More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Apples

People always ask me to send them fresh Washington cherries or apples while I'm up there. The problem is that cherries have a very short shelf-life and do not travel well. As soon as they're picked, cherries are run through a sorting/sizing facility where they are cleaned and packaged. They are almost immediately shipped out to grocery stores all across the country and overseas. The cherries that show up in our local Walmart here in Pensacola were literally picked within the last couple of days – certainly within the past week, nearly as fast as I could get them to you via UPS.  Because I ain't sending them overnight.

Apples are a different story. We all like to dream about picking a nice, juicy, sweet red apple off a tree at the peak of ripeness – what a treat! Unfortunately that's not the case. Apples are picked and then put in “CA” (controlled atmosphere) rooms where they are kept chilled until their sugars fully develop. The bag of apples you buy in Walmart today were very likely picked last season. It's why we can have apples all year 'round. It's an amazing fruit!

Why not leave the apples on the tree until they ripen naturally? Well... If you have only a couple of apple trees that might work. If you're a big production grower with thousands of acres of trees, the harvest must be carefully planned and orchestrated. You can't wait until all of the apples are at peak ripeness or you'd never get them all picked in time. Like cherries, apples are all picked by hand.

As the apple ripens, the last joint on the stem going into it gets weak. When the apple gets too heavy the stem will break there and it will fall off the tree on its own. Some growers resort to spraying one of several products colloquially known as “stop-drop” to delay this event if the apples are not quite red enough to pick. It's better to pick them just before they fall off and bring them to the CA room to complete the ripening process.

It's about five miles from our company heliport in Monse, Washington (what we call “the LZ”) down to the Brewster Airport. There are two ways you can get there. One is to cross the Okanogan River and take the highway down. Or you can take a dirt road that also parallels the river and goes through apple and cherry orchards. We travel between these two places a lot; we almost always take the highway. The dirt road is very dusty and rough, and slower.

One day in October, just before I left, my buddy Chris and I headed to the airport from the LZ. ”Dirt road?” Chris asked. Fine by me, we were in no hurry. The apple harvest was in full swing. Big eighteen-wheeler flatbeds stacked high with apple bins shuttled up and down the roads nonstop.  Our plan was to find a section that hadn't been picked yet and grab a couple of Fuji's or Honeycrisps. Which we did- barely.  Almost everything had been picked.  But we got a handful of nice, red ones that looked ripe.

We got to the airport and washed the apples off. Eagerly, we bit into them, hoping for the best. Unfortunately they were mealy and not all that sweet. Instead of a treat, what a disappointment!  They were so bad that we threw them away.

When I was growing up in New York City, the Red Delicious was the standard apple as far as we knew. It had that traditional apple shape. A good one was sweet and juicy – nothing better! Unfortunately it also had a fairly tough skin (it was a New York apple, after all) and the pulp could be yellowish.

But times...and tastes...and chemistry...have changed. There's a whole science to it; apples get engineered. Now the popular apple is called a Honeycrisp.  Developed in the 1970's, it was patented in 1988 and finally released to the public in 1991.  Growers in Brewster, Washington are ripping out orchards of Red Delicious and planting Honeycrisps instead.  

If you've never had a Honeycrisp, you owe it to yourself to try one. They're amazing. They're big and round.  They're sweet and juicy and the skin is not tough. Bite into one and you'll go, “Now THIS is what an apple should taste like!”  Once you eat a Honeycrisp, any other apple will seem like you're eating a...well...a pear.

The beauty is that you can have one in January. But it was probably picked in October.  Last October.

Enjoying Every Sandwich

I look at people...Donald Trump, say.  And I ask myself, "Would I trade my life for his?"  Almost always the answer is no.  I could never be Donald Trump.  I could never want to be.

A respondent in the Comments section of this blog said some very nice things to me...about being an inspiration for a career he wanted but never pursued because of...well, life.  Kind of funny, that.  Now, I'm not saying that the commenter wants to be me.  But let's face it, we all sometimes wonder about paths not taken.  

Life is all about choices, eh?  We do what we think we have to do to be "happy."  Unfortunately, sometimes the immature need for fun overpowers and replaces the need for happiness.  We who are guilty of such things think that the former is a good substitute for the latter.  Or that the former will bring the latter. 

