klutzy May-June weekend

I've never thought of myself as clumsy, but when you factor in my immoderate and lazy behavior, accidents are almost bound to happen. 

I'm happy to announce that there have been no complications from my appendectomy. I'm completely healed. I have some hairline scars on my abdomen and some staple wounds which are still healing up, but apart from that I'm cured. I just need to avoid lifting heavy objects for six weeks.

I still think I'm going to die soon, though.  

I'm talking about last Friday night (May 30), when I was walking home—admittedly under the influence of makgeolli and beer—and stopped by a public restroom near the Yangjae Stream. The stalls were somewhat cramped, which I learned to my cost when I stood up somewhat abruptly and smashed my head against the toilet-paper dispenser. 

Just...don't ask. Please. It happened, all right? That's all you need to know. 

Anyway, my head was somewhat fuzzy (makgeolli or concussion, I don't know) so I didn't really notice that I had hit myself hard enough to draw blood. This precluded me from putting antibiotic ointment on my noggin, and...

...well, sure enough, I came down with a head cold on Saturday, May 31, which prostrated me all through Sunday. Even on this warm, damp, drizzly morning of June 2, I'm not still wholly back together. Infection-induced, no doubt. What a sap I am. 

And speaking of sap, what kind of moron doesn't use hot pads to remove a scalding-hot bowl of oatmeal from the microwave? Me, that's who. The same moron who, early this morning, touched the hottest part of the bowl, dropped the bowl, tried to catch the bowl and stuck both his hands knuckle-deep into said scalding-hot oatmeal. I am now typing on this keyboard with several first-degree burns on my fingers.

I hope there isn't a university-sponsored polo match this weekend, or I'm a goner. 

There isn't too much other news. Miss H and I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past on Thursday evening, and both got a kick out of it. We also got our Hong Kong accommodations booked, so all the hotels 'n' stuff have been taken care of for my big Southeast Asia tour in July and August. (Now I just need to reserve my train tickets.) I had a lovely time with some of my work buddies on Friday night, drinking that aforementioned makgeolli and eating tofu (dubu in Korean) made from cactus in Achasan, near Gwangnaru, where Miss H and I used to live. Then I went to a barbecue in Maebong later that night with one of the dudes I brew with and his buddies, and nearly cracked my skull open in a public restroom around 12:30 a.m. Then I spent the weekend being sick. I'll spend the three days of my workweek (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) conducting writing assessments. On Thursday evening (which is technically a Friday, as we have a three-day weekend this week) I'll have a drink with Sang-ook, the Korean fellow I shared a ward room with when I got my appendix out a couple of weeks ago. I promise I won't hit my head on anything this time. 

No, really. Honest.

the death of Neo-Confucianism in Korea...?

All eyes are once again on Asia this week, President Obama having wrapped up his four-nation Asia tour (leaving hearty Filipino protests in his wake) and the Sewol disaster fresh in everyone's minds. However, yet another disaster—or near disaster—in South Korea has stolen the public eye. 

You might have heard about the subway train accident we had this Friday. QiRanger does a very thorough video update about it here, where you can get all the facts.

I'm not here to debate particulars, cast blame or express relief that everyone aboard those two trains survived. I'm not here to tell you that I travel on Line 2 all the time and could have easily been involved in the accident. (I have, actually, been aboard a Line 5 train that braked so hard and so unexpectedly that all six dozen people in the car with me went sprawling like dominoes, and I wound up flat on my back with a rucksack full of booze under me and my livid fiancée on my stomach.) 

I just want to say two things. 

First, subway accidents in Korea never happen. They are the exception, not the rule. Korean railways are tightly and safely run. The Seoul metro is one of the cleanest, safest, most efficient and easiest-to-use metropolitan light rail systems in the world, despite being one of the busiest. Its safety record was, to my knowledge, flawless up to this point. There was a nasty incident in December 2013 when an inexperienced train operator filling in during a strike ordered the subway doors closed too early, and an 84-year-old woman was dragged a short distance and killed. Oh, and the Daegu subway fire ten years before that, I suppose. But those were freak occurrences brought on by circumstance: a vengeful cab driver and an unschooled scab, as it were. This recent subway accident took place during regular hours, and wasn't caused by a mass murderer or a strike. It just happened. I would have said it was impossible.

Second...you may be witnessing the death of Neo-Confucianism in Korea. 

An Hyang (1243-1306), widely
considered to be the founder of
Neo-Confucianism in Korea.

As I discussed in my previous post about the Sewol sinking (which I linked to above), Korea's guiding star has been the Neo-Confucian model ever since the early days of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Some of Confucianism's central tenets are filial piety, respect and reverence, loyalty, and shame. It is unthinkable to disobey or show disrespect to one's elders. There is a very strict social hierarchy wherein each individual is classified according to age, experience, seniority, and other factors. Someone who's above you on that scale deserves the highest respect; anyone below you is yours to command. 

And in fact, this system, which served Korea well throughout its long and often brutal history, was just what caused the deaths of so many children during the Sewol debacle. The children and other passengers were told to stay put in the cabins and corridors, and bowing to the captain's lofty position and experience, they obeyed. Unfortunately, the captain proved to be an incompetent and untrustworthy coward, and many children met their fates as a result. This event, as I noted in my blog post about the sinking, has shaken Korea to its roots, particularly the younger generations. Many in Korea seem to have begun to doubt the worth and universal applicability of Neo-Confucian values. 

Nowhere is this growing doubt more apparent than in the subway train passengers' reaction to the drivers' instructions in the moments following the collision at Sangwangsimni Station. They were told to stay put, and hardly any of them listened this time. Quite a number of passengers pried open the train doors and leaped down onto the tracks and into the tunnel.

Now there's something I never would have believed possible. Korean folks disobeying instructions from a competent authority? Prying open doors and leaping onto train tracks? Anarchy!  

Does it mean that the Neo-Confucian underpinnings of this country's culture and society are beginning to erode? Only time will tell, but I think the signs are there. Goodness knows what will happen if I'm right. A complete paradigm shift might be in the offing. You may rest assured that I'll keep an eye on things over here, and let you know if I see anything noteworthy. 

But now you must excuse me. I have a four-day weekend to get back to. Children's Day is Monday and Buddha's Birthday is Tuesday. Two unrelated lunar holidays in a row. That never happens here, either. The unexpected double-whammy has convinced all the foreigners on the peninsula to throw a grand Cinco de Mayo bash. Colored lanterns are strung up all across the city, Seoul's high society are turning out in droves in their best tailored suits and tulle skirts, and the Americans and Canadians are getting blitzed in the bars and staggering around Itaewon wearing sombreros in broad daylight. Me, I'm taking introspective walks by the Yangjae Stream and meeting friends from out-of-town for a bite of Thai-Japanese fusion and a sip of beer. Oh, the expat life. 

