Sometimes Things Change

Yesterday, reading the newspaper, I got some disturbing news. It was followed a few hours later by an email from Bob Stephens with a link to the LA Times website, and later with a similar message from my nephew Justin (who lives in Beijing). Something may be changing my plans.



Tension has erupted among the residents of Urumqi.

How has this changed things? I don't know.

I know I need to go through Urumqi as I transited Xinjiang, the area between Chengdu (near where I will see the eclipse) and Kazakhstan. I had planned to fly there, and then take a bus to the border. Will they let me? I don't know. And there is no real way to know from here, anyway.

My answer to Bob was simply that I would take it as it came. He and Alson had been to Urumqi last year only a week after there had been a bombing caused by the same racial tension. Although security was high, he said, they were allowed to do their touristy things. Of course, they were with a well-managed group. I'll be alone (and without Judy, I am not generally well managed), and therefore more subject to the vicissitudes of travel.

Do I consider the situation unsafe? No, not at all. Or at least not any more than I would driving through Los Angeles today, a few weeks after whatever happened after the Lakers won the NBA championship. (And yes, I realize that the Urumqi situation is a lot more serious, and deadly.)

One must always be careful, and pay attention.

I do consider this annoying. It may cost me a day or two. More likely it will cost me a bus ride through some mountains and over a high pass into Kazakhstan. I love mountains, but they are not nearly as beautiful flying over them as they are driving though them.

So, as I said to Bob yesterday--If somebody sneezes in Mexico City in the next week, we may all be at Goat Mountain for the RAS star party after the Chinese close their borders to control the spread of Swine flu. One can plan all one likes. Eventually, though, we have to flow along.