It's all good so far

It is a quiet Saturday morning, I am not in an airport terminal or on a plane headed to or coming back from a shale play. We are waiting out the rain over our chosen course of caffeine. The wife is in full blown Napaticipation, viewing websites and plotting the details of our upcoming vacation.
I am still unwinding from the last trip, trying to both listen with enthusiasm while capturing though from the previous week.

More experiences to chalk up. Getting back and forth to Vernal, Utah which required the use of some regional airlines planes that are older than I am. I could envision the Flying Tigers going over ” the Hump” (the Himalayas) as we boarded the Beechcraft turboprop to fly from Denver over the Rockies into Vernal.

Although I realize that the pilots have a vested interested in a safe plane trip, it doesn’t prevent me from inwardly chanting my flight mantra -“Lord, keep us safe” with eyes tightly shut and arm rests gripped firmly from the moment we start down the taxiway until we are at cruising altitude.

While I have now invested in some old school magazine reading to keep my mind occupied/ imagination held in check, I have found that I don’t focus we’ll during a steep banked curve in early ascent, and am back to the inward ( I hope) chanting.

Then we get leveled off, and I can relax, and read or write. I don’t know if the adrenaline fused imagination helps or hinders the writing process. Fortunately there have not been that many life flashing before my eyes situations while airborne.

This flight banned the use of all electronics. I would be willing to swear that everytime the guy across the aisle did something on his blackberry, the engines revved and we had to a quick change in altitude. So I spent some quality time thinking.

Vernal was an neat place to visit. It is an older town set in a valley about 3 hours from Salt Lake and 3 hours from Grand Junction. There is the Dinosaur Museum, a couple of brew pubs, coffee bars, and sporting goods stores. The downtown has flower boxes everywhere. There is even a small Episcopal Church, St. Paul’s , that is over 100 years old.

We did have time to drive out of town and up to the Flaming Gorge Park. The roadside geology was fantastic. Formations and contacts were recognizable out the car window. It would have been a fantastic field camp area, however, the degree of difficulty identifying and mapping was probably too low for the University of Texas Geology Department.

Beautiful, voted one of the best small towns in America. Possible retirement spot? Well, there is that white stuff that falls from the sky and accumulates in fatal doses. And there is a lot of construction underway. Did not get to see much of the residential section of town, so probably not.

It does have me thinking about life after work. Although the current physique doesn’t show it, I have enjoyed the high adventure activities. I have been climbing, caving, diving, and flying. It needs to be an active retirement. Dad has been to China and Azerbaijan in his late seventies. There are plenty of places still to explore.

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