Word: mountainous
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...glory and enormous profit, big pharmaceutical firms and university and government labs have been joined by scores of new companies, not just in Cambridge but in Montgomery County, Md., Silicon Valley and other high-tech hot spots around the nation. It's a virtual gold rush to mine the mountain of potentially valuable data the genome contains...
...used to press sugar into conical lumps, so they called the place Sugar Loaf; plus they mispronounced the original Indian name. Whatever the Indian name was it had to be better than Sugar Loaf, which sounds like a something that should be located somewhere in Orlando, equidistant from Space Mountain and The Pirates of the Caribbean. There is a theme park quality to this part of the tour. I've never liked theme parks, never quite understood the need to pay strangers to make you sick and put your life in danger. I'm partial to museums, planetariums and bookstores...
...From the peak of Sugar Loaf (which is 1,299 feet high) you can see all of Rio, as well as the neighboring peak of Corcovado, the famous mountain with the huge statue at its peak of Christ the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor) with his arms stretched out like he's welcoming you home after a lifetime of really screwing up big time. The statue is visible from pretty much everywhere in Rio. Corcovado inspired Jobim to write the song of the same name (called "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" in English), which even today endures as one of the finest...
...Quiet nights of Quiet stars/Quiet words from my guitar/floating on the silence that surrounds us..." Anyway, I begin to think about the song "Corcovado" again, the October 1964 live version with Astrud Gilberto singing in English (her voice high and light as mountain mist) and Joao Gilberto answering in Portuguese (gentle and soothing as a priest's voice in a confessional) and Stan Getz's tenor sax sweetly flowing through the song like a warm river. "This is where I want to be/here with you so close to me/until the final flicker of life's ember..." It's a song...
...Just then, a huge thunderbolt strikes the mountain right near Christ's statue. Maybe God is a Papa Roach fan and didn't like my sarcasm. I suddenly realize that I'm standing on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm and my only transportation down is in a steel cable car held up by steel cables. I try to keep my eyes on Cristo Redentor the whole way down...