Month: December 2018

I decided a while ago to make a series of bucket-list trips to places where I have a connection or history.  The first of these was the long and winding road through the Northeastern states of my youth.  I was accompanied on that journey by my son, my daughter and the great navigator Google who appears when called upon to dispense witty repartee like, “I’m sorry Dave, your estimated arrival time is 3:37 pm”.

Last summer the bucket list took me and the kids to the great city of Baltimore, home of the Inner Harbor, Johns Hopkins Medical Center, the Ravens, the Orioles and the second best crab cakes in the Milky Way galaxy.  The winner of best cakes can be found in the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus, because duh.

But this trip was less about crab cakes and all about baseball; in particular my beloved Yankees who were in town to play a four game stint against the mighty Orioles at Camden Yards.  Perhaps a better phrase would be “the once mighty Orioles” because the “O’s” were in the throes of a historically bad season, brought on by an aging roster and swollen payroll.  My daughter and I thought to disguise our loyalties by donning Oriole caps to blend in with the crowd, only to discover that hordes of Yankee fans had driven down from New York, and these hordes made no attempt to adapt to the local colors of the Maryland state bird.

We were there for the weekend and saw a couple of games, two wins by the Yankees as part of a four game sweep.  It is to the Orioles and their fans credit that thirty thousand of the faithful came out to see their team every night.  Win or lose, Baltimore loves her Orioles.

The night is clear and warm and Camden Yards is bright and alive under the high intensity stadium lighting.  The players warm up with the sound of baseball slapping into leather gloves, the hickory crack of bat on ball, the sensory rituals that are so much a part of this game I love.

Alcohol and hordes can be an incendiary combination, and we watched as an overly festive lady was led away by security.  We could hear her arguing unsuccessfully that she is a good person and that everyone likes her, everyone that is except for the Yankees fan and family she had been ‘conversing’ with.  Another fellow arrived late and was surprised to find that his seat was insufficiently wide to, um,  accommodate him.  The usher led him away to, well I’m not sure to where exactly, but hopefully it all worked out in the end.  Bada bing bada boom.

Both my older brothers were avid Orioles fans and we spent decades in good-humored ribbing as our team’s fortunes rose and fell, like the tide.  I lost them both last year within six weeks of one another and truth be told this is why I wanted to come to these games, to be an Orioles fan for a time under a Maryland sky filled with stars.  They would have wanted to be part of the game and times we shared, to still be part of all this. 

And I believe they are.

The Big Island of Hawai’i has two dominant geologic features; the twin volcanic peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.   Mauna Loa rises over 6 miles from the ocean floor, making it the tallest mountain on Earth as measured from base to peak.  Yes, even taller than Everest.  I have been to the Big Island many times, and standing on the slopes of Mauna Loa makes you feel inconsequential yet paradoxically vast, because while the mountain itself dwarfs us, our minds can encompass it and understand its history, its story and its song.

But the solar system in which we reside is rife with wonders, some of which we are just beginning to discover.  On Mars there is the great shield volcano Olympus Mons towering 13.7 miles over the martian plains of Tharsis Montes.  Olympus Mons is not the tallest mountain in the solar system (we will get there next), but it is easily the most massive, with a diameter roughly equal to the state of Arizona.  The slope incline of Olympus Mons is so gradual that an observer on the surface of Mars would not be able to see the summit because it is beyond the visible horizon.

Further out from Mars in the Asteroid Belt we find the asteroid Vesta, a chunk of rock orbiting the the minor planet Ceres.  Millions of years ago Vesta suffered an impact which created a crater nearly half the size of Vesta itself,   The rim of the resultant crater is called Rheasilvia Mons, and it holds the current record as the tallest mountain in the solar system at 14.2 miles.  Rheasilvia Mons is not a shield volcano but still, 14.2 MILES.

The universe discloses its wonders to questioning minds.  Imagine what other mountains are out there in our search for understanding the universe and our place in it.