A Bryce Canyon Photo Shoot

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Maria Langer

It’s all about timing.

I’m at Bryce Canyon with one of my aerial photography clients this weekend. Although we’re here to do some aerial work at Bryce and then at the Grand Canyon (and maybe Sedona), we’re grounded due to weather. Yesterday dumped at least 10 inches of snow in the area, blanketing everything with thick white snow. Last night, it started to clear out. My client and I arranged to meet before dawn and see what we could shoot in the park at sunrise.

We met at 6:30 AM. The moon, waning two days past full, was still up and, at one point, was beautifully framed by the tall, snow-covered pines along the park’s entrance road. We pulled over into a cleared area and my client spent about 20 minutes standing in the snow across the road with his tripod and camera. I took the opportunity to touch base with my husband back in Wickenburg.

The clouds were moving in again when we finally got back on the road. My client didn’t have much hope. I was uncertain. I know how quickly conditions can change up here. I also knew that the temperature/dew point spread at the airport 5 miles away was only 2°C — and that meant possible fog. I was hoping some of that fog might be in the canyon.

Inside the park, only two viewpoints were open: Sunrise Point and Sunset Point. Both look out into the “Amphitheater” area , a roughly C shaped canyon facing southeast. My client and I were glad the other road was closed; it meant our brief aerial photo work the next morning was less likely to bother park visitors.

My client steered us to Sunset Point. Two very large snow throwers were at work in the parking area where only two cars were parked. We parked behind one of them, got our gear together, and headed out to the lookout point.

Although the path had been cleared the day before, about 2 inches of fresh powdery snow lay atop the surface. Below that was a sheet of ice. We both walked carefully. The viewpoint was deserted. The view was…well, interesting, but not perfect. The fog I wanted to see was layered in the canyon and at various other places beyond it. There was enough fog to make it interesting without really obscuring the hoodoos — red, column-like rock formations — that we’d come to see. The trouble was, the light was awful. The sun was up, but it was hidden behind thick clouds. The light was gray and lifeless.

The hiking trail down into the canyon was open — despite thick snow covering the pathway. My client, who was prepared to hike in deep snow, announced he was going down. I had the car keys. The idea was that when I got cold, I’d wait for him in the car. My iPad was in there, so I’d be able to read or check e-mail. He headed down and I walked back to the view point to see how things would change.

Another photographer showed up about five minutes later. We got to talking. He was from the Salt Lake City area and had come down the day before. He couldn’t believe all the snow he was seeing had fallen in just that day. As we chatted, we snapped photos. I had my monopod with me; he was shooting handheld. (My client was lugging a very heavy tripod down the trail with him.) A few minutes later, the man’s family joined us. He and his daughter (I assume) headed down the trail, leaving me up top with his wife and other daughter (I assume). We did a lot of chatting and photo snapping as time went on.

First Light The first hint that things might improve came a while later when the sun started breaking through the clouds. I snapped this photo using the HDR function of my iPhone and then fixed it up a bit more in Photoshop to bring out the shadows. Not too impressive. The light faded again right after that and I started thinking about how warm the car might be. But I decided to stick it out a bit longer.

I was glad I did. A few things happened:

The sun rose higher. Of course, I expected that.
The clouds drifted on a gentle breeze to the west. The effect of that was to make it easier for the sun to poke over the top of the cloud bank.
The fog bank began drifting into the canyon.

The effect of all these changes, which occurred over the course of about an hour, was to make an amazing, constantly changing scene in front of me. I began doing real photography. The three photos shown below are among the best I shot.

Snowy Bryce Dawn 1
D7000, f/10 @ 34 mm, 1/400, ISO 400, No Flash

What I like most about this first shot is the laying of the low clouds among the hoodoos in the canyon. This really helped to separate the rock formations and add an element of three-dimensionality. It was also neat to be above the clouds without having to fly there.

I had two lenses with me: a Nikkor 10-24mm and a Nikkor 16-85mm. Although I prefer the 16-85mm lens — it’s the absolute perfect all-purpose lens — I found that I was shooting most photos with the wider view. With my Nikon D7000’s 1.5x crop factor, this lens, at its widest focal length, is equivalent to a 15mm 35mm camera lens. There’s very little distortion — unlike my 10.5mm fisheye, which is fun but not practical. I liked the way it accentuated the sky in some of the earlier shots I took.

For a while, I switched back and forth — no easy feat when wearing gloves and relying on a jacket pocket for lens storage. Later, as the light continued to change, I wound up sticking with the 16-85mm lens, which also had a polarizer on it. That came in handy when the sun had risen high enough over the cloud bank to bring out some of the colors. I’m a big fan of using polarizing filters when the light is right for them. It really can accentuate the outlines of clouds and the blue of the sky, not to mention the red in the rocks.

Snowy Bryce Dawn 2
D7000, f/10 @ 16 mm, 1/400, ISO 400, No Flash

I’m actually a little annoyed about this photo. When I shoot, I compose in the camera with every intention of using the full frame image. In other words, I shoot photos that don’t need to be cropped. This is very easy if you use zoom lenses, which I do, and take the time to compose properly.

The problem with this image is that when I shot it, I included my monopod head, which was leaning against a fence rail, in the lower-left corner of the picture. It ruined the photo. The only way to “fix” it was to crop it. This was the best I could do. It is not as I intended. I may attempt to remove the monopod head with Photoshop in the future, but I generally don’t like doing things like that. We’ll see.

Bryce Canyon Lone Pine
D7000, f/11 @ 24 mm, 1/500, ISO 400, No Flash

I like to shoot foreground items with interesting backgrounds. This tree, with the fog, clouds, and sky behind it to separate it from the background details, made a great foreground subject. And what could be more interesting in the background than snow-covered red rock hoodoos?

In all, I shot about 50 images over the course of 90 minutes. These were the three I liked most after viewing them on my laptop. I might find other favorites when I get back to my office and have time to look at them again.

I should mention that my camera was outfitted with its Nikon GPS, which worked like a charm to encode location information into each shot. This was the first time I used it. The device is awkward and I’m not sure how often I’ll really want to use it. I might reserve it for tripod-based work.

The fog bank continued to move in and eventually blocked out the sun again. The overlook chilled back down to its pre-sun temperature. Down below, on the trail, my client and the two other people who’d gone down started back up. The dad and his daughter arrived first and the family left together. When I realized my client had stopped for more photos, I decided to head back to the car. He joined me about 20 minutes later.

It had been a nice morning shoot, despite the cold. My client says there’s too much snow on the hoodoos for the aerial shoot we need to do before heading south again. While I agree that there’s a lot, I don’t think there’s too much. The red rocks are still clearly visible and should look great from the air.

As I write this four hours after our return, the snow is falling again. Let’s hope it doesn’t add much more to the scenery here.

Today’s Snowy Adventure

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Maria Langer

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A comedy of errors in four acts.

I’m at Bryce Canyon this morning. I flew up here with a client to do an aerial photo shoot. We knew the weather was going to get bad today and made sure we arrived yesterday, before we couldn’t get in at all. Based on the forecast, we figured we’d get the shoot done on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning before heading down to the Grand Canyon to do a shoot there.

