The Trip Home - 2015 (Part One)

I write about my friend, Mike Nehring so often that you might think there’s something funny going on between us. Nope, sorry to disappoint you. We’re just really good friends…kind of like father/son but also not. Our friendship has had its ups and downs. But no matter where we are and what we’re doing, I’m there for him and I know he’s there for me, and it’ll always be so.

Case in point: Every year when I finish up my summer job in Brewster, Washington, Mikey asks me to stop by his place on the way home. Trouble is, Olympia, Washington is not exactly “on the way” home. In fact, since Olympia is over on the coast to the west, it’s in the exact opposite direction I need to be going, which is east.

But this past season was different. I wasn’t in a huge rush to get home and decided to take my time. First stop would be to see Mikey (finally!) and then down to California to see longtime friend, pilot and fellow blogger, Hal Johnson.

I had planned on leaving Brewster before noon on Sunday, November 15th, but you know how that goes. I didn’t get started on the four-hour trip to Mikey’s house until around two-thirty. Fortunately, the weather was clear for the trip across the Cascades through Steven’s Pass and I made good time.

When I got to his house much later than expected, I could tell Mike had been cooking. He’d whipped up some of his world-famous fried chicken. All joking aside, he is the fried chicken king. He’d also made a green bean casserole, which was awesome, and a batch of cornbread. Now, I think I make some pretty good cornbread. But Mikey’s recipe has forever changed how I’ll be making it from now on. (His secret ingredient? Sour cream. Yum!)

We ate and ate. I reflected on how generous and considerate Mikey is. I mean, we could have just gone out – there’s a Burger King right down the road and that would have been fine by me. But no, he had to cook up a big meal. So we chowed down and drank rum and watched football and talked - just the two of us, not the usual big crowd we always seem to be a part of. Quality time for sure. He had to fly the next morning so we didn’t make it one of our typical binges 'til the early hours of the morning.

He was gone when I woke up, but he’d told me where he’d be working. He'd be doing what we call “slinging Christmas trees.” This is where workers in a tree farm bundle up a bunch of living-room-size pine trees and then a helicopter hauls them over to a staging area for transport. Here is a YouTube video of such an operation. Mikey is not the pilot although the helicopter is owned by the same company. And while the pilot below is putting the bundles into a truck, Mikey was laying them in a pile on the ground.



Monday morning dawned rainy, windy and cold. The visibility was not quite as bad as in the above video, but it wasn't great. Despite this, when I got to the site, Mikey was hard at work. Other than a couple of field workers, nobody was around but an old guy in a beat-up pickup truck. I assumed he was the farm manager; turned out it was the farm owner. (You just never know who you’re talking to, right?) I introduced myself as another pilot who was with Mike so he didn’t think I was just some trespasser/lookyloo.

Together we watched Mikey shuttling the Bell 206 back and forth, back and forth, with no wasted motion, expertly dropping the trees off onto one big pile where they’d be individually run through a shaker (to get out the bugs, bird nests, etc.) and then another machine that bands them up with a tight netting so they’re more compact.

His flying is so smooth and precise…Mikey really is good at what he does and I admire him so much. The way he flies is inspiring. I’ve been privileged to watch him grow from an inexperienced newbie ten years ago to the consummate professional he is today. He’s never lost his enthusiasm and fascination for flying. He always tries to be better than he was yesterday - a characteristic of really good pilots. Watching him fly makes me intensely proud, even though I've had little to do with his development.

The farm owner had very nice things to say about Mikey’s work. He was impressed with his smoothness. After a while, he pointed at the JetRanger and asked, “So you do this too?”

I laughed and said, “Oh no, sir! That type of flying is for younger guys, not for me.”

He looked at me funny. I explained that such flying allows no room for error; it is a “right on the edge” kind of thing. One slip-up, one microsecond lapse of attention or concentration, one little mechanical glitch and you’re in the trees. (Around that same time this year, a helicopter in Oregon crashed slinging trees. The cause is so far unknown.) It’s not that I don’t have the skill to do it – I just prefer not to. Too risky for this pilot. (…Says the guy who hovers low over cherry trees for hours at a time in a 60 year-old helicopter.)

