Home is Where we Hook-up

The following is something I grabbed from a trailer towing newsletter we get. I’ll give the guy the credit for it, but I think he lifted it from somewhere as well. Nonetheless, I got a laugh from it…

Resolutions You Can Actually Keep…
Are you sick of making the same resolutions year after year and yet you never keep them? Here are some resolutions that you can actually accomplish! Enjoy! 🙂

1. Take up a new habit: maybe smoking!

Paula once asked me if I ever just sit back and enjoy a moment without thinking about the downside. The answer is that I do,but not for long.I suppose you may construe that as a character defect but it is not exclusive to me. In fact after flying heliopters for 33 years I find that most of my pilot friends think the same.

I recall a story,it may be a biblical one ,of a leader who was selecting soldiers . He marched the soldiers,weapons drawn through a hostile area on a hot sunny day. When the soldiers came upon a water hole,they were allowed to drink. The soldiers that drank from the water with their weapons in hand were selected,those that cast their weapons aside to drink were not.

When I think back on this summer I remember the good times as is ,thankfully, generally our nature. When I sleep my subconscious takes over. For every scene of floating in a warm sea just off a beautiful tree shaded beach I have other recollections or reenactments.

It’s just the way I live. I can appreciate a beautiful mountain setting with a village perched on the rocky hillside. When a fire is whipping up the hillside into the village the scene disappears and another takes its place.You are low over the village,houses are starting to burn on the perimeter and you spot the horse.He is tethered in a pasture on the edge of the town and he is going doing all he can to break loose. To no avail. Drop and drop more water around the pasture while a home starts to burn. You are out of water and its time to go and get more water. When I get back to the village with another load of water Ihave a choice to make.

Days later,its a day off and we are hiking through a mountain side village. The houses are so close ,neighbors could reach out the window and shake hands with each other. Its a beautiful place to visit. I look around at the 6 foot wide streets. not a hydrant or water source in site.Good luck ,if a fire ever gets going in here. Its just the way I think

Beautiful sights,wonderful perfect days enjoying the sights and culture of Greece interspersed with tragedy and more frightening events than anyone needs in a lifetime.

I really make every effort to enjoy the moment. Like Jimmy Buffet wrote, “its 24 hours and maybe 60 good years,its really not that long a stay”

I was talking to a friend this Spring via today’s medium of choice, the email. He was on the fires in Florida and things were settling down and he was going to do some local touring. Why not, enjoy the local area and have some fun.We had been mostly forwarding each other stories through the summer.Two days ago he wrote to tell me he was in full hospice care at home and the prognosis was not good. I’ll miss him. I hope he had a good run. I think he did. I do enjoy those moments when the world is just perfect. I wish they were longer.

I was up 12 feet in the air in the dark when I heard the news. Climbing down the gear leg of the SkyCrane with my flash light I walked over to our interpreter/ pilot Kostas and asked him for a little more information.

Yes, he said, it is a critical rescue mission that will begin tomorrow at first light . I always enjoy Kostas’s sense of humor and get his jokes right away so I waited to hear just how a critical rescue could wait 24 hours. The goats of Anti Milos Island are out of water and we will be flying fresh water to their water hole he said.

So it takes a day to plan this mission ? No, but the press need to be notified so that they can send a film crew. The Mayor of Siros has organized this and SKED ( our controlling agency) needs to approve the plan

So at least we have a plan, I said. Maybe,said Kostas.
During that day our “plan” was fine tuned.We would launch at first light.I never hear the phrase “first light” without thinking about my friend Wade Green ,a helicopter pilot for 40 years and countless early morning missions.When I retire, I never want t hear anybody tell me to be going anywhere at first light. How many times Wade continued, have you preflighted in the dark launched at first light and got to where you needed to be only to sit on your butt for the next couple of hours . Too many times I thought and this would be ,plus one.

