July 15
I woke up before Meghan's alarm, and the sad bird was calling outside again. I would have liked to go to the window to see if I could see it, but she had her arms wrapped around me and I didn't think I could get out without waking her up.
When her alarm finally went off, she shifted around and then let go of me and rolled over so that she could reach it, and once she had her portable telephone in her hand I put my head on her breast and she reached down and scratched my ears and said that she was glad it was Friday.
We got up after her alarm went off again, and when she got in the shower I went downstairs to put out breakfast and then went back upstairs to help her get ready.
If I knew more about clothes I could have set some out for her, too.
When she came out of the shower she sat on the bed and I brushed her hair, then she got up and found clothes for work. And once she'd gotten dressed we went downstairs and had cereal together. I asked her if she knew what kind of bird the sad bird was and she said that it was a Mourning Dove. She said that they were kind of ugly, and looked a lot like pigeons.
We stood out on the porch and enjoyed the morning sun until her friend arrived, and she pet me on the head before she left.
I hadn't brought my flight gear with me this time, 'cause that would have been a lot to carry to fighting practice, so I picked up my glaive and flew back home with just that. I stayed plenty low so that I wouldn't be in anybody's way.
I put my glaive away and filled up my camelback and put on my flight vest. I'd forgotten to ask Mister Salvatore to get another one for Aquamarine but I knew how to find Dick's, so I decided I'd get her one on the way back and then I could find a post office so that I could mail it to her.
I decided I'd kind of take a triangle route, and so I called the airplane directors and told them where I was going, and I got permission.
So I cut across Western Michigan's campus and then followed Stadium Drive southwest. It was all pretty familiar—I passed by the place where Mel and I did our stormwatching, then I kept going until I came to a town called Paw Paw.
The 94 highway was pretty close and I could have turned around there and followed it back, but I thought I might as well get a little bit more flying in, so I kept on going, until I finally got to a place called Teapot Dome.
A lot of the fields around here had bushes of some sort—I didn't recognize them from the air—and what looked like grapes on trellises.
I made a big circle and looked around for airplanes and then called the airplane directors and told them that I was going to follow the 94 Highway back to Kalamazoo then land at Dick's. So they told me that would be okay, and so I straightened out my circle and flew back towards the 94 Highway.
Some of the signs along the side of the highway said how far away exits were, and so I figured out pretty quickly that I had to fly about twenty miles to get to Dick's.
I would also go right by Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn's office, so I thought maybe I'd go down a little bit lower when I got close and wave to them.
It was kind of fun to see the cars on one side coming towards me and on the other side appearing in front of me, almost like magic. I tried to imagine all the places that those people were going.
I could have taken a shortcut—the 94 Highway turned a couple of times and I could have cut across the inside of the turns—but that wasn't as much fun as flying along and pretending that the highway extended all the way up into the air.
When I'd passed our stormwatching spot and got to the railroad tracks, I looked both ways but didn't see any trains.
Once I'd gotten nearly to Kalamazoo, I found a strange curved road that went off into the woods from a building, and it had one big loop and one little loop and I couldn't make any sense of it. And a little further up on the same side of the highway, there was a long narrow parking lot and I didn't know what that was, either. There weren't any cars parked there, and it didn't look as big or nice as the rest areas I'd seen.
Once I crossed over Oakland Avenue, I started gliding down. I could see the Westnedge exit ahead, and the office building where Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn worked, so I waved as I went by, then I angled off to the south. I could see the big building where Dick's was, and so there wasn't any sense in following the road anymore.
I landed on a big curvy island, and then went inside the store. I knew right what I was looking for, so I went over to their camelbacks and picked out one that was just like the one I had and then took it up to the counter.
The man who was there remembered me from last time and he asked if something had gone wrong with mine because there was a warranty, and I told him that it worked fine and was under my vest right now, but one of my friends had seen it and had wanted one, too. And he asked if my friend was another pegasus like me and I told him that she was an earth pony.
