Unbelievably...Back In Washington

You may now roll your collective eyes and sigh...

I may have mentioned in this blog a time or two that every year since 2011 I’ve been coming up from Florida to Washington State for my summer job with a helicopter company that does cherry-drying. Every year I say that it’ll be my last. And then every year I come back. Last year I was quite positive that I was done here.

And yet here I am, writing this at our headquarters in Brewster, Washington. Sheesh.

I’m not flying anymore. When I quit Petroleum Helicopters in 2001, I vowed that I was done with flying. I’d hit 10,000 hours of flight experience, which is a nice milestone and was sort of my goal when I started flying for money back in 1982.

But I’m not a good quitter, apparently. After leaving PHI, I took a succession of “temporary” (or so I thought) jobs, culminating in the one where I flew a Bell JetRanger for that rich guy in Alabama. That ended in 2010, and when I quit that job I said I was DONE! Then one of my friends called and told me about this cherry drying outfit that used the helicopters my dad flew in the Korean War.

But finally, I’ve had enough. I still love getting my hands on the controls of a helicopter, but my heart is just not in it anymore. I ride along with the new pilots, checking them out in the Sikorsky S-55 model that we use and showing them how we go about doing the job. But that’s about it. Now, I come up to Washington mainly to help my boss and his son get all of the equipment ready for the season. I stay for only two months (instead of as many as six!) and then beat feet back to Florida as soon as all the cherries are picked.

It’s fun up here, and that’s the trouble. It’s what keeps me coming back each season. But honestly (and I hate to admit this), I’d much rather be down in Florida with my motorcycle-riding buddies, taking trips and going to the beach while the weather is good. I mean, I live where people go on vacation! As I said, I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to stop flying for a living since 2001!

As great as Pensacola is, it’s certainly not Miami. We’re sub-tropical. And although our northwest part of Florida doesn’t get all that cold in the winter, it can be chilly (a high of 60 degrees for a couple of hours) and the November-December days at that latitude are short: Sunset can be as early as 4:30. Makes it tough to get in any meaningful trips if you don’t like riding at night, which I don’t. So we have to take advantage of the good weather in the summer.

Aaaaaaanyway, we’ve been having a pretty good season here in Washington, all things considered. The weather has been beautiful: clear and warm, but so far at least not blisteringly hot. (That’s coming next month.) The growers all seem to be having a good season; that is, good for them but bad for my boss who would prefer we were flying more. Perhaps the growers will get their cherries all picked early…(wishful thinking, I know) and I'll be out of here by the end of July.

It seems that I write this – or something similar – every year. I suppose I’ll be writing it again next year too.