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.
Here it is, the long-awaited home brewing post. You'll probably wish I'd included more pictures, but those pictures, when we remembered to actually pause and take them, were either full of screw-ups and mistakes or could give away our secrets. So I'll include one or two and you can use your imagination to fill in the rest, like you would with one of Hunter S. Thompson's columns. (I finally got around to reading The Great Shark Hunt: Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1, a compendium of Thompson's essays from the mid '50s to the late '70s. Solid gold.)
And so, to business.
Joseph (previously known as Mr. JA on this blog) is a fellow I work with at Sejong University. For anybody who's close to us, or just anyone who lives on this island of a peninsula, it won't be hard to figure out who he is. Brant (also called Mr. BP) is a little more tricky to pin down, but that's how he would like it. How we came together isn't important. It was a baseball game or a horse race or some other venial sin. There was lots of beer involved. The topic of conversation turned, as it so often does, to the outright shittiness of Korean beer and ways of remedying it. (Not Hite D Dry Finish, nor even the Queen's Ale, can rise above cloying mediocrity.)
Well, as the beers disappeared and the innings (or heats or whatever) wore on, the talk got crazy. We started thinking about home brewing ourselves. A year ago this would have been absurd. We'd've had to MacGyver a brewing kit together from whatever junk we could salvage from the foulest alleys and byways in Itaewon, and heaven knows what we would have used for sanitizing—a bucket of cheap off-brand Purell?
Fortunately, we no longer live in such a benighted state. Korean expats who feel the need to rustle up a better brand of brew now have hope: Seoul Homebrew, located just across from the Wolfhound on Bogwang-ro 59-gil in Itaewon. A harrowing trip down two flights of narrow stairs leads you to a tiny concrete-floored chamber, which looks for all the world like a garage with no door. Wooden shelves line the walls, displaying plastic hydrometers, hoses, siphons, rubber bungs, carboys, air locks and beer buckets. Tubs of grains and hops are stacked neatly against the walls, giving the room the aroma of a small-time feed store. Stark yellow lighting comes from bulbs inexplicably stuck on the end of faucets embedded in the walls. A grain grinder, an industrial sink, and a storeroom filled with white grain sacks completes the scene.
Joseph, Brant and I, having hashed out the basic kit we would need to start, betook ourselves to this mystical place and stocked up. At first, we bought a single kit, consisting of a beer bucket (spigot included), an air lock, a hydrometer, and a laser thermometer; this was kept at Joshua's residence over in Yangcheon-gu, southwest of the Han River. Since then, both Brant—who lives in the Gangnam area—and I have acquired our own sets of buckets, hydrometers, measuring cups, air locks, grain bags, stock pots, and bottles. Especially bottles. We need at least 30 for each batch, and that takes a lot of drinking.
But I digress.
Let me take you through the process quickly so what I have to say next will make sense.
There are two ways we brew beer. The first uses malt extract. After thoroughly sanitizing our beer bucket, hydrometer, tools, pots, and spoons, we boil water. We dump in some dry or liquid malt extract, stir, cook the resultant mixture (known as wort) for an hour, add in some other kinds of malt extract at the thirty-minute mark if needs be, and then begin part two of the process. The second species of home-brewed beer is partial mash brew. The process is similar to malt extract brews, only this time, real hops and/or grains are put into porous bags and steeped in the wort as it's cooked. This adds extra flavor and kick, though it does complicate things a bit.
We then dump the hot wort into the fermenting vessel—in our case, a beer bucket. We add a few more gallons of water to cool the wort down, pitch the yeast, add it to the bucket, fill up the air lock with sanitizer, stick it on the lid, put the lid on the bucket and let the whole shebang sit for anywhere from five days to two weeks.
After the fermentation period is over, we bottle. We add sugars to the fermenting brew. The yeast will eat the sugars and excrete gas, making the happy bubbles we like to see in our beer glasses. After the sugar's added, the bottling process is fairly straightforward. We fill up our sanitized bottles, cap them with a capping tool and set them in some dark, lukewarm place for another two weeks. After that, they're ready to drink (after being properly chilled, of course). Our first batch, done at Joseph's sunny, airy apartment in the Yangcheon District, turned out largely as expected: flat and tart. It was supposed to be a nut brown ale. We tried the same recipe again with the second batch; my bottles received carbonation when the requisite two weeks were over, 'cause I screwed all my caps down real tight. The brew was still unsatisfactory, however. Our third batch, intended to be a partial mash Irish red ale, was a failure—or so we thought. We opened it up and our nostrils were assailed by a hair-curling bitterness. There was also quite a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bucket. Certain that the brew had somehow acquired a fatal bacterial infection, we dumped it. Sanitizing your equipment thoroughly is imperative. Otherwise, bacteria will elbow the yeast aside and devour the sugars, creating acid instead of alcohol and irrevocably ruining the brew.
