I awoke all excited. Did X mark the spot??? And what spot was it marking? I spent the wee hours of that morning going over the Madonna pictures and laying them on the globe. The sun was just coming up when I finally reached my calculations… X marked Guadalajara, Mexico. A few days later I had my GPS in hand and coordinates marked and was on my way to Guadalajara. I brought a few of my colleagues along with me. We landed and quickly signed in to our hotel and hired a guide to take us to the Ruins of Teuchitlan. According to my gps… X marked the ruins as THE spot.
We spent an hour and a half riding in a bus on dirty dusty bumpy roads, but we finally made it at high noon to the ruins. The ruins were a series of pyramid circles and rectangular platforms. We followed the gps to the largest circle and climbed the steps to the top. Now what??? Not much up at the top but a flat slap with a hole in the middle that was used for a pole support for the building that was once there. I took some pictures and paid special attention to that hole. I put my hand inside… it was deep. My fingers didn’t reach the bottom. I knelt down and stuck my arm inside. I reached waaaaaay inside and finally felt bottom. Something that felt like a ring was inside. I pulled on the ring and it gave way and I fell backwards with it in my hand. There was a long pole connected to the ring… about 10 inches long. “Well what’d you know??? This time X really DID mark the spot,” I thought to myself!
No one had seen me fall and I was glad. I didn’t want the authorities confiscating the metal rod. I decided to hide it in my backpack and not mention it to anyone. I quickly snapped a few more pictures and my colleagues and I headed back to our hotel. I gave the film to the desk clerk, to have developed, and we all decided to grab a shower and then have dinner. After dinner I retrieved the developed film and went to my room.
Alone in my room, I took the rod out of my backpack. I studied it long and hard. I laid the pictures out on the table. I would look at them later. The rod was made out of a metal of some kind, but nothing valuable. I could tell it was old. But how old??? I would tell everyone about it in the morning… but for now I wanted to check it out myself. I laid it on the table and picked up the envelope with the pictures. I had taken a lot of close-ups. The close-ups of the hole had numbers all around it. I hadn’t noticed them when I took the photos. At first I thought they were numbers marking the site. But they looked familiar. The rod! The rod had those same numbers! I went to grab the rod off the table and noticed the way it was laying. It was across one of the Madonna pictures I had taken. It matched the antenna on the Madonna. I carefully picked up the rod and laid it vertical over the antenna and it matched. I would have to check the other Madonna statues at home…but I was SURE it would match the others. I was so excited about the rod that I totally forgot about the numbers and went to bed. I would tell my colleagues everything in the morning.
The next day we met with Guadalajarian officials and secured permission to take the rod home and have it examined by experts. When we arrived at the office I quickly took the rod and went to see the statues. As I had expected… it DID match the antennas…EXACTLY. Now what??? I remembered… the numbers… I found the pictures and yes indeed the numbers DID match. But what did they mean?
It was about lunch time and I was getting hungry. I had promised my pilot friend I would treat him to lunch. I stuffed the pictures in my jacket and headed out the door. My friend and I had a wonderful lunch. I told him I would pay and grabbed the check from his hand. My wallet fell out of my pocket and when I reached down to pick it up… all the pictures fell out of my pocket. He reached down to help me pick them up and asked what they were pictures of. I told him about the Madonna’s and the rod. He looked at the pictures and said that the numbers looked like flight coordinates!
That was a few months ago and here I am…Waiting to blast off. To some god forsaken planet. We figured out that we needed to leave from Beijing and head straight up into space. But to where??? THAT is another story... I’m tired (Yawns and falls asleep)
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