Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

I think…therefore I’m dangerous.

A(nother) Short Story about the State of US Healthcare

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Who wants a “pre-existing condition” these days?

I thought I’d take a moment to share a few recent thoughts related to the healthcare situation in the United States.

I’m in my late 50s now and have, for the first time, begun spending a lot of time doing close work with my hands. Making jewelry with fine wire and small tools doesn’t put a lot of strain on my hands, but it apparently does work the muscles and joints more than I’m accustomed to.

Arthritis runs in my family. I clearly remember my grandmother on my mother’s side, who lived to be about 90, complaining about it once in a while. She had typical “old lady hands,” that included thick knuckles and crooked joints under wrinkled skin. She’d spent nearly a lifetime doing close work with her hands in a garment factory, starting work when she was as young as 13 and working until many years later when my grandfather had a stroke and she had to stay home to care for him.

I’ve had knee problems on and off throughout my life. They always got worse when I was heavier and disappeared when I lost a lot of weight back in 2012. But before they disappeared — back when I had a lot of disposable income and a decent health care plan — I went to a doctor about it. Arthritis, he said, pointing at the x-rays.

Handxray
X-ray of a hand from Wikipedia. I’ve got my own x-rays around here somewhere.

More recently, a fall off the back of my truck that sprained an ankle apparently fractured some bones in my left wrist, which I’d landed on. While trying to diagnose the occasional swelling and severe pain (caused by “floating bodies,” we later discovered during arthroscopic surgery that removed most of them), the doctor took x-rays. He pointed out the early signs of arthritis in my wrists and hands.

So yeah. I have arthritis.

It’s gotten to the point that it’s starting to bother me enough to seek medical solutions that don’t necessarily include painkillers. (I can take Vitamin I (ibuprofen) without a doctor telling me to, and I’m not interested in anything stronger.) Would exercises help? CBD creams (as everyone keeps telling me)? Heat or ice therapy? Vitamin supplements? I’m not interested in querying Dr. Google because we all know that there’s enough bad advice there to drown out the good advice. I want to visit a doctor, have her take new x-rays, and tell me what I can do to slow the progression of this very common problem.

And here’s the rub.

If I go to an arthritis specialist — provided I can get an appointment with one — I’m making a very public (on my medical records) statement that I have a medical problem bad enough to seek medical help. In other words, I’m admitting I have a condition that, once admitted, becomes a “pre-existing” condition for future health care coverage.

Now, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, AKA “Obamacare”), as it was passed by the government and enacted into law, pre-existing conditions didn’t matter. But things are different now.

Let me tell you another story about pre-existing conditions prior to the ACA.

Years ago, when I was very heavy, I was having digestive issues that included GERD, heartburn, acid reflux, and vomiting. To this day, I think it was a hiatal hernia but at the time I was unable to find a doctor to offer any advice beyond “take Pepcid AC.” Back in those days, I made the fatal error of mentioning “chest pain” as a symptom. As you might imagine, that triggered a flurry of heart tests, all of which came back negative. I did not have a heart problem, I had a digestive problem. I blogged about this in detail way back in 2010.

This profit-driven nonsense established me in medical records with a “pre-existing heart condition” that didn’t exist. All of the tests came back negative! So when my idiot wasband lost his job (again), made a late COBRA payment, and got our health insurance canceled, the insurance company refused to cover me when they started the insurance back up. I had a “pre-existing heart condition,” they said.

For six of the scariest months of my life, I had no health insurance because a couple of greedy doctors put me through a battery of unnecessary heart tests and an idiot couldn’t manage his money properly. It wasn’t scary because of my health. It was scary because if, during the time I was uninsured, I got some kind of real negative health diagnosis (think cancer) or had an accident at home (think falling down the stairs) that put me into the hospital or long term treatment, I could lose everything I owned. Medical bankruptcy is a real thing here in the United States and I was set up to become a victim.

I got limited insurance coverage back and later got my own damn insurance again so I didn’t have to worry about an idiot screwing things up for me. The ACA really helped things; it was as if those old medical issues simply didn’t exist. And, so far, I haven’t had insurance denied because of these things — although the rate has gone up dramatically since Trump took office. Next year, who knows?

So here I am in 2019. I have arthritis in my hands and want help to prevent it from getting worse quickly. But I’m afraid to make an appointment with a specialist because I’m afraid to get the condition on my medical records. So instead, I’ll keep waiting, letting the condition likely get worse. All because I don’t want to be denied insurance coverage in the future.

Is it right? Does it makes sense? No and no. But there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it other than emigrate to a country with decent health care for all. And believe me, I’ve been thinking about it.

So that’s my situation as I type this.

At least the CBD cream smells nice.

The Dancing Cow

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A fable as told by Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins is back in theaters. The current movie is a sequel — not a remake — after all, how could they even think of remaking a perfect classic? — but it did get me thinking about the original. I was three when it came out in 1964 so if I saw it then, I don’t remember. I did see it sometime when I was a kid. And I saw it again recently, when I spied it on some streaming service and decided to settle down for a little fantasy from my childhood.

There was a movie a year or two ago with Tom Hanks playing Walt Disney and wooing Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers to get the rights to make a movie. I didn’t see that movie, but it did get me wondering about the book the movie was based on. So yesterday, when I was browsing the audiobook selections at my public library and saw the original Mary Poppins book available, I borrowed it and downloaded its files to my phone, along with a half dozen other audiobook titles. Although I started to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, I quickly realized, as my mind kept wandering, that I cared very little about quarks and bosons. I needed something light that would pull me in with a story line. Mary Poppins was just the ticket.