But perhaps not as irrevocably as we thought. The guys at Seoul Homebrew later told us that we should have bottled anyway. Oftentimes a brew will smell bitter and be full of sediment but still be A-OK. Stung by the knowledge that we may have chucked a perfectly fine Irish red ale (and ₩60,000 apiece) down the john, Joseph, Brant and I rolled up our sleeves. We pulled out all the stops for our next brew: a chocolate porter. That one has been bottled. This is the first time we've used glass bottles...things really feel legit now. Nine of those bottles are sitting on the lower level of my jerry-built kitchen shelving unit. They'll be ready to drink come Tuesday night. On Friday evening, the boys came over to my place to inaugurate my own set of brewing supplies. It was the first time we'd ever brewed at my apartment. Miss H and I busted our humps to clean the place up and make it presentable (and open enough for three grown men to work). We just about managed it. The brewing process came off more smoothly than ever before, apart from a forgotten air lock left at Brant's apartment in Gangnam. This time around we brewed an IPA, somewhere between an extract and a partial mash. We used two different kinds of hops, as per the instructions. To add some holiday zest to the beer we also steeped some fresh-cut ginger in the wort for 20 minutes. It refused to cool down, preventing us from adding the yeast. So Brant and I stuck the bucket on a footstool in my bathroom and rigged up the shower head so that it would spray cold water on the bottom of the bucket. It worked like a charm. There are genuine wort coolers you can buy for your home brews, but who needs 'em? Just use your shower.
That weird red dot on the side is Brant taking a temperature reading with the laser thermometer.
The beer bucket is still sitting on that footstool. It's now under our desk. The sanitizer in the air lock is bubbling away contentedly as the fermentation process moves along. I check the temperature once every 12 hours or so. I'm trying not to be paranoid or obsessive or manic. I got the used hops out of the house as quickly as possible so the smell wouldn't upset Miss H, and thoroughly washed and put away all the supplies. I can't wait to taste it.
And that's how I got into home brewing in Korea. Yet another reason it's so good to be alive.
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.
Remember that Canon EOS Rebel T3i I told you that I purchased? Specifically for the purpose of taking gorgeous photos of Japan during my nine-day stint there and putting 'em up on this here blog?
Well, I forgot to install the camera drivers on my laptop before Miss H took the installation CD and useless paperwork back to Korea in my extraneous suitcase. So, yeah. Here I am in Tokyo with an excellent camera and a wagon load of jaw-dropping full-color images on the data card, and no way of uploading them onto my Toshiba.
Sorry guys. I guess you'll have to wait until August 9 for me to update you about how Japan went. And give you those aforementioned pics.
I will say this: Japan is awesome. Like Korea, but bigger, wider, cleaner, neater, tidier, politer, more relaxed, less uptight, more confident in its own skin. It's expensive, yes, but I'm being smart about it, as you'll soon see. I'm on a shoestring here. I've done Tokyo for four days and I shall depart tomorrow for Kyoto, where I'll spend 48 hours. Then I'll head down to Kumamoto for another two days, and then it's to Fukuoka and the high-speed ferry. Don't worry, I'll give you the skinny when I'm back in Seoul and have the drivers installed and the photos on my hard drive.
Boy, have I got news for you! I finally submitted another story somewhere! On December 11, after a long dry spell, I sent a short piece to Daily Science Fiction. They customarily take stories under 1,000 words in length. I figured there was no future for me as a writer if I couldn't write something that brief. So, in the space of roughly 30 minutes, I thought of an idea, slapped it down on paper, edited it, and submitted it.
And then, of course, I realized that I'd made a mistake. Like I always do. I hadn't properly understood DSF's submission guidelines. When they say "plain text only" they're not just talking about omitting all the fancy symbols and stuff. They mean sticking your Word document onto Notepad and thereby converting it to ASCII format. Before you submit it.
Great. Nice going, Postie. Way to break into the world of science fiction, fudging the submission guidelines and all.
I don't know what to expect. I submitted the story (entitled "The Maze") a week ago. DSF's guidelines said to allow three weeks for a response. I'm not sure whether they'll politely ask me to redo my formatting and resubmit, or tell me to hit the bricks. Either way my heart's in my mouth until I find out. I'm filling the time by kicking myself vigorously.
The second big chunk of news is that my brother (who is a stage actor in Los Angeles) e-mailed me out of the blue to ask me to help him with something. Apparently he's writing a novel, too. I'd hardly spoken to him in two years, so I didn't know what he was up to. But yeah: he's writing. And like me, he's encountering some degree of frustration. He asked me for help in honing his work-in-progress and revising it, which I was glad to do. I was quite flattered, in fact. In return, he's taking a look at some of my stuff! He's already give me loads of assistance with several of my short stories (more about that later). He may even aid me in my larger endeavors, like my NaNoWriMo project and my magnum opus.
This is extremely encouraging, to say the least. I had not been able to find a beta reader who was suitably well versed in literature and dramatic devices to be able to critique my work properly. Most people I gave my stuff to just corrected my grammar, or line-edited, or made a few vague comments about characterization. Not my brother. He's picking me to pieces, but doing so in an encouraging, engaging and lively fashion. This is precisely what I've been needing all this time. We've only been at it a week and I feel like we've accomplished a lifetime's work. It's the best feeling in the world. Thanks, bro. I only hope I've been as much help to you.
