Airport Bums

Last one for tonight. The little airport where I'm based is a throw back to an earlier time. There is always a fresh pot of coffee and someone to either tell you a "there I waz" story or to listen to yours. They could care less about the Lear or the Gulfstream but they sure love the Pacer.

FL450

Another one from FL450. We were on our way to Belize and having a great time. Flying air ambulance can be the best job in aviation, this one was. Shame it had to end.

Russian Cargo Plane

We were in El Obeid, Sudan for several hours, while there we visited with the crew of a Russian four engine cargo plane. The Russians were flying for World Food for Peace, we were flying for the U.N..

Another From the Day Job Series

A quick look in the back at FL450.

More Photo Book

This is Isam our driver in The Sudan. This was my first day in country and when I asked Isam if I could photograph him this is the pose he assumed.

Photo Book Project

I've been invited to join a group of photographers in a self published book. We will each be able to contribute 3 to 5 images. Over the next few posts I will show the images I plan to use, all are from my Day Job Series.

The first is of our cook and station manager in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Iraq

I have only one question for either party. Who will step up and tell the U.S. how and when we will get out of Iraq, not a year from when he is elected, not even 6 months later, but how he will get us out of Iraq starting the day he/she takes office.

Once that question is answered the others will follow. What a fucked up mess we have to face, I hope the country and our politicians are up to the challenge. The place to start is a complete de-bushifacation of the government and the Republican Party. Everyone and every origination that had anything to do with the last six years, from the illegal installation of Bush in 2000 to Iraq, must be removed from power and the leaders must be made to stand trial. We must not allow this attack on our Constitution and our Government to be covered up. When we let the last bunch criminals off the hook after Nixon resigned they came back like the living dead. We can not let it happen this time. May their souls rot in hell.

Caravan

Pat and I parked the caravan in a State Park near Lincoln City last week. Pat was able to spend most of the week there and I drove back and forth. The WX was beautiful, clear skies, cool, and very little wind. It couldn't have been better or come at a better time. Oregon winters can be wet and gray with few breaks, when the WX is good you have to take advantage or you will be nuts by late spring early summer when the skies clear.

We didn't do much but we did see a couple of great sunsets, built a big bonfire, walked on a some beautiful beaches, ate good seafood, read and played cards. I tried to take a break from the political world,but Molly Ivins death brought it all back. I did find one of her books in Goodwill the day she died, damn the world will miss her.

Eating Babies

This is how I feel talking to the local wingnuts.

Low and Slow Along the Oregon Coast

The local WX this weekend was beautiful, clear skies, temps in the mid forties, a little windy but not too bad. The wind was just strong enough and coming across the runway enough to make flying the Pacer interesting for an old guy that hasn’t flown tail draggers in more than 30 years.

Pat did her first flight lessons in the Pacer on Saturday and Sunday. I used the time she was practicing to sightsee. Saturday we went up the coast to the north and Sunday we went south. The Oregon coast is a magic place; I never get tired of seeing it.

Strange how as we age we return to things of our youth. I don’t really think I’m trying to slow aging or even trying to recapture youth. It is more a return to the basic things that give pleasure, a return to the reason I chose the road taken. Low and slow with such a feeling of freedom, knowing that the whole world is open to you, that you control the most amazing machine made by man, yet such a simple machine, one that could be built with simple hand tools and by almost anyone.

BTW, teaching Pat is part of the joy, watching her struggle, then understand and gain control. To see the same feeling of accomplishment I had when I first learned to fly. For someone with itchy feet there is nothing to compare with the joy of learning to fly.

Our little Churchills

A must read post from Glenn Greenwald....." We've now arrived at the point where the White House and its followers reflexively characterize any criticism of the Leader's war of any kind as aid to the Enemy and an attack on our troops. They don't even bother any more to pretend that some types of criticism are "acceptable." It is now the duty of every patriotic American to cheer enthusiastically for the President's decisions. Anything else is tantamount to siding with the Enemy...."

SOTU

It is time for the Asshole from Midland to go.

Blog for Choice Day

Some Personal History

Abortion choice is as important for men as for women. Just before Roe became the Law of the land my future wife became pregnant. We were young with almost no money. She was in Nursing School; I was working two jobs, nights at a hospital lab and days turning wrenches at the airport, to pay for my flight training. We didn’t have the money to go to NewYork for a legal abortion and there was no way we could have a baby and have any future. By chance one of my jobs while I worked my way through college was Medical Sales and one of my customers was a “Dr. Brown”. I never met Dr. Brown but it was understood that he provided abortions for the wealthy and well connected of Texas. Someway we scraped together the $500 needed to have Dr. Brown end BJ’s pregnancy and we both went on to have productive lives. Most in our situation at that time would not have had our options. Their choices would have been have the child and who knows what would happen to their future, give the baby up for adoption, or have an illegal back alley abortion. We must keep Choice.

Why

That's Shrub ..."Second, and more impotant, nothing we have seen or heard from this President in his public appearances and utterances over the last six years supports the notion that he is anything other than an inarticulate, illogical and muddleheaded thinker who is incapable of putting together an honest, realistic and coherent assessment of anything as complicated as Iraq..."