So yes, as I drove southeast through Washington and Oregon in an 8,700-pound truck with a 4,400 pound camper with gear on top of it, I listened to a female British voice actor read Mary Poppins to me.

The book was different from the movie. In it, Mary is terribly vain and not especially nice. She does have that magic carpet bag, though. Bert is in just one chapter and doesn’t ever seem to meet the children. Jane and Michael have twin baby siblings, John and Barbara, who aren’t even a year old for half the book. Mr Banks is cheap but there’s no bank scene. There’s no chimney sweep scene, either (Bert is a street artist and a match seller). There are other scenes, though, that never made it into the movie and that’s what this post is all about.

You see, in one chapter, Mary Poppins told a story about a cow and I found a moral in it. I’m not sure if that’s what P.L. Travers intended, but I suspect it was. The moral had nothing to do with the rest of the story in the Mary Poppins book — at least not as far as I can tell.

Let me tell you a short version of the story.

The Story

There’s a cow called the Red Cow. She lives in a great pasture with the best grazing. Every year she has a Red Calf and she takes care of it. Her life is routine and blissful and she’s happy.

Then one day she starts dancing and she just can’t stop. She can’t sleep, she has trouble eating, and she can’t even properly take care of her Red Calf. While it isn’t exactly unpleasant, it’s definitely inconvenient and is disrupting her idyllic life. Not knowing what else to do, she decides to go to the king for help.

The king sees her dancing and commands her to stop. She can’t. Then he notices that she has a star caught in one of her horns. The courtiers try to pull it off. When that doesn’t work, the king tells one of the courtiers to look up a solution in an encyclopedia hidden under the throne. There’s no reference to a dancing cow, but there is a reference to a cow jumping over the moon. So the king tells her to jump over the moon. There’s some nonsense about her being a proper cow and cows don’t do that but she really isn’t given a choice. So she jumps over the moon.

On her way down, the star falls off her horn and drifts away. She lands in her own pasture where she’s greeted by the Red Calf and promptly pigs out on all that good grazing. She’s happy again.

But not for long.

She feels as if there’s something missing in her life and she connects it with the star. She enjoyed the dancing, even though it was a bit of an inconvenience. She wishes another star would come down and get stuck on her horn, but that doesn’t happen. So she goes to Mary Poppins’ mother to ask for advice. (That’s how Mary Poppins knows the story.) Mary’s mother says that stars fall down all the time, but seldom in the same spot. She’s not likely to catch one again in her own pasture.

And that’s when the Red Cow realizes that the best way to catch another star is to leave her comfortable pasture.

The Moral

It’s the moral of the story that really hit home for me, especially today. I spent the past week packing for a trip that would last two to three months. The whole time, I’d be living in my truck camper, often parked out in the desert without a power, water, or sewer hookup. Sometimes, I’d be so far off the grid I wouldn’t even get a cell signal. Although I don’t mind it at all — in fact, I rather like the challenge of living like this for a while every year — it’s not nearly as cozy and comfortable as my home.

And that’s what I was thinking about as I packed and did laundry and had a long, hot shower, and used the dishwasher and had super fast internet access and slept in a warm, cozy bed. That’s what I was thinking about throughout the day every day when I looked out the windows at the changing season on display.

Winter View from my Home
Here’s what it looked like from my north-facing windows the other morning. It’s hard to leave a view like this behind.

I was so comfortable at home. Out on the road I faced the real possibility of being cold at night and not having a good shower for quite a while. Laundry meant a laundromat, dishes would be washed by hand, I’d have to go outside and start up a generator — thus breaking the marvelous silence of the world around me — just to use the microwave.

What was I thinking? Why in the world would I want to leave my nice comfortable home for a less comfortable and often inconvenient life on the road?

I knew why: I love to travel, I love to be on the road, I love to visit with friends and see new things and go new places. And I love visiting a few places I’m very fond of. I love the freedom of a life on the road: coming and going as I please, changing plans as I see fit, making it up as I go along.

I love nights like tonight: parked in a mostly deserted state park campground on a river, sitting on my camper’s bed, typing a long overdue blog post into a laptop, glancing up through the skylight every now and then to watch the moon play hide and seek with some clouds. I like sipping a glass of wine and thinking about my day — rather than tuning into a television that distracts me from my own thoughts — and wondering what the next day will be like.

I could be the Red Cow, content in her comfortable home. But I’d rather get out and see if I can catch and hold a star. Even a modest little star that makes life different or special.

On the Cusp

I’m on the cusp of another major life change and it feels good. Exciting, uncertain, terrifying, challenging. I won’t say more now but I will say this: I’m pretty sure it was my brush with death back in February that has pushed me into thinking about another path to find and follow.

Understand this: at about 5 AM on February 24, 2018, I really thought I was going to die. I should have died. But I didn’t. I was the luckiest person on the planet that morning.

The lesson I took away from the experience was one I already knew: life is short. Don’t waste time doing shit you don’t like doing. Or shit you’re bored with.

I’m getting bored and it’s time for another change.

One Reason Independent Bookstores are Failing

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A quick story about a visit to a bookstore.

Yesterday, I spent much of the afternoon in Ellensburg, WA. Although less than 30 air miles from my home, it’s a 77-mile drive that takes about 90 minutes. Needless to say, I need to have a reason to go there when I do and I want to make the most of my time while I’m there.