The weather was surprisingly good and, if it hadn’t been so windy, we probably would have attempted the shoot on arrival. Instead, we parked the helicopter and I slipped on its blade hail covers, which I’d brought along. We’re not expecting hail, but I figured (correctly, according to two cold-climate pilots I spoke to) that the covers would also keep snow and ice off the blade surfaces. Unfortunately, there was no way to guarantee that snow wouldn’t accumulate on top of the covers. Heavy snow or ice sitting on the covers on the blades could cause them to droop excessively; if that happened, the blade droop stops could be damaged. So I’d have to keep an eye on the situation, possibly by making multiple trips to the airport during the weekend. The airport is 3 or 4 miles from the hotel we’re staying in, Ruby’s Inn. My client rented a car.

After checking in at Ruby’s the weather got better and better. My client went into the park to photograph the hoodoos and stayed there to watch the moon rise. He told me later that he took 20-minute exposures of the hoodoos lighted by just the moon and they look like they were shot in daylight. (I’m looking forward to seeing them.) I elected to stay in my room. I’m recovering from a nasty cold that just about ruined my vacation. It was cold out — probably around 35°F before sunset — and the heater works very well in my room. When I finally turned in for the night around 9 PM, the moon was shining brightly in what looked like a perfectly clear sky.

Hard to believe the weather forecast said 80% chance of snow in less than 2 hours.

Act I: The Snow Begins

Things were different when I woke up at about 3:40 AM. There was probably about 2 inches of snow on the ground and more coming down. Two hours later, when it started to get light, there was at least another 2 inches. Not much wind, either. I started wondering how much 4 inches of snow on 14-foot long helicopter rotor blades weighed.

At about 7 AM, my client showed up outside my door. I saw him through the window; he didn’t want to knock. I opened it. By then, the snow was quite impressive, piled up on everyone’s car. The wind had begun to blow a bit, too.

“Look at all this snow,” he said. “We can’t go to the airport to check the helicopter. The car is just a sedan. No four wheel drive.”

In all honesty, it didn’t look that bad yet. I recall driving 40 miles in snow twice as deep — in a 1987 Toyota MR2. Not exactly an all-terrain vehicle.

I told him I’d call the airport. I did. No one answered. I left a message asking them to peek out the window and report back to me about the rotor blades. But at the rate the snow was falling, I wasn’t willing to wait long for a report. I told my client I’d try again in a half hour. Otherwise, I needed to go.

The snow kept falling. The wind was blowing but didn’t seem to be making a dent in the accumulations on the tops of cars and trucks parked silently in the lot below my window.

Act II: Our Drive to the Airport — and Confrontation with a Jerk

Dressed for Winter At 7:30, after getting no answer at the airport again, I got dressed in my best effort at winter gear. That meant a cotton turtleneck shirt with a cotton long sleeved shirt over that, a pair of nylon/spandex leggings with a pair of denim jeans over that, cotton socks, sneakers (I left from Phoenix where I don’t keep a pair of boots), my wool scarf, my leather jacket (with lamb fleece collar removed so as not to gather snow), ear warmer head band, baseball cap, and wooly gloves. The only pieces of clothing from my suitcase that I wasn’t wearing were my pajamas, the shirt I’d worn the day before, and one extra shirt I’d brought along. I looked ridiculous (see photo; I don’t think putting this photo on Craig’s List would get me in as much trouble as this guy’s photo did) but figured I’d be warm enough.

I went to my client’s door. He was wearing sweatpants, having a cup of coffee. He didn’t look ready to go out. I told him I’d start scraping the snow off the car. He protested quite loudly, but I just went.

Partially Cleared Snow I had a plastic shopping bag with me and I used it to cover one arm. (The goal was to keep as dry as possible.) I then used sweeping motions to get the snow off the car. It didn’t take long. The snow was a bit wet but moved easily. Not very heavy. But there was at least 8 inches of it accumulated. What would that weigh on my blades? I was starting to get very nervous about it.

A plow came through the parking lot leaving the inevitable snow bank behind the car.

My client appeared. He told me he was going to buy an ice scraper. I pointed out that there wasn’t any ice. I asked him to start the engine and use the wiper blades to finish off the front window. I recleared the side and back window; another 1/4 inch of snow had already blanketed them.

While he backed up, I stood at the hood, pushing. He didn’t seem to have much trouble moving it, but made the fatal error of turning the wheel before he’d cleared the snowbank. The back end of the car plowed into it and the car was stuck fast.

I started work on the snowbank. By this time, two other cars had successfully extracted themselves. Two guys hurried over to help us. When the car wouldn’t budge, one asked if he could sit at the wheel. My client stepped out and the other guy got in. With three of us pushing at the hood and the driver’s good “rocking” skills, the car was soon extracted. I asked if we could help them with their car and they assured us that wasn’t necessary. They had four-wheel drive.

My client wound his way through the plowed area of the parking lot and into the main road. He was not a happy camper. But the road didn’t seem slippery, and at our slow speed, we weren’t sliding around at all. The main trouble was seeing the road. Everything was white and the road surface perfectly matched the white snowbanks on either side. Visibility was probably about 1/4 mile. The airport’s weather system was reporting freezing fog and now I knew what that looked like.

When we reached the junction of Highway 12, we stopped. There was no one around us in any direction. From inside the car, it was impossible to see if the road had been plowed at all. So I got out to take a look. It had been plowed, but not recently. It had tire tracks on it. It looked doable.

But before I could begin convincing my client/driver to continue on, a beat up old pickup truck made the turn onto our road. Because we were stopped in the middle of the road, he pulled in on our right side, facing into incoming traffic (if there had been any). He got out and told us we needed to be off the road. The conversation went something like this:

Him: You need to get off the road.
Me: We’re just checking road conditions. We’re going to the airport.
Him: Do you know where that is?
Me: About a mile or two that way. (I pointed into the whiteness of Route 12.)
Him: You need to turn around and go back.
Me: We can’t turn around here.
Him: Then I’ll call a tow truck.
Me: We don’t need a tow truck. We’re not stuck.
Him: Then I’ll call the sheriff.
Me: Why?
Him: You need to get out of the road.
Me: We will. We’re just looking at the road conditions before deciding what to do.
Him: I’ll call the sheriff.
Me: [exasperated and tired of maintaining a pointless conversation with a self-important moron] Go ahead.

Meanwhile, my client was beginning to freak out. He’s not American born and although his English is good, I don’t think he was able to keep up with our rapid-fire exchange. He did, however, hear the word sheriff twice, and he assumed we’d done something serious enough to possibly get arrested.

Him being freaked out wasn’t helping matters. He already was worried about continuing on the road. Now we had this jerk partially blocking our car, talking to someone on his cell phone. I needed to get to the airport. I knew it was possible. I had to convince my client. Finally, all I managed to do was convince him to let me drive. But the jerk was still blocking us. Tooting the horn had no affect.

That’s when I got pissed off.

I got out of the car and walked around to his window. I could tell by his uniform shirt that he worked for a gas station or something. I asked him where he worked and he said he worked for the tow truck operator across from our hotel. (Figures.) I told him I didn’t like his attitude and would be talking to his boss. He held the phone out so whoever was on it could hear me and I repeated loudly at the phone, “Your attitude sucks and I’ll talk to your boss about it.” I started to walk away, but then turned back and said, “Now get the fuck out of our way.” (Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.)

