cathshaffer

Which, yes, gave me a bad case of the “oh crap”s.

Nonetheless, I made it into DTW in a timely fashion. The flight down to DFW was uneventful, and I got the first part of what would eventually be 2.75 hours of editing on Sunspin done. I spent the rest of my time divided between Charlie Stross’ Laundry books and Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, both of which I’m enjoying immensely. I don’t normally split my attention between two books, but I have Stross in eBook and Ahmed in dead tree, and the exigencies of air travel caused me to have to switch modes periodically.

In Dallas, we took a long time landing due to the 50 mph cross-winds on the runway slowing air traffic down severely. That also slowed down the arriving flight that would become the equipment for my Portland connection, to the degree of being almost two hours late. So much for my plan of flying through Dallas to avoid winter weather delays in Chicago or Denver. So much for a good night’s sleep, as well.

Anent Sunspin, I got through the first revision pass of the first half of Calamity of So Long a Life, and began embedding the comments for an initial pass through the second half. Right now, I’m actually a bit ahead of schedule for what I expected on this book. I think that’s a good thing, but it might also mean I have been skimming work when I should be digging deeper. We shall see…

Also, I forgot to mention that at Epic Confusion adelheid-p gave me a very nice gift. I need to thank her, and will post photos and a description some time in the net few days as time permits.

This afternoon is another girls’ basketball game, though the_child has been down with a respiratory infection the last few days, so it’s not clear if she’ll be able to play. She gets sick so rarely, this is unusual.

And of course, now that I’m home, Day Jobbery.

As an FYI, here is a repost of my schedule there:

I will otherwise be in the bar, the dealer’s room or at parties. Find me and visit a while. Unfortunately, due to my needing to be at the airport midday Sunday, I won’t be able to make any Sunday programming. See some, all or none of you there.

It’s been a tiring but manageable week. My body seems to be (largely) cooperating with my intentions, and the writing is firing up. In fact, more of that on the plane today.

Whatever you’re doing today and this weekend, have fun and be well.

This is a big step for me. A big piece of recovery from chemotherapy. A big piece of reclaiming my normal life.

And in terms of reclaiming, I’ll be taking a stab at first draft fiction during my downtime on this trip. I often use airplane and hotel time for writing, so we’ll see if the writing brain lights up this week. I’m a little fearful and lot optimistic. Wish me luck.

There’s a meeting tomorrow where I am a key resource. Normally I would have day tripped the 6 am flight tomorrow, attended the meeting, and flown back in the evening.

Uh huh, not in my current state.

So I’m taking a midday flight today, then collapsing in my hotel room for the rest of the day. Attending the meeting tomorrow, then collapsing in my hotel room for the evening, then flying back mid-morning Wednesday, then collapsing at my house.

So, no open dinner as I would usually do. Continued blogging is expected. It will be odd to fly and camp out in a hotel and not gobble up that time for writing as I almost always do when away from home. There’s a lot of books in my luggage.

The upside is all the logistical brangle around the trip is keeping my usual CT scan freakout somewhat abated. I should know more about that — specifically, whether I am clean of further metastases — Wednesday or Thursday. That in turn will set the tone for next year in a huge, important way.

First of all, if I am going to do this, I simply have to take the_child. I can’t imagine not doing that, but it literally doubles the cost of the effort, which makes the fundraising that much more daunting.

Second of all, my original thumb in the air estimate of costs was about right for a basic trip through Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. $15,000 will get a person there from the United States by air, keep them in hotels and daily expenses as needed, and put them on a cruise across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic peninsula with some opportunities for landing on the Antarctic shore, with a bit left over for clothing and gear. That’s a two- to three-week trip, door to door from the United States.

The other obvious option is to leave from New Zealand (which for several reasons I find mildly preferable), but the base cost is rather higher for that trip than for the Argentina option, running closer to $30,000 per person. It also takes more time.

The South Pole is possible, by the way, but is closer to $50,000 per person by the time it’s all rolled up.

And then, of course, double the cost for including the_child.

Even the most basic approach is $30,000 under these parameters. That seems like an awful lot of money for a Kickstarter effort, though it’s well within their parameters. (I checked.)

The other issue, of course, is the creative positioning. That’s essential for the Kickstarter funding model, but also very important for me.