Since the mission would be based from the Island of Mikonos a mechanic would be on the flight crew, making it four for breakfast at the airport cafe on Mikonos.Dreaming. The mechanic, in this case our crew chief Mark would finish his night maintenance get a short nap in the early hours and jump aboard.The only time mechanics get any real sleep is when one of us hero pilots is telling another fascinating tale of brilliant airmanship.

The flights off on time with the back light of another sunrise casting an angelic glow over my fellow goat rescuers. We pick up water at Marathonas Lake and head offshore south of Athens , Frank Sinatra is singing “somewhere beyond the sea” on the ipod and life is good.

Its going to be a costly mission. Marathon Lake to the goat water hole shows about a 100 miles on the G.P.S. another 65 miles further to Mikonos Island for fuel and hopefully a suitable water source. About a 6 to 8 hour mission to get 5 to 7 thousand gallons of water to some goats.Well, who am I to place a price on saving Billy and the rest.

The water drops go well and breakfast never happens. Big surprise! Our fourth load is to be our last according to SKED. We speculate that perhaps since the media has failed to show and document the current governments sincere concern for the suffering goats ,that will be enough water. I compute the cost on the ferry trip back to our airport. Forty two thousand pus fuel for 5000 gallons of water, runs about 11 bucks a gallon.

Sip that water Billy and say a goats prayer for rain .

Sometimes I come across messages or blogs about what the definition of a “Full-Time RVer” is. It seems to me that anyone who lives in an RV, with no other home base (or sticks and bricks, the travelers preferred jargon) would qualify for the term. The debate comes from those RVers who regularly travel about the country, not stopping in one destination for longer than, say, one 3 month season – pick your favorite. This train of thought goes on to assume then, that the people who live in an RV full-time with no other home base, but never move year after year are nothing more than regular trailer dwellers. Now, the authors are always quick to point out that there is nothing wrong with that, but there does seem to be some stigma about taking full advantage of having a home on wheels.

When we arrived at the Living Forest RV Park, we knew there were folks living here full-time in their RV’s, but it was a day or two before we saw the extent of their “nesting”. These people were not going anywhere anytime soon. Really, it gave a whole new meaning to Full-Timing!

And to avoid any confusion – we are no longer at the Living Forest, I just had to share these funky add-ons with you.

Some of you know when I left Bishop to travel with Keith, I was under serious obligation that I’d better “keep in touch”. I saw the challenge in this immediately, as I already had several people on my email list and usually only 30 minutes internet time per day at whatever local library or cafe I happened to be using that day.

I knew just the sort of letter I would write, it would be akin to those letters some people send out at Christmas to catch all the distant friends and relatives up on the goings on. The greatest example I had were the letters from a friend of my parents, Carrie Martini – or as we called her Momma Carrie. She didn’t wait for Christmas to send her mass letters, they came a couple times a year, and I couldn’t wait to eat them up, word for word. She and her husband, Allen, lived in San Luis Obispo in a multi-level home with their 3 kids, some cats, a couple dogs, a half dozen or more daycare kids they babysat, and a foreign exchange student from time to time. To visit the Martini’s was like going to Disneyland without waiting in lines. They had a life sized playhouse in the backyard and a jacuzzi, and movies (the size of records) that we could watch almost anytime.

Momma Carrie was the perfect story teller and the best listener I ever met. Her ability to listen so well probably accounted for her great letters. She wrote about her own children’s antics, or the trials of a foreigner coping with schooling in America, or a chicken pox scare in the daycare. Whatever the stories, and the characters in their lives, their home and family, we came to know each one through her letters. So, when it came time for my own mass letter writing campaign, I set myself to imitate the style I had known and loved as a child, the letters from Momma Carrie.