So, while I'm excitedly waiting to see what our family think tank churns out, I haven't been idle. I've resolved to get back on track with my writing and actually publish some stuff. I'm going to start writing like I actually mean to be a writer someday, in other words.
Discipline is key. Up to now I've been juggling too much. It's been difficult to strike a balance between work, physical activity, leisure and writing. Focusing too much one one threw the others out of balance. But now I'm going to take aim at one and let the others fall into place. I'll try to submit a short story (no matter how short) at least once every two weeks. I'm going to move forward with revisions on both my NaNoWriMo project and my science fiction novel. (I should really think of codenames for both of these works so I can stop referring to them as "my science fiction novel" and "my NaNoWriMo project.")
Progress will be made. Poor writing shall be made rich. Mistakes, shortcomings and inequities shall be rectified. Flaccid prose shall be made taut and strong and hearty. And in the end...sweet victory. I'll be on my way to fortune and glory (and $32,000 bottles of Scotch) in no time.
I'm not going to get much editing done on my novel tonight, I can already tell. I've gotten through Chapter 6, and I'm pleased to report that (to my eyes) Chapters 2 and 3 look largely all right. Chapter 4 might need a little maturation, like bourbon in a cask, plus some trimming and cleaning, like an oil lamp. Chapters 5 and 6 are holding my interest nicely. Perhaps I need to make the foreshadowing and inferences within them a tad more subtle. We'll see what that nice editor says.
Like I said, I'm scared of that manuscript. It's like a hedge animal in a topiary that's still a bit rough around the edges, and I'm the gardener. Only the hedge animal is alive, like in The Shining. If I do it wrong, it'll tear me to pieces.
Maybe I'll get to it after I finish this post. Yeah, maybe.
Anyway, on with my story:
I would not hesitate to assert that my brain is my most precious possession. Why, I couldn't do a thing without it. I've painstakingly trained it over the past 23 years to recognize obscure words, create fictive universes out of thin air, process abstract thought, make complex plans (and duly disregard them), precisely order my every thought and action, and conjure up vivid images of naked women at my command.
However, I've lately become concerned that my vaunted mind has reached the peak of its performance, and is beginning to backslide. It appears, due to some disturbingly frequent occurrences, that my brain is no longer developing or smartening. Quite the opposite, in fact.
One of these disquieting phenomena is my increasing inability to remember an appropriate word. When I'm speaking in an erudite manner (as I usually do), I will suddenly discover that the ten-dollar word I desperately need to bring the whole thing off eludes me. I've come up against these situations before, and my mind has never failed to supply me with a suitable and almost-as-erudite substitute. These days, I'm afraid, my brain merely fills the verbal gap with the first word to come to mind. And that word, usually, is anything but suitable. Consider the following example. Some months ago, before I left Korea, I was over at my friends' apartment. Adam and Elaine were my two English coworkers, and we'd often get together after work for dinner and a beer. I readily admit to being a little buzzed that evening.
Somehow or other, we got to talking about plant sex. That is, botanical reproduction. Specifically, flowers. (I must've introduced this topic by saying something like 'You know why [wind-pollinated] flowers are so cool? Because they reproduce by spraying their genetic material all over creation.') Having successfully tripped through an entire lecture on anthers, and stamens, and sporangia, and pistils, and all that horticultural pornography, I was nearing the climax. I was in fine form, too. "So the male flowers open up, and if the wind is right, then all of the—"It was at this point that my mind failed me. I faltered suddenly. I couldn't remember the word "pollen." It utterly escaped me. This was infuriating. I desperately needed that word to finish what I was saying. But that mattered little to my stumbling synapses. So while my brain was fumbling with an ulterior way of expressing the idea of male genetic material, my mouth prudently opened and said"—jizz—"Two things happened in the next split-second which I don't need to tell you about. A & E burst out laughing and I, though chuckling good-naturedly, went red. I'd never said the word "jizz" before in my life. I hated it. As a rule, I dislike any crass slang term for biological processes or material. (Watch, everybody's going to post one in the comment box now.) Sometimes I have difficulty saying the word "sperm," even as it relates to whales.
So to up and say a word like that, out of the blue, when my brain knew at least five other ways to say it which were more intelligent and highbrow...that was disconcerting.
This happens to me more frequently than I care to admit. I'm not sure what I can attribute it to. It's a bit early for Alzheimer's to be setting in, and I wouldn't have thought the relatively small amount of drunkenness I've dabbled in would do the trick. It's exasperating, whatever the reason. And puzzling.
Dumbfounding. Nonplussing. Bemusing. Befuddling. Confusing. Confounding, even.
Well, maybe I haven't lost the synonym game yet.
I went to two places on Tuesday that I've never been before in my life: General Fox Airport, 50 miles west of Apple Valley; and southern Riverside, within spitting distance of Corona, where the nearest scion of the National Bartenders School is located.
Let's begin at the beginning. Now that I've completed two solo flights (consisting of three touch-and-gos while staying in the landing pattern), it's time for me to step things up a notch. Now I need to start actually flying to different places. I have to complete, I believe, five hours of cross-country flight, including a flight of at least 100 nautical miles. Harold and I knocked off an hour and a half of dual cross-country on Tuesday. We traveled 52 miles from Apple Valley Airport west to General Fox Airport, which, if you've never heard of it (nobody has, including me) lies about halfway between Palmdale Airport and Edwards Air Force Base, near Lancaster.
