Mojave Hail

The schoolbus-sized satellite that’s predicted to come down later this week will, the tingling in my toes tells me, hit the Mojave desert as I pass through, somewhere between Twentynine Palms CA and Parker AZ.

That’s one of the most uninhabited stretches of road I’ve ever seen with a couple of hours of no houses, no shacks, no structures of any kind and only the paved road with a lonely pair of railroad tracks for company. The stretches are arrow straight with right-angle turns as needed to wend through the bare mountains.

The only traffic to dodge, other than the satellite chunks, are the occasional cars pulling boats to/from the Colorado River at Parker, a favorite cooling off spot a hundred miles from the marine base at Twentynine Palms, and the rare semi taking this little known route for only-the-driver-knows reasons.

Otherwise it is utterly barren. Completely empty.

The prediction is that the satellite will break up as it falls and only a couple of 100+ pound pieces make it to the surface. And the prediction right now is that they could strike just about any place on the planet except the polar regions. As the event nears, the impact zone will become better defined - as the desert near California highway 62.

The tingle tells me to keep my iPad2 at the ready, the video app keyed up and plenty of memory available for the footage. Impact will be close as I have no zoom lense, lest why else would the tingle bother me?

I’m stoked at the opportunity and next Monday’s post here via iMovie and YouTube should be truly spectacular!

Either that or my feet are just tired from two days of standing and teaching.