The Frightened Passenger

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A passenger overcomes her fear while over the Grand Canyon.

She was from England, in her mid to late fifties, thin and tall. She had some difficulty with her headset and I helped her out. She didn’t tell me she was nervous. She didn’t have to. I could tell by the way she grasped her seat bottom as we took off.

We were on north traffic in and out of the airport. North traffic, for a North Canyon tour puts me on a zig-zag course over the forest northwest of the airport. The first two turns are sharp turns to the left. I’m allowed to bank up to 30° with passengers on board, and the first turn, at the Moki, needs it. As we turned and the helicopter leaned to the left, my passenger leaned to the right. I was a bit more gradual with the second left, but she leaned all the same.

The passenger clung to her seat bottom, staring straight ahead. I was just starting to wonder if she’d ever let go when she became interested in the view of the canyon, which was coming up on our right. She released her seat and began fiddling with her camera. She snapped off a picture or two and then I was making a turn to the right and she was holding onto her seat for dear life again.

This happened throughout the flight. She’d release the seat to take a few photos, then grab on again as I made a turn or some mild turbulence bumped us around. I’d seen people like her before and I knew she was okay about the flight. I tried to ignore her, since she was a bit distracting. She really broadcasted the helicopter’s minor movements to me — movements I usually had no real control over.

At the end of the 25-minute flight, I came into the airport with one last sharp left turn. I set down at my helipad, throttled down to idle, and turned to thank the passengers.

My frightened passenger was all smiles. “I was so scared!” she shouted to me. “Thank you! Thank you!” And then she hugged me tightly — a difficult task, given that I was strapped into my seat, wearing my headset, and not expecting it. She thanked me a few more times for good measure, saying how wonderful the flight had been. She shook my hand, too. I told her she made my day.

And then she was gone, rejoined with her friends outside the helicopter, telling them how great she thought the flight was.

So if anyone asks why I’ve taken on a job that pays a fraction of what I make in my other job, I can tell them about the frightened passenger and the big hug she gave me when we landed.

On Being a Professional Writer

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Some thoughts on writing for a living.

I make my living as a writer. And I make a very good living.

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer. The next question is usually, “Oh, have you had anything published?”

Hello? How can you make a living as a writer if you haven’t had anything published? After all, the money comes from the publishers. It doesn’t come out of thin air just because you spent time putting words on paper or in a word processor. Or in a blog, for that matter.

I’ve written 58 books since 1990. True, most of those books were revisions. Like my Mac OS books, which have been bestsellers since the very first edition. That was about Mac OS 8 back in 1998. I revised it for 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, X, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3. I’m going to start work on the 10.4 edition soon.

I learned very early on in this field that if I wanted to make a living as a writer, I had to write a lot and get it all published. So I learned to write my computer books extremely quickly, giving my publishers just what they wanted pretty darn close to the day they wanted it by. Publishers like that. They don’t want to work with prima donas who won’t do things their way. They don’t want to work with writers who can’t deliver on time. Because I met the needs of my publishers, they gave me a lot of assignments. I always had work to do. And since these books only last 12 to 18 months (on average), I needed to keep working. Even a bestseller doesn’t pay a dime when it’s out of date.

I had two bestsellers: the aforementioned Mac OS books and my Quicken books. The Mac OS books continue to do well. I’m extremely proud of the latest edition, which is over 600 pages long and full of great information. The next edition will be even better. The Quicken books aren’t doing as well these days. I think the market is saturated. I have other thoughts on this, but I’ve been advised to keep them to myself and I agree it’s probably a good idea.

Bestsellers are nice. They generate big checks. I wish I could have 10 bestsellers, all at the same time. Then maybe I’d have a little house on top of Howard Mesa instead of a camper with a pair of bad batteries.

If you’ve been reading these blogs, you know that I have a summer job as a pilot. It isn’t quite over yet, but it will be soon enough. Some people think I got the job because I needed the extra money. In all honesty, the job is a money sucker. The pay is terrible and I probably spend as much money commuting to work by helicopter as I earn each day. (But heck, it sure beats the 40-minute drive in the Jeep.) And every day I’m away from my office is a day I can’t work on a book. So I’m losing money when I’m flying. Good thing I enjoy doing it.

This summer, I worked a 7 days on/7 days off schedule. But I fiddled with that a bit and got it set up as 5 days on/9 days off for much of the summer. As a result, I was able to go home and work on books. I revised my Quicken book in June. I worked on my new Word Visual QuickProject Guide in July and August. And this month, I started my new Excel Visual QuickProject Guide. I have another Word book (a revision) and my Mac OS X book (a revision) lined up after these. So there’s plenty of work to do.