As I walked away, he got back out of the truck and started shouting at my back. “Well, I’m also the fire chief in [redacted] and on the EMT team and — ” I didn’t hear the rest. I was already in the car with my door closed. He, of course, didn’t move. Instead, he made a big show of walking behind the car, apparently to get our license plate number, further freaking out my client. I had to carefully make my way around his piece-of-crap truck, avoiding the deep snow bank on my left as well as I could. Then I made the left turn onto Route 12 and headed toward the airport.

The going was easy. But what really surprised me is that the airport road was plowed. The only problem was the snow bank from our road to that one. So we got out, leaving the car in the middle of the deserted road, and worked on it. I discovered that a floor mat, when wielded by two people, works very well as a scraping shovel. I turned the corner and saw a big front-end loader coming toward us. The airport guy was using it to plow the road. We stopped and talked to him. He said there wasn’t much snow at all on the helicopter. Then he told us where we could turn around safely past his house down the road.

We continued to the airport and were very surprised to see that there was hardly any snow on the helicopter at all. The wind was doing all the work for me. All those worries for nothing. We stopped and talked to the airport guy again. He volunteered to keep an eye on the helicopter and clear snow off it needed. He was a good, reliable, friendly guy. I felt all my worries fade away as we said goodbye and headed back to the hotel.

Act III: Black Ice

If you’ve ever driven in fresh snow, you might know that some snow is actually quite easy to drive in. It’s the stuff that’s not too wet and not too dry. It packs under your tires as you drive but doesn’t turn to ice in the process. That’s what we’d been driving on until we got to the airport road.

The airport road, however, was freshly plowed. Maybe it was the sight of that clean black pavement on the road in front of me that gave me the confidence I needed to drive at 20 miles per hour rather than a more conservative 10 or 15. Unfortunately, what I didn’t realize is that I wasn’t looking at pavement. I was looking at the half-inch layer of solid, smooth ice that sat on top of it.

Black ice.

There’s a tiny bend in the airport road before you reach Route 12. It’s so slight, it doesn’t even show up on a map. As I turned the wheel to the left to make this bend, the tires started to skid. My client reacted by saying the appropriate frightened passenger words. I pumped the brakes gently and, for a second, had it under control. Then more skidding and more right seat panic. My brain shut off and my foot pressed the brake down hard. Then it was all over.

In slow motion, the car skidded nose first into the snow bank on the right side of the road.

Shit.

It was stuck good. I couldn’t even get it to move an inch in either direction. The front wheel drive tires were sitting right on some of that black ice and all they could do was spin. We worked on it for a good ten to fifteen minutes, even putting the floor mats behind each tire in case it moved. No joy. And I do mean that literally.

We retreated into the car where I tried to get the airport guy on the phone. He didn’t pick up his cell. I called another number on the airport’s voice mail message system and reached a guy in Las Vegas. He was the airport guy’s boss. He said that he was out on the plow (which I knew) and probably couldn’t hear the phone ring. I told him our predicament. He told me to call 911. I said, “No, this isn’t an emergency. We’re in a warm car with plenty of gas within sight of Route 12. One way or another, we’ll get out without emergency assistance. Let them take care of heart attacks and accidents.” I think he was surprised by my take on 911. I asked him to mention us to the airport guy if he happened to call back.

I thought about calling AAA and realized that they’d likely call the jerk I’d cussed at and he’d likely not come. (Yeah, yeah, save the lectures.)

I started walking back toward the airport while my client yelled at me to stay in the car. I had to slip and fall twice on that damn black ice before heeding his words.

I tried the airport guy a few more times. On the third time, he answered. I told him our predicament. He told me he’d be right out. I told him to take his time. Warm up, have some coffee. We could wait. My client agreed. “Bring a shovel, though,” I added.

He showed up about 15 minutes later with his big front-end loader and turned it around so its back end faced the back end of our car. Then we hunted around for a place to tie onto the car. In the old days, imports — this was a Mazda — had these loops on the front and back of the car to tie them down during the boat ride from Japan. This one didn’t have those. But he found a loop on the frame. Trouble was, his chain wasn’t long enough to reach it.

He climbed back into his rig. By that time it was snowing very hard and the wind was blowing it almost horizontally. When he came back, he told me he’d made some calls and couldn’t get chain long enough to do the job.

“What do you think our options are?” I asked him.

“Well, I called the rental company for you and they said they could send a tow truck for $45.”

I’d already told him about our confrontation with the jerk. “The same tow company that guy I had a fight with works for?”

“I can ask them not to send [redacted jerk’s name],” he promised, grinning at me.

“Then do it,” I said. “I’ll pay $45. Cash if they want it.”

He made the call. I overheard him say, “You have to send [redacted jerk’s name]?” and I said, “I’ll pay $75 if they don’t.” He laughed and said, they’re just pulling your leg.

Call done, he told us to wait in the car. My client had been shoveling snow the whole time. I told the airport guy to go back and we’d be okay. He said he’d stick around just in case [redacted jerk’s name] showed up. I offered to let him wait with us in the car, but he preferred the backhoe.

We got back in the car. My client was really freaked out by the snow accumulation and the prospect of driving back to the hotel. That surprised me because he lived in Chicago and was no stranger to snow. But he told me that at home he had a truck with some sort of special snow driving gear. I didn’t get the details, but it seemed that he was convinced such special equipment was required for driving in the snow.

Whatever.

I just felt like an idiot for skidding into the snow bank and getting stuck. I know nothing had been damaged other than my pride, but I resolved to rent my own car on any future trips to shield my clients from the consequences of my stupidity.

Act IV: The Happy Ending

The tow guys showed up a while later and [redacted jerk’s name] was not among them. One of them asked me if I was the one [redacted jerk’s name] had a fight with. I admitted I was and we all had a good laugh. It took some work to get the car out and all three of the guys helping us nearly fell on their butts because of the damn black ice. Every single time one of them slipped, they’d comment on it. It was really nasty stuff. When the car was out, they said they’d be just as happy if we paid via AAA — in other words, making it a free tow — and urged us to do so. That worked for me.

I told the airport guy that I owed him big time but he insisted we were even. Even? How? I hadn’t done him any favors. At least not yet. I’ll think of something and if I don’t come up with a good one, I’ll leave my friend Ben Franklin on his desk before I fly out on Monday.

My client drove back with me pointing out the road. He was still having trouble seeing it. The tow guys followed us. We went into the gas station where my client took care of paperwork. He told me he would put it on his AAA, but he wound up paying instead, worried that he’d need the tow again later in the day and knowing that AAA doesn’t respond twice in one day. (I’ll put a $45 credit on his bill for this job.) I slipped each of the tow guys $10 in plain sight of [redacted jerk’s name] who appeared outside as we arrived, apparently looking for sunglasses left in their truck. We all ignored him. (In real life, as in online forums, the best policy is usually to ignore the assholes.)

