writing updates, 3/31/2011

It never ceases to amaze me how magazine editors always seem to know exactly what I'm thinking.

Seriously, they've got me pegged. It happens every time. I'll wonder aloud in an offhand way "How easy would it be to transition from a fixed-wing aircraft to flying a helicopter?"

And lo and behold, the April issue of AOPA Pilot magazine runs an article (part of their Pilot Challenges series) about a lifelong airplane pilot trying her hand at helicopters for the first time.

Shazam! My question's answered. This isn't the first time the AOPA has done this to me, either. A while back I wondered what it might be like to fly VLJs (very light jets) solo from the left seat, and they up and came out with an article about a fellow who owns his own Cessna Citation Mustang and does just that. And as if that wasn't amazing enough, the man's a published novelist as well!

Or take the April editions of Science Illustrated and Popular Science. I picked 'em up on a whim at Barnes & Noble a few weeks back. One of three scenarios in corporate publishing politics is playing itself out here. Either (a) these competing magazines monitor each other's work like a bug under a microscope, and arrange matters so that articles with extremely similar subject material are published simultaneously, or (b) both publications maintain research teams comprised of assiduous, straight-shooting go-getters whom of their own accord, respectively, come up with timely stories which just happen to cover the same topic; or (c) the editors-in-chief of both publications have a direct line to my brain via crystal ball or magic mirror, see what I'm mulling over in preparation for my next crack at being a science fiction writer, and delegate their writers accordingly:

"Quick, Hawkins! He's wondering about humanity, the future, and the possible mass-migration of civilization to new stars and new worlds aboard massive space-worthy floating arks!"

"Get moving, Jansen, Sadie, Leroy. He needs more info on giant starships, interstellar travel, space station environments, self-contained ecosystems and possible planetary destinations. Like, yesterday. Scram!"

My money's on option (c). 

Who'd a' thunk it? This month both magazines featured front-page articles pertaining to interstellar travel. And I mean real interstellar travel, not glitzy Hollywood Battlestar Galactica interstellar travel. Feasible, like. None of this high-flown hyperspace crap. Just the nitty-gritty: ships powered by black holes. A solar sail miles wide, capable of propelling a spacecraft at a fraction of the speed of light. A cone-shaped vehicle, which gathers and manufactures its own fuel from stardust as it zooms through the void. Star cruisers the size of continents, designed to hold a million human beings, and enough livestock, greenhouses, water recycling plants, air scrubbers, public parks, recreation halls, virtual-reality discotheques and whatnot to keep all of us from going hungry, thirsty, or batshit crazy. Lasers. Antimatter. Nuclear warheads. Hell, one article even talked about how our physical bodies might not even need to make the trip; eventually we might develop the capability to simply send our consciousness across billions of light-years instantaneously, downloading it into another body upon arrival.

Sounds amazing, doesn't it? And disturbingly god-like. Speaking for myself, I think it's a neat idea. But I kind of like to keep my body with me wherever I travel. I might need bits of it once I reach my destination, if you know what I mean. This whole sending-your-mind-into-space idea reminds me of a couple of rather unsettling stories by H.P. Lovecraft ("The Whisperer in Darkness" and "The Shadow Out of Time"; both involve aliens hijacking people's minds and transporting them across the space-time continuum).

(Ahem) Anyway, to cut a long story short, all of this stuff really helped me out with my writing.

I, ladies and gents, have completed my first science fiction novella.

If, going by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America standard, a novella is indeed between 17,500 and 40,000 words in length (less being a novelette and more a full-bore novel)...

Then I have written a novella.

That story I've been slaving away at, off-and-on, for something like four months—"Aptitude" I think I called it—is finally finished. I've got to edit it and clean it up some, of course, but the draft is complete. Rough tally is 21,300 words.

Ain't that the cat's pajamas?

I mean, yeah, okay, sure. I wrote a novel before this. It's about 51,000 words. A short novel, yes, but a novel. ("Only one, but a lion," as Aesop wrote.) I'd hesitate to call it a novel, though. It sucks canal water. I've been informed by semi-competent authorities that my characters lack depth, the first act is flat and dry and dull, and my description could use stand a lot more pizazz. (Huzzah, I finally get to use the word "pizazz" in a blog post...about dang time!) 

Something just feels right about this story. It has a plot. It's dynamic. It flows. The characters sparkle and sizzle and flash. The dialog is punchy. The setting is described in intimate detail. The conflict is multifarious and mind-bending. All of it just sort of weaves together. "Aptitude" is an amalgamation of coming-of-age story and high-speed mystery thriller (set in outer space). And unlike this damn novel, I like the way this story turned out. It feels whole. Complete. Well-rounded. Unpolished, but fully shaped. It has that "I'm-done-all-you-need-to-do-is-take-off-the-rough-edges-and-BOOM-I'll-be-a-twenty-carat-diamond" feel to it.

So I'm immensely encouraged and excited by the vibe I'm getting off this story, both during and after its creation. I'll keep you posted on how the submission process goes. In the meantime, it's time for me to polish up some other stories I've got waiting on hold, both on paper and in my brain. I'll keep you posted on that, too. I might even get back into editing the novel sometime soon. I'm confident that I'll fix it eventually. If I have enough whiskey on hand, that is.

And as for my stated goal of publishing three nonfiction travel articles by July? Nuh-uh. Not going to happen. I'm going to try, but I might have to push the deadline back a bit. Then again, word's come down from the higher-ups that we might have the entire month of April off from work. With all that downtime something's sure to happen on the writing front. I should hope I could be productive if I'm grounded for four weeks. 

Stay tuned...

P.S. Here's the link to the PopSci feature on how we might depart our planet. (I don't like the tone of this article too much; it accuses the human race of being a "risk to the planet." Nonetheless it's entertaining and mind-blowing enough to hold my interest.) I tried to get a link for the Science Illustrated article, too, but it seems they are rather like yours truly: too old-fashioned and stubborn to put their stuff up online. You can only find it in print. Check your local bookstore. Oh, and if you're curious about the artwork, that's a computer-generated image from the well-known and celebrated sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, obtained from Wallpaperbase.com. It depicts a highly underrated scene that, to my knowledge, has never made it into a cinematic adaptation of the book: the ironclad torpedo ram Thunder Child, under full steam, attacks three Martian tripods to cover the escape of another vessel laden with English refugees, off the mouth of the River Blackwater in Essex. Though heavily damaged by the Martians' Heat-Ray, she successfully rams one tripod and destroys it. The Thunder Child then turns toward a second tripod. Burning from stem to stern and close to sinking, the valiant ship charges the enemy with all flags flying and guns blazing. The second tripod's Heat-Ray obliterates the torpedo ram, detonating her boilers and ammunition magazines, but the flaming wreckage plows onward and crushes the Martian. The civilians aboard the paddle-wheel steamer are able to escape unharmed.

This is the first time in The War of the Worlds that a human artifact is able to compete with the Martians and come anywhere close to victory. Despite the loss of the ship and all hands aboard, the Thunder Child's sacrifice proves a tremendous boost to human morale, which the Martians have nearly stamped out of existence.

Now tell me that ain't good science fiction. Just try.

cocktail review no. 46 - Sazerac

Now here's an interesting one.