I see several angles here, both positive and negative. One is the journey through from the cancer being taken by me and the_child. The idea of going to extremes to celebrate having gone to extremes. Another is a continuation of the travel blogging and photo blogging I’ve been doing for years, on my trips to China and New Zealand and around the United States. Another is bringing the adventure aspect home to all of my readers with the same prosaic approach I’ve brought to the cancer journey and everything else.

On the flip side, I’m already a well-off American white male with all the privilege that implies. It’s hard to escape an appearance, and even a reality, of entitlement and privilege, regardless of my conscious motivations. If I am going to ask other people to pay for this, I have to deliver some specific, focused value — in the form of entertainment and education, pace my role in the world as a writer and blogger and a creative artist.

So I’m thinking the creative output has to be layered and meaningful. For example, a high-end, limited edition hardcover book of photography and essays and some Antarctic specific fiction for top tier-donors, and possibly later limited sale. The donors would receive some personalized premium content from me as well. I’d produce a more accessible trade edition of the same book for mid-tier donors and general sale. An ebook edition for all donors, and general sale.

The name of the project, naturally, would be At the Mountains of Madness.

All of this has to include the_child of course, her essays and her art and photography. And I’d being blogging the entire process from the very beginning, so the donor experience would be a reader experience, along for the ride on my metaphorical shoulder.

A question that I need to wrestle with is how much to frame this as a cancer/post-cancer project? From my internal perspective, that’s kind of the point — aiming myself at something audacious. So there’s an emotional journey here, from a hospital bed in Portland, Oregon to the polar ice cap, that would seem to underpin everything. At the same time, I don’t want it to be morbid.

Likewise, do I seek direct sponsorships instead of Kickstarter, or try to build a more traditional nonfiction trade book deal to support this project? Etc. etc. etc.

A lot to think about in order to make this make sense.

In other news, yesterday I had my head Hugo’d.

Looking like a low-rent superhero

The rocket is painted on

The final product

We’ll see how it holds up with my minimal head fuzz.

Photos © 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr. and JD.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. and JD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Now TSA is warning us of surgically implanted explosives. Speaking as someone with an implanted medical device (chemotherapy access port in my right chest, a hollow titanium knob almost the size of a golf ball) and multiple surgery scars festooning my abdomen and chest, I’m pretty sure this will make me a high risk flyer once TSA starts scanning for evidence of surgical history.

Which, if it becomes true, will just piss me off. Basically, the sickest travelers will be in the high risk pool. We will be forced to explain, or possibly document, our medical histories. On top of the myriad indignities of serious illness will be heaped the ingenious indignities of TSA.

Meanwhile, yesterday in America, almost 90 people died from gun violence, almost 1,700 were killed by poor diet and a lack of exercise and a little over 1,200 were killed from smoking cigarettes. No people using the air transit system were killed by surgery patients or persons wearing hats and gloves.

Feel safer yet?

the_child

elusivem

garyomaha

We hauled out to Valley, NE after work yesterday, where the ground crew set the balloon up. Another balloon, Celebration, was launching close by. It’s a long, complex process with a lot of key steps. (Many of which I missed because I was resting in the van.) Once the balloon was set up, we were off quickly, rising over the Nebraska farmland to cruise across the Platte River. We mooed at cows, watched deer, rabbits and fox run from us, inspected crops and railroad tracks, waved at farmhouses, and generally had a grand time.

The sensation of being up in a balloon is fascinating. Except when you’re close to the ground, there’s almost no sense of motion. You’re moving with the wind, after all. The pilot lights hissed slightly, but we could hear all sorts of things from the ground, from cattle lowing to frogs peeping to someone’s peacock calling. I found that I experienced vertigo when we were close down, but not above a few hundred feet from the ground. elusivem explained that’s because the sense of motion disappears as you ascend. Still, I clung to the stays pretty tightly.

On landing, as we came in over the contour of a hill, we even flew through corn. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.) Which is to say, the basket was cruising a foot or two off the ground through a cornfield, the plants hissing and snapping at the wicker as we flowed by.

The landing was clean and uneventful, though Emerald City‘s envelope got snagged on a barbed wire fence during takedown. Sadly, the good aerostat will be going in for repairs due to that mishap.

It may be a few days before I can post a good, solid photoblog of the event, but this might keep you happy for now:

Photo © 2011 Dr. C.

This work by Dr. C. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.