I'll give it to you straight. For me, getting awards from fellow bloggers brings with it a certain amount of self-loathing. First, I don't think I really deserve 'em. I'm not saying that out of modesty, or fake-modesty-that-makes-you-love-me-all-the-more-because-you-think-I'm-all-humble-and-self-deprecating-but-I'm-really-just-saying-it-because-it-makes-you-think-I'm-humble-and-self-deprecating-and-you-love-me-all-the-more. I don't deserve these honors—yet. Wait until I've won a few Pulitzers, gotten onto a few bestseller lists, done a few book signings. Then hit me up. Then I'll feel like I've earned it.
There's also that subversive, cynical, nonconformist corner of my brain. The bit that hates blogging awards and everything they signify about the blogsphere, the Internet, and e-community at large. The conservative portion, which can't stand the idea of everybody getting an award, and those awards being dispensed by the proletariat instead of a qualified panel, and these awards being dispensed at random, at the award-giver's discretion. It's the part of me that says Oh, golly-gosh. An award? Really? A blogging award? From the blogsphere? Whoopity-f@#$ing-do. That sure means a lot. I'm sure that got passed on to a lot of deserving people. Yeah, right. It's just a small, grainy image with a crude icon and a cutesy title. Doesn't mean diddly-squat. Everybody on Blogger's going to have one before the month's out. Especially if they have to pass it on to twenty other trite, bilious, self-important hacks, as if it was some goddamn chain letter.
So, in order to actually accept one of these awards, I have to simultaneously overcome (a) the specious cranial inflation that stems from "winning" a blogging award, and (b) beat down the vitriolic commentary from behind. Fortunately, the humanist part of my brain—he doesn't show his face too often, but he's there when I need him—kicks into high gear. He invariably saysOh, Andrew, how can you not accept this award? No matter what that hectoring conservative may say, this award is a gift. It was given to you in good faith by a kindred spirit, a fellow blogger, one of your comrades-in-arms. They want to show their appreciation for what you do, for what you write, for what you have to say. You have thoroughly impressed them with your work, and they are honoring you for it. How can you in good conscience refuse it? Are you so callous? Are you so heartless and cold-blooded that you would refuse someone's well-meaning sentimentality? Would you spit on their accolade, no matter how insubstantial or intangible? Have you no empathy? Have you no gratitude? Have you no soul? You must write an acceptance speech this minute, young man. Accept this award, show your appreciation, and pass it on to other worthy recipients. This is not a chain letter you are passing on; it's unadulterated love and encouragement.
How can I say no to that?
So let's get on with the awards ceremony, then. Donna Hole, author of a marvelous and insightful self-titled blog, has presented me with the Soul Mates Award. And Claire Dawn, from the effusive, exotic and ever-informative Points of Claire-ification, has granted me the "Creative Writer" Blogger Award. It's ironic that I should get both these awards at the same time, because they both come with a set of unorthodox rules.
Let's begin with the Soul Mates Award.
I don't feel bad about accepting this one, because mypersonal friend distant acquaintance Christi, from A Torch in the Tempest, started it off as a kind of social experiment; and in general, social experiments are rather fun. The rules are:
Pass it on to five recipients.
Make up something (preferably inoffensive) about the people you sent it to. Assuming they are people, that is. I don't know if the milk cows have managed to penetrate the blogsphere or not. If they did, ignore 'em.
Link to the people you gave it to (obviously; this is basic blogging etiquette).
Link back to the original award post, which is right about here.
Alright then! Here are the recipients...and their retinue of falsehoods.
The vampire queen known only as propinquity survived the Great Romanian Purge of 1887 by hiding herself inside a crate of Czechoslovakian absinthe. During the two-month voyage to the United States, the absinthe absorbed some of her bewitching raspberry pheromones. A penniless confectioner later bought a bottle, took a taste, stole a taffy-puller, and invented Red Vines.
Jon Paul, similarly immortal, has participated in every major air conflict in the history of the United States. He dueled the Red Baron; bombed the Bismarck; splashed MiGs on the 38th Parallel; patrolled the Ho Chi Minh Trail; and I bet he will get a piece of the Martians whenever they beam down. During peacetime he wrote the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina under the pseudonym "Leo Tolstoy."
Better known as 006, Smithy infiltrated a premier Venezuelan terrorist cell in 1974 to pass information to British intelligence about the movements of Carlos the Jackal. Having successfully completed his mission objectives (rearranging Carlos's sock drawer, swiping his collection of Dire Straits records, and sleeping with his mistress), Smithy was cooperating with French agents when Carlos apparently "murdered" him. Smithy was forced to go into hiding, and is now working incognito on a guava farm in west-central Brazil, keeping MI6 abreast of international bacon prices.
Mary Witzl was President Richard M. Nixon's proofreader until fits of uncontrollable laughter barred her from working. Following this, she established a wind farm in Indio, California, promptly suffocating everybody in Palm Springs. Farther west, in Los Angeles County, a public holiday has been established in her honor. People celebrate it by removing their oxygen tanks for a split-second and inhaling a lungful of real air.
Entrepreneur Chick's five businesses are really a front for a top-secret clandestine worldwide organization known as the Cold Ducks, who are responsible for the ridges in Ruffles® potato chips, the discovery of Ludacris, and that weird eyeball hovering over the pyramid on the dollar bill.
And now for the "Creative Writer" Award.
This one's fun, too. Pass it on to five bloggers first. I'll wait. Okay, done? Go on, do it already. Do you want that little humanist angel in your head to get after you? No, you don't. When you've finished, the jollity begins. Divulge seven things about yourself: six lies and one truth. The rest of us will try to guess the truth, while you sit back and laugh your head off. Let your readers stew for a couple of days, and then clue everybody in. (Ironic that this post is entitled the straight dope when it contains almost nothing but lies, isn't it?)
Points of Claire-ification (I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to bequeath this one right back to her; she's earned it. And she said I was awesome.)
And here are the lies:
I once read the entire Harry Potter series cover-to-cover without stopping. It took me just over 27 hours. I started at seven in the evening and finished up a little after 10 the following night. I had to take some breaks to eat pizza, go to the restroom, and run around my dorm a few times to stay awake, but I stuck to it and finished it.
I saw Dick Cheney speak live at my college. He came in early 2007 to help President Bush promote his Social Security makeover. I was impressed by how much more natural he was in person. He made an impromptu speech, cracked jokes, and took questions from the crowd. I actually passed within 100 yards of him on my way out the door.
When I was little, my mother, brother and I accompanied my dad on a business trip to Montgomery, Alabama. I don't remember much; basically, all I can recall is looking out of our high-rise hotel window and seeing all the other skyscrapers. There were lots of green trees and blue sky, too. I haven't been back since.
I'm good at riddles. When I was younger I had this big book of them that Ma had bought for me at some bookstore in Tennessee. I read and reread it until the pages were dogeared and the leaves were yellowed. When I got older and read The Hobbit, I pretty much knew every riddle that Gollum and Bilbo told each other. It might take me a minute or two, but I can almost always reason out the answer.
I've been in only one real car accident in my life. It happened my senior year in high school. I was driving on the wrong side of the road, and without a seat belt. Coming around a blind corner, I hit another car head-on. (The driver and passenger were okay, fortunately.) My head hit the windshield and put an enormous spiderweb crack in it. The highway patrolman said that if I'd been going any faster, I'd have smashed my chest against the steering column and killed myself. In the end, I got away with just a few scratches.
I can play five musical instruments: the piano, accordion, violin, harmonica and Jew's harp. I took piano lessons for about eight years, and still suck. I took a couple of violin lessons and then elected to fiddle. The accordion was something I got into after hearing a few good folk bands from Ireland and Newfoundland. I've always liked the harmonica, especially after my English friend Elaine gave me one that she'd bought in a toy shop in Prague. The Jew's harp was just something I picked up on the side, being an admirer of Snoopy.
I got to sample some absinthe at my last cocktail party. My buddy John and I split an $85 bottle of Mata Hari, brought it to my place, and got it all ready: glasses, absinthe spoon, sugar cubes, blue flames, the works. I was disappointed, overall. I abhorred the licorice flavor and didn't even see any green fairies as compensation. But at least I can say I've tried it now.
Figure that out if you can.
There, done. Man, that was hard. It was more difficult than I imagined to beat back the subconscious vitriol and accept these awards. And that's not even mentioning how tough it was to choose the proper recipients to pass 'em onto, make up some stuff about them, and invent some flagrant untruths about myself. Jeez... At some point (I don't know when) I'll get around to notifying everybody. If you're one of the nominees and you stopped in before I could get to you, I apologize.
Here's a film for every chartered accountant who ever wanted to be a lion-tamer.