Meanwhile, my jeans were completely soaked and I was starving. My client and I went into Ruby’s for breakfast. While we waited for coffee, he urged me to check out the boots they had available in the adjacent store. I went into the store, but instead of looking at the boots, I found a pair of sweatpants. I used the fitting room to peel off my jeans, surprised that the leggings beneath them were dry. I put on the sweats and went right to the cash register, picking out a pair of socks on the way and carrying my wet pants and newly washed sneakers. “I’m buying these now,” I told the cashier, reaching into the back and pulling the price tag off. We had a good laugh as she rung me up. It was the first time I’d ever spent $16 on a pair of socks, but desperate times require desperate measures. I was back at the table before my coffee was cold and received the scolding delivered by my client because I’d come back without new shoes.

I changed my socks while my client was outside having a smoke and I was at the table waiting for our meals.

Breakfast was typical Ruby’s. I’d like just once to get a good meal with good service there.

My client dropped me off at my room before venturing into the park. Visibility is so low that I think it’ll take quite some time for conditions to improve enough for photography. But that’s what he’s here for.

Me, I’m just along for the ride until it’s time to fly.

And yes, I’ll keep my hands off his rental car.

Phoenix to Lake Powell by Helicopter

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Maria Langer

Again, but this time with video.

The initial call about the January photo gig at Lake Powell came in December through one of my Russian connections. Apparently, two Russian businessmen who were attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wanted to photograph the Lake Powell area from the air. They were willing to pay me to fly up to Lake Powell from Phoenix and make at least two flights totaling 3 to 5 hours.

Trips like this are extremely costly — after all, the client has to pay for 4 hours of flight time just to get me up there and back — and I honestly didn’t expect it to happen. But a week before the chosen dates — January 12-13 — I got the green light and the all-important credit card number I needed to get paid for that 4 hour repositioning flight plus a standard overnight fee to cover my expenses and compensate me for my time away from home.

The Gig

I admit I wasn’t looking forward to the gig. The two photographers claimed to weigh 242 pounds (converted from kilos) and I knew they likely weighed more fully dressed and carrying camera equipment. I calculated the weight and balance as soon as I had this information and discovered that I’d have to strip all non-essential equipment out of the helicopter to lighten it up so we could take enough fuel for 2 hour flight segments (plus FAA-required reserves). Anything that was left on board would have to be shifted from under my seat to under the seat behind me, just to shift weight backwards. Having two fatties — yes, including me — up front would make us front-heavy. Having two fatties on the left side would make us heavy on that side. But even after adding 15 pounds of weight for each of them, I confirmed that’d be in balance with 2/3 fuel or less on board.

The other thing that bothered me was weather. Page, AZ was having unseasonably cold weather with daytime highs barely getting above freezing. Flying a helicopter with two doors off guarantees plenty of outside air inside the cabin and no amount of heat is going to win against 30°F outside air. So not only did I have a bit of a challenge ahead of me with a listing (but still within acceptable CG) aircraft to fly, I’d likely be freezing my ass off.

As far as the helicopter goes, I wasn’t worried about the cold weather affecting operations. My R44 Raven II is fuel injected, so carburetor ice is not an issue. I’d flown it in cold weather before and it was always peppy — once I got it started. In fact, that was my only real concern: Lake Powell photographers usually want to get off the ground at dawn for morning flights and with overnight temperatures under 20°F, I worried a bit about getting the helicopter started for its morning flight.

But the gig did have one big thing going for it: at least 4 hours of revenue time. And if there’s one thing I’m interested in, it’s getting paid to fly.

The Flight Up

Lake Powell is about 200 nautical miles north of the Phoenix area. Since my clients were paying for a 2-hour flight, my goal was to make it there in two hours. That meant flying as close to a straight line as I could.

Course Using Sky Vector, I plotted a course from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (KDVT) to Page Municipal Airport (KPGA) with only one waypoint in between: the Little Colorado River Gorge (LCRG) on the east side of Grand Canyon’s Special Use Airspace. I wrote down the coordinates for the LCRG to punch them into my GPS — a recent GPS battery change had wiped my user waypoint list clean. The flight path would take me north along the east side of I-17, crossing it just before it dips down to Camp Verde. I’d cut across the Verde Valley between Sedona and Cottonwood, then climb the Mogollon Rim west of Sedona, pass east of the restricted area for the Navajo Army Depot, west of Flagstaff, and west of the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountain in Arizona. From there, I’d drop back down into the Navajo Reservation, flying over its western edge, hop the Echo Cliffs, and drop back down to Page, AZ.

And that’s mostly how it all came off.

I departed Deer Valley at about 8:45 AM under partly cloudy skies with little or no wind. It was a cool morning, with temperatures just climbing through the 50s. I crossed Deer Valley’s runways at 2000 feet MSL as required by the Tower there and got right on course, aiming for the LCRG waypoint I’d added to my GPS.

It was interesting and different to fly a straight line route through an area I knew so well. After all, I’ve been flying from the Phoenix area to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, and Lake Powell for years, so it’s not as if the area I’d be flying over was new to me. But I usually fly with passengers on board and, to make the flight more interesting, I fly over or past various points of interest, such as towns, highways, mine sites, and canyons. On this flight, speed was the goal — I wasn’t interested in scenery. But I got scenery anyway — how can you fly a helicopter through Arizona without seeing something spectacular every mile?

As I flew, my GoPro Hero camera recorded a 720p widescreen video of the flight. Mounted up front, it offered an unobstructed view of everything ahead of me. The wide angle lens brought in details of what was close while pushing back distant points. Later that night, I’d watch much of the 2 hours of video and remember the various points of the flight.

Mountains north of Phoenix What fascinated me was the way the light changed throughout the flight. At first, it was partly cloudy. Then the sun slipped behind the clouds and it was cloudy. Then the sun began to break through, speckling the mountainsides with light. This still image, captured from the video, gives you an idea of what I mean. The light changed numerous times over the two-hour period of the flight — at one point, clouding over completely only 1,000 feet above me — giving the illusion that the flight was conducted over multiple days.

It wasn’t just the light that changed, of course. It was also the terrain. Flat desert in the Phoenix area, soft mountains studded with saguaro cacti as I headed north, flat mesas with steep basalt sides, deeply carved canyons, wide valleys, red rock cliffs and hoodoos, alpine forests blanketed with snow, tall mountains, ancient cinder cones, flat “painted” desert, deep gorges, buttes, uplifted cliff faces, slot canyons. I saw it all over the course of my two hour flight — all without trying to see it. My nearly straight line course simply put me over the top of all these things. I sat comfortable and warm in my seat, admiring the view as I glided over it.

Glided is definitely a good word. There was hardly a breath of wind during the entire flight so it was amazingly smooth. A pilot’s dream. And although outside temperatures dipped as low as -5°C, I was cosy and warm with the heat up only about halfway.

Sedona One of the highlights of the flight was crossing the red rock cliffs west of Sedona and climbing up over the Mogollon Rim. The light was absolutely perfect, breaking through light scattered clouds to illuminate the rocks with a soft golden light. Absolutely breathtaking and the GoPro camera captured the whole thing.