Yesterday’s mission was to check out a gallery where I hope to show and sell my jewelry. That part of the trip went reasonably well, despite the fact that the person I needed to see was not there. It also led to me checking out a nearby museum that might also be a good place to sell my jewelry and two shops that I didn’t think were a good match at all.

I listen to NPR (National Public Radio). Say what you will about “liberal media” but NPR’s shows are intelligent, thoughtful, and informative. The local station, which goes by the name of Northwest Public Broadcasting (NWPB), is turned on in my kitchen almost all day every day. One of its sponsors is a bookstore in Ellensburg — the town apparently has at least three — and since I’m normally a bookstore lover and want to support NPR, I thought I’d go check it out.

I first went into the wrong bookstore, which was small but neatly stocked with new books, cards, journals, and gift items of interest to readers and writers. I wound up buying a book about vegetable gardening that basically provides a calendar-based schedule for garden tasks. (I hardly ever walk out of a bookstore empty-handed.)

I was actually leaving town when I caught sight of the bookstore that actually supported NWPB. I parked and went in.

Old Books
Browsing disorganized old books might be fun if you have an unlimited amount of time and the place is air conditioned. Or maybe not even then. (And no, this photo is not from the bookstore I visited. It’s a stock image from MorgueFile.)

This was not at all what I expected. The space was larger than the other shop but it was mostly full of dusty used books. I admit to flashing back to a used bookstore I used to visit in the 1980s way down near the financial district of Manhattan. That shop was smaller, more crammed, and dustier. Walking into this shop was like walking into the disorderly garage of someone who happened to collect old books. I realized immediately that there would be nothing of interest to me there, but I figured I’d give it a browse.

The guy behind the counter looked exactly like a stereotypical gamer or computer hacker. Perhaps in his 30s, he looked as if he might live in his mother’s basement, where he spent way too much time interacting with a computer screen. He asked me if I was looking for anything in particular and I told him I was just checking the place out because I’d heard about it on NPR.

“I remember when the lady from NPR came over,” he said. “The bookstore across the street used to be a sponsor. She came over here and told us he didn’t want to support the liberal media anymore. So she asked if we’d take his spot and my dad was here and said we would.”

I hadn’t seen the bookstore he referred to. The one I’d gone to was on another block.

As I looked at the old books, I got a bit of a brainstorm. Years ago, for my birthday or Christmas or some other gift-giving occasion, my wasband had bought me two Mark Twain first editions. He’d remembered me saying that I wanted to build a library of “nice quality books,” and thought (for some reason) that meant expensive first editions. So he’d gone to a bookstore probably a lot like the one I knew in lower Manhattan, and had bought two books that may have cost him hundreds of dollars. Book that looked just as old and dusty as the ones all around me that afternoon in Ellensburg, books I was afraid to open because I might damage them.

I wanted very badly to sell them but didn’t know of any bookstores that bought and sold collectors items.

This one might. So I asked if they ever bought first editions.

The shop guy seemed to search the database in his head for an answer. “Well, it depends on the topic and whether it’s in demand and — ”

“Mark Twain,” I said, trying to cut to the chase.

“You want to buy them?” he asked, obviously not understanding what I was getting at.

“No, I want to sell them.”

He looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t have them with me,” I said.

He relaxed.

“How about if I send you more information about them and you let me know. I can send titles and dates and photos of the covers and title pages. Just give me your card and an email address.”

“Okay,” he said. And he went back to his desk. I assumed he was getting a card.

I browsed. The book sections did have labels on them, but the books within each section were not in any order at all. So, for example, when I checked out the Art section, topics bounced from photography to painting to crafts to photography to architecture to painting… You get the idea.

It was taking a long time and the shop was hot. There was no air conditioning and it was nearly 100°F outside. When I left a little while later, I realized that it was cooler outside than inside.

I wandered back to the desk. He was writing something at the bottom of a sheet of notebook paper. It was taking a long time.

“All I need is your email address,” I said.

“Well, I’m just trying to redo the website right now,” he said. “I want to set it up so I can update it and it won’t cost so much money. So I’m putting in these forums and I want to use that for company communication.”

“You don’t have an email address?”

“Well, I do but on GoDaddy, I have to go through all these screens to get to it and they keep trying to sell me stuff and it takes a really long time.”

“Can’t you just set up Outlook or Apple Mail to access your email account?”

He looked up as if I’d just told him that it was possible to use a microwave to boil water right in a coffee cup. “Maybe I could,” he said slowly. I could see the dim lightbulb over his head getting slightly brighter.

Meanwhile, although I was wearing a thin cotton dress I was sweating like a pig. I wanted out of there but I didn’t want to be rude. “Just give me your website address,” I said, holding out my hand.

He went back to writing. About a minute later, he ripped off the bottom of the page and handed it to me. There were five lines: the bookstore’s name, the bookstore’s phone number, the bookstore’s complete street address (minus zip code), an email address, and the complete URL for the bookstore. He had basically hand-written a business card.

I took it, thanked him, and headed for the door otherwise empty-handed. “I just gave out my last business card,” he said to my retreating figure.

“I’ll email you with the book information,” I told him. And I walked out into the relief of a hot breeze.

Much later — this morning, in fact, as I looked over the torn-off notebook sheet I took out of my pocket — I thought about the death of bookstores. Unless this one had a solid client base, it wasn’t long for this world. How could it be? Not only did it have to compete against Amazon, the bane of all bookstores, but it had to compete against bookstores that actually had a clue about how to draw shoppers in, display a variety of interesting products, and sell things other than dusty old books.

Will I email him about my Mark Twain books? Heck, why not? You never know. I sure hope he tries Outlook for email because there’s no way in hell I’m going to participate in one of his forums.

