July 30
I woke up to my portable telephone ringing, and it took me a minute to know what it was. I guess Meghan was confused by it, too, because she also woke up and was trying to turn off the alarm on her portable telephone.
By the time I got out of bed to answer it it had stopped, but it remembers who called and shows you.
Meghan was sitting up in the futon and she looked a little bit grouchy, and I turned my ears and heard a familiar engine outside, and I saw that it was Mel who had called. It took me longer than it should have to figure out what was going on, and then I opened the balcony door and could feel the way the wind was moving and faintly hear thunder off in the distance.
Meghan must have figured it out, too, because she had made her telephone show a picture of the clouds and the whole west side of Michigan was covered in yellow and red splotches.
Just then my portable telephone rang again and it was Mel and I told him that I'd be down pretty quick and started scrambling to get my flight gear together.
Meghan wanted to come, too, so both of us were scrambling to get ready. I got her clothes together for her while she was in the bathroom and then when she was getting dressed I filled my camelback and decided that I could put on the rest of my flight gear while we were on the way. It would be even more crowded in the truck with Meghan there, but she could help me get dressed.
Mel shook her hand and introduced himself when she got in the truck, and we didn't have a lot more time than that because the storm was coming.
Meghan said that quarter to six on a Saturday morning was far too early to be up, and I kinda agreed but what could we do? Back in Equestria, the weather team worked in shifts, but here I was the only weather-watching pegasus, so I had to go out when the storms came, no matter how inconvenient it might be.
It was really weird to have Meghan dressing me while I sat on her lap. Fortunately, she knew how everything went on except for my GoPro, and once I explained it to her, she didn't have any trouble attaching it where it belonged. She said that she'd turn the camera on when we got out there, because she could do it for me.
The two radios in Mel's truck were pretty active with updates from other watchers and warnings from the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids. There was a severe thunderstorm warning, a flood warning, and a tornado watch, as well as a small craft advisory for Lake Michigan.
On our way out, he stopped at Tim Horton's long enough to get coffee for all of us, because he said that we both looked like we needed it.
When we got to our watching spot, the gusty wind that I'd felt earlier had dropped off, but off in the distance I could see constant lightning in the clouds.
We sat in the cab and drank our coffee, then I called the airplane directors and told them that I was going up, and Dori gave me one-time permission to go through the clouds and see what they looked like from on top. She said that I couldn't stay there; I'd have to go back down under them, but I could take a look and report back.
So I flew up and once I was about a thousand feet up, I checked my radio with Mel and waved to him and Meghan (I'm not sure that they could see anything besides my blinking light), and then started climbing to the clouds.
For once, I didn't have to watch my altimeter, and I didn't have to stop when I hit the bottom of the clouds. I pushed right through and kept going, my light giving strange flashes up in the cloud.
When you're in a cloud, it's just like being in fog. Sounds get strange and distant, and smells are overwhelmed by the clouds itself, and it's pretty easy to get disoriented. My blinking light was not helping with that, either, because all it did was light up the cloudstuff around me. If there were any airplanes in this cloud, we'd never see each other before we collided.
This cloud was going to grow into a thundercloud once it got a little bit more energy, but it wasn't quite there yet. Back in Equestria, we'd have been working on clouds like this to get them to drop what they had before they could pile up into a big stormcloud, but with just me here that wasn't going to happen.
As I got close to the top of it, it started to get lighter, and pretty soon I broke through. I didn't have a proper perspective, since I hadn't been allowed to fly above clouds on Earth, so I couldn't say for sure how far away the front was, but it was a towering pile of anvil-shaped cumulus clouds, flashing with lightning all the way up to their tops.
I told Mel what I was seeing, and then I told Dori on the airplane radio as well, and before I went back down I stood on a little hill of cloud and looked around me, since I probably wasn't going to get the opportunity to be on top of a solid cloud deck very often.
Off to the east, I could see some rainclouds that had already passed by, and there were other big towers of cumulus all around me, so it looked like as far as I could see everyone was going to be getting storms.
There were also some airplanes far above me, adding their own clouds to the mix. I could see an arc where one of them had turned to avoid the top of a stormcloud.
When I'd gotten a good look, I punched my way back into the cloud and made my best guess for how far I'd drifted when I was above the clouds. Since I couldn't see anything on the ground through the clouds, I had no way of knowing where I was, and I couldn't even tell how strong the winds were up here.
