2
Despite using other means of keeping the gas petal pressed down
during the nearly two thousand mile drive from New England to
Colorado, my right foot still ended-up without any sensation on the
ball of the foot and toes. This made walking odd as the next day I
hobbled from my mother's mobile home to the row of community post
boxes to get her mail. One of the tasks I'd do to break-up my day
during my summer visits, it was immediately assigned to me on my
return. Having gotten in just after nine o'clock the night
before, we probably visited for about an hour before mom went to bed
and I unloaded my clothes from the car and the computer components.
The components I placed on the dining room floor for safekeeping
during the night and I left everything else locked in the car as I
went to bed myself. I slept through my mother getting up for work
the next morning, but the mailbox key was waiting for me on the
dining room table.
Part of me wanted to get right to it in Colorado, visiting
Jeff, another friend of ours, getting the computer up and connected
online. But after three days on the road, I found just settling on
the couch with the swamp cooler on, a glass of ice tea in my hand,
and watching the daytime talk shows, suited me just fine. I did
compromise and call my two friends in town to let them know I was
there and I'd see them the following day. Once mother was back from
work, I asked where I could set-up my computer desk? In the past
years, I'd used her sewing machine desktop for the computer, but as
I'd brought my light frame custom made desk with me in the car, that
wasn't needed, but now floor space was. The spare bedroom where the
sewing machine had been still made the most sense so it was
rearranged to open up the far corner nearest the phone jack and my
desk was soon assembled and the computer together and online. In
short order: The rules were I could use the computer online only
when mother was not home or asleep as she didn't like to pick up
the phone line to make a call and hear the computer ''screechy-talk''
buzz back at her. She further didn't like the thought that her
friends wouldn't be able to call her when she was home if the
computer was hogging the line.
Jeff had picked up another new computer friend while I was gone and
he had actually recreated and expanded Jeff's online site to feature
more than just mail and chat. 'Al' was the local computer prodigy
kid. His math teacher had been so thrilled with his work that he had
founded a business featuring Al as its sole employee who could write
code for those needing it. I came to know him in those first summer
nights visiting Jeff and even seeing his office as Jeff helped to get
it connected, he had grown-up using the 'Apple' side of the
microcomputer family tree and so his rewriting of Jeff's site was a
means to familiarized himself with the Trash-80 side of things.
His proudest achievement during his high school computer programming
years was a game I'll call 'Toad Blow-up' where the game would draw a
lily pad in the center of the screen, then a toad on top of it and
wait for the player to press the space bar. Then it would shoot from
the four corners of the screen to the center and blow up the toad.
Oh, so did the toad move or you had to aim? No. Could you
only shoot when things blocking your aim moved out of the way
briefly? Nope, the toad just
sat there waiting
for you to kill it using
the space bar.
During an evening when Al wasn't at Jeff's house, I showed Jeff my
finished 'Star Quest' game with the new climax at the end. He was
very impressed and made a copy for himself. He showed it to Al about
a week later when I wasn't there and he couldn't believe I had done
it. But as Jeff had seen it slowly grow to what it was over the
course of three years and even helped out with some key bits of the
machine code, he assured him I had. Al was duly amazed and wondered
if his math teacher should hire me as well, but as they were a tiny
start-up with limited investors, they couldn't afford to. Which was
fine with me as I was looking forward to having the Summer as free
time as I had during all my previous years. Still, Al kept me in the
loop and would occasionally invite me to other computer related
activities.
Jeff, to, invited me on one of his common activities. Being a huge
science fiction buff, he would often go to the various science
fiction conventions in the country and as there was one coming up in
Omaha, and I had money where I could pay my own way, he invited me to
join him for the drive there and the three day weekend event. I
agreed and as I'd finally gotten the feeling back in my right foot, I
even traded off on the driving to Nebraska in Jeff's fully loaded
Datsun 280Z sports car. What a world of difference true cruise
control made and I was thrilled the drive wouldn't take us through
Kansas as I had come to loath my driving experience amongst the
endless corn fields and pledged never to drive through it again.
Before the age of 'media' focused conventions, Omacon was run
and focused on written science fiction and featured Larry Niven and
Jerry Pournelle as the headlining guests that year. While it was
great sitting in on the various panels, what caught my interest was
the 'media' room where people had brought video tapes of all of these
short lived science fiction television shows I had never heard of
before, and even surprises from the ones I had. Having grown-up with
the Star Trek mythos of being the only television show to have
to go through two pilots before being picked up, I was seeing the
original pilot episode of Lost In Space that didn't feature
'Dr. Smith' at all. Much as the Star Trek first pilot show
was cut up and used during the first season's run of shows, so too
had Lost In Space's original pilot, a year before Star
Trek hit the air. Yet not only these
unknown gems were being shown, but shows from England as well as
other ones from the United States. After a second day spending most
of my time in the 'media' room soaking-up all they had to offer, Jeff
tracked me down and assured me there was so much more to see and
people to socialize with. I finally skipped the last few hours of the media room on the final day and saw some more panels and visited
with some people Jeff had befriended. We were then on the road back
to Colorado that evening.
Unlike most all of my past drives which took place in daylight hours,
we were driving into the sunset. After a few hours, Jeff pulled into
a rest stop with the plan of sleeping for the night. As this was his
trip I agreed, but found I was too buzzed to sleep. The car was
parked facing west and I watched the last remnants of the sun setting
and the sky transitioning from the orange glow of evening, high
lighting the scattered clouds above, into the purplish glow ushering
in the twinkle of the stars and the blackness of night. I loved
seeing this as in rural New England there were so many trees you
could rarely see the sun rise or sun set unless you were on a high
hill overlooking a large field. I thought the the western sky was
beautiful and looked forward to seeing this each and every day to
come.
I still couldn't sleep, but closed my eyes and leaned back in the
passenger seat and rested. A bit before midnight, Jeff woke up and
used the restroom and when he came back I asked if perhaps I could
drive while he slept in the passenger seat. He was a little leery as
he didn't want me driving and dozing, but I assured him I was wide
awake so he agreed. Over the next five to six hours of driving
through the night, I discovered that was my favorite time of day for
long distance driving. Maybe because traveling in the blackness with
the white road side markers zipping by somewhat reminded me of the
star ship Enterprise zipping through space. I don't know, but I just
loved that drive back to Colorado and we reached town just in time
for the first touch of the sun rise. I pulled-up to Jeff's house
and, as he had awakened as we reached town, we parted and he walked
up to his house while I drove back to my mother's mobile home in my
car to the east with the sun rising in front of me.
As I came to love the glory of sun sets and sun rises in the West, I
would rarely see them in the years to come, only savoring them once
in a great while over the years and reminding me of them from this
first science fiction convention trip.
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