Everybody should be familiar with Edwards Air Force Base, at least. Formerly known as Muroc, it's where a lot of groundbreaking aviation research has taken place. Or perhaps I should say "soundbreaking." It's the airfield where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his orange Bell X-1, "Glamorous Glennis." The X-15 tests were conducted there, too, as well as bunch of other stuff. There's oodles of history out there. My father used to work there, too (commuting over two hours round trip every day). The base sits at the end of truly massive dry lake. It's flat, wide and dusty: perfect for landings if the engines on your persnickety test plane suddenly decide to go out.
Anyway, the only difference between that day's flight and any other was that, before taking off, Harold and spread a chart on the vertical stabilizer of good ol' N42126 and plotted our course. It was pretty much due west. We'd overfly Victorville Airport, a rather uptight installation sitting in a bubble of Class D airspace extending up to 5,400 feet. That would be our first checkpoint. Then we'd pass another dry lake bed at El Mirage, roughly marking the halfway point. Finally, there'd be a big water tank on the last hill on the left before General Fox. That'd be our third marker. Then I'd call the air traffic controllers up on the radio and arrange a landing. Before the flight, Harold thoughtfully pointed out the ATIS, VOR, and radio frequencies I'd need. He also kept his flight guide (like a Triple-A guide book for private pilots) handy in the cockpit.
Oh, I'm sorry. Don't know what ATIS and VOR stand for? Welcome to my world. Piloting is sometimes just a load of alphabet soup. "ATIS" stands for "Automated Terminal Information Service." It's this nifty little report you get from the airport tower by tuning your radio to a certain frequency. They're updated often, sometimes ridiculously often if the weather's dodgy. They give you things like current wind speed, visibility, barometric pressure (so you can adjust your altimeter accordingly), and any special information you need to know. You tune into the ATIS, usually, before you take off from an airport and before you land at one, just to know what to expect.
The VOR is a navigational aid. We've come a long way from the good old days when airmail pilots used to navigate using roads and power lines. Now there are these handy-dandy VORs set up all over the States at regular intervals. "VOR" stands for "VHF Omidirectional Range." "VHF," as any dunderhead should know, means "Very High Frequency." They could've called 'em VHFORs, but that takes too long to say, and it sounds too Russian. Anyway, VORs put out a constant signal in the VHF range. By looking at a sectional chart of the area you'll be flying in, you can find out the frequencies for nearby VORs. Then, while in flight, you can tune your equipment to any particular VOR's frequency and use it to navigate. When you get out of range of one VOR, you can tune in to the next, and leapfrog your way across the countryside that way.
It's advisable to memorize all these frequencies (plus the airport radio frequencies) before you go anywhere—or at least write 'em down. That's going to be a tricky for me, so I'm putting a kneeboard on my Christmas list. A kneeboard is a vital piece of cross-country flying equipment. It's a clipboard that straps to your leg, onto which you can jot notes, attach charts and airport guides, write down instructions from the tower, whatever. I'm going to need that when I go out on my big 100-mile cross-country to 29 Palms...
Okay, anyway, back to the flight itself. Harold and I piled into the Cessna and off we went. I banked right once we'd reached pattern altitude. We skirted the mountains, and before we knew it we were almost over Interstate 15, which marked the boundaries of Victorville Airport's Class D airspace. That meant we had to give them a call and ask them if we could go through. Harold coached me on what to say beforehand.
"Victorville Tower, Skyhawk 42126."
Short pause.
"Skyhawk 42126, Victorville Tower, go ahead."
"We're about eight miles east of the airport at 4,500 feet, we'd like to transition your airspace to the west." (Oops! I forgot to give him my tail number again!)
"Skyhawk 26, clear to transition airspace to the west."
"Skyhawk 42126, roger." (Yes, I know 'Roger' is Army lingo and not Air Force, but sometimes I just get so excited. I had to forcibly restrain myself from saying 'over' after every transmission, too.)
This was per Harold's instructions. He said it was best to just call out to the tower and give them your identification (which normally consists of the make and model of your plane and the tail number). Then they'd call back to you and tell you to keep talking. That way you didn't just start talking only to find out later that the man in the tower was on the phone or something and didn't hear you. I asked for permission to "transition the airspace," meaning pass through that Class D bubble without entering the pattern or landing or anything. Permission was granted, so we flew on. When we got clear of the airport's airspace a few miles later, I called them and thanked them, and on we went.
We could already see El Mirage off our nose at about one o'clock. Don't know much about the place, myself. I think Chuck Yeager made a few emergency landings there when Rogers Dry Lake by Edwards wasn't an option. There were some long, low buildings off to the west of the dusty, suntanned lake bed. Harold informed me that his son-in-law lives there and is in charge of the organization that formerly administers speed trials for the race cars and speedsters which come to the lake bed to...well, conduct speed trials.
That was pretty neat.