He put it in a bag for me and I was about to tell him that I didn't need it when I thought about how useful it would be. The loops on the end were nearly big enough for a forehoof to fit through, and so I used my teeth to pull it on and then it was nice and secure. It would make landing a bit tricky, but as long as I kept my leg up (and it would be hard to forget) it would work.
So once I was back outside I told the airplane directors I was going back home and I was going to stay under a thousand feet and after they gave me permission, I took off from the parking lot.
The bag wasn't too heavy but it was really awkward and I think I should have found a different way to carry Aquamarine's camelback. I probably looked really silly flying it over Kalamazoo.
When I got back to my apartment, I had to pry the plastic bag off my hoof. And then it felt really weird to not have any weight hanging off my hoof.
I ate lunch, and took a shower, then I called a place which had hot air balloon trips. The man who answered said that they had an opening for tomorrow, because someone had canceled. He said that the forecast wasn't great, and there would probably be clouds but he wasn't expecting for there to be any rain and I could take that if I wanted, otherwise he didn't have anything for a couple of weeks.
Well, I thought that I'd take a chance, so I said that I would like two tickets for the balloon. And he told me where we would meet, and said that we would ride out in a van to our launching site, which they would determine depending on how the winds looked.
Then I checked my mail but I didn't have anything interesting. I'd gotten a couple of letters offering me a different money-card, but there was nothing wrong with the one I had so I wrote back that I wasn't interested, and put those in the mailbox to be sent out.
I wish I could have done that with the camelback for Aquamarine, too, 'cause that would have been really convenient. But Meghan and I could go to a post office tomorrow and mail it from there.
I was going to read some poetry and I'd even got out a Walt Whitman book and carried it over to the papasan when I looked outside and saw Caleb and Lindy and Trinity all looking at their portable telephones so I went out to the balcony and asked them if they were looking for Pokemons again and Trinity said that they were. So I flew down and asked if I could walk with them and they said that would be nice.
Caleb had figured out that each of them could try and catch the same Pokemon and that they didn't have to take turns trying to catch it, and Lindy said he felt really dumb for that. He told her that he'd thought it was only logical that each Pokemon could only be caught once, 'cause that was how it worked with real animals.
So we walked around the neighborhood for a couple of hours and even went all the way down to Stadium Drive and in the creek there they found a Magikarp and all three of them caught it, then we went back up along the back side of Western Michigan University, and near the campus police station they found a Jigglypuff, which Lindy didn't get, but both Caleb and Trinity did.
They also found another Pidgey in the park that hadn't been there when we went by the first time and Trinity said that I could try and catch it if I wanted to. Well, I didn't think I would be very good at using their portable telephones; it looked kinda complicated when they tried to catch one. But I said that we could catch it together if she wanted to get on my back.
So she did and she told me where to go to get close to the Pokemon and even held her portable telephone in front of me so that I could see it, and then when we were in the right spot she caught it and said that we'd done it.
I let her keep riding on my back, 'cause it felt kind of natural and she wasn't squeezing too hard. Lindy had taken a picture with her telephone and showed it to us and said she was going to tweet it, whatever that was.
Caleb said it was close to dinner time for them, so we went back to their house, me with Trinity on my back, and I could smell that Jeff was cooking things in the backyard. He was having a barbeque again and he said that I was welcome to join them.
I knew that Meghan would be coming over soon, so I said that I needed to meet her and that if she wanted to we'd come back, but she might have had plans for dinner already. So he said that he hoped we would but he'd understand if we didn't.
It was about a third of an hour and I heard her let herself in downstairs.
We hugged when she got upstairs and she set her bag down and then saw that her bra was hanging over the back of my computer chair (I'd thought if I put it there I wouldn't forget it).
I told her that we could have food with Jeff and Caleb and Lindy and Trinity and some of the neighbors if we wanted to, and I told her that I had gotten tickets tomorrow night for a balloon ride. She said that she'd brought some food for dinner 'cause she'd thought it would be fun to cook together but she could put it in the electric icebox and we could have it for lunch tomorrow instead. And then she said she had to put on a bra before she went over to the neighbors and I didn't see why if she'd walked over here without it.
