Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Fire Hazard Weather

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High wind and dry conditions are a bad mix.

I’ve been watching the northwestern Arizona weather carefully for the past few days, checking National Weather Service forecasts for Wickenburg (where I live) and Kingman. I had a flying gig at Wickieup this weekend and although I didn’t expect much revenue from it, it was an opportunity for Mike and I to escape home responsibilities for a few days and camp out with some extremely unusual folks. Wickieup is 2/3 of the way between Wickenburg and Kingman, so I figured that if I extrapolated between the two, I’d get a good forecast.

The forecast wasn’t good. It called for high winds — 30 mph or more — on Saturday and Sunday. Although I have flown (and I suppose I will fly) in winds up to 50 mph (not recommended, folks), the landing zone in Wickieup is on a narrow ridge with one way in and out while the event was going on. If the wind was coming from the northwest, I’d be operating with a tailwind, which is always a bad idea when you have a heavy load at 4,000+ feet elevation. The area is very mountainous, so all that wind going over the mountains would make for a rough ride. The end result: me operating in marginal conditions to give my passengers rides that they might not enjoy.

Since I’m just coming off a month-long period of heavy flying — I flew about 50 hours in the past 30 days — I decided that it just wasn’t worth it to spend the weekend. So we flew up for the day, did a few rides, watched the activities — more on that in another post — and flew home.

When we got home, I checked the weather again, mostly to make sure I’d made the right decision about the weekend. (I had.) The Wickenburg weather forecast included something I’d never seen before: a Fire Hazard Watch. Here’s what it said when I checked it again this morning:

...FIRE WEATHER WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY EVENING DUE TO STRONG AND GUSTY NORTH WINDS AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY..

A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IS DEVELOPING OVER THE WESTERN STATES THIS MORNING. THE COLD FRONT ASSOCIATED WITH THIS SYSTEM WAS LOCATED IN NEVADA AND WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE SOUTHWARD TODAY AND TONIGHT. SUSTAINED NORTH WINDS OF 20 TO 30 MPH WITH HIGHER GUSTS APPROACHING 45 MPH MAY DEVELOP ON SUNDAY. IN ADDITION...VERY LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY CAN BE EXPECTED. THE COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS AND VERY LOW HUMIDITY MAY CREATE HAZARDOUS FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS.

(Sorry about the ALL CAPS, but that’s the way they publish them.)

This warning just emphasizes how dry it can be here in the desert. I can’t remember the last time it rained here — maybe a month ago? We have plenty of stretches where it doesn’t rain for two or more months. Not long ago, Phoenix had a record 143-day dry spell. That’s almost 5 months!

The weather, in case you’re wondering, is almost always clear here, with bright blue skies. During our dry season — which is 8 to 10 months out of the year — there are rarely any clouds at all. Sure it’s beautiful, but it gets a bit tedious at times. You find yourself wishing for some cloud activity. You find yourself wishing for rain.

Right now, there’s a fire burning north of Wickenburg, although I’m not sure exactly where. We saw the smoke as we flew home from Wickieup. I have a feeling it’s somewhere southwest of Williams, AZ, perhaps in the Big Chino Wash area. There was another one burning southeast of Flagstaff when I flew back from Flag with passengers last Friday. In this dryness, it doesn’t take much to get a fire going. And when the wind kicks up, a small fire can quickly turn into an out-of-control blaze.

Yet people will continue to toss their cigarette butts out their car windows as they drive on highways and back roads. I can see the results of their carelessness as I fly around the state. Acres and acres burned east of Vulture Mine Road just south of Wickenburg. More burned along I-40, I-10, I-17, and SR-89. Signs up and down the highways proclaim Fire Danger Extreme, but no one stops to think of the consequences of a tiny cigarette butt or the sparks from an ATV or dirt bike. Those signs are for other people.

While I don’t expect a fire to break out in the area this weekend, I hope one doesn’t. If it does, with the high winds that are expected, we could get clouds — clouds of smoke.

The End is Near

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I’m almost done with a month on the road.

