The Aerie
The problem in America isn't that the Republican party has sold its soul to corporate wealth, Christian fundamentalism and plutarchs. The problem with America is that Democrats have, too. The problem with America is that the Republicans and the Democrats are units of the same organization, an organization that has consolidated its control over the American political process to the exclusion of all others.
Learned men have scolded me for my opinion, claiming that a two-party system is somehow both best and inevitable given the structure of our government and our electoral system. Despite the fact that I do not have a degree in political science, I fail to be persuaded. I insist there IS something wrong, under any system of power, in which one organization exclusively controls all the mechanisms of government.
It seems characteristic of Americans that we prefer dichotomies: good and bad, wrong and right, Republican and Democrat. Anyone who speaks up against dichotomy is branded with anti-intellectual and (since decisiveness is considered a male trait, and nuance a female trait) mysogynistic labels - "soft," "wishy-washy," "flip-flopper," "sensitive." The position of strength in America is dichotomy: the position of weakness is thoughtfulness. Reactionary versus thoughtful, and even that is a dichotomy.
So the problem isn't that Republicans are reactionary and Democrats are flip-floppers. The problem is that the political system has exploited our penchant for dichotomy to foster the mythology of democracy under the Two-Party system. We are reduced to splitting hairs and told that these are crises: which wealthy son of privilege shall we select as figurehead of the D.C. political juggernaut?
But what will be the difference if one man is picked over another? A little more money in one Department over another, a slightly greater chance of some bills passing, and other bills being vetoed? Small differences in troop deployments and foreign aid.
None of us expect truly fundamental change, and the political system would strongly propagandize against fundamental change. No matter which candidate wins, no one expects to see US military expenditures decimated or even halved, no one expects to see teacher salaries doubled, no one expects to see nationalized health care, no one expects to drive an electric car, no one expects unilateral nuclear disarmament, a base on the moon, a 32 hour work week or free tuition. Heck, we won't even see instant-runoff voting. In fact, we've been so strongly conditioned against such ideas that my even mentioning them undercuts my credibility with many readers and labels me a socialist, an idealist, or just a kook.
The last gasp of naive progressivism was Bill and Hilary Clinton's reckless efforts to institute a national health care plan, which died under a withering propaganda blitz that labelled the Clintons socialists and communists, and left us with the system that we have today: ruthlessly profiteering, crippling to the national economy, and firmly in control of government policy. After that failure, no new president is going to risk losing political capital by trying to effect fundamental change in the system.
We aren't REALLY facing a choice this election season - we're simply participating in the bread-and-circuses entertainment set up for us by a self-perpetuating monolithic political system. We don't REALLY have a democracy, because we don't REALLY have a choice. No matter which man wins, the same Beltway bureaucracy with grind along, the same world-spanning corporations will continue to extract profit, and the world will continue to heat up and choke on our wastes.
It's easy to get caught up in the soap-opera of American politics, but in the end that's all it is, a soap opera. Radio pundits can call each other names if they wish, but their performances are mere distractions from the machinations of power that have turned our Americna democracy into a mere supporting mythology behind the show.
My eldest son decided he wasn't interested in the computerized steering wheel that I picked out for his birthday. Apparently Midtown Madness and the Simpsons driving game held too little appeal, since we've had each for some time. So while his mother and sister went off to exchange his sister's birthday ring for a different one (picky kids eh?) I took the boys to the Micro Center to exchange the steering wheel for the Diablo Expansion Pack and Tribes II.
What followed next was, like all examples of life going slightly awry, caused by road construction.
We left the Micro Center, and I intended to jump back onto the freeway at the 36th street entrance. But the 36th street bridge was closed for repairs, so instead of turning we went straight. Straight past the Final Weekend Sale of the Unpainted Place.
Now I had recalled seeing this final weekend sale advertised on the television, and being on the market for a new couch it had caught my attention. Our old couch has been begging for replacement for ages.
I bought this couch when Theresa and I were courting and I lived in a (literally) closet-sized efficiency apartment. It was furnished with a castoff vinyl couch of my parents', so cracked and jagged that sitting down on it in shorts risked slicing open one's external iliac artery, being stuck to the vinyl, and bleeding to death. To say that it did not enhance necking is to understate the problem. Additionally, my bed was lofted into a tiny space above the desk.
So the logical answer at the time seemed to be a hide-a-bed.
