Titanic Post

It’s strange how life presents itself when you sit back and let things happen. All last week I had been feeling sorry for myself. My daughter was home sick and needed minor attention. It wasn’t much except I felt I should be there. And when I’m there, I’m nowhere else.

Yesterday my daughter was with her mother, and I took a ride on my blue motorcycle into the Sacramento Mountains. I spent several hours riding aimlessly about until I came to the turn-off to Apache Point in the southern Sacramentos. I turned in that direction. Apache Point is a stellar observatory (there is also a solar observatory nearby called Sunspot) and is positioned to overlook the Tularosa Basin to the South. When I got there I sat awhile looking out over the Otero Mesa. I could see Hwy 54 to El Paso, shining like a river in the sunlight and then disappearing into the haze south of Oro Grande. It was amazingly clear until that point. South of the wall of haze lies El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, too busy to worry about the air.

Did you ever shiver
Just because
You were standing
At a river?I sat awhile watching two big Ravens catching the up-draft off the hillside and getting tossed up into the wind doing some kind of acrobatic maneuver. Maybe an Emmelmann. They looked too old for that sort of nonsense.  On the way back to Cloudcroft, another Raven flew ahead of me for a short stretch, like he was making sure I wasn’t too old.  A little way before Cathey Peak, two adult wild turkeys ambled across the highway.  I slowed and waved, but they, knowing  that turkey season was long past, were too busy to notice me.

Going down the mountain, I stopped at Spring Mountain just before Mountain Park and had catfish and pinto beans with cole slaw, onions and pickles served with plastic utensils on a styrofoam plate. The master touch was a refreshing hot towel. A man was playing romantic songs on an electric piano and because I was sitting alone, I almost fell in love with myself, but stopped myself just in time.

Today I paid my dues to the IRS who hit me big time, because of some back payments I received last year. I wouldn’t mind so much, if I didn’t think the money would go to expand the Empire.

Indeed, life is like a sweet folk-song as it rambles down the road.