Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure by Dave Gorman

Author:Dave Gorman [GORMAN, DAVE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, GAM000000, HUM000000
ISBN: 9781468304015
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2012-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

eleven

Dripstone Ingles

Dripstone

noun: the form of calcium carbonate that exists in stalactites or stalagmites.

Ingles

noun: plural of ingle; an archaic or dialect word for a fire in a room or fireplace.

With so many hours of air travel behind me I had somehow managed to acquire a sort of Zen-like calm about the whole flying experience. Lack of legroom had ceased to be uncomfortable, the air had stopped tasting stale and other people’s elbows were no longer the enemy. Being on a plane wasn’t odd any more; it had become the norm. I put my headphones on, closed my eyes and zoned out. I might have walked on to a 747 but once there I ascended to an astral plane all of my own.

Long after the plane had landed I too returned to planet earth. Today, I was in the sunny climes of San Diego. By rights, I should have been mentally and physically wiped out by the rigours of travel but instead I felt energised and focused. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins; I was feeding on the energy of the task itself.

A dollar and fifty cents bought me a bus ride from the airport to the city centre. From there I took the tram, or trolley as it’s known to the locals, past trailer parks full of cheap homes and expensive cars, out to the small town of Santee, home of the Institute for Creation Research and therefore the home of Duane T. Gish, PhD, aka Dripstone Ingles.

Santee is at the end of the line and the trolley deposits you at what is basically a big out-of-town shopping complex; a cluster of warehouse-size shops and an enormous parking lot. I was a little early for my appointment so I took the chance to slip into a branch of Old Navy and buy some clean underwear. (By the way, Old Navy is a regular high street clothes store in the States, selling things at the (exceedingly) cheap and (quite) cheerful end of the market. I don’t want you to think I was buying used underpants from retired sailors.) I dumped my dirty underwear in a nearby litter bin. It didn’t seem quite right but I wasn’t taking them with me and I didn’t know what else to do with them.

I rang the offices of the ICR to ask for directions and was pleasantly surprised when I was put through to Dr Gish himself who then offered to come and pick me up in person. He spoke slowly and deliberately, his voice reedy with the sibilant whistle that comes with old age.

I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t expected him to be particularly old. I was already expecting this to be a difficult encounter. I wasn’t expecting to share much common ground with Dr Gish and now, in discovering the generation gap between us, I knew there was even less.

Normally when meeting a googlewhack my expectations would be shaped by the emails we’d exchanged. There might be only one or two but it would be enough for me to glean some kind of insight into their personality.

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