The hideabed worked well when we were young, and rested lightly upon the earth. With the passage of time, however, the divers springs, crossbars, and bolts of the folding mattress made themselves more and more known. Unfortunately I had not considered the mass of this object when purchasing it, and my friend Keith eventually imposed a moratorium on further assistance in moving it out of concern for his spine. Finally our children made their own impressions upon the couch over the years, spilling various snack and bodily fluids on with childlike abandon.
So lately our couch has stopped being a couch, and has become something akin to a sour washrag wrapped around a brittle metallic skeleton. It has sags in certain places and smells in others that make sitting or lying upon it an adventure in mysterious bruises. Clearly it had to go.
So when I stumbled with the boys upon the closing sale for the Unpainted Place, I decided to inspect the situation.
Things looked good. Several varieties of couch were available for sale, and the salespeople from what I could overhear were inclined to take deep discounts in exchange for moving product. A sign into the back section of the store even encouraged bargaining with the words "Ask a representative for additional discounts!" While I'm not much of a haggler, I figured this would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
I called the wife and daughter, whose errand had taken them to nearby Robbinsdale, and told them to make haste in arriving here at the sale in order that the wife might select the appropriate couch. The boys and I then passed one of the most stultifying hours imaginable, wandering between a crowded furniture store crawling with hungry salespeople, and the less-than-stimulating environs of the store parking lot. Several increasingly impatient calls were made. First the wife and daughter had decided to stop and show off the daughter's new ring to my mother, who had provided as a birthday gift the original ring that had been exchanged. Then they were unable to head south on Highway 100 because of road construction, and gone several miles north in search of a place to turn around. Finally they arrived, by which time the boys were ready to be anywhere but in that store.
But I thought "no matter, we will soon have a delightful new couch, purchased at a discount." I hoped to rival the $500 dollar giant refridgerator that my wife had found, and the $2000 off the minivan which had been the result of a fortuitous clerical error in our favor.
We spent some time subjecting several couches with our buttocks, and discussing the impact of recliner footrests upon traffic through our tiny living room. The saleswoman, a middle-aged Latina with a raptor's gaze, spent considerable time driving off her fellow salespeople like an angry bird protecting its nest-eggs. Amidst the flutter, she confided in us that the couch we were inspecting was "the best bargain" in the store, in part because they "had 'way too many in stock."
My ears perked up at this slip of intelligence! Surely with her own words I would drive the bargain deeply into the armor of Profit, possibly even drawing the blood of Below Cost. I resisted the urge to rub my hands together.
Then disaster struck. Another couple came and sat down in "our" couch, and my wife, growing nervous, uttered the three words no bargain-hungry husband ever wants to hear: "We'll take it."
We'll take it? We'll TAKE it?
Just that morning, while donating clotting sells (a lengthy process called "apheresis") at the Red Cross, I happened to catch "Ghostbusters" on the cable. Doctors Venkman and Spengler were inspecting the ramshackle firehouse, accompanied by an avaricious real estate saleslady, and had launched into a lengthy description of its flaws. Suddenly Dr. Stantz - whose third mortgage was funding the venture - appeared at the top of a fireman's pole.
"Does this thing work?" he cried, and sliding down the pole announced, "We'll take it!" The real estate saleslady worked to suppress a smirk as Stantz ran back up the stairs, crying "We should sleep here! Tonight!"
Only a few hours later, and there I was, re-creating that dread scene. With three simple words my spouse had disarmed and emasculated me, making negotiations an impossibility. "We'll take it."
So the couch is on the way, and I will have to work several extra hours to make up for the difference in price. But I wasn't too angry with my apologetic wife. After I upbraided her for her nervous outburst, I had to confess that she still had a lot of credit earned from saving us $1000 on a $1500 refrigerator.
Besides, I thought to myself as we drove home to await the delivery of our new piece of furniture, I'll get my revenge.
I'm blogging this...
But I was travelling, not thinking - running through O'Hare airport to catch the earlier flight, picking up the rental car, finagling my way out of the Williams Tunnel and onto the right road south. I'd splurged on a Ford Mustang convertible for my rental car, and I was practially to the Cape before I began to think about what I was doing, and what I was feeling.
But finally I was there, at the reviewal for my deceased birthfather.
I made my way to the funeral hall, navigating two Massachussets traffic circles without having an accident, and arrived to find the line for the reviewal stretching out the door.
