09 January 2004

Mission to Mars

A dusting of snow is falling on the city. It will snarl the commute. Already the pandemonium has begun. A commuter lost control of his vehicle approaching Arlington on I-66 where it narrows to two inbound lanes and flipped the guardrail and put his car on the Metro tracks, reducing the Orange Line to single track operations.

Thank God I am not relying on the Metro to get around this morning, but on the other hand, that means I will be driving in the snow across the broken pavement and up the District heights. And then back out to the periphery of the known world outside the Beltway.

Thank goodness it was not doing this last night. The County was dark and the wide boulevards through the trees had no definition. The lights of the big houses flickered behind the trees as I whizzed by. There were no features by which to navigate, only the broad dark lanes of the parkway punctuated by the bright lights of the strip malls and then the darkness again.

I was blue. It was a good time with my son. I love him so much, and our relationship seems fine. He cleaned me out for cash, between the dinner and the office supplies store. When eventually we arrived at the large home in The Station, he tapped me for beer money. I had a couple singles in my pants pocket, but otherwise the wallet was empty except for receipts and bills and a Metro pass.

I will have to fix that. There is an automated cash machine at the Department of Homeland Security, and I will visit that before my meeting with the customer there at 11:00 today. I will have to monitor the snow from the office and hope that the meeting does not run more than an hour. My other principle customer wants to meet at Mclean, just beyond the Beltway at 1:00. Lurking behind this is the dreaded White Paper I need to complete for a meeting on Monday. I am so bored with it I could scream and I do not want to work Sunday. It will be busy enough, getting my son to Reagan National airport for his flight and continuing to move things downstairs.

It is impossible to get anything done and I feel the disaster beginning in slow motion. The bookcases I need to get the books out of the closet where they are stacked will take a month to arrive. The plantation shutters are the same. The contractor I had hoped would have been complete by now was a no-show and ended in cancellation. The bed I ordered in October has shown no sign of arriving, though the company is optimistic that it could happen sometime soon.

I have the feeling that I will be sitting amid the boxes and papers again, my life piled in random heaps. Years surfacing as files slide to the floor, mixing together, the seventies sliding into the eighties, the uncollated nineties scattered wherever. I saw some disco there, some pictures improbable sideburns.

The new century is still patiently waiting for attention. I found 2002 the other day under something else.

The President is going to lift us out of these winter doldrums.

They say his Dad got crucified because he had no agenda after the first Gulf War. George W is not going to make the same mistake. He decided to make all the Illegals legal last week, getting cozy with the Hispanic vote. Now there is something for the space exploration community, a powerful untapped voting base. I hear that Howard Dean appeals to them.

The President is going to take care of that. He is going to return to the Moon and establish a permanent station there, something on the order of South Pole McMurdo Station in the vacuum, and then he is going to make a Mission to Mars a national priority. He says we need to go, part of restoring optimism and national purpose. He might ask some other countries to go with us, a Coalition of the Willing, if you will.

From the Moon we will launch other rockets optimized for the interplanetary voyages of discovery.

I hope we get started on it right away. If we need to put up shutters or bookcases, you can never order them soon enough.