My Interaction with Money

Money is my handicap, my ball and chain, my bondage, my sinking ship in so many ways.  I am just good enough with money not to draw too much attention to myself, no knocks on the door taking me away, no tow trucks repoing vehicles, and no foreclosure signs tacked to the door.

If I made less money I would be screwed.  I often wonder what my life would look like if I made half.  There are days I dream about downsizing.  Not to hurt anyone, or maybe just because I am doing a terrible job with the whole money thing.  I do not know, I am trying to step out of the equation.  It is a slow process.

How do you do with money?

As Good as it Gets

No this blog post is not about the movie, this is about my perspective.  Lately I have began to embrace that now my life is and perspective have finally began to sync together.  I had lived with the notion that my 'better life' would be just over the horizon.  Today I now see my life and better life as one in the same.  This shift has allowed me to live today with more peace and grace, and not be frustrated I am not living that better life now.  I am living it, it just took me a long to realize it.

Cloudly Water

It has been a while since I changed into a less open person to the general public in my writing.  I began when I started dating Jamie, and the new interest into who I was.  Before we met, I thought about what I wrote but didn't care much about who was reading and the impact the forever aspect of writing on the Internet created as an impact.  Part of this change was healthy, the other part in some aspects of my life took the process of transparency from brokenness to renewal and put it away. 

I would like to think I could write again from a place that is honest without hurting those in my life.  To begin my life is still not perfect, I have small successes but I am still bouncing along trying to sort out boundaries and what is healthy for me.  There is a lot more shit in my life.  Some of it falls out of the pull up Judah sneaks out during the transition of potty training.  Other parts of this are the toys that I step on all over the house.  Or the extra collection of wash cloths in the shower that never seem to get washed unless I gather them up in frustration.  There seems to be more of that lately.  Too much shit to go around and not enough organization in my life.

Rock This Next Time in Denver I dare Ya!

Okay I still got it.  I am forty-three years old and can still rock this move one handed.  This is Gate C32 in Denver.  I just started this a couple days ago!

A Flying Story

I carry an emotional weight of this story with me, and I will forever, after you finish reading perhaps you will understand exactly why on many levels.  There are days that start and end normally, perhaps even from the outside looking in viewed as a success, but the vast amount of life packed into the middle is far from normal or a success.  These days can end up being blocks that either we build upon or that end up sinking us.  Unexpectedly, the memory of this day came back into full view and I decided to write it down and share it.

This event happened on or after the spring of 1994.  I was flying for my parent’s business, Lockhart Air Services.  I was scheduled to fly the Cessna 185 floatplane to pick up a group of native outdoorsmen at a remote lake, south of Landsdowne House.  They had travelled to this location a few weeks earlier during the last of the safe snow and ice on snowmobiles and needed a floatplane to pick them up.  Normally a pilot based in Landsdowne House would be scheduled to complete this trip, but the seasonal training had yet to be accomplished. Without another pilot ready to I had to leave out of Pickle Lake on a series of flights before I side tracked over to pick up the group. This early in the spring is called breakup, and many lakes still had ice on them.  There were only a handful of the lakes were completely free of the winter ice.  

The first part of the day was going well.  I was quickly regaining my pace flying the C-185 floatplane from stop to stop.  I would normally be flying the larger De Havilland Beaver, however it was still being converted from the ski plane configuration back at the maintenance base in Sioux Lookout, a couple hundred miles away.  I had several years experience flying this airplane, but it wasn’t the normal aircraft I was assigned and I had to make adjustments on the different aircraft characteristics.

Being dispatched out to a location required the use of the basic four party description to where the remote camp was located.  The three men signaled for pickup using a HF radio back to their town, the receiving radio operator would then call someone who spoke english, who would then call either my father Howard or myself to make the booking.  Like I said a four party description often had a few challenges on exactness.    There is an art inside the art from the experience of learning just where every camp was located and transferring these locations as ink marks on each years new VNC map. After all that communicating and translating I was dispatched out to now be flying overhead and spotted the three men standing on the shoreline waving.  I circled overhead the remote waters and planned out my landing and takeoff spot, noting winds direction, wave action, water depth, and sunken obstacles.  After the typical approach to landing, I taxied up to the shoreline, cut the engine and drifted up to the rocky and icy shore.  We decided the first load was going to be just the moose meat and cargo.  I loaded the aircraft to the maximum weight limit and readied for engine start and departure northeast to Lansdowne House.  Without a scale pilots use the waterline reference on the backs of the floats to mark an approximate weight load, this day the backs of the floats had little space showing, a sign of a good ‘northern’ load.

