The 2014 Cherry Drying Wrap-up

As many of you know, I live in Florida but spend my summers up in Washington State where I do the odd job of drying cherries by helicopter after it rains.  Thing is, it doesn’t rain much in the interior of Washington State, which makes it a good place to grow cherries.  But when it does rain, the farmers freak-out because too much rain is bad for their crop. (They can always add moisture if needed via irrigation.)   Cherries absorb moisture, and if they absorb too much they’ll split open and be rejected by the packing plant.  We helicopter pilots (and there are dozens of us from Oregon north to the Canadian border) sit around on “stand-by” waiting for it to rain so we can go out and do our thing.

Some years it rains a lot.  This past summer was particularly dry; we hardly flew at all.  Plus it was blisteringly hot – over 100 degrees nearly every day in July.  So we sat around…inside mostly, trying to keep cool.  There was not any relief in the evenings – most days it wouldn’t get below 90 until after nine p.m.!  So much for lazy, evening barbecues.

The season started early, and for some reason it caught us by surprise although it shouldn’t have.  Normally the growers want their stand-by charges to start in mid- to late-June.  This year the spring was unseasonably warm which accelerated the cherry growth.  Thus, when we got some rain in early June the farmers all hit the Panic! button.  It nearly caught us with our pants down.

After that initial spate of flying, the probability of precipitation dropped to zero and stayed that way in the forecast through Christmas.  Oh occasionally a little stray shower would make it’s way across the Cascades and into our orchards.  I flew a little in the middle of June, a little at the 24^th of June, and then not again until July 27^th.  Can you say, “boring?”  I knew you could.

Then there was The Fire.  Officially it is called The Carlton Complex Fire.  It started on Monday, June 14^th near the little town of Carlton which is northwest of us in Brewster.  So far it has consumed over 250,000 acres and more than 300 structures.  It is being called the biggest fire in the history of Washington State!  Although it is pretty much contained (98%), it still burns today, August 20^th. Some say that it won't be completely out until the first snowfall.

By Wednesday we knew the fire was serious – the smoke was really heavy.  And since the smoke was right over us, we knew that we were downwind of the fire – not a good place to be.  By Thursday it was approaching the towns of Pateros and Brewster.  We went out to eat at the local Mexican restaurant, and watched the fire come over the hill and down into town.  People were racing around, evacuating the hospital, trying to save homes in its path while we calmly (blithely?) munched on burritos and drank Dos Equis (although I don’t always drink beer, but when I do…).  It was kind of surprising to see.  The area around Brewster is mostly sagebrush and fruit orchards, so we didn’t think it would get as bad as it did.  But it did!

Brewster was spared, but Pateros got hit hard.  Many homes were burned to the ground, including the topless mayor’s.  Power was out because the fire burned the wooden power poles which took down the lines as they fell.  All in all it was pretty hairy.

Fortunately our beloved SweetRiver Bakery was spared.  But the whole town was out of commission for about a week due to the smoke/ash damage and no power.

The Washinton DNR’s (Department of Natural Resources) response to the fire had been…uhh…“late and inadequate” are the only terms that can be kindly used.  They really could have put the fire out while it was still small (all fires start small).  But they did not; their efforts were apparently directed more at containing it, which they could not do because the weather started getting really windy.  One morning we awoke to find that the management of the fire had been taken over by crews from California.  Suddenly we were seeing many more aircraft of all type fighting the fire as well as a more concerted effort on the ground.

The fire threatened the three locations at which we keep our aircraft, but thankfully it never came too close although we did move aircraft out of harm’s way a couple of times just to be safe.  I am assigned to a job at a remote orchard north of Brewster up near the town of Okanogan.  With my helicopter moved to a safer location, I sat in my RV one night watching the fire approaching…cresting and then descending a nearby hill as it made its way down toward “my” orchards.  I stayed up, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.  But by morning we saw that the fire stopped at the edge of the orchard, as it usually does.  There’s lots of moisture in those cherry and apple trees.

Then the fire just…sort of…went away.  The winds shifted/died, everything burnable around us had already burned, and we got a little rain.  Suddenly we were out of danger.  But the fire had put a damper on everything, stifled our ability to have “fun” when so many people had lost so much.  You’d be in a restaurant and overhear people talking about their house had burned to the ground and they’d lost everything.  It was heartbreaking. It was not enjoyable. Usually I stick around after the cherries are all picked, but this year as soon as my contract was over I left.