I stood in line outside, wondering what to do. I didn't know whether I should push past the crowd and announce my presence to my half-siblings, or wait politely in line to get to them. Then I started to wonder, what side of this line was I supposed to be on?
I also was anxious about the people around me. What should I say if I were asked how I knew Ralph? "Well, um, I'm his bastard." No, that would be wrong. "I'm his child who was given up for adoption." Too dramatic. And no matter what answer I came up with, the reply I got back was "Well why are you standing in line?"
But it was impatience that finally won out, and I slipped away from the line as soon as it got through the door.
Inside I thought I spotted my half-brother Sam, but the fellow I addressed did not respond to the name. Then I saw Sam in the receiving line and realized that this doppleganger must be a cousin. Looking around, I saw a lot of dopplegangers: my birthfather's face, my own face, repeated with variations all over the room.
Sam being surrounded by a crowd of sympathizing guests, I made my way over to my half-sister Catherine and said hello. "I don't know what side of the line to be on" I confessed. "You're always welcome on this side," she replied kindly.
But I still didn't feel right, so I wandered around for a while, greeting Sam and then Susan, and then Ralph's widow Georgie. Finally I found myself talking to Ralph's brothers - my uncles.
"Now who are you?" one of them asked, looking at me curiously. It was the moment I had dreaded - being recognized as clearly related to Ralph, but being a stranger.
"I'm um, his eldest son."
It was no secret in the family that Ralph had a son who had been adopted away, and it was no secret that I'd found him ten years ago. But my presence at his reviewal and memorial was by no means assumed - indeed, I don't know that anyone had really considered it either way. So his brothers greeted me with polite surprise, but were occupied with other well wishers. I resumed wandering, taking photographs of the various mosaics of pictures from Ralph's life.
Finally I was approached by a woman who introduced herself as Ann, and asked who I was. She was delighted when I told her, and immediately introduced me around to a whirlwind of names, few of which I remember except for Warren - who I'd mistaken for Sam - and Peter.
Finally I felt comfortable. Enough people in the room knew who I was to at least tell the rest if anyone asked. After several minutes meeting new relatives, I wandered over to stand next to Catherine again - and this time I felt comfortable saying "I'm Ralph's eldest son" to those who asked. I felt like I had some right to be there now that the extended family knew who I was. I really, really didn't want my presence to be disruptive, or to make the reviewal "about me" in any way - but I really wanted to be there, too. By the time the end of the line crawled into view, I felt like I'd managed that, at least approximately.
Afterwards Ralph's children went to the home of his ex-wife Linda. Poor Linda had it harder than I did - I didn't want Ralph's funeral to be "about me", but I at least arrived with little or no baggage. Linda had the difficulty of being the ex-wife, with whatever strings came attached to that. I'm not judging anybody here, just acknowledging that Linda was in a tight spot, wanting to attend Ralph's ceremonies, but not wanting to be disruptive. I could empathize.
But her concerns were not apparent as we visited her home, both on Friday and on Saturday. She was extremely kind and gracious, and both she and her friends and relatives went out of their way to make me feel welcome. I met a number of her relatives who had come down for what was, after all, the death of her ex-husband.
Also when at Linda's house I got to meet my nephew, Catherine's son Benjamin. And there's no way to avoid stating the obvious, this kid is BIG. We're talking linebacker-big, off the charts in the size percentiles. If this kid keeps up, he's going to be seven feet tall and four feet across the shoulders. Not a fat boy, really, just big, big, big. Cute as hell, with his mother's dark eyes and very cheerful. A good kid.
After visiting Linda and having something to eat (the food was delicious but actually by then I would have eaten sawdust stirred into motor oil) we headed back to Sam's house, where I was given to crash in his son's room. I was so tired by then that I passed out almost immediately.
There was plenty of time upon awakening to prepare for the 11:00 a.m. service. Sam's wife Lynn was kind enough to prepare breakfast for everyone (I washed up afterwards), and we talked for a while before putting on our monkey suits for the service.
At the church Catherine kept busy setting up the pictures in the meeting hall, and dealing with the flowers which were locked into the funeral home despite promises that the building would be open. Eventually we all gathered in an anteroom and talked with visitors as we waited for the service to begin. Eventually we proceeded through the chapel and were seated up front, where I found myself in between Sam and Lynn.
The service was very nice - about Ralph rather than about God as have been so many of the funerals I've been to recently. Most touching was when his four older brothers gathered to give the eulogy.