But what is true happiness?  I'm not married...I have no kids, no roots, no permanent place of residence.  Some would say, "You're living the dream, baby!"  Maybe.  Sometimes there's a fine line between a dream and a nightmare, to torture that metaphor even further.  I've said it before: Being a professional pilot is like being paid to masturbate - ultimately fun but of no real redeeming social value.

You can't look too deeply into this shit.  You can "What if...?" anything to death.  Some questions just can never be answered.  I don't regret being this lifelong arrested-development gypsy, vagabond pilot, but I sure ain't leaving much of a legacy behind.  In fact, in all likelihood I won't be leaving anything behind.  And that kind of bothers me some. 

So my advice to everyone comes from musician Warren Zevon: "Enjoy every sandwich."  Find the beauty and joy in the simplest of things, for those are what life is all about.  Fortunately, I'm not dying like Zevon was when he said the line on the David Letterman Show.  At least, I don't think I'm dying. - at least not immediately. 

But we should be aware of these things - that nothing is forever, certainly not us.  Turning 62 has made me pause for a moment and look back - something I don't normally like to do.  If I have actually stopped flying for a living, then I have to come up with a plan for the rest of my life.   Or...I could just leave it up to "fate"...or put it in God's hands, which has been my modus operandi so far.

All this talk about sandwiches has made me hungry. 

Settling Down

And so another cross-country road trip is done. I don't like to fly on the airlines so I drive up to Brewster, Washington every year. There is no direct, diagonal route from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Northwest; you “stair-step” your way up or down. It's always 3,000 miles.

This year, I left Brewster on Monday. Heading west, in the exact opposite intended direction, I went over to the coast, to Olympia, Washington to see my good friend Brandon who flies for a company there. (My friend Mikey also flies for the same outfit, but he was away on a job and so I didn't get to see him.) After hanging out and having a great time with Brandon (as always), I left Olympia on Tuesday morning and made it back to Florida on Friday night. Google Maps says it was 3,182 miles.

Brandon, who is from New Jersey and often works on the west coast likes to do these marathon cross-countries in which he doesn't stop. He goes like crazy. When he gets tired, he sleeps in his pickup truck in a rest area. I can't do that. I'm a wuss. I need a bed to sleep in for at least a couple of hours and the ability to take a shower. I hate being road-grungy. I can usually find a hotel near the Interstate for around $60.00 per night, which is reasonable, I think. I pick the cheap ones that offer free breakfast so I can grab something to eat before I head out.

Unlike some of my previous trips, this one was uneventful. The venerable 1998 Buick crew-car that I drive back and forth performed flawlessly for 210,000 miles. However, I don't think she's got another trip in her. The transmission was starting to act up – nothing serious, just the very occasional slipping when accellerating from a dead stop, and also some stuttering when downshifting on the highway. Signs of impending doom. To be honest, the car is not worth fixing. So I'll sell her and buy some other piece of crap with somebody else's unknown problems. That'll make me feel better on a 3,000 mile trip!

As fun as my “summer job” up in Washington is, it's always good to be home. And yeah, for better or for worse, Pensacola, Florida is my home. My boss would like me to move up to Washington permanently, but I don't think that's going to happen.

In fact, my days in Washington may be over. There are big changes happening at the company I work for, and if everything goes as planned they won't have a need for ol' Bob next summer. The boss promised me a position anyway. But seriously, why would you pay someone to do something when you can handle that task in-house? Especially as much as they pay me. It doesn't make sense.

If I'm being honest, I'm looking forward to having next summer off from flying. Yeah, I still have to work – it's not like I'll be on vacation. But for the time being at least, I'm going to settle down and stay in one place for a while. 

End Of Season Blues

When I tell people that I work in the desert-y part of Washington State they look at me like I'm crazy and with a puzzled expression go, “Whaaaat?” I think most people assume that all of Washington is dreary and rainy like Seattle, or mountainous like St. Helens and Rainier. 

But, umm, no. The Cascade Mountains block most of the weather from the coast.  Out here between the Cascades immediately to our west and Spokane to the east, there's 150-miles of flat dirt and sagebrush. If not for the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers, nothing would grow here. And stuff only grows along those rivers. Otherwise, you'd be forgiven if you thought you were in Arizona or New Mexico, without all the cactus but with more Mexicans.

