You Shall Know Our Velocity! Read Online Free PDF Page A

laughed.
                "That's really his name," Pilar said, then sobered. The man's name knocked the wind out of her.
                "Well," Hand said.
                Pilar made a V of her hands and set her chin between her palms. Her eyes darted between us and quickly welled.
                "It's awful to see you two."

                We stayed up until four, in my kitchen, trying new itineraries and reading the Greenland website. The flight was eight hours away.
                "Biggest island," Hand said.
                "Official language is Greenlandic," I noted.
                "Not just Greenlandic --West Greenlandic. West Greenlandic, as spoken in Sisimiut, Maniitsoq and the Nuuk area, is the official language of communication throughout Greenland. East Greenlandic is very different from West Greenlandic, but most East Greenlanders understand West Greenlandic."
                "Total population is 53,000."
                "Ice covers eighty-five percent of the landmass."
                "They're desperate for tourists. They get about 8,000 a year, but they're shooting for 60,000."
                "They name their winds. Listen: East Greenland has the Piteraq, a cold katabatic wind, a well-known and much-feared wind phenomenon. The highest gusts to date in Ammassalik were recorded in 1972 and measured 72 m/sec."
                "What's katabatic?"
                "As a visitor to Greenland, it is important to note the following: The weather can change abruptly, and technical hitches may occur. So it is always advisable to enquire with GreenlandAir the evening before - - or at the latest the same day."
                "Technical hitches. Are they talking about the weather?"
                "I think so."
                We fell asleep in the living room, Hand on the couch and me on the recliner, and at eight woke with two hours to gather everything and go. We had agreed not to pack before the morning, and this turned out to be easy to honor, the actual packing involving the stuffing in of two shirts, underwear, toiletries and a miniature atlas, which took three minutes. Passports, tickets, the $32,000 in traveler's checks, the bandannas. Hand brought some discs, his walkman, a handful of tapes for the rental cars, some State Department traveler's advisories, and a sheaf of papers he'd printed from the Center for Disease Control website, almost entirely about ebola. He could talk forever about ebola. I threw in a Churchill biography I was reading, but after swinging the pack over my shoulders and feeling the weight of the 1,200 pages, I unpacked the book, ripped out the first 200 and last 300, and shoved it back in.
                We fell back asleep on the couch. At ten-thirty, with a spasm we woke again --

    TUESDAY

                -- and left and slept in the cab, each of our heads against a window, out cold; the cabbie woke us when stopped under the awning of O'Hare's international arm. The airport's quiet doors opened for us and we trotted to the desk happily, the airport tall and light, Hand whistling John Denver's relevant song, and at the desk we were told our flight was canceled; the airport in Kangerlussuaq was closed because of winds.
                "It can't be," I said.
                "The katabatic winds," Hand said.
                "Jesus."
                "We've only got one fucking week."
                The woman said we could go halfway, to Iqaluit, and wait.
                For how long? we asked.
                "Who knows?" she said, not looking at me. She'd been talking to Hand and I realized why. My face. " They're waiting." She pointed to a group of people on a bench across the way. They looked like they were going to Greenland, all with parkas, backpacks and beards. We looked like