Alex the Bird at the Office

Posted on by
Comment

Showing off.

I bought Alex the Bird a stand that he can hang out on in my office. The idea was really to take it down to Rear Window (our Phoenix condo) so he can hang out with me when I work there. He really hates it there and I know he’d like it better if he could spend more time with me. But since neither of us spend much time at Rear Window, the stand hasn’t made it down there yet.

Anyway, I realized that with him standing behind me, I could probably get some good photos of him with my computer’s built-in iSight camera. So I took a shot.

Then I realized that I could also make a movie with the camera. So I fired up iMovie and recorded directly from the iSight into an iMovie file. Here’s the result. Alex can talk up a storm when he’s in the mood, but he wasn’t at his best this evening. I’ll try again another time.

About Goulding’s Lodge

Posted on by
Comment

The place to stay in Monument Valley.

I need to take a moment to talk about Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley, since so many of my Twitter friends commented on the photos I tweeted of the view from my room.

Goulding’s was founded by Harry and Leona (“Mike”) Goulding back in the 1920s or 30s. It was a trading post back then, where the Navajo would trade their rugs, blankets, jewelry, and other hand-made items for goods that the Gouldings stocked in their store, such as foodstuffs and items otherwise unavailable on the reservation. The trading post started as a tent and, after a while, moved into a stone building that still stands on the property, housing a museum.

First Light at Monument Valley
The view from my room at first light. I slept with my curtains open so this is the first thing I saw when I woke up on my most recent trip.

During the depression, many of the Goulding’s suppliers went out of business, making it difficult for them to get goods to trade. Harry Goulding got the idea of going to Hollywood to sell John Ford on the idea of using Monument Valley as a location for his western movies. He went out there with some photos of the place and, after some difficulty, got to show them off. Ford came east with film crews and John Wayne. The rest, as they say, is history. Many movies were filmed in Monument Valley, giving the local economy a real boost.

Goulding's Lodge
Goulding’s Lodge is built into the side of a hill overlooking the west side of Monument Valley.

Goulding’s Lodge is a pair of motel-like structures built on a hillside overlooking the western part of Monument Valley. Until recently, it was the only lodging in the valley — the Navajo have since built their own hotel inside the park. Just about every room at the lodge has a view of the valley from a private patio. There are also several houses that belong to the lodge that can accommodate larger parties — when I came to the valley with an Arizona Highways writer and video crew in October, we were lodged in a pair of homes that could have easily slept 10 people.

Gouldding's Trading Post Museum
The old trading post is now a museum.

Harry and Mike are long gone but Goulding’s remains privately owned. It’s staffed almost entirely by local Navajo workers. In addition to the lodge and trading post museum, there’s a newer “trading post” gift shop, a restaurant, and a small movie theater that shows slide shows, videos, and old John Wayne movies nightly. There’s a private landing strip across the street where pilots who stay at the lodge are welcome to land and park. Goulding’s also offers several different ground tours of Monument Valley; the passengers on my six-day Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure take a 3-1/2 hour tour while we’re there.

If you’re interested in staying at Goulding’s Lodge, reserve your room now. I book a year in advance to make sure I can get the rooms I need. I recommend two nights, if you can, so you can get into the park and enjoy both a sunrise and a sunset at your leisure. Although you can take your own vehicle into the park, you can go much deeper into the park if you go with a guide; you can arrange for one at Gouldings or inside the park.

No matter how you get there, I highly recommend a stay. You’ll never forget it.

Lake Powell to Monument Valley

Posted on by
1

A slow start to the day, a great flight to a beautiful place.

I slept great at Page. I think it was the combination of a comfortable bed, good climate control (no need to run any heater or air conditioner), and a completely exhausted body.

I walked over to the Safeway supermarket, where there was a Starbucks, to get my morning coffee. It was a great day: clear, calm winds, blue skies, nice temperature. Or maybe it just seemed great because I’d slept so well. There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep to get you off on the right track for the day.

