I wrote this poem about my observations while people-watching in a small coffeehouse in Boston.

Your loud body language–
Deafening–
Is like a slap to the face,
But stings much deeper,
In accompaniment with
The song you sing.

But, for now, your words
Mismatched
With the melody of your heart
Form a painful love song–
Reveal a contradiction
Of tears and sound.

It came, then passed.
Expectations hoarded satisfaction, sharing none.
Out the window–through the panes–went the plans, through the pains.
The feigning of my lack of control
Turned from ever-realization into sudden actualization.
My momentum lost, Sovereignty kicked in,
I am caught in Love’s fate’s currents, stream.
Promises ever-unfolding–not forgotten–and I am trusting.
When only the impossible can, only the best can happen.
This will pass, it will come.

This post is an actual account of a two-day adventure to track, locate, and recover K2CC’s space capsule from its first ever near-space weather balloon experiment. Day 1 (referred to as “yesterday”) is Thursday, May 5, 2011 and Day 2 (referred to as “today”) is Friday, May 6, 2011. The launch site was at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY USA.

As I wipe Southwest Chipotle Sauce from my hands and face, I notice the strange feeling of a full stomach that has not yet fully recovered from the mild airplane sickness from just an hour before. The search and rescue flight was long, fatiguing, and fruitless until just past the point of wanting to give up. The sound of the radio beacon was so faintly trying to get our attention at first that we almost missed it when our yawns out-cried its transmissions.

To have been able to plan a search path to fly and even hear the radio beacon is quite incredible; however, to have made a visual confirmation of the space capsule’s landing place in the Adirondacks is next to impossible! Waypoint logged, here we are on our way to hopefully recover our aerial photography from our near-space weather balloon. Best yet, it’s late evening, leaving us with little remaining daylight, we have to hike through thick, swampy Boreal forest, and I’m covered with Southwest Chipotle Sauce. I hope there are no bears this far North that have ever vacationed in the Southwest to then say, “Is that Southwest Chipotle Sauce? My, I haven’t sunk my canines into a juicy Southwest Chipotle-style human since that rodeo years back!”

Just yesterday, we launched the balloon and payload around 4pm with great success. At the last minute, I remembered that I happened to have an audible emergency siren in my vehicle, so I grabbed that, clipped it on the space capsule, and we enabled it upon launch. We released it from a lawn on campus and watched it ascend toward the clouds, and then hopped in our vehicles equipped with tracking and recovery gear. Our tracking and recovery gear consisted of VHF radios for receiving the position transmissions, computers and software for decoding the position data, specialized mapping software for comparing multiple waypoints, GPS receivers, UHF radios for mission voice communications, GSM and CDMA cellular telephones for receiving APRS network data from aprs.fi (in the very few spots that cellular coverage was possible), UHF radios for receiving the separate radio beacon transmissions, directional antennae for determining the relative bearing of the radio beacon, and standard hiking gear. While in our vehicles, we tracked a balloon flight path to the South, which then turned and completed a large circle.

Due to GPS location transmissions being interrupted prematurely, we were unable to determine the landing site, which necessitated the use of balloon trajectory prediction software. We drove on some very rough, and scary, logging roads near the predicted possible landing area. We even had to cross some interesting wooden bridges! Unfortunately, we were unable to receive either GPS location transmissions or the separate beacon’s transmissions, which led to our eventual small plane flight today.

In this second evening attempt, we arrive 0.7 miles from the spotted landing site on a major State highway at 8pm. Three of us begin our hike with hiking gear, a UHF radio, and a directional antenna. We hike through thick forest with an unusual, swampy, moss-covered floor. After a while of pushing our way through the forest, we come to a stream.

While in the air, we noticed this stream that would be in our way, as well as a beaver dam stretched across it. After locating it, we then cross the stream by walking 100 feet along the top of the beaver dam until safely on the other side, which also necessitated throwing down logs from the dam to repair a 10-foot gap in the center of the dam. We then continue pushing our way through the forest toward the source of the UHF beacon transmissions, and inquire about a strange-sounding bird we occasionally hear chirp.

Eventually, we arrive at the general vicinity of the landing site, but are so close to the source of the radio beacon transmissions that we no longer can determine a direction. At this point, we are searching every tree for a shiny, metallic space capsule dangling by a string. Just then, we hear that same unusual chirp, and realize it is too acrylic-sounding to belong in the forest. The occasional chirp is not from a bird, but from the battery-exhausted audible beacon we had clipped on the space capsule as an afterthought! We turn and look with our flashlights to see our space capsule dangling from an evergreen tree. I suggest we fell the tree, but the capsule is only about 8 feet off the ground, so we decide to simply pull it down instead.

