You know, we celebrate in Colombia the "Independence of Cartagena" last November 11. So, next Monday is a non-working day (don't ask: down here, we move holidays around at our leisure). So, I have some time to update next year calendar in my awesome, extraordinary page
(that doesn't work well in ---, but works perfectly in Opera: another reason to change).I read all day about the "Story of religions", by Mircea Eliade. I was slowly but surely starting to understand the theory of the old crazy guy about 'hierophanies': his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate ways of bringing to light sacred things, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them. I'm a fan of Joseph Cambell, who says that no, Mircea is wrong: religions actually are a subsconcious way of men to adsorb the tragic (and entertaining, if I may add) way we have to move from childhood to adolescency: we have a hard time understanding sex. I'm undecided about Mr. Eliade theories all day long.
Anyway, at 6 pm I kick my kid (who has been playing "Commando" for the best part of the day and whose brain health could be seriously affected by now) out of the "main" PC I have, and I start to update my list of tracks.
By 7 pm I'm almost at the end of the list when I arrive to "Yas Marina Circuit". I had no idea until today that Bernie has made a pact with some sheik in Dubhai to build a track for next year right in the middle of nothing.
Shut, I think, I've built the path around all tracks to the millimeter, and now the old goat makes imposible for me to build this particular one. How in heaven am I going to draw it if the track itself isn't built? I sigh and, anyway, I look for the location.
After googling for a while, I find the website for the track. I take a good look at the pictures of the model they put up in display at the Shangai GP, I fire up Google Earth and I'm finally able to locate a channel, right by the coast, that has the correct shape.
The desert and a channel to the right: nothing to be seen
I'm puzzled, of course. The most featureless desert in the world is before my eyes. The coast line has no resemblance to the huge, luxurious dock that the sheik and his architects (Tilke, I suppose) have in mind. Anyway, the bleak, poor picture I located and my brain click somehow.
Just a picture in the wall behind Bernie's picture: the only clue I had
I take the svg image that Wikipedia has on its page about the track and, without any hope, I superpose the image on the desert.
Nothing.
I try in every conceivable way to move, resize, translate, rotate, whatever: there is nothing to be seen. I sigh again and I decide, what the heck, I'll measure the approximate shape of the track I have and I'll compare with the length posted in the wiki until there is some kind of match and I'll put it where I think it should be. That's all I can make. I'm not satisfied by it, but what else can I do?
I'm done when Tomás, my kid (he's nine years old) passes by and says: "Hey dad, what's that road doing there?". I answer to him: "There is no road there yet, kiddo, it's just a superposed image for a future track that I took from Wikipedia". He insists.
You know, I've trained him thoroughly to be able to walk around a track before a race and to be able to distinguish even where the superelevation changes are. The kid has a powerful mind, if I'm allowed to say so. He has the mind of an extraterrestrial, kind of a 5 feet encyclopedia, everybody says the same. The apple never falls far from the tree... So, what the heck, I zoom in, really close.
Shut. The kid is right. There is dirt track, barely visible, no more that 20 meters away from my wild guess location.
I'm pretty happy. In the next five minutes I realize that, yes, it is there, there is a whole layout of the track, right in the middle of nowhere. There are no other civil works yet, but, yes, with my kid help
I'm able to trace the whole circuit. I put it in my page, pretty satisfied with my kiddo's abilities, who, from thin air, shows me with total confidence, where the transition curves are. He's really well trained and I hope he can, some day, make his own tracks.Curves 5 and 6 to the right and backstretch to the left: a perfect match!
There is an odd building at the middle of the track, close to the site where the finish line will be.
All right, I go to bed early, and, as I'm pretty old, I wake up really early. I had a dream, you know, involving the Modoshawans landing at the building. Odd, I think. Jean Luc Besson has twisted something in my brain, I think.
I don't know why I go back to check the track site. Damn. The satellite pictures have a 2005 date!
I start to think that Bernie is a funny old man. How in heaven can a track, that nobody knew about until this year, has been built, as a dirt track, three years ago? And for what purpose? Surely the winds will cover the works with sand in no time. Well, I think, I may be wrong. There are some images in that area that were taken in July, 2008, maybe one of them was put there by the guys at Keyhole, who knows.
I notice that the main straight has a funny, slight angle to the channel. Why it's not at 90 degrees, as would be logical? I wonder if it is a mistake caused by the distortions of the image, as the Earth is a globe (duhh). However, I'm a little puzzled. Why would you twist a straight a few degrees in the desert from its "rational" direction? The yatch docks will be also twisted a few degrees toward the channel for no apparent reason.
Suddenly, as Campbell would have said, I have an epiphany. I make a quick line from the finish line to Meca, in Saudi Arabia. I locate the exact site of the Kaaba, the sacred stone that nobody (well, almost nobody) has seen, the one that people says is an iron meteorite that fell from the sky in Mohammed times.
I locate the exact site of the finish line. To my amazement I slowly realize that the main straight points directly to the Kaaba! There is no possible mistake, there is a bee line from the finish line to the ancient meteorite all the muslims face toward when praying.
I google furiously about the name of the airline that finances the track and I discover that its name (Etihad) means "unity". I look for the meaning of Yas: it means "age". Any meanings? I don't know.
So, to finish, the next year the whole grid will be pointing exactly to Mecca right before the start.
Perhaps Eliade was right: myths and rituals do not simply commemorate ways of bringing to light sacred things, they actually participate in them.
Time to start betting on someone in the grid converting to Islam next year (or Bernie actually being a Mondoshawan, who knows).
(In case of your beloved one reading this, "this is a joke, Madam"!)