I also got some work writing articles for a Web site. I can write those when I’m away at my summer job. I use my laptop. They don’t pay as well as a book, but I can knock one off in a few hours. And it’s kind of nice to write about a bunch of different things rather than just one main thing.

There are lots of people out there who want to be writers. I’ve met many of them. I was even pretty good friends with one or two. But they just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand that if you want to write for a living, you must write what the publishers want so they’ll buy it. If the publishers don’t buy it, you won’t make any money on it.

And don’t talk to me about self publishing. I have a friend who went that route and still has a garage full of books. Five different titles! Self publishing is risky. There’s a huge cash outlay involved and if you don’t know how to market (or sell) your book, you’ll never make any of that money back.

Yes, the key word here is sell. Sell your writing, sell yourself.

If you do it well enough, you can have a very nice lifestyle. After all, it’s nice to be able to make your own hours, work in your pajamas, take vacation anytime you want. Those are the perks of being self-employed. But you have to work to earn those perks. Pay dues, so to speak.

What a disjointed blog entry this is! But sometimes it’s nice to write something that you don’t have to sell. I guess that’s what these blogs are all about.

Who Needs Electricity? I Do!

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How I cope with a sudden electricity problem at Howard Mesa.

About a month ago, Mike and I took care of a water problem at Howard Mesa (detailed in another blog entry). In doing that, we used the water pump hooked up to the camper to flush a bunch of water down the septic system. I think that overuse of the water pump may have been what triggered a new problem.

The problem is this: In the morning, after turning on the light and the stereo in the camper and running the water a bit, I would get a “Low DC” message on the refrigerator’s control panel. The refrigerator does not run off the battery. It uses gas. But it evidently needs some amount of electricity to operate. When the battery’s power level falls below 10 volts, the refrigerator tells me it’s time to start turning things off.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve been living in the camper every other week, while working at the Grand Canyon, since April. The solar panel on the roof has done an excellent job of keeping the two batteries charged. I never had any indication of a low battery.

Until the day after we used the water pump for so long.

Mike thinks the extra electricity use discharged the batteries and the solar cell has not been able to bring them back up to full charge. But the solar panels have full sunshine almost every day when I’m not around running the stereo or turning on the lights. Actually, they get a whole week of charging time without me around to discharge anything. I even shut off the fridge and turned off the power one week. I think the batteries have gone bad and they’re simply not holding a charge. Of course, since I can’t prove that and the batteries are less than two years old, I must be wrong.

The solution, according to Mike, was to buy a generator and hook that up to the camper. So we went to Lowes and bought a 1,000-watt “portable” generator. We loaded it into the helicopter’s passenger seat (if Frank Robinson saw that, he’d probably have a canary) and strapped it in with the seat belt (like a 50-lb squat box is going to shift in flight). I flew it to Howard Mesa, lugged it into position behind the camper, and fired it up.

It was easy to start. It reminded me of the old days when I used to mow the lawn. You know, that pull cord thing. There’s a trick to starting it, but I learned that trick when I got my GoPed, so I was all set.

Although it was advertised as quiet, I’m not sure what they’re comparing it to. Yes, it’s quieter than a Bell 206L helicopter. But it’s considerably louder than the sound of the wind through the trees, which is the only other sound I have to deal with here at Howard Mesa.

It vibrates. It vibrates so much that the power cord that connected it to the camper kept falling out. I had to use bungee cords to hold it in.

But when it’s running and plugged in, I can use all the electricity I want and I don’t get any flashing warnings from the Fridge.

It won’t run the microwave. Whatever rocket scientist thought a camper needed a 1450-watt microwave was gravely mistaken. A 700-watt microwave would have done the job nicely. And the generator would have run it (if I turned everything else off and cooked in the dark).

This morning, I really put it to the test. When I woke up, it was 38° F outside and 45° F inside. Not the kind of indoor climate conducive to showering. And when I turned on the light and the stereo, the refrigerator started flashing. So I put my sweatpants on over my long johns (which I wear to bed here) and threw a sweatshirt over my nightshirt. I went outside, fired up the new generator, plugged it in, and fastened the bungee cords. Then I went inside and turned on the heat. The heat isn’t electric either — it’s gas. But its fan is electric and I knew it would suck the batteries dry within minutes.

The place warmed up nicely. And I couldn’t even hear the generator because the heater made so much noise it drowned out the sound. I had my coffee and took a nice, hot shower. It was pleasant. Until the carbon monoxide detector went off. I guess I shouldn’t have placed the generator with it’s tiny exhaust pipe facing the camper. I had to leave the camper door open when I left for the day because I was worried that the constant beep-beep of the carbon monoxide detector would drain the batteries as quickly as the solar cells filled them.

