Pilot's Log

I regularly travel back through time from the year 2036 so as to be here with you. It's tough to be away from the thrilling transformations that are underway there. But it's in a good cause. The bedraggled era that you live in needs frequent doses of the vigorous optimism that's so widespread in 2036, and I'm happy to disseminate it. Why am I confessing this? Because I suspect you now have an extra talent for gazing into the unknown and exploring undiscovered possibilities. You also have an unprecedented power to set definite intentions about the life you want to be living in the future. Who will you be five years from today? Ten years? Twenty years? Be brave. Be visionary. Be precise.

Twenty years from now (assuming I survive these times) I'll be sixty nine, the same age my dad was the year I had my last regular paying job.  In theory I'd be enjoying retirement but I still don't have a career to provide me one.  I'm screwed.

One afternoon in September, I was hiking along a familiar path in the woods. As I passed my favorite grandmother oak, I spied a thick, six-foot-long snake loitering on the trail in front of me. In hundreds of previous visits, I had never before seen a creature bigger than a mouse. The serpent's tail was hidden in the brush, but its head looked more like a harmless gopher snake's than a dangerous rattler's. I took the opportunity to sing it three songs. It stayed for the duration, then slipped away after I finished. What a great omen! The next day, I made a tough but liberating decision to leave behind a good part of my life so as to focus more fully on a great part. With or without a snake sighting, Sagittarius, I foresee a comparable breakthrough for you sometime soon.

I could use a breakthrough.  I've been trying to reconcile my future with the fragments of my past that I have left.

There was a police standoff in Shady Hills overday, and when I looked up the area it brought to mind the place as it was when I was a college student and a new car driver...

Back then, the north section was a four-mile straight, that didn't enjoy much in the way of police patrolling because it was very sparsely populated in comparison to Hudson or Land O' Lakes.  So it attracted a particularly rowdy form of commuter.  And I took it because it was much more direct than going west to US19 and taking it all the way through Port Richey, Elfers, and Palm Harbor to Clearwater.

But what made the Shady Hills Road interesting...

The straight ended very abruptly with little warning as a sharp, 90 degree LEFT corner.  And then a half-mile later, just after the exit to Crews Lake Park, an equally demanding 90 degree RIGHT corner introduced the driver to the fun part of the course--a winding path through an orange grove, ending with the Golf Course on the left side (allegedly owned by actor Larry Manetti of MAGNUM P.I. and BAA BAA BLACKSHEEP fame), the junkyard on the right side, and the intersection with State Highway 52--which at that time had no traffic light and so the possibility of a jam of backed-up traffic.

Speeders and the occasional overloaded pickups would wipe out at the left-hander.  Luckily, there was a larger-than-usual sand shoulder to settle down the errant vehicles.  But if you got stuck in there, you were going to be there a while.

It was Hades for a yahoo in a muscle car--but fabulous if you were sly and sneaky in something light and nimble--like a Toyota Tercel.  Some idiot would be on my back on the straight, and then couldn't keep up with me through the orange grove.  Sometimes it can be fun to make your daily drive a sport, and Shady Hills back then was good for that.

But it isn't like that now.  The addition of two public schools in the area means much lower speeds and more cops.  The advent of the Suncoast Trail toll highway in the area broke the old path, so now it's more of a slow esse in the transition because of the new overpass/underpass.  Most of the orange grove is still there, but it's being eaten away by the growth of the Quail Ridge subdivision, and will probably be gone in a generation or two.  Every so often I'll dream of it, or maybe a road like it.

FP

* Eddie Cheever, # 3 Tyrell
* Danny Sullivan, # 4 Benetton
* Mario Andretti, # 5 Lotus (the year he won the season)
* Michael Andretti, # 7 McLaren
* Danny Ongais, # 14 Penske
* Brett Lunger, # 18 Surtees
* Scott Speed, # 19, Toro Rosso
* Bobby Rahal, # 21 Wolf
* Mark Donohue, # 28 Penske
* Kevin Cogan, # 51 Ram Theodore
* Peter Revson, # 66 Penske

The only current American Driver in F1 is Alexander Rossi at Caterham F1 Team, although he is as of the just-finished season a relief Driver and not assigned a number.