Miss H and I were wandering around Victoria Gardens the other day. (It's this marvelous outdoor shopping mall down in Rancho Cucamonga.) Over on the southwest side we noticed a shop we hadn't seen before, called Anthropologie. We wandered in. Lots of scuffed wood, dry grass, pottery, and other nature-inspired décor; we assumed it was one of those places whose clothing line was designed to make everyone believe the wearer to be a famous explorer on safari in East Africa or Australia, but instead reveal on closer inspection that he or she is in fact dressed in designer labels for an afternoon out.

Nonetheless we felt the place worth checking out. Full-length linen dresses in blue or beige, trimmed in beads...straw sun hats, pre-weathered...a wicker deck chair, couch-size, with silhouetted antelopes growing out the back...blue china plates with a stylized octopus...

Ah. Here we go. This is more like it.

I found a book propped on a nicked coffee table called Vintage Cocktails.

I opened it up and found the table of contents. There were a few dozen familiar names, listed side-by-side with libations I'd never heard of in any bar, club or mixology handbook: things like "Pimm's Cup," "French 75," "Mary Pickford," and "Agave Gingerita."

Author Brian Van Flandern and photographer Laziz Hamani have, apparently, created a rough-and-ready go-to guide for all the classic highballs and mixers that ever got wildly popular or well-known at some point in American history. There was a picture in the front of the book depicting Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and some other heavy hitters standing at the bar, knocking back a few examples. Some concoction among these might have been the preferred tipple of Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra.

I was intrigued, let me tell you.
So I started leafing through it. Laziz Hamani should be put up in bronze, along with whoever mixed the drinks he shot (so to speak). Each full-page photo was jaw-dropping and mouth-watering; each cocktail looked good enough to dive into. The recipe (on the opposite page from the accompanying photo) was uniquely laid out too. Rather than a dull typeset font or a trite quotation or a humdrum backstory, the ingredient list and step-by-step preparation were laid out with a minimum of fuss, in giant letters, apparently written with the nearest box of crayons.

Many of them I was familiar with, due to prior interest in the pantheon of time-honored cocktails: the Bloody Mary, Cape Codder, Brandy Crusta, Between the Sheets, Moscow Mule...

And then I saw it.

Sazerac.

Now, I'd seen that name many a time in The Bartender's Bible. It was hidden up near the front of the book, at the tail end of the chapter on bourbon. Odd name. As you may have guessed, it's French. The Sazerac was first mixed around 1850 at the Merchant's Exchange bar in New Orleans, mostly likely by owner Aaron Bird, using a brand of cognac (also called Sazerac) imported by the Exchange's previous owner, Sewell T. Taylor. The original recipe called for one and a half ounces of Sazerac cognac, a quarter-ounce of Herbsaint, one cube of sugar, three dashes of bitters and a lemon peel. (Legend has it that a local druggist down the block, Antoine Amedie Peychaud, mixed up the bitters; on occasion Peychaud himself is credited with the invention of the Sazerac.) Later, due to an epidemic that devastated France's grapes, rye whiskey was substituted for cognac. In one old-fashioned glass, ice was packed; in a second glass the sugar and bitters were muddled, and the whiskey was added. The ice was then discarded from the first glass and the Herbsaint was poured in and swirled to coat the interior; then the excess was discarded. The rye/sugar/bitters mixture was then added to the coated glass (along with ice, if desired) and garnished with the lemon peel.

It's a tricky drink to compile, as you can tell. (Herbsaint?) In The Bartender's Bible,  orange peel, Ricard (anise-flavored liqueur) and Peychaud's bitters are listed among the ingredients. Vintage Cocktails, however, had it differently. Peychaud's bitters was still a factor, but absinthe could be used rather than Picard or Herbsaint. In fact, certain research suggests that the Sazerac was originally made with absinthe; Herbsaint was substituted when absinthe was outlawed in the United States some years ago.

Absinthe, eh?

I just happened to have a bottle of Czech-made absinthe sitting in my liquor cabinet at home.

This was getting more and more interesting all the time. A whiskey cocktail with absinthe, bitters, sugar, and an orange-peel garnish! I could only imagine what it tasted like. I had to admit to myself that I'd begun the long slide into jaded indifference in the realm of cocktail-drinking. I've mixed so many and sampled so much that many libations are beginning to taste the same to me. There's a great deal of variation on a select theme in the world of hooch. These days it's hard to come by a drink that tastes nothing like anything you've ever had before.

Well, this was it. Here, then, culled from the best bits of The Bartender's Bible and Vintage Cocktails, is the Sazerac I've thrown together.

• 1 teaspoon absinthe
• ½ teaspoon superfine sugar
• 1 teaspoon water
• 2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
• 2 ounces bourbon
• 1 orange peel

Pour the absinthe into an old-fashioned glass and swirl to coat the insides of the glass. Discard any excess. Add the sugar, water, and bitters, and muddle with the back of a teaspoon. Fill the glass halfway with ice and add the whiskey. Garnish with the orange peel.

That there may be no speculation, I used regular ol' Angostura bitters; Mata Hari Bohemian Absinthe; Old Crow bourbon (my favorite); and some simple syrup I'd prepared beforehand. It made the muddling rather pointless but I did it anyway. I'd still recommend Peychaud's bitters above all else; it has a lighter, fruitier element to it, more suitable for our purposes.

Oh, and one other thing: I didn't discard the "excess."

Heh heh. Life's too short to skimp on stuff like that. I figured since there'd be a whopping four ounces of bourbon in, I'd better keep what absinthe I had and liven things up a little, right?

I knew I was going to wind up with something different, but the reality of it took me by surprise. Having nearly despaired of the cough-syrup redolence of the bourbon/bitters combo, I was pleasantly surprised at the way it meshed with the rest of the conspiring flavors in this beverage. While the sugar keeps the mixture from being too bitter (for after all, Old Crow and Angostura form a powerful team), the bourbon still has its full sway, providing the nose and the bouquet and (partially) the finishing sting.

The aftertaste is what this drink's all about. I'm glad I left the absinthe in. The anise flavor comes on strong just after the bourbon passes over the taste buds, allying itself with the sugar to lend a sweet licorice undertone to the Sazerac. You mightn't think licorice would mix well with bourbon, but it does. To whatever extent the absinthe is not disguised by the bourbon overture, it melds seamlessly with the whiskey and then adds its own kick at the end. The sugar and bitters create a delicate balance and the orange peel rounds the experience off with a citrus interlude that complements the anise rather well. All in all, it's a smooth and flavorful cocktail with a sumptuous bouquet and a sweet-spicy kick at the end. 

Try it, and raise a glass to Jimmy Stewart or Dino. And buy Vintage Cocktails. Right now. Go do it. You won't regret it. It's as much art as a recipe book.

recommended reading

This is going to be a long one. To save you time and money, I've installed the first-ever table of contents in this blog post. See below.

I. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
II. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
III. current reading list, including such gems as The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (historical fiction), The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux (nonfiction, travel), Transgalactic by A.E. Van Vogt (science fiction), and The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson (????) 

PART I : A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
I'm finished with Anthony Burgess's masterwork of dystopia and ultra-violence. And whew, what a ride it was. I'd heard some disturbing things about A Clockwork Orange before I even picked it up. The work has a rap sheet a mile long; street cred similar to Jack the Ripper's. The only visual clue I'd gotten regarding its subject matter was a random glimpse of a movie poster, which showed some young, pale, dapper delinquent with a bowler, eye makeup, and a disquieting smile on his face.