Harold also told me to keep my eyes open, as a lot of gliders and RC airplane hobbyists operated from El Mirage, too. Nobody was out today, except for a lone streetcar sitting down in the middle of the lake with a few human figures next to it.
Our flight continued uneventfully. Well, as uneventfully as any flight can be. Flights aren't really uneventful. It's hard to count the coolest thing any human being could ever do in his or her life as being "uneventful." The view was amazing. I could see all of the San Gabriel Mountains off to the south; the vast Mojave Desert spread out beneath us to the north, west and east; and nothing but acres and acres of blue skies overhead, shot through with cirrus clouds and contrails. Somebody down on the ground was burning weeds or something, too, because two gigantic plumes of smoke were climbing slowly into the air beneath us and then spreading out into a flat gray sheet across the countryside. From above, the effect was rather like looking at a lily pad from the shore of a pond. You could see the stem coming up from the bottom, and meeting the pad itself, and then the pad stretching over the surface of the lake. Only these "smoke pads" were big, stretching over a wide layer of invisible air. It was really quite something.
The next time I solo, dang it, I am bringing my camera.
After a little hunting about, we located the water tank on the hill. And then, by leaning forward at a 45-degree angle and squinting a lot, we were able to make out General Fox. We could barely see the airport buildings and the dark streak in front of them. Harold informed me that the streak was a park right next to the airport, over which we'd fly as we descended toward the runway.
It was right about here, ten miles out, that Harold warned me to "keep my eyes peeled." There was occasional jet traffic between Palmdale and Edwards, he said. We'd be trundling right across the proverbial highway in the sky in our slow little Cessna, and we didn't want to get run over if we could help it.
Fortunately, no jets made their appearance. I swung out to the northwest a little (taking care to avoid the restricted area that surrounded Edwards AFB, a double green line on the GPS) and set up for my landing approach. About ten miles away, we tuned in to Fox's ATIS broadcast. It was "Information Alpha" (ATIS broadcasts are labeled phonetically by letter, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.).
About eight miles away, I called air traffic control.
"Fox Tower, Skyhawk 42126."
Another short pause.
"Skyhawk 42126, Fox Tower, go ahead."
"Skyhawk 42126 is eight miles east of the airport with Information Alpha, we'd like to make an approach." (Ha! I remembered my tail number that time!)
"Skyhawk 26, cleared for a two-mile final to runway 2-4, report the freeway."
I hadn't been cleared to land, but I hadn't asked to be, either. The tower's transmission meant that I was okay to set up my landing approach (a long, two-mile descent, straight in). Of course, I had to let them know when I was over the highway. Highway 395 (or maybe it was 14) ran just two miles east of the airport. The tower used it as a sort of rangefinder for incoming traffic.
I set up my landing and called the tower when I was over the freeway.
"Skyhawk 42126, cleared for landing 2-4," they replied.
When an air traffic controller in a tower tells you something, it's customary for you to repeat it back to him (or her), just to let them know that you (a) heard, and (b) understood. Nobody in tower wants to tell a plane to stay in the pattern only to see them coming in to land on top of another plane a few minutes later. Harold cautioned me to repeat the tower's instructions back to them verbatim at this point.
"They tape record these conversations, you know," he said. "You want to repeat it back to 'em just like they gave it to you, so just in case something happens, you can say 'You cleared me to land!' and the tape will back you up."
So I was very judicious about repeating my landing instructions back.
"Skyhawk 42126, cleared to land 2-4," I said, heart thumping.
They've got a big ol' runway there at General Fox, wider and longer than Apple Valley. It had more VASI lights, too. I was a bit high to start out with, and got a little low, but in the end I evened 'er out. The two leftmost lights were white, and the two rightmost were red. I touched down pretty smoothly (even despite the bumpy breeze down near the ground), braked, and exited the runway.
Ah, but it still wasn't over yet. Fox is a towered airport, remember? You can't even move on the ground without asking permission. As soon as I got off the runway, shut off the carburetor heat, put the flaps up and set the transponder to "standby," I called up the tower and told them I was off the runway and ready to taxi. They told me to taxi to the parking area, and I repeated it back to them dutifully. Then we went. It was easy as pie. Harold had been here before and knew right where to go. We passed a handsome twin-engine Cessna, pulled up next to a brown-and-white 172, stopped, and shut down.
And that was it. We were there. (WOOT!)
Harold and I stepped inside the airport cafe (considerably larger and better appointed than Skidmarks at Apple Valley) and had a little breakfast. He had toast and I had two eggs. Harold let me have a piece, though. He's a chum. We ate, talked a bit, and watched the airfield outside (not much traffic today, thank goodness). I was amazed to see, in the distance, the giant white windmills at Tehachapi appear as minuscule white sticks on the slopes of the mountains. It took two hours to reach them from my house by car. I was dumbfounded that they were this close by air.
I picked up the tab (might as well go the whole hog; I was paying for Harold's time and the airplane). Then we got back outside, snapped on the master switch, listened to the ATIS once again (things hadn't changed much), fired up the Cessna, got taxi clearance, taxied to the run-up area for runway 24, ran the engine up, got permission to take off and depart the pattern on the downwind leg (making a U-turn after taking off), took off, and departed the pattern on the downwind leg.