Postie out...

the wreck of the Sewol

Well, your TV and news sites are probably teeming with stories about South Korea right now. I wish there was a happier reason for it than the sinking of the Sewol, a large Japanese-built ferryboat hauling nearly 500 people, which sank in the western fringes of the Korea Strait on its way from Incheon to Jeju Island.

                                                                                                      Yonhap News

You're probably familiar with the specifics. Just a few minutes before 9:00 a.m. the passengers on the ship heard a loud bang and the ship started to list severely. A distress signal was sent at 8:55 a.m. The Sewol's captain, Lee Joon-seok (who was recently arrested), failed to issue any sort of evacuation order for a critical 30 minutes, at 9:30 a.m. The ship sank further, rolling over and becoming almost completely submerged by noon, with only the bow remaining above water by 2:00 p.m. The ship in its entirety has since sunk and settled on the bottom 90 meters below the surface. 

Horrifying, heartrending and heroic stories have risen from this disaster. Twenty-nine people are confirmed dead, 174 have been rescued and 239 remain missing. It's a well-known fact that 300 of the 476-odd people aboard were young students from an Ansan high school. (In an earlier draft of this post I wrote Incheon, but I was in error.) One of the crew is rumored to have lost her life ensuring that all passengers had their life jackets. Heartbreaking tales of the students texting their parents and relatives from the wreck on the bottom of the ocean have populated the web. 

Controversy is among the most prominent survivors of the Sewol wreck. Two at the moment are occupying my attention, and they are both mentioned in that link I posted up there about Captain Lee being arrested. The first is Lee's refusal to issue an evacuation order for a full 30 minutes, which has rightly come under harsh scrutiny and criticism; and that the helmsman, Cho Joon-ki (also arrested) made a "sharp turn" just before the bang was heard. He admitted that he was "familiar" with the operation of the helm, but that the wheel "turned farther than expected." This has led to speculation that the turn was too sharp, dislodging some of the containers in the hold and perhaps compromising the integrity of the hull, leading to the sinking. Other parties maintain that a hidden rock was to blame, but that doesn't make sense to me. Ferries have been traveling up and down that same route for decades. If there was a rock, surely it would have been detected by now? 

It seems that, as is commonly the case, human error is to blame for the horrific loss of human life. The ship's authority figures failed to act in a sagacious manner, trapping hundreds of innocents in the wreck of the vessel. 

To many abroad and in the West, this may seem like "just another disaster." Another captain asleep at the wheel, like the Costa Concordia in 2012. But it's more than that, folks. This catastrophe has shaken South Korea right down to its roots. Many of my students at Sejong University are tremendously disturbed, not just by the deaths of so many young ones but the accompanying implications. 

What implications, you ask? 

I've explained before that Korea has a strong Confucian mindset. This has been the case since the Joseon era (1392-1910), when Neo-Confucianism came to dominate the Korean court and both Buddhists and Christians were severely repressed. One of the fundamental tenets of Confucianism is unflinching obedience to one's elders and betters. Korea and China, during their medieval days, had rigid hierarchical societies. Things like birth, wealth, occupation, and even surname determined one's position in the caste system. When confronted with a member of a higher echelon, one must show them the greatest respect. To do anything else would be to violate sacred societal mores and traditions. It goes without saying that children must obey their parents and grandparents as a lowly foot soldier would obey a general. 

And that's precisely what the children aboard the Sewol did. They wanted to evacuate, to leap off the ship into the cold grey seas and swim for their lives, but Captain Lee, their elder and better—whose mind was paralyzed with fears that his passengers would drift away and be lost in the turbulent waters—ordered them to stay put. So stay put they did, in the cabins and corridors. And there they remain. 

Needless to say, many minds in Korea—particularly the younger ones—are beginning to call this whole Confucian system into question. This disaster has highlighted its fundamental weakness: what if the authority figures in question are pure-D wrong? There's little point in unquestioningly following a leader if he or she hasn't got the brains of an ice cube. Many Japanese samurai might disagree, but this isn't the Warring States Period, guys. This is the 21st century. And now, young folks across the Korean peninsula are wondering whether the Confucian ideal is, well...ideal anymore. One of my students, normally chipper and articulate but grave and hesitant when I spoke with him, told me that he couldn't really process the whole affair. 

"I love my country," he said. "I believe in Korea. But this disaster has made me question everything." 

Everyone feels that way, partner. My fiancée, a die-hard Titanic buff, has been quiet and subdued the past few days, shocked to the core that a major maritime disaster such as the Sewol sinking can still happen in this day and age. I must confess that it all seems a bit surreal to me. It's hard to believe that only a few hundred kilometers from where I sit, down in the muck at the bottom of the Korea Strait, sits a capsized ship filled with hundreds of people who may very well be siblings or relatives of the twentysomethings I teach. 

My thoughts and prayers are with them. May justice be served to those at fault. 

sci-fi art, entry #3

I'm not going to say much about this one; just do whatever you brain wants to with it. I will say, however, that this piece inspired a very pivotal scene in Novel #3 (which has just cracked 45,000 words and ten chapters). Make of that what you will. You may wish to click on it to expand it to its full size.

One more thing. The reason I don't usually credit an author for these images is because I found all of them on free wallpaper sites, often without any author's or artist's name listed. And that's kind of nice, you know? Keeping things anonymous. Just letting the dreamers stay in the shadows and do their thing and weave dreams for the rest of us.

sunken ships and captured forts

A Korean junk, circa 1871. (Photo taken by U.S. military personnel; courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Did you think the Korean War of 1950-1953 was the first U.S. military action on the Korean peninsula?

Have you ever wondered who the first American soldiers to receive Medals of Honor in a foreign conflict were? And which conflict it was? 

You're about to discover the truth.

The year was 1866. The American Civil War had recently come to an end. The heart-rending, gut-wrenching conflict was finally behind us, and the process of reconstruction was underway. America now gazed across the oceans, seeking new horizons, searching for trade partners, hoping enterprise would soothe its bruised soul. Commodore Matthew Perry had pried Japan open with a crowbar in 1854, and U.S. interests had been entrenched in China for decades. Korea had been on the table since 1844, neglected due to lack of interest. American eyes now turned to the isolationist empire on its small peninsula. It offered a tempting and pristine target for merchants and traders.

On August 16, 1866, a merchant marine side-wheel steamer named the General Sherman puffed into Korean waters. Belonging to the British trading firm Meadows & Co., the 187-ton Sherman carried a cargo of cotton, tin and glass, hoping to entice the Koreans into a trade partnership. The Sherman was also heavily armed, just in case the Koreans weren't in a listening mood. She was crewed by a Captain Page, Chief Mate Wilson, and almost twenty Chinese and Malay sailors. Also aboard were the ship's owner, W.B. Preston (American) and Robert Jermain Thomas, a Protestant missionary and the excursion's official interpreter. Assisted by Chinese junks, the General Sherman steamed up the Taedong River and anchored just outside the Geupsa gate, at the border of the Pyongan and Hwanghae Provinces.