—

Postscript: In searching the web for a public domain image I could use with this blog post, I stumbled across this article on Narratively: “Dear Dusty Old Bookstore.” If you have a greater love for old bookstores than I apparently do, you owe it to yourself to read it.

A Word about Life after Stress

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That whole thing about a weight being lifted off your shoulders? It’s true.

This past week, I’ve been stressed out a lot more than I occasionally get. It had gotten to the point where I felt an overall malaise that I couldn’t shake, accompanied by an overwhelming desire to give up on all the things I do that contribute to the stress that was making me feel so crappy.

And that’s never a good thing.

The Check Ride Stress

Quick Note:
I know that in the grand scheme of things — comparing my sources of stress to the sources other far less fortunate people face every day — I shouldn’t complain. And I’m not. I’ve been in far more stressful situations. The point of this post is not to complain or to gather pity. It’s to share an observation.

The main source of that stress was an upcoming FAA check ride scheduled for Thursday (yesterday). It was my first check ride in my new old helicopter, Mr. Bleu. I take a check ride for my Part 135 certificate every year, so it had been a full year since my previous one. I won’t hide the fact that the Spokane FSDO, which oversees my Part 135 certificate, has been getting under my skin with a series of what I consider to be unreasonable requirements. I’d been pushing back, which is something I’d never had to do with the more reasonable FSDOs and inspectors I’d worked with in the past. This was their big chance to “teach me a lesson.” At least’s that’s what was in the back of my mind as I prepped for the check ride.

But check rides are always stressful to me. You see, I never became a certified flight instructor (CFI) and I never spent 500 to 1000 hours sitting next to new students, teaching them about all the weird aerodynamic issues inherent in a rotary wing aircraft and doing dozens of autorotations every day. I have always lived in a place with amazing weather, operating primarily out of Class G and Class E airspace, so I have trouble remembering silly little (but important) things like weather minimums for the various classes of airspace. I know how to fly and I’ve been called a good stick. But that doesn’t mean I can necessarily meet the requirements of a Part 135 check ride, especially if the examiner is tough or wants to fail me.

Add to that that although I usually prep by flying with someone who works full-time or nearly full-time as a flight instructor, no one like that was available to me. My check ride was scheduled for Thursday but the CFI I’d hoped to fly with beforehand was gone until Friday. So I flew with my friend Woody, who has tens of thousands of hours flying Airbus airliners and a bunch of time flying mostly Schweizer helicopters. He’s a CFI and he’s taken more check rides over the years than there are long, hot rainless days in Arizona every year, but he approaches flying as a pilot instead of as a CFI. While that should be a good thing, I wasn’t convinced that it was a good thing for someone prepping for a check ride. (More on that in a sidebar.)

The stakes were relatively high. I needed to pass the check ride to continue doing charter and air taxi flights. Those account for about 10% of my flying revenue, which isn’t really that much. But a Part 135 certificate means I can say “yes” to just about any flight request, including something as simple as a tour that goes more than 25 miles from a starting point. It sucks when you have to turn down work because you lack the piece of paper that makes it legal. If I failed the check ride, I’d have to redo it. Since I was already in my grace month due to FAA scheduling limitations, that meant I could lose that piece of paper staring August 1. And I already have a flight booked for August 3. Redoing it meant more stress, too.

And did I mention the wind? Winds were forecasted to gust to 22 miles per hour on the date of my check ride. The check pilot was coming from Seattle and there was no chance that he’d reschedule after a 3-1/2 hour ride (each way). (I’d offered to meet him in Ellensburg to save him 90 minutes of that drive, but the wind was forecasted to gust to 37 there, so he agreed to come to Wenatchee.)

So although this was the 15th Part 135 check ride in my near 20 years as a pilot, it was stressing me out.

My R44 Helicopter in the Morning
My new old helicopter, Mr Bleu, parked in its landing zone.

On “making it work”

On my check ride, I was asked to land in a confined space on a hillside. It was a relatively big area — I’ve certainly landed in a lot tighter spaces — and there were no real obstacles, although there were some open range cattle, fencing, and a water tank nearby.

I misjudged the wind. I thought it was light and inconsequential and set up my approach to give me a the best angle of approach. As I came near the landing spot, however, I saw trees blowing and felt the wind buffeting me. Left pedal kept things under control without getting too sloppy.

Still, I decided to go around and approach from a different angle. As I told the examiner as I started going around, “If the helicopter is light, performance is not an issue, and the wind isn’t too strong, I could make this work. But making a bad approach work is probably not a good idea on a check ride.” He agreed.

And that’s the difference between flying as a pilot and flying as a CFI. A pilot flies depending on her skills, the conditions, and her intimate knowledge of the aircraft. A CFI flies depending on the best scenario learned in training. We all know it’s best to land with a headwind and that’s what the CFI will always try to do. But an experienced pilot also knows that you don’t have to fly into the wind if other conditionals make a safe operation possible. In this instance, there wasn’t that much wind and we were light. I knew I could land safely with that right quartering tailwind; I’d done similar landings before. But I also knew that the FAA was more interested in a textbook approach. My going around showed good decision-making skills and the second attempt was a lot smoother with a lot less dancing on the pedals.

The stress affected my ability to sleep. On Wednesday night, I was up for four hours in the middle of the night. Wide awake enough to read my helicopter’s Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) and Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) in bed (on my iPad) without them putting me to sleep. I fell back to sleep at around 3:30 AM and was up again at 5:30. So on Thursday morning, I was facing a check ride with a total of about 5 hours of sleep. Not ideal. I was a basket case by the time I got to Wenatchee Airport with my helicopter to wait for the examiner.