Peachy-keen!
The return trip was pretty much the outbound one in reverse, except the "smoke pads" had gotten wider. And that car I'd seen on the dry lake bed at El Mirage was now ripping around and kicking up dust. And I didn't have to ask permission of Victorville Tower to transition their airspace this time, because we flew back at 5,500 feet instead of 4,500, which meant that we were above that bubble of Class D airspace (yippee!).
I made, if I may say, a pretty darn good landing back at Apple Valley. We parked, shut down, and that was it.
I now have 1.5 hours of cross-country time in my logbook.
I jumped in the Jeep and headed right back to Highway 18, thence to I-15, and headed south for Riverside. I was a man on a mission. Determined not to spend the winter flipping burgers to earn a little flying money (and my parents' rent), I've resolved to go to bartender's school. If I'm on the ball, I could get at least one flying lesson's worth in tips per night. Also, I'd have yet another occupational notch in my belt for my next overseas adventure. I could work as barkeep in Australia, for example (in case they're at a lack for journalism jobs too). Plus it'd be just plain fun to work in a bar, I think, even if it was busy...as long as I was well-trained.
To that end, I sought out a bartender's school nearby. The closest one I came up with was a scion of the National Bartenders School, headquartered in L.A. This branch was in Riverside, a somewhat dilapidated, scummy urban area near San Bernardino. The drive was about fifty to sixty miles, lasting an hour to an hour and a half (on bad traffic days, which are depressingly common down there).
That's a hell of a commute for bartender's school, I know. But my only other alternative was Palm Springs, and though that's certainly a better neighborhood, it's a lot farther away.
The school's address was 12702 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside. Now, Google Maps gave the directions as follows:
Merge onto I-15 South. 49.7 miles
Merge onto Ca-91 East toward Riverside. 1.9 miles
Take the McKinley Street exit. 0.01 miles
Turn right on McKinley Street. 0.03 miles
Turn left on Magnolia Avenue. 0.00 miles
12702 Magnolia Avenue will be on the right.
Simple, right? Drastically more simple than most other Basin-based directions, I can tell you that much. Content in my navigational prowess (I'd just flown to an airport I'd never been to before, you know) I hummed and whistled as I drove down through Cajon Pass, past the San Andreas Fault, and finally came upon the junction of I-15 and the 215.
Now, the 215 goes directly to Riverside. There is, in fact, a big green sign hanging over it that says "RIVERSIDE" on it. So, of course, even though my directions said "Merge onto the I-15 toward Riverside" and said absolutely nothing at all about getting on the 215, I got on the 215.
I began to realize my mistake when, after reaching the 91 (considerably later than I would've reached it had I not diverted down the 215), I ran into a traffic jam.
I got off the highway at Mission Inn Avenue, pulled into the near-empty parking lot of the Amtrak station, called up my dad at his office, and asked him, all contrite-like, if he could kindly find me a way from Point A in Riverside to Point B in Riverside.
Turned out I was more screwed than I thought. I could either pull back out onto the freeway and brave the traffic jam (McKinley Street was just another couple of exits farther along) or I could drive further down Mission Inn Avenue until I hit Market Avenue, which eventually (after four or five miles) became Magnolia. That would be, as my dad called it, "stoplight hell," however.
I heaved a sigh, thanked Dad, glanced toward the highway, and pulled back out of the parking lot and back onto California 91. I had at least enough sense left, after the last hour of terminal silliness, to notice that I was going west. I would be approaching the McKinley Street exit from the opposite direction indicated in my directions, so I would therefore need to turn LEFT on McKinley after exiting.
I was so busy noticing this that I failed to notice the turn signal go green. The FedEx truck behind me had to remind me with his horn.
When I got to the McKinley Street exit, I accordingly exited. The exit was one of those 180-degree turns that dumps you out at street level in the opposite direction you were heading when you exited. So, therefore, I actually DIDN'T have to turn left on McKinley after all. I still had to turn RIGHT.
So, anyway, I was on McKinley, after failing to notice that turn signal go green as well, necessitating a honk from the youth group van on my six.
You know, there's a multitude of reasons why flying is better than driving, and the utter lack of honking horns is one of them.
I turned left on Magnolia, drove past 18800 Magnolia Avenue, didn't see another address number for a quarter mile, and then ran across 12402 or something.
DANG! I'd missed it.
Did I mention that Magnolia Avenue is a one-way street?
I crossed the railroad tracks, finally managed to find a left-turn lane, whipped a U-ey, and came roaring back down Magnolia. I reached the intersection of Magnolia and McKinley after a few minutes, whipped another U-ey, and then went north back up Magnolia, this time more deliberately.
You'd better believe I took the first available right turn after 18800. It was a strip mall. I drove down the row, peering at signs and banners, not seeing anything about bartender school. Frustrated, I pulled out of the parking lot, prepared to go further down Magnolia and take the next available right. As I was sitting at the light, waiting to turn, I glanced over at the strip mall's master billboard (the one where all the shops and stuff were listed). It was then that I noticed the address number stenciled upon it.
