Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Alex’s New Cage

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I buy Alex a new cage and he won’t move in.

I had a feeling there would be a problem, but Janet made my worries seem ridiculous. So I bought the cage.

The idea was to buy Alex, my 18-month-old African Grey parrot, a new cage. This would be one I could leave outside so he could spend nice days outdoors without me having to wheel his cage in and out. Moving the cage is a royal pain in the butt, and I only do it when it’s time to hose it out. A second cage would make life easier and get Alex some fresh air while I was at work.

Janet and I took Mike’s pickup down to Phoenix to Bird Expo West (or some similar name), a one-day bird show where we were sure to find great bird deals. Janet’s significant other, Steve, has a scarlet macaw named Calypso. He’s a monstrously huge bird with a beak large enough to break bones and a scream loud enough to wake the dead. While Alex may chew on toilet paper rolls and small pieces of wood, Calypso can tear through two-by-fours. Janet was looking for something to keep him occupied so he’d stop chewing the blinds.

The show was very big and very good. There was a little of everything: toys, food, cages, and birds for sale. The place was filled with bird noise, as if we were walking through an aviary. At one point, Janet missed a cell phone call because she never heard the phone ring over the din.

We bought toys. I didn’t buy many — I think I spent about $15 total. They were all brightly colored wood and wicker toys. Small toys that Alex could chew up within a few days each. They were cheap and would last Alex about two months. Janet bought bigger toys that she carried around in heavy bags. She also bought a few smaller toys for her Budgie, who’d lost his partner over the summer.

There were all kinds of cages, from the smallest carry box for a finch to huge, walk-in aviaries. And the prices on cages were incredible. Cages that would cost $500 in PetSmart were $200 or less. At my top budget price of $200, there was plenty to choose from. Including the corner cage with the rounded front.

Take a moment to imagine this. Alex lives in a rectangular cage in the corner of my dining room/kitchen. The cage is about 26″ deep and about 34″ wide. Add to that about 4″ on each side for the “seed catchers” that do a so-so job of keeping dropped food and toys from falling on the floor. As a result, a big corner of my kitchen is taken up by Alex’s living space.

I’d seen corner cages before, but had never seen one quite as spacious as the one at the show. (Mind you, there were other less spacious ones there, too.) This one would give Alex all the room he needed to live quite comfortably. Best of all, its two flat sides, which would be tucked into the corner, measured only 26″ wide. With the rounded front, the cage would take up much less space than Alex’s current cage. It was even green, almost the same color as the cage he already had, which matched my kitchen.

It all makes sense, right? Buy the corner cage, move Alex into it, and use his current cage for outdoors.

But there was a little voice inside my head that told me it wasn’t such a good idea. You see, Alex likes his cage. He likes to hang out in it. He likes to climb all over it — even upside down from its roof. Sometimes, in the morning, I can’t get him to come out. He spends the day in there, and he sleeps in there. It’s his room, his personal space.

I told this to Janet and she looked at me like I was nuts. He’ll get used to it, she told me. He got used to the one he’s in, didn’t he?

She was right — or at least she sounded right to me. So I bought the cage.

You know what comes next. I brought the cage home and wheeled it into the kitchen to show Alex. He was on top of his cage, just hanging around, and when he saw the new cage, he took a dive to the floor. He was shaking like a leaf when I showed him the new cage. He jumped off my hand several times. Over the next two days, every time I brought him close to the cage, he’d climb on my shoulder so he could be as far away from it as possible. Any time I’d try to get him to step onto the cage, he’d dive onto the floor. Obviously, not only did he dislike the cage, he was terrified of it.

Well the cage is installed in the opposite corner of the dining area, where Alex can look at it all day. I’ve installed some perches and toys in it. I lined the top with paper — not an easy task, given the quarter circle shape. And I keep trying to get Alex to take an interest in it.

The sad part is, I bought the cage to save room in my kitchen, and so far, I’ve just lost more space.

Another Sleepless Night

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About my unfortunate sleeping problem.

I can’t sleep.

It’s Tuesday morning, at around 12:30 AM. I’m wide awake, typing on my PowerBook in front of the TV. The TV is off.

I have a weird sleeping problem. I wake up very early — usually around 5 AM — without any assistance from an alarm clock. I can’t even claim that the sun is waking me, because the sun doesn’t rise these days until nearly 7 AM. I go through my morning routine, which includes making coffee for me and scrambled egg for Alex, my parrot, at a leisurely pace. By 7 AM, I’m ready for work.

The day goes quickly. These days, I’ve been starting my day at the local airport, which I kind of manage. My morning guy went back to work as a pilot and I’m looking for a replacement. Until I find one, I’m the morning guy. I work until about noon, getting lots of paperwork done and spending lots of time talking to the people who come in. Then I usually go to my office, where I spend a few hours catching up on the things I neglected while working on my last big book project — in this case, my Mac OS X Panther book. (Next week, I start another book project — Excel 2003 for Windows.) Around 5 PM, I head home. Mike and I have dinner and usually watch something we’ve “tape” on Dish Network’s version of TIVO. Last night, it was an episode of “Choppers” from Discovery Wings and a “Nova” about string theory. (We don’t watch network TV.) By 8 PM, I can barely keep my eyes open. I go to bed.

I’m dead to the world for the first half of any night’s sleep. You could set off a bomb in my kitchen and I don’t think I’d wake up. After that, things are iffy.

On the worst nights — like tonight — I wake up about four to five hours after I’ve fallen asleep and I’m wide awake. Tonight is worse than usual because I still have a cough, so when I woke up, I spent some time coughing, waking up Mike, too. When I’m like this, I can spend at least two hours wasting time watching TV, reading, or writing. Then, if I’m lucky, I can get back to sleep.