The copy I picked up at the used bookshop bore this review from Time magazine on the back cover:

"Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker, but is really that rare thing in English letters: a philosophical novel."

Well, huh. What am I to think?

So I read it. Ostensibly the novella concerns a gang of young punks with too much time on their hands, high on drugs, who rob, punch and rape their way through the streets of a futuristic English city on a nightly basis. But A Clockwork Orange turned out to be much more than that. It was as the reviewer suggested: on the surface the book was a gut-wrenching investigation of the depths of depravity (and downright evil). The protagonist, "Alex," (our first-person narrator) and his three "droogs" venture forth from their homes, drink drug-laced milk, and beat up whatever hapless victim they come across. Occasionally they'll steal a car, drive into the countryside, break into someone's home and have their way with its tenants. They destroy, steal, smash, and desecrate, all for the sake of the act itself: a pastime Alex calls "ultra-violence."

That's only the first part of the book, though. After a home invasion goes terribly wrong, Alex is arrested and imprisoned for murder. This is all very shocking for a young man, not even fifteen, living with his parents and with a peculiar liking for Beethoven and other classical composers. The worst is yet to come. Alex's less-than-model behavior in prison lands him a job—as the first test subject for a brutal new rehabilitation method, the Ludovico Technique. Alex, injected with nausea-inducing drugs, strapped to a chair, head and limbs restrained, eyeballs pried open, is forced to watch graphically violent films for hours on end, without interruption or respite. As much as he formerly enjoyed viewing and engaging in acts of sadism and brutality, the drugs eventually condition him to feel sick at the mere thought. During a public exhibition just prior to his release, Alex is goaded by a belligerent man and tempted by a femme fatale, both of which reduce him to a quivering, groveling, nauseous heap on the floor.

And so the novella's title is thus vindicated. "Clockwork orange" is a term which author Burgess explained thus:

"...an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton."

Not a pleasant prospect, is it?
I won't spoil the rest. Needless to say, Alex's troubles are far from over. But this is no tale of triumph and redemption, nor a cold, impartial philippic of social justice; suffice it to say that though Alex is not out of the woods (not one malenky bit, my droogs), his fate is not beyond hope.

The point, as far as I can see, is best framed by the question which the prison chaplain, who attempts to mentor young Alex shortly before the latter's Ludovico baptism, contemplates aloud:

Is forced goodness truly superior to chosen evil?

Which is better: a life lived poorly but freely, marked by willful corruption? Or a life spent in preconditioned sanctity, involuntary virtue, unadulterated moral slavery, as it were? The life of a clockwork orange?

Burgess reports, you decide.

A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing and yet wickedly fun read, made all the more so by Burgess's experimental use of a fictitious dialect, Nadsat. Described in the book as an amalgamation of gypsy talk, Cockney rhyming slang, and Slavic lexicon (ostensibly gleaned from Soviet propaganda), Nadsat is a herky-jerky, nigh-incomprehensible mélange of anglicized Russian and teenage argot. It's tricky to get into at first, but if you stick with it and pay close attention to context, you'll puzzle it out. It took me a while to understand "gulliver" (head), but I got "litso" (face), "malenky" (little), "rooker" (hand), "viddy," (see), and "droog" (friend) reasonably soon. The more esoteric terms like "cutter" (money) Burgess allows Alex to explain to his audience. My personal favorites were "chelloveck" (man), "govoreet" (talk), "groodies" (the part of the female anatomy below the neck and above the stomach), and "horrorshow" (a sort of catch-all term meaning "good" or "awesome").

In summary, I've never read anything quite like A Clockwork Orange. It's graphic, violent, dark, and ominous; but Alex's brash, sardonic narrative and the aural hilarity of Nadsat temper this darkness effectively. The book is not without its judgment or morals, but it passes them along barehanded and unvarnished, without allowing itself to become preachy or pretentious; and the ending (make sure you get the version with the long-lost 21st chapter) lifts the book out of shocker status and propels it into the realm of speculative fiction and psychosocial analysis. It's deeper than it appears to be. Keep that in mind, droogies.

And now for the big one:

PART II : MOBY-DICK
It ain't just about a whale.

That much has become apparent, now that I'm halfway through this tome. (I'm up to Chapter 77 or something.) This is much farther in than I've ever penetrated into Melville's opus before.
The action's shaping up well. There've been a few tantalizing tales of the white whale bandied among the whale-ships sailing off the Cape; Ahab's clumping about and muttering darkly; Stubb is eating whale-steak, ordering the cook to proselytize to the sharks; Ishmael is on lookout duty, basking in tropical sunshine and musing on the wider issues of life; at least two self-styled prophets have laid odds against the Pequod; and Gregory Peck still can't even begin to portray just how determined, ominous, and downright crazy Ahab is.

I'm not into sinister books with sinister characters, honestly. It strikes me that I went from one book with a scary anti-hero to another, even longer book with a scary anti-hero. Coincidence, I assure you.
What I've noticed so far is this: Melville, perhaps in keeping with other 19th-century authors like Jules Verne, likes to digress. Scientifically digress, mind. The Pequod will be sailing along, Ahab will be angrily pacing the deck, Ishmael will be in the crow's nest or the poop deck or the scuppers or whatever, and all of a sudden, WHAM! Didactic interlude. Take five, guys, let's break for Whaling 101. Melville, through his mouthpiece Ishmael, will go off on a tangent: factoids about the whaling industry, mostly. The percentage of the GNP based on whale-oil; that the corsets of queens and the lamp-light of civilization have been wrought from whale-bone and spermaceti; the demographics of your typical whaling crew; and zoological points of interest, like what whales eat, what eats whales, which parts of the whale are good for eating, which parts of the whale will kill you, and so on and so on and so on. You can tell that, if Melville were alive today, he'd be working with the guys at The Guinness Book of World Records. He loves to wow his audience. It's his privilege as well as his prerogative; most of the American public was (and undoubtedly still is) horrifically ignorant about sailing, whaling, and cetology in general. Melville knew it. And in Moby-Dick, he took it upon himself to throw off the veil, dismantle the rumors and half-truths and display his subject in its truest form. Therefore, he is constantly breaking off from the plot to discourse about the differences between sperm whales and right whales; the complete form and function of a whale-boat, including all the ropes, oars, harpoons and fitments found on board; and a few choice matters applying to krill, baleen, and giant squid. I'm impressed with the amount of knowledge Melville exhibits regarding cetology, a primitive science in those days. Many of the theories he puts forth on the behavior, morphology and habits of whales are dead-on. Melville confirms what marine biologists would discover centuries later. Sperm whales are bad-ass. They do, in fact, dive insanely deep, battle it out with giant squid, use their heads like battering-rams, employ spermaceti like a fish's dive-bladder, keep warm with blubber, and travel vast distances in short spans of time.

Now on the one hand, these diversions do round out the picture. They give the novel a grandiose sort of air, a subtle majesty, realism and truthfulness both refreshing and satisfying. Whaling is an arcane sort of business, and a lot of the jargon and technical whiz-bang has to be set aside and explained at length. I get that. But on the other hand, these digressions do the same thing to Melville's epic that they do to Verne's science fiction: they break up the story. They interrupt the action. They take what would otherwise be a fast-moving adventure (with metaphysical and philosophical implications) and turn it into an awkward, choppy hunk of academia.

