Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Dental malady, trinity

Part two of the dental malady will take place in a few hours. I get a real crown and a new filling, plus a bunch of shots in my gumline, a lecture about why I need to floss more, a sore jaw from the rubber block they jam in my mouth to keep it open wide, and hopefully some more nitrous. I will probably start having Frances Farmer flashbacks while I’m in the chair and put a dental explorer through an assistant’s thigh. Think gentle thoughts…

One of the best bits of luck has hit me with regard to my trip across the country. As I may or may not have mentioned, when I leave for New York, I will be spending two weeks in a rental car, exploring the country. My original plan was to go from Seattle to Salt Lake, then Vegas, then LA, then follow Route 66 to St. Louis, skip over to Indiana, see all of my friends, go to see Micheal in Ohio, and then head to the city. This was the plan, with me leaving on the 31st of March. But, get this:

The Trinity Site is opento the public on April 3! What does that mean? This is the place where it all started – July 16, 1945, the first atomic explosion ever. It’s only open two days a year, and I will be in the general vicinity for one of them. This means the whole trips is changing. I will stay in Vegas for one night, then immediately drive east, stay the night in Albequerque, and drive down in the morning to check this out. I’ll also have time to go to Roswell and see all of the fake alien UFO museums.

For a good site on Trinity, check this out. There isn’t much there – it’s not like the NTS tour, where there are huge craters from plowshare explosions and fake cities which were nuked to study structural integrity. But there will be some cool government spook signs, I’m sure – telling people not to pick up radioactive stuff or they will be shot on site or whatever. It will be a very cool photo op.

I just called NTS – they have monthly tours, but they are on March 22 and April 23, or something like that. You can’t take cameras there, either. I also found out from the above site that you can now scuba dive at the Bikini atoll, although the tours are very small and expensive, and you need to be an advanced diver. It almost makes me want to learn how to swim just to check it out. The aircraft carrier USS Saratoga is sitting at the bottom there, and you can swim all over it. Also, the Nagota is there, which is the ship from which the attack on Pearl Harbor was conducted. They hauled all of those old ships out there to see what an H-bomb would do to them.

I’ve gotta check out this guy’s web site. More later…