Friday, April 23, 2010

I'm Back

Just got back to Alaska. Ah, Home sweet no-longer-home with its two-foot drifts of dirty snow and roads where lanes are a community consensus due to studded tires. It's almost May, which means my friends who are graciously letting me crash in the guest room have windows full of seedlings straining toward the long daylight of breakup. Everybody is full of energy like pent-up floodwater behind a dam, waiting to burst into a hundred all-day-and-night projects of working hard and playing harder.

The next day, I woke up still stiff, groggy, jet-lagged, and wandered with a sheltie to the window. My sight wasn't that foggy - no, the houses and trees nearby were hard to see through the falling snow from the low gray sky.

I didn't miss winter.

Winter, it seems, didn't miss me either.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Plane budget

Once, as a student pilot, I walked out of the building with friends to find M standing by the flagpole, smoking. Another friend waved at him, and as we approached, he said "Man, how can you smoke those things?"

If you're expecting a self-righteous defense, or a long lecture about health, or any of the usual things, you're at the wrong place and time, wrong memory. R shook his head and continued. "I mean, they're what, like, a gallon of avgas a pack?" Everybody laughed, and M just grinned as he took another drag.

Years later, as I'm planning logistics, his crooked grin in response to the ribbing made me laugh as I catch myself laying out an exercise plan for gaining strength (sufficient to pull and push the airplane around when loaded in gravel) and losing weight... 'cause, you know, every six pounds I lose is one more gallon of avgas, or 20 minutes more flight reserve...

Sunday, April 4, 2010