To lecture, or not to lecture? That is the question.

The other thing I've noticed is that I like this book. I do. Honestly. I hated it the first few times I tried it. Found it as dry as a piece of ship's hardtack biscuit. This time around I'm truly engaged. I know next to nothing about whaling, so Melville's frequent lessons are informative and pleasant. As for the action, it's suitably intense, well-paced (considering), and told in an erudite yet passionate style, which (now that I'm old enough to understand what all the big words mean) I appreciate both for the fun of reading it and the obvious challenge. I'm having a grand time. Nearly 80 chapters in and still going strong. I'll have no trouble finishing, unless I hit a chapter that's 50 pages long or something. (Unlikely; most of 'em haven't even been two pages.) In fact, I think I'm still on schedule. I started January 5, and by that measure I should have precisely 77 chapters read by today. How about them apples?

PART III : READING LIST
Well, I could tell you what my reading list consists of, but (a) that would be rather ostentatious, (b) I've already mentioned the pertinent components in the table of contents, and (c) I added a reading list to the bottom right-hand side of this blog's home page last night. So go there if you want to see what I'll be reading next. Otherwise, you'll just have to stand the suspense. This post has gone on long enough.

Peace.

stranger in a strange sky (Airport Personalities, Part III - The Weird)

And of course, there are some people at the airport you just can't be too sure about.

You know what a Cessna Cardinal is?

This:

Four seats, 150-180 horses, high wings, tricycle landing gear. Produced from 1968 to 1978. It was meant to replace the wildly popular Cessna 172 Skyhawk. The Cardinal has a streamlined, futuristic sort of look, not to mention a few technological goodies like laminar-flow airfoils and cantilever wings. It wasn't nearly as good an airframe as its predecessor, though. Instability problems and (in the early models) an underpowered engine spelled disaster for the 177. Nonetheless, Cessna kept working with it and brought out some significantly improved variants in the 1970s, including the 177RG (pictured above), which had retractable landing gear. Many Cardinals are still flying today.

And that's what I want to talk to you about, in fact.

I like Cessna Cardinals. They've got nicer lines than the clunky old Skyhawk. They also have big doors, meaning I can cram my 73 inches inside without much grief. And the annoying support struts (which plague high-wing airplanes) aren't as much a factor.

There's this dude out at the airport who owns a Cessna 177. Lovely little machine. Blue, with white stripes. Skin's a bit worn but the frame's in good shape. Beautiful control panel and interior. Engine sounds pretty good. Even the landing gear has spats.

I don't know what the owner's name is, or where he came from. He looks to be in his sixties, drives a Volvo station wagon, and managed to procure himself a hangar within six weeks of moving his airplane to Apple Valley. That's quite a feat, considering there's other pilots hereabouts who've been on the waiting list for a hangar for over two years.
He's tall, around six feet. His white hair sweeps back from his forehead and temples in little waves, like a composer's powdered wig. His nose is Romanesque; his jaw square; his face is covered with freckles and blemishes. His spare frame is disguised by the billowy fleece he continuously wears. The cargo compartment of his Volvo is filled with boxes of spare parts, tools, old rags, and cleaning solution. It's a mobile repair shop; he pulls the car up to his hangar, cracks open the rear door, and sits there polishing spark plugs and connectors.

Irrespective of the man's outward appearance, it's his behavior I want to discuss with you. The guy's a wacko. He is planning to mutilate that little Cardinal of his. My pilot, JM-1, was conversing with him a couple of months back and learned all the dastardly things he's planning to do to his airplane. They range up and down the scale from unwise to downright ludicrous: telescoping wings, overpowered engine, retractable landing gear...

Heck, we've even heard rumors that this fellow plans to turn his beautiful little airplane into a remote-control drone.

Needless to say, we're horrified. This guy's a mad scientist. We don't know where he's getting the money for these modifications, nor why he's choosing to spend it on such madness. But we're all going to be sorry to see that cute little Cardinal cut up into itty-bitty pieces.

Stories of this gent and his brainchild have spread all over the midfield hangar block. They're met with a universal shake of the head. Nobody can stomach the thought of a perfectly good airplane being butchered, much less turned into a mutant cyborg. The old gray-hairs sitting in the lounge would pay money to get a line on Mr. Volvo's train of thought. I certainly would.

Fortunately this species of oddball seems to be rare enough. I don't know anybody else around Apple Valley who's planning to conduct scientific experiments on his airplane. Most of the rest of the weirdos at KAPV are the lovable, interesting kind.

Take Pete, for instance. You remember Pete? The master mechanic at M_______ Aviation? I don't think I've described him in adequate detail. He's on the short side; five-foot ten, I shouldn't wonder. I'm not mentioning this fact in advance in order to color your opinion of him; I'm well aware of the multifarious stigma which the vagaries of human consciousness may attach to a man's height. No, I'm merely describing him, laying out pertinent facts in their proper place. Pete's height has nothing to do with the impression he transmits upon meeting him for the first time; rather than drag him down, his stature actually buoys up his credentials. It's desirable in an aviation mechanic that he be the diminutive sort, since the business of repairing flying machines involves a great deal of crawling into tight spaces, cramming one's hands or fingers into minuscule crannies, and wiggling about the narrow tract between ground and fuselage. His reputation suffers no misfortune which stems from his size.

Pete's mustache is peppered with salt. His eyes, ringed with crow's feet, sit beneath weather-beaten brows in a deeply tanned face. His greasy long-billed cap is perched evermore upon the crown of his head; a blue cotton jacket, jeans and comfortable black tennis shoes (all oil-smudged) complete his ensemble. His voice never rises above the level of an office chair rolling across a carpeted floor. One is forced to lean forward and concentrate to absorb everything he says. When he speaks, all activity in the flight school stops; the secretary ceases shuffling her papers; the Dutch matron's fingers hover above the keyboard; the student will halt his rummaging through his flight bag; the instructors stick their folders under their arms and pause on their way out the door; the old heads reign in their tall tales and polish their spectacles. Everyone freezes to hear the mechanic discourse. I have heard of only one instance in which Pete raised his voice; and that was but a rumor. His hair, half-brown, half-gray, sticks out at odd angles from beneath the baseball cap which eternally adorns his head. I have no idea whether the pate beneath is bald or still clothed to some degree in brownish-gray fibers. The baseball cap is mum on that point. Pete goes through caps like a baseball pitcher his gum or a smoker his squares; they are purchased new and used until utterly unrecognizable. So caked do they become with oil, grease, and assorted shop grime that their original lettering, decoration, pattern or filigree will be completely obscured. The process is inexorable and astoundingly quick. Bets are taken around the premises on how long it'll be before Pete's brand-new cap will take on the luster and appearance of a rotten banana peel or a lump of coal.

On that same topic, when a screwdriver or a pneumatic wrench isn't occupying Pete's stubby, sunburned, oil-stained fingers, a lit cigarette invariably replaces it; and cigarette butts litter the titanic doorway of the repair shop hangar, where Pete and his trusty acolytes habitually toss them. That hangar, on any given day, is awash with the sounds of men at work: the whine of the pneumatic wrench, the growl of the electric screwdriver, and occasionally the lusty ring of the hammer. A fire bell rings in time with the telephone inside, notifying the men of an incoming call; the voices of Rush Limbaugh or Lauren Ingraham or John and Ken echo and blare through the metallic cavity, denouncing the Obama administration and the Qaddafi regime.

