My Old China Mobile

 

Trouble had a rather gentle first hour.  I’ve been listening to it, about ten hours after in broadcast.  Everything seems spacious and welcoming.  In another mood I might be a bit bored, but have a long morning run and staring down another long, early morning series of meetings tomorrow, this is suiting me. The sun is cutting into this room as it does in the summer afternoons.  Slowly, as seven turns to eight I can rise up the shade and savor more and more of the evening colors. 

 

It’s a fine thing to have an iPhone back again.  Simpleton, my main thrill was simply retrieving the seven hundred plus “observations” in my Seek app.  The primary fears of being locked out of my wechat account, of having to reconstitute my whatsapp account, had all been navigated, in the first few days after losing my old phone.  When I tried to connect the new device to the old build I had stored in the cloud it prompted me for a text notification on my old China mobile number.  The gent in the store suggested that I’d need as much as two months to a new password, unless of course I had another Apple device at home.  And when I returned with my MacBook Air, the code appeared and I suddenly had the black and white photo from Abydos with the dung beetle and other hieroglyphics, I had all my apps and yes, I saw with a thrill, all the observations on Seek, I’d painstakingly secured over the last sixteen months.  I’d really hated using the Seek app on Android.  The was a delay after every time you clicked a picture and it often hung, ineffectively. 

 

Looks like we’re going to head off on quite a long drive this time next week.  A drive to Dallas.  I’ve never been to Dallas.  My younger one has a good friend who moved from Beijing the year before she did to Dallas.  The big refugee powwow has been planned for months now. She could just fly but we may as well go check out some of the country, seeing as how we haven’t been able to go anywhere else in the world for nearly two years.  We’ll go through Cleveland and head down to Nashville, over to Memphis and across to Little Rock before riding on into Texas.  I don’t know just how much driving we can take but the plan at present is not to stay in cities but find something on the road out of town.  The Marriott properties in Nashville are asking some $300.00 plus per night.  What’s the point, we’ll get in late, and just leave.  We may as well stay some place where location isn’t a premium as, we’ll have wheels. 

I just did something I’ve never done before, which is order the Lonely Planet USA.  There’s a shelf out in the hall double stacked with the Lonely Planet guides to fifty other places in the world.  The China guide from 1993 and 1998 and 2006 and 2013, a guide from when there was still a U.S.S.R.  I’m suspecting that a quick look inside the Kentucky chapter, or the Arkansas bit might hip me to a cool eatery or some scenic drive I’d have otherwise overlooked.  I’m imagining that I’d drive through the night on major highways and go off to scenic routes when the sun came up.  I could take the gristle but I suspect my ladies may get sick of not having beds and showers and will insist on a proper refresh before too long.  And with thoughts of “My Cousin Vinny” I will do my darnedest to keep to the speed limit as we make our way south. 

Thursday 06/17/21