The weather got worse, and Mikey wisely decided to call it a day. He’d be headed northbound back up to Olympia, and I was going south. We said our good-byes the way we always do: not knowing if or when we’ll see each other again. It’s not that we think either one of us will crash. But in our line of work…

POSTSCRIPT: Mikey always bristles when he reads my blogposts about him. Some of the ground people he works with (non-aviators) google his name and of course my blog comes up…a lot. So Mike has asked me to not refer to him by name in the future. Because I want to cooperate, I’ll do what he wants. So this is my last post about Mike Nehring. From now on. he'll just be "Pilot X." But you and I will know. It'll be our little secret. ;-)

Weighty Matters

It’s no secret that we all put on weight as we age. Most of us Americans don’t exactly have a really active lifestyle, especially me. Not only that, the older we get, the harder it is to lose weight. While I’ve never been what you would call fat, I’m not a skinny guy either. I’ve managed to grow a quite impressive beer-belly over the years courtesy of drinking a copious amount of, you know, beer. And no sit-ups, or exercise of any sort, thank you very much.

By the time I hit fifty my weight was getting up there. I wore size 34” waist jeans, but they were getting tight. By my mid-50’s I was up to a 36” waist, and I weighed 200 pounds.

Three years ago I started “eating right” and exercising. And by that I mean I cut out sodas and watched how many calories I took in. I have a pretty good exercise (stationary) bike right in my bedroom, and I began working with kettlebells. Right away the weight started dropping off. I got down to 180 in no time flat.

But then I went back up to my summer job in Washington State. Up there we eat waaaaayyy too much. And it’s hard to exercise when you live in an RV it’s 110 degrees outside. Quickly I was back up to 200.

When I came home I found that I now had three roommates (long story). Two of them were temporary, but nonetheless… We all like to eat, and since we all like to cook, we ate waaaaayyy too much in Pensacola. I did not lose any weight over the fall/winter of 2014/2015.

And so it was that I went back up to Washington this past season weighing 200. That ballooned to 215 by the time I came home. I could barely button my 36” jeans, and was more comfortable wearing a 38”. I felt…and looked…awful. I posted a picture of myself on Facebook and thought, “Who is that fat man!” My resting pulse and blood pressure are crazy high. Unacceptably high if I want to stick around on this planet for a few more years, which I do.

Although the flying part of my job in Washington is not strenuous, there is a lot of other physical work to do. And I found that I had no energy or stamina. I couldn’t even keep up with the owner of the company, and he’s 75!

With no roommates in Pensacola anymore, I can eat healthy again and get back on my exercise regimen. My Wii Fit says I “should” be at 148 pounds, but I think that’s not realistic. I’d like to see, and I think I can get down to 175, and I’d be very happy there. (Getting rid of the beer gut is going to be tough.) The question will be: Can I maintain whatever weight I get down to? Our lifestyle in Washington is pretty unhealthy.

The funny thing is how quickly the initial weight drops off. I’ve only been back in Florida for a week, and I’m down to 208. A loss of seven pounds! I’m back in my 36” jeans, and even they are starting to be loose. Hopefully I’ll be back in my 34’s soon. Can I dream about getting into 32’s again? Can I fantasize about 30’s?

Now, I know the weight will not keep dropping off at that rate, but it’s a good start. I try to limit my daily calorie intake to 1,000, with a maximum of 1,500. It’s not all that hard to do, especially when you’re cooking for yourself. When I get hunger pangs I drink a bottle of water.

I’m not going to promise to post regular updates, for that is not my intent. I guess my intent is a little good-for-the-soul confession…a little self-inflicted fat-shaming. We Americans are fat, no doubt about it. We don’t get enough exercise and we eat poorly. Oddly, we seem proud of that, like it’s our birthright. Personally, I vow to not drink any more sodas and not eat any more fast food. If we all did just that…

Timing

Wow, so much to write about! I’ve been remiss in keeping the blog updated and for that I apologize.

It was a bummer of a summer. As I’ve mentioned, it hardly rained and nobody flew.