Carrie suffered a stroke some time ago, leaving her mostly paralyzed and unable to speak. Unable to speak, but certainly not unable to communicate. Through the years she and Allen devised any number of ways to communicate as they traveled the U.S in their motorhome. Allen’s a Harley Man, so they towed a Harley with a sidecar to go out on excursions. I saw Allen and Carrie this last summer, when they came to visit my parents. The years had not been kind to either Carrie or my dad, he in a hospital bed, and she in a wheelchair – neither able to speak, but OH, the looks and grins, “Hey Kid” Carrie’s look said, “Hey back” from my dad. This was a friendship that carried back way before my time, and it was no secret this was the last time they would visit each other, their eyes said their silent goodbye’s. My dad passed that July.

Allen wrote last night to tell me, with a heavy heart, that after 47 years together, Carrie passed away in her sleep yesterday morning. People frequently touch our lives without ever being aware. I am glad I got the chance to tell her this summer that she was the very reason I began writing my emails to friends and family. My emails have changed to a blog now. I am fortunate to have about 200 people in my email list and the blog is just a better way for people to drop into our lives when they get the time.

Rest in Peace, Carrie Martini, you will not be forgotten.

I am working a contract with a company called InterCall – they supply technology and support for companies to host conference calls. My role is to patch clients through to their correct conference, these are about 20 second interactions and they go like this:

Me: “Good Morning, may I have your conference number please?”

Last Tuesday morning this is how the client responded, oh, and it bares mentioning that it was a woman,

Client: **already frazzled “Hi, Hello, I’m a trucker – coming into some heavy traffic, I don’t know the code, but the call is for XYZ Company”

I shook my head, asked her to spell her first and last name – and before I connected her I closed with “Please, Drive Safe”

Keith asked me jokingly after I’d hung up, “Did it say ‘Drive Safe’ in your scripting?” Well, no it didn’t, but I could NOT help myself but to add it – and I’m praying for everyone on the road with her. I am certain she is neither going to get full benefit of the information presented on the call, nor be able to concentrate on her driving in traffic – wielding a truck regulated to haul loads up to 50,000 lbs.

We left Medford the next morning with a 500+ mile drive up the I-5 ahead of us. I watched every semi like a hawk. I’d eye each one in the cab as we passed by and the first one I caught swerving across the lines, oh ya – it was a woman and she was on the phone!!! I didn’t keep count, but was really amazed at the cell phone use by truckers, headsets or not – does that seem unsafe to anyone else? Have I turned into a old fuddy duddy, or is this a serious safety issue?

As we came into the thickening traffic of Seattle, I began counting how many drivers of regular vehicles were on their cell phones. No joke, 3 out of 4 drivers were on the phone, and dare I say – relatively unaware of the their own maneuvers or those around them. Certainly my senses were heightened, what with driving in a 50 ft long rig, weighing around 17,000 lbs at 5:04 p.m. on a Wednesday of Easter Weekend – but the drivers who slid in between us and the car in front of us just because their car would FIT, probably never really gave the move much thought, as they were too busy talking on the phone. It’s not a smart move, but it happens all the time. Jeeeeez, God forbid we loose our trailer brakes! If I lived full-time in a city (won’t happen, but let’s just say…) and my commute twice daily was in busy freeway traffic I’m sure I would fall into the comfort zone and talk away. Doesn’t make it safe.

So, I wanna know – how many of us are using our cellphones while we drive? I do, on a headset. Lemme know where you stand, I’m very curious. I promise not to judge – unless you are a trucker, cuz I really don’t think truckers should be chatting away while driving

Though Keith has a firm position of kudos and congratulations being unnecessary in regards to work that must be done – I had to compliment him for his fine driving hauling this:

In this nightmare:

I can’t remember how many times my birthday has fallen on Easter Sunday, a few to be certain, but it doesn’t happen often – every ten years??? And it might seem strange to some of you that I would even bother bringing it up (it’s not birthday wishes I’m after here – I promise). It’s just that an Easter birthday has always made me feel so dang special – Sunrise Service and flowers galore, brightly colored eggs and chocolate bunnies – what a day to celebrate! We hope you all have a fantastic weekend – time to celebrate the spring 🙂