Like many bird watchers from around the hemisphere (and for all I know from beyond as well), I’m off on a journey to the Midwest Birding Symposium in Lakeside, Ohio – in my particular case to represent Wingscapes and share with the attendees the benefits to be found in the new BirdCam products. As I have been awake since 3:00 AM and flying a connected flight from Oregon to Ohio via Texas in economy class on an American airline only to finally arrive at my hotel to a power failure lasting hours I am, needless to write, completely “shagged out.” Thus, I would simply like to offer a few disconnected musings I entertained myself with on the drive from my final airport of arrival in Cleveland to my lodgings in Port Clinton.
The sunsets in northern Ohio are far more grand than I ever expected them to be.
Having sustained myself all day on only a pre-dawn croissant and a double espresso, upon arrival in Cleveland I was overcome by a craving for protein, salt, and fat (which I was able to satisfy thanks to the proximity of an Applebee’s to Ohio Highway 2). I attribute this otherwise inexplicable craving to a deeply embedded primitive urge that was activated by a lower-than-usual intake of nutrients combined by the stress of airline travel. Try as we might, we cannot completely overcome the biological survival instincts our distant ancestors developed on the savannas of Africa.
As one who travels frequently, I have begun to consider as welcome friends the announcers on whatever local public radio station broadcasts in the area in which I find myself. They lend a sense of needed and much appreciated continuity to my life while I am away from my home and family.
And one final though from the black-out to round out the evening: the silence realized when the otherwise ubiquitous electrical power grid fails, even locally, is initially disconcerting but soon very much welcomed.
