Mon Oct 21 2002 19:47: Appropos of the memory of our 1998 road trip: Captain of an airliner: "Coming up on the right, you can see the Meteor Crater, which is a major tourist attraction in northern Arizona. It was formed several hundred years ago, when a lump of nickel and iron, roughly 150 feet in diameter and weighing 300,000 tons, struck the earth at about 40,000 miles an hour, scattering white-hot debris for miles in every direction. The hole measures nearly a mile across and is 570 feet deep." From the cabin, a passenger was heard to exclaim, "Wow! It just missed the highway!"