Fortunately, it had a happy ending. I took the check ride starting at about 10:45 AM and did surprisingly well on the oral part, which usually makes me seem like an idiot. As for the flying part, I flew fine but could have made better in-flight decisions at least once. Still, it was good enough for me to pass. So by 12:30 PM Thursday, that source of stress was gone.

The Cherry Season Stress

Another source of stress this week was cherry season. We’d gotten over the hump and it hadn’t rained in a month. (We get paid for standing by, so it isn’t as if we didn’t make any money. We did fine.) But the season was winding down and there was no rain in sight and I had to decide whether to extend the contracts for any of my crew. This came down to a basic math and probability problem: How many acres were left to cover and what were the chances of it raining on all of those acres at once?

Early in the week, I didn’t have the information I needed to make a decision. That was the source of the stress: needing to make an important decision I couldn’t make because I didn’t have the information I needed to make it.

Once my crew left, I couldn’t get them back, so I had to decide at least a few days before they planned to leave. I knew I’d only need to keep one of them around if I needed any of them and I knew which one of them it would be. And I knew he wanted to stay, although his partners back in Arizona wanted him back with the helicopter. The trouble is, if I asked him to stay, I’d have to pay him more standby money. That money was coming out of my pocket and it wasn’t chump change. So the stressful part of all of this was figuring out whether I should ask him to stay before he made unchangeable plans to leave.

Cherry season is stressful.
I should mention here that cherry season is always a very stressful time for me, starting in April, a good two months before the season starts. In April, I’m trying to secure my contracts and get acreage counts so I know how many pilots I need. In May, I’m trying to lock in pilots who are freaking out because I can’t give them exact start dates. In June and July, I’m watching the weather, trying to foresee storms and flight needs, and making sure my pilots don’t wander off. In August, I’m still watching the weather and hoping that I can cover whatever acreage is left by myself. So it’s up to five months of varying levels of stress. August 11 is my last day this year and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.

I started getting acreage estimates on Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was able to do the math part with some degree of accuracy. If I let all my guys go, on the first day they were all gone, I’d be right at the limit of the number of acres I could cover alone. If it rained everywhere, I’d be stretched thin. But too thin? And what was the chance of rain?

By Thursday, I was confident that there was no chance of rain for at least three days after the last member of my crew left. By the end of those days, it didn’t matter if it rained because the number of acres left to dry — remember, they’re picking cherries every day now — would easily be within my capability to dry alone.

So the stress from that decision was gone by Thursday, too.

The Tiny Sources of Stress

I have a few other tiny sources of everyday stress in my life.

  • Jeep air conditioner. It’s on the fritz, making a weird sound when the fan is on medium-high or high. That’ll need to get looked at.
  • Business planning. Believe it or not, I’m considering starting a new business with a partner here in Wenatchee. This is a huge decision for me and there’s some stress related to the yes/no decision of starting it at all.
  • Responsibilities. Like most folks, I have the responsibility of owning and managing a home and doing the work I do to make a living. Sometimes it’s more stressful than other times, but if I couldn’t handle that stress, which never really goes away, I should probably sell out, retire, and live in a rest home.

In all honesty, I can’t even count these as “stress,” mostly because they come and go on a daily basis. They’re part of life.

When the Stress Is Gone

What I really wanted to write about here is how I feel this morning. In one word: great!

Yesterday, after my check ride and lunch with Woody and an appointment to get my hair tended to, I rescheduled the business planning meeting I had set for 6 PM to sometime later in the weekend. On my way home from the hairdresser, I shopped at my favorite craft cocktail place and had one of their concoctions. I normally don’t drink at all during cherry season, but with absolutely no chance of rain, I didn’t think it would hurt. And I thought it might help for what I had planned next: sleep.

I was dead asleep by 7 PM. And I stayed that way until 3:30 AM. That’s 8-1/2 hours.

Now most folks probably wouldn’t be happy waking up at 3:30 in the morning. But after a solid night’s sleep, what difference does the time make? I spent some time sitting out on in the cool air on my deck, just looking out at the lights of the Wenatchee Valley. Then, as the eastern sky started to brighten, I went in and made my coffee.

That’s when I realized how good I felt and why: the stress was gone.

And with the stress gone, so was the malaise.

How could I have even considered giving up on the things I do? Running my helicopter services business? Managing over a dozen cherry drying contracts? Caring for and improving my home? Managing Airbnb properties? Making and selling jewelry? Raising chickens for eggs? Keeping bees? Gardening? Polishing gemstones?

And why wouldn’t I dive into a new business venture with a friend?

When I was stressed out earlier in the week, that feeling of malaise was making me question why I was doing any of these things, reminding me that the people whose lives revolve around a dull job and evenings spent watching television don’t get stressed out. The stress comes, in part, from facing challenges. No challenges, no stress.

But what those people don’t realize is that without self-imposed challenges, there’s no real meaning to life. They’re missing out on the amazing feeling of success that comes when facing a hurdle and jumping it.

Because isn’t that what I’m doing?

I wouldn’t have to take that check ride if I didn’t build and maintain a Part 135 helicopter business.

I wouldn’t have to make difficult staffing decisions if I didn’t take on the challenge of managing cherry drying contracts every year.

I make my stress when I take on these endeavors. The stress is usually temporary. And getting past it is what makes me tick, the reward of success is what drives me.

And I feel great today.

