On Safari in Four Corners

I have made it home after a wild weekend in Salt Lake City for CONduit. More about the convention later, I want to talk about the drive.

The drive from Rio Rancho to South Jordan (where my mother lives) is somewhere around 600 miles, and about 10 hours. I always try to leave early so that most of the drive will be in daylight, but that doesn't happen as often as I would like.

We finally got out of town by 11:00 am, and we were on the way. This trip was unusual because Kevin wasn't driving. He didn't get time off work for this trip because we'd spent it in March for World Horror Con.

Everything was going well, I was feeling good, my assistant, Jamie, was with me, as was my son, Morgan. About 20 minutes out of Cuba, New Mexico, I noticed some movement by the fence on the left side of the road. It was a bear. He was probably a yearling, about 100 to 150 pounds, and he was a blonde. We usually have black bears in this part of the country, and this is the time of year we see them most because they wake up hungry. But I didn't expect to see a Grizzly-colored bear. We looked each other in the eye, and he took off running up the hill, I assumed up to where his mother was out of sight.

This was not the only wildlife sighting. Some hours later, north of Moab, Utah, and almost to Crescent Junction where I got to drive on the freeway for 20 minutes, there was the inevitable road construction. The contractor was almost done re-surfacing the road. It's a two-lane, with about as much traffic as anywhere in the state of Utah.

The contractor had painted a double yellow line on the unfinished blacktop, to try and mitigate accidents. Cars were going 70 miles an hour, almost bumper to bumper, both directions. I was paying close attention to the road and my fellow risk-takers.

Suddenly, it looked to me like the center yellow line stood up, and I realized that there was a prairie dog taking refuge in the middle of the road. I could see a hawk and two large ravens circling the highway, and realized that they were looking for lunch. Unfortunately, the prairie dog took exception to their ideas, and was using the cars to keep the predators away from himself.

We also spotted some pronghorn antelopes, and some elk. I loved seeing the wild things, and Jamie was a little frustrated because she could see them, just not get them recorded on her camera.

Fun trip, glad I got to sleep in and take two naps today. I don't think I'm getting too old for this, but I do have to leave myself time to recuperate afterwards.

In which I get very little sleep

Here we are at the opening of summer, and Kevin and I have decided that we need to have more of a presence in the blogoverse. So I get the even days, and you'll hear from him on the odd days.

I find that it's hard to concentrate when I haven't been sleeping well. I left Kevin at home, and headed to CONduit in Salt Lake City. I was confident and pleased to be able to see some of my friends again. I wasn't worried about driving the 10 hours, I've done that before, and besides, I had my son and his girlfriend Jamie, my trusty assistant, along. If I got over-tired, Jamie would be able to drive.

So we arrived at the hotel without incident, and I go to my room. I did spend an hour Friday afternoon just lying down in the dark and cool hotel room, recuperating. Then I threw myself into the con.

I wasn't on any panels, even though my name was listed on the website. I had come to this event just to schmooze and visit. I had my hat on, and my crochet bag in case it got slow and boring.

That evening, when I finally went up to bed, though. I was aggravated. I have been using a CPAP system for almost 6 years, and there, on Friday night, it decided that it couldn't work, and just flashed error codes. I stayed up until 4:30 am investigating on the Internet how it might be fixed.

And I finally fell asleep without it. It is worrisome, because I know how much oxygen loss I suffer when I don't sleep with the CPAP. But I had to sleep. I actually got about 3.5 hours before I got up to go to breakfast with Jamie. Not all that unusual for con behavior.

Long story short, I didn't get it working yet. When I got home, Kevin and I opened it up and cleaned all the mechanisms, and it comes on now. But the regulator seems to be toast. It changes volume at random, giving me no air at all up to the maximum, and everything in between. I still can't sleep.

And so today, while I've been thinking about this blog, and the chapter I need to finish, along with Kevin's story that we want my half done on before June 15th, I haven't hardly written anything.

Except this blog. At least I kept up my side of the bargain.