Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Top Down in the Rain

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I discover that at certain speeds, it doesn’t really matter if it’s raining and the top is down.

I spent the day in Scottsdale today. I had an FAA course to take at the Scottsdale FSDO. The FSDO isn’t at the airport and doesn’t have a helipad. (How inconsiderate!) So I had to drive.

I drove my Honda. If you’ve been following these blogs, you may know that last year I bought a Honda S2000. It’s the last sports car I’ll ever buy, so I don’t drive it often. It has to last. At 18 months old, it still has less than 9,000 miles on it. I’d like to average 5,000 miles a year.

I normally drive my Jeep around town. It’s starting to become a bit of a beater. The roof needs replacing — too much time in the sun! — and the plastic side and back windows were so scratched up that the other day, I just unzipped them and threw them away. Now at least I can see what’s going on behind me. That’s especially useful when I’m in a parking lot, backing up, and the drivers around me aren’t 100% aware of what’s going on around them. (Sadly they can’t use bad windows as an excuse.)

The Jeep is terrible on the highway, even with the windows on. It’s loud and rides like a truck. It has a tape deck that’s so full of dust that it just spits the tapes out without bothering to play them. Not that you could hear the tapes anyway. The darn thing is so loud you can’t even hear yourself think. And you have to downshift to third gear to pass on the highway.

Of course, it does tackle the roads at Howard Mesa very well. And I’ve driven up the river more than a few times in it. So it does have its uses. Highway driving, unfortunately, is not one of them.

Anyway, the Honda is a convertible and I rarely drive it with the top up. But since I had to be in Scottsdale by 8 AM, that means I had to leave Wickenburg at 6:30 AM. And at 6:30 AM in January, it’s still quite dark and very cold. It was a top up drive.

I forgot my iPod at the office. I recently bought a kit that hardwires the iPod into the car’s stereo system so you can control it with the dashboard stereo controls. At the same time, it keeps the iPod charged. This works with the new iPod (iPod Photo, in my case) only. It won’t work with my old, original iPod. (That’s another argument for keeping the old iPod in the helicopter, as I discussed in another blog entry.) The car has a CD player and I had a few CDs, so the iPod wasn’t really missed. I like to listen to NPR, anyway. I listened to that until I was sick of hearing about the Iraqi election’s consequences for the rest of the Middle East, then popped in a CD and listened to old (70s) Elton John for a while. Then I hit traffic on the Loop 101 and decided it might be good to listen to NPR for a traffic report. Evidently, stop-and-go traffic on the Loop 101 between I-17 and Scottsdale Road is a normal occurrence, because they didn’t say a word about it in two traffic reports.

I got off at Princess Road. There were lots of signs about needing a permit to travel on certain roads. I later discovered that the Phoenix Open was somewhere in the area. As if traffic wasn’t screwed up enough, there was this huge, week-long event to completely destroy it.

I pulled into the FSDO’s parking lot without problems and got a good space out front. I stepped inside at 7:58 AM. Sheesh. Imagine doing that commute every day? Sadly, I have to do it again on Wednesday and then again next Wednesday.

I sat through the first half of course. It really has no bearing on this story.

I put the top down when I went to lunch. It was a beautiful day, although still a bit cool. I had a very nice turkey and melted brie on herb bread sandwich at a bakery. I think it’s called the Wildflower Bakery. Something like that. It was a sandwich you can’t buy in Wickenburg because 1) there is no bakery in town and 2) no one there is creative enough to suggest brie with turkey. (Wickenburg used to have a sandwich shop that had interesting sandwiches, but it went out of business.) I enjoyed the sandwich very much, primarily because I’d had a bad stomach problem on Friday night and the sandwich was only the second bit of solid food I’d had since then. I walked over to Organized Living to look for a file rack for my desk and stepped out empty-handed. Then I made my way back through the traffic to the FSDO office for the afternoon session.

At 3:30 PM, when class was over, I stepped outside and was quite surprised to see dark clouds. But the forecast hadn’t said anything about rain. So I put the top down and heading back to the highway for the drive home.

The rain started falling when I was northbound on I-17. First a bit of a drizzle, then enough rain to turn the wipers on. There was traffic, but it wasn’t bad. I was able to keep a speed of 40 to 50 MPH. I felt a few drops on my head, but not many. I had to make a decision: stop now and put up the top or keep driving with the top down?

Ahead, there was sunshine. And I really didn’t want to stop. So I kept going.