I had a bunch of chores to do before picking up my passengers at 10:45 at their hotel. One of them was a meeting with the Chief Pilot of a Page-based tour operator. I’m doing a custom video for them based on our Lake Powell footage and we needed to iron out details regarding the narration script and footage to be used. I also wanted to preflight the helicopter and remove the tie-downs. And pick up a book about the ill-fated San Juan Marina on Lake Powell. And do some networking around town.

I got all of this done — and more — before picking up my passengers and while they were out on their tour of Antelope Canyon. I also checked them out of their hotel, checked myself out of mine, and stowed all of our luggage in the helicopter.

Antelope Canyon
This is actually Lower Antelope Canyon. I made this photo on another trip. My passengers went to Upper Antelope Canyon, which is more accessible and looks a lot like this shot.

One of my passengers had eaten something the day before that didn’t agree with her and was feeling a bit under the weather when I picked them up. Fortunately, the symptoms had subsided by the time they went on their Antelope Canyon tour. When they returned, they were in high spirits and she was hungry for lunch. Since there was no rush getting to our next destination, I recommended a restaurant near the tour operator office and they went in for a meal. I spent the next hour doing some last-minute networking with a Hummer tour operator nearby.

By the time we got to Page Airport, it was well after 2 PM. Although winds had been forecasted out of the southwest at 20 mph, there was barely a breeze out on the ramp. We loaded up and took off uplake. We were the only aircraft out there — the radio was dead quiet.

The lake water was a mixture of glassy smooth areas punctuated with ripples caused by surface winds. Our ride, 500 to 1000 feet above the lake’s surface, was remarkably smooth. I pointed out all the buttes and bays and canyons I knew by name, then swung us past Rainbow Bridge for just about the best view you can get from the air.

From there, it was on to the Confluence of the San Juan River. We followed that arm of the lake up a bit, then turned toward No Man’s Mesa, crossed it, and descended into the valley west of Monument Valley. There are a bunch of dark red sandstone formations out there that few people ever see; an old hogan at the base of one formation provides some scale to its huge size.

N630ML Parked at Gouldings
The Goulding’s airstrip, photographed from my room at the lodge. Can you see my helicopter parked there?

We approached Monument Valley from the west and made a loop around the famous monuments on that side of the park. Then we went back for landing at Goulding’s airstrip. We spooked a herd of horses as we came in low across the runway. I set us down gently on one of the two helipads.

A van was down from the lodge before I had a chance to call. We were checked into our rooms, overlooking Monument Valley, by 4 PM local time. (The Navajo Reservation is on Daylight Savings Time; we were in Utah at that point.)

Wagon Wheel
I snapped this from the covered overlook in front of the old trading post at Goulding’s.

I took the rest of the afternoon off, shooting a few photos from the lodge property. The drawback of flying into Monument Valley is that once you get there, you’re pretty much stuck. There’s no mass transit, no rental cars, no taxis. The only way off the lodge property is to hitchhike or take a ground tour of Monument Valley Tribal Park. But there are plenty of nice views from Goulding’s Lodge, so it wasn’t difficult to get a few good shots. And everything you need is within walking distance: restaurant, shops, grocery story, gas station, laundry. So it’s not as if staying there is a hardship. It’s not.

Later that evening, I went up to the little theater on the property and saw a short video about the history of the Lodge. The night was dark and the sky was full of stars. As my fellow travelers settled down for the night, a deep silence surrounded me. In the distance, now out of sight, the ancient stone monuments loomed in the darkness.

Fraud Alert: East Coast Mobile Style

Posted on by
32

Check your credit card bills!

Just a quick note to alert readers to a scam that’s evidently been around for a while.

In reviewing my credit card charges for the week I was gone, I found a charge for $2.56 from “#eastcoastmobilestyle.” The name was not familiar to me, so I called the phone number on the charge record, which appeared in the memo field of Quicken’s register when I downloaded my transactions: 912-289-0124. I got a recording with a female voice that sounded Asian. She said they could not provide support and that I should e-mail a support address. I left a message and kept digging, trying to find out what I’d supposedly bought from this company.