A float pilot had to be quick to push off the shore and jump in and start the engine.  Carrying the momentum was important as waves and winds could either be hinderances or an assistance. I had made several starts and stops before this pickup without incident.  This time however I found the battery had not enough charge left to start the engine.  As I mentioned the remote site where I was making this pickup had no dock only a rocky shore with areas of ice still frozen between the boulders.  The loaded aircraft was spun outwards and pushed off the rocks to avoid the wave damage as it was now heavier and was being pushed back upon the rocks. With insufficient battery power to turn the engine over I was now drifting freely on the water faster than I could paddle back, the water was also too deep and cold to jump in and pull the aircraft back to the shore.  As I mentioned this location was a couple hundred miles from the nearest repair building and in these spots you fix things yourself and keep going.  

There is a procedure to start the engine by hand, and normally this would be accomplished with the plane secured to shore or a dock.  Considering I had the ability to do neither I had to try to start the airplane by hand floating freely upon the water.  This procedure had me opening the passenger door of the aircraft and standing upon the right float positioned behind the propellor.  Normally, I would enter and exit from the left hand side, and I had to climb across the front seats and cargo to exit onto the float of the aircraft.  I would then hold onto a handle attached above the engine cowling with my left hand and grab the propellor with my right hand.  I had to quickly pull the propeller through the compression of the engine to try and start the aircraft.  

Before I exited the aircraft I had set up the fuel pump, mixture and throttle as appropriately as I could to add just enough fuel to the engine so when I pulled the propeller through there would be enough fuel to keep the engine running.  Once the engine started I needed to avoid the propeller and shuffle under the wing strut and open the door and climb back into the aircraft.  I think most people can understand that when the aircraft is secured it is much safer.  I was doing this all in a floating aircraft away from shore towards the middle of the lake and into larger waves. The three guys watched from shore helpless to rescue or help.

When attempting to hand start an engine the compression of the engine makes it difficult to start.  It is a tricky maneuver and in this particular case it was a day that I would remember for the rest of my life.

As I held on with my left hand, and reached with my right hand for a long swing I remembered to pull back quickly as the engine caught.  There is an anxiousness when doing this in the best of circumstances, doing this on slippery surface only added to the danger and risk involved. I gathered my courage quickly as the situation was quickly  worsening as drifting with a heavily loaded aircraft in large waves could capsize the aircraft as well.  

The engine started quickly, with the throttle set measurably too high.  I was  now instantly traveling well beyond taxi speed directly back towards the rocky shore with me standing as a passenger on the right float of the plane and no one behind the controls.  I didn’t need to work for NASA to understand this picture was not exactly part of the plan.  I quickly ducked below the wing strut avoiding the spinning propeller inches away.  On the first attempt to open the door the slip stream of the engine was too strong.   I couldn’t open the door this brought instant panic and an adrenaline rush fueling my next attempt.  The handle on the door is narrow and slender and sits flush with the door, the adrenaline overtook my whole body with fire , heat and energy.  I grabbed the handle as hard as I could, and weaseled my body into the crack of open the door to push it apart with my shoulders.  I could sense I was racing towards the rocky shore, and a disastrous fate flashed before me, wreckage, injury, and ... As I  struggled with opening the door and pressing against the slipstream, it feels much like your hand out the window of a car, and I reached across the front seat and pulled the mixture killing the engine.  This was a momentary relief, the aircraft was still racing towards the shoreline. I quickly slipped backwards out of the cockpit and back underneath the wing strut towards the front of the float to stop the aircraft.  I yelled for help and jumped into the icy water to stop the aircraft from hitting the rocks.  I managed to get it stopped without serious damage to floats of the aircraft.