Beyond that was a surprising amount of snow and a light overcast layer that shrouded the top of the San Francisco Peaks. The temperature there was around 0°C, but the Flagstaff ATIS reported -5°C — a real thermal inversion only 10 miles east. The low cloud layer and dimly lighted snowfields made me feel claustrophobic. Ahead of me, it looked as if some precipitation could be falling from the clouds. That got me a bit worried about icing, but I continued on. By the time I got to the point I thought I’d seen rain or snow falling, it had stopped — and so did my worries.

The only surprise on my flight was upon reaching the GPS coordinates for the LCRG. Simply said: it wasn’t there. It was about 10 miles northwest of where I’d plotted it to be. I can only assume that I’d punched in a wrong digit when I entered the waypoint into my helicopter’s GPS. So rather than fly over its most dramatic point, I crossed a bit to the east and kept going. I deleted that waypoint so I wouldn’t depend on it again. Oddly if I’d made a serious mistake in the entry, I would have noticed it a lot sooner. But because it was only off by a little bit, it wasn’t until I passed the waypoint that I realized the error. I’ll definitely be more careful in the future.

Over the Rez When I got to the empty expanse of the Navajo Reservation, I dropped down and flew low over the ground. There were few homes in the hundreds of square miles and only a handful showed signs of life. In the video, my helicopter’s shadow is clearly visible: small when I’m flying higher and larger when I’m flying lower. The video makes it seem as if I’m going much faster during this portion of the flight, but I’m not. I managed to keep a steady 100-110 ground speed for most of the flight. It’s just an illusion: the closer the camera is to the ground, the faster I seem to be flying.

I crossed over the Echo Cliffs at Cedar Ridge — at least I think that’s where I was — and sped across more of the Navajo Reservation north. In all, I think about 45 minutes of the flight was spent over the Rez. It’s an amazing land of stark beauty, sprinkled with traditional homesteads, more modern yet simple homes, and, on its far western reaches, the ruins of abandoned homesites clearly visible as rock rings and corrals. The traditional Navajo home is a round or octagonal building called a hogan and they are clearly visible from the air. Also visible on most days are livestock such as cattle and sheep and wild horses.

I descended down toward the lake, flying at a low enough level that I didn’t actually see its clear blue water until I was about 15 miles out. Of course, I could see other landmarks — notably the bulk of Navajo Mountain about 50 miles to the east of Page and the Navajo Power Plant, with tall stacks belching ugly smoke into the air just outside of town. The radio frequency was silent as I descended toward the airport. I lined up with the taxiway and set down on one of the helipads.

The Video

Later, after doing 3.4 hours of photo flying around the lake and points east, I watched the video shot by my GoPro Hero. It was probably some of the best footage I’d ever captured with the camera. My only regret was that I hadn’t shot in in 1080p.

Over the course of two days, I assembled a movie from seven-second clips shot during that two hour flight. Last night I added titles and music. I exported it for my iPad and uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is. Enjoy.

The Two Antelope Canyons

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Maria Langer

You must see at least one of them when you’re at Lake Powell.

Antelope Canyon Square I’m working on an itinerary for a Flying M Air excursion client. They’ve decided to customize their Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure to add another day at Page, AZ, as well as an overnight stay at Bullfrog Basin about halfway up Lake Powell.

One of the things they wanted to add to their trip was a visit to Lower Antelope Canyon. The trip includes a visit to Upper Antelope Canyon, which is the attraction that gets the most visits. I felt it important to explain the difference between these two places and provide additional information on how they could be visited. I figured this information might help others plan their visit to the Page area.

Antelope Canyon: An Overview

Let’s start with an overview of what Antelope Canyon is and how it was formed.

Upper Antelope Canyon Antelope Canyon was formed mostly by the action of water in Antelope Creek, a south-to-north arroyo southeast of Page, AZ on the Navajo Reservation. During heavy rains to the south, the normally dry creek bed turns into a stream of water that rushes northward, sometimes at dangerous flood stage levels. (Indeed, 11 tourists were killed in Lower Antelope Canyon during a flash flood in 1997.)

Over time, the water has carved a series of narrow slot canyons through the red rock sandstone. Two of these slots are open to the public. Upper Antelope Canyon is south of route 98 (see top satellite photo); Lower Antelope Canyon is north of route 98 (see bottom satellite photo). Examination of satellite images of the area show additional slot canyons along Antelope Creek, but they are not open to the public.

Both canyons have restricted access. You must pay a fee to the Navajo Nation and enter the canyon with a Navajo guide.

Both canyons have smooth, carved, Navajo sandstone walls that are quite beautiful. Antelope Canyon is one of the most photographed locations in the area.

Upper Antelope Canyon

Upper Antelope Canyon is, by far, the more visited of the two. I think there are two reasons for this:

Tour companies based a few miles away in Page take groups of tourists directly to the mouth of the canyon, making access convenient.
The floor of Upper Antelope Canyon is generally level, making the canyon very accessible, even to those who are less physically fit.

Upper Antelope Canyon is about 600 feet long, carved through what looks (from the air) like a single sandstone formation. Much of the canyon is so narrow that you can touch both walls with your hands at the same time. The downsteam opening of the canyon is bright with three big “rooms.” The rest of the canyon is much darker and narrower.

Most of the photos you see of Antelope Canyon were shot in Upper Antelope Canyon. At certain times of the day and year, shafts of light come down into the canyon. Photographers often kick up sand or dust into the light shafts for interesting photographic effects.

There are two ways to visit Upper Antelope Canyon:

Sign up for a tour with a Page-based tour company. The fee they charge covers the fee to the Navajo Nation as well as their fee for guide service. They will provide transportation from their location in town to the mouth of Upper Antelope Canyon, usually in a large, open-backed truck with bench seats. Your driver/guide will then walk you through the canyon. Afterwards, you’ll have about an hour to explore it on your own.
Drive up to the park entrance on Route 98, not far from the power plant. Pay a park entrance fee and park your car. Then pay a fee to tour the canyon. You can then wait on benches there until a tour is ready to go and climb aboard the same kind of open-backed truck to reach the mouth of the canyon. The driver/guide will walk you through the canyon and give you about an hour to explore it on your own.

They’re basically the same experience, but one requires you to wait outdoors in a relatively unpleasant environment while waiting for your tour to depart.

If you’re wondering which one is cheaper, there really isn’t much of a difference in price. I prefer using a tour company based in town, strictly for convenience. If you do decide to use a tour company, I recommend Antelope Canyon Tours.

You cannot drive your car to the mouth of the canyon. You must go with a guide.

If you are interested in photographing Upper Antelope Canyon, you must read this.

Lower Antelope Canyon

Lower Entrance Lower Antelope Canyon has far fewer visitors than Upper. Unlike Upper, no tour companies — at least none to my knowledge — visit it. In addition, the canyon itself requires a decent amount of physical fitness. There are ladders, narrow passages, and various places where scrambling on the smooth sandstone is necessary. Heck, even the opening of the canyon, where you descend into a crack in the rock (shown here) seems designed to keep certain folks out: a fatty simply wouldn’t fit through it.

The great thing about Lower Antelope Canyon, however, is that you have up to four hours to explore it pretty much on your own. This gives you plenty of time to shoot photos or lose yourself in thought between the smooth sandstone walls. Because there are far fewer visitors, it’s a more relaxed and pleasant place to visit. You can probably guess that I prefer it.