It’s still summer down here in Florida, with daily temperatures in the mid-90s.  I walked out of my house the other day and was suddenly hit by the heavy, humid air.  So different than the dry 100-degree heat of interior Washington.  Different, but…I don’t know…comfortable in an inexplicable way. Familiar, maybe.   And I thought to myself, “Gee, it’s good to be home!” I've done four summers up in Washington; I'm not sure whether there will be a fifth season for me.

Above is a shot of downtown Brewster on July 17th, 2014 as we'd just come out of the restaurant. The fire is coming down the hills just north of town. We're starting to think, "Hmm, maybe this fire is more serious than we thought?" How or why it didn't burn right into the town is beyond me.

The shot above is of the fuel truck at my LZ (landing zone) near Okanogan. The fire had come down the hill in the background and is right at the edge of the orchard (covered in the white bird netting). With the naked eye you could clearly see flames in the sagebrush but they did not show up in the shot.

Fire is a curious thing. See here how it burned the sagebrush right up to one post of the sign for the Alta Lake Campground near Pateros. But if that leg of the sign happened to be part of your house...the house would probably be gone.

Hugger

I am, I have to admit, a hugger. It is not my nature to be. I was raised in a family that was not especially physically demonstrative. Not that my parents were cold and/or distant; they just weren’t the huggy/kissy kind. The preferred show of affection was a swift slap on the back of your head. And so I grew up to be just a little awkward with affectionate human contact. It is what it is. But somewhere along the line it changed. I hug people now. It sometimes makes my friends uncomfortable. Oh well.

As a pilot for so many years, I’ve seen more than my share of people who’ve died. It happens unexpectedly, obviously. You never assume that people are going to crash and die. But they do. One day they’re here; next day they’re not. Boom – gone, just like that.

Crashing is one thing.  But people depart suddenly in other ways too.  When I was with Petroleum Helicopters (PHI), I spent a lot of my time with the company contracted to oil companies and flying ships that were based offshore. I worked a week-on / week-off schedule. On Friday morning, a mechanic and I would grab our helicopter at a shore base and leave, staying offshore for our seven-day “hitch.” We usually wouldn’t return to the base until Thursday evening when we’d leave for our seven-day “break.”

For four years the mechanic assigned to me was a guy named Jim Kedziora. We started out, both new to the company, assigned to Tenneco Oil, which was eventually absorbed into Chevron. When I transferred over to Shell Oil, Jim came with me. We both lived in Pensacola, Florida and were friends off the job as well. In fact, we were the closest of friends. We were both single, and we both rode motorcycles. Jim also had a bike and we took many great road- and camping trips together. Life was good. …At least for me.

We in our little circle of friends knew that Jim was depressed. He was taking Lithium to help him deal with his mood swings, and it helped. Sadly, we did not know the depths of Jim’s depression. And all of us were stunned when he committed suicide just shy of his twenty-sixth birthday. None of us saw it coming. In fact, that break week was totally unremarkable. There was no hint that anything was amiss with Jim.

As you can probably imagine, you go through a lot of shit when someone so close to you commits suicide. There are questions that can never be adequately answered, yet you ask them anyway. They gnaw at you: Why did he do this? Could I have seen this coming? Why didn’t I see this coming? Could I have prevented it? Could I have been a better friend? On and on and on, it never ends.

Our little circle of friends disintegrated. Just being with each other was painful. Jim’s girlfriend, Darlene was devastated and went through her own hell. Chuck (a coworker with whom Jim had been living) sold his house and moved away…as did PHI pilot Greg and his wife Thelia. I moved away too, although I stayed in the Pensacola area.

It took me about a year to get over it, to be honest - to get to the point where I stopped beating myself up for not being more attentive and sensitive. If there was something positive to come out of Jim’s death, it was that it made me appreciate people more. And so I hug them. You can communicate a lot of things with a hug – more than the words can convey. I hug my friends even if I know we'll see each other "soon," in case I’m never going to see them again. Morbid, I know. But people are important and I never, ever again want to feel like I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye and tell people how I feel.

The suicide death this past week of Robin Willliams brought all of these memories back, opened old wounds. I guess you never completely get over something like that.  It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years now since Jim's death. The time has sped by.

Jim in happier times offshore on the Shell Oil platform on which we worked. He's wearing a t-shirt he got at an Oyster Bar in Key West during one of our epic motorcycle trips.

A much-younger (and slimmer) me and Jim in front of N5001P, a Bell 206B

Weight Loss...and Gain

When I left for Washington State this past May I weighed 180 pounds, down from 203. I held a futile hope that I wouldn’t gain “too much” back while doing my summer job, which consists of me sitting around doing nothing but overeating during my on-duty time and drinking to excess while off-duty.

