After a three week stay in Northlandia, I have returned. And then I took another week off just because. Existing In BFE has reassembled its vast staff of editors, writers, investigators, and general office help and today resumes its mission "to entertain, to cajole and to help down that first cup of coffee in the morning." Oh wow, after almost 10 years a real mission statement. And to my 6 loyal readers, I bid you 'welcome back' after the longest break we have ever had.
Give me a day or two to shake the rust off and we'll be humming along like a 1900 cc Yamaha Stratoliner Midnight cruising down the road. Cycle riding, cabin-in-the-woods 2.0 hunting, roadtrips, sippin' beer, breakfast with the girls, and picture taking. If you are ready, then let's go.
But first, although this is a linear blog, I want/need to start it all up again with a mystery that happened on my way back to Kitschland.
Give me a day or two to shake the rust off and we'll be humming along like a 1900 cc Yamaha Stratoliner Midnight cruising down the road. Cycle riding, cabin-in-the-woods 2.0 hunting, roadtrips, sippin' beer, breakfast with the girls, and picture taking. If you are ready, then let's go.
But first, although this is a linear blog, I want/need to start it all up again with a mystery that happened on my way back to Kitschland.
- Taken from my seat at 6:30 pm Thursday September 13
- Seat Number 8A: 8th row, left hand side, window seat
- Flight 871
- Heading South to Florida.
That round bright thing is the sun. At 6:30 in the evening, the sun is setting and usually sets in the West. In order to fly from the North to the South, the plane's seat number 8A will be facing the East.
There is no way I should have seen the sun from my seat. At this point the plane is heading North. I either was temporarily in the Twilight Zone or we made some sort of maneuver that was not noticeable as a passenger.
This diagram shows the approximate route of Flight 871 from Peoria to St. Pete/Clearwater Airport. Okay, so it looks to be emanating from Springfield, just disregard that and pretend it is Peoria. Airlines like to economize as much as possible (perhaps Allegiant too much so) so as direct a path as necessary maximizes their profit. Hurricane Florence was creating a stir hundreds of miles away but planes usually fly over or around such danger.
So why would the aircraft make a virtual 180 degree pivot and fly north? Here are the possibilities:
A. A tear in the fabric of the space/time continuum. Every Sci-Fi movie worth its stripes has used this explanation for weirdness for decades now. Star Trek used it to death. The earliest use of the phrase is in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in the Darkness" written in 1930 and published in 1931. While it would be really cool if this actually happened, Allegiant isn't clever enough to accomplish this feat: they are strictly the Wal-Mart of airlines. Everyday Low Price. For a space-time thingy I'm almost certain you'd have to find other means of travel.
B. The shiny round object wasn't the sun at all but some kind of alien space craft checking us out. I don't know about you, but why would an advanced civilization capable of intergalactic space travel come all this way to see an aging airplane from a second-rate airline?
C. Because of Hurricane Flo all routes were readjusted and we simply flew north at one point to align to a normal flight pattern.
I grant you, the first two possibilities are more tantalizing than the third, but sadly, also more fantastical. And so we begin the final quarter of this year's blog, with a mystery.
"Picture, if you will, an aging guy from Mercer County, returning to Kitschland to rejoin his family. A man given to flights of fancy. This particular flight is Allegiant 871. Rich in imagination, but poor in deductive reasoning, this Floridian is about to circumnavigate the outermost edges...of the Twilight Zone."
So why would the aircraft make a virtual 180 degree pivot and fly north? Here are the possibilities:
A. A tear in the fabric of the space/time continuum. Every Sci-Fi movie worth its stripes has used this explanation for weirdness for decades now. Star Trek used it to death. The earliest use of the phrase is in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in the Darkness" written in 1930 and published in 1931. While it would be really cool if this actually happened, Allegiant isn't clever enough to accomplish this feat: they are strictly the Wal-Mart of airlines. Everyday Low Price. For a space-time thingy I'm almost certain you'd have to find other means of travel.
B. The shiny round object wasn't the sun at all but some kind of alien space craft checking us out. I don't know about you, but why would an advanced civilization capable of intergalactic space travel come all this way to see an aging airplane from a second-rate airline?
C. Because of Hurricane Flo all routes were readjusted and we simply flew north at one point to align to a normal flight pattern.
I grant you, the first two possibilities are more tantalizing than the third, but sadly, also more fantastical. And so we begin the final quarter of this year's blog, with a mystery.
"Picture, if you will, an aging guy from Mercer County, returning to Kitschland to rejoin his family. A man given to flights of fancy. This particular flight is Allegiant 871. Rich in imagination, but poor in deductive reasoning, this Floridian is about to circumnavigate the outermost edges...of the Twilight Zone."
Welcome Back! This morning’s coffee is the best I’ve had in weeks.
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