05 May 2003

Cinco de Mayo

The SARS epidemic seems to have longer legs than the Iraqi war. The best Iraqi story is about mustaches, and the facto that more men are opting to shave off the furry lip-caterpillars associated with the late and unlamented regime. The pandemic as the top story this morning from Hong Kong, and the war has drifted into the background. One of my pals leaves Qatar this morning, headed for Bahrain for a debrief, and another checked in back home, done with the additional duty. They are saying that the virus is traveling through the sewers, a mode of transit I don't want to dwell on. I have a cold, the first in a couple years. It is either related to stress or travel, I don't know which. I am hoping it is not SARS. I ran out of vitamin C on Friday, and as you will see, I didn't have a chance to get to the Commissary to replenish my supply.

It is the anniversary of Alan Shepherd's 15 minute sub-orbital flight in a Mercury capsule 1961. I remember listening to it in my elementary school classroom on one of hose little ivory-colored transistor radios we all carried around. The teacher didn't mind. And of course, it is Cinco de Mayo, the imported festival which celebrates the Mexican discovery of mayonnaise. It is cold this morning, down again into the 40s, and I think I brought it back from Michigan with me. As usual, I am starting the week further behind than when I ended the last one. I recall Friday, the joy of slinking out of the Department at 5:30, a little guilty at leaving so early, but I was scheduled to have a social event at the Café Asia, where the waitresses are all from Thailand and Indonesia and Korea. They are cute and the drinks are strong and it was a marvelous way to dim the memories of the week, in which the Chief of Staff had announced that she had enough, she was fed up, and through tears, said she wouldn't be back today.

That was the first of three sets of tears that day, and I decided that whether the job was important or not, that was about three more events than I needed to deal with. By my personal count, that was five separate individuals who had wept in my presence in the office and I have only been there 67 days. That amounts to an emotional breakdown nearly every week. I have not observed that sort of frequency in nearly 27 years of Federal service. So this is quite interesting. We have a psychiatrist on staff now, and I may ask her for a professional assessment of the situation.

I certainly didn't have time to think about it this weekend. I got up Saturday with a mission and a plan to extract my son from the University of Michigan for the summer. He had a load of possessions to move, and a timeframe. This was the weekend to leave. There were a couple major events that were coming to a head at the office and I couldn't get away Friday. I had planned to drive the 500 miles to Ann Arbor, stay overnight, and then drive back down with him. As things were playing out in the office, there was no way I could get clear of the place to avoid being in the usual awful afternoon traffic on the Beltway. And the I-270 Technology Corridor, and then parked on I-70 and crawling along the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpikes in the black-cat night to US-27 north to I-94 west to Ann Arbor's State Street exit.

It looked like the best I could hope for was to get a few hours up the road, grab a few hours sleep somewhere, get up early, and do the quick turn-around in the late afternoon Saturday. I was filed with dread. Then the light came on. I decided to fly up Saturday morning, rent a car, pile my son's stuff in the back seat and drive only one way. Voila!

So up I got on Saturday to gather some essentials into my traveling briefcase, the one I ensure has nothing that the Transportation Security Administration could construe as threatening contained in it, pulled on my jeans and a sweater and drove the World's Fastest Production Pickup truck out the Dulles Access road. At that hour, headed out, I was the only one on the road and the truck rumbled with deep-throated content at the exercise. I inserted myself into the traveling cocoon of security successfully. My check-in was via e-ticket, and it was a breeze. Not so for the checked-baggage traveling public. The United counter was jammed with grim-faced travelers.

I maintained a happy countenance all the way to the "A" terminal at the mid-field. The confounded mobile lounge, scourge of the Dulles system, delivered me in the usual desultory fashion and checking the departure status board, flight 7200 to Detroit was on-time. Things were looking great, though, of course, appearances can be deceiving. My flight was one of those "United-operated-by-some-other-airline," a little airplanes, the scary little turboprops flown by young men who are still on their learners-permits. In this case it might have been the Free Mexican Airforce, and we changed planes because the first plane's aft cargo door could not be secured and we were switched to another gate which was boarding people for Toronto, the SARS capital of North America, and I did not see the gate agent handing out any health advisories.

So with a modicum of confusion I was seated sideways on a little seat almost out the door right at the front of the plane next to an Urban young man who apparently believed that full body relaxation was the only way to fly. The hatch wouldn't close but after sufficient banging they got it to latch and the kids flying seemed to be happy and off we went. There was one spectacular play for the proper glideslope (Whoa!), but in the end, landings equaled take-offs and I was soon enough standing in the Emerald Aisle of the National Car Rental Concern, selecting a Mitsubishi mini-SUV for my driving pleasure. It really was a nice little car, except for the prominent "no smoking" stickers on the dash which I ignored. I kept the windows down while I was burning things in the cockpit, and held my hand carefully out in the slipstream like I was driving my father's car on a high school date.

Ann Arbor was relaxed, most of the students gone already. I drove the SUV up on the lawn of the DEKE house for easy loading. No car goes off-road like a rental car. My son's stuff, carefully packed in plastic garbage bags, filled the entire interior to the roof. Thankfully, the vehicle had a CD player and I did not intend to use the rear-view mirrors anyway.

My son slipped in the Beatles CD with their twenty-one number one hits, and we sang and laughed down US-27 and across the flatlands of Ohio. He wanted to see the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton Ohio, and that is where we wound up at four in the afternoon. The bronze bust of O.J. Simpson was my most memorable moment, and we both enjoyed it thoroughly. It is as American a place as you can imagine, the repository of Sunday Hype and Hoopla and jersey's and ancient footballs and magic moments.

It is worth a story all by itself, but we had road to gobble, blue highways to travel down in the little Ohio Valley towns that have been sinking back into the rocky soil for a century. In the end, we passed by a Washington Monument, through Washington County, Washington Township and Washington City, none of them the right ones. But it all worked, the CDs blasting, and we are all home again, safe and sound.

My throat tickles this morning, and I might have an elevated temperature. Warning signs from the health advisory for SARS, if they had given me one at the airport. I think a ten-day self-quarantine might be exactly what the doctor ordered. I wouldn't want to be so tired that I burst into tears at the office.