I am a pilot. I have flown my own airplane through the skies of every state west of the Mississippi River. At a moments notice I have slipped behind the yoke in my cockpit, climbed above the clouds, flown hundreds of miles without even being able to see the Earth below me and landed at my intended destination within five minutes of the time I was expected. I have done this for almost half a century and never once have I lost my way. You would think that a person, such as myself, who has mastered the navigational skills required to make such journeys, who can take into account the curvature and rotation of the planet, who can correct for the wind that is constantly trying to blow him off his course, would be able to make a trip of 20 miles along a well marked highway and return without getting lost. You would be wrong.
We have been thinking of buying a HD flat screen TV for the last several years. It took a lot of thought and self delusion to convince us to spend that much money on a television that is mainly not much more than a source of noise and is mostly tuned to news we don't want to hear or weather that we can discern ourselves if we were to look out the window. Because we moved into a new home we figured that if we were ever going to do it, the time to do it was now. Actually, to save money, the time to do it was the day after Christmas. So, the day after Christmas I went the to store and bought a TV.
It is a second generation TV. Something they call LCD. It's between Plasma and LED technology, I will spend more money to operate it than I would have spent had I chosen the newer version, but I figure I saved enough on the set itself because of the older technology to more than make up the difference. And, for those of you who's head just exploded because my choice entails the use of many more electrons than the LED version, I'll change a couple of light bulbs to flourscent. OK? Are we good?
I brought it home and then realized I needed a wall mount if it was going to be mounted above the fireplace. So, back to the store in my Guzzler Deluxe to purchase more stuff. It turns out there are three kinds of mounts. Those that are just there, those that tilt and those that move in several directions. I chose the one that tilts and was told "We're out of them now but we'll get them in next week." I did not want to wait until next week, and knowing just how handy I am around the house, I grabbed one that is just there.
I made some measurments, did some calculations to determine optimal angles, and cut shims that when installed between the mount and the TV pointed it directly at the eyes of a seated viewer. Who needs a mount that tilts? Now, I was left with a perfectly good four year old 32 inch TV in the middle of the floor. We needed a new TV stand so we could put it in another room and that, at long last, brings us to the subject of this post.
Our local furniture store was the starting point in the search, but they wanted over $400.00 for a stand that did not match the rest of our early junkyard decor. We declined. Next we looked on Craigslist and found just what was needed. It was made of solid Oak, the perfect size to fit our old TV, was within driving distance and priced to fit our budget! We made the call and were on our way.
Prineville is 20 miles east of Redmond. It is a beautiful drive in the country along a lightly traveled two lane highway. For a while the Sun came out from behind the clouds and we really enjoyed getting out of the house. We had been cooped up for a week and it was time to be in the elements. Barbara had given us excellent directions and we drove to her house without a problem. The stand was as advertised, we paid her price without haggling, loaded up and were back on the road home.
As we approached Prineville on our way back I saw a sign that said "Truck Route". I thought I'd save a minute or two if I took that turn and we could also see a little more of the pretty little town. We did see more of the town and it was worth it. We drove through town and continued on the highway home.
The navigational skills I learned almost 50 years ago are now outdated. All that is required to safely pilot an airplane from one place to another these days is to tell the little black box where you want to go. It promptly displays a route on the instrument panel display and if you keep the icon that represents your airplane on the line you will end up where you want to be. Even though I no longer need to do so, whenever I am in the air I find myself looking at the compass every few seconds to be sure of the direction I am traveling. When we bought the Guzzler Deluxe I made sure we ponied up for all the options and that those options included an electronic compass on the dashboard that is always enabled. Unfortunately I never look at it.
After we had traveled a little over 20 miles toward home I saw a sign that said "Madras 7 miles" Do you remember our TV is mostly on the news and the weather channel? I have seen Madras depicted on the weather map and it is not on our way home. It is not even close to being on our way home. We were lost.
Luckily, we are both retired and had the rest of our lives to find our house. And even more luckily, it took only 45 minutes of those lives to figure out where we were and pull into our driveway.
The old TV now rests on the new stand, the new TV now mostly produces noise and displays the news and weather. And we are warm and comfortable in our home. Oh yeah -now we also know where Prineville and Madras are.
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