Lower Antelope Canyon is only accessible by driving up to the parking area, paying the fee, and getting a guide to take you down. Sometimes a guide will take you straight down; other times they make you wait. The entrance to the canyon is walking distance from parking. The guide does not stay with you. Although you’re limited to four hours in the canyon, there’s no one keeping track. You can exit the canyon the same way you entered or climb out on a series of well-built ladders on the far end and walk back along the east wall of the canyon.

Visiting Both

My clients want to visit both, which I think is a great idea. What better way to appreciate the difference between them?

Of course, since they are separate, there’s no easy way to visit both. You can save the park entrance fee — which I believe is about $6 — if you drive to Upper and then visit Lower on the same day. If you’re interested in photography, however, that means that you might not get the best light for both canyons. It all depends upon the time of year and angle of the sun. We’ll be there in March when the sun is nearly straight overhead at noon; midday seems like a good time to visit.

My Las Vegas Weekend

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Maria Langer

Something I’d prefer not to repeat any time soon.

If you follow me on Twitter or read this blog regularly, you know that I spent last weekend in Las Vegas doing a multi-day charter flight for two women from Prescott. The job was to fly them by helicopter to Vegas, where they’d spend two nights as part of a family get-together, and then take them home on Sunday afternoon. It was just the kind of gig a pilot looks forward to: an all expense paid weekend in Las Vegas. As an added bonus: the weather would be perfect.

Our route to and from Las Vegas, as recorded by my Spot personal tracking device.

I picked them up at Prescott Airport (PRC) on Friday afternoon. My passengers were great people, although they seem to have packed enough luggage for two weeks instead of two days. (Honestly, how many changes of clothes does a person need in less than 48 hours?) I took off from Prescott at about 3:15 PM and made a beeline for the Hoover Dam 140 nautical miles away. My goal was to be on the ground in Las Vegas before dark.

Strike 1: Fuel Pump Failure

We were about 60 NM short of the dam, not far from Hackberry, AZ on old Route 66, when the Aux Fuel warning light illuminated. I remember thinking to myself: Oh no, not again. I checked the circuit breaker for the pump and sure enough, it had popped out. I pushed it back in. It popped right back out. So there I was, in the middle of nowhere, with an auxiliary fuel pump failure.

As I’ve written elsewhere in this blog, the auxiliary fuel pump is a redundant piece of equipment on a Robinson R44 helicopter. Although it’s required for operation on launch — in other words, I can’t legally take off if it isn’t working — it doesn’t do anything in flight except wait around for the engine-driven fuel pump to fail. Fortunately, that fuel pump is apparently much better designed and built because it doesn’t seem to fail at all. This particular auxiliary fuel pump was the third one that had failed on my helicopter since it was new 5 years (about 1100 hours) before.

As a pilot, I had a decision to make. I could:

We were right about here when the auxiliary fuel pump failed. That group of buildings on the right is Hackberry.
Land there in the middle of nowhere where it would be extremely difficult to get help. Not only would this ruin my passengers’ weekend by delaying them at least 5 hours, but it would be extremely costly for me to get them (and me) transportation anywhere else. This was something I considered for only a moment. The helicopter was running fine and the emergency procedure says land as soon as practical. Hackberry, AZ was not a practical place to land.
Detour to Kingman. Kingman, AZ was about 12 NM southwest. It was marginally better than Hackberry and the same arguments against it apply. But given a choice between Hackberry or Kingman, I would have gone to Kingman.
Return to base. The Robinson guy I spoke to yesterday said that on an auxiliary fuel pump failure I should go back to base, but since I was much closer to my destination than base (Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix), going back to base seemed pretty silly. Frankly, I didn’t even consider it.
Continue the flight to Las Vegas. This seemed to make the most sense. Again, the helicopter was flying fine. There were several small communities and one or two small airports along the way. If I started experiencing any problems, I could set down there.

I chose the last option.

Again, everything was running smoothly so I wasn’t really worried. Just a little more alert than usual, listening hard for an engine hiccup that might indicate a fuel flow problem.

Problem-Solving

As we flew, the back of my mind worked on the problem I now had to deal with: getting the pump replaced before 1 PM on Sunday. It was actually a two-part problem:

Getting a fuel pump. The last time the pump had failed, I’d tried unsuccessfully to find a replacement locally. The Robinson Helicopter Company had them in stock, but they’d shortly be closed for the weekend and I’d missed their shipping window anyway.
Finding a mechanic to install the fuel pump. The last time I’d had mechanical problems in Las Vegas, Silver State Helicopters had still been in business there. Their mechanic had come to McCarren and made a ramp repair. But Silver State was gone and I had no connections in Vegas for repairs. Especially on a weekend.

Understand that if I didn’t get it fixed by midday Sunday, I’d have to:

Provide alternative transportation for my clients back to Prescott. That meant two plane tickets from Las Vegas to Phoenix followed by a 160-mile round trip car service ride.
Refund at least part of the money my clients had paid me to fly them up to Vegas or provide them with a 2-hour flight somewhere else in the future.
Spend additional time in Las Vegas, incurring more costs while I remained unproductive.

That would cost more than a repair — and I’d still need the repair.

One of my favorite photos from our Prescott to Las Vegas flight on Friday.

The answer came to me not long after crossing over the Hoover Dam and its new bridge. My Seattle mechanic had made a “hangar call” in Phoenix for another one of his customers in October. Maybe he’d come to Vegas. And since he had a bunch of R44s, if he didn’t have the pump on a shelf, he could pull one out of a helicopter temporarily as a loaner. It seemed like a good bet. After all, who would turn down a free trip to Vegas?

Only in Las Vegas can a pilot fly between a glass pyramid and a garishly painted medieval castle.

My route took us up the west shore of Lake Mead to Lake Las Vegas, then west into the sinking sun toward the Stratosphere. We crossed over the Strip as tourists in the tower beside us took photos of us, then headed south along I-15 on the west side of the Strip. I turned base leg between Luxor’s pyramid and Excalibur’s medieval castle, then came in for landing on the Atlantic Aviation ramp on the northwest corner of McCarren Airport (LAS).

While my passengers visited the ladies room in the FBO, I was on the phone with Rich, my mechanic. Within 10 minutes, we had a solution. He’d fly to Vegas that weekend and replace the pump.

While this seems like a happy ending, it would also be an expensive one. I’d have to cover Rich’s round trip airfare to Vegas — with tickets bought at the last minute — and pay a weekend labor rate about three times his normal rate that would also apply to the four hours of travel time. And the pump would cost another $1,600. Plus, in order to facilitate transportation for Rich and any needs he might have, I rented a car at the FBO for $85/day. My free trip to Vegas had suddenly become very expensive.

Strike 2: Rio “All Suites” Hotel

My reservations were at the Rio, an off-the-strip hotel that markets itself as having all suites. I wanted to be comfortable for my stay, so I’d looked into it. Vegas is hurting in this economy and deals are everywhere. I got an upgraded “Strip-view suite” for $80/night.

They put me on the 23rd floor of the tower. I looked out the window, expecting to see the Strip. I didn’t. I called the desk. After speaking with three different people, they agreed that my room was not Strip-view. Since I’d paid for Strip view, they moved me to a room on the 26th floor. They’d send a bellman up with my new keys.