Hatari! (1962) concerns a group of expatriates in East Africa, capturing animals for zoos and circuses. And how do they do it? The fanny-kickin' way, of course: trucks, ropes, and cages. None of this wishy-washy tranquilizer nonsense. John Wayne and his gang are taking names. If you've ever fantasized about climbing into a beat-up old pickup truck and chasing an enraged rhinoceros across the sunlit grass of the Ngorogoro Crater, you've gotta sit down and see this movie.
The plot: John Wayne's character, Sean Mercer, is the boss of a game company, a crack team of drivers and animal wranglers based somewhere in Kenya. They live on an extravagant spread, a compound filled with bungalows, cages, enclosures, sheds, and enough booze and zebra-skin rugs to stock a hundred African adventure flicks. By day, they drive out to the savanna in a beat-up assortment of vehicles and run down the local fauna; by night, they smoke, drink, dance, and romance like New York socialites, accompanied by some of the grooviest tunes Henry Mancini could dish up. Seems like a pretty cool job, if you ask me.
Sean is a cantankerous Irish-American with bad luck in love. He came within an inch of getting married, once. Then he made the mistake of bringing her to Africa with him. She couldn't stand the place and walked out on him. Since then, Sean's shunned women with a vehemence bordering on misogyny. His well-ordered lifestyle is suddenly complicated by the arrival of a beautiful Italian photographer, Dallas (Elsa Martinelli), sent by one of the client zoos to take pictures of their acquisitions. Sean wants her gone, but Dallas immediately wins the hearts of his coworkers: wisecracking driver Pockets (a Brooklyn cabbie, played by the inimitable Red Buttons), who is secretly in love with Brandy (Michèle Girardon), for whose attentions the much-more-handsome-and-dashing Kurt Muller and "Chips" Maurey (Hardy Krüger and Gérard Blain) are hotly competing. There's the shadow of bad luck hanging over the whole expedition, too, as "the Indian" (Bruce Cabot), the expedition's rifleman, is wounded by a rhinoceros in the opening scenes. The crew must find a replacement and simultaneously cope with what the Indian is sure is a "rhino jinx."
Interspersed with all of this are some of the most amazing animal sequences ever seen in a movie, before or since. There are no CG effects going on here, people: it's the real deal. The cast members really did pile into trucks and Jeeps and go haring after rhinos and giraffes and zebras, all over the African plains. Not only that, but most of these scenes are unscripted: there was no way of knowing what the wild animals would do, so director Howard Hawks told the cast to ad-lib as they went along. Watching John Wayne doing his darnedest not to swear on-camera while wrestling a fully grown zebra into a crate (or getting his foot stomped on by a baby giraffe) is nothing short of cinematic gold.
Wayne proves his mettle, though. In one timeless scene, he faces down the charge of an angry mother elephant on foot, rifle in hand. I thought that was the pinnacle of manliness when I first watched this film as an eight-year-old boy. And it's not just chasing animals, either. Midway through the film, Pockets (my favorite character) comes up with a high-flown scheme to net a bunch of monkeys: a rocket. He plans to build a skyrocket to haul a net 100 feet into the air and drape it over an enormous tree, into which the helpful Warusha tribe (who, unfortunately, aren't really developed as characters, and are treated more as part of the African scenery) have chased 500 chattering, screeching vervet monkeys. Ever see that in any other movie? Eh? I thought not.
Comedy slides seamlessly in between hazards and canoodling. Not only are we privy to the whimsical courtship of Sean and Dallas, and Pockets's never-ending supply of one-liners (when a cape buffalo rams its head into the front grille of the catching truck, Pockets quips "Our insurance rate just went up"), but there are plenty of non-romantic hijinks to go around in between safaris. Bedlam ensues when someone leaves the gate of the ostrich enclosure open, and the lanky birds escape into the compound. Dallas, a compassionate soul, becomes a magnet for orphaned baby elephants, much to Sean's chagrin. And the research, development, and implementation of Pockets's monkey-netting rocket are always good for a laugh.
The film keeps the suspense going nicely, too. All the time, you're wondering whether the cast is ever going to run out of cigarettes. And through it all, there's the intangible sense of adventure hovering just below our perceptions. As one views this film, one subconsciously realizes the grandeur of the setting, the quiet ecstasy and omnipresent thrill of having a swashbuckling job in a far-flung corner of the planet. I dare anyone with a soul to resist the excitement that bubbles up in your midsection whenever the screen turns to a wide-angle shot of the Masai Mara and the catching cars heave into sight, engines roaring, bald tires kicking up dust. The very concept of the film—living and working in Africa, capturing fractious megafauna on a daily basis—is intoxicating.
Smoldering passions, shameless chain smoking, exhilarating chases, exotic locales, dangerous beasts, endless dangers and high thrills (and a hefty helping of male chauvinism) render this flick dated but endlessly fun. For world travel, nostalgia, adventure, laughs, romance, intrigue, and a rollicking good time, look up Hatari! and hang on for the ride.
Just don't get too close to the TV. That rhinoceros is a mean one.
I'm beginning to realize just how low on the aircraft totem-pole I started. When I began training in a Cessna 172, I knew it wasn't exactly sex on wings. I mean, look:
Doesn't compare to, say, a panty-dropper like the F-35, does it?
Of course not. But all the same, I was thrilled.
Wow, the five-year-old kid in me hollered, a real airplane! Awesome!
Now that I'm flying a Mooney M20E, which looks like this...
...it's suddenly become apparent what a primitive flying machine the Cessna is. My Cessna 172M has 150 horsepower. That's less than most cars, a lot less. At sea level, it has a top speed of about 140 miles per hour, something any self-respecting Lamborghini would laugh at. To take off, it needs a ground roll of about 835 feet. It climbs at about 645 feet per minute, and has a maximum service ceiling of 13,000 feet.
The Mooney we're flying is a 1961 M20E. (Aircraft age differently than cars do. If you saw somebody with a '61 Chevy, for example, you'd marvel that they managed to keep it running so long. You might even wonder why it's still on the road at all. It doesn't work the same way with airplanes. You just don't fly them until they wear out and then throw them away, like you would a pterodactyl. When a part breaks down, you fix it. And when it gets too run-down to be fixed, you replace it. If an airplane lives long enough, every single part in it will eventually be replaced. Any airplane more than a few years old is a veritable Frankenstein of new and aging components.) Mooneys, as I've mentioned, are sports cars. Even this '61 model has a 200-horsepower, fuel-injected engine. It climbs like a chipmunk on LSD. Our Mooney has retractable landing gear, a fuel pump, a variable-pitch propeller, and cowl flaps (trapdoors which let more air into the engine block during climbs or slow flight). My Cessna 172 handles like a truck. The thing just putters along through the sky. On descent, it floats down slowly on those big wings, and flares like a goose when landing. It's about as acrobatic as Rosie O'Donnell. It can turn on a dime, as long as that dime is on the ground and you're at least a thousand feet over it.
Our M20E, on the other hand, is what Boss #1 calls "finesseful." It's a finely-tuned piece of machinery, compared to the slab-sided Cessna. Flying it requires a greater degree of control, alertness, presence of mind, skill, and efficiency...which explains why I suck so bad at flying it. You can't pull up too hard when taking off, or the propeller might over-rotate. You really have to have the thing trimmed out properly during descents, or you'll be fighting for proper pitch ("nose authority") all the way to the ground. You'll want to stay below 140 miles per hour, generally, because if you hit any turbulence at that speed, the wings will crack right off.
In the Cessna, I pull the throttle out or push it in, and watch the tachometer needle fall or rise. At cruise speed in the Mooney, I monitor the throttle with something called a manifold pressure gauge. I'm still not exactly clear on what the heck "manifold pressure" is. It sounds like the kind of obscure mathematical principle a physicist would put on a T-shirt. If I have got this correct, the manifold pressure gauge measures the air pressure in the throttle manifold. Theoretically, when you're sitting on the ground with the throttle closed, the manifold pressure readings will mirror actual surface pressure (in inches of mercury). However, at cruise altitude with the throttle open, the pressure will be a lot less, and you can use it to measure throttle settings. Or something like that, I don't know. Perhaps I'm stewed. Perhaps the manifold pressure gauge actually measures how good the pilot is at flying the airplane, which would explain why it's so low all the time.
I do know this, however: for cruise in our Mooney, you'll want the manifold pressure at 20 inches; descents, 15 inches. During Mooney-cruise, you fine-tune the tachometer with the propeller knob. The variable-pitch propeller, as I so ineptly explained to you, can be adjusted to increase or decrease the blades' angle of attack.
What is the angle of attack, you ask? No, it's not the direction from which you should approach the chicks in the club, wise-ass. And it's not the angle of the Johnson as it enters the coochie, either. Get your mind out of the gutter. This is the angle between the chord line (an imaginary line drawn down from the trailing edge of the wing to the exact center of the curvature of the leading edge) and the oncoming air. Generally speaking, you should keep the angle of attack down to 20 degrees or less. Any more than that and you could stall the airplane. Stalls, if I haven't explained already, occur when the angle of attack is too great to produce lift. If you've been studying the four forces of flight down there at the bottom of this page, you'll know that the force opposing lift is weight. And what happens when you suddenly have 1500 pounds of weight in midair without any visible means of support?
