A head-to-head high speed autonomous race. Twenty laps of driverless cars at speeds up to 200 mph around the famous Indy oval, all racing for a million dollar prize.
It didn't turn out exactly as expected. Based on two years of practice performance, they had to keep changing expectations. In the end, they had nine cars make a total of eleven laps, one at a time. Three of those laps resulted in crashes.
The idea of autonomous driving is awesome, but maybe not really ready to be a thing yet.
One carefully executed exit from the state
and the New Mexico map is done!
Now, about Texas.
We're in Amarillo, way high in the Panhandle.
We have photo evidence.
I'm told they forgot to get drunk. There are tattoos, however.
The Palm Girls: Coconut palm, sable palm, and date palm. Like the Spice Girls, but different.
No motorcycles today though. Thankfully, none of the husbands will have to suffer the indignity of riding on the back of a Harley anytime soon.
Headed for Denver. Christie too from Edmonds. Becky and Brian picked them up at DIA.
As best I understand it, tomorrow the three women are all going to get drunk, get tattoos, then buy motorcycles. Grandchild Taylor is going to accompany them and get a different tattoo of her own as well. Matt was going to join them for a touch-up of one of his, but it turns out he's not there until next week.
Skeptical? I swear, at least several of the above statements are true.
About teenage decision making. I’ve heard more than one person say “I’m surprised that I’m still alive” when reflecting on their teenage years and that got me to thinking; thinking about making mostly good decisions but interspersing poorly considered ones as well.
At seventeen, I drove Roger Lawson and me to Yosemite National Park. It was Spring. We camped for the weekend and drove home. Simple, right? It was, however, a little more eventful than that. On a warm Saturday morning, wearing cutoffs, looking at an island in the river, it seemed like a good idea to go in the water and swim to that spot. I was a good swimmer. It wasn’t a difficult decision. So in we went, and were immediately swept away by the frigid swift water. I made the island, but only just. I landed on the final downstream point. As I got out of the water though, Roger went by, unable to make it. We didn’t have a plan for what to do if we didn’t make the island, but whatever was going to happen to Roger, it wasn’t going to happen to him alone. I went back in behind him.
In the center of the high country current, we went cold pretty fast. There seemed to be opportunities to swim to shore but nothing worked. The current was too strong. Our best efforts left us still in the center of the current. One more bend, I expended the last bit of strength I had in the cold water as my arms went numb. I gave it my all, but to no avail. No strength. Nothing left. I was done. I knew I was done.
But soon after I had accepted my fate, the river bent the other way, cast me out of the current, and gently deposited me right up on a sandy beach. Roger arrived on the same shore about fifty yards downstream. We took the time we needed to recover then headed off for our next adventure.
I’m surprised I’m still alive. Why did we survive? Dumb luck. Teenager survival: sporadic bouts of dumb decision-making and dumb luck.
We don't see Jim and Elle a lot, but we've seen them for a lot of years.
We first met about fifteen years ago at an RV Park in Golden, Colorado; motorhomes parked side-by-side. We only talked for a few minutes, but six months later we met up again at Gulf Waters RV Resort on Mustang Island outside Corpus Christi. It's been like that; we end up at the same State Park, or the same commercial RV park in whatever state, or we stayed at their house above Carbondale in Colorado. Now they're in Scottsdale. We all just keep making these meetups happen. Last night they brought pizza and chocolate cupcakes with whipped cream to our house for dinner around the campfire until, if you can believe it, we got chased inside by a rainstorm!
But now we're farther south, in a commercial RV park in Mesa, much closer to our son's house. Still north of Matt, but a lot closer.
We've done some damage to the New Mexico map. When we got there, it looked like this:
Now, we've passed through more counties, and it looks like this:
That bright red county in the middle is where Bosque del Apache is. We've recorded 159 species there.
Tonight, we're at Cave Creek Regional Park in Arizona.
Love this place.
Waiting for the evening quail to come in.
It's a 1922 portable air compressor! This one powered rock drills and jackhammers.
Three people got it!
