Earth, wind, and fire

DISCLAIMER: the opinionated political satire expressed here is in no way affiliated or aligned with the views of Cornell University.

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One tiresome flight and an equally tiresome drive later, we've arrived safely in Mojave. It feels good to be back at this crazy place, which can only be described as a harsh clash of intellectual adventurism and solitary desert...ism. In classic cudgc fashion we arrived late- I think I got to bed at about 3am local time. For what it's worth, I do not recommend that strategy as a way to get accustomed to local time. I think the overall effect has been that I am now accustomed to exactly zero of the timezones on the face of this poor planet, though perhaps there's some pocket of Indiana in which I might sleep appropriately.

We touched down in California amidst some dense fog, which was fine enough by me since I was not the one flying the jetBlue A320. The more bizarre and portentious weather arrived shortly after- a heavy wind storm and a minor earthquake. The wind storm was no ordinary kite flying weather that I'd ever seen; in fact, it was only 5 mph and a few buckets of water short of a hurricane. On top of that it lasted the entire ENTIRE day, which means that it was there blowing peoples' glasses across the parking lot in the morning, there spewing sand into our mouths as we fought our way to Denny's, there knocking trucks over as we visited the hardware store, and there pushing us sideways as we piled into the In and Out Burger for dinner.

We set up shop in a portion of an airplane hangar at the Mojave Air (and Space) Port, hunkered down against the fuselage of an Antonov AN-2. That brings us to the present, where I am briefly checking over my code and falling asleep between games of solitaire. I hope things stay that way... not because I particularly like playing solitaire, but because it means stuff is not broken.