A Few More Thoughts about my Stupid Pilot Trick

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A response to some of the comments I’ve been getting, along with an update.

First of all, I want to thank the over 70 (so far) people who have taken the time to comment on my “Another Stupid Pilot Trick” post. It took me about a week to write it, mostly because I was embarrassed about what I’d allowed to happen to me, and I was feeling more than a little sensitive about that. I almost didn’t leave comments open on the post. But I’m so very glad I did. The outpouring of understanding and good wishes has been amazing. I didn’t get a single nasty or hurtful comment — which is pretty amazing given the percentage of low-life scum we all see bottom feeding on the Internet. You folks rock.

What’s really weird to me is how many people came to read the post. Apparently, it was picked up on Facebook or somewhere else and went a little viral. For two days in a row, it got more than 10,000 hits. So a lot of the comments I got were from complete strangers, including a lot of pilots.

The blog isn’t the only place I got feedback. I also got some on Twitter and a little on Facebook. I got a few email messages and even one phone call. Everyone was amazingly kind and made me feel good about my friends, acquaintances, and the pilot community.

Thank you.

Why “Stupid Pilot Trick”?

First, an explanation.

A friend of mine took some offense at the title of the blog post. She said:

I have to say I don’t like the title of your blog. It made me feel like you were hot dogging or pushing the helicopter to it’s limits.

Understandable. A lot of pilots use the phrase “stupid pilot tricks” to refer to that kind of behavior.

But as I explained:

“Stupid pilot trick” is the phrase I’ve always used to refer to accidents caused by pilot error. I’ve used it in discussing other accidents so I thought it appropriate to use it when discussing mine.

She seemed satisfied with that. I hope other readers are, too.

My Recovery

I’ve had some more time to recover both physically and mentally.

Windsock
One of my home projects was to replace my old, faded windsock with a bigger, brighter one. I even installed solar spotlights to illuminate it at night.

The bruises are almost gone — the one on my right leg, which my doctor says might take several months to disappear, is pretty much the only one left. (I’d include a photo of the way blood under my skin is now pooling on the right side of my right foot, but do we really need to see that? I don’t think so.) I had low-grade, nagging headaches for a while but they’re all gone now. I’d say I’m pretty much back to 100%, and that’s good. It’s springtime and I’ve got a ton of work to do in my garden and a long list of projects around the house to tackle.

Mentally, things are a bit weird. I think I’m suffering a bit from survivor guilt. You see, about three weeks before my mishap, a friend of mine was in a helicopter crash in eastern Washington state. He’d been doing some animal capture work with two biologists on board his Hughes 369 helicopter. One passenger died and my friend and the other passenger were seriously injured. No one knows what happened because no one can remember. My friend was in a coma for two weeks with a 10% chance of survival. He’s a young guy, though, and he came out of it. They did reconstructive surgery on his arms and legs. His wife recently sent me a photo of him in physical therapy. He’s got a long road ahead of him.

I didn’t want them to know about my crash mostly because I felt bad that I’d survived with very little injury and he’d very nearly died and will be working on his recovery for months (or more?) to come. But his wife found out — probably through the hoopla over the blog post. They’re okay with it — I mean, why wouldn’t they be? — and I know now that my survivor guilt is idiotic. I’m coming to terms with that slowly.

The gaps in my memory of the event are also bothersome. I still don’t remember anything from the time the helicopter went through the trees — which was very loud and seemed to take forever — to the time I was on the ground and realized I could get out. Somewhere in there, the helicopter hit the ground at least twice and turned 180 degrees but I don’t remember it at all. And no, I didn’t pass out; I had no head injury other than getting my brain rattled around a bit. I also don’t remember using the fire extinguisher, although I apparently did. And what did I do during the 30 minutes between when I texted another pilot right after getting out of the helicopter and finally calling 911? I remember parts of two telephone conversations I had during that time, but not 30 minutes worth of anything. I’ve never experienced memory gaps like that before and it continues to bug me that that time is missing.

I should stress that my memory beyond that is fine. My brain is back to functioning at 100% of whatever it was functioning at before the crash.

Counseling? No Thanks.

About two weeks after the crash, I got a letter in the mail from an organization that offers support to pilots after crashes. My response was to get angry. Very angry. So angry that I wrote an email to the guy who sent it, berating him for assuming that I needed help.

Fortunately, I didn’t send it. I grew to realize, with the help of some of my Twitter friends, that some pilots do need help getting past a crash and that the organization would probably be very helpful to them.

A lot of the comments I got from people about the crash assumed that I was seriously traumatized by it. But am I?

I don’t feel that I am and I think I know why.

You see, if you were to make a list of the traumatic things in my life and rank them by how traumatizing they were, this crash would actually appear pretty far down the list. I don’t want to share the list — jeez, why would I want to revisit all the things that have traumatized me throughout my life? — but I will offer one example: the man I lived with for 29 years, who I loved and trusted with my life, cheated on me (with a woman old enough to be my mother!), lied to me (and a judge, under oath), and then tried (and failed) to ruin me financially through a long, drawn-out divorce battle. You don’t think that’s pretty traumatizing? A helicopter crash I walked away from with just scrapes and bruises is nothing compared to that.

(So yes, my crazy divorce prepared me for a helicopter crash. Thanks, honey!)

It’s all relative.

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this: When you live life, shit happens. The more you live, the more shit happens. I’d rather deal with the shit that’s a byproduct of life than to have no life at all.

‘Nuff said.

Getting Back in the Saddle

I don’t need counseling. What I need is to fulfill my desire to get back into the cockpit and go flying.