That was one of the most dangerous things about flying through the clouds over the ocean. You could land on top of a big mass like this and then when you went back under them discover that you were over the ocean with no land in sight, and no sun or stars to guide you back. With experience you learned to judge the drift, but I had virtually none here on Earth. The only thing that I did have in my favor was that I hadn't been up all that long and there was a lot of land to the east of me, so no matter where I was, there was going to be someplace to land.
Well, it took me a minute to orient myself once I was back under the clouds. There was a big patch of forest under me, and I could see the lights of Kalamazoo off in the distance. It took me a minute but then I found the railroad tracks and the 94 Highway, and from there I could see where they crossed, and from there find our storm-watching spot.
I called Mel and told him where I was, and started to fly back towards them. The wind had started to pick up, and then the rain started coming down, and it just got heavier and heavier, and I wound up going off-course because I couldn't see them at all. When the rain dropped in intensity, I could see the headlights of the cars on the 94 Highway, and I kept heading in that direction until I was over it, and flew back in that direction, then off to the west some more so that I'd be able to give some advance warning on the intensity of the storm.
There was lightning and thunder all around me, and sometimes the rain was coming down so fast that I couldn't even see the ground at all. Keeping a roughly stationary observation point turned out to be completely impossible, so I kept flying back towards our spot whenever I could see it, but as the storm went on I wound up drifting far enough off course that I couldn't find it any more, so I just kept flying generally into the wind.
Even when there was a break in the rain, it didn't help, because I couldn't see enough of the ground to orient myself. Kalamazoo was out of sight through the rain, and I'd lost the 94 Highway, and I couldn't see the 131 Highway yet, and there was nothing on the ground below me that was distinct enough to be sure where I was.
At least the radio still worked, so I could talk to Mel and let him know what the weather was doing. I asked him if he could see me—maybe my blinking light would be visible through the rain—but he said that he couldn't.
I didn't know how long I'd been up before the rain finally lightened up enough for me to find the 94 Highway again, which was behind me. So either the winds had shifted and I hadn't known, or else I'd overcompensated flying into them. And I still didn't know which side of our stormwatching spot I'd wound up on, because nothing around me looked that familiar.
I guessed that I'd probably overflown to the west, because I thought that I'd probably have been able to seen Kalamazoo if I'd drifted to the east, but I couldn't decide if I should dive down until I was low enough to read the signs on the road, or just trust my instincts. I didn't want to lose my altitude, but I'd lose a lot of energy if I flew the wrong way.
It was starting to clear up, and I knew that I'd recognize Kalamazoo from a couple of miles out, so it wouldn’t be that much of a waste of effort, I hoped. So I called Mel and told him that I was over the 94 Highway and I thought that I was southwest of him but I wasn't sure. He asked if there were any good landmarks, because he could look on a map and find them, and I said that I was over trees and swampland, and I could see some fields off in the distance and that there were a couple of lakes behind me and he said that he didn't think that was enough to go on.
So I told him that I'd fly east along the 94 Highway and hopefully I'd find him again, and if I saw Kalamazoo ahead of me, I'd turn around and come back.
I'd guessed right, because after I'd flown for a little while, still not seeing enough of the ground through all the rain to be sure of my position, he called me and said that both he and Meghan could see my blinking light.
Before too long, I could see the bridge over the highway, and I felt a sense of relief.
And then the heavy rain came again. I felt the cold wind suddenly hit me from behind, and turned back into it as sheets of rain washed over me. I lost all sight of the ground again, except for occasional flickers of lights on the ground below me, and once again I was completely caught up in the storm.
This time it didn't last all that long, and when it cleared up a bit I could still see the 94 Highway, and I lost it again.
The storm continued until noon, and sometimes it was really heavy and other times there was enough visibility for me to see the ground and keep my position. The gas station has a really tall sign with a white S on it, and that was a good landmark.
When he finally called me down, I was completely exhausted. My wings were sore, I was starving, and I was completely soaked. Meghan helped me out of my flight gear and dried me off some, then we got in the truck and Mel stopped at the gas station and bought me a doughnut called a Krispy Kreme and also another cup of coffee.
It wasn't the best food for an empty stomach, but it perked me up some, and on our way home, Meghan used her pocket telephone to order us a pizza for lunch.