So it's dry here, okay? In fact, we haven't had any rain in Brewster since June 8^th. Oh, it's sprinkled occasionally, but no actual rain days. And none to speak of in the forecast. Because of the lack of rain, we didn't do much flying at all during the cherry-growing season.  It was boring with a capital "B."

The customer I was assigned to rents two helicopters from us. One of them only flew five hours and the other one (mine) did not fly at all. This is a contract that can generate up to 100 hours per ship per season for us. So five hours was basically nothing.

I normally hang around after the season is over. I help in the demobilization of all of the helicopters, RV's, fuel trailers, crew houses and such. Then I assist in washing the ships, taking their rotor blades off and then putting them away until next year. Unlike most every other helicopter operator in the world, we only use ours for about two months out of the year.

My boss also does cropdusting. Last year, we picked up a contract to apply a nutrient called boron to 8,000 acres of orchards. The ground is very boron-deficient up here. I played “loader-boy” which is not a highly sought-after position in aviation. It involves a lot of things that go into keeping the spray ship working. There's a lot of cleaning involved.  And a lot of climbing...climbing up and down ladders to load the chute, and up and down on the airplane. It's not hard “work” per se, but it's definitely a young man's game. And I am not one of them any more.

The customer was late delivering the boron to us, so we didn't even start spraying until late October. I ended up staying until the first week of December, which was too late for this southern gentleman. It was fuckin' cold, pardon my French. I won't make the same mistake this year.  The good news is that the we only do boron every two years, and this ain't one of them.

I promised myself that I'd leave here “around” my 62^nd birthday, which was back on September 11^th of all dates. Well that came and went as the boss and I were on a week-long road trip to Little Rock, Arkansas to pick up some airplane parts. Fortunately there is not much left to do.  I've been wasting my time and my boss's money.  My new plan was to be out of here by Halloween. Thankfully, it looks like I'll be gone sooner than that. 

I'd like to say that I'm sad to see my time up here end. But frankly, I've got those end-of-season blues.  Just like every time each year, I'm eager to get home to Florida.

A Very Durable Cat

Sammy the airport cat died recently. Good-natured and friendly, he was a nondescript light brown Heinz 57 cat, with darker fur on all four legs that made him look like he'd just walked through a shallow mud puddle.  He seemed old; he wobbled and stumbled around the place. He was totally blind in one eye and just about blind in the other. He was also as deaf as a post. 

Toward the end, the only way he'd ever catch a mouse was if he was sleeping with his mouth open and a mouse accidentally walked in and got stuck. Even when he was awake a rat could have walked up behind Sammy and kicked him right in the ass. He'd never see it coming. He was a bag of bones...a cat skeleton wearing a thin fur coat.

For the last three years Sammy looked like he'd used up 9.99 of his lives. Yet every Spring I'd come back and that darned cat had...unbelievably...made it through another winter.  He was a very durable cat!

I asked the Boss how old Sammy was. He scratched his chin and thought about it. ”Oh, I guess we got him when Ray was born,” he said. Ray is the Boss's grandson. Ray is twenty-one this year.

Sammy was old. Probably the oldest cat I've ever known.

The Boss used to live in the house here at the Brewster Airport. He and his wife raised three kids in this house. They're all grown up and gone now. Everybody moved away, and Sammy obviously felt abandoned, especially as his world narrowed with the infirmities of old age. Grandson Ray did live here for a while, and was supposed to be taking care of Sammy. We don't believe he was very diligent in accomplishing that task. Since I've been staying here at the airport, the task of feeding Sammy fell to me.

Sammy was never a house cat. From the beginning the Boss preferred that he live outside. Nevertheless he was used to always having people around. So he'd come into the hangar during the day and snuggle up to you, always getting under foot, starved for attention. For the last two summers I've been worried that one of the local predators (coyotes, camp dogs) would inevitably get him. But cats...even elderly blind, deaf cats are wily. Somehow Sammy survived.

Then last winter the Boss took pity on Sammy and let him live in the hangar. It would have been cruel to do otherwise.

I am not a “pet guy.” I tolerate dogs and cats, but I view them as a burden. So needy! I can barely take care of myself much less a pet. Plus, my here-and-there lifestyle does not lend itself to having a pet.

