"Took a look down the westbound road, right away I made my choice."

-Bob Seger, Roll Me Away

I was flying back from Houston this past weekend, high over the Texas Gulf coast and the clear blue expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, sitting on the east facing side of the airplane (I thought it out beforehand) looking out at untenable miles and miles of towering cumulonimbus clouds disappearing over the horizonal curve hundreds of miles to the south-southeast where Ciclon will be headed this coming Friday at 1400 local time as they depart on the Regatta de Amigos, bound for Veracruz Mexico.

Because my daughter Sasha is graduating High School on that exact date, this race is not an option for me (this time), but maybe the next one in two years....regardless I will be following it and posting a few updates here, and it can also be followed at the link above, as Ciclon and all of the other entrants are carrying transponders, which will update their positions hourly.

So anyway, I'm looking at the Gulf, wearing my blue tennis shoes, and sort of tranquil after my complimentary bidness class cocktail (rhum and coke....what else?), just thinking about things....the direction of things.

The flight is less than 45 minutes, and as much as I hate to fly, it wasn't all that bad. Before I knew it we had touched down in Harlingen and D was there outside to pick me and my smelly clothes up, head home.

Yesterday morning I returned to my phony-baloney administrators job, to an email inbox full of castigating, insulting rhetoric from some worthless conjunto county commissioner who would be hard pressed to explain what "self aggrandizement" even meant.....demanding her fair share of ill gotten gain, and finally heaping on the straw that broke the camels back.

I sat there for about 45 seconds thinking about what things are worth.....thinking about the blue expanse I saw the day before, thinking how I've wasted almost three years, grown fat from inactivity, begun to develop things that if left unchecked could wind up causing serious health concerns....thought about the rational in treating things that could be prevented in the first place by a simple, permanent change in daily activity and lifestyle so that I might return to the same beck and call for a bunch of thankless, uneducated politicians, weighed the alternatives, filled in the date in the letter that has been sitting in "My Documents" for some months now.....

.....and quit right there on the spot. Gave 'em my one minute notice.

I have no regrets in doing so. In fact I became instantly much happier and more peaceful than I have been in ages. I know there are blue horizons just waiting out there, and in the meantime, I am assembling the elements necessary to find out.