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Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2005-05-11 - 9:55 p.m. Day 3: Do you have a map? Florence has the highest population of motor-scooters in Italy, so we were immensely grateful that our Office Linebacker, organizer of our professional delegation, had arranged a shuttle bus to take us from the hotel to the meeting. Not since Lis, Roland and I spent an hour watching the death-defying traffic on Paris's Champs-Elysees have I seen such bravery in the face of non-existent lane control. The last two members of our engineering team arrived during the night, so we should be eleven on the bus. But, when our leader counts heads, one of the flock is missing. Office Linebacker strolls into the hotel and returns to announce, with a slow grin, that our QA rep was sound asleep, inspiring the inevitable jokes - Well, that's hardly the first or last time Quality Assurance has held us up. (Sorry Lisette.) We are quite late to our meeting, but make excellent progress despite the slow start. Also, we tease QA mercilessly until our Italian counterpart finally says, I believe I understand who was late this morning. If I haven't reminded y'all lately, my spacecraft is designed to observe the sun. Our Manager gives a presentation acquainting our Italian partners with the details of our mission and design. In the corner of one powerpoint slide is a graph of sunspot activity, the variations in their annual number being a rough indication of the amount of energy output by the sun. I smile, amused, because Galileo was one of the first to observe sunspots. I mean in the very face of the sun these innumerable multitudes of dense, obscure, and foggy materials are discovered to be produced and dissolved continually in brief periods. - Galileo Galilei, 1609 I shall say the solar spots are produce and dissolve upon the surface of the Sun and are contiguous to it, while the Sun, rotating upon its axis, carries them along, perhaps bringing back some of those that are of longer duration than a month, but so changed in shape and pattern that it is not easy for us to recognize them. - Galileo Galilei, 1612 Galileo could have never imagined that the spots mark the sites of the Sun�s most potent magnetic fields. Our kind hosts give us dinner recommendations, which the Boy meticulously plots on one of his three maps. Now I've been around the block enough to know that spontaneously finding a good restaurant with seating for 13 people is difficult, especially in Europe, where reservations are the order off the day. Back at the hotel, our kind concierge and I check the map, then she calls Latini on my behalf and secures a reservation for 9:30 pm. But it's 7 pm, and the Americans declare they can't wait that late to eat, so the group vote says we'll just take the bus into town and luck into somewhere. Roland whispers to me This won't work out. But there's a bigger crisis brewing because the Boy's map is not with me and no longer at the front desk. Like a Scooby mystery, the concierge has given it to someone in the party, yet not one has it. Now, for a word about sheep. In a large group of people, you can only have a few leaders. The rest must abdicate responsibility and follow along trustingly, like sheep behind their bellwether. In Scotland, where the sheep roam without fences, the flocks are marked with gang signs - various colors of paint indicating which owner they belong to. They mix together in the common pasture, color-coded for later sorting. Of course, Roland and I think it's all a cover for the sheep Mafia which really runs Scotland. ... A coup occurs on the bus ride, as the Girlfriend (who's been exploring all day while we worked) declares we should go to Piazza Michaelago and view sunset over Florence. The flock follows along, except for the Boy, who is twitching because he doesn't have a map. Boy paces the bus, borrowing maps from each member of the party, hoping for different details on street names. He moves frantically from window to window, changing view angles on landmarks and signs trying to match current location to whichever map he's borrowed. He is, in a word, manic. Meanwhile, Roland and I are sitting on the back of the bus with two of the senior project engineers, who listen patiently to my sheep mafia story from our travels in Scotland. Occasionally, they get the urge to help the Boy navigate, but I stop them saying No, no, get down. We're in the back of the flock. We have to change buses, which makes the Boy crazy as he still doesn't have a city map much less a bus schedule. The rest of us continue mocking him until Roland hugs me close and growls in my ear Stop baiting the Boy. We reach Piazza Michaelago, which is entirely worth the view. Most of the flock mills about savoring the sunset, except for our maniac, who is busy buying extra bus tickets just in case one of the flock comes up short - then herding us to the correct stop for our return. The word snigger is not something you get to use everyday, but it must be said here. We sniggered at the Boy who had literally glued himself to the bus kiosk because it had - you guessed it - a map. At this point, one of my guys - whom Roland has pegged as a Loric-clone - says Oh, that map and hands him back his missing street map they've had palmed for the last hour. The Boy looks like he's been hit by a board. However, the flock has made a mistake. A big mistake, for the Boy now has information. We strike out, following the Boy through the darkened Firenze streets, hunting a restaurant that had been marked on his map. Roland, I, and the two senior engineers who had listened to the sheep story trail along at the end of the line, a mob thirteen Americans who were busy loudly looking like Americans. After twenty minutes wandering, we perceive that there is a map argument at the front of the flock, at which point, my coworker proclaims, Oh, no. It looks like there's been a coup. I don't want my ass painted. I like being a Pink Sheep. While I laugh hysterically, the herd slowly turns in another direction, with Pink Sheep continuing to comment on how this is a bad idea. I mean, I'm comfortable being Pink. A change in leader means they'll repaint my ass,, until finally, we find the mythical restaurant. And, it's closed. I laugh, because you might as well. We randomly try the only open restaurant we find in the darkened area, finishing another fine house Chianti just in time to catch the second-to-last Number#7 bus back to Fiesole, along with a gang of drunk people from Kentucky. Pink Sheep has taken to calling me Pink Leader around the office. � � � 
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