It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, April 17
A good day today.
We were up early (see Sleep Log below) after a fabulous rest and, after morning project work was done, had one hell of a breakfast at a local joint that turned out to be the oldest cafe in Idaho…I am not making that up…It first opened in 1934 and there were regulars there, of course, including a couple of guys who were probably there for the grand opening…It was our first time there, of course, so of course, we were given the once-over by the guys…Nobody shot us, and we were permitted to sit at the counter without incident.
Breakfast was very good…We had our favorite: three hotcakes, two sunny side-up, and sausage…Our waitress – who called me young man even tho we’re probably the same age – saved us some dough because initially, we ordered it a la carte because that was what we wanted…However, she pointed out that it was actually the Country Breakfast minus the third hotcake, so we ordered that with the extra hotcake on the side and the order so confused the cook who put the third hotcake on a separate plate.
The big news is there is NOT a sign on I-15 heralding your crossing of the 45th parallel – the halfway point between the North Pole and the Equator…Recall we discussed this yesterday…We LOVE civil lines of demarcation and were hoping for a sign because we can recall seeing on I-5 years ago.
We prepared for this evolution, too…We navigated submarines in the Navy, so we have some street cred where time, speed, and distance are concerned and before leaving the cafe we had reckoned – very loosely and without even checking our current latitude – that we might pass it around 0830.
But we wanted to narrow it down further, so when we thought we were getting close and needed gas, we stopped in a town called Dubois and checked the coordinates and our instincts were trusty: we were at 44 degrees, 10 minutes north latitude…Any idiot knows that each degree of latitude is divided into 60 minutes which is subdivided into 60 seconds and each minute of latitude is one nautical mile and that one nautical mile is 2,000 yards or 6,000 feet…(Actually, 6,076 feet but the extra 76 feet are statistically insignificant and ignored at sea.)
At 44°, 10′ we were 50 nautical miles away from the 45th parallel, which is 57.5 statute miles…We zeroed the odometer and headed out.
(Those of you keeping score at home are probably wondering if one minute of latitude equaling one nautical mile is a coincidence…No, siree…The first planetary coordinate system dates back to the 3rd century before Christ, and some rather dull people started equating a minute of latitude with a nautical mile in the 15th century.)
The best-laid plans and all that, as everything went for naught…We kept a close watch out the whole way – including watching both the median and the side of the road – but didn’t see a sign…After we were well past the 60-mile mark, we pulled off at Dillon and a quick check confirmed it: we were at 45 degrees, 12 minutes north latitude.
It was still winter at the upper elevations, including a pretty good dumping at a rest area near Missoula, and we made it to Her Majesty’s house around noon, our first time seeing each other in years…Her husband Everet came home for lunch, and while we had probably met before, maybe we hadn’t…Back when they were dating, they visited The Shire, but this was when things with The Ex were bad, and they camped out in the backyard, and we didn’t spend any time with them…He’s a funny, low-key guy, and it turns out they went to high school together.
Their daughter, Freya, is 14 months….Her Majesty asked when the last time I’d been around a one-year-old…. I had to think about it and could not come up with a definitive answer…Offhand we thought of cousins but that was hardly extended time, merely the occasional family gathering…We’ve never dated anyone with a 1-year-old and we certainly never had one ourselves and the real answer may actually be our late brother, who came along when we were six.
One of the skills Her Majesty inherited from her mother – The Ex – was she is a wonderful cook…Lunch was a charcuterie board that she whipped up with the same ease with which ol’ Sparrow puts something in the microwave and dinner was a pasta dish with a tasty white sauce because Everett is allergic to tomatoes…It was good, but Her Majesty indicated it wasn’t her best, and darling hubby said some funny things in support of that, but it was our first home-cooked dinner in years and it could’ve been roasted lugnuts and we would’ve raved about it.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1900 Tuesday until 0300 Wednesday…8.0 hours for the day and 22.5 hours for the week…Regular readers of this crap know that sleeping in a hotel can be hit-and-miss for us…Sometimes we sleep well and sometimes we don’t…Tonite there was no doubt: we were exhausted and more or less on schedule, tho we did help matters along by taking some melatonin.
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The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