When I got home the other day I weighed-in at 197. Clearly there is work to do.

And so it’s back on the “diet” and by that I mean cutting out the red meat and fried foods and keeping my total calorie intake to 1,500 or less. It’s not all that difficult; I did it before. It’s just hard to do up in Washington where the boss likes to take everyone out and buy them breakfast and/or lunch. Restaurants rarely have really healthy choices. Plus, while I was up there I was living in an RV which had limited cooking facilities. The inclination to overeat is tremendous.

Losing weight must be a combination of diet and exercise, we all know that. And I wasn’t exercising at all up in Washington. So it’ll be back onto the exercise bike and working with the kettlebells. I know I’ll never be buff, but I’d like to get down to a weight where I won’t be embarrassed to have my picture taken in a bathing suit. I stopped in Atlanta to visit my friend Matt on my way home from Washington last week. We went kayaking. We took the usual camera on a rock with the timer set selfie of us in the river. I made him promise not to post the photos though because I look so…well there’s no other word for it…fat.

Maybe I better keep the total calories down to 1,000 or less…

The Mayor's Boobs

I shouldn’t write about this, but I won’t mention any names, not even of the town we were in. So maybe nobody will know.

We were in this joint, see, a hangout that is a real, honest-to-God dive bar. Scuzzy. A place that even the Hell’s Angels would pass up because just peeing in the bathroom is so disgusting. Ugh. I mean, I’m not really too picky when it comes to where I pee, but seriously, I’d rather pee outside at this place. And I often do.

Anyway, it was crowded – so crowded that the bartender started running out of liquors you’d assume every bar would have plenty of, especially on a busy weekend. And you do not want to drink draft beer – God only knows what’s growing in those taps that haven't been cleaned since the Nixon administration. So bottled beer it is. Nevertheless, the crowd was in a raucous good mood and was having a grand ol’ time. Okay, let’s not sugarcoat it: We were all drunk. But hey, it was a bar not a friggin’ church.

It was getting late. Someone exhorted a nice-looking woman near me into lifting her shirt and displaying the goods…and she obliged!

Turns out it was the mayor.

That’s right, the mayor. Hey, now there’s a politician who knows how to give the constituents what they want. Finally! She happened to be facing right at me when this happened. It was impressive…err, they were impressive. Err, whatever. Oddly, nobody seemed all that shocked/appalled/disturbed/upset.

I’m certainly no prude, but at that point I figured that it was probably a good time for Bob to head for the house. Not that I don’t like a good party, but things were kind of getting out of hand, so to speak. We didn’t have to worry about the cops arriving; there isn’t even a local P.D. in this particular town. But you know…you gotta draw a line somewhere. I’d seen enough. Literally. And it was late. Or early, depending on what you call 3 a.m. I rounded up some others who’d also had enough. We had a long drive home. Luckily I wasn’t driving. Unluckily, the guy who was driving was only slightly less drunk than I was. Thankfully there’s nobody else on these roads at that hour of the night/morning. Seriously, I don’t think we saw one other car on the way home. This really is the Middle of Nowhereville.

Next day there was the requisite, ”Oh man, you should’ve stayed!” from my friends who did. Not only did the mayor flash her tits a second time (cementing her reelection, I’m certain), but she did it with another, similarly well-endowed woman who didn't want to feel left out and joined in the fun. Two pair. Dammit! I wondered if the other woman was running for political office too. I would've liked to have checked out her...umm...qualifications. There were reportedly even more tawdry shenanigans after we left involving two local boys in the strangely tolerant crowd, but since this is a family blog I’ll spare you the sordid rumors. Let’s just say I’m glad we left when we did.

Just when I think that nothing exciting or unusual ever happens to me… But the summer is still young! I can’t wait to see what other things are yet to be revealed.

Friends

As I’ve often reported in these pages, I am blessed with the best friends money can buy. No seriously, I have great friends…better friends than I deserve. I could list each of them, and the kind and generous things they’ve done for me over the years, but it would take a blogpost the size of a certain Tolstoy novel. So I’ll tell you about the most recent.

I’ve mentioned my friend Mike Nehring before. I met him in Pensacola nearly ten years ago when he was just starting out in this crazy field of helicopter flying. We hit it off right away and have been friends ever since. We’re a lot alike. We are both sons of pilots, and so we both have inherited some innate talent for this line of work. He is an extremely knowledgeable and gifted pilot whose skills are right up there with the best of us. It was Mike who turned me on to this cherry-drying stuff in Washington State, which was new to me even though I’ve been involved in aviation forever.

