Airplane, Fire
I'm pretty sure I saw the Little Bear Fire in New Mexico when I was flying home the last time. I saw smoke in the distance and at the time I didn't realize we were in such an intense fire season. Since I read the Earth Observatory article about the fire I've been meaning to post about seeing it, but really that first line is all I need. My view of the fire looked like this:
I was flying from Ontario, CA to Dallas and was thinking twice about the Indian food I'd had for dinner the night before. This was a hastily planned trip that included presenting at a conference in San Diego and then going to Fort Irwin to talk to some people. Due to the circumstances I had a lot of time to kill in the middle of nowhere, and while the trip was hastily planned, through searching for things-to-do-at-Fort-Irwin I realized the Goldstone Deep Space Network of antennas was right next door and best of all they offered public tours.
So I emailed their tour coordinator and told her what times I would be available over the two days I was at Irwin and got back a rather general reply. She said they had tours on Thursday at 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., which seemed like if I showed up at either time I could take a tour. Right? Turns out that was a really bad assumption on my part, one I didn't realize until I was at the Goldstone guard station.
Me: I'm here for the one o'clock tour!
Guard: Why aren't you on my list?
Me: Oh crap.
Luckily I had made it to the guard gate early so the guard gave me the number to call for tours and told me I'd have to drive back to Fort Irwin to get a cell phone signal. Which I frantically did because I had spent the earlier part of the week blabbing incessantly about the Goldstone DSN tour I was going to take on Thursday. So after the 20 minute drive back to cell phone service I called the tour hotline and no one answered, and so I left a long and rambling message about apologizing, mixed messages, and wanting to take a tour. And then I waited.
And then I decided to go and check into the Fort Irwin Inn where I, unfortunately, had to spend the night. Then John called and said he'd go ahead and give a 1:00 tour even though I had failed to schedule it beforehand. I rushed back for the tour which, turns out only had me on it. Still it lasted three hours. The first hour was devoted to an explanation about the antennas, a lot of talk about space missions, and a look around their small museum, The next hour was driving around to the antenna clusters. John the tour guide was exceptional too. He was in school at UC Berkeley but had started giving tours of Goldstone sometime in high school and now just comes back during school breaks. He could answer all of my questions and we really did talk a long time about the Voyager missions. After the tense waiting, everything worked out and it was all so cool.
I was flying from Ontario, CA to Dallas and was thinking twice about the Indian food I'd had for dinner the night before. This was a hastily planned trip that included presenting at a conference in San Diego and then going to Fort Irwin to talk to some people. Due to the circumstances I had a lot of time to kill in the middle of nowhere, and while the trip was hastily planned, through searching for things-to-do-at-Fort-Irwin I realized the Goldstone Deep Space Network of antennas was right next door and best of all they offered public tours.
Me: I'm here for the one o'clock tour!
Guard: Why aren't you on my list?
Me: Oh crap.
Luckily I had made it to the guard gate early so the guard gave me the number to call for tours and told me I'd have to drive back to Fort Irwin to get a cell phone signal. Which I frantically did because I had spent the earlier part of the week blabbing incessantly about the Goldstone DSN tour I was going to take on Thursday. So after the 20 minute drive back to cell phone service I called the tour hotline and no one answered, and so I left a long and rambling message about apologizing, mixed messages, and wanting to take a tour. And then I waited.
And then I decided to go and check into the Fort Irwin Inn where I, unfortunately, had to spend the night. Then John called and said he'd go ahead and give a 1:00 tour even though I had failed to schedule it beforehand. I rushed back for the tour which, turns out only had me on it. Still it lasted three hours. The first hour was devoted to an explanation about the antennas, a lot of talk about space missions, and a look around their small museum, The next hour was driving around to the antenna clusters. John the tour guide was exceptional too. He was in school at UC Berkeley but had started giving tours of Goldstone sometime in high school and now just comes back during school breaks. He could answer all of my questions and we really did talk a long time about the Voyager missions. After the tense waiting, everything worked out and it was all so cool.
posted by Ellen at 9:54 PM
7 comments
