On Canvas Grocery Bags and Pilot Uniforms

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Being a “local” has its privileges.

When I started working at Papillon, I was told that many of the Tusayan businesses offered discounts for local residents and employees. I was also told that the grocery store was not one of them.

But the truth emerged slowly. While waiting in line to check out — in uniform at the end of the workday — the girl in front of me whined that she’d forgotten to bring her canvas shopping bag, the one that entitled her to the discount. She, her friend, and I were the only three people in line. The check out guy pretended at first that he didn’t know what she was talking about. But she was persistent and he finally gave in, probably to shut her up. But when she left, he was faced me with — obviously another local. He gave me the discount, too.

At Papillon, I asked around about the grocery bag. I was told that you had to buy a special canvas grocery bag and use it every time you shopped. You’d get a 10% discount on the bag and anything you bought when you had the bag with you. It was a sort of signal, a way to let the checkout guy know you were a local and you knew about the discount without spilling the beans in front of the tourists.

So today I went into the grocery store. I poked around, looking for the canvas shopping bag. When I didn’t find it, I went to the checkout counter, where the clerk was taking care of a customer. He asked me if he could help me.

I said, “I was told I needed to buy a certain canvas shopping bag.”

He looked at my uniform and nodded knowingly. “I haven’t seen one of those bags here in a while,” he said, packing the other customer’s purchases. “I’ll see if I can find one.”

But then other customers came and his line got long. I decided to let him work. I began to gather up the groceries I needed. I found the other clerk stocking shelves. I asked him about the bag. He told me they didn’t sell them. They only sold them in their grocery store in the park. I certainly didn’t plan on driving into the park to get a 10% discount on a few groceries. I finished shopping and brought my basket to the counter. The other customers were gone and the two clerks were talking. The one at the register said that even though I didn’t have the canvas bag, he’d give me the discount. And he did. I saved $4.

Afterwards, I went to Wendy’s and ordered a Chicken Spinach Salad at the drive thru window. (I don’t really like fast food, but I admit that Wendy’s makes a pretty good salad.) When I got to the pay window and asked how much (I can never understand them on those speakers), he mumbled a number, then said, “But four sixty seven with the discount.” He’d obviously seen my captain’s bars.

Oddly enough, I’m starting to FEEL like a local here. I just have to get my hands on one of those canvas bags.

Call Me a Mouse Relocation Specialist

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I catch a mouse, take it for a helicopter ride, and set it free at Grand Canyon Airport.

Anyone who has been reading these blog pages carefully should have noted that my trailer at Howard Mesa has a mouse problem.

The problem started last season. The trailer is parked here from late spring to early fall. Last season, we didn’t spend much time here. On our last stay, when I opened the door I found that the fringe on the throw rugs was gone and there were tiny black mouse droppings all over the floor. No other sign of the little buggers, though.

We bought those noisemaker things that are supposed to keep rodents away. We plugged them into an inverter that we left plugged into one of the trailer’s cigarette lighter-like outlets. Then we left for a few weeks. When we returned, we found that although the batteries were still charged (thanks to the solar panel on the roof) and the inverter worked fine, the two noisemakers were dead. There were more mouse droppings on the floor. And the little buggers had begun chewing the white threads off the sofa upholstery.

We hooked up the trailer and took it home. Mike went at it with whatever mouse removal tools he wanted to use. That usually includes sticky pads and nasty, snapping traps. I don’t like those. I don’t like seeing dead animals. So I just avoided the trailer for the whole winter season. Mike assured me sometime in January that the problem had been resolved.

This spring, we took the trailer back up to our property at Howard Mesa so I could live in it while I worked at the Grand Canyon. It’s only 36 miles door to door, and it beats the trailers with housemates program Papillon makes available to its employees.

I scattered moth balls around the trailer’s tires. Someone told me that would prevent mice from climbing up the tires and into the trailer through openings we knew nothing about.

But when I returned to the trailer after being home for a week, guess what I found? More droppings, chewed up Kleenex, and less white thread on the upholstery. The mice were back.

Mike planned to come for the weekend. I asked him to bring the humane mouse trap. That’s a mouse trap that actually TRAPS the mouse. It doesn’t kill it. It holds it in a tiny metal box so you can do something humane with it. And I went to Flagstaff and bought another rodent noisemaker.

When Mike came, I gave him an assignment. I told him that the mouse nest must be under the sofa. That was the only place we hadn’t searched thoroughly. I asked him to check it while I was at work. When I returned at the end of the day, he showed me where all that white thread and throw rug fringe had gone. And he repaired the ductwork for the heater.

Had he seen a mouse? No.

