{"id":754,"date":"2009-06-01T22:29:18","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T02:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=754"},"modified":"2009-06-01T22:30:58","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T02:30:58","slug":"notes-on-the-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=754","title":{"rendered":"Notes on the Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/dogsatbeach06012009.jpg\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN-LEFT: auto; MARGIN-RIGHT: auto; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" height=\"297\" alt=\"dogsatbeach06012009.jpg\" width=\"499\"\/><\/p>\n<p>We rolled back into Colorado Springs at 4:30 PM this afternoon, right into the thick of a whompin&#8217; thunderstorm that was rapidly flooding streets on the west side of town. When we left, there was snow on the daffodils. Now summer is in full roar. I wonder sometimes where spring went. No matter; we&#8217;re back in our own house, and tonight I can sleep in my own bed. In the meantime, a few notes on the trip that admittedly may be a bare half-notch above sock-drawer reports:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trucks were not speeding on I-80. In fact, they were often going 5-8 MPH <em>below<\/em> the posted limit in states where speed limits apply identically to all vehicles. (This has <em>not<\/em> been our experience in past trips.) One wonders if trucking companies are strapped enough by the flagging economy to tell their drivers to back off on the lead foot a little and save on Diesel.<\/li>\n<li>There were an appalling number of deer lying dead on the side of the road in central Iowa. In fact, I&#8217;m guessing that the nation&#8217;s deer held their village idiots&#8217; convention just east of Des Moines this year. We saw twenty-five or thirty in a fifty-mile span of Interstate.<\/li>\n<li>Near Lincoln, Nebraska we saw a convoy of six or seven black SUVs marked &#8220;National Severe Storms Laboratory&#8221; with <a href=\"https:\/\/secure.nssl.noaa.gov\/v2gallery\/vehicles\/IMG_1266-Copy.JPG.php\">a rack of the damndest geegaws<\/a> on top of them, and a mobile radar unit bringing up the rear. I took some notes, and found out once I got home that this was part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vortex2.org\/home\/\">the Vortex2 project<\/a>, which has been getting much coverage on the Weather Channel. The vehicles in question were part of a &#8220;mobile mesonet,&#8221; which gathers data on winds out where tornadoes happen. Even the weirdest Texas Bugcatcher never had anything on those!<\/li>\n<li>I must be getting <em>really<\/em> old. Faced with paying $9.95 for one night&#8217;s Internet access at the Sheraton Iowa City on Saturday night, I said &#8220;no thanks&#8221; and went to bed.<\/li>\n<li>And you know what? <em>Nothing of value was lost<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anglersfishinginfo.com\/neb\/mcconaughy\/index.html\">Lake McConaughy<\/a> was higher than we&#8217;ve ever seen it. In fact, the lake is starting to put feelers back into the upper reaches of Martin Bay, where the less-than-half-full lake hasn&#8217;t been in over eight years. The dogs romped in shallow bath-warm water between low dunes, and we ran them along the beach until they dried out. The flies haven&#8217;t come out yet, and a wonderful time was had by all.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s much to be done this week, as there always is after five weeks away&#8211;and we&#8217;ve got the Colorado Springs dog show next weekend. Quite a few bichons are entered, enough so that the show will be what they call a &#8220;major.&#8221; Aero needs a second major win to get his championship, and this may be the one, if we can spiff him up sufficiently and get him to behave in the ring.<\/p>\n<p>And I have a book to finish. But &#8220;finish&#8221; at this point really means putting the icing on. The cake itself is done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We rolled back into Colorado Springs at 4:30 PM this afternoon, right into the thick of a whompin&#8217; thunderstorm that was rapidly flooding streets on the west side of town. When we left, there was snow on the daffodils. Now summer is in full roar. I wonder sometimes where spring went. No matter; we&#8217;re back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28],"tags":[38,78,31],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","category-travelogs","tag-dogs","tag-travel","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":757,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}