The traders established contact with the Koreans and told them they wanted to dicker. The Koreans refused, but agreed to supply the foreigners with provisions. The Sherman was told to wait at the Geupsa gate until the Korean regent could be consulted. He would then either send the envoy home or invite them into Pyongyang. For unclear reasons, however, the Sherman weighed its anchor and steamed further upriver, eventually running aground on an island in the midst of Pyongyang. A Korean ambassador was sent to the ship with an offering of food, and a stern warning: the ship must return to the Geupsa gate, or all aboard would be killed.

This is where accounts get muddled. The Koreans claim that the foreigners kidnapped the ambassador and held him hostage. They demanded to be allowed inside the city and even went so far as to fire the ship's cannons into the crowd which had gathered on the banks of the river. This went on for four days. More envoys were sent, words were exchanged, and the vessel kept firing its guns up and down the riverside.

Reality check, here. I'm not an apologist, but I find it difficult to believe that a trading ship would just up and start a war on an isolated nation for no reason. Doing so would hardly have been profitable. More likely there was some massive misunderstanding that took place. The Reverend Thomas was the only Westerner aboard who could speak Korean, and no one knows exactly what his level of proficiency was. After living in this country for almost 21 nonconsecutive months, I'm well aware of just how easy it is to cause massive misunderstandings. The language barrier is pretty thick here. The cultural discrepancies between Korea and the Western world don't seem great at first, but they can sneak up on you. And Koreans wear their hearts on their sleeves: they will react passionately and vehemently if something untoward happens, and they will correct forcibly if they can't make themselves understood. Perhaps Thomas, Captain Page or Mr. Preston all underestimated their hosts' magnanimity. Perhaps they just failed to keep their minds, eyes and ears open.

Whatever the cause of the misunderstanding was, it cost them their lives. The Koreans tied several boats together and filled them with wood, sulphur and saltpeter. They set them aflame and sent them drifting toward the General Sherman. The first two boats left the steamer unscathed, but the third lit her up like a Christmas tree. Unable to quench the blaze, her crew dived into the water, where the Koreans unceremoniously beat them to death.

And so ends the first part of my story. The second now begins.

Nobody knew what had become of the General Sherman, but since there had been American nationals aboard her, it was a cause of concern for the United States of America. So, in 1871, a military expedition to Korea was mounted. Its mission was to ascertain the fate of the Sherman and her crew, protect a new diplomatic legation being sent to open trade routes with the peninsula, and to establish a treaty with Koreans for the protection of shipwrecked sailors. (The Joseon Dynasty, like the Tokugawa shogunate, took a rather dim view of castaway foreigners on its shores.)

American history books (if they mention it at all) call this the 1871 Korean Expedition. The Koreans call it the Sinminyangyo, and it was centered on an island in the Han River estuary called Ganghwa-do. It already had a history of punitive incursions; the French had mounted a military expedition there in 1866, the same year the Sherman was destroyed. The Japanese would later invade there in 1875, and shanghai the Korean regent into signing a trade agreement, thereby ending the Joseon Dynasty's isolationist policies.

The American warships first attempted peaceful overtures, but the local officials dodged the subject of the Sherman incident, perhaps to avoid having to pay recompense. The Americans stated their intention to explore the region peacefully. Official Joseon policy, however, forbade foreign ships on the Han River, which led directly to Seoul. So the Korean troops fired on the American ships from their stone forts on Ganghwa's heights, without inflicting much damage. The Americans demanded an apology within 10 days. None was forthcoming, so on June 10, 650 American sailors and Marines off the Colorado, Alaska, Palos, Monocacy, and Benicia landed at Ganghwa-do. They stormed several Korean forts on the island, one after the other. Set against them were some hundreds of Korean regulars, known as the "Tiger-Hunters" and led by General Eo Jae-yeon.

Another Wikipedia image. This is a posed photo, but these are the U.S. Navy commanders. That's Admiral John Rodgers, the expedition's commander, leaning over the table on the right.

The account of the action is quite thrilling, and can be read in detail here. Suffice it to say that about 250 Koreans armed with outdated matchlock muskets were killed, for the loss of three Americans. The fort defenders were easily defeated by the better-armed Americans, who were also aided by artillery fire from the Monocacy. Five Korean forts were taken, as well as numerous prisoners. The Americans hoped to use these spoils as bargaining chips to force the Joseon rulers to the table. No dice. The Koreans refused to negotiate with the Americans and told them they were welcome to keep the "cowardly" defenders of Ganghwa-do.

So the American ships sailed away to China, and that was the end of it.

But was it? This seemingly insignificant action had far-reaching consequences. Firstly, Daewon-gun, the Joseon regent, saw fit to strengthen his isolationist policies in the wake of invasion—to no avail. The Japanese sailed up the Han River in 1875 and threatened to fire on Seoul unless the Koreans agreed to trade. (The Japanese must have taken a leaf out of Perry's book, huh?) Trade agreements with the Western nations soon followed, including one signed with America in 1882.

Perhaps more importantly, though, nine sailors and six Marines of the American expeditionary force were awarded the Medal of Honor for the actions at Ganghwa-do.

These were the first Medals of Honor ever awarded for action in a foreign conflict.

How about that, eh?

AND NOW YOU KNOW...

as the prop turns

It sure beats me why Wings was the only well-known, successful sitcom to take place at an airport. This blogger is frankly puzzled by the fact. There's enough drama (and comedy) at small airports to sustain at least five sitcoms on daytime TV, no problem. It'd be a piece of cake. I can envision at least three seasons' worth off the top of my head as I sit here in the briefing room. Yes, even this innocuous airport in Apple Valley has all kinds of stuff going on in the background which would escape the average citizen's notice, but would be commanding fodder for a drama or afternoon soap.

And I ain't lyin'.

My pilots and I have openly acknowledged that an airport drama set at KAPV would likely succeed. As the Prop Turns was our chosen title.

I'll introduce the cast of characters first, and then the premise. I'd like you to meet some of the flawed and florid characters we have hanging around here. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

(Disclaimer: As the Prop Turns is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and any real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintentional.)

TOM: The airport café's owner and head cook. Tall, bald, and congenial, Tom is somewhat lopsided, the result of a nasty motorcycle accident in his youth. A good chunk of his stomach muscle was grafted onto his ankle to replace the flesh gouged away. He walks with a permanent limp, and constantly slips on the grease on the café's kitchen floor—despite the Crocs he wears to prevent this from happening. A full-length fall upon the floor is not uncommon. Tom invariably burns his hands, cuts his skin or breaks his bones when this happens. He chipped his hip a few weeks ago, and most recently broke his femur on his way to the bathroom. He's on crutches now, and has hired extra help to mind the store. The economy being where it is (in the U-bend of the national toilet's drainpipe), business isn't so good, either. Combine low income with broken bones and you get Tom, stumping about behind the counter, chunnering ceaselessly to himself. He expresses political opinions openly; checks gas prices (and women's undergarments) with a pair of scuffed binoculars; and claims that Cream's original lineup consisted of Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, Jim Morrison and George Harrison. Tom's definitely one of the more colorful characters here at the airport.