After the season was over and the pilots went back to their real world, I stuck around to help the owner of the company demobilize the equipment and get ready for next season. Well, that and we had to make three trips to North Dakota to pick up a bunch of helicopters and parts that we bought. Three pickup trucks with three big trailers; 1,200 miles one-way; six days on the road. We wanted to get it all done before the weather turned nasty, and we barely made it. The higher elevations in some of the passes we had to go over were getting snow by the end of our third trip.

There was also lots of work to do around the bases and airports from which we operate. We actually moved a hangar…that’s right, took it apart and moved it from one airport to another. That was fun. (And I say “we” but my participation involved just standing around with my hands in my pockets, “supervising” as usual.)

I told the boss I would stay until the end of October, and stuck around even after that. But it just got too damn cold and I am just not a cold-weather kind of guy. Plus, by the middle of November we were really running out of things to do. And so I left.

I was going to fly home, but I had some sort of flu bug that had me feeling poorly. So I decided to drive, and borrowed one of the company cars. I wanted to take my time and not be in any huge rush this time. It worked out great, because I got to visit pilot-friends at every stop on the way home, which was not even remotely a straight line. If I’d gone more or less direct it would’ve been 2,700 miles; it ended up being 3,500.

At one stop in Texas I got to fly a very rare Hiller helicopter! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I am blessed to have the very best friends.

So I’m back in Pensacola. And, I might add, walking around in short-sleeves. But my time here is short. I promised the boss I would be back up on Washington by the end of April. The time will go quickly, as it always does. Six months here, six months there.

I got home Sunday night. Two days later the boss sent me a picture of the first snowfall. So I left not a moment too soon! In life, timing is everything. And in this case my timing was pretty good.

While We're On The Subject of Music...

Chris Erickson is a young pilot at our company up here in Washington. Easygoing and affable, he’s got an incredible sense of humor, which is probably why we get along as well as we do. But he’s not just a pilot: He’s a multi-talented guy who is handy with tools and can fix just about anything. (In fact, we lean on him a little too hard to be our general handyman.)

Chris is also an incredible musician who has taught me a lot about playing the guitar. We often “jam” together, which is really just playing the six or seven songs I know. Our intent is to polish our “act” enough that we eventually ambush karaoke night at the Bakery and take over with a surprise and impromptu duet set. We wanted to do it this past summer, but we’re “just not there yet.” Meaning I’m not good enough yet. Chris is plenty good enough. And I’m practicing.

We argue over certain songs. You know how, when there are different versions of the same song, it’s usually the one you heard first that’s the one you like best? Take “City of New Orleans,” for example. There have been so many versions of that great song over the years, from Willie Nelson to Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Reed and John Denver. Even Steve Goodman, the guy who wrote the song did a version of it. I love ’em all but I, like you probably remember Arlo Guthrie’s as the definitive version.

Or “Me and Bobby McGee.” A number of people have done that one too. You might know that Kris Kristofferson wrote it and put it out as a single. But my introduction to the song was through Janis Joplin who’s version is definitive in my opinion. Chris begs to differ; he heard the Kristofferson version first and likes it best. I’m sensitive to that, so when we perform it, we make it a mashup of both Janis and Kris’s versions.

I like Janis’s version better because it’s more uptempo, more bluesy and has a key change in the middle. Kris Kristofferson’s version is kind of…I dunno…meh. It’s good, I guess, but maybe sometimes people who write songs aren’t always the best ones to interpret them. Wait, I take that back. On the other hand we have The Beatles: Has there ever been a remake or re-interpretation of a Beatles song by another artist that was worth a crap? No, there hasn’t. I’m sorry, there just hasn’t.

Then again… Chris and I do a version of “I Saw Her Standing There” that is killer. We’ll add it to our repertoire just as soon as we get the harmonies right and I perfect George Harrison’s mid-song guitar solo, which is proving to be troublesome. Nevertheless…I have no doubt that you will still prefer the Beatles version.

As I do.

Odd Little Coincidences

It’s funny how things are connected in our lives in ways we cannot understand and don‘t even know.

