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FLYING HOME   Thursday rain fell on the paperback romances I bought for my flight from Bismarck, as I dashed from the convenience store back to our stolen rental car. Several excellent novels awaited my attention in my bag. But for now all I wanted was escape. Not to think for a while. Not to feel. Just to dull the outside world until I could get home. * * * Once a month, I travel for my job. At least, we try to keep it to that. I, along with two or three colleagues, audit public drinking water programs run by the states, to see how well they=re complying with EPA guidelines. We survey 10-12 states every year, but often the schedule gets compressed and we end up with a couple of states in one month. Last June I spent a week in Salt Lake City, got back home late Friday night, and left again Sunday morning for a week in Topeka. That gets difficult to do because I start to mix the states up. By Thursday in Topeka, I was beginning to forget if Kansas or Utah waives testing for certain pesticides in the water and if it was Utah or Kansas that requires an extra sample for bacteriologicals. This was after Wisconsin in April and Massachusetts in May. Then we went on to do Louisiana in July and Georgia in August. And North Dakota in September.