VINCENT: The airport manager, employed by the county. A large, imposing man with a white mustache and a goatee down to his chest. His dress is always impeccably professional, button-down shirts and slacks, as befitting an airport manager...and a hog rider who needs to conceal the sleeve tattoos on both arms. He takes the details of his job seriously, and ministers minor duties with his own brand of zeal. A few years back it was discovered that some unscrupulous character was coming into the pilot's briefing room in the dead of night and downloading pornography. Upon receiving this intelligence, Vince laid in wait, grasped the man by his collar, and threw him bodily from the airport building. The brazen pervert hasn't been heard from since.
You will notice, however, that I used the words "details" and "minor" in referring to the way Vincent does his job. A shadow hangs over the manager's office. All sorts of nasty rumors are swirling around around Vince. From what I hear, he's a snarky, secretive, dishonest martinet who runs shady backroom deals out of his office. He won't allow new businesses onto airport property, because he's worried they might expose his illegal dealings.
I'm not sure how much truth there is to the secrecy and dishonesty, but I do find Vince to be a snarky martinet. He's always the first to jump down the throat of anyone he perceives breaking rules or doing something wrong.
Okay, so I might've been driving a little fast around the airport. It wasn't a big deal. I never came close to hitting anything. Nevertheless Vincent noticed, and had one of his maintenance men keep an eye on me, and report to him if I did it again. Sure enough, I proved a repeat offender. Vincent stopped me on my way to Tom's restaurant. He scolded me and told me to slow down. I agreed, wondering why he had chosen to pick on me and not the half-dozen other pilots who rip around the airport like stock car drivers. When someone chopped up a parked car with a propeller two weeks ago, Vince was called from home to assess the damage. The first thing he did was admonish the flight school's chief mechanic, Lenny, to move his car away from the wreckage. Lenny was well outside the line of cones surrounding the jumble. There was no need to move. Evidently Vince, and his authoritative ego, thought otherwise.

LAURA: Vince's pretty secretary. She looks way, way too good to be 30 years old and a single mother of two. This long, tall and leggy brunette has been turning heads at the airport for several years. All the old men at the airport feel that there must be some trick behind her comeliness, and spend a good portion of their time looking behind her, just to be sure. (It doesn't help that her wardrobe consists mostly of knee-length halter sundresses.)
Laura is nice: friendly, outgoing, accommodating, and conversational. But she's a wolf in sheep's clothing. She realizes that her position at Apple Valley depends on her superior's good will, and as such she is firmly "on his side." She's Vince's informant, his confidante, his unquestioning toady. Anything a pilot says to her can and will get back to the airport manager. Laura may give you a friendly, smiling, trustworthy look, but woe betide you if you reveal any sensitive information to her. Vince will be breathing down your neck in short order. Laura is not your friend if you are late on your hangar rental payments, haven't stumped up for transient parking fees, or get caught washing your airplane on airport grounds. She'll sell you up the river without a second thought. A femme fatale indeed.

HERB: An instructor and part-owner of Apple Valley's second flight school. (Why are there two flight schools here, you ask? I'll explain in a moment. It's quite the piece of drama.)
Herb is a marvelous man. He's the most amiable, peaceful, tolerant and equable human being I've ever met. He's a flight student's dream: he won't harp on, howl at or harangue a pupil. Flying with him is more like flying with your favorite uncle or a friendly neighbor. He merely points out what you could be doing better, and congratulates you on what you did right.
But...he's not that good at flying. His total number of solo hours could be counted on fingers and toes. Most of his flight-time was spent instructing, and instructors don't fly unless their students do something drastically wrong. But more than that, Herb just doesn't know that much. Flight instruction is like any other kind of education, and among its teachers, there are good eggs and bad eggs. The good ones are constantly seeking to improve their skills, adjust their lessons to fit new examples, call on situations they've experienced or read about, possess a bazillion flight hours, aren't just gunning for a job with the major airlines, and know all there is to know about the airplane, the airframe, the engine, and what's going through the student's mind (and fingers).
The bad ones...well, they're just not up to code. Maybe their methods are out of date. Maybe their benchmarks and rules-of-thumb are airport-specific, or apply only to certain situations. Maybe they don't communicate very well, or don't place proper emphasis on the most important subjects. Maybe they're not good at teaching students useful shortcuts or mnemonic devices. Or maybe they're just not that good at teaching, or don't know what the heck they're talking about. (Unfortunately, there are a lot of flight instructors out there like that.)
There's been a few things Herb has taught me that JM-1, my current instructor, has had to fix. I like Herb a lot and thank him for getting me through the bulk of my private pilot training, but he's not the best, and that's the honest truth.
Herb was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a terrible blow to him as a human being, a business owner, and a pilot. His flying will have to be severely restricted from now on. He can barely get from the truck to the flight school office some mornings, and that's a level walk of barely 30 yards. I feel truly sorry for the man and respect his valiant struggle against the disease. He is truly a good man, but like any man, he has his flaws. 

BARBARA: Herb's sensible, straightforward wife. Her body is a twisted parody of humanity, contorted into an awkward, shambling wreck by rheumatoid arthritis. Each of her ten fingers points in a different direction. Watching her take someone's debit card and swipe it through the reader is almost physically painful. She keeps a stiff upper lip, however, despite the hardships of running a flight school in this day and age. She's just as nice and supportive as Herb is, if not more: her encouraging words helped me get back on an even keel before and after my private pilot checkride. 

OLD JOE: The bent, wrinkled, smiling ass-kicker-turned-airport-bum. Serving in the Air Force for over 20 years, a veteran of two wars (Korea and Vietnam), Joe was and still is an accomplished pilot who flew everything from the F-86 to the F-111 and wound up with an armload of amazing stories to tell. Ask him about dodging SAMs over Vietnam, dogfights with MiGs, the burst of flak that blew out his windscreen and nearly blinded him, night raids over enemy territory, racing Phantom pilots to the ground, dust storms in Nevada that cut visibility to a quarter-mile. Those and other hair-raising tales, too numerous to mention, are just the beginning. Now, it seems, Joe's settled down to a quiet life of sweatpants, tennis shoes and sugared coffee. (I've never seen him without his blue Air Force baseball cap, either.) You can find him at the airport any day of the week, his gnarled hands in his pockets, his voice hoarse from years of shouting over jet engines. He tends the flight school when Herb and Barbara aren't around, and enjoys a good chat with anyone who happens by.

