X Marks the Spot

Last year I found flying myself on a mission into Africa.  I always wanted to visit there.  It seems like such an exotic place.  Of course, besides the stories of Tarzan, Alan Quartermain, and the like, I was also interested in seeing the Great Pyramid, the Nile, and of course the Equator. 

I know that the equator goes all the way around the world, but so far I haven't had a chance to visit it anywhere else.  The closest I came previously was a short trip down to Honduras.  Not nearly close enough. 

So my crew and I fly down to Kenya and it looks just like it does on National Geograhic; the trees, the giraffees, everything!  I was so distracted by the sights that I completely forgot to mark the moment when we crossed the Equator on the way in. 

I mean that was my first time!  It's supposed to be an event.  I don't know, you get almost naked and run to the back of the airplane in just your underwear and combat boots.  Well, maybe that's just a Navy tradition, but I at least wanted to mark the moment that we crossed it...well, I missed the moment. 

We concluded business in Kenya and took off North again.  This time I wanted to make sure that the moment didn't go un-celebrated.  I asked my navigator if there was some geographic feature (a river, a lake, or even just a road) that marked the spot.  He consulted his charts and couldn't come up with anything that would be helpful.  With the equitorial region, fast approached (relatively speaking) I was becoming dismayed, when I saw off in the distance...and X carved into the earth.  It wasn't a road, and didn't look like runways. 

My first thought was, "Wouldn't that be funny if X marked the spot?"  As I said those words I thought back to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Harrison Ford says, "and X never, ever, ever, marks the spot."  Later in the movie he proclaims, "What do you know, X does mark the spot." 

As we the GPS lat longs counted down to the moment, I checked the wind drift.  There was very little, so what was abreast of me visually was indeed abreast of me.  That X was looking more and more like my marker.  Of course, I snapped several photos, trying not to capture the moment, while the GPS continued it's countdown.  And at the moment when South turned to North, I checked my 9 O'Clock to see that "X" directly abeam me.  X MARKED THE SPOT! 

Who knows why that X was there?  Did aliens carve it into the earth for some kind of astrological navigational aid used in conjunction with the pyramids of Giza?  Or was it just a dirt landing strip in the middle of nowhere?  I don't have the answer...but it did keep me distracted long enough to prevent me from stripping down to my Green Bay Packers underwear and go running through the cargo compartment.