Mike has worked his way into a fine job with a company in Olympia, Washington which is just south of Seattle. He’s doing what we call “Utility” work: Hauling external-loads (stuff strung under the helicopter on a steel cable); fighting fires; and stringing powerlines. Yes, it’s riskier than most “normal” flying, and the pay is obviously better.

Instead of driving from Florida to Washington this year, I’d decided to fly up, leaving Pensacola on Thursday, May 8th, connecting through Dallas, TX and Seattle, WA and arriving into the town of Wenatchee, WA which is about an hour-and-a-half south of Brewster. One of my company guys would come and take me the rest of the way.

But without hesitation, Mikey said, “I’ll pick you up!” It was out of his way, but he was driving over to Spokane anyway where on Friday he’d be catching a flight back to Minnesota to visit family. If he picked me up on Thursday afternoon, he could overnight with me in Brewster and then head to Spokane the next morning. Perfect!

Then we saw that I’d have a four-hour layover in Seattle, close to where he lived. The logical thing was for him to pick me up there and for me to "miss" the little commuter flight to Wenatchee (hey, twist my arm!). At least, that was the plan. Then God got involved.

There were tornadic thunderstorms through the center of Texas all day long causing delayed flights and misconnections like you wouldn't believe. My inbound flight to DFW got diverted into Shreveport, LA for a while to wait it out and get fuel. Of course I missed my flight to SEA even though it left late. My new flight's departure time from DFW kept getting pushed back later and later. The bottom line was that I would not be arriving into Seattle until sometime around 9:30 pm. Which meant Mikey and I wouldn’t get into Brewster until around 2:00 am. I called and gave him the bad news. “You might as well take off and head for Spokane,” I said. “No need to wait around for me and ruin your trip.”

“I’ve already switched my flight to Saturday,” Mike said.

I was flabbergasted...shocked...touched. Why would he do something so unselfish without letting me know first...you know, without giving me the opportunity to tell him no. But he's like that. He likes doing things for other people, and I'm fortunate to be one of those other people.

As it turned out, Mike did pick me up in Seattle, and between one thing and another we finally got to Brewster around 3:00 am. On the way over he talked; I slept most of the way.

I pity people who angrily claim to not need any friends. Because it’s not true. We all need friends, and of equal importance we all need to be friends to others. In my life I’ve known some terrific people whose friendships have been invaluable to me...people who’ve done things for me which I’ll never be able to repay, if you could even put a monetary value on their actions, which most often you can't.

I say that I have the best friends in the world. I should probably tell them that more often.

Switching Hats Again

And just like that, the Great Cab-driving Adventure of 2014 is over. I turned in the cab today. On Thursday morning I leave for Washington State. Flying up this time, and yes I know I've previously promised that I will NEVER fly again on the airlines. But to be honest, I just wasn't keenly looking forward to another 3,000-mile drive. A younger me would not have hesitated; this me just wasn't feeling it.

This will be my fourth season as a cherry-drying pilot. I'm excited about returning to the Pacific Northwest...seeing all my friends again who are now becoming "old friends." Mikey, the son I never had, is already up there, living and working full-time for an operator in Olympia. He's already eagerly planning escapades and shenanigans, most of which are sure to involve alcohol abuse (hopefully mild). Weather forecasters are predicting a dryer-than-usual summer, so who knows how much flying we'll do.

Our company sort of committed to a local club of glider pilots that we'd use our plane to tow their planes aloft this summer, and I sort of got nominated to be the tow-pilot, although I'm not sure how or why I agreed to such a thing...perhaps it was in the heat of some of the aforementioned alcohol abuse. Glider-towing is hardly exciting work. But it is different from helicopter flying and I do like exploring other aviation avenues.

I know I promised you some cab-driving stories, which have been woefully lacking. I really do enjoy driving a taxi here in Pensacola, where the majority of my business comes from the military. It makes me so happy that I don't drive a cab in a city full of...well, ordinary civilians.

Nobody has gotten sick in the cab so far, although other drivers have not been so fortunate. I try to not stay out too late on weekends. Just after midnight, people are still happy-drunk but not yet plastered. However when it gets past two a.m. you see the real drunks come out...the ones who've been drinking since eight p.m. and are now hammered. I try to take my last trip around two and then head to the house.

The other night while cruising downtown I picked up a couple of foreign military helicopter pilots (Jordanian, I think) who were stationed at Ft. Rucker, Alabama undergoing some training. They'd come down to Pensacola for a fun weekend. I'd driven one of them before, and he recognized me. They were drunk and horny, two qualities of passengers that make me very uneasy. Again, like last time the one who'd ridden with me before asked that I take him and his buddy to a strip club. It was a little after two a.m. and it had been a relatively slow night. Over the radio I heard driver after driver going "10-7" (out of service). I was fixing to knock off as well.