LENNY: The mechanic-in-residence at Herb and Barbara's flight school. Billing himself as a prop balancer, Lenny's abilities run the gamut from tightening bolts to full-on engine replacement. I don't have much on him. He has a crop of white hair, is about 5'6", drives a silver SUV, and is generally regarded as an idiot and a thief, even among his fellow mechanics. I can't say. I've never had direct proof, only secondhand accounts. And speaking of secondhand accounts...

SONJA: I've mentioned her before. The chain-smoking Dutch matron of the original flight school at Apple Valley, M______ Aviation. Short and plump, with a lined face, auburn hair and twinkling eyes, Sonja's accents are often heard on the traffic advisory frequency. (She pronounces "r" like "w.") Sonja is outgoing and helpful, but the way the pilots tell it, she's the next thing to a highway robber. Renting a hangar from her is like showing up to an IRS audit without last year's tax forms: she'll rake you over the coals if you're behind on your payments. And good luck trying to rent-to-own an aircraft from her. Sonja, the story goes, has a nasty habit of adding miscellaneous and superfluous charges onto any bill she processes. Repair bills always have an extra quart of oil tacked on for no apparent reason. Herb and Barbara once tried to lease an airplane from her, but couldn't make any headway at all toward ownership thanks to the superlative charges they paid each month. They finally gave up the ghost, told Sonja to stick it, and went and founded their own flight school down at the other end of the runway. (That's how there came to be two flight schools at this airport.) Neither Herb nor Barbara—nor hardly anyone who's had their plane serviced at her garage—has anything complimentary to say about Sonja.

PETE: The venerable, soft-spoken, eternally grease-stained master mechanic at M______ Aviation. You know him, you love him. What you don't know is that he and Sonja used to be romantically involved. When they split, M______ Aviation fell on hard times. For all Sonja's faults, she was extremely good at keeping the books. So Pete fired his inept secretary and hired Sonja back on, and the two cigarette smokers have run a tight ship ever since. Pete is a capable man and will loan out tools and equipment for free, but his reputation around the airport has been soiled by the price he charges for inspections (and his complicity with Sonja's money-grubbing).

I guess those are the major players. What a motley crew, eh? Quite a diverse representation of personality types we've got here. This should be more than enough to feed a drama and satiate it indefinitely. I can just see the episode titles now: "Bank Robbery at 5,000 Feet," "The Straight-In Narrow," "All's Well That Pays Well," "King of the Runway," "That Airplane Won't Wash," "A Nice Piece of Asphalt," "Sectionals and the Single Mom," "Bait-And-Master-Switch," "The Men on the Flying Trapeze," "Three (Hangar) Doors Down," "Tom Takes a Trip"...need I go on?

And think of the guest-stars! Elderly couples from Cable and Tehachapi. That thirtysomething NASA engineer with the kit-built canard plane. Warbirds from Chino, like Thunderbolts and Corsairs. Businessmen and peace officers in Pilatus PC-12s. (Why, the lieutenant-governor of California flew in once in his Cessna 414.) Glider pilots from Palmdale. Weekenders from Big Bear City, Lake Havasu, Las Vegas, Flagstaff and Phoenix: Comanches, Arrows, Barons, Skyhawks, Centurions and Cardinals. Cross-country trekkers from Alaska and the Midwest, in tail-draggers like Cessna 185s, Piper Cubs and Bellanca Champs. Amphibians from Catalina Island and the coast. The personal transports of millionaires and sports players, Caravans and Citations and Phenoms. 

Why, as I type these words, a skinny Japanese gent (with a T-shirt which reads Advanced World Aerobatics Championships, Team Japan 2008) is standing here, working on the computer in the pilot briefing room. Now he moves into the lobby and I can hear him conversing rapidly with his copilot, a shorter, balding man in an olive-drab flight suit. Who are they? Where are they going? What did they fly in on? How far is it from here to Japan, anyway? Can I hitch a ride, boys? 

Such drama!

someone owes me three weeks of my life

Greetings, sportsfans!

Yes, as you may have noticed, I've been out recently. I intended to keep up a more frequent blog in 2011, but working six days a week caused my entries to fall off sharply in late 2010. And I've sort of spaced out these last few weeks.

Why?

I've been sick.

For nearly three weeks, yes.

First they thought it was mono. Then they didn't. Then they thought it was again. Then, apparently, they thought it was "some sort of viral infection that will probably go away by itself."

Unquote.

Great. That's lucid.

I was prepared to ride it out. All I had was a fever and some aches. No sniffles, no sinus problems, no cough, nothing. I was living large, not going to work, mooning around the house in my bathrobe all day, Moby-Dick in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other. (But please don't ask me how much writing I've done during this sudden unexpected vacation. You're better off not knowing.)

Heck, I thought I was on the road to recovery. I was feeling pretty good. I even went back to work. It sure was grand to be back in the Mooney and flying 6,000 feet above the desert floor. My right ear refused to pop coming back down again, but I shrugged it off.

Then the sore throat began.

It came out of nowhere that very evening. All of a sudden I was wincing as I swallowed. A stabbing whack of pain bolted from my palate to my tonsils every time I did.

Certain people near and dear to me insisted that I go back to the doctor. (Thanks, Ma. Still looking out for me.)

So, one doctor's appointment and a gag-inducing throat swab later, it became apparent that, not only do I have strep throat, but also an ear infection.

Now that's just mah-veluss.

What we figure is that the ear infection came on first, which explains the fever and aches I had for the first two weeks. Then the strep throat bacteria just saw its opportunity (my immune system already compromised) and dove right in.

Oh well. At least I have a definite diagnosis now (and drugs, huzzah!).

I'm kind of glad it wasn't mono. That means I stand to recover from it sooner. Mono would've created an extremely awkward situation, given that my girlfriend doesn't have it.

Speaking of my girlfriend, she's been an absolute angel throughout all this. Despite long days babysitting five rambunctious children and giving her friends rides down to lesser Los Angeles, she's never missed the chance to come up here and look after me. I still get hugs and kisses even though I'm sick and greasy and disgusting. I feel at once fortunate and extremely humbled. Thanks, Miss H. You're a doll. When this is over, you and I are heading out on the town. I'll treat you to the evening of your life.

There's just one last thing left to settle before I can do that, though.

I want those three frickin' weeks of my life back.

Somebody owes me big for this, and I'm collecting.

The hammer-headed cross-eyed lame-brained weevil who gave me this ear infection is dead. I'm going to string him up by his thumbs and burn the epithet "WAX-MEISTER" onto his stomach with a branding iron. He's cheated me out of a fortnight's pay.

And as for the scene-stealing four-flushing irredeemable ass-hat who transmitted the rest of this bacteria unto me...well, if you're there when I catch up to him, I just hope you turn away. Just look in the other direction. You've been given fair warning. It'll put you off your lunch for the next 10 years. It'll make the Spanish Inquisition look like a pillow fight.

Anyway, that's why I've been out. More and better posts should be coming within the next few days. There's exciting news in the offing, on all fronts. Stay tuned...