The view from my room around sunset. Okay, so it doesn’t suck, but it isn’t what I expected, either.

I waited 30 minutes for the bellman. When I got to my new room, I found that it was on the same side of the hotel. But because the hotel was curved, it had a partial view of the Strip. That’s the best they were willing to do.

As far as the “suite” part of the room’s description goes, the folks at the Rio obviously have a different idea of what a suite is. To me, a suite is either two rooms or one room with a divider between living and sleeping areas. Embassy Suites has suites. What I had at the Rio was a big room with a bed, sofa, desk, and TV that faced neither the bed nor the sofa. It was not, by any stretch of my imagination, a suite.

There was nothing very appealing about the room at all. It was rather run down, although the bed was comfortable and there were plenty of pillows. The business part of the bathroom — shower and toilet — was small, although the outer area was quite large. The climate control system clanked every time it kicked on, so I left it turned off at night so I could sleep.

I won’t be staying at the Rio again and I don’t recommend it to anyone.

My advice to anyone who wants a nice room in Las Vegas: stay in a hotel less than 5 years old — there are plenty to choose from — on the Strip.

Strike 3: Buffet Dinner

I was meeting friends who were in Vegas for National Finals Rodeo (NFR), which was finishing up on Saturday. I’d invited them to join me for dinner. To compromise on our food choices, I picked the Rio’s buffet, which I’d heard was very good.

As usual with Las Vegas and so many American things, quantity seems more valued than quality. Yes, the buffet had over 300 items to choose from. But none of them were outstanding. In fact, unless you like to stuff yourself with mediocre food — which I don’t — it was a huge disappointment.

But they did have a good bread pudding for desert, and my friends seemed happy enough. Still, I won’t be eating there again.

Hit 1: Sleep

I slept remarkably well. Although the room was right next to the elevators and vending area, it was quiet. There was a bit of noise when my next door neighbors came in — the room had a connecting door — but they got quiet pretty quickly. And, thankfully, I didn’t have to listen to them having sex.

I did wake for the day at 4 AM, but that was to be expected. I was on Arizona time, and I usually wake around 5 AM there. I got a blog post written and posted using Bluetooth tethering on my BlackBerry to access the Internet, then showered and started my day.

Hit 2: Walking/Shopping Las Vegas

I am not a gambler. I don’t see the point. To me, the people parked on stools in front of slot machines like zombies are missing out on the finer points of life. The people at gaming tables are at least getting some social interaction — but at what cost?

Las Vegas is one of the freakishly weird places on earth and there’s nothing more interesting to me than to explore it on foot.

So after visiting my friends at the Cowboy Christmas market they were participating in at the Hilton’s convention center, I headed over to the Las Vegas Fashion Mall on the Strip. I got a great parking spot under the mall and went up on a mission: Buy a Verizon MiFi.

You see, back when I bought my iPad, I made a conscious decision to go with the WiFi only version. I was already paying for Internet three ways and couldn’t see adding a fourth. Besides — silly me — I thought Apple might enable Bluetooth tethering, like I could use with my MacBook Pro and Verizon BlackBerry Storm.

Two things happened:

Yes, the Las Vegas Convention Center wanted $99 a day to access their WiFi.
I started traveling with my iPad only. Without my MacBook Pro, I couldn’t set up an Airport Network to share my Internet connection with my iPad. If WiFi wasn’t available, I couldn’t use Internet features on my iPad. And I was certainly not going to spend $9 to $99 a day to access the Internet at a hotel without free WiFi. (I’m addicted, but not that badly.)
I began using Square. Square is this great system for accepting payment by credit card. It requires an iOS or Android device. I use it on my iPad. Problem: it requires Internet access. No WiFi, no chargie.

I’m due for a new phone after December 23. I’d already decided to buy an Android phone — probably the Motorola Droid 2 — so it would work with Square. I’d done extensive price calculations to see which would be better: using the phone as a hotspot (it has that capability) or getting a MiFi. The cost was about equal, but having the MiFi would give me greater flexibility in that I’d get more bandwidth for less money and the additional bandwidth cost was cheaper. Plus, as I later learned, I’d be able to continue using the Internet while I was on the phone.

Smaller than a pack of cards, this MiFi will connect me to the Internet just about anywhere I go.

Verizon has a special deal on the MiFi 2200 right now. The device is free with a 2 year plan. I decided to go for it and that’s why I went to the mall.

I found a Verizon kiosk, picked the brains of the very knowledgable and friendly but not pushy sales guy, and signed up. I walked out with a MiFi, stowed it in the car, and went out the mall’s main entrance on foot to explore that area of the strip.

The front of the Fashion Mall from the overpass at the Wynn across the street.

I crossed over to Wynn, where I had lunch in Red 8, a Chinese restaurant. I’ve been really hungry for good Chinese food lately — there isn’t any in Arizona — and had a bunch of it in Las Vegas.

Yes, this is completely indoors. Why have a real sky when you can have a prettier fake one?

From there, I walked down the strip past the new (to me) Palazzo and into the Venetian’s indoor shopping mall. The Venetian was built in the tail end of the wacky phase that demanded rides in every hotel and, because of this, it has an indoor “canal” with gondola rides. I bought a very unsatisfactory tiramisu in a “bakery” and wandered back out onto the strip.

I got about as far as Harrah’s when I started feeling hot and tired and figured it was time to head back. So I crossed the street and walked along the strip past the Mirage and Treasure Island. They were doing work on the sidewalk there and they detoured all traffic into the casino (how convenient), but I found the walkway over the road to the mall. I wandered up to the Apple Store to see what kind of iPad cases they have — I’m actually looking for a purse-like case — and then wandered out empty-handed. Three hours after I’d started my walk, I was back in my rental car, exhausted.

Hit 3: Dinner at the Burger Bar

During my walk, I’d decided to cheer myself up from my helicopter maintenance woes by going to a show. I’d heard a lot about Chris Angel as the big up-and-coming magician. He had a show at the Luxor that was somehow connected to Circue du Soleil. I called and, as a party of one, got a third-row seat to see the 7:00 PM show.

So after taking a nap and configuring my new MiFi, I headed out to the Luxor to pick up my tickets and grab a bite to eat before the show. I wound up in the Burger Bar, which is on the overpass between Luxor and Mandalay Bay. I’ve eaten there before. It’s basically a pricey burger joint, but it’s easy and there’s aways a seat at the bar.

I wound up sitting beside a woman in her early 30s who was also alone. Only moments after I arrived, she struck up a conversation. Within minutes, we were chatting like old friends. She was from a small border town in Canada and was on exactly the same page as I was regarding politics and the role of religion in society. She was an outdoorsy person who was out of place in the zaniness of Las Vegas, but was determined to explore it. She’d read about the Burger Bar in a tour book and had asked her friends to join her there for dinner. But they’d rather shop so she’d hopped on a bus from Planet Hollywood (up the strip) and had made the trek alone.

It’s always interesting to me to see how people from other countries similar to the United States think of us. At one point, we were discussing the tax situation in the United States and she said, “I can’t believe you people want tax cuts when you have such a huge deficit and you don’t even have universal healthcare yet.”

