Monday, November 22, 2010

[Catching up] Even on good days things can go bad

The Wasatch Mountains as seen from Salt Lake City International Airport
The 10-day trip started on October 29.

It was a nice day. I'll have you make note of that fact. It was a very nice day. So obviously everything was bound to get fouled up somehow.

On this day I was traveling with a character you haven't been introduced to before. I'll call her Stephie the Pharmacist. (I am introducing her because she'll likely appear in a few photos I'll be posting from this trip and I don't want you wondering who she is.) Anyway, Stephie and I head to the airport bright and early to catch our 6:35AM CST flight. We were to be flying out of Central Wisconsin Airport heading to the city of Grand Junction in Colorado. Our trip was to be a multi-leg affair, with stops to grab different flights in Minneapolis, MN, and Salt lake City, UT.

CWA is a tiny regional airport in the town of Mosinee, WI, and I don't mind flying out of there. Lines are short and security is generally not much of a hassle to get through. However, because it is such a small airport if there are mechanical problems with a plane there's generally no quick alternative options to get onto a different flight. Such was the case this morning. When we checked in at CWA they re-booked our flights for the day, in case we missed our flight in Minneapolis, so instead of arriving in Grand Junction at 12:40 PM MST we'd now be arriving at 6:35PM MST. Of course, there was the possibility the plane would get fixed quickly and we'd be on our way earlier than they expected, but no, the plane we were supposed to catch that morning was 2-hours late arriving, and because we were tightly booked we didn't have much wiggle room between our flights.

Let's get this whole thing going again

After my little trip I thought I'd have a lot of motivation to get back to the blogging business. However, I discovered that I was instead filled with a lot of blegh about the prospect of sitting down and doing write-ups about 10 days worth of  “everythings.” And as each day crept along the everythings I could be blogging on built up and . . . well, you get the picture.

It was my own fault, of course, I had planned on keeping a running diary while I was on the road down into New Mexico and southern Colorado, but I left my trusty laptop sitting in a guest bedroom in Grand Junction, CO. If I was a real writer/blogger I'd have made due with collecting some paper notes as I traveled, but I didn't do that. I am not called the Lazy Geographer for nothing, folks.

So what did it take to get me blogging again? Bribery. Yes, I was bribed to get this blog back into order. Amazing, isn't it.

So how do I get things back on track? I abandoned all of you just as Indonesia was still suffering from the dual disasters of the eruption of Mount Merapi and a tsunami off the coast of Sumatra. I wrote briefly on those, but I won't be returning to them for the time being. Instead, I'll be covering the trip I took earlier this month.

I hate going back to the beginning, that was near the end of October, after all, but sometimes the beginning is the best place to start.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig? Maybe in a Bit

I was so amused by the balanced pebbles that I totally forgot
to take a picture of the actual balanced rock.
I am currently poaching some wi-fi that I found so I'll give a fast update here.  I'll be heading home two days from now.  Hopefully, things go smoother than the flights out here (it took 17 hours).  Toured four states: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and a small sliver of Arizona.  Saw a lot of desert, visited a lot of fun places and took a lot of photos, so look forward to some original content regarding all of that in the coming days.  Tomorrow I'll be out exploring a small part of the Black Ridge Canyon Wilderness, so I'm not done with my travels just yet.  however, if I can get some internet tomorrow I might be able to get a solid start on blog updates then.

See you all on the flip-side,

The Lazy Geographer