No, I’m not afraid to fly now — although I admit I have no interest at all in flying at night. (Other than the “Moonlight Dinner Tours” I did in Phoenix between 2005 and 2011, I never really enjoyed flying at night.) Knowing what caused the crash — distracted flying at night — and what I can do to prevent it from happening again — pay attention, idiot! — takes away any fear I might have of flying again. After all, I really am a decent pilot — a “good stick,” I’ve been told. I flew my R44 like most people drive their car — or maybe even better. (Actually, probably better considering the way some people drive.) I’ve learned my lesson and am eager to get back in the cockpit.

Of course, that means getting another helicopter. I’m working on it. The week after the crash, I put in an offer on a helicopter in Canada, but the guy’s price, which I thought was high, was firm and he wasn’t interested in helping me get it into the U.S. And then there’s all kinds of paperwork to deal with when bringing an aircraft down and I’m simply not interested in dealing with any of that. So I’ve scratched all Canadian helicopters off my list.

I’ve also rethought my strategy on buying a new helicopter. Rather than getting one in the same condition as the one I lost — jeez, it was just a year out of overhaul! — I figured I’d buy one that needs an overhaul in two to five years and get the overhaul done when the time came. That meant I could buy a helicopter for cash using the insurance proceeds and save up for the overhaul. Without a helicopter loan, saving up would be possible. After all, I did it in 2013-16 after paying for a divorce, buying land, and building a home. (I do make a decent living as a pilot and still earn royalties on some of my writing work.) Then, in overhaul, I could get it fixed up to be more like the one I lost.

With that in mind, there are three candidates I’m considering. The closest is in Phoenix and I’ll likely check it out within the next week or so. I’m hoping we can go for a test flight.

I will admit one thing here: not long after the accident, when I first started thinking about buying another helicopter, there was a fleeting moment when I considered taking the insurance money, putting it in the bank, and not buying a helicopter at all. I’m a little young for retirement — although I consider myself semi-retired since I only work half the year — but financially, I’m secure enough to call it quits now if I want to. And I could still manage my cherry drying contracts every summer for a little side income. It would be an easy way out of the inconvenient mess I put myself into. But there’s no challenge in easy and I’ve come to believe that I live for challenges.

And I’m not ready to give up yet.

On Bravery

A lot of the people who commented about my blog post or contacted me other ways told me I was brave to tell my story. I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around that.

You see, I don’t consider telling my story about what happened “brave.” It happened because I was dumb and let it happen. It’s embarrassing, but not something I could (or should) hide.

Last Photo of N630ML
This is the last photo of N630ML in one piece. I was one of a team of three frost control pilots. This was shot in the hangar we were based in at Yolo County Airport.

Like it or not, I have a bit of a public persona. Part of it dates back to my writing days when I did a lot of public appearances. Part of it is because of this blog and my general outspokenness. There was no way in hell that I could crash a helicopter and prevent people from finding out. After all, one day, I’m flying a beautiful red helicopter with my initials in the N-number and a few months later I’m flying something completely different. And it isn’t as if pilots don’t read the NTSB reports. I do.

And why should I hide it? I did something dumb. If I could admit it and other people hear about it and that prevents them from doing the same dumb thing, I might save lives. Why wouldn’t I do that?

It’s not bravery that has me writing about this. It’s common sense. It’s caring about the pilot community and the passengers that pilots carry. It’s wanting to use my experience as a teaching moment for others.

And let’s face it: I’m in my mid 50s, approaching the end of my flying career. I’m self-employed and am not going to lose my job by admitting I did a dumbass thing that could have killed me and totaled my helicopter. I’m not worried about future employment because I’ve already come to terms with this fact: very few employers would consider hiring a middle aged, outspoken and set-in-her-ways woman with only 3700 hours of helicopter flight time for any flying job that would really interest me.

So what’s so brave? I’ve got nothing to lose by speaking out.

Dealing with the FAA and NTSB

Some pilots reading this might want to know what it’s like to deal with the FAA and NTSB after an accident. Let me fill you in.

First, I have to stress how lucky we all are. First, I survived with very little injury and a decent memory of what happened. I’m not in denial about what happened and why it happened. I’m not interested in hiding the facts. No one other than me was involved in the crash. There was no property damage — other than the trees I “trimmed” on my way to the “landing zone.” (Humor does help.) The crash was never even reported in the local news. The only photos that exist are the ones taken by police — I assume; I haven’t seen any — me, and my friend Sean who was there for the recovery. All this makes it a lot easier for everyone concerned.

The NTSB was the first to get in touch. Their local guy called while I was still in the hospital. (I was in the hospital for less than 3 hours.) I think he got my number from the police. I gave him a verbal account of what I remembered over the phone. He was very kind and polite. And relieved, it seemed. By simply surviving and telling him exactly what happened I was making his job very easy. In fact, the NTSB didn’t even come out to the accident site. They got a lot of information from the police, I guess. They released the helicopter for recovery within 3 hours of the crash. It was removed by noon the same day.

The FAA’s Sacramento office got in touch three days later. I was at Heli Expo in Las Vegas by then. I spoke for about 15 minutes on the phone with an inspector, telling him pretty much the same thing I’d told the NTSB. He asked if I’d be interested in doing a presentation at a WINGS safety seminar in my area. Sure, I told him. I want other people to know how easy it is to let complacency kill you. He recommended that I get back in the cockpit and start flying as soon as possible, perhaps with a CFI. (Another one worried about my state of mind.) He asked me to send him a summary of the crash in writing via email and I took down his email address. The next day, I sent him the same stuff I’d sent my insurance company.