It was ready when Mel got to Papa John's, and I wanted to start eating it right then, because it smelled so good.
Mel let us off at my apartment, and we sat on the futon and had pizza and then Meghan asked if I wanted to take a shower.
I said that I wasn't sure if I did because I'd had enough of water for one day, and now that my belly was full and I was mostly dry, all I wanted to do was sleep, and she was yawning, too, so we got back in the futon and curled up together.
I didn't want to lie on her 'cause my coat was still pretty damp, and I didn't want to get her shirt wet. She said it was okay, and that she'd been really scared when she lost sight of me up in the storm, especially when she'd heard me telling Mel that I didn't know where I was.
I'd been a little worried, too. I'd thought that I might have to land and then have Mel come and pick me up, and I thought that would be really inconvenient for him.
She said that he wouldn't have minded, and she said that they'd been talking and he'd suggested that I could get a wristwatch that showed where I was, and that maybe I should have one.
I'd have to ask Mister Salvatore about that.
We napped for a couple of hours, and when we woke up, after I'd stretched out Meghan insisted on preening my wings, which really needed it. I shouldn't have gone to sleep without doing it, and if I'd been by myself, I wouldn't have. I guess it was kind of selfish thinking of me, but I'd sort of thought that she'd want to after our nap. So she sat up and had me turn around and put my wing on her lap, and then she started straightening out my feathers, and I just nickered contentedly while she worked, and nuzzled her hip and side when she worked really unpleasant tangles out.
When she was finished, we ate the rest of the pizza for dinner, and then we tried to decide what we wanted to do for the evening. It was still gray and overcast outside, although it had stopped raining hours ago. She said that she didn't really feel like getting dressed again, and we decided that after this morning I deserved to relax at home.
So she moved the papasan so that we could both sit in it and watch a movie, and we watched one more Kung Fu Panda movie, then after it was over she got up and said that she wished that we had a bottle of wine.
Well, I told her that I’d go and get one, and she decided that she wanted to come along, too, so she put on her pants and shirt but not her underwear because she said she wanted to be naughty.
I think that the clerk at the counter noticed, ‘cause he kept looking at her boobs while pretending not to.
When we got back she opened the bottle and took a drink, and then gave me the bottle so she could get undressed again. And we sat back on the papasan and watched a third Kung Fu Panda movie and shared the wine, and by the time the movie was over we’d drunk half the bottle.
We stayed in the papasan kissing and touching and nuzzling for a while, and I wanted to get up and get into the futon, because it wasn’t fair that I was having all the fun and couldn’t easily return the favor. And she leaned down and kissed me and ran her other hand through my mane until I collapsed on her chest.
When I finally got up, she got out of the chair and turned off my computer and put away the wine bottle—we agreed that we’d finish it up tomorrow—and I think she was kind of taunting me by taking her time going over to the futon, so I nosed her in the butt to motivate her.
She sat down on the futon and said that she hoped that there wasn’t another storm tomorrow morning, and I agreed. Then I got to thinking and even though I’d been trying to motivate her to lie down, I thought maybe in case there was, I ought to make sure that the camelback was filled and all my flight gear was laid out, so there’d be less scrambling in the morning if there was a storm.
So I did that, and she checked her portable telephone and said that there wasn’t a storm forecast for tomorrow, which was kinda a relief. And then she said that tomorrow we ought to see what kind of movie I got on the GoPro, so we agreed that we’d do that, and then we finally both got in bed and I teased her a little bit and kept my rump away from her at first.
Fun fact: this storm set a daily rainfall record in Kalamazoo, dropping over 2 inches of rain.
Silver is 2 cute 4 life, yo
And naughty, let's not forget naughty
Sinclair? (Probably not, they usually use the green dinosaur)
So Silver gets a SmartWatch next? Soon she is going to carrie a whole weather sensor array...
I also noticed that in Silver Glows parts of equestria portable compasses would sell really well to pegasus ponies.
Even if the magnetic field of the planet itself should proofe itself to be not compatible, unicorns could cast a strong field in every town, so that pegasi would find the way back home.
7610979
Speedway, most likely. Sinclair doesn't have a presence in Michigan.
7611055
Using a smartwatch with fingers is not that much better. That's why they accept voice control.
I have to ask...