On September 14, I left home to start the first of a string of flying gigs that kept me away from home for 16 of the past 28 days. I estimate that I flew at least 3,000 miles during that time. (I flew about 200 miles just today.) I know I slept in 9 different hotel rooms — plus my camper — and ate in at least two dozen restaurants.

Right now, I’m stretched out on a Sleep Number bed — in other words, an overpriced, remote controlled air mattress — in Flagstaff’s Radisson hotel. The linens are nice. I’m watching the Weather Channel, angry that I just missed Stephen Colbert on Larry King, and amazed that there’s nothing else on worth watching.

Tomorrow is the last day of our Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. Normally, I think I would have enjoyed every minute of the trip. But somewhere about halfway through this week, I realized that I was tired of traveling, tired of being away from home.

Fortunately, my passengers want an early start tomorrow. So I’ll pick them up at their B & B at 8 AM and whisk them away to their last activity: a hike around the ruins in Walnut Canyon. I suspect that I’ll be too tired to join them on the hike in, so I’ll hang out in the rental car (a PT Cruiser, I think) or on a sunny bench and read until they’re done.

Then, it’s back to Flagstaff airport, where the helicopter has been fueled by the excellent crew at Wiseman Aviation and the hour-long flight back to Deer Valley Airport. I’ll say goodbye to my clients, give them the parting gift that I’ve been lugging around for the past five days, and high-tail it back to Wickenburg. With luck, I should be back in my own home by 3 PM.

I think I might spend the afternoon napping in my own bed.

Best of all is what’s on my calendar for the next seven days: nothing.

No books to write, no clients to fly, no meetings, no phone calls. I might even shut off my phone to keep it that way.

Okay, so I’ll be honest: I do expect to work next week. I need to start writing Leopard articles for Peachpit’s Web site. I’m hoping to knock off about 20 of them during the next two months. And I do need to start thinking about the video I’m under contract to do for MacPro Video. And develop a new brochure for Flying M Air’s multi-day excursions. And put together a proposal for the Navajo Film Commission. And create a package for Phoenix-area concierges.

But I’m not going to do it all next week. I’m going to take a little break and knock off just a few of the east tasks.

I deserve some time off.

Still Working Hard

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I am so incredibly tired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Enough Hours in a Day

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Still too busy to blog regularly.

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, which is something I’m not happy about. You see, I need to blog. I need to keep this journal of my life and share tips and how-tos with strangers all over the world.

So when I neglect it, as I have been for the past week or so, I feel bad about it.

I Take Work When I Need To

But the reason I’ve been neglecting things is because I’ve been so busy doing the kind of work that pays the bills. (No, blogging doesn’t do that.) As any business owner or freelancer can tell you, there isn’t always paying work to do. Sometimes, after a dry spell, you have to take the work that comes along.

And that’s how it is with Flying M Air. Summer in Wickenburg simply sucks. I can’t put it any other way. There are few people around and none of them want to fly — including me. It’s just too damn hot. So with just one gig in all of July and just three or four in all of August, I was personally funding Flying M Air again, paying its bills through the dead summer months.

And Flying M Air doesn’t have small bills to pay.

When September rolled along, I was anxious to do rides at the Mohave County Fair for the third year in a row. And right after that, were two good gigs with photographers over some of Arizona’s most scenic areas. Although the Fair gig was a bust this year, the two gigs that followed it earned me more than 15 hours of revenue time. That’s enough to keep Flying M Air in the black for four to five months. Best of all, I have another very lucrative gig lined up for Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock at the end of September and beginning of October.

I Work Two Jobs

All these gigs have been keeping me from my office for days at a time. That means I can’t do the work I need to do for my other job, the one that funded Flying M Air in the first place.

I’ve been working on my 70th book, a revision of my Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide for Leopard, since July. It’s a 750-page volume and I decided this year to tear it apart, reorganize it, and rebuild it from the ground up. I’m nearly done, but it’s been a long, hard task from the start.

It’s always hard writing a book about software when all you have is beta. Betas aren’t always stable, so they occasionally crash at the most inopportune times. Betas aren’t always final, so the thing you wrote about two weeks ago might be different today. It’s a constant process of review and revision.