I finished work at sunset today and raced to Three-Niner-Lima. I was airborne within 10 minutes. I had a great 20-knot tailwind. I made record time getting back to Howard Mesa, but it was still pretty dark when I arrived. (I couldn’t check the windsock from the air because I couldn’t find it. Another 15 minutes and I wouldn’t have found the trailer.) I moved the generator to the front of the camper, so I wouldn’t have to walk so far in 30+° weather in the morning. And, hopefully, I wouldn’t have to listen to the carbon monoxide detector.

As I type this, I’m sitting on my sofa, listening to the stereo. The light is on. The heater has just gone off automatically — it reached its 65° setting. The generator is outside, about 10 feet away. I can hear it humming away. I think I’ll raise the heat so I can listen to that instead.

But at least the refrigerator is happy.

Arizona Strip Trip – Intro

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About the trip I planned on the Arizona Strip.

I’d been planning the trip for weeks. I had a week off from work in the middle of September. The same week that the aspen trees on the north rim should be turning color. And that Rod Carr would be at Bar 10 Ranch on the west side of the North Rim. I’d finally make a trip up there to see the roads I flew over every day from the ground. And take Mike to see Bar 10, which is one of my favorite get-away-from-it-all places.

The plan was loosely set up as follows:
Day 1: Tusayan to Page, with stops in the Navajo Reservation and Antelope Canyon.
Day 2: Page to North Rim or Jacob Lake, with unpaved road excursions into the forest and stops at Point Imperial and the North Rim.
Day 3: North Rim or Jacob Lake to Bar 10, with stops at Point Sublime and Toroweap.
Day 4: Bar 10, with short trips to the rim and other points of interest.
Day 5: Bar 10 to someplace on Lake Mead.
Day 6: Lake Mead to Wickenburg (for a day of rest before back to work) or Tusayan (to pick up Mike’s truck).

But things don’t always come off the way you plan them and this trip was like that.

Remembering Harry Combs

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My thoughts on a great man in aviation who I was privileged to know.
I first met Harry Combs in November 2002, not long after I’d taken over operation of the airport. I’d been subletting his hangar every summer for my helicopter for three years, but had never met him in person up to that point.

Mr. C, as many folks called him, had a home at Rancho de los Caballeros in Wickenburg. He’d arrive in Wickenburg each November as a passenger on a Lear 35 jet — the same jet he’d owned and flown years before. At the Pima Air Museum, there’s a Wright Brothers display that includes a photograph of Mr. C standing beside his Lear with the distinctive Kitty Hawk monument in the distance. Mr. C had sold the jet to a fractional jet company with the stipulation that any time he wanted to fly, that same jet would take him.

Last year, Mr. C would occasionally stop in at the airport terminal to chat. He had many nice things to say about the work I’d done at the airport and it was an honor to receive complements from such an aviation legend.

I recall a conversation I had with Mr. C at the terminal one spring, when he told me about the Wright Flyer reproduction he had commissioned for display at Kitty Hawk. He’d been almost outraged that there was no full-scale reproduction of the plane at the park and had done something about it. “It’s going to cost a lot,” he told me more than once during the conversation. I never asked how much.

Every year, someone would ferry Mr. C’s Bonanza down to Wickenburg, not long after his arrival. At that point, the subletter would be kicked out of his hangar — sometimes with as little as two days’ notice — and his plane would be moved in.

I recall seeing him arrive at the airport with Joyce, his secretary, for a flight in the spring. Mr. C had turned 90 in January and he was a bit unsteady. Joyce looked nervous. We all tried to talk Mr. C out of flying — without insulting him, of course. But Mr. C was stubborn and it appears he knew what he was doing. His takeoff on runway 23 looked smooth as silk, despite the crosswind. After flying around the desert northwest of the airport for a while, I heard Joyce’s voice on the radio, announcing their return. (Mr. C left all radio communications to Joyce.) Mr. C landed smoothly and taxied back to the hangar. Ed and Rob put his plane away. That’s the last time I saw them fly.

Mr. C was 90 when he made that flight. He’d been flying for 75 years, since he was 15 years old. He had witnessed aviation grow from the days when flying was left to daredevils to a time when getting on a plane to go from one point to another is commonplace for anyone. He was a great supporter of aviation and aviation history, the author of a book about the Wright Brothers (Kill Devil Hills), and a contributor to aviation museums.

Mr. C died just after his trip to the 100th anniversary celebration of the Wright Brother’s first flight. He was two months shy of his 91st birthday.

I’ll miss Mr. C, but I’m glad I had a chance to know him.