Tuxon

Home.

Well worth the effort, but the price was high. I’m always surprised how much effort moving actually is. Even if you’ve only been in a place for six months, and all you took with you was a sedan-sized carload. So many things to take care of, especially after being further removed from second-home for about a month.

As usual, as long as I tell my mind it’s not OK to be exhausted until a certain task is done, the body complies. The drive back was interesting – leaking power steering, strange car noises, dead battery, getting jumps at every gas station in New Mexico. I guess my battery didn’t like sitting at the Colorado Springs airport for a month, then being further drained as we packed the car to the brim. We had just finished the final cleaning/mopping on our place in Manitou and had brought Noser (the gnome/cat) down, all set to go.

Turn the key – nothing. She-ite.

Got a jump from our neighbor, and figured we’d be good to go. Next gas station, no bueno. Another jump. Thought about filling up with the engine running, then thought better of it. Next station we turned everything off before stopping, and had Paula at the keys while I quickly filled the tank. Success – it started up!

I was trying to stretch the tank as far as I could – to minimize the number of fill-ups. I just about crapped my pants and turned around when I saw 64 miles to “T or C”, having just passed Socorro. There was a gas station between there, but it was on a dirt road (!!) and the only cars to pull up in the first 15 minutes were an old woman in her 70’s and a rancher with mega horse trailer in tow. I wasn’t about to ask either of them for a jump.

At this point we probably should have bit the bullet and bought a new battery, but we were already pushing a very late arrival in Tucson, and stopping was not an option — I had a meeting at 9am in Tucson the next morning.

Still, New Mexico is a beautiful state and I enjoyed much of the drive. I always feel privileged to live in a time when you can throw all your worldly possessions and three bikes into your car and “move” 500 miles in the space of one day. Especially someone who has never held a ‘real’ job in his life.

We got home to even more fun — we had someone staying at our house, but our room had been closed and dark the entire time. Perfect conditions for little bugs to take over. So we stayed up past 2 am pulling our room apart, vacuuming and other hysteria.

The meeting was a source of much unnecessary stress, and was nothing but painful to endure. I’m usually one for pain and suffering of the enduring kind, but my psyche was in no shape for it. There’s a certain rhythm that your body uses to go to sleep. Unable to even close my eyes momentarily, I had to just fight it off, which usually brings an all-over body aching. Maybe you know what I’m talking about, maybe not.

The actual meeting, a site visit for a very cool biology / computer vision project, was Tuesday and was more of the same – deep aching pain. I already knew everything about the project, so there was nothing new. Indeed, my only function was to sit there, pretend to be interested, and demonstrate that I can speak and understand english. A ‘warm body’ that may or may not fill a postdoc position should the project get funded. It’s a cool project that I am interested in working on, but my importance to the grant (i.e. money grabbing) effort was grossly overestimated (and the knife was twisted deep as a result). That overestimation was most unfortunate given all the other difficulties and drains on my psyche as of late.

I went for a ride after the visit, and set the probability of leaking air (flat tire) at 99%. It’s one of the few guarantees in life — first ride back in Tucson (with normal tubes in the tires) = flat tire.

I also expected to suffer, cough, ache, and I did do pretty much all of those. But I also witnessed the sky set ablaze, full moon rising yellow between bright red clouds. Calm winds, pleasant temperatures, and a ripping downhill to enjoy, set to a red sky backdrop.

A perfect Tucson evening.

And no flat tires.