You are correct, Wile E. You fall.
I've practiced stalls several times during my flight lessons, and it's the same sensation as a roller coaster starting down. First there's a buffeting sensation as the air rolls roughly over the wings. Then your stomach flies up into your throat, and you can tell without looking that the plane ain't flyin' no more. Propeller blades have chord lines, too, and an angle of attack. Fixed-pitch propellers can't be adjusted; the air is hitting the blades at the same angle, no matter what. But the blades of variable-pitch propellers can be rotated minutely to change the angle of attack. If managed properly, a variable-pitch propeller makes your plane more aerodynamic and efficient by fine-tuning the RPM, which saves fuel and smooths operation. The gentlest twirl of that knob can send you sailing miles further.
When I flew in a Cessna, I had flying lessons. When I fly in a Mooney, I have flying lessons—on crack. If you want to slow down an airplane, the best method is to raise the nose, and reduce throttle. But my bosses are former fighter pilots. They prefer to yank the airplane into a hard turn, wings pointing straight at heaven and hell, and pull a screaming three-sixty in the middle of the sky. I'm crushed into my seat by two or three G's. My lips and chin go slithering down my neck toward my chest. Shoulders strain to reach my pelvis. My feet are seemingly glued to the floor. Eyeballs bounce off tonsils. I often wonder how my mother (who gets carsick just from reading roadsigns) would react if she were there. The maneuver invariably works. Once we roll out of the turn (eyeballs returning to their accustomed place) we're suddenly 50 mph slower, descending and ready to land.
Adjusting from Cessnas to Mooneys has taken some doing, needless to say.
I still love the 172. It may be slow. It may handle like a truck. It may not be "finesseful." But it's comfortable and forgiving to fly. That's ideal for an idiot novice who prefers not to think too much, you know? My Cessna resembles the placid old Clydesdale that I rode on my grandparents' ranch as a kid. I feel fine just plodding through the sky, floating down on big wings, not worrying about propeller angles or screaming three-sixties.
This week I flew with Boss #1. It was interesting to see Mr. Mooney again. He showed me some spellbinding photographs of his spread up in Montana. It's really coming together. He and his buddy Cowboy are clearing out some willows and putting in a trout pond. The land is surrounded by hundreds of acres of national forest. Elk, trout, flying, all the best of Big Sky Country. I envy him.
We had a good week this week. We earned our pay on Tuesday. There was a possible traffic conflict. Joshua let us know about it first; then I picked up the blip on the TKAS; then Mr. Mooney got a visual. It was a Cessna 182, tracking across our windscreen left to right, right in the path of the climbing UAV. Fortunately it was still a few miles off; we'd had sufficient warning from Joshua. Mr. Mooney radioed the controllers and had them level the UAV off at 7,000 feet, and turn a bit to the left. This they did, and all passed in safety.
Wednesday was warm. We spent the day over at the Victorville airport, and it always seems hotter over there. Perhaps it's all the extra pavement. It was probably in the low 80s, which is just about melting point for me. Or perhaps it was the girls. The FBO at Victorville is called Million Air. It's a swanky flight service which offers plush waiting facilities with leather couches, "quiet rooms" for tired eyes, laundry services, a small theater, free refreshments, weather tracking, and more. And it's staffed by the most attractive assortment of young ladies in corporate skirts and heels, too. Airplanes aren't the only thing they help get up.
I got a lot of work done during our down-time, despite the eye-candy. The second edit of the novel's almost done. Soon it'll be time to send it off to my alpha readers and find out what's wrong with it. I'll keep you posted.
The other noteworthy thing that happened Wednesday was... (Drum roll, please.) ...I got to take off in the Mooney for the first time! I didn't do half bad, either. I did everything Mr. Mooney told me to: push the throttle in slowly and smoothly; raise the nose at 80; don't raise the nose too high after liftoff. I nailed it clean. I flew us out to the rendezvous point and Mr. Mooney took over. He said "good job," which, coming from an old Air Force squadron leader and jet instructor, made my little heart jump for joy.
Thursday was an odd day. We recovered the drone at 12:30 instead of 4:30. Those spring winds were springing up again. But we kept ourselves busy for the rest of the afternoon: it was time for Sierra Hotel's 25-hour inspection. Mr. Mooney had me pull some panels off the engine and battery (a long, painstaking process, involving the removal of about a million screws). We cleaned the engine, checked all the bolts and fastenings for security, the fuselage for dents, the battery for corrosion, the skin for missing rivets, and the engine block for leaking oil. Finding none of the above, we clapped everything back on again and called it a day. I have now officially given an airplane an inspection. I held my head up a little higher as I walked out of the hangar that day. If Jack Ridley had come along at that moment, I could've looked him in the eye and given him a firm handshake.
On Friday we were weather-canceled. Again. I still haven't worked a full week yet. Mr. Mooney and I finished filling out the daily reports, and then split. I went home and pottered about for a few hours until Mr. Mooney called me down to the airport to give him the key to the hangar. Ha ha, I forgot to leave that with him. Whoopsies.
And now perhaps you're wondering why I titled this post I'll sleep when I'm dead (instead of sex on wings). That is because I plan, by next week, to have taken my final bartender's exam. Following my passage of this doughty test (a written quiz and a comprehensive speed-trial), I will be briefed on the intricacies of a POS system, and then placed with a job. I intend to work nights and Mondays, around my flying schedule, in order to save up for the
ENORMOUS STUPENDOUS SUPER-COLOSSAL TWO-WEEK TRIP TO ENGLAND I'M TAKING IN JUNE!!!
It's true! Shortly before I left Korea, my English friends Adam and Elaine invited me to Newcastle to watch the 2010 FIFA World Cup from the comfort and chaos of the local pubs. I, having always wanted to watch a football match in an English pub, readily accepted. The main reason I have been striving and sweating to complete my bartender's training, in fact, is so I can get a lucrative job with plentiful tips and save up enough cabbage to actually go. It's looking tight right now, even with two jobs. But I'm going to try it. I don't fancy I'll get much sleep, flying by day and tending bar nights, but it'll be more than worth it.
I'll be in England two weeks. Two glorious weeks of booze, football, travel, castles, parties, and, as the Geordies say, "good craic." Stick around and you'll hear all about it.
This epistle shall leap all over the place, I'm afraid. It's an amalgamation of several different posts, some of which have been in the pipeline for a while, and others that have just cropped up. First, I'm going to tell you a story. Second, I'm going to accept an award. (I spoke too soon yesterday.) Third, I'm going to update you on how the job's going, and the work in progress ("the Novel," with a capital N).
And so, the story: When I go on my afternoon constitutional, I usually head north down Corto Road, then cut east on Ocotillo Way. After about seven-tenths of a mile, Ocotillo peters out at Pioneer Road, which parallels the railroad tracks north by west until it intersects La Mesa. Each of these dirt roads is rougher than the last. There isn't a house within two miles of La Mesa. It runs north to south, from Highway 18 (miles away in the valley below) up into the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. Beyond La Mesa, my walking path is a mere dirt bike track, winding sinuously through the empty desert further east.
The Pioneer/La Mesa crossroads is a peculiar one. The four dusty trails are joined by the railroad tracks alongside Pioneer, which run for miles to the southeast until they reach the limestone mines. There are also power lines. A row of high-tension towers accompanies La Mesa along its northern stretch, eventually breaking off and curving away north across the valley after bisecting the railroad tracks.
Originally, I was ambivalent about these pylons. Easily a hundred feet tall, they rear their porous gray gantries against the eternal blue and sullen gray of the desert sky. Their black insulators, ribbed like huge accordions, hang from their stout arms like missiles slung beneath the wings of a fighter jet. I used to despise power lines; they mucked up the panorama. I still harbor a bit of resentment toward the structures in general. Not these power lines, though. Somehow I don't mind them. Though man-made, they seem to add something to the stark desert landscape, rather than detract from it. Standing in the midst of empty desert as they do, they seem almost like sentinels, guarding the vulnerable houses to the west against the threatening shades of night. Their angular outline seems to fit the hard, unforgiving terrain, while simultaneously estranging them from it.
These impressions aren't always supported by visual stimuli, either. Last fall, I was heading east down Pioneer on a golden, sunny afternoon. The omnipresent Mojave wind (what Pete down at M—— Aviation jokingly calls "the desert breeze") was blowing energetically. I looked ahead and saw the towers looming. I strode along. The only sounds were wind buffeting my ears and the crunch of boots in the gritty dust. As I approached the towers, I became aware of a thin, roaring scream creeping into auditory range. It was almost undetectable at first, so high-pitched and wispy was it. I paused for a moment, and listened. The sound was still indistinct, so I resumed my walk.