I almost regretted my decision when traffic got a bit worse and my speed dropped to about 30. I was getting a little wet. But then traffic cleared up and I sped up. Soon, I was cruising at 65 MPH. And even though the rain was getting heavier, not a drop was falling inside the car!

Top down in the rain, not getting wet. How cool is that? I kept imagining a wind tunnel with the smoke going right over the top of the car. The rain was like the smoke.

I passed a bunch of cars, my windshield wipers working steadily, wondering what the other drivers were thinking of me. They probably thought I was nuts. But I wasn’t the least bit wet! Then I caught up with and passed another convertible with its top down. There were two women inside and they were laughing hard. I waved to them, sticking my hand out into the rain. They waved back. We all laughed. I wondered if only women were crazy enough to drive a convertible with the top down in the rain. Then I sped on.

By the time I got off at the Carefree Highway exit, the rain had stopped. But a look to the west told me that it was likely to start again. And it might rain harder. Was it worth keeping the top down? I was already stopped, waiting behind other cars to make the left turn. It would be easy enough to put the top back up.

Oh, heck. I pulled up the parking break and pushed the roof button. 10 seconds later, I was snapping the two latches closed. I’d keep the top up for the rest of the ride.

It didn’t rain until I got near Wickenburg, and even then it wasn’t much of a rain. I could have left the top down after all. Just keep the speed up and remember the wind tunnel.

It Goes!

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I get a new set of wheels.

It’s a 1979 Marketeer. And it goes.

What?

I bought a golf cart today. No, I don’t play golf. But I needed a vehicle to leave in the hangar to tow the helicopter around the airport. I was using my Jeep, but I don’t always have the Jeep with me at the airport.

We found this golf course classic in the Arizona Republic classified ads. It was the cheapest golf cart listed, at a whopping $800 OBO. Mike called the seller and got a very talkative woman on the phone. A woman who talked so much she made me seem like a mute. After a lot of listening, Mike got to ask the right questions. When he hung up, he had directions to her trailer park off Union Hills in Phoenix. We hooked up the flat bed trailer and went to take a look.

We made two wrong turns on our way to the owner’s trailer. Trailer parks in Arizona are maze-like in design, with short blocks and few straight streets. But we finally found it and parked out front. Her son Brian was waiting for us. Beside him was a hopped-up golf cart with ATV tires and a dark green paint job. Beyond them was what would soon become my very own Marketeer.

The first thing I noticed was that one of the front wheels was not positioned vertically to the ground. It was as if the steering wheel was turned all the way to the right. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the other front wheel was parallel to it. But it wasn’t.

It was a plain off-white golf cart. The kind you think about if you live in an area with few golf carts and think about golf carts. (Although why you’d think about golf carts if you didn’t have, need, or regularly see one is beyond me.) It was almost identical, in fact, to the one that my mechanic Ed, at Wickenburg Airport, has. No frills.

There were some signs of rust — I think that’s to be expected in any vehicle that’s nearly thirty years old. But the six batteries and their cables were in decent condition and, when we hopped in and went for a ride on those maze-like streets, it ran pretty smoothly. Despite the gimpy wheel.

We drove it back to Brian. Mike voiced his approval without sounding like he was in love with it. He wasn’t, of course. It was a pretty basic and somewhat awful golf cart, with just enough right about it to make it meet our needs.

“Your mom said she’d consider other offers,” Mike said. “Would you consider $500?”

Brian smiled. “No,” he said simply.

“How about $600?” Mike asked. (This is what we’d hoped to pay.)

“I’d feel better about $650,” Brian replied.

“We’ll, we’d feel more comfortable with $600,” Mike told him. “We have cash and can take it right now.”

“Cash is king,” I chimed in.

“Cash is king,” Brian repeated thoughtfully. “Okay.”

I pulled the six $100 bills I’d put in my left rear pocket out and counted them as if I wasn’t sure how much was there. I counted again to act surprised that it was just the right amount. Then I handed them over. Brian handed me the title, which had already been “signed over.” (There’s more to that, but it isn’t worth talking about here.)

Mike drove it up the ramp onto the trailer and Brian helped us tie it down with some straps we’d brought along. The whole time, he talked to us about hunting and doing other weird things with his hopped up golf cart. About the only thing he didn’t use it for was golf course transportation. It was street legal, which isn’t so unusual in Arizona, and had a stereo. On the way to our meeting, I’d asked Mike how a golf cart could be worth $4K or more used. Brian’s golf cart showed me the answer.

