It’s a Good Life

Tonight was the first time in the field with the Yamaha, and the first outing of summer. I realize now that being in 90F in the field in black pants is not optimal. I'm going to have to get re-acclimated to this. I also realize that my boxers are on backwards, and they apparently sew them tighter in the back than in the front. I knew something was off on the ride out here… part of me is tempted to take them off and put them on right, but there’s a popular trail not far from here and there’s nothing to duck behind. It’s alright though - golden hour has come to Northern Colorado, and I’ll let the pants take a back (front?) seat to exigent circumstance.

I’m in the Lower 48 again, called back to the office by the Orion program director, who is a holdover from the STS days back when NASA was launching shuttles. He’s old school and he’s wrangling us back in, despite two years of working remotely and meeting every deadline along the way. I asked to remain remote and took my case all the way up to program management and the vice president level but got shot down, so I begrudgingly came back. I wasn’t expecting to have such a tough time with it, but after hundreds of days across thousands of miles I’ve emerged a changed man. Now the thought of lording over a cube, being hell’s caretaker, performing work theater, having to hear other people shit in the bathroom, is all just too much. It’s amazing to me that we take these amazing gifts - bits of stardust we manipulate with our genius and dreaming but turn it into something as mundane as the office.

So fuck that.

I submitted my notice the day after I got back stateside before even stepping into the office. No job lined up, but it was a three-and-a-half week notice to give them time to find a back-fill (and give myself some time to figure out what the hell I'm gonna do). I won’t have a front seat to watching mankind advance into that final frontier, which saddens me greatly. But however brash this is, I see myself as a modern crusader, fighting against the encroachment of the mundane world. I promise I’ll not capitulate to a daily commute and let myself grow old in cars. If only I had come to my senses sooner then I could have experiences the Alaskan summer, of which little in the world compares. But I'm here now and have an apartment through October, so I stopped by the local dealership and grabbed something I liked in their inventory: a Yamaha FJ-09. Now I have two motorcycles and no cars. I wonder if the bikes willl ever be within a couple thousand miles of each other? My territory is vast. Its a good life.