None of this is weird, of course; but I find it suitably eccentric, unique enough, let's say, that it warrants special mention in this blog post, which was intended to be as objective as possible.

I suspect every smallish airport has its own eclectic collection of rare, quaint, queer, whimsical, offbeat or aberrant individuals, much as any museum, no matter how small, will have its collections of tarnished farm implements, corroded fossils and incomprehensible paintings. These are taken as they are. The strange people at your local airport are no different. They are not to be blamed for their disparities, unless they interfere or impair others' ability to operate, in which case the bastards would be mentioned in the previous post.

No matter how aggravating their behavior may be, how perplexing their fancies, how inaudible their speech or wavy their hair...such oddballs are an integral component of flying itself, as much as any strut, wheel or rivet would be. They're indispensable to the process, like the ignition of the engine or the turn of the propeller (or rotor, or turbine). They complete the picture. They add a qualitative bonus to the overarching fun and adventure of aviation. They make the event come to life, bring it home in mind and soul, add another brick to the wall of experience. No trip to an airport is complete without meeting all the weird and wonderful characters who abide there, listening to their stories, observing their idiosyncrasies, shaking your head at their capriciousness, telling the tall tales to your friends back home. So long as they don't come winging out of eleven o'clock at you at 5,000 feet or cut you off on a taxiway, the wackos make life a little more interesting.

Won't someone just please think of the Cardinals, though?

up Calton Hill

I'd love to be able to take credit for this image, but it's Wikimedia Commons to the rescue yet again!

EDINBURGH, DAY TWO

Dammit, I am going to finish this story if it kills me.

I went to England for two weeks in June of last year. Yeah. And it's taken me this long to tell you about it.

Believe it or not, I'm almost done. Another three or four posts should cover it. Hang in there.

And so I left the company of my vampiric Romanian roommate and sauntered off into the sunny streets of Edinburgh, along with my irrepressible Canadian travel buddy, Jeff.

Well, not really. First I grabbed my computer out of my roofless hostel room and went down to Beanscene, a charming little coffeehouse just up the block. It boasted free wi-fi; free, that was, if you bought something. I got the cheapest and most innocuous mocha on the menu and sipped it while I got some business concluded. I penned an article covering the last two days' events and packed it off to my editor; THEN I went back to the Belford Hostel, rousted out Jeff, and sauntered off.

Now, one might very well marvel at our singularity of purpose. Rather than moon about the streets of the Scottish capital, gawping at everything in sight, making trite and unimaginative remarks upon this attraction or that, and vaguely postulating on whether it would be feasible to tour it in the 72 hours we had available, this day we had our act together. We zeroed in on our objective like a punctilious Patriot missile. We pointed our noses in the direction of Calton Hill and made a beeline for it down Princes Street.

Now, let me explain something. Edinburgh was once known as the "Athens of the North" for its cultural, philosophical and artistic achievements. The place was a regular brain trust. The perception of the Scotsman as a kilt-wearing, whisky-soaked, belligerent hayseed is a monstrous injustice. In truth, the average Scotsman (at least in the 18th and 19th centuries) was a kilt-wearing, whisky-soaked, belligerent philosopher, artist, and writer.

There's a monument up at the top of Calton Hill (a large rise in the center of the city, just east of New Town) that you ought to hear about, in light of this fact.

Calton Hill is central to the Scottish nation as well as its psyche. The headquarters of the Scottish government, St. Andrew's House, is on its southern slope; Scottish Parliament and Holyrood Palace lie at its foot; the New Parliament House, the Political Martyrs' Monument and the National Observatory are scattered across its surface. It's an important hill, the kind the Russians would've aimed the nukes at.

But this one particular monument at the summit of Calton Hill is the one I want to talk to you about. It's known as the Scottish National Monument, and it was officially built to commemorate the Scottish lives lost in the Napoleonic Wars. Seeing as how Edinburgh was "the Athens of the North," however, designer Charles Robert Cockerell decided to model the monument after the Parthenon, in Greece. Construction started in 1826...

...and ended in 1829, when the money ran out.

So now, basically, what you've got standing on top of Calton Hill for all the wondering world to see is, well...half a Parthenon.

The monument is now popularly known as "Scotland's Shame."

Compared to what the Dubliners call the Spire (the "stiffie by the Liffey"), that ain't so bad.

Jeff and I made a quick stop at the Old Calton Cemetery before heading up the hill proper. Some rather famous people are buried there, like philosopher David Hume. This is his tomb.

Nearby is a monument to all the Scottish soldiers who fought in the American Civil War. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw a statue of Abraham Lincoln in a Scottish cemetery. This is, apparently, the only Civil War monument outside of the U.S., and (erected in 1893) the first statue of an American president in any foreign country. The six Scots honored (and interred either under the monument or nearby in the cemetery) are Sergeant Major John McEwan, Lieutenant Colonel William Duff, and Privates Robert Steedman, James Wilkie, Robert Ferguson, and Alexander Smith.

The cemetery is on the haunted tour of Edinburgh, which, as I mentioned earlier, Jeff had taken (while I lay sick in my bunk back at the hostel). Apparently there's a face on the back of one of the gravestones. I had to squint at it, but it was discernible. Whose face it is, I can' t be sure. If it's the person who's actually buried under the gravestone, that would be something. If it isn't, then somebody's looking over that dead guy's shoulder.

Photo credit: Jeff took this picture, not me.

Having assured ourselves that, yes, David Hume is actually buried in Calton Cemetery, we swung back out onto the road and climbed the rest of Calton Hill. I could tell you what we did and saw up there, but I think pictures will better suffice:

 

Those two likely-looking ladies were doing the same thing we were: looking around and climbing on the monuments. We gallantly offered to give them a hand (or a leg) up, but they declined for some reason. Jeff and I must look shiftier than we think.

There was some kind of marathon going on in Edinburgh that day. "The Seven Hills," they called it. Up and down, up and down these runners ran, through the seven largest hills in Edinburgh, finishing with Calton. The finish line was just behind us. We passed several very winded-looking people on our way back down.

And what did we do after we got down, you ask?

Well, I'll tell you. The incident's as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

...

Let me just reach over here to my side-table and consult my little red travel notebook—

Ah-ha!

We strolled across North Bridge (connecting New Town and Old Town by linking up Princes Street and High Street directly). And so we found ourselves back in Old Town, where we'd been wandering around yesterday, thinking we'd suddenly been transported back to medieval times.

 

Again, our singularity of purpose would've gobsmacked the most fundamental hermit. We were in search of one thing, and one thing only. This time, however, we penetrated Old Town not in search of historical artifacts, or medieval fortresses, or half-built monuments, but something completely different:

To hasten our demise with artery-clogging comestibles.

No shit. Seriously. We had food on our mind. Food, junk food, and plenty of it.

First on the list: pizza.

Now, Edinburgh being the cultural and artistic hub it is, a crossroads of international taste and intellect, there was a surprisingly large amount of artisanal pizza joints around town.

We found one just across North Bridge, a little place called Pizza Express. Highbrow sort of joint. You can enjoy a glass of wine with your Veneziana, Sloppy Giuseppe or Il Padrino. I had the latter: chicken, pepper, zucchini, and mushroom with mozzarella in pesto sauce. Dynamite. I had no clue that pizza was a gourmet food. I forgot I was in Europe. Anything can be gourmet in Europe, as long as you use expensive ingredients with long names and tack on a glass of vino.

