"Patience my friend. He has grown strong. Only together can we turn him to the dark side." - Emperor Palpatine, Return of the Jedi

This was my last look at Denali National Park. The traffic is killer. Oh, you can click on this for bigger pictury goodness.

Major note and plug for Wilder Global Domination, Inc.:

The Mrs.’ book is out and unleashed on the world. It’s online and available at Amazon.com at this link. Buy a copy, or, better yet, buy a dozen. They’re cheap, make wonderful gifts, doorstops, blocking for cars that you want to keep up on blocks, and they’re make from wonderful, sweet trees.

A word of warning: The Book isn’t Life in Alaska. It’s more like Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci code. I liked it, even after reading it (and editing it) a bazillion times. This is a big day in the Wilder house, and The Mrs. was giddy. If you hate Amazon, you can also get it at Target.

One thing that Alaska taught me, for which I am forever grateful, is patience.

Not Patience like the crappy Guns n’ Roses song, but rather the old Zen Master type of patience. When you live in Alaska, well, if you want it, and it ain’t in Fairbanks, you either ain’t going to get it or you’re gonna have to wait. Amazon.com (hint, hint, see above) takes forever to deliver. If you want the house to be warm, you’ll have to be patient. It takes a while for the wood stove to come up to temperature. If you want to get construction services performed, you have to be patient, especially during moose season.

Patience is built into the Alaskan experience.

I really realized how different that I was when I started driving in Houston traffic. Houston traffic is probably not the worst in the world. That would probably be the traffic into Paris Hilton’s bedroom. Take a number? Nah, she doesn’t have time for that. Regardless, the traffic is, well, as thick as the Baldwin family at certain times of the day (do you think that Adam or Alec or what’s his name can even spell? Me neither).

As I started to brave the traffic, I realized something: I can’t drive through cars, unless I get a much bigger car, say, a M1-A1 Abrams tank, or something bigger like a Tahoe. Given that restriction placed on me by physics, I decided to be content in traffic. I achieved this Nerdvana by:

• Leaving Early to Go Where I’m Going,
• Looking at the Miles Per Gallon Indicator on the Dash, and
• Being Old.

I noted that, after getting off the 1600 lane Interstate-Style road, I can get through approximately 1492 stop lights without stopping. I do this through the extraordinary means of

• driving the speed limit,
• watching the traffic and lights ahead,
• keeping a buffer of distance between,, and
• holding a petrified mummy’s hand and chanting, “Klaatu Verata N’ictu”.

Since the kinetic energy of a car is ½mv², and my car has a mass of approximately 62.5 slugs (really, that’s the English system’s version of mass, if you discount the pound-mass, which is, well, just silly) and a velocity of 40 MPH, then the total kinetic energy of the car is 386,200,000 slug-feet/second². I’m not sure what that even means, but, it’s actually correct. When use my brakes to transfer that 386,200,000 slug-feet/second² into heat, well, that’s 386,200,000 slug-feet/second² of gasoline I could have not poured out onto the pavement. I’m cheap. I don’t like to use my brakes.

While I was doing this the other night, I got lights flashed at me and was honked at by someone who obviously didn’t understand that by jamming on the accelerator and rushing from one red light to the next, having a speed curve of 0mph-40mph-0mph that he would waste that 386,200,000 slug-feet/second² of energy at every red light. I let him pass me. He looked like Vladimir Putin

Figures. Communists hate saving energy. Stupid Vladimir Putin.

Hey, why does my keyboard glow like it’s been charged with 386,200,000 slug-feet/second² of energy?

(Subliminal message: buy the book and Vladimir Putin won’t poison you with polonium.)