I wound up on a Web site called 800Notes where people evidently log the phone numbers of suspicious calls. There was a page dedicated to this number that mentioned East Coast Mobile. There were three pages of comments. In each case, the commenter had received a phone call from this company and a charge for $2.56, $4.56, or $6.56 had appeared on their credit card bill. I checked my new phone’s call log and did not see any calls from that number. However, I’d purchased my phone just the day before and had used the same credit card to make the purchase.

This certainly appears to be a scam. They get your credit card info and process a tiny charge. Most people would ignore a charge like that — after all, it could be for a ring tone or some other minor cellphone related service. But other people — like me, I guess — know who they buy from. I did not buy anything from this company.

I called the fraud department at my credit card company. They reversed the charge and cancelled that credit card account. I’ll get a new credit card later this week.

My advice to everyone reading this: always check your credit card bills for unknown charges. Follow up on the ones you don’t recognize — no matter how large or small they are. If this company places tiny charges like this on 100,000 cards, they can make a quarter of a million dollars in no time. They can also repeat the process for other charges — including larger ones — or sell your credit card information to scammers.

Please spread the word about this to the folks you know.

June 2, 2009 Update: In just a month, this has become one of the most popular posts on this blog. It consistently gets more than 50 hits per day. This is telling me that the fraud is extremely widespread.

Imagine that only 1% of the people who are fraudulently charged by East Coast Mobile Style find their way to this blog post. That means 5000 or more people per day are being charged. Even if the fee is the low number of $2.56, that’s well over $10,000 of fraudulent charges per day!

PLEASE spread the word about this fraud to the people you know. We need to stop credit card fraud any way we can. Always check every item on your credit card bill, no matter how small. I know it’s a pain in the butt to cancel a credit card, but if your has been compromised, that’s the only solution.

Good luck!

Grand Canyon to Lake Powell

Posted on by
1

[Almost] Too tired.

I slept terribly while at the Grand Canyon. This was due mostly to my room’s climate control — and my inability to set it properly. My room had a baseboard heater that seemed to take forever to warm up the room. I was asleep when it got to the temperature I’d set it to and the room got very dry and stuffy. I woke up and opened the window a crack to get some fresh air in. From that point on, the sound of the wind in the trees kept me from drifting back into a deep sleep.

As I tossed and turned, I was worried about how the forecasted high winds would affect our flight from GCN to PGA.

I finally gave up trying to sleep at about 5:30 AM, which is my normal waking time anyway. Sunrise was only moments away and I was only steps from the rim of the Grand Canyon, but I was too tired to rush out with my camera. Instead, I took my time dressing and getting some of my things together. El Tovar’s dining room opened at 6:30 and I wanted to get one of the first tables. I had plenty of time.

It turned out to be a good thing that I didn’t rush. I would have been disappointed — like that horde of photographers the evening before probably was. There was a huge, thick cloud on the eastern horizon. Sunrise had been a non-event — as it sometimes is at the Canyon — when the world brightened without dramatic colors or shadows. There’s soft light and then there’s really soft light.

Lookout StudioLookout Studio at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, in slightly delayed first sunlight.

When I started my walk to El Tovar, the sun was just peeking out over the top of this cloud. I had my camera with me and shot Lookout Studio and the Canyon beyond with some of that early morning light on it. I imagined — mostly through experience — all those photographers shivering for an hour or more at Mather Point or whatever the designated “best spot” for sunrises was, finally getting a few shots that showed off the canyon’s dawn colors.

I got a table for one at El Tovar where a waiter who is definitely in the wrong line of business “served” me. I won’t go into details, but I will mention that he was rude to me — twice. My mood had been cheerful, despite two consecutive nights of bad sleep, but he managed to bring it down a notch. My breakfast was good, though, and once I got the pity of another server, strong, hot coffee kept coming.

Back outside on the rim just after 7 AM, it was still quite deserted. I had three hours to kill before meeting my passengers. I killed it by checking the weather multiple times.

