Category Archives: Travels with Maria

Blogging from the road.

Photos from My Trip: Day 1

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An afternoon on Airport Mesa.

I’m in Sedona, relaxing in my room at Sedona Sky Ranch. It’s the first day of my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I left Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ (near Phoenix) at 10 AM with two passengers, their luggage, and my luggage. We had a great scenic flight through downtown Phoenix, up past Lake Pleasant and the Indian ruins atop Indian Mesa, over Black Canyon City and Arcosante near Cordes Junction, past the cliffside town of Jerome, and along the red rock cliffs to Sedona. Our total flight time was around 70 minutes.

Once in Sedona, I got our rental car and took my passengers down to Uptown Sedona for the day. It was around noon and they had a Jeep tour scheduled for 3 PM. That gave them plenty of time for lunch and shopping in town. After dropping them off, I took care of some business at the Jeep tour company, grabbed a salad to go at Wildflower Bakery, and headed back to the airport to button up the helicopter for the night.

Zero Mike Lima at Sedona
Zero Mike Lima parked at Sedona. The white stuff in the sky is mostly smoke from a burn up on the Mogollon Rim.

“Buttoning up” the helicopter consists of tying down the blades in case it gets windy — don’t want the blades flopping around — doing a post-flight check, adding some oil, cleaning the windows, and locking up. I hitched a ride out to the helicopter with the fuel guy so I wouldn’t have to walk or bother someone to open the gate. I like the fuel folks here. They’re friendly and they give me a little discount. I topped off both tanks. I like to say that the only time you can have too much fuel is if you’ve got fatties on board (which I don’t) or you’re on fire.

I ate lunch out in front of the airport terminal on a bench, sheltered from much of the wind. Then I fetched my camera and spent some time taking photos like the one above. Afterwards, I checked in to the hotel. We’re staying at Sedona Sky Ranch, which is on Airport Mesa. I managed to get an upgrade for my passenger’s room so they’d have a full view. My room is one of the garden rooms.

View from Sky Ranch
This is the view from the lookout point adjacent to Sky Ranch Lodge’s Red Rock View rooms.

Sky Ranch Lodge, which I wrote about in detail here, is a weird little place. It’s at the edge of the mesa and the rooms looking out to the north have amazing views from their semi private patios. The only reason I’m not recommending it so strongly to my passengers is the simple fact that the rooms could use some “freshening.” (This is a word a friend used when I brought her here.) It’s not that they’re dirty or unpleasant in that respect — it’s just that they could really benefit from some new mattresses and linens. Some of the rooms have a downright 70s motel look about them. An investment of about $500 per room would make all the difference in the world.

But you really can’t beat the view. And it’s so much nicer and quieter up here.

The Gardens at Sky Ranch
Part of the garden area at Sky Ranch Lodge.

My room is one of the garden rooms. The grounds here are beautiful and immaculately kept, with little streams and goldfish ponds under shady trees, surrounded by flowering bushes. Very pleasant. I’m thinking of grabbing my book later on and relaxing by some of that running water. Or maybe trying out the hot tub, which isn’t far from my room.

After dropping off my passengers in town, I had the rest of the afternoon to myself. Although there was a slight chance my passengers could call for a lift back up to Airport Mesa, I have a feeling they’ll just ask the Jeep tour people to bring them up. They’re on their own until tomorrow morning. We need to be back at the helicopter by 9 AM to arrive at Grand Canyon Airport by 10:30. They have a helicopter tour with Maverick before we head into the park for our next overnight stay.

As for me, I’ll probably head back down the mesa for dinner. I want to check out some of the hotels down there. I’m looking for another affordable but well-kept lodge in town to offer my Southwest Circle guests.

I’ll also likely enjoy the sunset from either the trail northeast of Airport Mesa or the lookout area on the mesa. We’ll see. I have more than 2 hours to plan that out.

And maybe I’ll get ambitious and upload some more photos.

On Someone Else’s Vacation (Again)

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I prepare to begin a 6-day helicopter excursion with two paying passengers.

Those of you who have been following my blog might remember that Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure was featured in Arizona Highways, one of the best magazines about Arizona. Arizona Highways shares well-researched information and incredible photographs about the state, offering residents and regular visitors a guide to little-known places while enticing other folks to come for a visit or a more substantial vacation.

The magazine is well-known in Arizona but less known outside the state — except by photographers. Its photos form a sort of “gold standard” for southwest landscape photography. It also has a huge readership in Europe. Europeans — notably Germans and the French — love the U.S. Southwest, probably because it’s so different from anything out there.