How the fu- buck did you make so many chapters in the span of, what about 3 weeks ( maybe I calculated wrong ) you my friend are amazing or maybe you stored up these chapters that released a few a days? But non the less time to got roooooght into this
7611082
You calculated wrong, probably.
It's been one chapter a day for the last seven months.
7611100 huh when did you first publish this?
To me it says February...
I really, Really need to remember the months and what order
Reminds me of the storm that blew through here Monday. They closed the road i usually take home. Took me over an hour to detour around all the flooded intersections. I got off work at 5:30am. Collapsed into sleep at 7:15am.
Glad she wasn't hurt while flying. Getting lost is one thing. But injured and lost is a very scary feeling.
Kalamazoo has nothing on Houston this year. On April 18 we got 10 inches of rain. That was followed by many days of rain with less than an inch. I live near the Brazos river and normaly it is at 16 ft. At it's peak the river crested at 55 ft. They had to drive new pylons down for the railroad bridge there. That confused me a lot since the pounding traveled through the water system and my faucets were making wierd noises.
7611068 Mine would work for her. Gear S2 Classic has a bezel that she can use, plus it's water resistant.
The sexytimes per chapter has been doubled.
A lone and dripping wet pegasus sitting on the top of a stormcloud of an earth rainstorm is a beautiful and somewhat melancholy picture.
So very typical for the SG. Meghan fears for her marefriends life, while said mare fears that she'll inconvenience Mel by making him have to drive somewhere to pick her up. Because, hay, it's just a really serious storm, no biggy. I was a little bit concerned about the tornado warning though. Really nice chapter.
At least she didn't panic while searching for her round crew, and that she didn't encounter any hailstorms.
Hopefully she never meets the Witch of November up close and personal.
Couple points
A compass works off a planet's magnetic field. Magnetic fields wax and wane. The sun has an 11 year cycle, the Earth about 50,000 years. There have been times when the Earth had no measurable field.
In short , magnetic compasses do not necessarily work on Equestria. Also Pegasi don't have whatever directional system birds have? The price of intellect, not enough brain space for other stuff?
Asking questions like that called racist? Or, just that most researchers were Unicorns and didn't care? Sort of like most human medical research is on white males because that's who pays for it (or so I've read
I've been a dishwasher. Based on wrist watches, what "water proof" means is that any water that does get under the crystal will NEVER dry out. My advice is to get something made for divers.
One of the few things that the Internet is good for is you can find the info on line and probably buy it on Amazon or eBay (world's largest yard sale).
7611139
Yeah, i'm damn proud of that one!
What i mean by slog is that reading the information dense run-on sentence style of silver glow's writing became an emotionally deadening experience to marathon, and it got worse with every chapter of summer break, but now reading it as a daily is the perfectly awesomest experience.
I would compare it to reading a very
linglong wall of text comment by an enthusiastic reader, or a neat fanfic written by a beginner writer with poor technical writing skill: The more you read consecutively, the stronger the feeling of "ugh, am i done yet? No? God, fine... Shit i missed something again, i must have skimmed by accident... Ugh, am i done yet? No? God, fine..."This journal is entirely a different reading experience than any other to marathon. I marathoned the Austreaoh series from Austraeoh to Ynanhluutr (the latest book back then) within two weeks without feeling this sense of dutiful drudgery. But, I did start to feel this dutiful drudgery when trying to read through each chapter's comments, which were vital to the experience.
I made this comment to help you diagnose this issue. What've we got, doc?
(Typo inspired question: any changeling exchange students? Can they survive in low magic earth?)
Mister Salvatore is going to fing explode with giddy ecstasy when Silver Glow asks for a personal tracking device!!!
(With a little FBI-DHS protocol-breaking happy-dance and everything! )
7611385
Nah. It's because of the first point.
Pegasi have that trait, but ten generations or more have passed since Discord made it permanently a moot point, so the
knawledgeknowledge of practicing that instinct would have been lost.Can you imagine anything funnier than being Discord and tweaking the local or entire planetary magnetic field just to make migratory birds and pegasi fly in circles without ever realizing it? Or arranging cow herds without handy high voltage power-lines to confuse their north sense?
7611148 Glad to see another Houstonian reading this story!
I'd like at least a mention of what is happening in the rest of the world now that an alien race in a alternate Dimension has been contacted. Apparently no significant change in the main news.