P.S. Oh yeah, I have a question to ask you guys. Does anybody know how to change the color of your blog title with this new blog editor thingy? I want to make it lighter. Can't hardly see the dark blue print against the control cabin of that B-17...

an F-bomb in K-Land

So, says the storyteller, sitting in a chair by the fireside, a whiskey sour in his hand, did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally dropped the F-bomb in front of my students?

It was 2008. I was 22 years old, and teaching English under contract in South Korea.

Now, as much as I try to deny it, I'm rather sensitive about my image. Not in regards to my appearance or personality, oh no. Knock on my door any given day and I'm liable to greet you in a pair of stained cargo pants and a ratty old T-shirt with a stretched collar. The hand I'll extend for you to shake will likely be the one I was picking my nose with five minutes earlier. Spending time with me is a crash-course in sexual innuendo, judgmental commentary, godawful puns and (consequently) social tolerance.

I'm sensitive about my image as an American, though. One of the things I dread about traveling is being perceived as the "ugly American." You know, one of those strident, bulbous, glassy-eyed jingoists who came to Paris because they wanted to see "the LOOV-ruh," and spent the whole time complaining about how unfriendly the natives were and how weird and different everything was. These folks put up a stink if they can't find somebody who speaks English (fancy not finding an English speaker in a foreign country!). They never bother to read up on their destination's cultural and social mores, and therefore unknowingly and repeatedly commit crimes of etiquette. They mispronounce names so egregiously that passers-by are physically sickened. And they try to touch or carry away a piece of every monument or museum piece they see. These are the people who poke fun at the Queen's Guard standing outside the gates of Buckingham Palace; send sushi back and ask for it to be cooked longer; and spend their entire Mexican vacation in a deluxe resort and come away twittering about what a nice country it was. Loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless and ethnocentric, as Wikipedia puts it.

Every red-blooded American is allowed to jones for a double cheeseburger with fries while they're overseas, but jeez, people, don't harp on it. Just because the United States is the greatest country in the world doesn't mean you have to remind everybody within earshot about it. I don't want to be one of those ugly Americans. I am sometimes, but I try not to be. Americans have acquired such a stigma that I fancy I can see a little twinge of displeasure come into foreigners' eyes when I tell them where I'm from. The old "Oh-God-he's-an-American-this-is-going-to-be-just-great" kind of twinge. Not that I care, of course. I'm busy thinking I'll bet you've never fired a gun in your life, sucker. Bet you wish your country had the balls to enact a Second Amendment, don't you? This didn't happen much in Korea, I'm glad to say. When I said, "Miguk saram imnida" ("I'm an American"), people's eyes usually lit up...as long as they were under 40.

I'm not apologizing for anybody. I'm proud of the country I was born in. It's a swell place. There are a lot of intelligent, worldly, culturally-aware people here. But as usual, a tiny contingent of dimwits is mucking things up for the rest of us. Not every American tourist is ugly. And that's what I've set out to prove, no matter where I go. It's my unofficial mission, when I'm wandering the globe, to show people that Americans aren't evil, stupid, obtuse or ethnocentric. Whatever foreigners I meet are going to scratch their heads afterward and say, "Hmmm...that bloke wasn't all bad."

Well, except for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If I meet that guy on the street, I'm going to give him the wedgie of his life.

With this promise in mind, I set out to learn the Korean language almost immediately upon arriving there. No, before. I was familiarizing myself with the alphabet and basic grammar before I'd even left Wyoming. I was only a few months into my tenure at my hagwon (academy) on Geoje Island, but I was already starting to get comfortable in the lingo. I had the alphabet down, the number system was beginning to coalesce, and I even had some rudimentary sentences under my belt.

I was so proud of what I'd accomplished that I thought I'd trot out some of my skills before my students. Impress 'em, you know. Let them see that I was getting comfortable in their language, even as I was acclimatizing them to mine. Fair trade, you see. It would make 'em feel like I was making an effort, and that I wasn't some overbearing, self-centered xenophobe.

So I started calling out the page numbers of our textbook in Korean. You know, instead of "twenty" I'd say "i-ship." "O-ship-gu" for "59," etc. "Sam-baek-chil" in place of "307," and so on. Then I'd stand up there in front of the whiteboard and bask in the smiles, widened eyes, and delighted gasps of the little ebon-haired tykes.

Then it happened. The time came to turn to page eighteen.

There's a rather interesting quirk of the Korean language involving the number eighteen. It's spelled like this: 십팔. However, the pronunciation, ship-pal, is EXTRAORDINARILY similar to the Korean F-word, shi-pal (시팔). It's almost exactly the same, in fact. 십팔 is pronounced SHEEP-pal, but you don't aspirate the "p" at the end of "sheep." You can't hardly hear it. The Korean F-bomb is pronounced SHEE-pal, without any "p" at the end of "shee." Unless you're a lifelong Korean speaker, it's very, very difficult to hear—let alone pronounce—the difference between the two.

Just my rotten luck, huh?

Wondering why my entire class burst into peals of raucous laughter whenever I said "eighteen," I went to my Korean colleagues and asked them what the deal was.

Charles asked me, "How are you pronouncing it? Say it for us."

I did.

Eyes bulged. Jaws dropped. Hands clamped over mouths. A universal gasp of horror went up. Charles, who had perhaps been expecting it, was laughing. He put a friendly hand on my shoulder and said, bracingly, "You are saying the F-word."

A frayed little piece of paper went spinning through the whorls and eddies of my mind and burst into flames, disappearing forever. I suppose it was the last forlorn shred of my dignity, self-assurance, and pride. For the rest of the day, I slunk around campus with my head between my shoelaces, while Korean kids and teachers alike snickered into their sleeves.
It took me ages to live this down. Charles was a lot gentler than I deserved; he only ragged me once or twice a month for the remainder of my sojourn. The kids, however, wouldn't let it rest. Any time I paused in my lecture for more than two seconds, Arthur and Edwin would pipe up: "Teacher! Say eighteen! Eighteen!"

There were no consequences; no parents were called, no disciplinary action taken. No fire-breathing ajuma showed up at my apartment door, out for scalps. I don't even know if word got back to the school director. But me pulling the rug out from under my own attempt at cultural awareness was punishment enough. My worst nightmare had come true. Not only had I been guilty of the most grievous linguistic impropriety, but I'd also negated the pains I'd taken to disprove the theory of widespread American unworldliness. I'd done the exact opposite of my intention. My vaunted assiduousness had been thwarted by ignorance.

Oh well. It made for a good story.

fameless shalsity

Well, I think it's about time I dropped the other shoe and clued you all in about the fibs I told before. Capische? Congratulations to all who were brave enough to take a stab at the truth. None of you succeeded.

