The ball was going to be swept through the wellbore until, within the hour, its path was blocked by a fibreglass plug.
After an hour, the path is spotlessly clean, and everything else is pebble-dashed in grime up to a height of five feet: the house, the kitchen windows, the dog, even the leaves on the trees.
Havana was a four hour, dirt path ride through the national preserve, so if by chance anyone spotted anything that might be suspicious, there'd be about an eight hour delay before the soldiers could be sic'ed on it, which by that time they'd be sic'ing onto something tied up at a pier in Jacksonville.
If we wanted to leave the lighthouse for dinner, we would have to do so before 7 or after 10. Between those hours, the path might be flooded, and we wouldn't be able to get out.
Had the time of entry of the Chelyabinsk meteorite into the atmosphere varied by only a few hours, its path would have brought it down over much larger population centres in northern England.
(Independent exploration was also an option). And we who had booked our trips in honor of our roots would, for a few hours, explore paths haunted by ghosts.
"Following the weather conditions of the past 48 hours, coastal paths are particularly hazardous and present a danger to the public who are attempting to gain access to this area". Hugh Shaw, the Secretary of State's Representative for Maritime Salvage and Intervention, said those involved in the salvage operation were moving as quickly as possible, but added that the work could take some time.
"When we started, the car was going about two to four miles an hour along a path through a park — you could ride a tricycle faster," Pomerleau told me.
An hour later, a path that the protesters had cleared to the field hospital had become a highway for the wounded, who came in ambulances, on motorcycles and in the arms of friends.
There could still be smaller objects — hitting something as small as a pebble could be catastrophic at New Horizons' speed of 31,000 miles per hour — but the path appears to be clear.