In 2006 I began working in the town of Brewton, Alabama. Every time I’d drive up there from Pensacola I’d pass the “Welcome To Brewton!” sign which proudly notes that it was the home of William Lee Golden (singer with the really long hair in the Oak Ridge Boys) and Hank Locklin (also a country singer from an earlier period). I knew that Hank Locklin’s big hit was “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” but he had others as well.

Mr. Golden had long since departed Brewton. But Hank Locklin, who’d moved there in 1970 to be with his new wife who was from there, stayed. It was in Brewton in 2009 that he died at the age of 91. I remember the day; a lot of the locals knew him.

Flash-forward to 2015. My boss and I are in his brand-new Ford F-350 pickup truck, heading to North Dakota to pick up some helicopters and parts. As we drone along on the Interstate, the Sirius/XM radio is tuned to “Willie’s Roadhouse,” a station that plays lots of Country oldies from the 1950’s through the early ‘70s. And this song comes on…

Walking the floor
Feeling so blue
Smoke cigarettes
Drink coffee too
Honey, you’re the reason I don’t sleep at night…

Immediately I’m jolted out of my Interstate-induced slumber (apparently I have what they call “carcolepsy“). I know this song…love this song! But I haven‘t heard it in years - maybe not since the 1970’s. It’s a good song…catchy…the kind that stays with you, apparently for decades. I look at the radio. It‘s Hank Locklin: "You're The Reason (I Don't Sleep At Night)."

Well I’ll be damned. If I had only known. Or remembered. I would’ve gone to his house and talked to him. The guy had been a performing member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1960. His final appearance on the Opry was only two years before he died. The guy was a legend. We would have talked for hours, or until he called the cops to have me ejected.

It turns out that “You’re The Reason” was written by fellow Alabamian, Bobby Edwards who had a decent hit with it (but in a different key) on both the Country and Hot 100 music charts in 1961. But “You’re The Reason” was covered by a bunch of people, including (but not limited to) Hank Snow, Conway Twitty/Loretta Lynn (a duet), John Fogerty and Hank Williams III (“Hank III”). Hey, a good song is a good song.

Even Gerry and the Pacemakers, they of the original British Invasion covered the song although they did not release it as a single. It was at a faster tempo of course, but it's a nearly-identical remake, even in the same key as Hank Locklin’s version! Check out both Locklin and Gerry and the Pacemakers' versions below!

There are so many different versions of this song it’s not even funny. And they’re all great! Hank Locklin’s version did not chart as highly as Edwards’ original but oddly it is the one I remember.

When we got back to Brewster, my friend, guitar mentor, hell of a musician and fellow pilot, Chris Erickson and I set out to learn “You’re The Reason” on our guitars. It’s not a complicated song: E, A, B7, that’s it. It’s even in a key I can sing (sort of - if you call what I do “singing”). We could probably do a passable job of it at The Bakery if they ever institute an open-mic night.

And you better hope to God they don’t.

An Embarrassment of Riches

I turned sixty the other day. Sixty! How on earth did that happen? I look in her mirror and still see that fresh-faced, innocent, um, 40 year-old I used to be. I have thankfully few wrinkles, owing to a fairly stress-free life but probably more to my “don’t give a shit” attitude than anything else. My hair is grayer (but not totally!), and there’s still lots of it in most places.

None of my other “milestone” birthdays (30, 40 or 50) were particularly upsetting, but for some reason this one is. I don’t like being sixty. I don’t even like the thought of it. But there you go.

Additionally, being born on September 11th is not great. It’s a somber day, not one of gleeful celebration. For my parent’s generation it’d be like being born on December 7th. So I was kind of hoping to keep this birthday low-key; let’s face it, I’m not ten. But you know…the more you want to not do something, the more your friends want to do it.

My Facebook wall filled with birthday greetings. From Atlanta to Florida to Washington state, all around the country and even around the world they came. The best comment was from my friend Daniel Speed: “Congrats on not dying for another year.” Gee, um, thanks Daniel!

My friend Mikey Nehring flies a firefighting helicopter for a company based out of Olympia, Washington. What with all the fires raging out here this summer he’s been bounced around quite a bit. But as luck (or something!) would have it he had gotten based up in Omak, Washington which is just a few miles up the road from Brewster where I’m at.