Anyway, the magazine coverage got my phone ringing more than usual with people who were serious about flying with me. I sold several excursion packages, including one that begins today.

So starting in a few hours, I’ll be taking two folks from the high country on the east side of Arizona on a six-day, five-night helicopter excursion all over northern Arizona.

If you’re interested in such things, you can track our progress two ways:

  • Spot Messenger will be enabled during all flight segments. Visit http://tinyurl.com/FindMaria to see where we’re flying.
  • GPS Tracker, in my new Blackberry Storm, will be sending out signals of where I am every five minutes (while it is within cell phone coverage areas). Visit http://tinyurl.com/FindMaria2 to see where I am.

When he heard about these excursions, a fellow helicopter pilot commented to me that I’d really have to like the people I was flying around to spend six days with them. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I only spend about 1-2 hours a day with them. The rest of the time, they’re on tours (without me) and on their own. But, in general, the folks who do this excursion are very likable. After all, they like helicopters and they like touring Arizona. We’ve already got that in common, so we’re good to go.

I brought my still and video cameras with me on this trip and hope to share some images in daily blog posts. While my passengers are doing their thing, I’m doing mine. I have chores — tying down the helicopter’s blades, seeing to fuel, hauling luggage, checking in/out of hotels — but I have just as much free time at the destinations as my passengers do. I intend to make the most of it.

And get a little R&R when I’m done.

Just because I’m on someone else’s vacation doesn’t mean it can’t be my vacation, too.

Stress Levels Rise as Blogging Frequency Falls

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Something I’ve noticed.

You may have noticed that my blogging activity has dropped off again. There are two reasons for this:

  • I’ve tried three times to write a blog entry and all three times the text is moving off on a tangent that leads to a dead end. I’m blocked.
  • I’m working against three deadlines, only one of which is self-imposed, to get a bunch of stuff done. I can’t seem to work as quickly as I used to.

Whatever the reason, I’m blogging less and feeling more stressed. Some people might argue that those two things are not related, but I think they are, at least in part.

When I start my day with a blog post, as I did each day last week, I feel good about myself and ready to start the day. Maybe it’s because I’ve managed to produce something at the very start of my day, before most folks are even awake. Maybe it’s because it sets the pace of my day to get more done. Maybe it’s because writing in my blog often helps get things off my chest or out of my head, stored in a safe place so I can clear them from my mind. In any case, blogging helps me to think and to work better.

What’s on My Mind

This week I’ve got a ton on my mind.

My company was mentioned in Arizona Highways magazine and that has led to a dramatic increase in calls for my flying services. In the past two weeks, I’ve sold three 6-day excursions and have at least two other people seriously considering it. If this pace keeps up, I’ll be flying two to three excursions a month during the spring and autumn months. While this is a great thing, it also brings on a lot of stress — making reservations, worrying about customer satisfaction, thinking about weather and helicopter maintenance issues — the list goes on and on.

This stress is only complicated by the fact that I’m working on a book revision that I need to have done by mid-May. While the software I’m writing about isn’t technically even in beta yet, it’s pretty stable. But there are a few features that simply don’t work. I don’t have access to the bug reporter, where I normally contribute to the company’s efforts to identify and squash bugs, so I don’t know if they are aware of the little problems I’m seeing. And, in the back of my mind, is the possibility that the software’s interface might change. I’m 5 chapters into a 24 chapter book right now — a book rich with thousands of screen shots — and if there’s a major interface change tomorrow or next week or as I’m wrapping up, I’ll have to do the whole revision all over again. How’s that for a stressful thought?

And why do I need the book done by mid-May? That’s another stressful situation. I’ve been contracted for cherry drying in Washington State this summer. Unfortunately, I haven’t been given a start date yet. It’ll take me a week to get the helicopter up to Seattle for its annual inspection, come home to get my truck and trailer, and drive back up there to my contract starting point. But I don’t have any details about where or when I’ll begin work. I could theoretically get a call next week — while I’m on one of my excursions — telling me to report in on May 5. I’d have to scramble hard to make that happen.

Related to this is my need to fill at least one seat on the flight from the Phoenix area to the Seattle area. It’s about a 10 hour flight and the cost of such a flight is enormous. I need a couple of passengers or a helicopter pilot interested in building time to bring in some revenue for the flight. Trouble is, it’s hard to get the word out, few people who hear about it understand what an incredible opportunity the flight is, and those people who do want to go simply don’t have that kind of money. My summer profitability depends, in part, on covering my costs for the ferry flight with revenue.