You would think that there would be some sort of weekly TV show or specials on the science cable channels or something on page 10 of the newspapers.
Equestria probably doesn't have enough spare Pegasus Weather ponies to do anything about tornado alley on Earth. It would take hundreds!
The problem with rushing, or even leaving it to teh day before and then getting things together is that it gets so easy to forget something. I finally got a piece of simple script working on teh PC for a guy at the computer club to look at. Saved it out to USB stick, and to mass storage on the cell phone.
Got down the club, I had 3 hours sleep and 5 hours travel, was too tired to reember how I came up with the script to write it down, left the USB stick in the PC, and forgot the charge, tranfer cable for the cell phone.
I gave up just popping the micro SD card out of the call phone to read it through a standard PC adaptor, because that requires removing the battery, and resetting the clock etc.
Silver is getting a steadly increasng harder time dealing with teh weather, which is whereabouts in teh seasonal cycles? Before, at or after the usual peak of energy, violence?
Thunderstorms are particularly bad, as you cant just fold and drop to work out which way is down.
7611550
In fairness, the contract between Earth and Equestria is so fresh it probably hasn't had ANY impact on day to day life. Think of 9/11. There was blanket news coverage for a few months, then things started to go back to normal, especially when other events took center stage. Sure, 9/11 colored everything that came after, I just watched an episode of a show made in 2011, no mention was made of the event until the last few minutes of the show. BRILLIANTLY done, incredible impact, 10/10 would recommend, but this was a 9/11 memorial episode and the actual events of the day were just sorta background to the rest of the show. Also keep in mind that the cultural intermingling is so minor, there's only a couple of handfulls of ponies on the whole planet. The average person has maybe one in a few hundred million chance of encountering an Equestrian Pony. This is why Silver's able to become a YouTube star, there just aren't enough pegassai on the planet for people to become accustomed to the sight of one flying, manipulating clouds, etc.
7611148
I grew up in Colorado, moved to San Diego where my daughter was born, then moved to Phoenix. It's fairly amusing to watch people in SoCal dealing with any weather besides, "Sunny with a high of 79-degrees," and then the people who grew up in a literal desert knowing perfectly well how to cope with year-round drought conditions interspersed with torrential flooding and quite literally NOTHING in between. :)
7611760 No wonder OPP has been delayed. XD Well, best of luck.^^
7611102 He did start in late February as far as I remember.
I know that feeling. At some point it's just so much water and exhaustion you just don't care anymore. And you end up haunted by the feeling and the sound of water that nigth...
Would you guy consider electing Vermin Supreme this year? I think we really need that free pony program. With any luck, it will expended in all North America via the NAFTA...
7611723 You are right about the inside being colder. They make cyclonic coolers that operate just on air pressure. The less dense hotter air gets pulled to the outside. The wiki on Vortex tube covers it.
Cute, though. Meghan must be living her dream.
Meghan is definitely spoiling her little pegasus.
contented horse noises
7611102 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.
For future reference.
7613002 yeah thanks
7611550
7611716
But then there's this. And I might remember an Author comment mentioning first contact being 15 years ago.
*where I was?
More acoutrements!
Coming to The WB this fall, our latest action-packed series reboot: The Six Million Bit Pony starring Silver Glow!
(She's not actually bionic, but I don't think that's going to matter much.)
Extra period.
7611148
Honey! The faucet's thumping again!
7611148
Since no one else has said it yet...
Meanwhile, at TXDoT:
7610917
Silver is 2 cute 4 life, yo
And naughty, let's not forget naughty
7610979
Speedway, as 7611024 guessed. Interestingly, until I was on a road trip that took me through Missouri, I was unaware that Sinclair still existed. Likewise, I had assumed that Exxon didn't exist anymore until I saw them on the east coast.
7610983
Probably not a smartwatch, but either a portable GPS or a pilot's watch (I've been researching which would work best for her).
I would imagine that the ponies have some sort of compass. I can't recall if we've seen one in canon, but there are ponies with compass-like cutie marks, which implies their existence to my mind. They might work on magnetic fields, or thaumic fields, or some other principle.
7611068
Interesting. I didn't know that, although it makes sense that they would. I wonder if anybody's built one into a Dick Tracy wrist computer yet?
I wonder how well they'd work when they were soaked in rain? I know the touchscreen on my phone doesn't work right when its wet, and sometimes it starts doing things on its own until I turn it off and dry the screen. . . .