I consider that meal a high point of my weekend. It wasn’t the food — I had the sliders and they were pretty good but nothing special — it was the conversation. It’s always great to meet someone who has the same basic ideas you have. Just when I think I must be nuts because of what everyone else is thinking and doing, I meet someone who thinks the same way I do. It confirms that I’m not nuts after all.

Strike 4: Chris Angel Believe

I’ll start by saying this: Do not waste your money on this show.

Interesting that the letters LIE should be bold in the logo. The show’s description was certainly a lie.

Chris Angel has built a show to stroke his ego and feed his narcissism. A big video screen shows photos and videos of Chris in action throughout his life at various points in the show. (Apparently, I’d come to watch TV.) His comedic sidekicks shared immature bathroom joke humor that served primarily to get cheap laughs and stretch out the show’s length to 90 minutes.

Every once in a while, Chris would do a magic trick. Most tricks were some version of the transposition illusion, where Chris and an assistant or sidekick exchange places using a teleportation illusion. I think he did at least five of these and, after the third one, I felt like saying, Okay, I get it. You can switch places with someone. Let’s move on.

He also escaped from a straight jacket while hanging upside down — a trick my cousin was doing when he was in his teens.

He apparently swallowed razor blades and string and pulled the string out with the razor blades tied to it. Teller of Penn and Teller does the same trick with sewing needles and is a lot more entertaining as he does it.

He put on a big, bulky stage coat and then proceeded to produce birds. (Gee, where did they come from?)

He cut an assistant in half in a relatively gory version of the usual trick.

He defied gravity, but in each instance, it was pretty easy to see an assistant releasing the invisible wires attached to his back. In fact, I’m not even sure if we were supposed to be impressed by that; it was pretty transparent.

There were other tricks, too, but not enough to fill 90 minutes — hence the chatty fill and stupid jokes. Every break in the action seemed to be an opportunity for Chris Angel to brag about himself or promote his TV show or products for sale in the gift shop. It was probably this aspect of the show that turned me off so much. I think that if he’d had a more likable personality and wasn’t so damn full of himself, I could be more forgiving of his performance. But to brag about how great you are and then deliver such a mediocre performance was unforgivable.

When the show ended, it did so abruptly, leaving the audience wondering if it was really over.

I cannot believe how much money I spent on this show and how absolutely ripped off I felt when it was done. I would have better spent the same amount of money feeding into slot machines. At least I would have seen something different at every spin.

Oddly enough, my passengers saw the next show that night — the 1,000th performance. They were equally disappointed. I’m really surprised that this show was so well attended. In my opinion, it sucked.

Strike 5: Stomach Problems

Despite the fact that two doctors have told me that there’s nothing seriously wrong with my stomach, I was up in the middle of the night with severe acid reflux and nausea. I had no medicine — not even Tums or Rolaids — to take. I prepared the bathroom for the expected second act where I’d lose those tasty sliders and fries, then went back to bed. Propping myself up on all the pillows so I was nearly sitting up really helped. I was even able to get back to sleep without losing my dinner.

From now on, I travel with Tums.

Hit 4: Rich to the Rescue

Parked on the ramp at LAS. The 747 behind me is a private jet belonging to the owner of the Venetian.

My mechanic, Rich, arrived at LAS on time at 8:20 AM on Sunday with a remarkably small duffle bag. I picked him up at the main terminal and drove him over to the Atlantic Aviation terminal. The drove us out to the far reaches of the ramp, where they’d had me parked. Rich got right to work. Within minutes, the side panel was off and he was pulling the old pump. Once the new pump was in, we ran it to check for leaks. Then I ran up the helicopter while he slid underneath to make sure everything was okay.

By 9:30 AM, we were walking back to the terminal. He decided to try to catch an earlier flight back, so I drove him around to the main terminal and let him off. Mission accomplished.

I’ll get the bill in the mail.

Strike 6: The $8.54 Smoothie

I had 3 hours to kill before departure time. I decided to kill it at Mandalay Bay, which has a bunch of really great restaurants. It was too early for lunch, so I figured I’d pick up a smoothie, which would help keep my stomach settled. All I’d had to eat that day was a cup of green tea and half a toasted bagel with cream cheese.

There was a yogurt place on the north side of the casino that had make-your-own smoothies. You’d fill up a cup with your choice of frozen yogurt flavors and some fresh fruit, then hand it off to the girl behind the counter. She’d toss it in a blender with some 2% milk.

It wasn’t until after my mix was in the blender that I was told it would cost $8.54. Ouch. Well, at least it was tasty.

Hit 5: Lunch at the Noodle Shop

I went for Chinese food for lunch again. This time, I had congee, which is a Chinese rice gruel. It sounds gross and most American folks probably would think it is. But I like it.

Back in the 1980s, when I worked for the City of New York, my partner was Chinese, originally from Hong Kong. On payday, after picking up our checks at the our office in the Municipal Building, we’d head over to Chinatown for lunch. She’d take me to the restaurants where the Chinese people ate. I’d be the only Caucasian in the place. She’d order in Chinese and I’d eat whatever she ordered for me. I think that at first she was trying to see what I’d eat. She soon learned that I’d eat anything. Congee at Big Wong was one of our favorites; she’d order it with tripe sometimes or with little meatballs made of god-knows-what.

At the Noodle Shop in Mandalay Bay, I had congee with abalone and chicken. I’d never had abalone before and I figured it was worth a try. It was good, but not worth the extra money. I would have been just as happy with pork. But at least I know what abalone is like now.

Return Flight

I got back to the helicopter at 12:30 PM and preflighted it. I settled my bill at the Atlantic desk for fuel, parking, and “security” fee. I then went into the pilot lounge to wait for my passengers. They had WiFi there and I spent some time Tweeting and Facebooking. My passengers showed up right on time at 1:30 PM and we got a lift out to the helicopter.

Bummer. They made me fly up the west side of I-15 instead of up the Strip.

On departure, I asked to fly up the Strip but was told I couldn’t. I have a feeling security concerns have made that off-limits to pilots now. (I was able to do it about two years ago for my husband and his mom.) Instead, I was allowed to fly up the west side of I-15 as two tour helicopters came down the east side. Disappointing, mostly because I couldn’t give my passengers the Strip tour I’d hoped to — and I couldn’t get the incredible pictures I’d expected to get from the helicopter’s nose cam.

The relatively small open pit copper mine at Bagdad, AZ.

After retracing my route back to Hoover Dam, we followed the Colorado River south, past Lake Mohave, Laughlin, and Topock Gorge. At the north end of Havasu City, I turned east and beelined it for Bagdad. We flew over the mine and could see Granite Mountain just northwest of Prescott in the distance. We set down at the FBO in Prescott at 4:45 PM local time. My passengers thanked me as I walked them into the FBO. We talked about other flights. Then they left.

After fueling up and visiting the ladies room, I climbed back on board and headed back to Phoenix. I landed about 15 minutes after sunset, exhausted and glad to be back.

I’m in no hurry to go back to Las Vegas.

An Eclectic Mind

Web site and blog for Maria Langer, writer, video producer, jewelry artist, boat captain, and helicopter pilot. Blogging since 2003.

Category Archives: Travels with Maria