We were then asked to share any memories we may have had about Ralph. I was unsure whether to say anything. The first fellow rose to speak, a boyhood friend of Ralph's who remembered wrestling with him on the front lawn, but after that there was a pause where nobody seemed about to say anything. My caretaker mode kicked in, and I rose to my feet.
Of course, then I realized I had to say something.
"I didn't have a lot of time to get to know Ralph," I said, "But during the time I knew him he was never anything but kind, never anything but generous, and never anything but gracious. I didn't get to know him as well as I'd have liked, but I think I got to know what was important about him." That's about what I said, and I'll stand by that sentiment.
After the service we had a long reception, featuring delicious lobster and crab rolls as well as two hundred kinds of dessert, all chocolate. I had opportunity to talk to many new relatives, including my uncles, several cousins, some aunts, and even one woman who identified herself as an adoptee as well.
Everyone was terribly, terribly kind. There are no formal guidelines on how to be a reunited adoptee at a birthfather's funeral. There are no formal rules for how to treat a reunited adoptee who shows up at one. But formal rules weren't necessary - Ralph's extended family is steeped in courtesy and kindness and general decency, and that more than compensated for the fact that we didn't have any steps to our reunion dances.
After the reception we went to Linda's for a time, and then over to Ralph's house to visit with Georgie. Having treasured his garden, I took the time to photograph all around the outside of Ralph's house - I doubt anyone else will be able to keep it the way Ralph kept it. Then, the weather being fine we all moved out to the front yard and watched baby Benjamin learn to walk on a sloping lawn.
We had a minute after leaving Georgie's to head down to the beach. Sam and Lynn seemed to think that it would be wrong to visit the Cape for three days and not hit the beach, and I think they were right. None of us were dressed to swim and the weather was too cold in any event, so we waded in the warm surf and buried the kids in the sand. Nick looked especially fetching with a pair of sand boobs.
Eventually we packed up and headed back to Sam's, and Catherine and John came by to visit briefly, despite being terribly exhausted and facing a long drive home. For Catherine, in particular, it must be a terribly stressful time: a new baby, living in an apartment while building a new house, job changes, and now Ralph's passing. I hope somebody gives that girl a vacation, and soon.
But despite all this she and John stopped by to visit, and I really appreciated it.
The next morning was great, well, except for the hurricane. By Sunday morning Hurricane Charley arrived at Cape Cod, as tattered and destroyed as a Florida trailer park. As we drove to breakfast a deluge opened up, and I drove with the windshield wipers at maximum, peering through the rain at the fans of water erupting from Sam's car as I followed it.
But we arrived at the restaurant in one piece and had a very nice breakfast together, which they allowed me to pick up. Afterwards I took a couple of snapshots of Sam and his family, including Lynn's neice Mackenzie, and then we said our goodbyes.
Despite the rain - or maybe because of it - there was no traffic at the bridge off of Cape Cod (although I narrowly missed an accident in the turnaround on the far side). Although we took our time having breakfast and I left much later than I expected, I found myself approaching Boston with plenty of time before my four o'clock flight.
So I took a detour to visit a friend I know from the Internet, who I had met back in 2001 while studying for my CISSP exam. Tom and his wife were very friendly, chatting while they packed up for an afternoon barbeque. They even packed me a lunch to eat on the plane!! It turned out being exactly what I needed to stave off starvation later in the evening, so I was profoundly grateful. Also, I was able to use part of it for a bribe...
I set forth from Tom's place and made good time to the airport, discovering along the way that the Callahan tunnel (I think that's the name) is not a toll tunnel like the outbound Williams tunnel. Well before I expected to be there, I was at the rental lot and dropping off my car. I arrived at the airport almost two hours early.
My flight back was screwey. American routed me to Minneapolis via Washington D.C. (on United) and then Chicago - a different plane each time. The schedule had me travelling for nine hours and arriving at home after midnight on Monday morning. So I began immediately trying to grab an earlier flight in Boston. I was successful, and took off for D.C. at 3:00 instead of four.
Seated at the very back of the aircraft, I grabbed a number of cool photographs on approach to D.C. Strangely enough, when we landed they opened up the back door of the plane as well as the front, and allowed us to disembark onto the tarmack and follow a path on the pavement to a door back into the terminal. Instead of being the last off the plane, I was one of the first.
I hurried through the airport to the American Airlines desk and located the gate for the next flight to Chicago. Hurrying to the gate, I managed to grab a standby seat, and shortly flew out of D.C. about half an hour before I'd been even due to arrive.