About a week after the crash, an NTSB investigator from Washington called. I gave him the same information. He said he’d send a report I needed to fill out and warned me that I’d have 10 days to complete it and send it back. It got lost in email and was resent and the 10-day clock started when I confirmed receipt. Then I forgot about it. I remembered it six days later and spent about an hour filling it out. It was pretty straightforward, asking for basic information about the aircraft and my logged flight time, as well as a narrative about the crash. There were full pages I was able to skip because there were no other aircraft involved and no other crew members or passengers.

Along the way I had to tell my Part 135 POI that the helicopter no longer existed. He asked me to write an email officially asking to remove it from my Part 135 certificate. That was a 10-minute job.

And that’s it, so far. Although the FAA might ask me to do a special check ride with them, no one has asked yet. I don’t think there’s any doubt that I know how to fly safely. I was very forthcoming with the dumb thing I’d done that caused the accident. I do my Part 135 check flight in June anyway and I bet it would take them that long to schedule a special flight.

So my dealings with the FAA and NTSB have been pretty worry-free and very professional. I’m happy with the way they all actually seemed to care about me and my wellbeing. There were no accusations or unfair finger-pointing. After all, how could there be? I blamed myself because it’s my fault.

Why Deny the Truth?

And that’s another weird thing that I’ve realized: too many pilots won’t take blame for accidents that are their fault.

I know a good example. A few years back a pilot was flying a Schweizer 300 on a cherry contract. He had full fuel and another pilot on board so they were pretty close to max gross weight. He came in over a cherry orchard at high speed and made an aggressive turn that involved coming to a stop and descending. The helicopter went right into the trees. He claimed that the engine lost power but the NTSB, which took the wreckage in for investigation, could find nothing wrong with the engine. Instead, they reported that the accident had been caused by the maneuver he’d used to come in over the orchard: descending at a near stop had likely caused him to settle into his own downwash. Settling with power.

While it’s true that the pilot may really believe that the engine lost power, it’s more likely that he’s in denial of what really happened and his part in the cause of the accident. After all, when you get into settling with power, pulling pitch just makes it worse. It might seem as if there’s an engine problem. But we’re trained to avoid, recognize, and recover from settling with power and he was a flight instructor so he should understand what happened.

I’ve met this pilot and years after the accident he was still defiant, claiming the NTSB had gotten it wrong. As if the NTSB, which exists to investigate transportation related crashes, doesn’t know what it’s doing.

Now suppose I was in denial about my part in this accident. Suppose I claimed that the helicopter had lost power in flight and I’d found myself flying into trees. All of a sudden, the case isn’t cut-and-dry. The NTSB would have to take possession of the wreckage and perform all kinds of tests on the engine to see if it had lost power and why that might have happened — all on the taxpayer’s dime. (And yes, I’m a taxpayer and I care about how the government spends our money. Don’t get me started on $30K dining room sets, please.) Robinson would get involved. Reports would be delayed, I’d be questioned over and over. All this would still be going on now — and likely for months.

At what benefit?

Isn’t it better when a pilot honestly reports what happened and takes blame when he/she is to blame?

As far as I’m concerned, this chapter in my life is nearly closed; I’m already moving forward with the things I need to do to replace the helicopter and continue my work. That wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t recognize and admit what really happened and work with the authorities to help them quickly get the facts they need to complete their investigation.

On my Well-written Account

A few folks have commented about how “well-written” my blog post about the accident was. I appreciate the praise but, in all honesty, this one makes me giggle.

While lots of people know me as a helicopter pilot, what they may not know is that I became a helicopter pilot and bought a helicopter by building up a 20+ year career as a writer. Yeah — I wrote for a living. A good living. I think that says something about my writing skills. Somebody who can’t write can’t earn enough money as a writer to pay for helicopter flight training and buy a helicopter.

I wrote boring stuff. Books about how to use computers. Step-by-step instructions with lots of screenshots and captions and sometimes even callouts. I wrote it all and I often even did the layout. I wrote for numerous publishers, some of which you may have heard of: Peachpit Press, McGraw-Hill, Macmillan, Brady, Sybex, Microsoft Press, etc, etc. Some of the later books, which I’ve self-published, are about more interesting topics. If you’re interested in numbers, the count so far is 86 books.

I also write for magazines, both print and online. I wrote for computer magazines in the old days (pre 2012) and now write for aviation magazines. The most recent issue of Vertical included an essay I wrote, right near the beginning.

I started this blog in 2003 as an outlet to write stuff I found interesting — mostly stuff from my life, including my flying life. I use it to record and save information I want to share or consult later, like recipes. I use it to vent when something pisses me off or heap praise when something makes me happy.

I’ve also been working on a book about my first ten years as a helicopter pilot. It’s about halfway done. If I get a little more motivated to work on it, I hope to have it finished by this summer. (And yes, I know I’ve been promising that for a while now.) Will it include this accident? No. I’ll save that for Book II, which will cover the next 10 years.

So to those of you who think my accident account was well written, thanks. It better be.

That’s All for Now

And that’s pretty much everything on my mind in response to the comments I’ve gotten on my accident blog post, in email, and by phone. Once again, I want to thank all of the folks who took the time to reach out. You really made me feel good.

It also brings the situation up to date as far as my plans for a new helicopter and dealing with the authorities. I’m sure some of you were curious. This should satisfy that curiosity.

Any new comments or questions? Use the comments link for this post and I’ll try my best to address them — hopefully individually this time.