The trip to Tahoe involved kool-aid powder-and-vodka shots done in a hot tub filled with twenty people. That's all I have to say about that.

The ride back was... beautiful. It has never looked that gorgeous to me. Clouds gave way to a bright, light, subtle grey sky that illuminated the rocks and snow, the falling streams of water under evergreen... And everything was clean, totally clean; rarely in my life have I ever stepped out into a world so--hmm. The world was not singing--it was in bright silence.

It came to me that our world was truly multidimensional. There are places and things that Do Not Exist unless you are in a certain state of mind. You will not see them or ever come across them until you go through some intangible doorway that shows you that world. It is new and different and it is not where you were before. Any place you can be in is an intersection of space and time and mind; change any of those factors, and you are in a different place. All our maps and quantifications are the sum total of our perception of the places we move through. Our world is not just round. Our world is not just a planet. It is much more than that. A map is just one world-view (get it, ha ha?). If you think a map will show you every place there is to go, you are sorely mistaken.

Speaking of rare intersections of time: Happy Leap Day.

6:02 p.m. 2004-02-29