7611102
Actually, it's kind of funny that since this story is two months behind real time, I keep getting mixed up on what month it actually is.
7611126
I got caught in one of those a year or so ago. Had to take two detours because of trees across the road.
7611140
That would be a pegasus' worst fear, especially in a big storm. And it's doubly an issue when Silver Glow's at home, because they could get lost at sea, and if they're blown out far enough over the water, they might not ever come back.
7611148
Yeah, you guys down south have been getting hammered this year.
7611310
I'm not sure that that has any functions that would be terribly useful for her, though. She needs a speedometer, altimeter, and GPS/compass function, and from reading the specs of the Gear S2 Classic, it doesn't do all of that.
7611344
Being lost in a storm probably isn't all that unusual for Silver Glow, although of course normally she'd be with her whole team. What Meghan is forgetting (which is of course natural for a human) is if things get really bad, Silver Glow will either land and ride it out on the ground, or fly back through the clouds and sit on top of them until the storm calms down. That would be their strategy in Equestria.
As for the tornado, it was a watch, not a warning. In the US, they issue a tornado watch when conditions are right for tornadoes to form, and a tornado warning when one is actually spotted.
7611382
Man, I was reading about some of the storms on the Great Lakes, and they're chilling. The Witch of November will wreck your shit.
7611385
I would assume that some sort of compass works in Equestria, although it's not necessarily the same as ours. I'm not sure that Pegasi, or Equestrian birds, use it to navigate, since the pegasi escort the birds back from the south. Regardless, whatever pegasi use to navigate may not work on Earth at all--Silver Glow's been relying on visual navigation as long as she's been on Earth, after all.
I would assume that pegasi know how they navigate; since they're sapient, I assume that they pass that information on to their foals verbally. Although I suppose it could be instinct-based, as well. Normally, children learn to walk on their own, after all. It might be something that they don't even think about, any more than you or I think about walking, unless there's a problem.
Yeah, I have to imagine that a lot of the watches that she could buy were never intended to be used literally in the middle of a storm.
It's great for doing research. How much does it cost, how well do people say it works, etc.
7611386
Yeah--she'd never make it as a formal writer, that's for sure. She loves run-ons. Especially when she gets emotional.
Man, I've said it before and I'll say it again--the comments are the best part. Thoughtful comments on stories is what drew me to this site to begin with, and made me seriously consider writing fanfiction. And I love how even when we're discussing serious, hot-button issues, people mostly stay respectful.
We've got an adorable, enthusiastic pegasus who speaks English as a second language.
Probably no changeling exchange students, and not because they couldn't survive (maybe they could, maybe they couldn't), but because of the horrifying image of a changeling disguising itself as some human for some nefarious purpose.
You're darn right. "You want a device so that you, and by extension, we, always know where you are? I'll get right on that, after I get done kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner."
7611419
I expect that in the thousand years or so that Discord was gone, Celestia fixed as much of the damage as she could, so that things kind of got back to normal. But, it does make you wonder if that's why the pegasi have to escort the birds north in the springtime (and presumably, south in the fall).
7611550
Over time, it's probably gone from daily coverage to occasional specials whenever something noteworth happens. And, while I might be a bit cynical and biased, the American news media is really good at only focusing on bad things, celebrities, or the presidential election (which in many ways is a combination of the first two). All that having been said, Silver Glow doesn't pay that much attention to the news, anyways.
True, but they might be able to put together a few rapid-response teams that would fly by helicopter or jet to storms that seemed likely to produce tornadoes.
7611617
In Michigan, so much of it depends on the lake temperature that it's hard to say what's 'normal.' Usually, though, we get the big storms in June-August, because the lakes are warm and feed into them. Then some Novembers you get really nasty storms on the lakes, but a lot of times their impacts aren't so bad when you get a ways inland.
That's true, although I suspect that pegasi, being innate fliers, have a better sense of 'up' and 'down' than humans. They can probably 'feel' gravity with more sensitivity than humans do.
7611716
Somewhere between 5 and 10 years since first contact (haven't specified in the journal). So it's not fresh-fresh . . . which I think does kind of make 9/11 a good comparison. At first, of course, it would have dominated every news cycle.