1. FALSE. I have never read the Harry Potter series cover-to-cover without stopping. I imagine it would take me a lot longer than 27 hours if I tried (although I'm a fast reader). In college, my buddies and I did watch all six Star Wars movies back-to-back, however. It took us 17 hours. We started at noon and finished up at five in the morning the next day. And indeed, we had pizza, and had to take breaks to go run around the building. We watched 'em in chronological order: new trilogy first (bleh) and then the original (WAHOO!).
2. FALSE. I did not see Dick Cheney speak live at my college. I saw the man himself, George W. Bush. Dubya came to my college and spoke live. And I told you the truth: I was impressed by how natural he was, how poised, how sure of himself. He didn't give a speech, he made no prepared statements. And he never stuttered once. He talked firmly, loudly, and professionally. He was funny. He gibed at the Illinois professor so much that he got us all laughing. I wasn't too sure where my Social Security money was going to end up by the time Bush had finished talking, but that didn't matter. In my mind, this incident cemented the belief that poor ol' George has been unfairly and unpardonably treated by the liberal media regarding his "speech impediments" and poor public speaking skills, which, as it turned out, were nothing more than stage-fright. Give the man a break, I say. Not every president is a natural-born Abe Lincoln or an FDR. Talk to him in person before you judge what you see on the news.
3. FALSE. It wasn't Montgomery, Alabama. It was Atlanta, Georgia. Thought you wouldn't get that one.
4. FALSE. I'm hands-down-triple-Z-abso-freakin'-lutely awful at riddles. I couldn't solve a riddle to save my soul. I always wind up thinking too hard, over-complicating things, overshooting the simpler answer...or worse, not thinking far enough outside the box. You could dangle a ten-billion-dollar bill in front of my face and say, "I build up castles. I tear down mountains. I make some men blind, help others to see. What am I?" I would walk away none the richer. The only time I ever solved a riddle was a month ago; I can only attribute that to a flash of genius borrowed from another dimension. My friend J.H. called me up and asked me "What gets bigger the more you take away from it?" Lucky for him I'd just finished planting a tree. "A hole in the ground," I said, and I was right.
5. TRUE. I've been in only one real car accident. The rest have all been minor things, like backing into stationary objects. The car I wrecked was a 1986 Chrysler LeBaron, dark red finish, leather interior, low mileage. Sweet gangsta Grandma-car. It was bequeathed to me by my grandfather, who was managing my late great-uncle's estate. And I wrecked it a mere three months and 1,000 miles after getting it for free. Nice one, Postman.
6. FALSE. I can't play the Jew's harp. I don't understand the concept behind it at all.
7. FALSE. There was absinthe at my last cocktail party, purchased and served with my own hands...but I didn't taste it. I was working the next morning and didn't want to take a chance on something 120-proof. Maybe next time. I'll let you know how it goes.

You probably think I made these too difficult. Well, you're right. I'm a hard master when it comes to tests and quizzes.

I'm going to go laugh myself silly with sadistic joy now. Try to have a good rest of your day, now that I've shattered all of your illusions of being on Jeopardy!

And by the way, the answer is "sand." 

the thin blue haze

No two days on the job are exactly the same.

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.

they call me "Sugar Doll"

That's right, sucker. I'm a sugar doll. You know how I know? Says so on this award here. A thousand congratulations to Jon Paul from Where Sky Meets Ground on receiving this award himself, and a thousand thanks for bestowing it upon me. Like him, I would've questioned whether or not I was a "sugar doll" but seeing as how Entrepreneur Chick (bless her heart) has called me a "dollbaby" before, I think I'm not too far out of bounds in accepting this. I hope I'm not. I'm tickled pink to have gotten this accolade. The rules are simple: list ten facts about yourself and pass the award on to four deserving bloggers. However, since this award was given to me by a man's man (who also got it from a man's man), I shall delight you with the most masculine facts I can dish up. It's time to man up, people. Ready? Let us begin!

1. The worst hangover I ever had was the second morning of the Korean New Year, Seoul, late January 2009. My expatriate friends and I had been out on a bender the whole night previous: pub crawling, karaoke, the works. I must've drank my weight in soju. My head was literally fit to split. I couldn't even move for the first hour. The second hour I inched my hand across the tousled bedspread and somehow managed turn on the TV. The third hour I groggily watched The Matrix and thought about trying to sit up. Eventually I dragged myself into a scalding hot shower and went out for a long constitutional in the freezing winter breeze. It worked.
2. I'm not technically "scared" of anything: spiders, snakes, murky water, the dark, or whatever. But I do not like centipedes. They're not the comeliest of beasts. And they move too fast.
3. I think millipedes (and tarantulas, and slugs, and eels) are cute, though.
4. I have this Microsoft computer game called Impossible Creatures. It's a strategy game, where you are the commander of an army and have to fight other people's armies. The cool thing about it is that you make your own units. You combine different animals together to make super-powerful hybrids: amphibious whales, winged lions, gorillas with wolves' heads, elephants with hornets' stingers, bulls with porcupine spines, you name it. Anything you can imagine, you can make. The best animal I ever created was a "rhinorpion": a rhinoceros with a gigantic scorpion's tail, and pincers coming out of its shoulders. It had horns, claws, and a poisonous tail; and it was a bruiser in close combat. It couldn't stand up to my brother's lobster-shark, though.
5. I have many different ideas about what I want to do when I get old and retire, most of which fit into some stereotypical mold or other. Sometimes I want to sit in a rocking chair on the porch and dispense unsolicited pearls of wisdom; sometimes I hope to go driving my Bentley through people's flowerbeds; sometimes I wish to wear a floppy straw hat and ride around on a donkey on hot afternoons, drunk as a fiddler. I think I'll just settle for owning a corner bar and listening to people's problems, though.
6. When we lived in Tennessee, there was an enormous grassy hill right next to the long gravel driveway we shared with our neighbors. With their permission, my brother Harlan and I would sled on it in winter. In summer, we'd get our trusty little red wagon (a genuine Radio Flyer), hop in and go rolling down that hill à la Calvin and Hobbes.
7. I like the name "Azerbaijan." It just rolls off the tongue, don't it?
8. I have six scars: one on my left index finger (soap-carving accident); one on the top of my left foot (a dropped plate); three chicken-pox blemishes on my torso; and one on my right forearm (a brush with a wine rack).
9. I love Star Wars. I hate Star Trek.
10. Okay, let's see...is this list masculine enough? I've talked about drunkenness, scary animals, combat, retirement-era hell-raising, boyish pursuits, exotic places, scars, and my discerning tastes in science fiction. Looks good to me, so let's finish off with the ultimate manly pursuit: speculating about the fate of the planet. If given the chance to gain immortality, I'd pass it up. I don't want to live forever. I just wish I could live long enough to see (a) the ocean floor explored completely; (b) contact made and diplomatic relations opened with sentient beings from another planet; and (c) what manner of fantastic beasts will evolve on Earth millions of years from now.

