Inspiration is where you find it...from Friday afternoon's 3:08PM Reno AFD:
LONG TERM...TUESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY...
THE WEATHER DOLDRUMS CONTINUE THROUGH NEXT WEEK AS AN UPPER RIDGE
REMAINS FIRMLY IN CONTROL OVER THE WEST. HIGHS TO REMAIN AROUND 5
TO 10 DEGREES ABOVE AVERAGE THROUGH NEXT WEEK. SNYDER
There it is: Doldrums...we're still becalmed, weather-wise...
It goes a little deeper too...after two weeks of no storms to fight, my enthusiasm is adrift in the doldrums as well.
My trusty old BR350 is running like a thoroughbred, there's more than enough firm snowpack to last another month or two, and iTunes is serving up more than enough Radio Podcasts to distract me nightly...what's missing then?
Thrills! There's no thrills on hard snow...no adrenaline anyway...taking pleasure from the delicious home-baked rye bread of my Pastrami and Jarlsberg sandwich, and the adolescent humor of the Afternoon Drive Time Show doesn't give me the same jolt as a fierce storm fight or a big plow project to be shoe-horned into a full night's Work Orders.
On the bright side, this week's Full Moon and clear skies made for stunning visuals on the mountain. As the moon was setting in the west Friday morning, Venus was rising in the east. It was as bright as the two groomers' lights atop the mountain from my view.
Astronomically speaking, this season has been largely mundane. All that early weather obscured the meteor showers, and there's been no naked-eye comets so far. NASA's Shuttle Program has been grounded with fuel tank cracks, on it's way to the mothball fleet.
There's two or three Shuttle missions still to fly before Washington scraps the program. I'm more than a little nervous for two of them. The External Fuel Tank cracks and fix on Discovery were enough to make me wonder, then one of the astronauts got in a bicycle accident and suffered a reported broken hip, so he was pulled for a replacement astronaut...these guys are doing some spacewalking on Discovery's final mission set for a late February launch.
The Shuttle Commander for shuttle Endeavour's April mission is Mark Kelly, whose wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords D-AZ was shot in Tuscon in early January. Commander Kelly is staying at his wife's side until further notice, and has been replaced in training.
Like they always say in the NASA films, Godspeed to you all!
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As a child of the aerospace industry, it definitely is a sad day for our Nation to witness an era pass.
ReplyDeleteThe mission to explore space was a wondrous adventure for all of us. So many inventions were spawned that we apply in every day life.
It gave our nation hope in a time when our Nation needed to go forward.
Just think how we can apply the new engineering skill sets that are in existence today? For example, fractal geometry. The possibilities are infinite.