Mark me down . . .

 

Mark me down in the category of the easily amused. Last night, for example, the weatherman on the evening news said that the space shuttle flyover would be spectacular, presumably due to the clear skies. “The spectacular flyover view will be from 7:46 to 7:50 PM tonight in the northwest skies,” he said. It was like pouring kerosene on a hot fire for me. Not that I am a celestial enthusiast, it’s more along the lines of my being easily enthused about practically any outdoor phenomena and I had a large unfilled hole in my evening schedule with no hope of being amused by television. Accordingly, I spoke to my better half and she cleverly observed that the flyover would follow-up nicely to an evening devoted to a Mexican dinner at the nearby Los Ranchos restaurant.

I was hooked. We made the 40 minute drive to West Branch, (cleverly named after the west branch of the Rifle River) to the aforementioned Mexican establishment. I ordered Chile Poblano (some kind of beef in some kind of pepper) and my clever bride ordered Pollo Mexicano (chicken with some kind of hot sauce.) The dinner was great.

We left the restaurant on time according to my schedule of arriving home just prior to 7:46 PM. Things seemed to be progressing nicely toward an interesting evening. The only possible hitch to my impromptu evening entertainment was the weatherman; the selfsame weather predictor who promised the spectacular view had also predicted a cold evening – Ummm. It had been cold all day. The mercury had hovered just under 0° F all day long despite the bright sunshine for much of the day. Could my inspired plan be derailed due to cold? Of course not, I said to myself, cleverly keeping such thoughts from my betrothed who sometimes fails to follow my inspired suggestions.

The drive home became ominous when I pulled from the restaurant parking lot with the last rays of the departing sun falling captive to the enveloping blackness of night. The subdued light of the instrument panel was in stark contrast to the temperature gage that flashed brightly, -5° F. I crept through the town to the north- bound expressway and the gage went to -7° F then -10°F. The temperature seemed to be falling faster than a turd in a swimming pool.

I pulled into my garage at 7:40 PM and -17° F on my new outdoor thermometer that some idiot had decorated with cardinals sitting on flowered tree branches. Surely only a fool would stand outdoors in the dark of night at -17° F to watch a tiny light speed across the sky amidst several thousand other tiny lights. “Here we are,” I said to my spouse as we marched outdoors in the darkness to await the space capsule’s reflected sunlight.

Despite being bundled up, by 7:42 PM the cold was beginning to penetrate my coat and stretch it’s lengthy tentacles past my socks, beneath my long underwear and northward toward my sensitive parts. By 7:44 PM, I was cold. I scanned the horizon and searched the northwest sky just above the row of spruce trees at the edge of my property. Nothing, other than a few thousand stars.

I waited another minute before checking the clock in my warm kitchen for the 4^th time. It was now 7:47 PM – the space shuttle must be late. My shivering made it hard to see as my eyeballs jostled around in their sockets, but I was sure nothing had come past my field of view. I stomped my feet, adjusted my collar and decided to look at the kitchen clock again: 7:51 PM.

“Have you see, see, seen anything?” I managed to stutter through my balky lips.

“Only one little light that zoomed just above the horizon a couple minutes ago,” she replied.

“That’s it, then. I’m going in.”

We re-lived our nighttime viewing in the warmth of the kitchen. She said the light she saw was a medium intensity light that appeared to be only a few inches above the horizon as it passed to the southeast. “I didn’t think it was anything at first, and then it was gone. But it must have been the space shuttle, since nothing else came into view.”

I missed the shuttle altogether since I was searching straight up and the shuttle was sneaking along on the horizon. I thought it strange that the shuttle would take the long way instead of zipping straight over, maybe the Russians were driving and they wanted to fly over their home. I also decided to blame the weatherman. I suspected he was a blowhard – it wasn’t a spectacular view at all. As I thawed out in front of the wood stove and straightened my fingers from the clenched balls they had become, I decided that the evening hadn’t been a total loss: the dinner was good, my new thermometer was working properly, and despite the awful cold, it had been a mildly amusing evening, at least for someone like me.