Tripping

Composing entries for this blog when traveling can be awkward for the reason that some entries are made from a laptop and some, like this one, from a phone.

Typing on a phone with sausage-shaped fingers is troublesome as I can easily hit three characters at a time with one finger pad . This could make for awkward reading, since the reader would be faced with what looks like Enigma code. Inevitably there is an exceptional amount of backspacing and correcting that goes on. Enough to turn unintelligible gibberish into … another type of gibberish.

******

Last week, just after dawn, I looked out my kitchen window toward the walking path between us and the row of houses beyond and spied the largest and most beautiful red fox I’d ever seen trotting along the concrete toward the fields on the west side of town.

It’s size made me glad that I could see our cats snoozing in chairs behind me. I’m not as worried about Willow who is probably at her physical peak, but Poco is more like me, where out-thinking a foe is much the better way to go when compared to running away or climbing a tree.

And you really can’t out-think a threat as immediate as a fox standing in front of you with lunch on its mind.

******

On the drive to Denver from Montrose along Interstate 70, it has become commonplace for us to be delayed, sometimes for more than an hour. Once it was an accident that forced us to take a long detour through Leadville. Another time it was during a heavy snow, where there was an unscheduled avalanche abatement miles ahead of us somewhere out of sight. That one went on long enough to bring scores of us out of our cars to empty straining bladders in full view of fellow travelers in that long stalled line of automobiles.

On this trip we were alerted by one of those overhead electric signs which reach across the traffic lanes that I-70 was closed up ahead at milepost 116. Backtracking would have added hours to our journey, so we exited at milepost 114, which was in West Glenwood Springs, and found a Culver’s restaurant. There we learned that an accident up ahead was causing the delay, so we settled in and had our lunch.

We have an app on our phones dealing with Colorado road conditions, and there the accident was at 116, clearly marked by a red indicator on the map. So we finished eating and stayed in our booth until that red spot went away, then continued on without further trouble.

******

******

George Will is one of those uncommon birds these days. A conservative of the venerable stripe, dating from B.F.N. (Before Fox News). In previous decades his sense of prissy entitlement sometimes annoyed the very hell out of me, but he hasn’t lost his clarity, and that’s something special in these garbled times.

I have found that for this often intemperate liberal (moi) there are few things healthier than to read well-considered pieces by conservative writers. My firmly held (but often thinly-derived) opinions are thus tested, and it is not unheard of for actual change to occur as a result.

People like Will, David Brooks, and Andrew Sullivan come to mind as examples of folks I have found worth reading. Mr. Fawkes has collected examples of all three for your enlightenment.

******

.

******

Monday Robin and I went to the Denver Zoo, along with the Johnsons. It was a sunny, warmish day and about one hundred thousand other people had the same idea. Which made finding a parking spot a test of my equanimity. Just as I had reached the sputtering stage, a tiny space appeared that I was able to shoe-horn our car into, while still being able to open the doors wide enough to exit the vehicle.

Every time I visit a zoo I am torn. Certainly there are those successes where species are literally rescued from extinction and saved to eventually be returned to the wild. A good thing.

But even with ever-increasing amounts of space allotted to their “cages,” the universe for most of these intelligent animals is so tiny relative to what Nature formerly provided. We humans have so much to answer for … and so few excuses.

******