My wife requested that I bring home some tacos from Taco Bell on my way home this evening. The visit to the place where old tacos go to die reminded me of an incident in my fairly distant past.

I once did a great deal of flying. As a pilot, and a fairly conscientious and serious one, I often attended FAA safety seminars. These are long, usually boring lectures by FAA officials, warning pilots of serious safety problems. The importance of not running out of fuel is an example of the deep technical issues these seminars tackled.

On one fine evening, perhaps 12 years ago, I sat in an auditorium listening to a lecture on ice. Icing is a serious problem under certain weather conditions, so this was one of the more interesting seminars I’d attended. The speaker began to talk about sublimation. That’s the process where ice, rather than melting, simply turns right into vapor without ever becoming liquid. Only a few substances can do this under normal conditions (dry ice is one), but a slipstream at high altitude isn’t exactly normal.

The official asked a question of the audience.

“Can anyone name for me a substance that goes directly from a solid state to a gaseous state?”

There was an uneasy silence. No one answered for a long, long time. Finally, something in my brain snapped. Someone had to say something, but somehow, inexplicably, a single word appeared in my subconscious, kicked in the door to my conscious, and proceeded directly to my vocal cords. I said the word, “Burrito?”

After everyone was finished howling with laughter, rolling on the floor, and gasping for air, the rest of the lecture seemed a bit dull by comparison.

Our T-1 is installed at the office! As some may have noticed, the ScottJ webcam is back on the air for your bald-spot viewing pleasure.

Scott