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.

Getting Away from it All

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We spend a weekend at our “summer” place on Howard Mesa.

It’s no secret that central Arizona, near Phoenix, gets brutally hot in the summer time. Daytime shade temperatures in July and August typically 110°F or above, and you can add 20 to 30°F if you happen to step out into the unyielding sun. We realized after just a few short years in Wickenburg that we’d need a place to escape to.

I heard about Howard Mesa on a radio commercial advertising 10-, 36-, and 40-acre parcels near the Grand Canyon. Mike was away at the time — he telecommuted to a job in New Jersey and spent about a week and a half each month there — so I hopped in my Toyota and made the 154-mile drive alone to check it out. I was soon seated in a big sedan beside Larry, who would be our sales guy, driving up well-maintained dirt roads to the few lots that were still available on top of the mesa. I fell love with the second lot he showed me, a pie-shaped wedge near the mesa’s highest point. The wide “crust” of the pie shape was flat and bordered state land, where I was assured nothing could be built. The rest of the land dropped off gently toward the west. Every inch of the property was buildable, but the obvious building site was right before the dropoff, where an old two-track road used by ranchers and hunters led to a clearing, where a single cow rested in the shade of a pinyon pine.

The land was off-the grid — that means no electricity, water, telephone, gas, or cable television — five full miles from pavement and about ten miles from the nearest store where one could buy a quart of milk. Williams, AZ, which had a supermarket and restaurants, was 20 miles south. Valle, the crossroads of Routes 64 from Williams and 180 from Flagstaff, was 14 miles north. The entrance to Grand Canyon National Park was another 30 or so miles north of that.

It was the quiet, beauty of the place that hooked me. Not a single building was within sight — just rolling hills of golden grasses, studded with the dark green of juniper and pinyon pines. Once Larry shut off his Buick, all I could hear was the wind, with the occasional call of a crow or raven.

San Francisco PeaksBut it was the 360° views that sold me. To the north, is Red Butte and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. To the west and northwest, are distant mountain ranges near Seligman, as well as Mount Trumbull on the Arizona strip 85 miles away. To the south is Bill Williams Mountain, just south of Williams. And to the east is snowcapped Mount Humphreys and the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountain in Arizona.

The price for all this amazing remote beauty? Less than $1,000 per acre. And our lot was priced higher than most others because of the view.

That’s how it all started. And what we realized just last night is that we’ve owned this place for ten years now. It was the Toyota that trigged the date memory. I bought my Jeep in the summer of 1999 and I was still using my Toyota as my primary car when we bought the place. That meant April/May 1999.

Our use of the place has varied over the years. In the beginning, we camped there on weekends in a pop-up camper, which we kept folded up on the property when we weren’t around. We had a round pen for the horses, which we’d bring with us. We got the entire 40 acres fenced in so the horses could run free. Then we began preliminary work on getting a house built. After a false start getting ripped off by Lindal Custom Homes — they told us we could build a home for $60/square foot but needed $600 to draw up the plans; the plans resulted in a home that would cost $120/square foot to build — we started exploring other modest custom home solutions. We had a septic system put in. I spent the summer of 2004 in a trailer up here while I flew for one of the Grand Canyon helicopter tour operators. And then, to give us a place to store our stuff while we were preparing to build, we put in what we call our “camping shed.”

And that’s where things got stalled.

You see, although I still love our place atop the mesa and would love to build a full-time residence up here, Mike thinks it’s a bit too lonely and remote. With so much going on for us in the Phoenix area these days, we don’t come up here nearly as often as we used to. To further complicate matters, the future of the area has become questionable. Much of the land up for resale and several property owners have put up commercial style buildings or trashed up their lots with a lot of junk. All this takes away much of the charm of the place. It seems senseless to pour a lot of money into a permanent residence when we’re not sure whether our new home will be looking out over a bunch of used shipping containers and broken down cars or another oversized Quonset hut or a second-hand mobile home left to deteriorate in the sun and wind.

Camping ShedSo we come up here on the occasional weekend and soak up the silence or the sound of the wind. If the nights are moonless, we can see almost as many stars as Hubble — or at least it seems that way — along with the distant glow of Las Vegas, 173 air miles away. Jack the Dog spends most of his time investigating the rocks, looking for lizards or pack rats, or chasing rabbits. Alex the Bird hangs out in his cage, playing with his toys and whistling along to the music on my iPod. Mike and I go for walks or do odd maintenance tasks to keep our camping shed in good condition. Sometimes we’ll go for lunch and a walk along the rim at the Grand Canyon. Other times, we’ll drive out to Flagstaff for some Thai food and to pick up some odds and ends in Home Depot or the RV repair shop. Still other times — like this weekend — we’ll just lounge in the shade on the camping shed’s “porch,” reading or talking.

