Posts from — February 2005

I didn’t know it was gonna be a sex flight, but that’s the way it worked out. That’s the cool thing about sex flights, they are like the real thing—you try for it all the time, but usually come up short. When you have a sex flight, you are pleasantly surprised.

I flew to Lancaster, PA (KLNS) today. I’d never been there before, and they supposedly have a great pilot shop: not one, but two excellent reasons to fly there. A little over 80 nautical miles from my home base, I could make it there in about an hour. This would give me time to check out the place and head back before the snow that’s forecast for tonight.

The tower staff there were quite friendly, as was the flight instructor at the helicopter school, who loaned me the keys to his truck so I could drive down to the pilot shop (I had mistakenly taxied to the wrong FBO at the other end of the runway, thinking that was where the pilot shop was). The pilot shop did indeed have a wealth of pilot goodies: books, videos, airplane models, clothing, flight sims—it was like walking through a Sporty’s Catalog, with the added bonus of fair pricing. Picked up a book about a guy who flew around the world in a Beech Starship, and a new carbon monoxide detector.

On the way home, I stopped at Alexandria Airfield, which is this really nice little airport/airpark in western NJ that I not-so-secretly wish I could have a home at. After an uneventful landing at Alexandria, I headed for home.

So what’s this about a sex flight? Oh yeah, that.

Well, there’s not much to tell, really. I throttled back on the downwind leg, flaps ten, trimmed for ninety. Turned base, flaps twenty, settled on 80 MPH, and turned final. Setting flaps to 30 degrees and lining up on the centerline, I noticed there were a lot of airplanes around, planes waiting on both sides of the runway for me to land so they could get on with their own business—I had an audience. I generally don’t perform well with an audience, but…

Here come the numbers, flaps 40, slow power reduction, rounding out, one eye on the sock, it’s limp, the runway’s all mine—no wind…

Pulling back on the yoke, and then a little more, I feel a sensation in my seat. It’s the subtle vibration of the main wheels beginning to roll on the pavement. The aircraft is in the midst of very gracefully converting itself into a land vehicle. No bumps, no chirping sounds, just a teeny-tiny vibration in the seat and then the dull rumble of the wheels over the pavement. The smoothest landing possible.

Sex flight.

Yesterday, as I waded through my backlog of email, I got not one, but two emails from friends of mine, announcing recently published interviews.

My friend Mike Zagorski—a still pasty Scot living in Hawaii who rides a bike faster than I ever could—was recently interviewed for Pez Cycling News.

Mike is one of my many “internet friends”—someone I met via the internet in some fashion and have shared common interests with. In Mike’s case, we both were beta testers for Autodesk’s (awful) Viz4 product. While we were complaining on the beta forums about the poor implementation of what was Lightscape’s (wonderful) radiosity engine in Viz4’s horribly bloated application, we each checked out each other’s websites (you gotta have your website in your email signature you know) and discovered a shared love of cycling. As you will see from Mike’s interview and website, he’s a rather talented rider. I hope he can someday soon realize his dream of turning pro.

Not more than two minutes after reading Mike’s interview, an email from another friend, Jeff Bosie, appeared in my inbox. It seems that he too has an interview featured right now, in the local paper Home News Tribune.

Jeff is an old friend made the old fashioned way, through actual physical interaction. We went to school together and recently re-conneted at karaoke, which he documented. Jeff is a talented photographer, and has a show coming up in Perth Amboy. The details are in the interview. If you enjoy photography, have a look at Jeff’s gallery and then join us at the show next Sunday. I’ll see you there.

Home again. Got back last night. Great trip.

Now: hundreds of emails to read. Hundreds of photos to organize. New webhost to arrange. Laundry.

So, so good to see the cat again. She purred for hours.

Perhaps more detail later. Yes, definitely. So much good material. For now, this:

View, bedroom window

Sunset, Cozumel

Don’t worry, the sign says

Mas tequila, por favor

Tiramooseu, our mascot

Lather, rinse, repeat. The whole week was a mass of breathtaking views, dramatic sunsets, beverages, cigars, food, and lots and lots of laughter, and each day unfolded much like the previous one.

