Flight and Day 1

So, I’m off to Paraguay and it has kind of become a bit of a tradition for me to keep a little online journal on these trips…so here it goes. I’ll be gone for about two weeks and will get into the details of why in later posts.

The day started with a very comfortable noonish flight which meant that I got to read books with the girls and take them out to breakfast before I left. The flights and layovers added up to just about 24 hrs: SacramentoàHoustonàSao PauloàCiuadad Este (stop – no layover)àAsuncion.

The flight was uneventful. I got some work and a decent amount of reading done. I read a couple hundred pages including at least a chapter from each of the books that made the backpack:

Exclusion and Embrace – Miroslav Volf [1]

Goldengay’s Genesis Commentary (Vol 1)

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig – A Paraguay travel memoir that I am sure to cite early and often in this journal

Foundations of Restoration Ecology [2]

The overnight flight was a reminder that I am not getting any younger. I am finally old enough to realize what that phrase means. But the up side of “not being 25 anymore” is realizing the benefit of “not being 45 yet.” I’ve decided that if you always look backwards at what you can’t do any more, you’ll always feel old but if you look forward to what you someday won’t be able to do, you are more likely to feel gratitude for current capacities and make the most of the moment. [3]

We flew over the Parana River (possibly the coolest river name of all times [4]) and the hydroelectric project that motivated this trip (which, until Three Gorges totally spins up is the highest wattage hydroelectric project in the world). Both the river and the project were impressive even from the sky. The dam releases created a huge plume of water and the river downstream was more sinuous than any I seen.

We landed in Asuncion to find four American C4’s conspicuously parked in a relatively small airport (they were the only other large aircraft besides ours). Apparently Obama was coming to Brasilia and the Secret Service et al. were using Asuncion as a staging ground.

My first evening in town was really nice. The head of the renewably energy program of Paraguay picked us up personally from the airport and gave us a tour of Asuncion. First impression, Asuncion is a surprisingly lovely and clean city. He ordered us dinner at the hotel… steak/egg/ham/cheese/olive sandwiches…which were amazing. Then Chan and I drank Paraguayan beer, and ate in the cooling equatorial air as the sky darkened and the unmistakable siluette of bats began to flit across the darkening sky.

In my ecology class this quarter, we exchanged papers to review, and I got to review a paper by our cohort’s bat expert. Cool bat facts: they are the most widely distributed mammal group on the planet and second only to rodents in mammal diversity? This is one of the

reasons I love being in an interdisciplinary scientific “group” rather than a classic department.

I called my family using google video. They saw me, but I didn’t see them. It worked out, though, because the girls were highly entertained by a tour of my hotel and a look inside of my mouth, nose and ears. Then I flipped on the TV hoping for the Wisconsin Basketball game. 60 channels, 7 soccer games, no March Madness. Fortunately, reason #538 “Why I love the internet” – I was able to watch the game (in fits and starts but watch it none the less) on ESPN.com.

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[1] My reading group is taking a break from NT Wright. I have LOVED everything I have read by Volf and this is his seminal work. If the opening chapters are any indication, it is going to be fantastic.

[2] The text for one of the coursed I am taking when I return. I also have Bruggerman’s Genesis commentary and a Jonathan Edwards (the old misunderstood one, not the contemporary, kind of doushy one) reader coming off the ‘bench’ (and by bench, I mean checked luggage). It is the sign of endless optimism to always have 4X as many pages as you could possibly read with you at any time.

[3] So that when we look back on the current years we can say “I can’t do that any more, but I made the most of it while I could.”

[4] Yet somehow not etymologically related to the famous South American fish.