12702 Magnolia Avenue.
Turns out the bartender's school was on the OTHER side of the building, where it was absolutely impossible to see from the street, thanks to the proximity of the building next to it and the narrowness of the parking lot in between. I found this out after whipping two quick rights: one onto Magnolia and one off, through the car wash, and back across the side street into the strip mall's parking lot once again.
I got inside the school just as the day's free demonstration was beginning. Tasha, the head teacher, greeted me as I walked in, slapped a loaner textbook into my hand, bade me sit anywhere I pleased, and began a 45-minute lecture on highballs. We covered everything from Scotch-and-water to Freddy Fudpucker. The class, though extremely informal, was professional. Tasha was swearing up a blue streak and telling us off-color stories about her bachelorette party, but during that short lesson I learned a lot about serving drinks in a busy bar. This school is thorough, if I didn't mention that before. Most schools would just teach you how to make drinks. This one teaches you to mix drinks fast, to memorize a drink's ingredients mnemonically, to operate a POS system, and even the finer points of public-house conversation.
After the lesson concluded I got the chance to talk to Tasha in her office. She told me that, for the school's flat fee of $595, I could sign up and take as long as I needed to to learn how to be a bartender. The classes ran on two separate schedules, weeks and weekends. I could attend whenever I pleased, however long I required. They had two sessions per day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. All in all, that was more flexible than I'd dared to hope. They had speed trials at the end of every class, twelve drinks in six minutes. If you could keep up that pace, you could serve drinks in any bar during happy hour, Tasha claimed. I now had the skinny: scheduling, fees, lessons, teaching style...the works. All that remained was to say yea or nay. I thanked Tasha, grabbed a copy of the schedule, and walked out.
I deliberated for a time. Was that godawful commute really worth it? Would I get my money's worth out of this? Should I wait until later? But ultimately I decided to go for it, for the reasons I've listed before. It just seemed too reasonable, too convenient, too cost-effective, and too...exciting. I never used to think of myself as a guy who actively sought out and took on challenges, but it's beginning to look that way, kind of. I want to see if I can learn to memorize a hundred drink recipes, and mix twelve drinks in six minutes. I want to be a bartender.
I managed to find my way back out of Riverside the way I should've come in, without incident. Good thing, too. I had a headache when I finally got back to the house, and was just generally wiped out. Flying cross-country and navigating the congested Basin highways in the same day will do that to you.
Boy, have I ever got things to tell you.
First, I no longer have a job. I was dismissed. You remember some of the stuff I've written about before in untoward happenstance and William Zinsser, eat your heart out? Well, it's caught up to me at last. My incompetence has finally devolved upon me instead of innocent people. Here's how it happened.
The straw that broke the camel's back fell on Wednesday. I made an error, yet another one in a long string. I got the date wrong on an obituary again. I'm not sure how. The obit was submitted without a date, and I suppose I must've called and asked the mortuary for one, and then put it down wrong, somehow. (Sometimes I don't know where my mind goes. I thought I was past doing stupid mental fumbles like that.) More shameful still, the date was blatantly wrong: the date the obituary was submitted was September 23, and I put down the date of service as September 20. Temporally impossible, you see. Anyway, it got past the editors (I don't blame them at all; I was the one who wrote it wrong in the first place) and the customer who'd placed the obituary noticed it. They called me on Wednesday, and wanted to rerun it. Of course, my employer's policy is to rerun an ad for free if there's an error. But before we could rerun for free, I had to go tell Ron. He told me to rerun it, but he also said he was disappointed in how many mistakes I was making. He called me into his office later and gave it to me straight: because I was making so many mistakes, because I'd made it clear that I was not yet ready to be a reporter at that newspaper, I was now out of the running for the full-blown reporter's position which I'd originally applied for. (I'd had no idea that I was still in the running for it, but that didn't make what he said any easier to hear.) He said he liked me, but it was apparent to him that I wasn't yet ready.
I thanked him for telling me, and asked where we'd go from here. He said I'd continue working in the capacity of editorial assistant, filing obituaries and letters to the editor, and then (after I'd said that I understood and thanked him for informing me) I left the office.
This was a far cry from being fired, but it felt about as bad. I don't know about you, but when I get criticized, no matter how just or gentle the criticism, I feel horrible. Hearing Ron's voice as he told me how disappointed he was, seeing that disappointment in his face and frustration in his eyes, I suddenly felt as if a balloon filled with ice water had exploded in my chest. It was a struggle to keep up eye contact. I'd made this mistake before, and lots of different ones besides. Ron didn't want apologies, he wanted corrected behavior. And I was letting him down. He'd given me this position out of the goodness of his heart and I was letting him down. That's why my veins suddenly froze and my knees nearly failed me. It wasn't because I was being criticized. I was ashamed of myself for disappointing him. I was mortified, but also a wee bit grateful. He had told me why I was out of the running. Furthermore, he was very gentle. He had criticized me very gently. Not that I'm weak or insecure or anything, but I probably would have died of shame if he'd been nasty about it.
So the obituary was rerun the next day, Thursday. Thursday was an ordinary day, although I was extra-judicious in making sure that the dates on that day's obituaries were correct. At about 5:00, Ron came by my desk and told me to drop by his office on my way out.
