11-19-04

Howdy. It’s raining. Thought I could use a change of scenery today, so I went on a quest for a new coffee shop. I found “Coffee Girls” on the boulevard. Ultra-hip place. It’s in an area of town where there are a lot of art and design studios, but it manages not to be pretentious. I wish it wasn’t such a long drive from the corporate, suburban, hell that I call home. I’m all for capitalism and everything, but sometimes living in a cookie cutter world of restaurants and shops and radio stations just feels oppressive to me. I find myself yearning for an experience that is unique or authentic. This place satisfies that yearning as much as any coffee shop could.

It was recently brought to my attention that in bringing all of you up to speed a couple posts ago, I carelessly omitted one of my more memorable experiences of the last few months.

So there I was (all good stories sport this preamble) working at the flight school desk. The phone rang. The woman on the other end explained that she had a friend who had recently died. Her friend had spent a significant portion of his life working at the very airport out of which I operate my meager flight instructing business. He didn’t have any family to speak of, but had been somewhat a part of the bereft caller’s family.

As she laid out the circumstances, I had an inkling of where this was all going. People don’t usually call the flight school to chat about their dead friends. I was still sort of shocked to actually hear her request. He had requested upon his passing, to have his cremated remains dispersed over the airport.

“Would there be anyone there who would be willing to do that?” she inquired.

At that moment, the “Story Value” philosophy of life took over. This philosophy, owing its roots to the great philosophers, (Frost, Blackwell, Deneault) demands that if there are two possible courses of action, I take the one that will yield the better story later. Since it became a guiding principle of my life, I have realized its immense value and wisdom.

I assented and the funeral date was set. As word got out what I was to take part in, I was amazed to discover that practically no one else would have volunteered for the position of aerial undertaker.

“It’s going to get in the airplane, you know!” was a common response. I didn’t care.

When the day finally came, I worried greatly about my ability to keep a straight face, and wondered if it was my place to do the whole “well, should we say a few words…” shtick.
We departed with the dearly departed in a plastic bag. Attached with duct tape to the cellophane coffin was a length of plastic tubing meant to guide the ashes out of the airplane and to minimize blowback. It looked like it would work.

When we got to altitude, there was a pause as we all just looked around at each other. Before long, though, the patriarch of the family opened the window and commenced the dump without saying a word. Immediately, there was evidence that maybe the plastic tube should have been a bit longer. A cloud of thin dust filled the cabin; not so much as to obscure visibility, just enough to feel in your nostrils and make your teeth feel gritty. They also seemed to be having trouble getting the ashes to flow from the bag through the tube.

“This just isn’t working that well,” they complained at one point, but kept making steady progress. Finally, the bag was empty and we began our descent. The debacle of the dumping had overshadowed the somberness of the event to the extent that when the tower advised “Wind check, 270 at 14…” I let out an overly chipper “Oh Baby!” at the prospect of getting some crosswind landing practice. The landing was a non event, even though I was kicking myself all the way down final for the “Oh Baby!” comment.

The melancholy didn’t settle in until after the family had left and I made my way to the line shack to find the dust-buster. Human ashes are of a different consistency than I had previously assumed. I had figured them to be almost entirely dust. To my surprise, the bits that clicked through the handheld vacuum as I tidied up the plane evoked kitty litter more than powdered sugar. One of the most unique, authentic, and humbling experiences of my life was when, on my way back to the line shack, I emptied the contents of the dust-buster into a 55 gallon trash barrel in the hangar.

11-11-04

Howdy. I’m sitting here at Pizza Shoppe. To answer the question some of you are undoubtedly asking by now, no, I don’t spend any time at home. The din of an end of season party for some sort of little league group filters through the Jeff Buckley in my headphones. “We’d like to recognize Johnny for…Wade in the Fire!!, and the winner is… Wade in the Fire!!” It is a beautiful day outside; perfect day for a check ride. I just left the airport where my first private pilot candidate is in the middle of his practical examination. He’s a really sharp guy. Meteorologist. He should do fine. I sure hope he does.

Yesterday was a good day. It was the first day in probably a month where I’ve flown more or less all day. Pretty average lessons for the most part. There was an intro flight though that was kind of interesting. I’d been sort of curious about it since the gal called and scheduled with me one day when I was working the desk. She said she wanted to get her friend a birthday gift. I don’t usually take birthday flights because I don’t get paid for them and they usually don’t turn out to be serious students…..

I hate to interrupt the intro flight story, but now I’m sitting at the coffee shop open mike night listening to some monotone little high school pipsqueak droning about wishing he had the answer. I really want to tell him that the answer is not a career in music. That’s probably not a very good-citizen-like thing to do, but Jesus Christ!!! If I sounded that much like Wesley Willis, I would want someone to fucking tell me. For those of you who are unacquainted with the genius of Wesley Willis, he was a semi-retarded guy with a toy keyboard who somehow got recorded. All of his songs were non-rhyming, monotone monstrosities with a prefab percussion background courtesy of his toy keyboard. They had titles like “I Whooped Batman’s Ass” and “Rock and Roll McDonalds.” The thing that really scares me about tonight is that this squirrelly little red head has a notebook of all of his songs. He’s taking this pretty seriously. I think he’s on his fourth song. I wish I could be that prolific as a song writer. Now envision a conspicuously older gentleman sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He’s reading a menu and nodding his head with the irregular beat. Perfect.