Other nights, I’ll just wake up and snooze and wake up and snooze for the rest of the night. Or I’ll just sleep lightly and wake to the slightest outside sound: dogs barking, coyotes howling, wind, etc. Or be kept awake by the sound of Mike breathing. Since I can’t get him to stop doing that, I’m often in a semi awake stage for hours. These nights are particularly bad if I have a lot on my mind. Then these thoughts parading through my head make it impossible to sleep.

Of course, other nights, I’ll sleep right through.

The sleepless nights usually come in groups. They might be triggered by the moon or by some internal clock that my body keeps winding. So I’ll have a week or more of sleepless nights. Then, one night I’ll sleep right through and wake feeling very pleased and surprised. For a while, the sleepless nights went on for months. It got to the point where I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good night’s sleep. Then, suddenly, I could sleep straight through again. I was extremely pleased. The thought of never sleeping well again wasn’t sitting well with me.

I don’t believe in taking medicine to help me sleep — unless, of course, I have a cold. I’m a firm believer that when you’re sick, sleep is extremely important. If you don’t get sleep, you won’t get better. So whenever I’m sick, I purposely take over-the-counter remedies that include sleeping aids. Of course, they seldom work because I’m sick and too busy coughing or fighting a runny nose to sleep.

Anyway, tonight is one of those nights. I just spent 20 minutes writing this, sitting on the sofa with my legs tucked up under me and my laptop on my lap. I’ll write something else during the next hour or so. By then, I should be ready to get back to sleep.

I hope.

Flashback: February 6, 2002

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I take Mike’s cousin Ricky to a real ghost town.

Swansea is a ghost town about 60 miles west of Wickenburg. Located on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (or as close to there as you can get), it takes about 3 hours to reach the place by car. But it takes only 40 minutes by helicopter.

Mike’s cousin Ricky was in town on one of his annual visits. (He doesn’t come annually anymore and I’m not sure why.) Mike had to work and I needed to play. So I took Ricky to Swansea in Three-Niner-Lima.

We landed on the site of what had been the mine manager’s house. The area was flat, covered with the same fine gravel that seems to cover about 90% of Arizona’s desert. The town was deserted — at least I don’t remember anyone being around.

Swansea
Ricky stands near Three-Niner-Lima, on the site of the mine manager’s house.

We explored the town for about an hour. I’d been there before and although I found it interesting, Ricky really seemed to enjoy it. The town has quite a few buildings, many of which have enough left of them to explore. BLM, which owns the townsite, has a walking tour, with numbered stops, and a brochure that explains a lot. It really is worth seeing, but whether it’s worth a total of 6 hours spent in a car, most of which is on dirt roads, is debatable. Having the helicopter for transportation really makes places like this much more accessible.

Ricky at the Wheel
I don’t know why, but I like this photo of Ricky behind the wheel of a desert wreck.

This year, if Ricky shows up, I’ll take him someplace new. I have a few ideas for places to explore.

Flashback: October 11, 2000

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I fly my new helicopter solo for the first time.

I was going through some old files on my computer today when I discovered a folder full of photos of me flying my helicopter, N7139L. While I have lots of photos of me in flight, these are special: they were taken on October 11, 2000, the day of my first solo flight in my own ship.

I’d picked up Three-Niner-Lima in Chandler the previous Friday. Masahiro Nakamura, my flight instructor, took me for a flight around Phoenix’s Class B airspace, pointing out the landmarks I could use to avoid this airspace while flying between my home in Wickenburg and Chandler. I’d been flying on and off at Guidance Helicopters in Prescott, so flying with an instructor wasn’t a big deal. (I don’t think I’d comprehended yet that the helicopter was mine.) What was a bigger deal was the flight back to Wickenburg a while later with Mike. That was only the second time I’d flown without an instructor since getting my private certificate in April 2000.

That flight went well. It must have, because I don’t remember much about it. I don’t remember much about any flights I took during the weekend, either.

But I do remember my return trip to Chandler the following Monday morning.

Flying an R22 solo is quite different than flying it with a warm body beside you. The problem is weight — the weight and balance is completely different. With full fuel, which I probably had that day, weight shifts to the back. But without that warm body, weight also shifts to the right. So the helicopter lifts off front-left first and back right last. It scared the hell out of me on my first solo and since it had been more than a year since I’d soloed at all, the thought weighed heavily on my mind as I prepared to depart.

N7139L
Here I am, lifting off near the fuel island at Wickenburg. Even in this shot, you can see that the skids aren’t level.

I did fine lifting off. But I did make one mistake. For some reason, I thought I could take off directly to the south, past the light posts and over the hangars. What was I thinking? Although the ship had plenty of power, it was a silly, dangerous thing to do. And I remember thinking just that as I came closer than I wanted to to a light pole.

N7139L
Mike took this excellent photo of me in flight — from the ground!

I was a nervous wreck all the way to Chandler, although I don’t remember any details or even why. It must have been the knowledge in my mind that I was a 90-hour pilot in solo control of a new helicopter. A pilot that had flown less than 10 hours in the previous 6 months. A pilot who had never navigated around the Class B and Class D airspaces in the Phoenix area alone. A pilot who was very short on confidence.

N7139L
Isn’t this a cool shot? Mike took this one, too, as I flew overhead.

Things change. Time at the stick changes them. I have 700+ hours now and have trouble remembering the fears I had when I was a new pilot. I have confidence, but I don’t think I have too much. There’s always more to learn.