We’ve just returned from a short but eventful bike trip. Our summer trip starts from Las Vegas but the BMWs were in Texas so we decided to move them. It’s 1200 miles or so and there’s a great deal of nothing for much of that distance.
Right in the middle of many hundreds of miles of nothing (ok not quite nothing but flat, open plains as far as the horizon in all directions) is Roswell New Mexico. Visiting Roswell was the highlight of the trip for me because of its history:
In the late 1940s, an apparently disc shaped object from some sort of crash was recovered from nearby. Military reports referred to it as debris from a radar-tracking balloon. Nothing was made of this for around thirty years until a ufologist (made up title or what?), after speaking to a military contact from that time, proclaimed that the debris was actually an alien spacecraft. The military contact was subsequently featured in that eminent publication known for its rigorous journalistic integrity, the National Enquirer. And so the legend began.
I can see how it might all happen. There’s so much nothing around there that I think I might start seeing some crazy stuff after a few days there. Actually I think I might have seen some aliens in one of the bars – you know – the MIB types that look normal but then spin their heads through 360 degrees when nobody is looking…