Once she was ready, we took a bunch of the beers with us to share, and added them to the icebox that Jeff had, and stayed over next door until it was almost dark, talking and drinking and playing with the kids some.
Meghan was a little bit giggly from the beer and I'd had one more than I should have, too.
We thanked Jeff for inviting us and he thanked us for bringing beer and also thanked me for walking with his kids while they played their game. Then I flew up to the balcony while Meghan went around, and I'd already folded down the futon by the time she got out of the bathroom.
Just when I'd gotten comfortable she remembered that if she didn't want a hangover she ought to drink some more water, so she got up and got a glass of water and by the time she got back into bed I was half-asleep so I just snuggled against her side and when she saw that I wasn't trying to sleep on her, she rolled on her side and started scratching my back until I fell asleep.
I know it's kinda beating the dead horse, but... Silver is cute AF, yo.
Even if you used "them" instead of "they," that would still feel clunky and unwieldy. I'd suggest "all of them" instead.
For hangovers, a sports drink like Gatorade seems to work better (because of the electrolytes?). Also, I've heard vitamin B helps, IDK why.
"It would make landing a but tricky"
A bit tricky, too.
7568908
7568920
Corrections made; thank you!
As little as the cars in this video make sense, this chapter still made me think of it.
7568912
Phở is best hangover cure. I bet Silver would love a good non-gas-causing seafood Phở.
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Whatever else you may think of French Imperialism, Vietnam owes them a great deal of thanks for that, at least.
Round and round and round she goes, where Silver stops, nobody know.. SHOPPING
If you think the 3 Dimentional cloverleafs are complex, theres researchers been publishing algorithms to allow two intersecting particulate flows to not collide, in a variable enviroment. given i has a heavy time componant, you could say its 4 Dimentional.
And so, the Cammelback invasion slowly begins. Im sure Discord would try to help out with the self mounting spider version.
I find the fact that Silver still replies to spam mail funny as hell.
He?
He-man?
He who must not be named?
Nice and fun chapter.
7566494 I was hilariously reminded of a person I knew in undergrad. We would get drunk, playing bluegrass, and then stumble outside to smoke. Well... He had to go. But the bathroom was too far. So he just stands between two cars and faces the hill behind the dorm.
Apparently that worke for him because he did that all the time.
College is weird.
A few chapters ago Silver had a very polite conversation with her handlers about being nice to people over the radio. I wonder if the Airborne Idiot, as Silver calls him, had a less pleasant conversation with an authority figure about honoring our Equestrian guests.
Seeing Silver trying to pace the cars along the highway makes me wonder what her fastest speed is. I wonder if there are any sports cars that she can fly at pace with?
7568954 don't forget banh mi sandwiches. Those are great.
7569432 She's going slower than the highway traffic. By a lot, I think. She left shortly after Meghan left for work, flew roughly 45 miles, got back and immediately ate lunch. So that's at least 3 hours. 45/3=15mph (max).
Most people walk at 3mph, and sprint at 15mph, so that's 5x. So if she's flying at her minimum comfortable speed (unlikely?), and could increase 5x, she could match the highway speed. *shrug*
7566209 Fanart exists:
http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/652180/silver-glow-stormwatcher
Never getting tired of the cuddle bookends that surround most of the chapters.
Maybe have it framed, Silver.
7569432 I thought that it was already estimated to be approximately 30 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour in level flight.
Faster when in a dive.
7571380 Ah that makes sense. There are some small details about the story that slip my memory sometimes.
7570329 So there was a time that her cruising speed was discussed...Well I done forgot all about it then.
Someone made a comment about humans speaking Equestrian & that got me thinking (always dangerous)
Silver might have used words not usually taught in class and maybe not yet in the dictionary. I can see it now. Some kid asking her "What does * mean?". Followed by "Mommy, why won't the Pony tell me what * means?"
On the other hand, different cultures curse in different ways. in the USA, it's body functions like shit or fuck or calling someone a prick. French Canadians it's more religious. Sacre bleu is God's blood.
