languishing in some god-forsaken airport?

It took me three days to get back from Erice. I had booked a flight on Aug 25 from Palermo to Rome on a discount airline. When I arrived at the airport (at 5.30 am – a 4 am wakeup in Erice), I learned that the airline (Wind) had gone bankrupt two weeks earlier. I was the only person from the conference who had tried to save the organizers extra money by a cheaper flight. Though there were numerous flights to Rome later in the day, all flights were sold out until September !! There was no internet service at Palermo airport and my phone wasnt working. I went to town (one hour) to get a train. All the trains were booked as were buses. I somewhat frantically rented a car from the airport, foolishly booking it through an aggregator rather than Hertz. I went back to the airport, another hour. I then remembered that there was a ferry from Palermo to Naples. By this time, the information at the airport was open and I booked a ticket on the overnight ferry. There were no sleepers available. I had no problem cancelling with Hertz but had to eat the prepayment at the aggregator.

My wife and I had taken the ferry a few years earlier and there were no chairs. We either had to sit on the floor or, after a while, seized a bar stool and sat on it for hours. I dreaded the overnight ferry. I waited in town for hours until the 9 pm ferry, mostly at a nearby restaurant. By this time my computer was nearly drained as well, but the restaurant let me recharge. A fellow near me went to the ferry ticket office at 4 pm and when he returned said that he got a sleeper. I went over and they didnt have any. Actually it turned out all right. They had overnight lounges that had reclining chairs like airplanes arranged in rows like an airplane. I put on airplane mask and earplugs, took a heavy gravol and slept through the night.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t able to get a plane from Rome to Toronto until Monday afternoon. I had to buy a new ticket.

Being stuck in Rome doesnt sound bad, but I was ready to come home and somewhat in a bad mood. On the other hand, I’ve taken lots of trips in my life and never got burned like this before, so I was fairly phlegmatic about it. I was a lot more tired when I got home.

I think that the tiredness is mostly because I sprained my ankle badly early in the summer and haven’t got proper exercise since then. It also hasn’t healed properly and I’m finally trying to deal with it.

Stephan Lewandowsky reviews Mann’s book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”

It turns out that Lewandowsky is not merely an obsequious member of the Hockey Team but a believe in Michael Mann as Copernicus, or something approaching that: Mann and his hockeystick “will forever change how humanity views its future.”

Stephen McIntyre’s first priority should be his personal life, starting with maintaining his health.

As well note he spends much time digging and analyzing, excellent work that is a solid contribution to defending humans.

It was the lion that needed courage. So did I in 2009 after Climategate emails and documents were released and I watched world leaders and leaders of the scientific community try to justify false temperature data.

The following verses from the Bhagavad Gita gave me courage to engage the tiger whose tail I had been pulling since 1975:

“Having made yourself alike in pain and pleasure, profit and loss, victory and defeat, engage in this great war and you will be freed from sin, Arjuna.”

“But if you do not participate in this battle against evil, you will be violating your dharma and your honor, and you will incur sin.”
Bhagavad Gita 2:34-38

http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/

Especially if you realize you’ve been pulling on the tail of a tiger.