The strip club I took them to was kind of remote - not walking distance from anywhere. They worried about getting a taxi back to their motel and wondered if I would be working for another couple of hours? "Fat chance," I thought to myself, but assured them...promised them that someone would be available to pick them up. But I wasn't sure of that at all. As I drove home, even more drivers called it quits, leaving only one or two still in service. I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, so I didn't hear whether they got picked up or not by our company. If they didn't...well, fortunately I'll be gone for the next few months and won't have to see them again if they come down for another fun weekend of scamming babes in Pensacola, Florida.

Mikey's going to pick me up on Thursday afternoon when my flight lands in Wenatchee, WA. He'll probably already have a bottle of rum, a bottle of Coke, a bag of ice and some red Solo cups. If not, the liquor store is right on the way out of town.

I have a feeling it's going to be another crazy summer. And I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it!

Jumping To Conclusions

Misconceptions: We’re all guilty of them, especially when it comes to other people.

I carry a lot of passengers in my taxi, and as a student of human nature I've learned to "read" them. However, I do jump to some conclusions about people. I don’t like it when I’m wrong. And sometimes I don’t like it when I’m right.

I carry a lot of military kids in my cab. The Naval Aviation Technical Training Center (NATTC), based at Naval Air Station Pensacola (NASP) has over 4,000 young U.S. Navy and Marine Corps students in attendance at any given time. Many of them are under 21, and very few of them are allowed to have cars, and so they depend on taxis to get around. Over 90% of my business comes from the navy base.

Getting a tattoo is a time-honored tradition in the military. Lately, the government is putting more and more restrictions on tattoos, but nevertheless the desire for “ink” is strong and I transport a lot of young sailors and Marines to the various (and numerous) tattoo parlors in the Pensacola area.

Recently, three young ladies got in the cab at the navy base. …Three Marine women, all in their smart-looking Class C uniforms which the Marines are required to wear when they go off base here. …Three clean-cut, wholesome, conservative-looking, nice young women hopped in the cab at Foxtrot barracks.

“So…which tattoo shop can I take you ladies to today?” I said in my jokingly sarcastic way.

“Monster Ink!” was the excited reply. All three of them had appointments to get tattoos.

Well shut my mouth.

I hate it when I’m wrong.

Then a couple of days later I got a call from a woman whom I’d carried before and who lived way out west of town. Her daughter was at home and needed to go to the Cordova Mall. The woman could not drive her. A pickup time was arranged.

When I got there, the daughter (who is white) and a boy (who is black) got in the van. They were very young…sixteen...maybe. I couldn’t tell whether they were boyfriend and girlfriend. You never know. It might be racist of me for even mentioning it, but there is a trend today for white girls to go out with black guys. You almost never see the reverse: a black girl with a white boy. It just doesn’t happen. For obvious reasons, I suppose. (And if you have to ask…don’t.)

The ride to the mall took over a half-hour, so I had time to assess the young couple in the back. These kids were a puzzle. For one thing, the girl spent almost the entire time on her cellphone. Secondly, they weren’t holding hands, nor did they seem at all affectionate. They didn’t even seem very friendly to one another. In fact, there was a palpable air of tension between them. I got the distinct impression that the boy didn't even want to be there. Then it dawned on me. “Ahh, she’s pregnant!” I smugly thought to myself. That’s what sixteen year-old white trash girls do down here – they get pregnant by the first boy who pretends to be in love with them just so he can get laid.

Halfway to the mall the boy’s cellphone rings. He has a short conversation with someone I take to be a male friend and who I gather wants to get together and do something. A question is posed, but I cannot hear it. “I can’t," the boy replies in a disappointed tone. "I have a doctor’s appointment,” he says. Then he hangs up. Hmm. “I” have a doctor’s appointment? Not “we” have a doctor’s appointment? Could I have read this whole situation wrong? Perhaps. And so being nosy, I ask if they want to be dropped off anywhere specific “at the mall,” which coincidentally is right next to Sacred Heart Hospital and a bunch of medical clinics in the surrounding area. But they say no, the main entrance is fine.

We finally get to the mall and the kids get out. As she does, the girl drops a folder on the floor right behind and between the two front seats. I reach down to pick it up and hand it to her. On the front is a label with her name on it and…wait for it…the logo for the obstetrics clinic at the hospital. Aha! Okay, then. A fifteen or sixteen year-old girl, pregnant by a guy she's probably not all that fond of to begin with.

I hate it when I’m right.