Chicago was trickier. Our flight was delayed on landing and spent an extra half-hour circling the city. By the time we landed the next Minneapolis flight, 8:30, was just about ready to board. "The flight is full," the attendant told me at the gate, "and standby is closed." I despaired of making the flight. If I missed this one the next flight to Minneapolis was my original flight out, 10:49, arriving just after midnight. All the gains I had accrued on my prior standby flights would be lost.
Tom and his wife had packed me some Lindt chocolates along with an orange and a sandwich. I quickly slipped one from my bag and tucked it into my boarding pass envelope. "Please," I told the gate attendant, "Could you take down my name? I'd REALLY appreciate it." I passed her the envelope.
It disappeared below the counter. She clicked some keys and produced some beeps.
"Wait over there," she said, "and don't hover!,"
I waited. The plane boarded. A pilot arrived and asked for the jumpseat. She called a family of three on standby.
"I'm not hovering!" I called from across the lounge.
"Your voice is hovering," she called back sharply.
She called for two passengers to board. No reaction. My hopes began to rise. Then a couple appeared. He was tall and handsome, like a Ken doll. She was tall and gorgeous, like a brunette Barbie. They tonguewrestled vigorously and apparently she won, because he turned and boarded the plane. One down. A few minutes later a heavy fellow on a cell phone walked briskly through the gate, hardly pausing to have his boarding pass scanned.
Both missing passengers had boarded. The jumpseats were full. And standby had been closed already when I arrived. I turned dejectedly and started to gather my bag to find a place to spend the next two and a half hours.
Then she called my name!
I whirled, handed over my flight coupon, and received a boarding pass in return. I had completed my trifecta of standby flights, and arrived in Minneapolis before 10:00 p.m.
So my long weekend odyssey ended with a full night's sleep.
So I lost my birthfather, and any chance I might have had to get to know better one of the two people who gave me life. But I found along the way was a generous, welcoming family, and witnessed for myself the rewards Ralph reaped for a lifetime spent as part of a closely-knit community. It was emotionally very challenging, both on the up- and down-sides, but it was a worthy undertaking in so many different ways. I feel a lot closer to Ralph's extended family and my siblings, and very fortunately for having the chance to get to know them.
I'm off to Cape Cod tomorrow for my birthfather's funeral. This is too many funerals in too short a time - attending funerals is not something I want to get "good at."
I remember when I was in my 20's, and half the weekends of summer seemed to be occupied with attending the weddings of friends and cousins. Is this to be replaced with funerals as I age? What a prospect.
I'm nervous about attending the funeral. I'm hoping I pass largely un-noticed by the extended family. I look enough like Ralph that I am worried that people might look at me, do a doubletake, and then ask who I am. But maybe I flatter myself, or maybe I'm projecting. One thing I always enjoyed about visiting with Ralph was to talk to a person who looked just like me. I think non-adoptees don't know how wild that is.
Making the last-minute reservations was an interesting experience. Started with ol' reliable Priceline, got some stinky prices like $720 (I could get $233 if I flew in on Friday night and flew out on Saturday morning - now, exactly what is the point of that unless you're delivering kidneys to Tokyo?)
So then I started hitting the individual airline sites, seeing slightly better rates.
Finally, well what do you know, an Expedia commercial comes on the TV behind me. So I go to Expedia and get the near-perfect intinerary for $350. But it was only near-perfect, so I sprang for an extra $200 to leave later on Sunday so that I don't have to rush.
Then renting the car, well, I sprang for that as well, dropping an extra $100 to get a convertible for three days instead of an economy car. Hey, this is going to be a hard enough trip without driving 90 minutes each way to the Cape in a tin can.
So I fly out Friday morning, nonstop, and fly in Sunday evening, with a brief layover in Washington D.C. And in between, I get to see my half-siblings, my extended paternal birthfamily, and drive around a convertible.
Trying not to feel guilty about lining the sad clouds with a little silver.
The high is going to be below 60 today.
It's the 10th of August, the sky is scudded with gray clouds, and it's so cold that I had to go home over lunch to change into a warmer shirt.
At work, I have nobody to talk to. The few people with whom I had friendly acquaintance have quit, transferred, or decided that they loathe me.
And my birthfather just died.
I had ten years during which I had a chance to get to know him better, but I didn't. I can count on my fingers the number of times he and I spoke.