Our worldly appetite slaked, we adjourned to the National Museum of Scotland, there to satisfy our intellectual and artistic one.

But that's another story.

Stick around and I'll tell you about the Declaration of Arbroath; the Monarch of the Glen; James Watt and his affinity for boiling water; the befuddling layout of the National Museum; and of course, more booze.

TO BE CONTINUED...

random travel destinations - Germany

It is with no little regret that I present to you the last of my RANDOM TRAVEL DESTINATIONS. I just can't sustain it. Too many countries and too much info (and so little time!). I don't like doing things I can't sustain. You probably noticed that I let my football-related posts fall off. I couldn't keep pace with the games and couldn't bear to blog about San Diego's umpteenth humiliating defeat in the conference championships. Screw it, I say. I'm not going to cover any more seasons. Leave it to the sports writers.

But back to why I'm giving up on RTD: I'm going to run out of countries pretty soon. There's only 192 or so (well, 193 now that South Sudan's referendum went through). I'm sure all of you have heard enough about Bahrain and Libya and whatnot anyway. And some countries just don't have anything going for them, either. I mean, what's there to see in Qatar? Doha? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Might go just to say I've been there. Everybody I've talked to that's been there says it's a hole in the wall. Small potatoes. Nothing to write home about.

I think what I'll do instead is start up a new column, called BACK CORNERS OF THE WORLD, where I'll illuminate some hidden-away paradise I've discovered in my travels. Like the best arcade in South Korea. The darkest pub in Edinburgh. The tastiest street fare in Central Asia, and so on. And better yet, I'll have actually been to these places instead of blathering copy at you like a travel agent.

So, here's the last RANDOM TRAVEL DESTINATION. I chose Germany because that's where Miss H and I are going to try and wind up when we leave. We're going to teach abroad together. Seeing as how I've already done Asia, and Miss H would like to see Europe, and Germany seems to pay the most of all the European countries...Deutschland sealed the deal.

About the country itself:

Well, jeez, what can I say? You know most of it already. The Protestant Reformation, and Kaiser Wilhelm, and the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich, and the fall of the Wall, and the rest of it. In fact, ever since the Cold War ended, Germany has just gone right out of the American line of sight, hasn't it? The Average Joe couldn't tell you who the president of Germany is, or the chancellor, either, or whether the president or the chancellor is in charge. (I think there's an Angela Merkel in there somewhere, but I could be wrong.)

So let's just start from the beginning and I'll give you some stuff you may not know.

Back in the wild days (before soap), 750 B.C.E. or so, the Germanic people rose in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, and headed south with the sun to colonize the rest of their future country. Not much is known about them, except when they got there—because as soon as they did, they bumped into the Romans. It's estimated that the words "Germany" and "German" stem from the Roman word for "men from the forest" or perhaps "men with spears." The Germans and Romans did indeed have martial contact, for the Romans invaded Germania (a region which, by their estimation, stretched from the Rhine River to the Ural Mountains) under the reign of Augustus. They were trounced, too. A fellow named Arminius, who had big ideas about uniting the Germanic tribes under one banner, defeated the Roman armies in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. Arminius was eventually assassinated by rival Germanic leaders, but his military victories against the Romans had done their work; Germania remained outside the Roman Empire. In a few centuries, the Germans had occupied most of Germany, including the shores of the Rhine and Danube, as well as Austria. A great number of disparate Germanic tribes sprang up, among them the Franks, Frisians, and Saxons. You might know the Saxons. Their descendants are generally accepted to be modern-day Germans, Dutch, and English. And since the early United States was composed mostly of English and Germans, well...the Saxons might very well be considered our progenitors. (Certainly there are quite a few English words that have Germanic roots, and that's gotta count for something.)

Anyway, things rattled along in Germany for another thousand years. The Great Migration saw the expansion of the Germanic tribes to the west and southwest, and the assimilation of all the smaller tribes into major ones. One of these, the aforementioned Franks, grew so powerful that it established its own empire. They survived the Romans and became a factor for the spread of Christianity across Western Europe, too. They conquered most of Gaul, which would become France. ("France," in fact, derives from the Latin for "country of the Franks." See, this just proves that the Germans had designs on France from waaaaaaaaay back.)

And the rest of it you've learned in history class. Holy Roman Empire, blabbity blabbity blah...Great Famine, Black Death, yadda yadda yadda...Martin Luther, Protestant Reformation, Thirty Years' War, yakety yak yak...

Nowadays, though its liberation from Communist clutches and subsequent reunification went down barely 20 years ago, Germany has established itself as an economic powerhouse and an influential force in European and world politics. The world's third-largest population of foreign-born migrants resides in Germany. They were the world's leading exporter of goods (of any kind) from 2003 and 2008. Cars are their cup of tea. Three of Germany's top 10 most profitable corporations are car manufacturers, Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW respectively. Not many people know this, but the major name brands Adidas, DHL, Nivea, and T-Mobile are also German in origin. The national airline, Lufthansa, is one of the most remunerative in the world, taking in 22.3 billion euros annually (31 billion U.S. dollars at the time of this writing).

And, as with any successful economic power, there's a substantial demand for English teachers in Germany. It was the same in South Korea, it's the same in Japan, it's the same in the United Arab Emirates and Oman and Saudi Arabia, and it's the same in Germany. There are international academies and private institutions who are in need of native-born English speakers to tutor their young 'uns (and even their professional adults).

I say that with no little pride. I'd say we have Britain to thank for the fact that English is now the global language, the trade language, the pan-geographical lingua franca, as it were.

And hey, it gives me an automatic in. I ain't complaining.

Apart from all this, I know virtually nothing about the country. I'm intensely excited to learn its language (I'm 75% German myself on both my father and mother's side); lots of hard consonant sounds I'll have to learn. Cake is something else that Germany's famous for. Kaffee und Kuchen is a serious affair in Deutschland, similar to siesta in Spain or teatime in England. Everybody gets together at home or in town and has a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (literally "Black Forest Cherry Cake") is perhaps one of the most famous of German confections. I mean, come on, look at it:

If decadence were a crime, we'd have to call Germany on a Cake Holocaust. Doesn't that look like a little slice of heaven? Wikipedia says this orgasmic monstrosity "consists of several layers of chocolate cake, with whipped cream and cherries between each layer...decorated with additional whipped cream, maraschino cherries, and chocolate shavings."

Damn.

Certain bits of Germany itself are enough to make you drool, too. Take a look at Lake Hintersee, in Bavaria. Pretty country, ain't it?

Just a few reasons I'd like to go: cake, high country, old European architecture, rich history, a language I could get used to hearing every day (and not think I was in a war movie)...and, oh yes, a little thing I like to call

BEER!

Speaking of being in third place, Germany is subordinate only to Ireland and the Czech Republic in its per capita consumption of beer. According to this list, the average German knocks back 110 litres of amber fluid per year. (The U.S. drags in thirteenth place with a measly 81.6 litres.) That's well ahead of such renowned beer-drinking countries as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland. I'm astounded (and not a little excited) by this news. I've been to the United Kingdom and Ireland and thought they were boozy countries. I can't wait to get to Germany and try it out for size.