With coyotes packing up behind us, we trek back to the beaver dam, cross the pond using the dam again, and press through the pitch-black forest back to the vehicle. After an intense hike through the dark, we arrive back at the road where the vehicle is parked. We arrive in Potsdam at 10:15pm with space capsule, parachute, and balloon remnants in hand, and recover the memory cards from the horizontal and vertical digital cameras with incredible timelapse photography on board!

Other notable photos from K2CC’s weather balloon and space capsule, as well as from the recovery missions: https://picasaweb.google.com/tycon1337/TheGreatGigInTheSky

APRS Position Telemetry Messages: balloon_aprs_dot_fi_messages

Tyler Conlon’s website: http://tylerconlon.com
K2CC’s website: http://k2cc.clarkson.edu

We talked.
To my surprise, it was not as awkward as it naturally could be,
Or perhaps as it naturally should be, especially during the awkward moments that followed an all-to-common topic that should probably be uncommon or otherwise less-common in natural discourse.

Next, I realized how awkward it was that it wasn’t awkward.
Of course, such an awkward thought of the awkwardness of the lack of awkwardness made me feel awkward.
In fact, at that point, I probably even began acting awkwardly.

Then, I had the realization that the realization of the awkwardness of the lack of awkwardness was making me feel awkward and probably act awkwardly.
At last, I decided to stop thinking about it and just revel in the awkward lack of awkwardness of the otherwise naturally-awkward situation, which otherwise would have been awkwardly awkward if I had not stopped thinking of its awkward and unnatural lack of awkwardness.
Get over it—people are awkward, and that, itself, is awkwardly not-so-awkward.

I am in search of the world’s most delicious food or meal. Unfortunately, after much searching, I came to the realization that every culture’s and every person’s tastes are so vastly different, that even locally-popular foods are hardly noticeable on a global scale–it is even difficult to form a list of the most popular foods! I guess this adds to the value of and great feeling associated with cooking for others and sharing with them one’s own food experiences.

So, here I ask you, what are some of the best foods/dishes that you have had that you recommend trying at least once in life, and is there a noteworthy setting that added to the experience?

Brilliance drives by.
Filter horizontal stripes
Onto headlights
Cornering shadows,
And together they dance the
Brief waltz that
They die to live for.

Horizon leaning,
Diagonal spinning,
The fade then flashes.
Cars distancing
The dim nighttime hues
That fall between
My fingers like time’s sand.

Pillow cools my mind.
Breath shortens
While form escapes me.
Stanzas are failing.
The night’s music that
Chimed so lovely then
Now forebodes that sanity’s a temporary vapor.

Thoughts evaporate as
The sound of raindrops mists them.
I still feel but
No worries are left in the game.
I feel peace and
Wonderful love and
Even see the potential future today.

(Submitted from my phone.)

During Sunday Night’s Community Group, a vision overwhelmed me. Here, I’ll try to capture that experience.

Prayers
Answered.
Hearts spoken to.
Holy Spirit moved,
But by selfishness removed.

And this is what it looks like when
God whispers in the hearts of men.
And this is what it feels like when
Our own ambitions turn us away.

I cried,
For Heaven was crying,
And the sorrow we dealt
Was drowned out by the sorrow I felt.

Nation
Dying.
Saints proclaiming.
Leaders denying
And Heaven is crying.

And this is what it looks like when
God hears our intercessions.
And this is what it feels like when
Those we care about do not listen.

And I cried,
For Heaven was crying,
And the sorrow they dealt
Was drowned out by the sorrow I felt.

Oh, I cried
When I saw how Heaven cries.
And the sorrow–oh, the sorrow–
Was a sorrow I never before felt.

The sorrow–
My sorrow–
Shared in Heaven’s sorrow,
Heaven’s sorrow.

And then I could see,
See what we are meant to be–
See what we could be–
And I cried at the beauty.

I am.
Neither my father nor my mother, but of both.
I am small
But like my brothers, I am my own.

I grow.
It’s a race against the clock, and I was made eager to grow.
I am alive
And like others in my race, taste human rights.

I dream.
Not in thought, but my heart beats the rhythm of the human spirit,
Freedom’s song.
The passion of humanity and individuality flows through my veins, it’s how I was made.

Ask why.
My mother could be unwilling to care for me, or might have been raped,
I do not know.
But I do know I’m not to blame.

Ask why.
My only protection from the world has turned on me.
Turn away
You won’t protect me from my kin, though I have no fighting chance.

Ask why!
I wish I could understand how the world could be so cruel as to blame me.
In this world
That promotes this and only this way out, I wish I wasn’t made guilty.

I cry.
I might be incapable physically, but I’d try.
The heart that
Is still in formation, oh how it can feel heartache.

I cry.
This is how it feels to be forsaken, and now I’ll never meet my first love, laugh with friends, or chance the American Dream.
I think little
But if only I’d been given the chance for after-thought, these are what I’d say.
Yes, if I had a voice before my death sentence, these are what I’d plea.

I die.
If only I was given the chance to forgive you and this world, then I could have tried.
But I die,
I die.