The big fires are all pretty much under control now, and Mikey’s ship got released on my birthday. Instead of going home, he came down to Brewster. We decided to not go out and get shit-faced drunk as we usually do and just did a big steak barbecue at our helicopter base.

Then our friend Nate Englund called. He dried cherries for another operator this past summer and because he's young and cool we got to know him. Great guy. He called from Missoula, Montana which is five hours away. “I’m inbound!” he said. What a nice gesture, coming over just for my birthday.

All of the other pilots have gone home or onto other gigs, but Lauren St. Romain is still around. She and Danny Smith (one of the owners) brought a big chocolate cake. Instead of 60 individual candles which surely would’ve elicited a visit from one of the Forest Service waterbombers she just got a six and a zero so I only had two to blow out instead of sixty. Thank you, Jesus.

So we had a nice party. No, there are no pictures. It was outside and mostly after dark.

I don’t want to get all mushy and sentimental. But I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I’m blessed with the best friends anyone could ever hope for. It is intensely gratifying and extremely humbling to know such good people. When it comes to friends, I have an embarrassment of riches. I thank you all.

Malaysian Airlines MH370: Still Gone

How can a big plane like a Boeing 777 just disappear into thin air? Seems preposterous, doesn’t it? But that is apparently just what happened to that Malaysian Airlines jet back in March of 2014. Thin air. Gone.

Back in July of 2015 a control surface called a “flaperon” was discovered on Reunion Island which is (don’t Google it) in the Indian Ocean about halfway around the world from Malaysia. It appeared to be from a Boeing 777 of which exactly one is unaccounted for (guess which?). It was covered with barnacles.

A word about the flaperon. You might know that the little flipper thingees out on the end of an airplane wing are called ailerons. They move in opposite directions. One moves down and one moves up and the airplane banks toward the wing with the up-deflected aileron. Stick your hand out your car window at speed and you can simulate how an aileron works. We’ve all done this as kids.

Then there are wing flaps. These panels extend out of the wing, increasing the wing area and changing the curvature of the wing to lower the speed at which the wing will “stall” and lose lift.

Normally, ailerons and flaps are separate and operate independently. Flaperons are usually (but not always) located inboard toward the fuselage. They not only deflect with the ailerons but are also linked to droop with the flaps. Don’t ask me why jets have these control surfaces; it’s a complicated aerodynamic explanation I’m sure.

Anyway the flaperon was found. Initially it appeared to be from a 777. It was immediately sent to France of all places to be examined. Sure enough the French said it was from a 777 and the Malaysian government assured the world it was from MH370 (I guess using the “logic” that no other 777’s have crashed and therefore it must be from their plane. I mean, how could it not be?

Well…

Strangely, the French authorities stopped short of saying that the flaperon came from that Boeing 777...that being MH370. Boeing, who you’d think would have something to say about this matter, has been eerily quiet. You see, there is a little data plate that would normally be attached to the flaperon which would specify which airframe it went on. The data plate is not there. Nor are any other markings that would directly link the flaperon to MH370.

Huh?

Let us realize that Boeing does not make every single part of their aircraft. Much of the plane is sub-contracted out to other manufacturers, many of which are in other states or even foreign countries. Spread the wealth, you know. It turns out that a Spanish manufacturer makes flaperons for the Boeing 777.

So the mystery deepens. We really don’t know any more than we did before, other than that a damaged, barnacle-encrusted flaperon from a 777 has been found. Putting on my tin-foil hat, I believe that whoever commandeered MH370 somehow obtained a flaperon and chucked it into the water someplace, hoping it would be found and assumed to be crash-damage. Only it wasn’t found. It stayed submerged for over a year before washing up on a beach thousands and thousands of miles from where it “should“ be.

Yes, I still think that MH370 was taken somewhere and landed, not crashed. What does this mean for the passengers? Probably not good things. But I'll bet that plane gets airborne again, and in it will be a bomb (slightly) larger than the latest Adam Sandler movie.