Wish us luck, people. RANDOM TRAVEL DESTINATIONS, signing off.

cocktail review no. 45 - Cajun Martini

Is it humanly possible not to relax, kick back and feel at peace with the world after listening to a good solid round of Jimmy Buffett?

No, it ain't. And if you want the full tropical flavor, as so many parrot-heads do, then you have to have a margarita.

But margaritas aren't the only thing Jimmy drinks. If you listen to his tunes, he mentions other libations in his lesser-known songs. Daiquiris are given a plug in "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Hurricanes are part of the chorus of "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere."

And in a largely unknown tune called "We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About," a passing reference is made to something called a Cajun martini.

That piqued my interest. I knew Cajuns were renowned for their spicy foods, and I was already a fan of your regular run-of-the-mill dry martini. I'm also developing a fascination with spicy drinks (be they flavored with capsaicin or some other agent like nutmeg).

Donna Hole is going to hate me for this.

What the hey? I asked myself.
What the hey, indeed? I answered myself.
So I decided to go for it.

The recipes I discovered, though as various as a macaw's plumage, all had some common themes: gin (or vodka), vermouth, and jalapeño pepper for garnish. So I just decided to mix up a regular martini and garnish it with pepper slices.

• 1½ ounces gin
• ½ ounce vermouth 
• two or three slices of jalapeño pepper

In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine the gin and vermouth. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with the jalapeño.

I wasn't expecting much. I couldn't see how a few puny slices of jalapeño could make much matter in a double martini. Boy, was I wrong. On my first sip I was punched in the face with olfactory and gustatory sensation. It wasn't heat, oh no: the capsaicin was, in my father's estimation, being metabolized by the alcohol in the gin. No, it was pure eau du jalapeño. A whack of peppery flavor hit me in the taste buds and filled my mouth with a fiery, exotic ambience, backed by the tang of the gin-and-vermouth duet. Moreover, the peppery flavor only increased the farther in I plowed. Beginning with a combustive, intense explosion of pepper flavor and finishing with a sort of mellow, inchoate zest, with overtones of coriander and lemon peel and the aromatic herbal redolence of the vermouth...well! I'll tell you what, this drink is like chewing your way through the best bits of your back garden with a hefty gulp of alcohol for a chaser. Sounds like something a hard-bitten Cajun might do anyway.

I can really see why ol' Jimmy likes 'em, Gulf-Coastal boy that he is. It's a cool, summery afternoon sort of a drink, with an extra kick to it, a challenge as well as a refuge. Something for a round of contact golf with the guys, or an opening volley in the evening's first drinking game.

Drink with caution. And have a chaser ready when you reach the bottom (the time's come to eat your garnish!).

And now, a little tune we can all enjoy with our drink, no matter what that drink may be. Bottoms up!

...those who trespass against us... (Airport Personalities, Part II - The Bad)

I'm not going to point fingers in this article. Something tells me that it would be an unwise move for a new pilot to make, particularly one who's hoping to make his fortune in aviation. Some of the people I libel might make it warm for me later on.

Second, I work at this airport. I practically live there. Some of the people I libel might make it warm for me right now.

Third, everybody's got their faults. The people I know who fail at certain aspects of their existence (politeness, competency, generosity, empathy, and so forth) are absolute saints in other arenas. Nobody's all bad or all good. It would be wrong of me to brand someone who isn't totally irredeemable as a gibbering fool, even if they bear a strong resemblance to a gibbering fool most of the week.

So I'm just going to list the stereotypes here, representative of some of the bad 'uns I've met out at the airport, and let you make what inferences you will. Or won't.

If you're going to have good people on an airport, you're going to have bad, too. It's the same all over. You can't have a profession, or a pastime, or any sector of the human existence without that sector, properly populated, containing all the virtues and vices, pros and cons, vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the macrocosm.

This is a smallish sort of airport, Apple Valley, but there are a lot of pilots here. Helicopters from surrounding schools sometimes stop by to practice point landings. We even get jet traffic on occasion. And an absolute plethora of airplane pilots fly in and out, day and night, especially on weekends.

Flying is a subjective business. Everyone has their own opinions about the best way to perform certain flight operations. The Federal Aviation Regulations are straightforward and absolute, but that doesn't mean they aren't open to interpretation. Pilots, with safety foremost in their minds, have to analyze the situations they're presented with and make the best judgment call based on the information at hand, weather, traffic, and F.A.R.s included.

It's often said in aviation that "there's no right or wrong way to do this/that." Often, the methods a pilot employs to accomplish a task are based largely on personal preference, and as long as the pilot is operating his airplane safely, and within F.A.R. guidelines, no one's to say otherwise. On occasion, however, some pilots' judgment is, shall we say...questionable.

And so, having got that two-paragraph disclaimer out of the way, let us take a moment to consider the usual suspects:

The Slowpoke: Everybody knows them. They're on the roads as well as in the air. They've got nowhere to go, and all day to get there. These are the people who just poke along the sky-ways, unhurried, unmoved, oblivious. They're slow to join traffic patterns, they tool along on taxiways, and take forever with their engine run-ups. Whether due to ineptitude, nerves or plain old Sunday leisureliness, these guys make you want to hit yourself over the head with a claw hammer.

They just take so...effing...long to do everything.
And unless you can squirt around them when they pull off the taxiway to do their run-up, there's no way of getting around them, either. You just have to sit and take it, and try to compensate for their sluggishness with liberal use of flaps and landing gear and Martian popping things. There's no law against going slow in mid-air, that's the problem.

The Cheater: Often even more aggravating than the Slowpoke, the Cheater is the guy who knows the rules, but doesn't much care for 'em. Unlike Slowpokes, whose behavior is almost never dangerous, Cheaters can come dang near to causing accidents. They cut corners and take shortcuts. Much like the motorcyclist who drives between lines of cars at a red light, Cheaters break rules.
There's one such rule at Apple Valley Airport: no intersection departures. If you want to take off, you've gotta taxi all the way down to the end of the runway. It's a safety precaution. It prevents you from pulling out in front of a plane that's about to land, or already has landed and needs to exit. One fellow at Apple Valley, who owns a particularly zippy airplane, thinks himself above this rule, and constantly departs at intersections. A law unto himself, he is; doesn't feel he needs to taxi all the way down to the end. And unless the airport manager catches him at it, nothing can be done. It's the same with the young bucks at our airport who don't like waiting their turn. Instead of falling in behind traffic in the pattern, they cut in between or in front of people. One hotshot pilot shaved it so close that the older, more experienced pilot behind him (whom the young'un had cut off) walked over and gave him a dressing-down when they had landed. Unfortunately, that's all he could do. Unless an FAA representative sees these schmucks in the act, we all just have to sit and watch and grind our teeth.

