The lightest of patters hit the windshield, blurring the mad dashes slightly as they flew by.
The faintest of echoes of a scent of a summer day, when the heat relents, and the pavements drink. There’s something of relief in that smell.
It started raining by Richmond.
Van Halen played on the stereo, matching the coffee jolt, but not the nightscape.
An Audi flew by, exiting on Nuckols road northbound. There are so many places to go. It seems I’ve been to half of ‘em this week. Did you know it would take, at 60 mph, six months to drive to the Moon on a space highway?
After three and a half years of Zoom calls, I finally met them in person. The online astronomy club at the library back home is in Season 4, starting during COVID. Now we all gathered for our first in person session. We shook our collective fist at the clouds (“it’s what happens when I bring out telescopes”), and had a rollicking time of questions, answers, scale models of the solar system with strange objects (a Barbie for Venus, a toy gun for Mars), and even tried some math.
Oh what fun. We were curious together. That’s so important. I relish it.
“I’ll give you a dollar if you can tell me this: you hitch a ride with a photon on its way from Proxima Centauri, about four light years away. You start, look at your watch, and then arrive here, looking at your watch. How much time as passed?”
Zero. Nobody got the dollar. Whew. But a new kid did ask for $500 instead. “Hey, I like your approach. You’ll go far” I told her.
The evening wound down, and the clouds relented slightly. We all spilled out to the parking lot, and spied Jupiter and Mars through one of the scopes.
I’ve seen both planets in incredible detail through premium and historic instruments–a 26” Clark refractor and my prized reflector with pristine optics, but…
Rarely is the view so electric, even if half-obscure by clouds.
There’s so much to be excited about.
“I see the moons! I see the cloud bands!”
After a freezing half hour, people dispersed. We were all the better for it.
I said goodbye to my friends from the local astronomy club. They were there to help this evening, but had always kind and patient with me since I was a kid stumbling around in the dark. “They’ve been putting up with me for twenty five years!” I roared to the audience earlier. People were impressed.
Then, I got in the car, and left.
The road went by the old neighbors. We had visited earlier, swapping stories over delicious casserole. Then it went by my old house, porch light shining through the woods to the highway, down the hill to cross the bike trail, out to the light by the Chinese restaurant, and south, to rain and Richmond and the blue ridge foothills, home ‘round midnight.
It would take 266 years to drive to Mars on a space highway.
It took me 39 to get here.
–Josh