P.S.
I have fully come to terms with my immense dislike of being in the water. Snorkeling? What in hell was I thinking?

After a wonderful few days of unseasonably warm weather, the temps dropped last night and remain in the 30’s today. Add a 20-knot wind and you have an unpleasant experience. I think I’ll head to Cozumel for a week!

Now, spending time at the beach is not my normal gig. But a good friend is about to celebrate a milestone birthday, and sometime in August we all decided that the proper thing to do would be to rent a villa, populate it with friends and alcohol, and hang out for a week. And the thing is, it actually got planned. So, tomorrow morning—after a big opening night bash tonight for the latest show at Brenda’s theatre—we all pile on a direct flight outta Newark bound for sun, sand and snorkeling.

Catch ya on the flip side.

… especially when you try it without a plane. Yesterday, when getting ready to go fly, I flew. Let me explain.

The asphalt at my tiedown spot is rather old, and what with the sun beating down on those three little pressure points that my plane’s tires make, the tires have created three distinct depressions in the ground. They are so deep at ths point, if I try to accelerate out of my spot I have to go to almost full throttle to get out of there. Lately I have taken to pulling the plane out a few feet with my tow bar, so that I don’t have to use so much power to pull out of my spot.

Yesterday, after dilligently clearing away all the snow & ice from last week’s snowstorm, I was ready to pull 93F from her roost. I hooked the tow bar on and did a mighty heave-ho. No luck. Sometimes, I get it almost out of the depression, only to lose the battle with gravity and have the wheels sink back in. A harder pull usually does the trick. No luck. One more try. No luck.

Finally, I planted my feet for one more try. I pulled hard, harder still, and at last, the tow bar slipped off of the nosegear.

Firmly planted as I was, and pulling hard as I was, once the tow bar came loose I essentially launched myself into the air and flew about three feet before landing in a puddle. I know the exact quarter-sized point of my left buttcheek that I landed on, because it hurts like hell this morning. I truly wished someone was around to see my airplane imitation yesterday, because I’m quite certain that it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever done.

From now on, I will use whatever power setting is required to get out of the spot.

Never Again, and again, and again.

Recently, I pulled my head out of the sand regarding the genocide in Rwanda. Since my recent missives on this topic on this website, I have read the excellent “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families”, and am now most of the way through this book, which is an equally devastating account of the events of those hundred horrible days in Rwanda in 1994. I have two more books on the way.

I for one have been walking the streets of my little world with my head hung a little low, embarrassed by my lack of full understanding of what happenned there until now, and wanting to learn all I can about the scope of the tragedy, and our shameful ignorance of it all, perpetuated by the media here. I want to review what was going on in my life then, what could possibly be so important that I would have missed the full weight this story as it developed, even despite the woefully inadequate and complicit coverage the story received. How could I have missed this?

And the thing is, even despite my pathetic memory, I can understand how the murder of hundreds of thousands can be missed, because it’s happening again.

Recently, the UN released a report saying the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan are not, we repeat, not genocide. Oh, sure, there’s ethnic cleansing, because we can say that without being compelled to act. Oh sure, there are close to a million people dead, but it’s not genocide. Let’s be clear on that. This is exactly what happened in Rwanda, but almost in slow motion. A slow starvation is taking the place of swift machete blows, but the same ugly process is happening. So-called diplomats are bickering about the term genocide (because if it gets that label the UN is required to “act”), while people die.

Perhaps fittingly, I finished reading “We wish to inform you” this past Thursday, as the world remembered the holocaust. I immediately started “Shake Hands…” and, with one eye on that book and one eye on the current Darfur coverage & inaction, I’m hard pressed to find any evidence, any evidence at all, of any shame, any lessons learned, any humanity.

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/darfur/
http://www.darfurgenocide.org/

http://www.savedarfur.org/