Equestrians might curse in ways we wouldn't find offensive. Stench of a camel, say. (Weird fact. Untrained horses get freaked out by camels. The Romans used that when invading England)
To get your PhD, you have to do original research. It doesn't have to be Earth shaking, just original. Somebody's doctoral dissertation is going to be on Equestrian cursing. I can see it now, every Equestrian on Earth is going to get email asking for help in this invaluable work.
7572051
Please forgive my unsuccessful pun.
7572117
Was a reference to a thirty-year-old Robert Redford movie.
7572398 "Sacre bleu" ("holy blue") is one of those euphemistic oaths that is a gentler form of "sacre dieu" ("holy God"). It does sound a bit like "sang de dieu," but doesn't actually mean "God's blood."
/nitpick mode
Granted, such distinctions are kind of academic when even symbols transmit ideas just fine. @#!*!
7572051
It's not New Testament. There's actually a few different rules about that. I don't remember all the details, but I know that there's a few different gifts farmers are supposed to leave for the poor. One corner of the field is left un-harvested, when they're bundling up the crops anything that gets dropped is left behind, and they also leave anything that falls off the cart.
7571787 There probably has been, but I didn't see it. All my figuring was based on the content of this chapter.
7571830
When Silver first got to earth she said she wanted some ansjoos for breakfast, but didn't know what they were called. People looked that up, it's Dutch. So the "Equestrian sounds like Dutch" headcanon was born.
7571919
yeah it was. That was a great chapter when that happened. It's a really good fic.
well the thing with my problem was that they were imperial and all for the same thing. Whomever came up with the kg-ft should be shot. It's a bastardization on two separate levels. imperial/metric and kilogram isn't a unit of force, it doesn't even measure the right property. I think pressure is the only thing with multiple metric units (bar and pascals) and even then I don't think bar is used to much. As for things being deceptively close; it's a design thing. If you run the same analysis with just different units, you still end up with the same solution. But yeah, they're not interchangeable and I get how annoying that could be.
Most people do, but if you have a low enough body fat, you'll sink. One of my friends from high school did that.
I have a the same headcanon. I'm a little weak with my electrophysics but I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't work. I don't know the details though. Things get all quantumy (although you could hide all of magic in quantum mechanics). it could be a weaker form of lightning. Kind of a controlled discharge instead of an unrestrained one. I think that they were just surprised by the lightening. If a Pegasus is given time to prepare, they can't really get hit.
7572398 We don't use sacre bleu, that would be a very outdated and cliché french curse.
Although we do use religious based curse. Christ, Hostie (sacramental bread), tabernacle (the church's one), ciboire (ciborium), calice (chalice) and a few variations.
I picked that phrase up from reading. If it's outdated. I guess that says something about the stuff I read. Now that I think about it, it was all pre WWII & some set in the 19th century.
Sort of like saying "bully" or "23 skidoo"?
7572188
So now, god will do what the factcheckers could not and make morons realize that most of what Drumpf says are lies.
7568890
7568912
Plantsponies love electrolytes.I've never tried it, but if it's true that it's dehydration that gives you a hangover, than it does seem that a sports drink would be better than plain water. Of course, choking down a bottle of Arctic Blast after a night of drinking might be a tall order. . . .
7568937
Silver would cause so many accidents if she flew right down the median like that.
7568954
That picture really isn't selling it for me. But then I was never much of a soup fan.
It is always kind of cool how one culture brings something and then another culture makes it their own. I suppose in the setting of this story, there are probably Earth restaurants serving 'Equestrian' food which is light on the hay and heavy on the bacon, and vice-versa.
7568964
Some of our interchanges are so dumb. The Portage Rd. exit off Westbound I-94 in Kalamazoo is a good example of that. Or the clusterfuck that's the Cedar/Pennsylvania and I-96 in Lansing. And the 196/131 interchange in Grand Rapids has to be seen to be appreciated. North and southbound 131 temporarily switch sides.
That would be the best version. Or the worst. I'm not sure which, to be honest.