But he was never, ever, anything but kind. He was generous. After I found him he started sending me gifts on my birthday. I never expected such a thing, but he sent them anyway.
He left behind his second wife, three great kids (or, I suppose, four if you count me), a new grandchild and a step-grandson.
I hate cancer.
Had a weekend away in Chicago, meeting old friends and new and playtesting a soon-to-be-released roleplaying game. Events in Shadow World are based on an alternate contemporary Earth where a minority of the human population has psychic powers, and where pretty-much every conspiracy theory and secret society ever rumored to exist actually exists and is made up of these psychics. Think "X-Files" meets "James Bond".
The trip was full of weird events. For example, one of the scenarios of the roleplaying game includes a hostile order of psychic nuns in located Madison, Wisconsin. Don't ask. But as we drove down I-94 were discussing these psychic nuns, the Sisters of the Papacy. So imagine our surprise when, pulling into a rest stop in Madison, Wisconsin, we were greeted by over half a dozen nuns in habits.
The trip back was also eventful, to say the least. Despite knowing that traffic out of Illinois on I-90 was going to be affected by construction near Janesville, Wisconsin, we were taken by surprise by the extent of the backup. Miles and miles from the construction we had seen while heading south we ran into standstill traffic.
We bailed onto side-roads, and ended up in a lengthy backup at a stop-sign in rural Wisconsin. As it turned out, the backup we encountered was the lesser of two evils, but it was still phenomenal to see how much disruption a single stopsign can cause when it has to be observed by dozens of semitrailer trucks.
We were also growing increasingly hungry: we'd decided to "grab something on the road", not realizing that we'd end up stopped in a Wisconsin cornfield for hours. Serious, serious consideration was given to the idea of stealing a few ears of corn and grilling them on the manifold - the only thing that stopped us was a lack of tinfoil... and the farmer wandering up and down the ditch with a golf club in his hand.
When we finally reached the stop sign we turned the opposite direction from everyone else, determined to cross country north to I-94.
After 4 hours we had managed to travel 100 miles when we reached I94, and triumphantly sailed into Madison. But by now we were starving. So we exited off the freeway and looked for someplace to eat. We noted a Pizzeria Uno, wandered past it looking for other options, but after about five minutes decided Pizzeria Uno would do.
As we headed back to Pizzeria Uno, I noticed a large ball of black smoke off beyond Pizzeria Uno. At first I thought it was a nearby puff of diesel exhaust, but it became clear it was a much more distant and larger cloud of smoke.
More black smoke followed, and we could see an auto dealership up in that direction, so we decided to go past the Pizzeria Uno and see if there was a car fire at the dealership.
But as we approached the auto dealership, some odd things made themselves apparent. The street was littered with debris, including lamps from the streetlights. Looking around I realized that the lamps from ALL the streetlights had fallen out. Then I noticed that one streetlamp had a large, deforming dent about 2/3rds of the way up the pole... and across from the streetlamp was a white rectangular chunk of something that looked like... a wingtip?
Then we reached the crest of the hill and saw a small airplane burning in the parking lot of a car dealership!
We arrived before the local authorities, and as we reached the corner across from the flaming wreckage several squad cars appeared. Officers leapt from their cars and immediately began dousing the flames with chemical extinguishers. Another officer leapt into the road in front of us and waved us onto a side street, and we left willingly.
We made our way on back streets to Pizzeria Uno, and as we pulled into the parking log more emergency equipment arrived and the street outside the restaurant was closed.
We ate our dinner on the patio in what would have been a lovely sunset, except that a pillar of smoke, first black then grey then white, was looming over the restaurant. We talked to our server, who told us that the plane had just missed the restaurant, soaring silently only a few feet over the patio with its engine off.
It really bugged me to think about this. First, the picture of a desperate pilot trying frantically to save his life made it very disturbing to be sitting in the path of his final seconds. Second, we might have decided to got to Pizzeria Uno instead of looking around, and the pilot might not have managed to miss the Pizzeria. We could have had a light plane crash into the restaurant while we were having dinner.
Several hours up the road we stopped into another rest area... and as we entered, there was my neighbor Cat and her family. They reported that they had stayed on the freeway during the traffic outage, and had been trapped in their van for several hours, during which time their air conditioning had broken down.
So we got in about 12:30 a.m. very tired, but grateful that we'd gotten home safe, and with air conditioning.