I use four different methods to check the weather while I’m traveling:

  • My new Blackberry Storm has a weather application called WeatherBug. I highly recommend this to anyone with a Blackberry. You set it up with predefined locations or let it get you the weather closest to your current position, using the GPS. The weather info seems to come from the National Weather service and is augmented with icons and other graphic elements that make it easy to read. On my previous phone, a Palm Treo, I used the Web browser to visit the National Weather Service’s mobile Web site where I got the same information with a bit more effort.
  • My phone has a directory of the airports I fly into programmed into it. I simply dial the number for the airport’s AWOS/ASOS system and get current conditions read to me. Want to try it? Here’s the number for Grand Canyon’s automated weather observation system (AWOS): 928-638-0672.
  • If I have a computer with an Internet connection — which I can usually get via dial-up networking on my smartphone — I can check the DUATS.com Web site. This is a lot of weather information — usually a lot more than I need — but it is an official source of weather for pilots.
  • If I’m really concerned about the weather, I can call 800-WX-BRIEF and talk to a briefer. I’ll be the first to admit that I rarely do this. The information available to briefers is the same information that I can get from DUATS. Most of it is of interest to airplane pilots flying at altitudes I’ll never reach, traveling distances farther than I usually travel. But this is another official source of weather. And on one occasion I can remember quite clearly, a briefer helped me find my way over a mountain range that was clouded in.

On Tuesday, I mostly used the first two methods: getting the forecast and hearing the current conditions at GCN and PGA. Although PGA had high winds forecasted for later in the day, the winds remained calm at each call. GCN was another story. Each call brought a report of higher and higher winds. By the time I was ready to meet my passengers, winds were 22 mph gusting to 29. The forecast called for gusts up to 50 later in the day.

We were at the airport and climbing into the helicopter by 10:15 AM. My passengers waited inside while I preflighted. After adding some oil, I climbed on board and started up. I was parked exactly perpendicular to the wind, so my initial pick up into a hover wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked. But when I pointed it into the wind, I had no trouble getting airborne. We turned to the southeast to exit the GCN airspace and begin skirting around the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules area. I had to keep the helicopter’s nose pointed about 15° off our path of flight to keep us in trim.

It was bumpy, but not nearly as bad as I’d expected. We dropped down off one plateau and then another. Soon we were flying over the Little Colorado River Gorge, heading northeast. We passed over a herd of wild horses at 500 feet and I asked my passengers whether they wanted me to circle back to see them better. They said they didn’t so I kept going.

We had a wicked tailwind. At one point, the GPS showed a ground speed of 152 knots. My airspeed never exceeded 110 knots.

At Page, I gave them a quick tour of Horseshoe Bend, the Glen Canyon Dam, and the Wahweap Marina, where my passengers would be staying. We had a bit of trouble landing at the airport because there was a plane in the pattern that kept changing its mind about what runway it would be using and I just couldn’t see it. (I will not approach an airport for landing unless I can see all of the planes in the pattern or there’s a controller to keep us separated from other traffic.) But we were finally on the ground about an hour after we’d left the Grand Canyon.

That same drive would have taken about 3 hours.

I had a lot of running around to do over the next few hours: taking my passengers to the marina for lunch and their boat tour, tying down the helicopter, having lunch, checking my passengers into their room and bringing up their luggage, checking into my motel in town.

I wasn’t staying at the marina. To make a decent amount of money on the excursions, I have to stay in more affordable places. So I stayed at the Page Boy in town. Not sure if I can recommend it. It was recently refurbished, but it still has that 1970s look about it. But it was $60 less per night than the the cheapest room at the marina. That’s $60 in my pocket. And I was too damn tired to enjoy the marina anyway.

Hedgehog Cactus
Hedgehog Cactus, in bloom.

One thing the Page Boy does have is a small but nicely landscaped desert garden around the pool. And that’s where I saw this hedgehog cactus, with more flowers on it than I thought possible. The flowers were a bright reddish orange and looked as if they were made of wax. I had to shoot a bunch of photos of it. I don’t think I’ll ever see a specimen this nice ever again.

I spent the afternoon trying to nap and not succeeding. I gave up at around 5:30 and went to get an ice cream. Then I went back to my room and watched entirely too much television on Hulu.com.

By 9 PM, I was sound asleep.