7569104
She hasn't wrapped her head around the concept of mass mailing.
7569142
Grilling with Voldemort, next on the Food Network.
7569144
College is weird but fun.
I can't recall any of my friends who did that, although one of them was from Pennsylvania and he often said that he had to go see a man about a horse, which is the strangest expression I've ever heard.
7569342
MIster Salvatore probably didn't lean on him too hard. Probably just told him to straighten up and fly right.
(I couldn't resist)
Technically, besides being a dick on the radio, he didn't do anything wrong, So as long as he was reasonably contrite and promised not to buzz any more pegasi, Mister Salvatore would probably be pretty cool with that.
7569432
Earlier, I had her top speed on Earth (straight and level) be somewhere between 30 and 40 mph. For endurance flying, she goes a lot slower, and I'm not sure what her maximum dive speed would be. I'd have to guess it would be a little slower than a human's terminal velocity, so maybe 160-170?
I think she'd be faster in Equestria, though.
7569830
That actually sounds pretty good, at least from what I saw in a quick Google search.
7570329
Somebody's following SIlver Glow's routes on a map.
Just like a real horse (and I assume birds as well), she's got a couple of different speeds. For long flights, she has a slower pace that has a fair bit of gliding and uses thermals where she can find them, and (not counting dives) she can probably hit somewhere between 30 and 40 for a little while before she gets tired.
7570401
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Something like this, perhaps, but with an actual lacy red bra?
7571380
You are correct.
7571787
It was discussed in the comments in a chapter where she was 'racing' cars in downtown Kalamazoo, although in the story itself she's never given a specific speed. And she's probably picked up a few miles/hour now that she's spending more time in the air and less time on the ground.
7572398
That's probably already happened to Cayenne.
Well, I now know from the comics that "Aw, crackers" is an Equestrian oath.
They probably have a range of things from slighty offensive to outright obscene, I would think. And some of them are probably hilarious when translated (IIRC, some language has an insult along the lines of 'you're as dumb as a potted plant,' and there's a French insult involving badly-groomed sheep).
That's one way for Silver Glow to make her mark on Earth society.
7572449
You are forgiven
Also, correction made.
7572458
Was he in Field of Dreams? Or is there a different one I'm not remembering? Bull Durham maybe? Was that about Baseball?
7572721
Maybe it was in Exodus or Leviticus, then. I can't remember. I suppose I could Google it . . .
. . .
Leviticus 23:22 is the one about leaving some of your harvest at the edge of the field, which is the one I was thinking of.
7572934
Gotcha!
It's actually not Dutch, it's Norwegian. (Ansjos) Which I picked because I remember them being served for breakfast in Norway.
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7572950
That's another one I need to re-read. I don't even know if I finished it, to be honest. I'm, like, way behind on my reading.
That reminds me, I knew a girl in high school who didn't weigh enough to donate blood.
Although if they built up a negative charge (which is the most likely), they'd be doubly fed if they got hit by a positive lightning bolt. Those things are out there to prove that Mother Nature can wreck your shit whenever she wants.
I think in Equestria lightning bolts are more on the magical spectrum, and sort of equalize the potential between earth pony magic and pegasus magic. And I think that one of the reasons that they set them off on purpose is so that the charge won't build up too much.
7573072
Some of the oldest phrases are the bestest, though. I just last night came across the phrase "A game of flats."
7573038
You probably don't say 'Zut!' either, do you? My whole French class was a lie.
7573249
That would be something.
"And now on MSNBC, we have a fact-check by Mister Jehovah."
7579165 Zut? Sometime, as a substitute to "oops" and sometime as a "polite" curse.
7568964
nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.
I think I have made my thoughts clear.
Nope.
7580743
Four legged "spider", and the tips curl up together to make a cross strap.
So Discord would make headcrab camelbacks!
7579214
Good to know!
7580743
7601496
I'm both in favor of the idea, and also horrified by it. Which, given that Discord is involved, is probably the right mixture.
7579214
Sounds like the same sorts of situations where we use "crap".