I didn't think anything of it. I thought he might ask me to come in on Friday, or Monday. I came into his office at 5:30 and sat down unbidden on the soft leather couch in front of his desk.
And Ron told me it was my last day working at that newspaper.
I was half-stunned. I couldn't pretend that I hadn't seen (or sensed) it coming. I was actually surprised that I hadn't been fired the day before. But it had only been postponed for a day. As I sat there with my nerves slowly bleaching, Ron gave me the story. He reiterated that he was disappointed in the mistakes I'd made, even with something so simple and innocuous as obituary writing. There were some things I should know by now, he said. I still had much learning left to do and some things about news writing that I needed to work on, and until that time, my employment with the newspaper had, as he put it, "run its course."
He was not speaking to me in the usual way he spoke to me (and the other reporters). He normally spoke quickly, quietly, almost harshly: disjointed, rapid-fire admonitions, recommendations, and suggestions, with a good scattering of colloquialisms and idioms sprinkled in. I had overheard him talking to Patrick (another reporter) earlier that day, exhorting him to either finish the story he was working on or, failing that, find something else to do.
"We've got to get on this thing. We've got to pull our fat out of the fire. When you fumble the football, you've got to pick it back up fast."
On Thursday, as he had Wednesday when he told me I was out of the running for a reporter's position, he adopted a new tone: slow, cohesive, gentle. He was very nice about the whole thing. He could've lambasted my incompetence and told me to get the hell out of his sight. He had every right to.
But he didn't. He made it clear that he was letting me go, and he told me the reason civilly, reasonably and straightforwardly. He didn't yell, he didn't kvetch, and he didn't say "You're fired." Despite my shame, despite the acute deadness that was spreading everywhere throughout my body as I heard this, despite how angry I was at myself, it didn't feel like I was being fired. What's more, everything he told me about my performance was true; I could see that immediately. A child should be able to do obituaries correctly, and call for verification when needed, and make sure that all dates and addresses are true and correct before publishing them.
But I couldn't. Or wouldn't. So I was being dismissed.
Ron signed what was now my final time sheet. I thanked him again for informing me and giving me this opportunity, then turned around and walked out of the office.
I felt like I was moving through the cloying, dense air of a dream as I walked back to my desk. I strode mechanically through the newsroom, past reporters whom I'd come to know by name and personality. It was strange to me suddenly. I was an outsider again. Though I hadn't liked the job, it was still a sudden and saddening thing to be leaving. Not to mention shameful.
Didn't even make it a whole month, I thought. That phrase kept pounding through my head as I cleaned out my desk and collected my lunchbox, AP style guide, and a few papers that I wanted to keep. (Ron's hand-typed list of journalism basics was one of them.) My guts were curdling. My heart felt like it was shriveling up. My hands and feet and head felt like they were miles away from my body. I couldn't believe it. I'd screwed the pooch. I'd been dismissed from a job. And it was entirely my fault.
And then, desk was bare. The wall next to it was clean of notes and reminders. Old press releases and business cards were stacked neatly on the old desk behind. My possessions were in my hands. It was time to leave.
Unable to walk out without saying a sort of goodbye, I wrote Thanks again on a scrap of notepaper and left it lying on top of the stacked documents. I stopped by Ron's office once more to shake his hand, say thanks, and apologize. He told me if I ever needed help or a recommendation then he'd supply it. That was too much for me. I left the office with one last over-the-shoulder "Sorry." I walked out without saying a word to anyone. I couldn't bring myself to speak to them. I was just too ashamed.
For the rest of that day I really sympathized with whoever invented hara-kiri.
I had to call up the staffing service that had placed me with the newspaper and let them know I'd been dismissed. I didn't sugarcoat it, but I didn't beg for sympathy by saying I'd been fired, either. They let me know that they'd process my final paycheck and send it along...and then they said "Good luck."
Yeah. Right.
I knew I had to keep myself busy or I'd start thinking. Thinking about how big a failure I was. Thinking about how many people I'd inconvenienced. Thinking about what a piss-poor a writer I'd always been. Thinking about how much of a loser I must be for not holding down a job (a temp position, for Pete's sake). Thinking of a lot of other condemning, gut-churning, excoriating, reproachful things.
I did pretty well. I kept reading The World Turned Upside Down, watched a couple of movies, and planned out all the errands and cleaning I needed to do on Friday to prepare for my birthday party (more about that later). My mood improved as the evening wore on. Yeah, okay, so I'd been fired...dismissed, anyway. It was my own fault, yes. But it wasn't the end of the universe. I could get another job, somewhere. I was now free to go to Australia, what's more. I'd been given a warning, that was all. This was a small dose of the real world. I'd been given an opportunity, blown it, and had reaped the consequences. At the very least, I should take a lesson from this and do better next time. I wasn't an idiot, just a very, very slow learner.
By the end of the evening I was getting excited about the party (which I shall inform you about later), and had largely shaken off the shame, depression, malaise and self-loathing that had been gnawing at me.
Then I went to bed, and shut off the light.
And thought.
