states backrubbing an unappreciate leader of another nation, and hear of expensive beer making equipment purchased by the US coastguard to aid in rescuing Katrina victims, there does seem to be evidence of something weird going on here. If not linear discontinuity, maybe total reality disconnect. Particularly strong evidence of this was the giggling CNN reporting this and the approving american citizenry which seems unfazed by it all.
The others hold no reponsibility for all that, but I will apologize for my seeming disjointed continuity here. I really wasn't trying to f**k with anyone's head.
well maybe I'm the discombobulated one here cuz dada's route sounded perfectly normal to me ... sounded like ones i've taken a few times myself ... of course I was usually going the other direction. oh wait, now my head seems to be flipping around backwards. Hell, throw in the time wrinkle & it's possible we may all really be on mars. sheesh, is the sun still rising in the east? is some little frat boy still rubbing presidential shoulders & spitting cornbread crumbs on the british p.m.?
hmmm, maneiac, your SF story sounded very familiar. I liked the term "conservation of reality" ... now there's a conservative movement I could get behind. My favorite SF time traveler story still remains Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5", even after all these yrs. Not a bad movie either. D.K.
oh no DK you had to go mention Vonnegut- that is what has been missing from summer...now I have to go to the Library...thanks...
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