We drove home, making a few stops along the way. We went right to the airport where we unfastened the cart and drove it down the ramp. Rob, from Ed’s place, was there working on a plane. He pulled Ed’s cart out and parked it next to ours. They were virtually identical, although Ed’s had fringe along the roof and a bunch of welded-on pieces to hold various airplane tow bars.

Mike hopped into our Marketeer and he and Rob took off, racing down the ramp between the hangars. Mike was quicker off the line, but Rob quickly caught up and passed him. They disappeared around a corner. A minute or so later, Rob was back. Mike followed a bit later. Okay, so it wasn’t fast. Maybe it just needed a charge. Or maybe the gimpy wheel was holding it back.

But it is a classic. And it goes.

Eat Cheese

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My cheese is delivered and I have a cheese tasting dinner with friends.

The cheese (referred to in a previous blog entry) arrived on Thursday. It came in a box fitted around a Styrofoam cooler that contained the cheese and a reusable ice pack. The cheese was still cool, despite its long trip from PA via FedEx but the box was stinky, like you’d expect a box of moldy cheese to smell.

Moldy is a strong word. Blue-veined is the word the cheese descriptions use. It appears that I’ve hit that magical age where a person starts liking blue-veined cheese. Oddly enough, Mike has, too.

John and Lorna came for our cheese dinner. I put out an assortment of crackers and some sliced french bread. And the cheeses. Not only the four I’d bought online from iGourmet.com, but two others I’d bought locally.

Here’s my cheese review.

Amarello is a sheep’s milk cheese from Portugal. I bought it because I’d never had sheep’s milk cheese. It has a semi-firm texture and a rather sharp (to my palette), salty flavor. It reminded me of a cross between Provolone and Romano. I give it a thumbs down.

Brie is a soft cheese found in many places. I bought this particular brie at the local Safeway supermarket. They have several brands there and I know from experience that I like the store-brand “Primo Talgio” the best. I put it on the serving plate beside Coulommiers, a French cheese described in the catalog as the “ancestor of all bries.” When tasted side by side with the brie, it had a much more complex flavor and an interesting finish. I give both a thumbs up, but the Coulommiers gets a bigger thumbs up.

Saga is a blue-veined, brie-like cheese. I bought it at Safeway. It’s one of my favorites. It has an interesting flavor and should not be eaten with brie as it makes the brie taste bland by comparison. Thumbs up.

Morbier is the cheese that started me on this cheese quest. It’s a French cow’s milk cheese that has a unique appearance — a blue line running horizontally across its center. This cheese was the big hit of the evening. Everyone liked it. Even John, who has extremely conservative tastes in food. This cheese not only gets a thumbs up, but it will likely be on every future order.

Gorgonzola Dolce is a very soft Italian cheese that has a strong flavor and even stronger aroma. I think this was the cheese that, despite its double-wrapping, stunk up the box. I like this cheese, but I don’t think it’s because I like the flavor. It think I like the difference of the flavor. I’m always interested in eating something different and this definitely is different. I give it a thumbs up for that reason, but a thumbs down because the piece they sent is so enormous that I’ll be eating it for longer than I probably want to. I’ll probably try different gorgonzolas in the future. Smaller ones.

My cheese experiment cost about $60, including the locally bought cheeses and crackers. I have enough cheese left to do it again, several times, Mike and I will probably work through them over the next week or so.

I’ll probably do this once a month or so, just to build up my knowledge of cheeses and enjoy their flavors.

Got any recommendations? Use the comments link or form for this post.

Say Cheese!

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My love for cheese has me shopping online.

I love cheese. Not the kind you buy in the supermarket’s deli counter: American, Swiss, cheddar, etc. Not really even the kind you buy at the supermarket’s cheese display: brie, Gouda, Havarti, Fontina, etc. (Although I admit I’m fond of Saga, which is available in one of Wickenburg’s supermarkets.) I like the kind of cheese available in cheese or gourmet shops, the kind imported from all over the world, the kind with complex flavors and interesting histories. The cheese that’s very difficult to get when you live in a small town on the edge of nowhere.

Oddly enough, Wickenburg’s Safeway store — the better of the two supermarkets in town — has a big cheese display and a rather impressive assortment of supermarket-type cheeses. It’s there that I can find the pseudo-fresh mozzarella that goes so good with tomatoes and fresh basil, the Saga that’s so nice on a crispy cracker, the double-creme brie that’s wonderful melted onto a slice of toasted French bread, and the goat cheese that tastes so nice melted on a Boboli crusted topped with olive-oil sauteed eggplant and garlic. That cheese display can meet most of my cheese needs, but not my cheese desires. I like to eat cheese as a meal itself and after a while, the supermarket cheese selections get about as boring as the supermarket meat department selections.