I on other hand, I just experienced a living nightmare in several unguided steps that began and ended without physical aircraft damage, but had left me completely charged and exhausted.  The embarrassment of the situation was the last of my worries, I was now exposed to hypothermia, shock, and still in the middle of nowhere with half a day or more of work ahead of me with an airplane without a charging battery.  I can just imagine what these three men thought of getting into the aircraft with me later that day.

I quickly had the people on the shore secure the aircraft with a rope on the tail.  I took the front passenger door off the hinges and rested it inside of the aircraft across the front seats and reattempted the whole start procedure all over again.  This time I could reach inside the cockpit without the obstruction of the door and adjust the throttle back to proper rpm for idle.  All the while standing on the float, I secured the door, making sure not to drop the door pins in the water, and climb back into the pilot seat to taxi the aircraft away from the shore for take off.  I had to repeat this fragile and potentially deadly start procedure seven more times that day.  Seven more times, the flashback of the event burned the memory into my heart and mind. I flew from point to point going over this event in my head, wondering just how lucky I was to escape with little permanent result, just a building block.

At the end of the day in Pickle Lake I shared the event with my father Howard and we changed the start procedure in this event.  The new procedure was to take the door off to remove the obstruction of the door in the event of the throttle being set too high.  This would come in handy as alternators would stop functioning from time to time and pilots had to be able to start the aircraft by hand.  Something I myself did almost on a biyearly basis.  As dangerous as this was there is a skill set needed for operation and survival when flying in Northern Canada.

As I looked back upon this event there are a lot of times the beginning and the end of the day are normal, it is what happened in the middle that changed and shaped me.  In writing these words my fingers are tingling, my heart is beating harder, and I just shake my head at the Post Traumatic Stress reaction that still beats through my body today.  

It was just another day, I flew thousands of them, this one I will remember forever.    If you are safe at the end of the day count it as a blessing, I know I needed to relive this to remember this for myself.

Back in Dallas

Five years ago I came back to Dallas a little less sure what to expect. It was a city where I once lived and where part of me died. Now all this time later, my life is something different. I no longer live in the same city, I am remarried and a father, as well as we are expecting child number two. The old ghosts have all disappeared. It funny that what was so important seems to get lost in those translations of trying to figure out what everything means. Life is good, and I like it that way.

Stumbling Through Injury

For the last two years I haven't been able to run without pain then swelling. For the last two years I have struggled to keep pace with those who have never been much for slowing down. That hopefully will change with the knee surgery I had a couple weeks ago. I injured my knee initially as a grade school kid. I remember not being able to squat to play catcher as a kid. I remember not being able to jump off my left leg as well as my right leg in high school and in college. In college I took my physical activity up a level playing university basketball. It was during my second year of college that my knee began to lock. This led to my first surgery December 20, 1990. The surgery was a success and my strength and ability was reborn. It always takes a while for your body to recover and reset after an injury. The muscles and tracking can be thrown out of line and have to be rebuilt, and retrained to return to a new normal.

Somewhere along the way I re-injured my left knee. I went to the doctor last year, and was advised to suck it up till I really needed it. Well this year I needed it. I topped the scales at 15 pounds above my college weight and refused to give into size 38 jeans full time. They were only on short term loan. A couple weeks ago I returned to the surgeons table and underwent my second scope on the left knee. So far the recovery from surgery is going well. You start out with the usual this doesn't hurt while the local area is still numb. Then you go through the I need pain killers and ice stage. This is followed by where are my crutches and ice cream state. Slowly though you begin to think it is going to get better.

For me it has always been about today. Not living for today as hard as I could in each of the last 2 years. No the today I am talking about being a father and being able to play trains, catch and run around with sore face muscles from smiling and joy. Today is here, the today I planned for as I tried to save my knee, and the today that has a two year old that wants all I wanted for him and MORE!!!

I have stumbled through the last couple of years in pain, and discomfort. I have allowed myself to change pace, and I am now going to have to shed this cloak of reserve and live again with passion and energy. I still need to rebuild the strength in the muscles, and the rebirth of the form of the knee without discomfort from torn internal tissue.

I look forward to enjoying today as it should be, to the fullest, at last.