My friend Terry just bought a motorcycle and wants to go riding when I get back to Pensacola. Specifically he wants to go camping on our bikes. And I'm, like, "Okaaaay, but what are you going to do with Charlie Brown?"  That's his dog.

“Well I'm going to get a case of some sort and bolt it to the frame behind the seat...”

...Right where the camping gear/equipment would normally go. But Terry can't leave Charlie Brown home, oh no! That dog goes wherever he goes. And that's a problem when you're going on a motorcycle.

I suspect that we won't actually be doing any motorcycle camping. But it's nice to dream, no? (I may do some motorcycle camping. I am not so encumbered.)

In any event, Sammy the airport cat lived a full life. Toward the end he was still doing pretty well, in no discernible distress or pain, still peeing and pooping all over the hangar floor (which guess-who got to clean up?). He'd never been trained to use a litter box because he was always an outside cat.

Then all of a sudden one day he came into the hangar and just lay down in the middle of the floor instead of under the break table, under our feet as usual. He stopped eating and drinking. He was having trouble getting up and getting around. The Boss and I could see – it was the end. Within twenty-four hours he was gone. It happened pretty quickly. He did not suffer, at least as far as we could tell. Which was good.

I wish I had taken a picture of Sammy. I always intended to but never did. I guess I just figured that he'd live forever. But nothing does, eh? Eventually, everyone and everything dies. So grab your phone/cameras and take pictures of your loved ones...yeah, even your pets. Put them up on Facebook so you...and we...will always have something to remember them by. I wish I'd taken a picture of Sammy...instead of that stupid camp dog, Waldo that hung around one summer a couple of years ago. 

Here's Waldo!

Depressingly Good Weather

Generally, helicopter pilots get frustrated when the weather is so bad that it keeps us grounded. It's simple: Pilots want to fly. It's why we become pilots. It's why we become professional pilots – so we can get paid to fly! When you can turn a hobby into a job that pays the bills, well...isn't that the best of both worlds?

Well, sure!

I've been “lucky” in that I've been a professional pilot for most of my life. I've never once woken up in the morning angry that I had to go to “work.” Just the opposite! I've always leaped out of bed knowing that I'm going to get to do something that I really enjoy. Okay, maybe not leaped, but I've never gotten up thinking, “Dammit, I have to go to work today. Grrrr.”

Now that I'm thirty-something years down the road in this field and semi-retired, things have changed slightly. Now my idea of the perfect flying job is one where I get to sit around with my feet up and get paid to not fly. Which is what I've got this summer.

Did I mention how dry it's been here in cherryland? Since the beginning of the season we have had exactly one day of rain. And it was not an all-day soaker; most of us only got a couple of hours before the cherries were all dry. And since June 15th there's been...nothing. No rain. Not even a cloud in the sky to give us the faint hope of rain. In the seven seasons I've been coming up here, it's been the most severe-clear, dry summer.  Even the temperatures have been moderate, with fewer days above 100 degrees than usual.

The absolutely clear weather is good for me but bad for the pilots I hired. They're all fairly young and eager, thirsty for flying. But they're all sitting around with long faces because the weather has been so good. Ironic, isn't it?

I won't bore you with what I've been doing all summer. You really don't want to know. My life isn't any more exciting or interesting than yours other than I (sometimes) fly a helicopter that's as old as I am, and I'm 61.

The boss is not happy. Then again, we've had no maintenance problems; these are old helicopters after all. We didn't crash anything; these are young pilots with very little time in this specific model of helicopter. And we haven't used any fuel or oil. So there are always trade-offs. Not a great year; not a horrible year.  Most people who live up here would tell you that this summer weather has been great!  For us it's been depressingly good.

We do still have a few helicopters on contract, one of which is “mine.” The grower to whom I'm assigned told us he'll be keeping one ship around until sometimes in August. And there are two other guys covering cherry orchards that don't ripen until later. So I guess I'll stick around for a while.  But not for too long...

I'm hoping that I can get out of here and back to Florida while there's still some good motorcycle-riding weather left.  I've got my "new" Harley Sportster down there and I'm itching to put some miles on it.  Unlike tropical Miami, Pensacola is sub-tropical, which means our winter temperatures can be fairly cool. And when we go back to Central Standard Time the days get short.  Call me a wuss, but I don't like to ride when it's less than 60 degrees out, or at night.