When we were out in California for the New Year, we stumbled into a cheese shop at La Jolla Shores. The shop had lost its original purpose. Although named “Cheese Shop,” it had clearly turned into a combination gourmet grocery store and deli. There were very few cheeses to choose from. In fact, I think Safeway has far more. But among the selections was a cheese called Morbier. We bought some, I ate some, and I remembered how much I liked cheese.

When we got home, I searched the yellow pages listings online to find a cheese shop in Phoenix. The closest I could find was A.J.’s supermarket. A.J.’s does indeed have a more expansive selection of cheeses than Safeway, but it doesn’t satisfy my cheese desires. Besides, A.J.’s prices tend to be outrageous. The Saga you buy there costs about twice the price of the Saga in Safeway. And it’s the same stuff. So how much is that other stuff overpriced?

Not to say that I shop for cheese based on price. Price doesn’t stop me from buying a cheese I really want, but it does prevent me from buying a lot of it.

Not satisfied with the Yellow Pages results, I went online with Google to search for cheese shops. I found a place called DiBruno Brothers, based in New York. Of course, I couldn’t remember what Morbier was called, but I remember what it looked like. (It has a very distinctive appearance.) And I remembered that its name began with an “M.” So I browsed DiBruno’s Web site until I found Morbier and clicked the Add to Cart button. Then I shopped around and bought a few more cheeses based on their description and checked out.

Shipping for my order was supposed to be $9, which I thought was very reasonable. But the next day I got an e-mail from DiBruno telling me that they had to charge me $10 more for shipping. I don’t like “bait and switch” tactics — which this appeared to be — so I cancelled my order. No Morbier for me.

That was about two weeks ago.

igourmet.comYesterday, after munching on some Saga and longing for something different, I tried again. I found a Web site called Cheeses.com, which has all kinds of information about cheese. From there, I followed a link to iGourmet.com. I searched for Morbier, found it cheaper than DiBruno’s, and clicked the Add to Cart button. More cheese went into my digital shopping cart before I checked out. Shipping via FedEx is a reasonable $12.45, so the whole thing didn’t cost a fortune. Well, it did cost more than steak dinner for two at Charlie’s, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it a lot more.

I wish there was a cheese shop locally, one where I could buy the cheeses and other unusual “gourmet” items I like to eat without leaving town. But if Phoenix and Scottsdale can’t support a cheese shop, I can’t very well expect Wickenburg to. Especially when the most affluent businesses Wickenburg can attract these days are Dollar Stores and Check Cashing Places.

Hangar Cleanup Time

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I prepare my hangar for inspection by the FAA.

Cleaning a hangar is a lot like cleaning a garage. But instead of cars among the miscellaneous non-automotive junk, there are aircraft among the miscellaneous non-aviation junk.

I really shouldn’t say junk. Our hangar has far less junk than our garage has. That might be because we’ve only occupied it for two and a half years. We’ve lived in our house for about eight years now, so we’ve had far more time to stuff junk into the garage.

Hangar ClutterI’m applying for an FAA Part 135 certificate. As part of the approval process, the FAA has to come take a look at my operations base AKA my hangar. I want to make the right impression. So this weekend, while it drizzled outside, I did a cleanup. I share the hangar with a Grumman Tiger, a stagecoach, four motorcycles, a Porsche, a Go-Ped, a short row of theater seats, and various pieces of furniture. The Grumman Tiger belongs to my significant other, Mike, and his partner, Ray. They bought the plane about two years ago but they don’t fly it very much. In fact, I was thinking of selling partnerships to it. I figure I could get another two or three partners on the plane and neither Mike nor Ray would notice. It’s a nice plane — 1974, I think — and in very good condition. Every airplane person who sees it is impressed. To me, it’s just a nice, shiny plane. I can’t fly it and I don’t really enjoy riding in it as a passenger. The thought of doing 60 or 70 knots when the wheels touch the ground on landing scares me. I’m doing zero when I touch down and that suits me fine.