It’s also a process of learning how new features work. Sure, there’s some onscreen help for some of the new features. But it’s spotty and incomplete, designed to teach basics. It’s best used as a starting point for learning more. Only by “playing” with the feature and experimenting with it can you learn the little tricks that give the book value to readers. That’s my job, and it’s both fun and frustrating sometimes.

Tight Scheduling

As I write this, aviation photographer Jon Davison is in my kitchen, cutting up a cantaloupe for his breakfast. Here’s here to photograph and write about Flying M Air and my helicopter for a book he’s writing about Robinson helicopters. We’ll be flying today and tomorrow and probably on Tuesday. Today’s the air-to-air portion of our photo work; we leave in 45 minutes to fly in formation with my buddy Dave, who owns a Hughes 500.

Although this isn’t a paying gig, it’s important. Jon’s coverage of Flying M Air will help me promote the company. The book, when released, will show readers the kind of work I do and places I go. I’m eager to promote my 6-day excursions and this will definitely help.

So I’m squeezing Jon into my schedule. A few days with him followed by a few days of Leopard followed by a few days in the Four Corners area, flying photographers around.

October is another busy month, with gigs on three of the four weekends.

What To Look Forward To Here

When the Leopard book is done, I’ll begin writing short how-to pieces for this blog about it. But don’t expect to see them before Leopard is released. I take non-disclosure agreements very seriously and don’t have any desire to get Apple, Inc. pissed off at me.

And if you like reading about flying, keep checking in. I’m sure I’ll have some things to say about my work with Jon — hopefully, with photos — and the photographers I’m working with at month-end.

Working Hard

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Writing, flying, writing, flying, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I realize that I haven’t been blogging lately. I have a good excuse. I’m unbelievably busy with work.

I have a drop-dead deadline for my Leopard book coming up very quickly now. So whenever I’m at home, I’m in my office with my fat butt planted in the chair in front of my computer, writing about Leopard. The book is coming along very well, but not without some minor problems. Still, if I keep at it, I’ll get it done on time.

Trouble is, I’m not spending much time in my office. After a seriously crappy-to-the-point-of-wasted-time gig in Kingman last weekend, I had to fly up to Page to take some photographers around Lake Powell. For three days in a row.

Confluence of San Juan and Colorado RiversI love Lake Powell. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. And if you think it looks great from the ground or water, you should see it from the air! But after a 4 hour flight on 4 hours of sleep today, I decided I’d had enough of the Lake. Fortunately, I’m going home tomorrow, after dropping off one of my clients in Phoenix.

I’ve been in the Marriott Courtyard here since Monday night. I’ve had five flights totaling over 10 hours of billable time, with about 3 hours more to come. Great for the Flying M Air bank account, which can always use a good cash inflow — especially after a slow summer in Wickenburg. But not great for the Leopard deadline.

So now I’m sitting here at the desk in my hotel room with two laptops in front of me — my MacBook Pro test mule running the latest Leopard beta and my trusty 12″ PowerBook G4 — revising text and making new screenshots for my Leopard book. I’ll finish Chapter 7 today and, with luck, start Chapter 9. (No, I’m not doing them in order.)

Tomorrow, I’ll check out of here at 7 AM and take my luggage — including my “portable office” — to the airport. By 8 AM, I hope to have my passenger on board for the flight to Phoenix. With cooperative weather (read that, “no headwinds”), I’ll be at my desk again by 1 PM, laying out the chapters I wrote in Page. Friday, I’ll be in my office all day.

Then, on Saturday, I pick up another photographer. He’s from Australia and he’s doing a coffee table book about Robinson helicopters. I’m one of his featured operators. I’ll fly him around for a few days, taking time to work on the Leopard book in early morning hours, before he’s awake. He leaves on Tuesday. Then I have two more days in my office before another helicopter gig at Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock.

Anyone who thinks being a freelancer or owning a business is an easy living should walk in my shoes this month. It’s times like these that I think back with a bit of longing for those cubicle days, when I spent more time shooting the bull with co-workers than working long hours to meet deadlines and client needs.

But by mid-October, things should be back to normal. Until then, bear with me. On the priority scale, blogging has slipped behind a few more important tasks.