(The rear exposure of the spectacular re-modeling of Raven and Big Mama’s house in the Little Village by the Bay).

It is the usual time and I am up doing the usual thing. It would seem like the last five days did not happen in the same space-time continuum in which I find myself lodged; it had so much in it. Some of it was spent out of body altogether, or so it seemed.

Hurtling up and down the Interstates, I was at one with motion and driving strategies on the always-under-repair ribbons of asphalt and concrete.

Forging forward in a gritty world of big trucks and little cars, big hills and long boring stretches of soybeans and corn under skies that alternately presented the best and sunniest of the end of summer, and the coming rains of winter as the season turned upon me Up North.

I accumulated more pictures- that is one of the things I do as a pretend photo-journalist- but these are emotional ones. The rear of the old family house is transformed by the reconstruction; the interior shot shows the central living area of the house blown out into glass and light with the walls eliminated and new tongue-and-groove flooring.

(Image of the smoke from the crash courtesy US Park Service.)

The image of the ball of smoke over the Shanksville pastures was captured from the “Interpretive” panels at the visitor’s center just beyond the debris field from the crash of Flight 93.

It truly is Fall up there, with the colors just beginning to erupt in brilliant reds and orange and yellow. A cold tongue of frost extended as far south as the Central Pennsylvania highlands, too.

I stopped yesterday morning at the crash-site of Flight 93. I was approaching Johnstown, famous for flood, and mulled a detour. “If not now, when?” I thought, and pulled off at the exit.

The hijackers, damn them, may actually have been headed for the Capitol Dome, but at the time we thought they were coming for us at CIA HQ. Damn cold and damn emotional, looking out across the meadow of wildflowers toward the bolder and the gap in the little copse of Aspen trees that mark the edge of the pit that was gouged out of the strip-mined earth when the jet rolled inverted and smashed in at almost 600 miles an hour.

(The crash site of Flight 93 yesterday. The white dot in the middle and the gap in the Aspen grove marks the resting place of the passenger and crew and their murderers. Photo Socotra.)

Driving east on US 30 over the Hole In the Wall tunnel over the Alleghany mountain spine was an adventure in hairpin turns and blind humps on the asphalt. Great wind-farms near the summit; disorientation at the unaccustomed and severe grades.

The Fall is coming to the Piedmont, but the wool Pendleton shirt I was wearing (I have owned it since 1974) only became a little oppressive when I rolled down the window here in Virginia and saw the hip-twenty-somethings in Ballston wandering around in shorts as I wheeled onto Glebe Road from I-66.

(The Panzer with petroleum umbilical near Torch Lake).

I had approached from the West, since the last forty miles in Maryland approaching the capital is just so…stupid. That asshole driving the red Blazer had some pals with him, and I was not sure I could take them on with the ball-bat I keep in the backseat.

They had seemed willing to kill me already, so once I got enough distance on them to be invisible, I ducked off on Rt 15 South and took the Greenway and Dulles Access Road in for the dog-end of 1800 mile trip.

I was filled to the brim with talk radio of both stripes- the exultant Dems and bitter Republicans. No, wait, beyond the brim. The vitriol sloshed over the top.

There was a lot to think about when I escaped to purely musical channels on the satellite radio that emanated from the speakers. I thought about how curious the whole swirl had been.

Stories I would have written, and might yet actually get to one of these days:

The Panzerwagen (an auto review of a pretty neat car and how it responds in crisis- see the last topic)

The One Percent (the people next door to my pal in suburban Detroit- my God, you have never seen a formerly upscale suburban neighborhood transformed into Baronial splendor that evokes the Gilded Age.)

Newlyweds (My son and his wife’s little 1950s bungalow just a mile or so from the 1% neighborhood where I grew up)

Storm Front (watching the Autumnal rain sweep toward the shore of the Big Lake from North Manitou island in a charming 110-year-old bluff-top retreat near Leland)

Like (I’d Seen) a Ghost (meeting the contents of the storage warehouse and plunging into despair)

Filling a Panzer (The stuff I thought our old friend Dee- “Call me Mom, now,” and I agreed was a few picture albums for me to take away from Torch Lake wasn’t. Books in boxes filled the car. Why did we think these things were so important?)

Petoskey Phoenix (the astonishing reconstruction of Mom and Dad’s House- OMG!)

Recovery (walking out of a gas station in Toledo and almost falling, making me realize I am not recovered, not just yet)

Crappy MOTEL (An account of the Meth Dealers in the next room at La Siesta, my destination of choice if I am falling asleep on the Ohio Turnpike short of Cleveland)

Let’s Roll (visit to the Shanksville, PA, crash site of Flight 93. Highly emotional.)

Concealed Carry (Road Rage- not mine- approaching Washington, and wishing I already had the concealed carry pistol permit that was waiting for me at home- though of course it was not legal in Maryland. Why do Terrapins drive so badly?)

Pretty crazy five days. Love the Panzer enough that I think I will continue to pay for it. Not a classic beauty, but a Teutonic gem of a car. It is down in the garage, still filled with boxes of the….crap…that my Brother and I thought were worthy of special treatment. I am hoping the photo albums are in there, but will wait to look at the farm.

I can’t think that well at the moment, though I know I have to go back to the Northland and deal with the large pile of things in storage, and nothing is really ever over.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com