Happy Hour...

… came early today (at approx 1330 hrs), and one is simply glad it arrived at all… given as how it’s late December. To put it another way… although 70-degree days in December ain’t unknown here on The High Plains of New Mexico, they are somewhat rare. So, one takes advantage when one can. And I most certainly did… take advantage.

Happy Hour was a mundane sort of affair. I sat outside and had not one but two cigars, accompanied by a couple o' three brewskis (of course). I spent the first hour in relative solitude, listening to the cries of the mourning doves and enjoying the (relative) silence here in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park, today being a work-day for most. That got old fairly quickly… and by the time I opened my second beer I tuned my very expensive radio (aka my peesee) to Pandora’s Santana station and proceeded to kick out the jams. Much better. Excellent, in fact.

I spent most of my time looking up, watching the fast-movers etch brilliant white vapor trails across the robin’s-egg-blue skies. Well… let’s be accurate. If we’re gonna use the vernacular we should use it properly: I was watching trash-haulers, not fast-movers. There IS a difference, “trash-haulers” being transports and “fast-movers” a synonym for fighters. We don’t see too many fast-movers in these parts of late.

Anyhoo. The winds aloft must have been pretty brisk today, as the vapor trails disappeared almost as quickly as they were created. Here are three pics… taken in a span of about five minutes, give or take a minute or three:

I found it interesting that the west-bound traffic outnumbered the east-bound traffic by a ratio of about six-to-one. Here’s a pic of one of the east-bound aircraft as it streaked across the sky.

I amused myself wondering what the occupants of those big-ass aluminum tubes were doing at the exact moment I looked up. Watching a movie? Napping? Reading a book? On their third drink? Looking out the window and wondering just who the Hell would live in country as desolate as this? The mind does wander… and I imagined myself in one of those tubes west-bound, headed home after vacation, or after the conclusion of a job, or on leave... whatever. That might well have been me... in another time, long ago and far away.