So…Back to the intro flight….The girl who called told me that she might get her friend more lessons if she liked it, so I thought, “What the hell!” My co-worker, Greg, saw the girls’ names on my schedule, and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Most of our customers are men. I told him that I thought they were porn industry representatives. That fantasy was immediately shattered when the happy couple moseyed into the flight school. I saw more tattoos and piercings on these two girls than I’ve seen collectively in my year and a half as a CFI. There was some deliberation as to whether the gift giver would come along on the flight. I told her she should come. She worried that she might get sick. Greg whipped out some sick sacks. I gave her a headset with an inoperative microphone and she joined us. The flight went pretty well. The birthday girl seemed to enjoy herself, even if she didn’t pick up on things too quickly. We were on final for the last landing when I remembered our passenger was incommunicado. When I looked back, she held up a barf bag like a trophy. “How did I miss that?” I wondered.
“Maybe it was the Guinness I had this morning,” she reflected walking in from the ramp.
“At the garage sale?” birthday girl asked incredulously.
“Yeah, At the garage sale.”


I ended up leaving Pizza Shoppe to fly with a random guy who just wanted to take an instructor up on his recreational flight because he hadn’t flown in a while. I was happy to have the diversion from wondering how the check ride was going. It didn’t really work out that way, though. The oral portion of the exam had gone well, and my student took off with the examiner right after me. I was distracted during the whole flight. We flew to Lawrence, Ottawa, and back to Olathe. It was half way in between Lawrence and Ottawa when I looked down and noticed that there was still ten degrees of flaps out. I just pointed down at the flap lever and left the sheepishness to the guy I was flying with. I did sort of want to slap myself in the face and tell myself to snap out of it.

Finally, we were inbound to OJC and more importantly back on executive tower frequency. Just as we were about to call the tower, I heard my student call in and request touch and goes. I knew that the examiner he was with usually did the take offs and landings at the beginning of the ride (this is opposite of how I usually structure my lessons), so I wasn’t surprised when he called back a moment later to request a full stop. I knew it was a good sign that they were still up after an hour and a half. If something had gone wrong in the pattern they would have cut it much shorter. As I taxied in, I saw My student getting a hug and a pat on the back from his dad. Amen. Hallelujah. Two for Two Baby!

Adam and Ashley on boat in Venice

11-5-04

Howdy. I hope all is well with everyone. I'm well into my third hour at the cozy coffee shop that has been doubling as my office lately. I've spent the last few hours totaling up my logbooks and updating my resume in the delusion that I might have enough experience to get a job doing something besides instructing. It’s not that I don't like instructing. It’s just that health insurance would be nice. So would moving out of mom's place. I just talked to a contact at Great Lakes Airlines, and he said to send in a resume even though I only have 750 total and 25 multi. Great Lakes has a bad rep as far as pay and schedule, but you build a lot of time. I just can't help but think that the sooner I start building twin turbine time, the better. I could wait around for a year or more trying to build enough time to get on with a "better " regional, or I could try to get on with lakes and have a year of airline experience under my belt. We'll see. I'm probably getting ahead of myself. Last Friday, as I sat at the flight school cursing the cloudy October weather, I overheard an older gentleman inquiring as to whether there might be an instrument instructor around who wouldn't mind going to Michigan that afternoon in his newly acquired Archer. I practically leapt out of the scheduling room with my hand in the air. The man, who had a certain Boris Karloff quality, wasn't current on instruments and didn't want to spend another night in Kansas waiting for the overcast to break. I checked the weather and agreed to take the trip. I guess he moved up there last winter. He had owned the very same Archer while he lived in Kansas. He sold it before the move, then happened upon it again when he got the itch to buy another plane. I planned the whole trip and filed a flight plan while he returned his rental car. Our departure was delayed by a bad battery in his intercom and a couple of pee breaks for Boris. It wasn't long after we were finally underway that we were being tossed around in some very wet cumulous clouds and receiving vectors out of the Kansas City class B airspace. I was impressed that despite the turbulence, my new friend was holding heading and altitude fairly well. I was still happy when we broke out of the clouds around 7,500 feet. Soon after, we were handed off to Kansas City center and cleared direct to Kankakee, Illinois (south of Chicago). As we passed south of Kirksville, Missouri, I thought of the multitude of airplane accidents in that vicinity lately. It was about that time when Boris asked if I could take the controls for a moment. "I need to take a leak!" he admitted. It was bound to happen sooner or later in my career. I should have expected it on this flight. He had, remember, taken more than one piss break during our pre-flight debacles. He pulled a red bottle, like the ones in the Sporty's catalogs, out of the back and I learned that the "find a spot on the wall" technique isn't just for urinals. Substitute cloud for spot and it also works in an airplane when an old guy whips it out in the seat next to you.