The nearer I got to the towers, the more apparent it became that the sound originated from them. At their very feet, I stopped short and listened once more. An involuntary chill ran up my spine. The thin scream assaulted my ears, louder than ever. It's impossible to describe exactly what it was like. It was as if a hundred thousand hoarse banshees were yowling all at once, or the Devil himself was whistling between his teeth. Memories sprang unbidden to mind: the dusty street of a ghost town in a black-and-white Western—and the timeless, tuneless whisper of the wind, blowing through chinks in the dilapidated buildings, howling across the dusty ground between outlaw and lawman. It was the wind. That desert breeze, coming out of the southwest, was slipping through the towers' pylons and creating that spine-chilling sound.
Goosebumps broke out on the back of my neck. My neck craned upward. My eyes gazed in naked wonder. I couldn't move. I was spellbound by the music. Imagine my delight (and amplified chills) when I returned to the towers in late winter, when the winds were blowing with all February's fury. Whispers became screams. Whistles became shrieks. Howls became a hellish chorus. The towers yammered and whined and moaned like living beings under the onslaught of air.
On that day, and many days after, I stood beneath them and listened to their haunting, ceaseless cries. I soon learned to judge the sounds as a critic would judge a sonata. The wind, passing through the towers, created at once a thin voiceless shriek and a deep, atonal thrumming. Hearing it, I could almost imagine that I stood on the blasted surface of some alien planet, listening to some nameless tribal ritual echoing from the dark and unknown distance. The power lines danced as though legions of invisible acrobats tripped giddily across their expanse. And the wind never faltered or held back. It blew as if it had always blown, ever since the blasphemous days, the very Dawn of Time itself. And I wondered: if humanity should someday vanish, and its trammels fall to ruin, what might extraterrestrial explorers think of these skeletal metal towers? To see them standing there, far from civilization's edge, slowly bleaching in the desert sun, surrounded by a jumbled mass of truncated rubber and copper tentacles? Would they guess their moot purpose, the reason behind these eldritch structures? Or would they misinterpret the find, hold these odd pillars to be cultural icons, rumors of a long-lost and barbaric religion? To what would they attribute the unending scream of high-tension towers in the wind?
A compelling query, in my opinion. Now onto the award ceremony thingy! Muchas gracias to Christi from A Torch in the Tempest for her generosity. I could be wrong (I've been wrong about several other things on her blog, trust me), but I don't believe this accolade comes with any conditions. You just pass it on to five bloggers. Based on the title, however, I will send it to recipients who exude an optimistic demeanor in their writings, or whose posts retain an intangible, uplifting quality—however subtle or covert.
Thank you for your dramatic tales, prose uplifting in its eloquence, and silvery consideration, friends. Your posts never cease to make me smile, think, or sit back in wonder.
This is my first full week of flying. The previous three we've been canceled by winds and weather, only working two days. This week I'm with Mr. Mooney again. We're getting a lot done, both in the air and on the ground. I was going to give you a full blow-by-blow, but I think I'll save that for another time. I will say this: I now know how to take off in a Mooney, have negated that accomplishment by botching five landings in a row, and even aided in Sierra Hotel's 25-hour inspection. I took off the cowlings, and—
Well, that's for later. I'm also getting a lot done during down-time. The Novel's second edit is almost complete. Once that gets finished I'll send it off to my alpha readers, and let them rip it to pieces. Once I implement their vitriolic revisions, I'll start down the long, long road to publication. Rejection slips, here I come!
My valiant quest to win every award in the known Universe continues.
Now, I could offer you the usual excuses, self-deprecations, pleas of ignorance, but that'd be tedious. You've heard 'em all before. "My gosh, I just don't know why I get all these awards."
"Who'd have suspected I would garner all this attention just for shamelessly pontificating?"
"Beats me where all this attention comes from. I just blog here, man."
Let's just skip that part. Suffice it to say, I am once again humbled, honored, and red-faced to receive this accolade. I believe it's called the "From Me To You" Award (didn't see that coming, did you?). Two exemplary bloggers bestowed it upon me: Jon Paul from Where Sky Meets Ground and Mia from My Literary Jam and Toast. I call these bloggers "exemplary" because they epitomize principles every blogger should aspire to:
If you're going to say something, say it well. And make yourself useful while you're at it.
Mia and JP not only write well (and humorously). They habitually promulgate tips and hints to help us poor benighted folk with the agonizing and soul-shaking process known as "writing." (Speaking of which, I need to get cracking. I should find out what that publisher back in Georgia is doing with my first three chapters, and keep editing my MS in the meantime. I might have found an alpha reader I can give it to when I finish the second edit, though. Even so, I'm falling into a stagnant, apathetic rut again. I hate myself sometimes. Come on, my conscience is niggling at me, do you want to be a writer or not? Roni over at Fiction Groupie just won an award with her novel manuscript, and the publication process has started! She's on the road to success! That could be you, chump. Thanks, brain, I needed that.)
Anyway, let's see about the rules of the FMTY Award: seven facts, seven bloggers. Or perhaps we should say "seven truths" because, as Indiana Jones will tell you, fact is not truth. Relate seven truths about yourself, and send the award on to seven worthy bloggers. That's not too shabby. I was hoping I'd get to do another award ceremony again, and mollify my enormous ego by deluging you with ceaseless talk about my favorite subject.
I could count the number of lies I've told in my lifetime on one hand. That's if I could remember how old I was when told the last one.
I hate asparagus. It is my absolute least favorite vegetable on this benighted green Earth. If every single spear of asparagus suddenly vanished out of existence, or was whisked away into another dimension, or was scorched and fried into oblivion...I wouldn't so much as blink.
Speaking of hating things, I once despised alcohol. Couldn't stand it. Liquor, cordials, even beer. The taste was abhorrent. Thank goodness I stuck to my guns and kept tasting it. Eventually it began to taste better. And now look!
Sneezing is one of the more under-appreciated bodily functions. It's so enjoyable! Scratches every itch in the nasal tract.
It's endlessly annoying when folks say "Here, here" instead of "hear, hear"; "without further adieu" instead of "without further ado"; and "hanger" instead of "hangar." ("Here" is an adverb, "hear" is a verb; and you are telling bystanders to "hear" what the speaker is saying when you proclaim "hear, hear." Adieu is French for "goodbye." "Ado" is bustle or fuss. And a "hanger" is either something you use to put up clothes or a short sword worn by British soldiers and sailors. A "hangar" is where you put your airplane. Are we clear?)
I love it when people refer to chimpanzees and other great apes as "monkeys," though. It makes me laugh.
I have an irrational fear of fiberglass.
Splendid. And now onto the nominees who have earned this prestigious award!
From me to you, my pretties. Keep the quality coming, the juices flowing, and the Muses grinning. You're lucky I'm rather tired this evening. I was going to spin this post into a huge didactic tale of drone-spotting and novel-editing. But I ain't gonna do it now. I'll have to save it for later. I, my friend, am going to flop down and vegetate for a while. You have yourself a good evening.
This one's another of my very own inventions. I make no claims as to its originality. The odds are that there's a drink out there exactly like it, which someone else invented, and called by a different name. Who cares? This is my version. And it was a hit, let me tell you. There was this cute little blond at my cocktail party the other Friday who absolutely loved it...
1 ounce cherry brandy
1 ounce Bailey's
½ ounce crème de cacao
In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine the cherry brandy and Bailey's. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass. Pour the crème de cacao into the center of the drink and swirl the glass around a little before serving.
I didn't get a chance to taste it myself. (I couldn't drink that night, not even a drop; I had work in the morning. That's also the reason I haven't yet had a nip of the fancy absinthe John and I bought. I might cry.) However, the drink received rave reviews—particularly from that blond.
What's not to like? It's cherry brandy, Irish cream and chocolate liqueur, the best combination of cherry, chocolate and coffee-cream overtones. It'd be like a cherry Fudgsicle, only in liquid form. And with booze. Give it a shot, ladies. It's worth your while.
I keep banging on in this blog about Australia, but I've never actually sat down and figured out what I want to see. What better place to do that than here?
Unfortunately, the list is far too long. There's planes and trains and automobiles I'd like to ride; sun-washed beaches I need to vegetate on; deserts I need to cross (praying "there but for the grace of Burke and Wells go I"); some sparkling, dancing waterfalls I need to stand under; at least 32 towns I'd like to get drunk in; and, as long as the locals aren't looking, a few kangaroos to box here and there. And Tasmania.
Maybe I could even get work on a regional airline down there, huh? Or as a bartender in Sydney?
Hmmmmm... Oh yes! And there's the Blue Mountains to climb. If that's legal. If it isn't I just might have to sit in the Jamison Valley with a hangdog expression, until the locals have mercy and petition the government to change the law. It might work.