The stagecoach belongs to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum, located in downtown Wickenburg. If you ever drive by this place, don’t let the dinky exterior fool you. It’s an incredible little museum, with exhibits on two floors (there’s a basement, so it looks like a one-floor place from the street). My favorite exhibit is the semi-permanent collection of antique horse gear, including bits, bridles, spurs, saddles, and chaps. Anyway, the stagecoach in my hangar was donated to the museum by Vi Wellik of Flying E Ranch. The stagecoach is authentic, originally used in the 1880s. It was meticulously refurbished some years ago and was used on the ranch and in the town’s local Gold Rush Days parade every year. I even met one of the wranglers who used to drive it. Now it’s sitting in my hangar, waiting for the museum to build something to house it in.

Why is it in my hangar, you might ask? (I ask myself the same thing quite often these days, as my hangar fills with other stuff.) The previous hangar tenant agreed to house it for the museum. When he died and I moved in, I was told it would be there for another three months or so. That was 28 months ago. I don’t mind too much. The helicopter fits snugly in the place between it and the hangar door and it does tend to impress visitors.

The motorcycles belong to me and Ray. I own a 1993 Yamaha Seca II and a 1996 Ducati 900 SS CR. Ray owns two cruisers, one of which belongs to his wife. Frankly, I don’t know what they are, but I know they’re not Harleys. He came by and ran one for a while in the hangar and it didn’t make enough noise to be a Harley. They don’t drip any oil, either. Ray and I ride our motorcycles even less often than Ray and Mike fly that plane. I’m always on the verge of selling mine. I should, really. They cost about $100 per year to insure and that again every two years to buy them new batteries. I’d ride mine more if I could get them out of the hangar. But that darn airplane’s wings take up so much space and, with the helicopter in there, I just can’t wheel either one of them out. That’s my story and I’ll stick to it.

The Porsche belongs to Ray. He stored it in the hangar when he moved to Montana. But he never fully moved. He’s back now, looking for a new place in Wickenburg. It seems that winter temperatures of -5°F don’t really appeal to him. His wife is still up there with her horses, but she might come down. In the meantime, the Porsche is tucked in the corner, behind one of the airplane’s wings, covered with a car cover. I can’t even remember what color or model it is.

The Go-Ped is mine. The idea was that I’d use it as ground transportation when I flew my helicopter someplace that I needed ground transportation. But the darn thing is a menace. I had a bit of a scare on it and don’t like to ride it. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to practice riding it so it doesn’t scare me anymore. Or sell it.

The theater seats are something I bought on impulse when the local theater was replacing its old used seats with new used seats. They were selling the seats for $5 each to raise money for a local charity. I bought six of them, along with the hardware to put them together. Now they’re in a row in the back of the hangar, covered with cobwebs and looking a heck of a lot worse than they did in the theater.

The furniture includes our old bedroom set, which we’re saving in case we ever do build something on our Howard Mesa property, and some kind of cabinet that Ray moved in with the Porsche. Our furniture is up on palettes, shrink-wrapped, and covered with an old sheet. We’re trying hard to keep it nice. My grandmother gave it to us as a wedding present back in 1986. It’s Scandinavian stuff, teak and very nice. But it didn’t go with our southwest decor. So about six months after she passed away, we ordered a new bedroom set. We’ll use this one again someday.

Yesterday, I cleaned around all this stuff. I started out with a broom, but quickly switched to a Shop-Vac. There was some dried mud along one wall (we get some water in the hangar when it rains really hard.) There were also lots of cobwebs, which I really can’t tolerate.

I also assembled a brand new Black and Decker storage closet. It cost me $69 and it was probably worth about $64. No tools required. Everything snaps into place. Give me furniture that requires tools any day. But once assembled and with 18 quarts of oil on its bottom shelf for ballast, it was fine. I’m using it to store all of my stuff, in an effort to 1) segregate it from the Tiger stuff and 2) to keep the dust and cobwebs off of it.

I also threw out a bunch of junk. We have a big trash can in the hangar with an even bigger heavy-duty trash bag in it. It had never been emptied. I emptied it yesterday and was pleased to find extra bags at the bottom of the can.

While I was cleaning, my hangar landlord, Rusty, came by to look at the new helicopter. It’s always good to have a landlord stop by while you’re cleaning. Especially when that cleaning includes using cat litter to soak up oil drips and installing a drip pan under your aircraft.

I had to take a break in the middle of the hangar cleaning process to have lunch and take care of other chores. Those chores included buying new filters and bags for the Shop-Vac, which was spitting out as much dust as it was sucking in.

I finished late in the afternoon. The hangar looks good and ready for inspection.