And on top of all this is the video project from hell, which I prefer not to discuss here until it has been resolved.

So you can see why my mind might not be tuned in properly for blogging.

Taking it One Day at a Time

I know that the best way to work through this stressful time is to take one day at a time and get as much done as possible. My main motivation is peace of mind. The more things I complete, the fewer things I’ll have on my mind to stress me out. While some thing are out of my control — will they change the user interface of the software? will I be called to Washington before mid May? — others aren’t. I just need to plug away at them until I get them taken care of.

And I need to blog every morning. It sure does feel better when I do.

Blessed by Arizona Highways

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A great magazine gives my business a much needed shot in the arm.

Arizona Highways has long been one of my favorite magazines. There’s no other magazine that consistently shows off the beauty of our state with high quality photographs and articles that paint pictures with words. I’m sure that more than a few people have been lured to Arizona by something they saw in the pages of Arizona Highways. And I’m sure plenty of us have remained to make Arizona our home.

Last fall, I had to follow the route of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I’d hired a video production company to make a promotional video about my company and wanted footage from every location we visited, from Phoenix to Monument Valley. There would be a videographer on board for the entire six-day trip and another following in a truck with equipment they expected to need at each location. Since I had a spare seat on the helicopter, I decided to offer it to two different high quality travel publications. The idea was to put a photographer or writer on board and maybe build a relationship with that publication to trade flight time with advertising.

At least that was the idea.

The Arizona Highways editor responded quickly. He assigned one of the magazine’s writers, Keridwen Cornelius, to accompany us and write up a story about the excursion. If everything worked out well and they could use what she wrote, they’d send a photographer out to get pictures later.

Arizona HighwaysI was thrilled, but didn’t really expect much. I certainly didn’t expect the 10 pages about my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure that appeared in the May 2009 issue.

I got my advance copies about two weeks ago. I ate up Keridwen’s words and aerial photographer Adriel Heisey’s photographs. The article is amazing. Keridwen gave readers a look into her mind as she experienced each part of the excursion, from our departure from the Terminal 3 Helipad at Sky Harbor Airport to our winding canyon flight down the Verde River — and everything in between. For the first time ever, I’m able to understand how people who don’t usually fly around Arizona in helicopters see and feel about the magnificent terrain.

(By the way, this is one of the reasons I like to fly people who don’t usually fly. I get to experience a bit of the wonder of it all through their eyes.)

The magazine reached subscribers on Friday, April 10. That’s when my phone started ringing. I’ve been answering questions and sending out printed literature ever since. The Flying M Air Web site has also been busy, with about four times the hits it usually gets. The magazine just hit the newsstands and the Arizona Highways Web site. I formally announced it on Flying M Air’s Web site and began offering a 10% discount for all excursions booked before June 30.

And yesterday I booked an excursion for a couple from Pine, AZ for the last week in this month.

To say that this is a breakthrough for me is an understatement. One of the toughest things about building a small business is getting the word out about your services — especially when your services have a limited market and are relatively costly. My company is the only one in the country offering multi-day excursions by helicopter. But I can spend thousands of dollars on advertising and not be able to reach the right people. After all, ads are ads — we see so many ads, we know how to filter them out. But editorial content is different. And there’s nothing better than seeing a positive report about a product or service written by an objective third party.

I feel extremely fortunate to have my business covered in such a way.

I hope everyone reading this goes out and tracks down a copy of the May 2009 Arizona Highways. I really think you’ll enjoy every single page.

Hoodoo Run (by Helicopter)

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Low-level, high speed run down a Utah canyon lined with hoodoos.

Hoodoos — in case you’re not familiar with the term — are pillars of stone shaped by wind and rain over long periods of time. The most famous hoodoos in the U.S. are the ones at Bryce Canyon. They’re red rock columns on the edge of a crescent-shaped cliff. (Bryce Canyon isn’t technically a canyon at all.)

But there are other hoodoos in other places out west — including up the Wahweap Creek near Lake Powell.

While doing this weekend’s video work, we paid the Wahweap Hoodoos a visit. They were a lot lower and closer to the ground than I thought and will probably not make it into our final video production. The rocks in this video are just a few hoodoo-like structures in the area. I flew past them with my POV.1 camera fastened to the helicopter’s nose. Although the footage appears to be in slow motion, it’s not. I was moving at roughly 90 knots for most of the run.

Enjoy.