Man, was it ever a beautiful day today. The temperature was in the mid-70s, with lots of sun and a mild breeze out of the north. Absolutely perfect, in other words. Spring is in the air, all right...
Work went swimmingly. There was a lot of traffic in the skies this morning, and the winds kicked up a little in the afternoon, but we escorted the UAV safely out and back. I think I'm even getting the hang of flying the Mooney. It's a tenacious beast, and quite finicky, but if you know what you're doing, it's a hot rod. I just can't get the dang thing trimmed right.
What is "trimming," you ask?
Good question. No, I didn't have to climb out of the airplane in mid-air and take snippets off the wings with a pair of garden shears. You'd like that, wouldn't you?
"Trim" refers to minute adjustments of the control surfaces to keep the plane level and make flying easier on the pilot. In small planes, it's usually controlled by a wheel in the cockpit somewhere. In the Mooney, spinning the wheel moves the entire tail. (That's why it's a complex plane, sweetheart.)
Boss #3, Dawg, let me take over the controls as soon as we were at a safe altitude climbing out of Apple Valley, and I got everything else done as far as leveling out was concerned: pulling the throttle back until the manifold pressure gauge was at 20 inches or so; twiddling the propeller knob until the tachometer was at 2450 RPM; but the trim wouldn't get set right. Either I've got an unsteady hand on the controls, or the plane kept wanting to climb or descend.
Oh well. Everything else went fine today. We cracked the door open as soon as we touched down for a landing, letting the delicious breeze get blown into the cockpit by the prop wash.
Moving on...
The Sententious Vaunter has made some new friends!
Following the Drunk At First Sight Blogfest, we've got a few new faces around here. Plus there's a few new blogs I've found that I'd like to tell you about, so I think I'll take a leaf out of Jon Paul's book and share some link love with you.
Dr. Bamboo - No, of course mine is not the only boozy blog out there. The good doctor knows a heck of a lot more about the drinking game than I do. Check this blog out for some rare and insanely interesting cocktail recipes and a wealth of knowledge and witty writing about our favorite libations.
From the Faraway, Nearby - This photographer's been all around, and best of all, he's taken pictures of most of it. For some of the most ethereally beautiful photographs you've ever seen, check this blog out.
Ftocheia - This blog is not for the faint of heart. Thanatos's writing is dark, certainly, but it's well done. There's more raw emotional power in one of her posts than there is in some tragic novels. For creative fiction and shared thoughts, you must have a look.
Murrmurrs - A former postal worker muses on some of life's quirks. Trust me, you haven't looked at things from this angle before. Or rather, you have. You just haven't heard them phrased so cleverly before. Her philosophy is "Really, most things are funny." How can you go wrong with that?
Points of Claire-ification - Claire lives in Japan and blogs with the infectious enthusiasm of somebody who is doing something really cool and knows it (but isn't sententious about it, like me). For tear-jerking graduation stories, writing tales (and jolly good writing), and random Japanese lessons, this blog is a must.
Got that? Now, I'd like each and every one of you who's read this to check those links out (except, of course, your own) and see what they're about. It'll be worth your while. Spread the love. And this isn't the end, either. I might share some more links later on if this trend works out.
To all those of you who clicked that "Follow" button, I just want to say: thank you. I'll try not to disappoint.
When people start honking about spring, they usually honk about the same things: how nice and green everything gets, or how blue the sky is, or how prettily the birds are twittering, or how warm the air's getting, or how lovely the flowers smell. Come on, people. Those are obvious. They're nothing that every other human being on Starship Earth hasn't honked about every spring for the last five thousand years. I think these folks are taking a bit for granted. How about a little appreciation for being able to smell again, period?
I love winter, make no mistake. I like snow. It's great for hiding from one's enemies. I like ice. Nothing like a little Cha-Cha Slide down the sidewalk. But more than all that, I like cold. I've never been able to stand hot weather. Dry heat's bad enough, but moist heat? Gag me. Better yet, drown me. At least I'll die quickly from total immersion rather than being slowly suffocated. With cold (or even cool) weather, I can do whatever the heck I like and not break a sweat. Nothing beats a bad mood, a hangover, or writer's block like stepping outside and receiving an icy blast of air in your face.
I'm serious. Try it sometime if you don't believe me.
There's just one thing I dislike about winter, though. It's the sterility of the air. The lack of smells bothers me. I hate stepping outside, taking a sniff, and having my boogers freeze. No, no, I don't mind that, on second thought. Frozen boogers I can handle. What I mind is not being able to smell anything. No flowers, no grass, no trees, not even the dirt. It gets to me after a while. Oh, coming in out of the cold and wet and getting a hit of roast turkey or pumpkin pie is great. But there's just no substitute the smell of grass on a spring day.
I walked out of the airport with Spud last week right after the landscaper got done mowing the median in the parking lot. A big ol' whiff of cut grass smacked me right in the kisser. And man, it was glorious. Fairly shouted that springtime was here. Nothing beats going out on a walk in March and smelling the dirt. Winter didn't hit us too hard down on Geoje Island in South Korea, but things still froze up pretty well. But when springtime rolled around, and the sun came out, and the ground thawed, and you could smell the dirt again... It's hard to beat that wet-dirt smell. It's just as much a part of spring as daffodils and cherry blossoms, if not more. A nice noseful of that will brighten anybody's day.
I live in the desert, as you know. Grass is scanty around here. Greenery of any kind is. The appearance of spring isn't so much a literal "appearance"; it's a gradual lengthening of the days, a warming of the atmosphere, and a marginal revamping of the local smells and scents. So perhaps I'm more sensitive to smells than most. I knew it was spring when I stepped outside yesterday in the predawn twilight and smelled the desert (without it having rained first). I smelled sand. I smelled rock. I smelled plants. I smelled houses and people. It wasn't quite as divine as, say, someplace more fertile like Tennessee or South Korea. But it smelled pretty dang good, after the sterility of winter. I took a deep breath and said to myself, "Okay, I guess I'm ready for spring after all."
All right, here's my entry for the Drunk At First Sight Blogfest. Rules are simple: grab a drink, cruise over to Jon Paul's blog, click on all the links, and read all the great fiction that the other applicants posted. Go on, do it. Kudos to everyone who signed up and a big hearty round of thanks to (a) Jon Paul for conceiving the idea and working hard to set it all up, and (b) everybody else for gettin' the word out. And by the way, I hope you're wearing green. If not, pinch yourself. Hard. And now, without further ado... My Bonny Lies Over the Seagram's
(c) 2010 A.T. Post
I was halfway through my third glass when I noticed her. Dunno why I did. The place was packed. The bar was in Boston, and in Boston it was St. Patty’s Day. Everybody in green, everybody totin’ a glass of that godawful Guinness swamp water, happy as pigs in you-know-what. She was all the way across the room, sittin’ at the bar, all by herself. Maybe that’s why I saw her. It’s like when you’re in a noisy room and you can’t hardly hear nothin’ so you tune out all the rest of the gab, but when somebody shouts your name you hear it ‘cause you’re hard-wired to. I see a girl sittin’ by herself in the bar, and she’s pretty much got my name stamped on her ass.
Speakin’ of ass, I can think of a few other reasons why she caught my eye. I’ll admit to fallin’ victim to the beer goggles once or twice, but this chick didn’t need no alcoholic enhancement. Or any enhancement at all, matter a’ fact. She curved where it counted, and straightened where she ought. The lines on her woulda made Frank Lloyd Wright keel over. Her face mighta converted Picasso to realism. (I ain’t no collector, but I been to the Museum of Fine Arts a couple times.)
Now, I ain’t the kind to get sentimental or nothin’, but lookin’ at her, up there at the bar by herself, and bein’ into my cups already, I got kinda melancholy. I mean, I dunno about you, but there comes a time when every hound has to find his bitch. You know what I’m sayin’? You can only philander for so long before it starts to get sour. You get tired of it after a while. Wakin’ up alone. (Or needin’ to sneak out.) Gettin’ stoned every weekend in the bars, cruisin’. Stupid dumbass sonsabitches hornin’ in on your stompin’ grounds. Breakin’ down the same old femme barriers, night after night after night. The lay is good—hell yeah, when wouldn’t it be?—but everything else, it wears you down. Don Juan died a lonely man, but y’never hear that part of the story.