And now for the lucky four, in no particular order:

• Gently Said: Jerry, a 65-year-old man who works in a tall building in Houston, muses on the little everyday things that make life so strange and wonderful. One man's calming thoughts on dogs, dancing, word definitions, music, family, with a bit of short fiction thrown in. Help me out here, ladies. He is most certainly a sugar doll, right?
• It Was Dark, Stormy and I Lost My Serial Comma: Here is a doting father, great storyteller, lover of Fruity Pebbles, trafficker in dirty blog titles, all around funny guy, with a warm and entertaining blog. Spells "sugar doll" to me.
• Fortune Cookies and Men: Chloe C is hip. She's a native New Yorker. She's Chinese-American, a former Serial Monogamist, self-sufficient, independent, brassy and refreshingly straightforward. What more could you want in a sugar doll?
• Jane Jones: She still believes in summer days. She knows the secret nooks and crannies of the heart and soul. She's traveled to hidden places. She likes to cook for the fun of it. She's a not-so-apologetic country music fan. But most importantly, her writing is ethereally beautiful. Familiar, somehow; like a doll for the soul. Sweet in its truth, like sugar for the mind.

Congratulations to one and all! You've earned it. And now it's time for the six o'clock news. You don't have to read all of this if you don't want to. It's rather long. Just pick and choose the headlines that look interesting, like I do when I read a newspaper. AREA MOTHER PURCHASES NEW DOG You remember the new collie we got a few months back, Maggie? We had to euthanize her. She had a herniated esophagus or something. Couldn't stop hacking up bile. We had to put her down; it was either that or let her suffer. Not wanting my dog Harriet to be lonesome, Mom and Dad stopped by the Apple Valley animal shelter a couple of weeks ago, perused the selection and picked out a seven-month-old German shepherd. They signed the paperwork and a few days later (after he was "fixed") brought him home. We dubbed him Dash, and he's an absolute champ. Things were a bit rocky at first; he whined a lot until he got used to his surroundings, and we had to set some boundaries for him. (No climbing on the furniture, unless it's the old futon in the front room, and the kitchen is strictly verboten.) He still doesn't walk on a leash very well, and can't sit on command, but he knows his name and is learning to fetch the squeaky tennis balls he loves so much. At seven months, he's not fully grown; his feet, ears and tail are awkward and oversize. He'll grow into them, though. He's going to be a truly massive dog, 120 pounds, the vets reckoned. That's more than twice what Mom's old Belgian sheepdog Molly weighed full-grown! GARBAGE TRUCK GETS STUCK IN QUICKSAND The tremendous rains we had a little while ago washed the roads out something terrible. We had huge gouts and ruts and swathes carved out of neighborhood streets. We're so far out in the sticks that the roads aren't maintained by the county, so we have to shift for ourselves. The local water board got out its heavy equipment and began bulldozing the roads flat again, filling in the ruts. In this case, that created a problem. The ruts were filled, but they were filled with loose sand and smoothed over. I went out walking shortly after the work was finished, and when I stepped on this smooth and deceptively firm sand, my foot sank in up to the ankle. It wasn't quicksand, but it was the next best thing. I was out painting the eaves last week when I heard a peculiar banging sound in the distance. I looked around, but couldn't see where it was coming from. A short while later, I heard it again. Bang bang bang bang bang. I turned around. Behind the house, just up the block at the corner of Corto and Horizon, I saw one of the big maroon-and-white Avco Disposal garbage trucks. It was just sitting there, cocked across the intersection at an odd angle. As I looked, I heard the engine rev up. Dust began to fly. The truck started to shake, so violently that it began to make the metallic banging sound I'd heard earlier. Then it stopped, and sat quietly again. I'd been stuck in loose sand too many times not to realize what was happening. I saw a couple other people gathering about the truck, so I didn't just jump off the ladder, snatch up a shovel, and go and help. I kept painting, figuring that if the truck was still stuck by the time I finished the south side of the house, then I'd go and help. I was almost done with the southwest corner at the time. I finished, and the truck was still stuck. So I put everything away, opened the shed, grabbed a shovel, slung it jauntily over my shoulder, and strolled the hundred yards up the dusty road to the site of the disturbance. I must've looked a sight: work boots, cargo shorts, a Chargers cap (on backwards), sunglasses, and a red T-shirt reading THE PARTY HAS ARRIVED. Plus the shovel on my shoulder. Superdude to the rescue. The garbage truck, trying to turn around at the intersection, had run straight into the sand loosely packed into a former culvert, and had gotten stuck. I actually didn't wind up doing much. I shoveled some loose sand out of the way of the truck's tires, and tamped down some more behind them, but Kert (the driver) still couldn't get out. Another garbage truck came and tried to pull Kert's truck out of the sand with a chain, but then he started slipping. Finally, a semi with a winch was dispatched to the site and managed to yank 'er out. While we waited, I had a lovely chat with Kert, the woman who owned the house in front of which he'd gotten stuck (Jeanette, and her articulate, autistic, adopted son, Elijah), and a couple other neighbors I'd never spoken to before. It was a lovely day and rather nice to talk to new people. Elijah and I had an erudite discussion on why stop-motion and other old-fashioned cinematic effects were superior to computer graphics. ASPIRING BARTENDER POLISHES OFF MOST DIFFICULT LESSON That's right. On Monday I went down to Riverside and, after a grueling three hours and 40 minutes, passed both parts of the wickedly tricky Lesson 7, concerning shots. It wasn't hard, per se, but there were so many ingredients to remember and so many different mixing methods that I came close to forgetting myself. I just barely made the six-minute time limit on both parts of the test, even despite the rather raunchy mnemonic devices I'd learned. A strawberry cheesecake shot, for example (vanilla vodka, cranberry juice, and cream) has to be mixed, shaken, and poured. B-52s (Kahlúa, Bailey's, and Grand Marnier) need merely be layered. But Scooby Snacks (Midori, crème de bananes, Malibu coconut rum, pineapple juice, and cream) have to be shaken with the tin and then cracked like an egg into an old-fashioned glass. Like I said, tricky. But I passed it. Now I just have Lesson 5 (blended drinks) left, and then the final, and then a bit of POS training and job placement, and then...I'm a bartender! And in brief... I've resumed flying after taking a six-week hiatus (due to money issues which have been resolved thanks to Mom and Dad). I'm doing instrument work, where they strap a hood over your eyes so you can only see your instruments and gauges and not what's going on outside the plane. Then they tell you to do stuff. I think I'll put that in a separate post. Dad had some coworkers from Lake Tahoe down for dinner last night. I was the designated bartender. I only made one drink (a vodka martini), but I made it well. I was also introduced to a new libation I'd never heard of before, even at bartender's school: something called an "astronaut." I'll have to ask Wade about that one... Finally, the weather's been lovely. Sixties and seventies, sunny, breezy, hardly a cloud in the sky. Spring's already sprung in the desert, and once again I'm sweating on my 4.6-mile walks. Just wait'll it's still 90 degrees out at sunset. Sigh...I miss winter already. Not.