I had trouble sleeping last night again so I went out and read on the marble steps again. I finished Descent into Hell. It was pretty good. The last 40 pages flew by. I had heard Charles Williams’ books were among the most difficult of the Inkling’s. It was ponderous at times but there was a lot of really interesting stuff. Today I started Robinson Caruso. It was written in the mid 1600’s and the guy who is responsible for First Things said he has read it many times and found it nourishing.
We got up at 5:30 to catch the army caravan at the Corps of Engineer’s facility that we were supposed to stay at. We showered, ate and made it there by 6:20. I don’t like it there. People were barking orders. It is just not a good place to be a civilian. We drove to the airport in a conspicuous, swerving, 5 land rover caravan with plenty of guns. John and I agreed that if we can bypass the Corps next time for even the few services they provided us (ride to and from the airport) it would be better. I’ll take less conspicuous over heavily armed every time.
The airport took a while but John positioned us in the waiting area to be early in line to board the plane. This was important because it was open seating. I got a window. But I didn’t utilize it for the first little while since I crashed while we were waiting to take off. I am continually impressed with my ability to sleep through take off and landing. This is one of the unexpected things I learned during my phd (courtesy of all the trips to Vicksburg), not unlike the most efficient way to count sand.
When I did wake up we were in the middle of the mountains. They are the Hindu Kush mountains and run down the center of the country northeast-southwest like a spine. They were pretty impressive and I could see the late snow pack I taught about. After we cleared the mountains, I also saw why it was important. They country is a vast desert apart from some thin corridors of green and civilization surrounding the rivers composed of snowmelt. The purpose of the dams we are training them to manage is to store the snowmelt and release it slowly through the summer in order to provide a steady supply of water throughout the year instead of a flood in the spring and nothing the rest of the year. It is really no wonder that hydraulic engineering is in this people’s lore.
When we left the river valleys behind we trade the desolation of a nevadaesqu dessert for the fist actual, sand ocean desert I have ever seen. The sand was reddish and started abruptly. The surface was covered with dunes such that, at flight elevation, it looked like the drained “after” of one of my fine sand flume experiments. Occasionally, volcanics jutted out dramatically, their dark and jagged forms the only variance in the red, undulating surface.
I didn’t do much cool in Dubai. We got in at 12:30 (customs took an hour) and I could have changed some money and gone somewhere…but I was tired, had a 2:35am flight. So I napped and worked out and ate at the hotel restaurant. The restaurant was as nice at the hotel. I got the only Middle Eastern thing on the menu which came with like 6 different Middle Eastern style meat. It was very good – and I got them to bring me a side of naan too, which might have been the best part. I can’t believe that on my way home, in a hotel restaurant, I ate my first Middle Eastern meal. The guy we had dinner with was going to Afghanistan to advise the new AID engineering chair (who we were really impressed with). He was talking about creating a position that would be essentially a technical advisory position within the Afghani government that he said someone like me from HEC might be really appropriate for and that it is the kind of position that you could bring a family with you. It sounded interesting. It seems like there will be more short term and long term opportunities. I’m pretty interested
The Dubai to Frankfurt short overnight was a slog of a red eye...but I felt ok afterwards. I slept quite a bit. I was a little embarrassed to be an American because the section of the airport with outgoing flights to the US had extra security and everyone got frisked. Not very friendly. Now the Frankfurt to San Francisco flight. 12 hours. I think the last flight I had that was that long was Amsterdam to Singapore when I went to Nepal.
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