I guess that evenin’ I’d about had it. I was sick and tired of it. I’d come out for the Big Green Whoopdedoo, and there was no action. Nothin’. The girls was either taken or too young or both. (I’ve given up on the little girls, those under-twenty-fivers…they gets attached too easy.) I was just sittin’ there, gettin’ stoned for the hell of it. And then I look up and see her. And I think to myself, Ya know? Maybe this is fate or somethin’. Maybe this is it. Maybe that’s the girl I been lookin’ for. Now, if you’d a’ come to me sober, and told me when I woke up that mornin’, St. Patty’s Day, that I’d head down to the bar, see some chick and wanna get to know her better, I’d a’ said, “Hell yeah, partner.” If you’d a’ told me I’d see her, and get mellow, and think “Maybe she’s the one for me,” I’d a’ told you to grab your ankles, brace yourself, and yank your head outta your ass. I had three rounds of brew in me, which was nothin’. But it musta been affectin’ me somehow, I thought. I shook myself, and told me to get it the hell together. I was Herbie Krakauer, a regular latter-day Casanova, the King of All Hounds, Philanderer Extraordinaire. I had no business thinkin’ like this. It was the booze. That was all it was. The booze was makin’ me feel mellow. I was either too drunk or not enough, I figured. I erred on the side of drunkenness.
I tipped the waitress the wink. The wink that had gotten me into a lot of pants. “What can I get you, sir?” she asked. Her cheeks were a little red. That wink’s never failed me yet.
“Gimme a glass of whiskey,” I told her. “Seagram’s.”
“Sure you don’t want Michael Collins or some 10-year-old Bushmills?” she asked, smilin’ a little. “To go with the occasion?”
“Positive, toots,” I answered. I nodded at her. “And send that lady up at the bar there another of whatever she’s havin’.”
The waitress craned her neck to look over at the bar. Then she looked back at me, and her smile had gone on vacation. “Will do, sir,” she said, all uptight.
I glared after her. Cripes, I thought, as her backside went around behind the bar. What wuzzat for? All I did was buy a woman a drink in a bar, for Pete’s sake. A few minutes later I was watchin’ as the waitress set the drink down in front of her. I saw her ask the waitress who it was from. I could see the side of her face, shinin’ in the lights above the bar. She looked like an angel. The waitress, her face still stiff, pointed over at me. The lady craned her head around to take a gander at me. Watchin’ her move was like watchin’ a willow sway in the wind. She moved so smooth-like, so cool and calm. Lookin’ at her from the front, she was even prettier—and with her ass, that was sayin’ somethin’. And then she swung off her stool and waltzed over to my table. I swear to Gawd, my ticker kicked up a notch. It started thumpin’ to beat the band, matter a’ fact.
Cripes, I thought again.
Our eyes never left each other as she came across the room. Suddenly that bar felt kinda huge—like a concert hall. But it was hot and stuffy, too. And sorta tingly, like the air was filled with feathers and snowflakes.
The lady sat down with a sexy kinda swivel. She glanced away for a moment to put her purse on the floor under the table. I breathed out, and breathed back in as she looked up and locked eyes wi’ me again. I heard one of her shoes scrape the floor as she crossed her legs. I couldn’t see those legs anymore, bein’ under the table, but my imagination kicked in somethin’ righteous. And then, suddenly, I found myself sitting at the same table with her. My brains were stuck in the mud, but my head felt like a balloon at a county fair—it kept tryin’ to float away. The beer wasn’t helpin’ either, as far as that goes. I couldn’ think straight. I didn’t hardly know what to do with my hands, so I glued ‘em to the empty glass in front of me. My ticker kept on thumpin’ away.
Cripes, I thought again, this is like bein’ back in junior high, for Pete’s sake.
She just kept starin’ at me. Up close, she was even more of a knockout. Her hair was dark brown, like a whiskey barrel, and wasn’t too long or too short. It was sorta done up, like, so it wreathed her head in Jesus-glow. Her face was just gorgeous. Liz Taylor had nothin’ on her. She had a nice, rosy face with a beauty spot, a little nose, some red lips that weren’t too big or fancy, a forehead like a Greek goddess, a chin that didn’t stick out, and a neck that Nosferatu woulda wept over. I liked her eyes the best, though. They were blue, almost bluish-purple, but not nasty-lookin’ like a bruise. What are them purple flowers that people like? Irises, that’s it. Her eyes looked like a couple a’ irises. They were deep and mischievous, too, sorta smilin’ at me. Her eyes reminded me of a sunlit flowerbed I saw once over in City Square Park in Charlestown.
I can’t tell ya exactly what it was like, lookin’ at her. It was kinda like Gawd took a Wordsworth poem and turned it into a woman, and that woman was sittin’ right across the table from me. I knew she was dif’rent than all them other girls before. That was for dang sure. The waitress stomped up and plunked that glass of whiskey down in front of me. “There you go,” she huffed.
I mumbled somethin’ and lunged for the glass, glad for somethin’ to do with my hands. I was about to knock it back, but then I met her eyes again. And she said somethin’.
“Come here often?”
It was a good thing she said that before I started drainin’ th’ glass, or I’d a’ probably spewed Seagram’s all over her, and died a lonely man. I set the glass back down, a bit shaky.
“Comin’ from you, that don’t sound like a pickup line,” I said, cautious-like, kinda surprisin’ myself with how steady I sounded.
“It’s not,” she answered back. She had a voice as strange an’ marvelous as her face. It was easy on the ears, very crisp, like a singer’s. And it lilted, kinda. It reminded me a’ music I listened to when I was a kid, sorta familiar and comfortin’, like.
“I ask because I’m trying to find out what sort of person you are,” she went on. That threw me for a loop.
“What, ya came over here to interview me for the Globe or somethin’?”
“In a manner. I’d just like to get to know you better, that’s all.”
“How come?”
“I’ll get to that later.”
“Well, for what it’s worth,” I said, giving her the wink, “the feelin’s mutual.”
Now her mouth smiled as well as her eyes.
This was awful strange, let me tell ya. When she’d walked over, I felt like I was gonna die. My heart was bangin’, my skin was tinglin’, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I was a deer in the friggin’ headlights. Now, with just a few straight words, she’d calmed me down. I felt all free and easy and relaxed all of a sudden, lookin’ at her across my glass of whiskey. It was comfortable speakin’ to her, ya know? Not weird or prickly or whatever, like it was tryin’ to talk to them other girls. It was like we were friends already.
“So,” she said, “do you come here often?”
“Yep,” I said, givin’ her smile a friend to talk to. “I’m in here a lot, matter a’ fact.”
“Okay,” she said, noddin’, like she was filin’ my answer away in her head. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Huh?”
“I ask a question, then you ask a question. You said you wanted to get to know me too, didn’t you? Let’s take turns interrogating each other. It’s only fair.”
Well, I didn’t know what to say to that. I was havin’ a hard time figurin’ this lady out. Most chicks I bought drinks for either threw ‘em in my face or took me home after invitin’ me over. No lady had ever got up and come to me before, hell no. And she was so frank and open about everythin’ to boot. Askin’ me questions and sayin’ we should take turns like that. It was weird. But it wasn’t weird in a bad way, ya know? I still wasn’t sure whether I liked the way she acted, or whether we were gettin’ ourselves into a bad round of speed-datin’. But I decided to go with the flow. Couldn’t hurt. And I was awful curious.
“Alrightie,” I said, “what’s your poison?”
“Pardon?” she asked, a puzzled little smile hoverin’ round her lips, those big beautiful eyes openin’ a little wider. Man, but she was a knockout. My ticker skipped a beat.
“What’re ya drinkin’?” I clarified, smilin’ right back.
“Oh!” She laughed. It was a beautiful sound, like clean water tinklin’ over rocks, or the birds singin’ on Boston Common.
“It’s something I ordered specially, just for today,” she said, and a little hint of her laugh stayed in her voice, and made it shine an’ sparkle. “It’s a leprechaun martini.”
“And what the hell’s in a leprechaun martini?” I chuckled, crackin’ her up as well.
“It’s vodka, Irish cream, and green crème de menthe,” she giggled.
“Sounds nasty.”
“It is. But I thought I should try it, at least, before I said yea or nay.”
“Least you c’n do.”
“My turn again. What do you usually do after a night like this?”
“A night like what?”
“This,” she said, gesturin’ at the bar and the happy swillin’ folk all crowdin’ around. “Where do you go and what do you do?”
Here’s my shot, I thought, grinnin’ inside.
“Well,” I said, free and cool and easy, “I usu’ly wind up takin’ a gal home and gettin’ some, if you know what I mean.”
I gave her the wink again. She didn’t stir a hair. That threw me off even more. Good or bad, that wink never failed to get a reaction outta the womenfolk. She might as well have been blind for all the notice she took of it.
“I see,” she answered, not mad, not glad, just plain. “Your turn.”
“You live around here?”
“Up in Charlestown,” she replied, impassive. “Are you happy?”
“Huh?”
“That’s my next question. Are you happy right now?”
I thought about that for a sec. Seemed like a simple question. But if it’s one thing I’ve figured out about womenfolk, it’s this: they ask loaded questions. They might ask how you’re feelin’ or how the grub tastes or what you think a’ this and that, but they’re actually tryin’ to find out somethin’ else—usu’ly how you feel about them. That little fact has bit me in the buttocks a few times, let me tell ya. So, natur’ly, I was careful how I answered her.
