Dis-Location

You won't believe this, Bush. I was up early this morning working on this journal, aiming to make good on my promise to explain the NASCAR mystery. I had a wonderful piece all typed out and nearly ready to send when my computer shut down without warning--it has done this a couple of times before, and I haven't yet discovered the reason for it--and swallowed up everything I'd written. I'm not even going to try to rewrite it all today--or at least not until later in the day--so you're just going to have to wait until I get around to it. Sorry...

Meantime, I note that nothing much has changed since I left on Saturday morning. I always imagine, when I get on a plane, that weeks will have passed before I get back home. I'm not sure why this is, especially when I get back no more than twenty-four hours after I left. I suppose it's a matter of the time-space disruption involved in flying thirty thousand feet above the earth and landing in some distant part of the globe. Tracy, California, where I spent the day in Saturday, could have been the surface of Mars compared with my Southern California home. I went into a convenience store in search of trail mix and could find only a bag of salty nuts, dry raisins and M&Ms. I also picked up a couple of sticky-sweet granola bars from the shelves of potato chips, cheesy snacks, and beef jerkies. At the check out desk, the proprietor looked at my purchases and then at me, with curiosity. "Very healthy," she commented. Very strange.

More later, Bush, when I get my head together. And yes, I'll tell you what took me to a NASCAR race in Tracy, California.