Or a more recent event--Malaysia Airlines flight 370 (the one that went missing over the Pacific or Indian Ocean in 2014) dominated the news when it vanished, but did you know that two days ago they identified a piece of its wing that was found on Mauritius?
Obviously, location makes a big difference. For the ponies who do get tourist visas, small cities like Kalamazoo aren't on their to-visit list. In a place like New York City or Paris, they'd be a little more common.
Yeah--she's the first pegasus exchange student in the US, which gives her the time and ability to do mundane (to her) activities, which of course most people have never seen at all. No pegasus visiting Europe on a two-week visa is going to spend some of that time trying to move clouds, assuming that she could even get permission to do so.
And being a lifelong Michigander myself, I found it amusing watching southerners try and cope with snow. Especially since in Kalamazoo, it usually came down a foot at a time, then most of it melted a week later, than it snowed again. Or sleeted. Or freezing-rained. Or all of them in the same storm.
7611763
We're getting there. One's been published, and one's getting its final edits this weekend, and (depending on time), one or two more will have complete drafts by the end of Sunday.
7611886
Yeah, sometimes there's too much of a good thing. Rain, I don't mind so much (since it's easy to avoid by just going inside), but really deep snowfall with drifting gets annoying. We had one guy drop a car off at our shop before a major snowstorm, and we literally could not work on it until the next day, because first we had to dig it out of a five-foot drift, and then leave it in the shop overnight so that it could melt.
Of course I'd consider it. Besides the pony program, he's the only candidate with a zombie-preparedness program.
7611960
So does that mean that if you could dump a bunch of hot air into the middle of the tornado, that would stop it? I don't feel that it would, because fire tornadoes are a thing. Or is that a totally different phenomenon?
And yes, that is a lake on fire.
7612133
Oh, she is.
Silver Glow deserves to be spoiled, though, doesn't she?
heh, oops.
7613379
My thought is somewhere between 5 and 10 years before actual first contact. Obviously, the exchange program, tourist visas, etc., haven't been going on for quite as long as that.
7622332
By the time she's done, she almost will be.
And, although it hasn't come up in the story yet, I'm imagining in the future a pegasus 'pilot' will have a minimum equipment list. "Before flight, you must wear a brightly colored vest with reflective stripes, attach navigation lights to your hind hooves, a blinking white beacon light to the front of the vest, an airplane radio to your right foreleg, and a combination airspeed/altimeter/GPS to your left foreleg."
Fixed!
7623081
Fun story about pilings: when the Southern Pacific railroad was construction the Lucien Cutoff--a causeway across the Great Salt Lake, they discovered that in some places the salt crust was so thick that the pilings would splinter before going through it, and in other places it was so soft that they'd hit it once and it would just vanish.
7626696
What's the weather pegasus method for dealing with being caught in a tornado? Angle toward the center, curl into a ball, and get spat out the top? Good strategy.
7626817
That might be RD's favorite method, but the smart way is fly up (to avoid debris) and perpendicular to it.
Actually, the best way to avoid lots of things that are big and fast is to go perpendicular to them.
Instructions unclear; head stuck in cieling fan.*decide
8034081
Correction made; thank you!
8041823 Speaking of corrections, (sorry for mentioning this late) but all through the first hundred chapters or so you spell Israelites as 'Isrealites'.
8135487
Dammit. No easy way to fix, either.
I can see next exchange pegasus getting a wristband device that integrates two radios, GPS, mobile phone and a complete airplane dashboard. With a vest with integrated battery+camelback+lights and some saddlebag space. Possibly with a detachable winch in the back.
8338428
The biggest catch to that would be the market for it. I actually did research different types of portable aircraft radios, GPSes, and so forth, and there really aren't that many to choose from, since most real aircraft already carry those instruments. I suppose, though, that it would be possible to use existing equipment and fit it into some sort of saddlebag, with a pegasus-friendly GPS display on one foreleg, a headset/boom mic combo, and push-to-talk buttons for the radios on the other hoof.
If it gets a winch, it also ought to have storage compartments for cans of anchovies for mid-air refueling.
Also, if you didn't get a chance to check out the various related blog posts, here's a pic that totallynotabrony drew of Silver Glow in her stormwatching gear + GoPro helmet:
derpicdn.net/img/2016/7/10/1197358/large.png
(It was before she got her GPS watch, so she's got a parachutist's altimeter instead).