“Sure, I’m happy,” I said, sorta proud-like. “I’m real happy right now. I got a full whiskey glass on the table and a knockout chick sittin’ across from me. What more could a guy like me want?”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out,” she said. Her elbows were on the table, and she was leanin’ forward, all cozy and intimate, like we were plottin’ to kidnap the Pope or somethin’. Those killer eyes of hers were opened wide, not like she was surprised, but like she was investigatin’. My ticker kicked up another notch when I imagined that she might be likin’ what she saw, and wantin’ to drink in more. I could oblige her there. But there was a knowin’ little smile hoverin’ around her mouth. That I just couldn’t make out. What was she smilin’ for? Was she makin’ fun of me? What was so funny?
I didn’t know what she meant, so I asked her.
“Well, you do this a lot, don’t you?” she went on. “You come down here to the bars, get drunk, pick up women, go home with them, make love to them, and abandon them the next day, right?”
Oh boy, I thought. Now I saw where she was goin’ with all this. I was in for a lecture. I could just feel a reprimand comin’ on, from the way she was all squared up over there across the table. “Abandon” was a pretty punchy word, too. I felt kinda ruffled. My life was my life, and how I conducted it was nobody’s business. She shouldn’t presume to tell me whether what I was doin’ was right or wrong. It worked for me, so that should be the end of it.
But…well, I dunno why, but I got kinda uncomfortable after she said what she said. I hadn’t felt guilty too many times in my life, but I felt guilty right then. Somehow, hearin’ my love life repeated back at me that way made it seem ugly and heartless and low-down all of a sudden. Hearin’ her say, right out and honest like that, that I was a philanderin’ rake…well, that was a bitter pill to swallow. It was like gettin’ a splash of cold water in the face, the morning after the best sleep of your life. I’d never looked at things that way before. And it was hard. Real hard. It made me mad. I didn’t like that guilty feelin’ at all. I didn’t like feelin’ bad about the stuff I’d done. I didn’t like hearin’ my habits put to me like that.
So I got mad. I sat up straight in my chair, looked at her square-on.
“Hey, what’s your game, lady?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know what I’m talkin’ about. You got no call to be judgin’ me like that. I don’t care to hear my life put to your music. What I do is what I do, and I don’t mind it, and that oughta be good enough for you. I got enough problems without havin’ to hear the gospels preached to me by every moralizin’, uptight chick who walks into my bar. So lay off, will ya?”
I glared at her, intendin’ to keep railin’, or knock my whiskey back and take my leave. But I pulled up short. She was still leanin’ on the table, all casual, lookin’ at me with them same open, honest eyes, her hair still framin’ her head like angel-fire, that face of hers just glowin’ under the incandescent lights, like a lighthouse out on the cape. And that small smile was still hangin’ around her mouth, too. That was what really took the thorns outta my side, that smile. If she was goin’ to take me to task, she probably wouldn’t be smilin’ about it.
It was the same kind a smile people get when they’re thinkin’ about somethin’ familiar. Ya know? When they’re recallin’ an old haunt, or an old friend, or somethin’ that happened to ‘em a long time ago that made ‘em real happy. Or when they’re sittin’ next to their bestest old buddy and they do somethin’ silly. That’s the kinda smile she had on her face right then. And right then, it wasn’t like I was sittin’ across the table from a stranger. It was like I’d known her for years, all of a sudden. It was like we were friends, buddies, comrades-in-arms, almost. I can’t even hardly explain it. It was just a feelin’ I got that welled up inside when I looked at that little smile on her face.
She looked at me, and said, “I wasn’t going to preach.”
I’d a’ given a lotta money to see what my face looked like right then.
“Huh?”
“I said, I wasn’t going to preach to you. I don’t care what you’ve been doing.”
There was a little pause. “I just wanted to ask if you were happy doing it,” she went on.
I stared at her. My mouth was hangin’ open like an idiot. I just couldn’t figure her out. Now, just like that, I wasn’t mad. I was confused as hell.
“Well, whadda you care?” I fired at her. “What’s it to you whether I’m happy or not? What difference does it make whether I’m happy, doin’ what I do?”
“Wouldn’t you rather be happy?”
“Hell yes I’d rather be happy! Jesus—”
“So you’re saying you’re not happy now?”
“Sure I’m happy! Like I said, I got a drink in front of me, and a lady too!”
I was startin’ to get mad again. I couldn’t figure out what she was gettin’ at, and I didn’t like where the talk was goin’. I was still tryin’ to flirt, but she started to fire off questions at me like a machine gun, and wouldn’t let me finish a sentence. She never raised her voice or nothin’—just kept sittin’ there, all serene, just quizzin’ away.
“Don’t you think there’s more to life than booze and women?” she asked.
“Sure there is, but—”
“Don’t you ever wish you could find it? Don’t you ever get tired of doing the same thing day in and day out?”
“No, lady, for your information, I’m pretty damn happy doin’ what I’m doin’—”
“Don’t you think you could be happier?”
“Well, maybe, if I won the lotto or somethin’—”
“I’m not talking about money or wealth or anything material.”
“What in hell’s name are you talkin’ about, then?”
“Happiness.”
“In my book, happiness stems from booze, women and money.”
“True, lasting happiness.”
“Lastin’ happiness stems from winning the lotto.”
“Please, Mr.—”
“Herbie. Just call me Herbie.”
“Herbie,” she said, and she fixed me with a look outta them eyes like I ain’t never seen before. She was skewerin’ me with ‘em. She leaned in a little closer, and I almost got the urge to lean back, even though I loved the way my name sounded comin’ outta her mouth. Her eyes was so intense. She looked like she was talkin’ about the fate of the world or somethin’.
“Be honest with me,” she said, and her voice was low and so quiet I could hardly hear her. I couldn’t look away from her. That supernatural feelin’ just kept rollin’ off her, and my ticker didn’t slow down any. I can’t even hardly talk about it—I was mad, scared, confused, and curious all at once. I thought I’d explode.
But somehow, I didn’t reach for that glass of whiskey.
“Are you happy?” she asked, her voice almost breathless, her eyes narrowing.
“No! No, dammit, no! I’m not happy, all right? We got that all straightened out now?”
It just kinda slipped out. Here I was, trying to run my game, tryin’ to ignore those melancholy thoughts I’d had earlier, and here this strange woman had just up and drawn ‘em all out of me at once, without my even meanin’ to give ‘em up, usin’ some kinda hypnosis, like. As I spoke, her smile finally disappeared. That made me madder than ever.
“Look, what’s this all about, lady? What’re you interrogatin’ me for? Whadja come in here and mess up my evening for, huh? Why don’t you just leave me alone? Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what the hell you’re about. You’re askin’ me all these weird questions, and talkin’ about happiness and whatnot, puttin’ me off my drinks, spinnin’ me all around—”
“Am I really?”
“Jesus Christ! Yes you are! What’s your game? Why are you askin’ me these questions? What the hell do you want?”
“I think,” she said, finally taking her eyes off me, looking down at her drink, picking it up, and sipping on it, “that we want the same thing, Herbie.”
Suddenly, all the mad and the sad and the confused disappeared. It just dropped away, like a sheet drops away from a sports car on a game show. The whole pub seemed to go quiet. There were people standin’ all around, laughin’, yellin’, drinkin’, courtin’, getting’ blitzed as hell, makin’ noise fit to raise the dead—but I couldn’t hear ‘em. The rest of the world just kinda toned down. I had ears and eyes only for her. I fancied I could almost hear my heart beat. And if I listened, I thought I could hear hers, too. They were beatin’ to th’ same rhythm. And just like that, I knew what question I was goin’ to ask. For my turn at the game, y’know.
“Why’d you come over here?”
“I recognized you,” she said, and I could hear every sweet syllable comin’ from her lips, like music floatin’ over from the next street over durin’ a parade. “I saw the look in your eyes as you sat there.”
I didn’t say anything. I just let her go on.
“It’s the same look I see when I look in the mirror,” she said. She wasn’t smiling. She looked about ready to cry, in fact. There was another a’ them little pauses.
“So that’s what it is?” I asked, almost as breathless as she was.
“Yup,” she said, kinda joking, like, but blinkin’ a lot. “I think the both of us are tired. I think we both came in here tonight, believing nothing would happen, that nothing would ever change. And we took a look at each other and thought, ‘What the hell, maybe.’”
Man, I just about fell outta my chair. That was exactly what I’d been thinkin’, remember? She looked up. Her face was like stew—a little bit a’ this, a little bit a’ that. Hope, fear, sadness, lon’liness, and more than that— Trust. I saw trust in her eyes. No woman had ever trusted me before. The look in their eyes at night said it loud ‘n’ clear. “I know you’ll be gone tomorrow morning.”Her eyes told me: “I hope I find you next to me—tomorrow, the day after, and every day after that.”