Fun

I do the hiring and firing for the company I work for here in Washington. Each year we hire a half-dozen or so pilots. Oddly, the ad for our little two-month, temporary summer gig garners a lot of resumes (dozens this year!), which tells me that there are a lot of unemployed pilots out there looking for work...any work.

If I'm going to ask a pilot to come all the way up to the Middle Of Nowhere, Washington (on his own dime!) for an interview, I want to make pretty darn sure that he'll work out. I don't want to waste anyone's money and I certainly don't want to waste my boss's money and time.

A couple of years ago, I brought a relatively low-time guy up. He was in his 30's and had enough time/experience to meet our minimum qualifications. We had a good conversation on the phone, and I was optimistic that he'd be okay. He lived in northern California and elected to fly up instead of drive. The closest airport with airline service is in the city of Wenatchee, about 70 miles south of Brewster. I drove down to pick him up.

On the hour-plus ride back up to Brewster, we talked. Everything seemed okay. I took him for a “pre-employment” ride in our helicopter and I knew right away that I could make a cherry-dryer out of him. Good pilot.  But then...

It happened to be a weekend, and that night we went to the SweetRiver Bakery, of which I write so much about. My friends Mikey and Brandon were there, as usual. We were sitting outside in the back. There was a band, and the music was loud, so the three of us sat on the same side of a big, round outdoor table that could seat eight or ten - you know the type. The prospective pilot sat on the exact opposite side, making it difficult for us to communicate. He seemed deliberately aloof and distant. Some of this is natural, considering he was immersed in a situation where everyone knew each other and he was the new guy. I get it.  Believe it or not, even I can be shy and reserved in a new group of people too.  

But then he made a Big Deal about not being a drinker. We drink. Sometimes we drink a lot. But it's okay if you don't drink. Have a soda! WE DON'T CARE. But there's no need to make a big issue out of it. Which he did.

At one point Mikey, knowing the guy lived near San Francisco, asked him what he did for fun in the big city? 

 ”I don't have fun,” the guy replied somberly. 

Oh man...talk about crickets...the ultimate record-scratch.  Even the band stopped and turned their heads our way in disbelief.  Mikey, Brandon and I looked at each other with three raised eyebrows. He doesn't have fun? What? Seemed kind of weird to be honest. All helicopter pilots are a little peculiar...but there are limits.

The guy could have said, “Hey, I fly helicopters, what's more fun than that?” And we would've laughed and agreed and moved on. Actually, I would've. But not Mikey. He would've pressed the issue. And he did. Because we humans are not one-dimensional. Yeah, we pilots love to fly above everything else. But I ride motorcycles and play the guitar (badly). I like to drink with my friends and go camping and drive too fast on winding roads.  Mikey and Brandon ride their motorcycles and do all sorts of other crazy shit...young guy stuff which we won't talk about. Our lives are, if nothing else, fun.  Incessantly, unendingly fun.

But this prospective pilot guy maintained that he simply had no fun...had no life.  No other explanation or expansion was offered. Wow. At that point I had serious misgivings but decided to keep him around anyway...just to see.  Maybe he had other, more redeeming qualities?

The next day I continued the interview process and was giving the guy a check-out in the S-55 helicopter. It's a tall machine, and to do a proper preflight inspection of the transmission and rotor head you have to climb up and stand on the side of the airframe – about ten feet off the ground. I climbed up one side. The guy sort of climbed up on the other side of the ship and clung onto the handles on the fuselage, but would not join me up top.

“What's the matter, you got a fear of heights?”

I joked.

“Well, I don't...but my legs do,”

the guy replied with a weak smile. He wasn't joking.

Okay! Game over. If I can't depend on you to preflight the rotors (the tail rotor also has to be inspected by standing on a tall ladder), then I don't want you. I drove him back down to Wenatchee to catch a flight home....home to where he had no fun.

The fear of heights thing was the clincher, but honestly the not-having-fun thing was almost as troubling. It seemed...I don't know...fake? Like he was hiding something? I mean, come on, we all have fun. Who doesn't like to have fun?

Unemployed pilots, that's who.