The Drawler: These dudes are more frustrating to air traffic controllers than to their fellow pilots. Regardless, there's been many a time when a pilot has had to bite his tongue, finger hovering impatiently over the radio button, when a Drawler gets on the air. These guys take as long to say what they're going to do as the Slowpoke takes to actually do it. You'll always know a Drawler when you hear one. Ordinary radio calls are pared-down, rapid-fire nuggets of information and requests. From an experienced radioman, a call to ATC might sound like this:
"Joshua Approach, Cessna Four-Two-One-Two-Six, five miles north of Apple Valley at five thousand feet, en route to Tehachapi."
Then the controller will reply, giving the airplane (who just requested flight following via radar to his destination) a transponder code and pertinent weather and traffic information.
Drawler radio calls sound like this.
[Microphone clicks]
[Pause]
"Joshua Approach."
[Pause]
"Centurion One-Three-Niner-Tango."
[Longer Pause]
"Six miles west of Apple Valley."
[Another long pause. No pertinent altitude information given.]
"Destination: Fox Field."
[Click]
Then the controller will come on and ask the Centurion for his altitude and whatever other information he usually neglects to give. Then he'll give the Drawler a four-digit squawk code, the current altimeter setting, and landing information at his destination airport, weather and whatnot. The Drawler will read back this information at a snail's pace, further clogging up the airwaves. This makes pilots who have somewhere to be and something important to do (like the Southwest Airlines crews who routinely talk to Joshua on their way into Los Angeles, not to mention JM-1 and I who are trying to escort a Predator from a restricted area into a Class D airport) foam at the mouth.
There are sub-classes of Drawlers. There's the Stutterer, who stumbles and staggers through his radio calls, making soft-hearted pilots in the vicinity wince on his behalf; and the Out-of-Towner, whose accent is so heavy that he either speaks excruciatingly slowly, or is almost incoherent, or both. I've heard some Texans on the radio who sound like they're bellying up to the bar instead of requesting an IFR clearance to Bermuda Dunes.
Now, if the Drawler also happens to be a Blithering Idiot (see next bullet point) he will do the same thing, only he will get most of the information the controller gave him wrong, and the controller will have to correct him. This makes pilots who have somewhere to be and something important to do wish they had fool-seeking missile launchers on their wings.
Unfortunately, there ain't no law against talking slow, either.

The Blithering Idiot: Worst kind of pilot there is, bar none. These are the people who fly twice a year, are grossly inexperienced, don't do their homework, aren't worth two cents on the radio, have no idea what all the little flashing lights in the cockpit are for, land airplanes like they're kites (or anvils), and so on and so on and so on. In short, these folks haven't got a clue what to do or how to do it. Some of them are (forgive me) just plain stupid. I've had the misfortune to encounter quite a few of them myself. I don't exempt yours truly, by the bye; I've done some blitheringly idiotic things in my time, both on the ground and in the air. Fortunately I haven't endangered anybody or given the FAA or the NTSB any paperwork to do, which is what Blithering Idiots commonly do. They're even more dangerous than Cheaters. They pull out onto the runway when you're on your final approach; don't see you because they're not scanning the sky properly for traffic; clog up the radio frequencies (see above); get off at the wrong taxiways; don't listen to instructions; forget important laws of flight (and in some cases physics, and even reality)...and all the rest of it. Anything you can think of that's dumb to do in mid-air, they've done it. I know everybody makes mistakes. Not everybody who fouls up in the sky is an idiot. But there must be a reason why 80% of all airplane crashes are caused by pilot error.

The Know-Nothing: They differ somewhat from your run-of-the-mill idiot in that they don't necessarily do stupid things in the air, but are wrong most of the time on the ground. Like, maybe they'll have their numbers mixed up. Instead of believing he must remain 500 feet below, 1,000 feet above and 2,000 feet horizontally clear of clouds, and maintain one statute mile visibility (as the F.A.R.s say you must during VFR flight by day in Class G airspace between 1,200 and 10,000 feet MSL), a Know-Nothing might think he would have to remain 1,000 feet above, 1,000 feet below and one mile distant from the clouds while maintaining five statute miles visibility (as he would during VFR flight by day or night above 10,000 feet MSL in Class G airspace).
Confused? I can't see how you would be.
Yeah, I know. This is complicated. Aviation is the worst mix of alphabet soup and the grade-school math class you still have nightmares about. There's hundreds of different numbers, terms and abbreviations you must know by heart, all of which can pile in on each other in your brain and mix themselves up. But if you keep your brain sharp, review periodically, fly often and get your head on straight, you'll be okay. You'll remember what you need to remember, and all these parameters and qualifiers and conditions and requirements will become second nature. Know-Nothings, though, never quite get a handle on it. And not only don't they know what they're talking about, but they prove it quite often. Loudly. At best, they're corrected in private, resolve to do better, and then stain their image again with the next outburst; at worst, they make public spectacles of themselves, lose all credibility as pilots, and (more disquieting yet) become flight instructors and pass on their wrongness to their students.
They haven't gotten 'round to outlawing this yet, either. The best you can hope for is that your local Know-Nothing will foul up badly on his biennial flight review (BFR) and have his license revoked.

The Wanderer: An unpredictable cross between the Slowpoke and the Blithering Idiot, the Wanderer's flight pattern beggars description. You can never tell what these guys are going to next. They might report that they're three miles east of the field when they're actually five, or vice-versa. (Cheaters often use this tactic to insert themselves into the traffic pattern ahead of other aircraft.) Or a Wanderer, attempting to enter the pattern, might wind up weaving and doubling back on his own path, because he didn't give himself enough space to turn, or he wanted to overfly the field first to make sure nothing screwy is happening, or because the wind is pushing him all over the sky, or (potentially) because he's a Blithering Idiot.
Wanderers also have a tendency to fly

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patterns, taking them two miles or more away from the airport on the downwind and base legs. This causes problems for other airplanes lining up in the pattern, who have to wait for the Wanderer to turn and pass them on his final approach before they themselves can turn base. Combine a Wanderer with a Slowpoke and you can almost hear the pilots behind him sharpening their knives.

The Chicken: Now, this one's kind of unfair. There's definitely no law against being cautious. The more careful you are as a pilot, the better. You really can't do enough to ensure your safety and the safety of others in flight. But sometimes people can go overboard. There's a difference between being cautious and being overcautious. Some pilots inadvertently cause problems for themselves, their airplanes or others when they're too careful; and some pilots just don't have enough experience to be decisive and assertive. It is for that very reason that you rarely encounter Chickens. Usually they're too scared to even fly. The slightest breath of wind will send them into a tizzy. Chickens combine all the worst characteristics of Wanderers, Slowpokes and Blithering Idiots. Approaching a field and hearing other traffic in the area, they'll hang back and let everybody else go ahead of them. If anybody else shows up while they're doing this, the Chicken will let them go ahead too, burning up more fuel and making a possible hazard of himself flying in circles close to the airport. They may also stress their engines unnecessarily by idling too long on the ground (running repeated checks during their run-ups, for example). This latter habit is believed to be have been responsible for several airliner crashes.
Blithering Idiots don't know what they're doing; Wanderers don't know where they're going; and Chickens don't know when to go.
Like I said before, caution's one thing. By all means be cautious. Check your engine, know your airplane's limits, scan the skies for traffic. Keep your wits about you. But don't overdo it. Don't take too long to make important decisions. Don't wait forever to join the pattern. Don't waste time. Don't dither. And don't be afraid.

As annoying as they are, these guys are usually harmless. Slowpokes don't hurt anybody, as long as you're not behind them in the pattern and disastrously low on fuel (that'd be your fault, though, not the Slowpoke's). Cheaters are merely annoying, as long as they don't do anything dangerous outright. Wanderers can cause problems, but as long as you keep your eye on them you'll be fine. Chickens are more to be pitied than persecuted. I was a Chicken myself when I first started. Getting a bit better every day.

So, be on the lookout for these guys the next time you're in the sky, all right? They are out there. Just hope you never figure out who's who.

Oh yeah, and watch out for the judgmental bastards, too.