Its restful — the perfect antidote for the poisons of modern civilization.

When I’m finished with this year’s cherry drying gig, I’ll probably spend a month or so up here with Jack and Alex. Mike will join me on weekends. I’ll work on the last of the three books I have contracted for this year. I’ll make day trips to Williams or the Grand Canyon or Flagstaff. I’ll enjoy the violent thunderstorms that roll through during monsoon season. I’ll take my Jeep to explore the forest roads bordering Grand Canyon National Park and likely find one or two new places to look down into that vast abyss without a tourist in sight. At night, I’ll look out at the stars and listen to the coyotes. It’ll be a simple life — an escape from reality.

Something I need more often than most people.

Beggar Spam

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A new kind of spam makes me wonder how stupid spammers think we are.

To post a comment on any of my blog-based sites, you need to jump three hurdles:

  1. You need to get past Bad Behavior, a spam prevention solution that can identify bots. If Bad Behavior thinks the a page is being accessed by a spam bot, it simply does not allow that bot to comment. Does this work? Well, during the past 7 days, Bad Behavior has blocked 2,018 access attempts. Does that mean it has stopped all the bots? Sadly, it doesn’t. But it seems to do a pretty good job.
  2. You need to get past Akismet, the WordPress-provided spam filtering tool. Akismet takes the incoming comments that get past Bad Behavior and evaluate them to determine whether they might be spam. If it thinks a comment is spam, it gets put in a spam “bucket” (my term). Does this work? Well, in March it caught 3,830 spam comments, missed only 11 that I flagged as spam, and incorrectly marked only 3 good comments as spam that I rescued. It has caught a total of 54,048 spam comments since October 2008 — that’s just six months.
  3. June 30, 2014 Update
    I’ve finally gotten around to writing up the site comment policy on a regular page (rather than post) on this site. You can find it here: Comment Policy.

    You need to get past me. I read all the comments that Akismet approves and either approve them for posting on the site or mark them as spam that Akismet missed. In certain rare instances, I’ll delete a comment that might not be spam but is, in my opinion, inappropriate for the site. (You can read my comment policy, if you’re interested.) I also briefly review what Akismet has flagged as spam and occasionally rescue a non-spam comment from the spam bucket so it appears on the site.

If you’re not a blogger, you probably don’t realize how big a problem comment spam is. Simply said, if I didn’t have Bad Behavior to block the bots and Akismet to filter out spam comments, this blog would attract anywhere from 10 to 1000 spam comments in a day. Spam comment contents range from links to sites selling drugs or offering online gambling to simple attempts to get some “Google Juice” from links to specific sites. Some of it contains crude and offensive words and ideas. If I let it get by me and allowed it to be posted on my sites, it would likely offend most of my readers.

But lately, I’ve begun getting a new kind of spam: beggar spam. The content of the message goes something like this:

I do not believe I get only one chance in life. I am from Guinea so my English is bad. Please give.

WTF?

Of course, this kind of comment never makes it to my blog. It’s stopped dead by Akismet or me. After a while, Akismet will pick up the pattern that identifies it as spam and properly filter each beggar spam message into the spam bucket.

But the real question is this: do these spammers really expect blog readers — or bloggers, for that matter — to send money to some faceless beggar just because they asked for it? Does anyone actually send them money to give them the idea this ploy works?

Which brings up another thought: The Internet has made it so easy for people to try to suck money out of people that they’ll try anything, no matter how unlikely it is to work. Just get yourself an automated commenting bot, set its options to include the message and link you want, and let it go. Sixty seconds of effort and an Internet connection can flood the world’s blog (and spam filters) with millions of scam attempts. If even one of them is successful, the spammer is ahead of the game.

I wonder how much of the world’s Internet bandwidth is used by but spammers and con artists. I’m not just talking about comment spam here. I’m talking about e-mail from Nigerian princes and widows. I’m talking about responses to For Sale items on online services, where the buyer offers a certified check for more than the purchase amount and asks you to give the difference to his shipping agent. Or the people who e-mail legitimate companies, offering to pay more for services than advertised, with the difference going to a “logistics” agent.

I see how many of these things cross my path in a day or week or month. I’m just one relatively well-connected person. What of the people who are better connected than me? Or the ones that foolishly put their e-mail addresses, unencoded, on a Web site so the spam bots can scrape them up for sale to spammers? Or the ones with blogs at the top of Google’s page rank that get thousands of visitors a day?

How much of the Internet is wasted on fraud and spammy self-promotion?

Anyway, I’d love to get feedback from other bloggers or people experienced with spam. What’s the most ridiculous spam you’ve ever received? The one that made you think the spammer thinks everyone is a gullible fool? Use the Comments link or form for this post.

And don’t try to spam me, please. Your comment will never appear on this site.