IED

The photo is of an IED found on the Kabul, Afghanistan airport. It couldn’t be simpler, a large pressure cooker, some explosive, a little wire and a motorcycle battery. A few dollars spent and you have the potential to kill and maim many and to destroy multi-million dollar equipment.

Back for a Post or Two

What a year.

Can Shrub fuck up Iraq any worse that it is? Knowing his history I don’t want to know the answer.

I’m now the owner of a 1954 Piper Pacer. It puts a smile on my face every time I see it.

The GIV has new paint and carpet……looks pretty good. I will post a photo later.

China

This was like many of our oversea trips...a blur of loading bags, unloading bags, taxi rides, crashing in your hotel room trying to recover from a 20 hour + day only to get up early the next morning to do it all over. Long story short...we flew to Anchorage for a meeting, then on to Khabarovsk, Russia for a tech stop, and Beijing for a RON. After a night in Beijing we flew to Macau for a day meeting and then to Hong Kong to spend the night. The next day we went to Xiamen for a meeting then back to Hong Kong so we could fly to Taipei (Mainland China will not allow flights to Taipei from their airspace) for a RON. The next day we were to come home but...when the boss showed up at the airport he "wanted to stop short and spend the night...somewhere..." The scramble to find a place to stop, to get permits, to set up hotel rooms, to get landing slots, started. BTW, we told him his best option would be to go back to his hotel in Taipei and we could start early Saturday morning for home. Nope, he wanted to do a short leg and then go home the next day. At this time we had been on the airport 6 hours with the APU running most of that time...the short part of the story...after almost 5 hours of work putting the permits and flight plan together at a cost of around $??,????USD...just as the "handlers" were walking up the air stair with the overflight permits, the landing "slots", the flight plan, just as we were less than 5 minutes from cranking our engines....you've got it..."we are going to spend the night here and go home in the morning". The bottom line...after 12 hours at the airport, Mucho $ for handling fees, and 2000 lbs. of kerosene burned we were back where we started...still 12 hours of flying from home...another unloading and loading of bags, a 1 hour cab ride on rain slick streets, two ways, and two very exhausted pilots that still needed to get a new set flight plans and permits. The good news...we left Taipei on time the next day, Saturday morning at 11:00 local, after a tech stop in Petropavlovsk, Russia we made it to Portland, OR at 09:30 Saturday morning. Did you notice...we made it home an hour and a half before we started :-) ...BTW it was a hell of a long ways to go for a bowl of noodles.

A couple of observations from someone that really didn't get to spend enough time in any one place to learn much but that has never stopped me from having an opinion or expressing it :-) ...we (the USA) are in deep dodo...the Chinese have their shit together. The place is clean and modern, the infrastructure is in very good shape, the people are smart and educated, and there are a ton of 'em, and we are shipping our money over there as fast as we can. We are screwed unless we get our act together much faster than I think we can.. Hong Kong is another world...I would love to have some time to spend there...it is also an example of how to make things work...money has been spent on the infrastructure, it is maintained, and there is an investment in the future...something that has been lacking in the States... our roads and public buildings are falling apart. We are not spending our money or our public capital wisely....maybe because our sense of community, of common cause has eroded, as we have been distracted by side shows and red meat thrown to the rubes. Whatever the reason...the result is our pockets are being picked and our country is falling apart compared to what I saw in Hong Kong and China.

NOT JUST INCOMPETENCE

From Kevin Drum

Michael Hirsh has a decent rundown in Newsweek today of how badly George Bush and his team have botched the war on terror...The damage that George Bush has done to the United States is going to be with us for a very long time.

IN KTUS

We are in Tucson. Interesting trip down…neither of us had flown for several weeks and the rust showed. There was nothing unsafe but at times it was like a couple of monkeys trying to do a basketball in the cockpit. Funny now but not while it was happening.

We stopped in Santa Monica for a couple of hours before flying the last leg of the day to KMZJ. KSMO has very strict noise regulations, to comply your takeoff path is Runway heading at 1000’MSL turn right to 265, climb at V2+10 to 3000’ MSL. The KSMO-KMZJ leg was mine. We were light with only 12,000 lbs of fuel…All I can say is “WOW” what a kick in the ass. At our takeoff weight we were only about 2 lbs of airplane for each lb of thrust. To hold V2+10 required over 20 degrees of pitch up…we went up like a rocket.

We ran into an old friend at Flight Safety TUS, while talking he reminded me of the time we were in Reynosa and I bought “pussy for the bar” with the company AmEx.

It Has Been Awhile

Well I'm back...maybe.

What a busy 6 months. I received my GIV type at the end of Sept and almost the first trip out of the box headed for Kabul via Iceland and Turkey. Following the Afghanistan trip I have been to Denmark a couple of times, London, Canada, and all over the States. The time really flies (sorry), it is already time to go back to Savannah for re-current.

The image is of the entryway to our compound in Kabul.