Ahhh, so a couple weeks ago I was sitting on the top of the slide tower at work with nothing to do. So I just thought about random shit. Brb. Gonna trim my nails. Alright sorry that was bugging me. So, I was thinking about random shit. For whatever reason I thought about the desert.
The desert would have to be the most underrated terrain on the planet. I mean, all basic terrains on Earth have pretty good ratings and likeness from the population. Plains: where most of all people on earth live more or less. Mountain: where people experience much of the beauty and adventure of winter. Island: where all of us dream of for fantastic relaxing vacations. Deciduous: again where a huge population of us live. Rainforest: perhaps the most sought-after terrain of them all. Then there's Desert. And no one seems to really give a fuck about the desert. No one ever takes a vacation to a desert because they've never seen a desert before. But they do however take frequent trips to mountain, island, deciduous and especially rainforest terrain type places.
My question is, why? Desert terrain is perhaps the most extreme, unique, and beautiful terrains of them all. The culture of desert civilizations is based off of complete adaptation to the land they live on, it's perhaps the most desolate isolation you will ever see, and very little is scientifically known and documented on the movement, expansion, and formation of sand dunes. And perhaps the coolest aspect of the desert, is navigation.
Aside from the oceans, deserts are the only geological locations where the signature of the surface of the Earth changes rapidly. Here's what that means. All of earth's surface changes; volcanoes form islands, plates move continents apart, mountains form etc. but this all takes millions of years. In a desert, a sand dune the size of a mountain may exist one day, and be gone the next. Sand dunes are massive! Some tower thousands of feet above the rest of the sand. To think that they move around, and come and go with the aimlessness of the wind is nothing short of intriguing.
So because sand dunes are very big, they become very difficult obstacles to deal with when traveling across a desert. And because the location of even the biggest sand dunes are completely arbitrary, navigation across a desert can get difficult. Travel across a desert would be difficult enough with the endless sand and infinite heat, but when you add the fact that you have small-sized mountains to either climb over or walk around and you have no clue where they're gonna pop up; navigation in a desert becomes quite a hassle. And of course there are no roads, signs, landmarks, or anything expect to guide off of save sand and dunes that are never in the same place twice.
See this is the type of shit I think about at work, nonstop. Anyway with my deep analysis of deserts I decided I should add the Sahara to my bucket list. So now it's there.
Then a couple of days after I thought so much about it, my parents and Karen and I booked a trip to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Unfortunately we won't get all up in the Sahara's business like I wish to someday do, but I'm pleased with being in the High Atlas Mountains. I'm also pleased with finally getting my ass to Africa. 19.5 years is a long fucking time to live without ever visiting Africa. Asia's next on my list, but Africa was a higher priority.
In other news, I've recently been real into racing. And not any specific type of racing, I've really been getting into several disciplines and leagues excepting NASCAR because NASCAR is boring as fuck. In fact I just ordered a cool racing wheel along with a new racing videogame to indulge in. I like racing due to the precision involved. The only thing that involves more precision is flying. Other than flying, high-speed, adrenaline-fueled precision really doesn't exist outside of racing. Think about precision; precision is everywhere in the western world (engineering, finances), but only exists with such a high-speed/low-reaction-time in flying and racing. Which is why I love both. I really enjoy the challenge.
So that probably wraps up this blog post. I hope you enjoyed learning so much about deserts. Now stop reading this and go out and be an interesting person. Until next time...