“So how about it?” she asked. “Shall we take a chance with each other?”
I looked at her just one moment longer. The sound was still cruisin’ along at zero. That delicious silence was ever’where. I was sober, too. Those three glasses had gone right outta my system. I looked down at my whiskey and suddenly didn’t want it anymore. I looked up at her. That angel-fire hair. Those gorgeous eyes, like iris blossoms floatin’ on the water. That frank expression on ‘er face, that little knowin’ smile. Now I knew why it had seemed like she was pullin’ a fast one on me. She saw through me the whole time. She knew me. And now I knew her. We were the same, pretty much.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s get outta here. And when we can hear again, tell me yer name, huh?”
“Certainly,” she said, her face lightin’ up like the Second Coming.
“And by the way,” she added, as I held the door open for ‘er, “thanks for the drink.”
Tuesday and Wednesday we didn't fly at all. We were weather-canceled. The spring winds which blow so fiercely in the Mojave at this time of year kicked up in force. The powers-that-be don't like the UAV to fly in high winds; it makes landing kind of tricky. Any less chance that the $3,000,000 piece of equipment will get bent is taken up. I stayed home, but Spud, my second boss, still flew. That governor on the Mooney "Sierra Hotel" was still acting up. Pete, Spud and a few others worked on it for two days and got it fixed at last.
On Thursday, the winds were calm. Spud and I met at the hangar at 7:00, had some of Anna's excellent coffee, rolled Sierra Hotel out of the hangar, cranked up and took off. Spud is solid. He's tall and extremely lanky, with a Roman nose, big honest eyes, and a ready grin. He'll never hesitate to tell you a story or explain an obscure aerodynamic principle. He lets me fly quite a bit, too, whenever there's a quiet moment in the air.
There was a bit of an incident on Thursday, though. It felt oddly breezy in the cockpit as we climbed out of Apple Valley and headed west to Victorville. Neither of us could figure out why. Then I looked up. I saw blue sky peering at me through a crack over my head. The door was open. I hadn't closed it properly. I'd fastened the bottom latch, but the top latch, directly above my head, was loose. And now the 100 mile-an-hour slipstream was blowing the door ajar. Neither of us panicked, nor even lost our cool, but I tell you what—unexpectedly seeing blue sky from inside the airplane is somewhat disconcerting. Fortunately, the UAV wasn't ready to take off yet, and we had a few minutes to spare.
We tried various things. Spud slowed us down to an absurdly low speed to reduce the tearing force of the slipstream. No good. Even with that, I still couldn't pull the door to. Spud called up the tower and asked if we could do a touch-and-go. We were cleared, and while on the deck, Spud reached over and helped me latch the door. We had to throw in a fancy handle-jiggle to get the job done. We took off again, just as the UAV called up and said they were ready to go.
Lesson learned: next time, look up and make sure the door's latched. I didn't feel too bad about it. Spud was gracious and passed it off. I hadn't delayed the United States government in the testing of its new über-advanced reconnaisance and weapons platform, either. Whew...
And then, there was a bit of technical difficulty. We escorted the UAV out to the test site, but the controllers at Victorville couldn't seem to hand the darn thing off. Control couldn't be transferred to the training base. After 30 fruitless minutes, they gave up. Spud and I escorted the UAV back to Victorville. We tried again at noon. This time, everything went off as planned.
Later that day, while Spud and I were sitting in the airport café, Boss #3 showed up. Dawg had come to take care of some other business, and thought he'd observe the afternoon mission. That meant I was let go at about 3:30 p.m. So I went back home and got some stuff done. All in all, it was an odd sort of day. Friday was more...well, normal. (As normal as things get around here, anyway.) In the morning, Spud let me orbit in Victorville airspace while we waited for the UAV to taxi. "Orbiting" is just what it sounds like: flying in a circle (or an oval, racetrack-like). Jetliners do this when they're in a holding pattern. We try to time it so we come out of the final turn right behind the UAV as it takes off. Sometimes we make it; otherwise, Spud has to haul an extremely tight turn. That's one major thing Mooneys have over less complex planes like Cessna 172s: the zippiness. You can pretty much roll a Mooney's wings straight up-and-down, and fly that way. You could never do that in a Cessna; you'd completely lose the vertical component of lift. Mooneys have the power to pull that kind of maneuver, though.
The mission went perfectly. We escorted 'er out; came back to Apple Valley; got some errands done, like returning Spud's rental car (a Prius...ha!); and then drove back to the airport and did some paperwork. I polished up a long article about mountain-climbing in Korea, and sent it off for publication. I also worked on my entry for the "Drunk At First Sight" Blogfest. (It's not too late to sign up for that, folks! Join the fun! Write up some romantic, comedic fiction involving St. Patty's Day, alcohol, or Ireland! Come the 17th, stroll around to everyone else's blogs and enjoy the read! Sign on today!)
Then Spud and I flew the afternoon mission. He let me fly out and fly back in. The thing that sticks in my mind about those two flights is just how beautiful the flying was. The weather was divine, and clear as a bell. You could see for miles. There wasn't a breath of wind, which almost made up for two days of tree-bending gales. We just sort of cruised along, behind and below the UAV, close enough to read some of the serial numbers on the tail, a vast sea of blue sky above us, a continent of sand and dust below. The snowy San Bernardinos glimmered in the distance through the thin blue haze. Rogers Dry Lake shimmered with a mirage the size of a battlefield. The Sierra Nevadas reared their hoary heads on the horizon. Our perspective was unlimited. We were masters of the world, and all that lay in it. Flying is joy, and as Melba Colgrove said, joy is the feeling of grinning inside. The neat thing about working with an instructor who also happens to be a retired Navy fighter pilot is: you get to hear the most incredible stories. And all sorts of exciting military jargon is thrown in with your lessons, too. We sat up there on Friday afternoon, six thousand feet over the ground, the panorama of the desert spread out beneath us under the fiery western sun, the ground controllers updating us regularly on the position of the incoming UAV. A bubble of excitement bounced irrepressibly around my chest. There's a strange sort of deliciousness to waiting. Waiting for somebody's vehicle—even just the vehicle itself—is one of the sweetest kinds of anticipation. It doesn't matter what manner of conveyance it is: a train, a plane, a car coming around the bend. Whenever I'm waiting at the station for a bus or a train, excitement simmers in the pit of my stomach. Every time I see a film where people stand around and wait for something (or somebody), I am bodily thrilled. The opening sequence of Once Upon a Time in the West is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time...and I don't even like the movie all that much.
Things were no different as we slowly orbited the rendezvous point that Friday afternoon. Oh boy...where's he going to appear, and who's going to spot him first?And, as we waited, Spud taught me how to intercept. That's right, an old fighter pilot taught me how to intercept another airplane. Picture me, my hands on the thin yoke of the temperamental Mooney, Spud sitting in the left seat, his flattened hands held up in front of him, pantomiming two aircraft in flight, as he discourses excitedly about how to spot the enemy first and get on his tail. Tell me that's not awesome. Just try.
After I made a pretty decent mess of putting the Mooney into the traffic pattern for runway 26 back at Apple Valley (the wind was blowing out of the west, strangely), we landed, refueled, tucked the plane into its hangar, and prepared to depart for Ontario Airport, about 60 miles away. I had a moment's scare when I realized that my computer bag was not in my Jeep. And what's worse, it had my computer in it. Somewhat frantically, I drove down to the airport lobby, with Spud sitting in the passenger seat and calmly reassuring me. "You ever read Nancy Drew stories?" he asked, as my heart jumped and pounded in my chest, cold sweat on my forehead, hands tight on the wheel. I was thinking about the USB drive with all my private data on it...in the hands of a stranger. "Uh...no...what?" I stammered. "Nancy's father gave her some good advice once," Spud said. His voice was strangely soothing. I felt like I was in a two-seat fighter jet, roaring over the ground at hundreds of miles an hour: a hapless trainee, sweating about what button to push next. Spud, my instructor, was at ease in the backseat, speaking to me in that same tone...an aural salve. "Don't borrow trouble," Spud intoned, quoting Nancy's father. "You've got plenty enough of your own." After I took a turn about 30 miles faster than I should've, he added "If it's there, it's there. If it's not, it's not. Nothing's going to change in five minutes." That ready grin never left his face. Feeling marginally better, I dashed into the airport building and found my bag. It was sitting right where I'd left it, on a chair in the lobby. Nobody had even touched it. Everything was still there. Computer, USB drive, lock, stock, and barrel. Man, I love small airports in small towns. I ran Spud down to Ontario Airport, battled my way back through rush-hour traffic on I-15, and got back to the house about 7:30. I could now look forward to Dad's spaghetti, Mom's garlic bread, some Billy Squier, and InuYasha. I'd just put a twelve-and-a-half-hour workday under my belt. It felt good.
