A close-up of pulleys and chains on that operated an old McCormick combine, one designed to be tractor-pulled rather than self-propelled.

I am no expert on agricultural implements, but I suspect that it dates from the 1950s, no later.

It seems to be part of the prairie aesthetic to park obsolete threshing machines, etc., on tops of knolls, either as local landmarks or memorials to farming as it was. (Or because the nearest scrap-metal dealer is 70 miles away.) This one is near Finley, North Dakota.

This post’s title is a weak allusion to the movie The Plow that Broke the Plains, made during the Dust Bowl and something anyone interested in North American ecology should watch.

Two days ago: morning fog creeping west from the Missouri River, south of Fort Pierre, South Dakota.

Blogging will be sketchy for the next week, as I am on the road, my destination being first, a small town and an old friend in eastern North Dakota — and then possibly the Turtle Mountain area of that state.

Tonight I fetched up in Valentine, Nebraska (more than halfway there!), which in some respects is a typical Plains town that smells like cows and diesel fuel, but which is surrounded by some fascinating country, including the Sand Hills.

Blogging will be sporadic, or maybe nonexistent, for the next week as I head for the Mysterious East (Virginia) for M.’s family reunion.

I do want to make a little bit of a pilgrimage along the way, and if it happens, I’ll blog it.

Right now, I am obsessed with the thought of flying into a strange airport, renting a strange car, and driving three hours at night through a mostly unfamiliar area to find a place that I have never seen before.

Unlike your typical road warrior, I have to do that only about once a year.

Really, it’s nothing compared to what some people have faced:

I had decided quite definitely that if I could find the right kind of Kurdish brigand — and the hills around Kuchan were infested with them — then by means of a goodly sum of money which I felt confident of getting, and the promise of some plunder into the bargain, I would be able to get through the mountains with explosives.

Now that is what is meant by “travel, not tourism.” It’s from The Spy Who Disappeared by Reginald Teague-Jones, a memoir of his months in the Caspian Sea region during the Russian Civil War.

My pilgrimage connects with that era too.

But I all I need is someone helpful at the Avis counter, not Kurdish brigands. (Imagining an Avis counter manned by Kurdish brigands … Like this?)

At least we can come back by train.

M. and I are preparing to hit the road to where we can eat some good red chile sauce and look at some 17th-century churches. So what am I doing? Charging …

• the iPod
• the digital camera
• the cell phone
• the laptop computer (correction, twoPowerBooks. M. needs her in case of student crises.

It didn ‘t use to be so complicated. We packed clothes.

But this way you might get to see a photo from where we are going.

Another reconstructed longship is on the whale path headed west, and it has made it to the Orkneys.

The plan is to sail through the Orkney Islands in order, among other things, to avoid the Pentland Firth. That this is not a sailing strategy of recent date is evident from the old Nordic texts. They also describe the dangers of Péttlandsfirdi and speak of the shipwrecks in Svelgr “the most gigantic of all whirlpools”.

A running historical commentary is here.

If I had leaned far enough out of my window at the Oxford Hotel to get the full text of the sign at Denver’s Union Station, I would have fallen three stories, which would have ruined M.’s and my trip to the Mendocino coast.

And if I had remembered to pack the USB cable to connect camera to PowerBook, I might have published a day-by-day photo journal. And that journal might have bored some readers to death.

So here is a synopsis, with links instead.

We took Amtrak to Sacramento, then drove to Clear Lake, because I have a fondness for down-at-heel resort towns, like Truth or Consequences, N.M., or Manitou Springs, Colo., the way it was when we lived there. We spent one day just zig-zagging around Lake, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties, being auto tourists.

We stayed at a 19th-century B&B, ate beyond our budget, and of course bought wine. And more wine. (I have a sentimental fondness for Pedroncelli, even though it is not one of the fawncy post-wine boom vineyards, based on a strange dream-like experience during my college years.) And beer, just to be fair.

And then retraced our steps.

I came home Saturday night the 16th with a flourishing head cold that I probably picked up on the previous Monday’s flights between Colorado Springs and South Carolina. It manifested on Thursday morning–that interval seems like about the right incubation time–and made the last three days of the conference I was attending much less fun.

M., meanwhile, had left on June 6 to see relatives in St. Louis. Her return trip on the 11th was disrupted, but this time, Amtrak did right by her–nothing like the trip last winter where we ended up taking a cab from Philadelphia to Washington.

She was supposed to meet the westbound Southwest Chief in Kansas City, but it had derailed on its way from Chicago. This time, Amtrak put her and other delayed connecting passengers in the nearby Westin Hotel. And the next morning she was able to continue on to Colorado.

People on the derailed train were bused to KC. Several told her that the engineer had handled the derailment–possibly caused by vandalism–like a pro. There were no serious injuries, which is one thing that I like about trains: the wrecks are more survivable.

Meanwhile I “enjoyed” a series of virus-laden metal tubes. No big problems, although we sat for twenty minutes on the tarmac in Chicago, passengers fanning themselves with the safety cards from the seatback pockets, while a problem with one engine’s bleeder valve (??) was corrected. It was not as bad as Rod Dreher’s experience with Delta:

This is going to be a miserable summer for air travel, with sprawling terminals serving as Dante-esque cities of woe. Abandon hope all ye who enter here – and don’t forget the Advil.

So I did almost none of the writing that I hoped to do outside the conference sessions, there on a beautiful campus with wireless access everywhere. Yesterday I finished, I hope, an anthology contribution that has been hanging over my head. Now on to some book reviews and an article revision.