I am so incredibly tired.

September knocked things up a notch when two things happened at roughly the same time:

• I got a bunch of flying gigs. To be fair, the biggest gig was booked back in March or April. That’s the gig I’m on now — flying a group of Russian photographers around Lake Powell, Monument Valley and Shiprock. (I’m in Monument Valley now; more on that later.) But in addition to my annual appearance at the Mohave County Fair, I scooped up two photo shoots at Lake Powell and three relatively lucrative custom tours for Realtors. And did I mention the Australian photographer I needed to take around so he could get shots of my helicopter operation for an upcoming book? (Of course I did. I’m still tickled about that.) I flew more than 45 hours in September, and most of them were solid revenue hours.
• My editor reminded me that Apple promised to deliver Leopard in October. Counting back from the end of the month, it became obvious that I’d have to have my book done by the first week in October if Apple delivered on that promise and we wanted our book to be in stores the day Leopard became available. And one look in my personal bank account reminded me that I write for a living and had been neglecting my livelihood.

Thus began a month of very long days. And timing couldn’t be worse. Not only was I scheduled to do this big gig with the Russians, but the dates happened to fall on the very last days I had to write the book. So I had to finish it before I left. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I was packing for my trip as my computer was generating PDFs and uploading files to Peachpit’s server.

I worked 14-hour days last week. Basically, every waking hour was spent in front of my computer, writing about Leopard. And, believe it or not, I have two laptops with me here on my trip so I can knock off the Introduction before the book goes to the printer.

But although the book work is not 100% over, it’s over enough to relax a bit. And even though I’ve been flying my butt off, I do have a nice quiet evening to myself.

And I know — I’m way overdue for a blog post.