We left after the weekend. Mike had set up the humane mouse traps (we had two) in the trailer. I closed them up, explaining that they wouldn’t be very humane if we caught a mouse and let it starve to death. Instead, I set up the noisemaker.

I returned to the trailer on Wednesday evening. Opened the door and looked inside. And guess what? No mouse droppings, no torn tissue, and the sofa looked just as bad as when I’d left it — not worse. The noisemaker was still making its weird noise. I unplugged it and put it away, then set up the humane mouse trap, with a dab of Skippy peanut butter as bait.

At around midnight, I was wakened by a snapping noise. And then a tiny rattling, kind of like a very small mouse trying to get out of a metal box. I’d caught a mouse!

The tiny rattling went on for a half hour and I soon realized it was likely to go on all night. I got up, fetched the trap, and put it outside on the picnic table. Then I settled back to sleep.

In the morning, after having coffee and getting dressed, I went outside to look at my prey. What a cutie! I would have been shattered to see such a cute little guy stuck to sticky paper. He looked scared. And cold. But I had no pity for him. Not after what he’d done to my sofa. In my eyes, he was lucky to be alive.

Now what to do with him? Sure, I could take him out to the road and let him go. But what if he was some kind of homing mouse, one that could easily find his way back to the trailer? I could drive him down the road and let him go. But that would take time, and I had to go to work. So I decided to take him to work with me and let him go there.

I’d flown my helicopter to the trailer the evening before and that was how I planned to get to work that morning. So I loaded the mouse trap with its prisoner into the helicopter, along with the odds and ends I was bringing to work. I started the engine, warmed it up, and took off. I’m pretty sure that was the first time mousie was ever in a helicopter.

I landed at Grand Canyon Airport and set down on one of the transient helipads. I cooled down the engine, shut down, and unloaded my stuff. I brought the mouse trap over to the grass at the side of the helipad and opened it up. I shook the mouse out. He landed at the base of a tall clump of grass and looked at me as if to say, “What now?” Then he was gone, into the grass.

I set the other trap tonight. Let’s see if I can get another one.

I Finally Got Smart

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I give up my contract at Wickenburg Airport and feel an enormous weight lifted off my shoulders.

It was driving me nuts.

I’d won the fuel manager contract in late 2002 and started with the lofty goal of turning the airport around, making it a place where pilots would want to hang out, drink coffee, and do some hangar flying. Like a clubhouse. And while they were there, they’d pull out their planes, go for a flight, and buy some fuel so the town and I could make some money.

If you compare the airport now with what it was under the previous fuel manager, you’d have to admit that I succeeded. But at what cost?

The original idea was to find a full-time guy (or gal) to manage the place for me. I’d handle the money, the manager would handle everything else. But reality set in quickly. First, I couldn’t find such a person. And then I realized that even if I did, I couldn’t afford to pay one.

So I became that person. And the nightmare began.

The job was fraught with frustration:

Frustration at dealing with the town and its slow (almost backward) speed of getting things done. I’ve been told that all small towns are like this and that I should be patient. Believe it or not, I can be VERY patient. But no one who has an interest in seeing things done can be THAT patient.

Frustration at attending airport commission meetings, which discussed the same semi-relevant topics every month. My favorite was the hangars at Forepaugh issue, which was begun by a local ultralight pilot because he supposedly couldn’t get a hangar in Wickenburg without insurance. (Untralight pilots can’t easily get insurance.) As soon as he got a hangar in Wickenburg, he stopped coming to meetings. (Has anyone checked for insurance? I doubt it.) But the topic was discussed for at least two more months, with nothing being resolved. And let’s not even talk about Forepaugh. How so many people can waste so much breath over a dirt strip in the middle of the desert absolutely amazes me.

Frustration at dealing with customers who got their kicks by complaining to ME about things I have absolutely no control over. “When is that self-serve fuel system going to be fixed, anyway?” “Why are fuel prices so high?” “Why are hangars so expensive?” “Why can’t I build my own hangar?” “How could you let so-and-so cut me off in the traffic pattern?” “Why didn’t you tell me that the windsock on the east end of the field shows different wind that the one at the west end of the field?” It never ended.

Frustration at dealing with people who weren’t customers — people who were proud of the fact that they didn’t buy a thing from me — coming in and drinking my coffee and sitting on my sofa a few times a week. Getting donut crumbs on the floor and missing the urinal when they took a leak. And talking other customers out of buying things that kept me in business.

Frustration at seeing the annual “Fly In,” which is sponsored by an organization that knows less about aviation than the Girl Scouts, turn into a poorly publicized car show with no control over aircraft or people on the ramp. Last year, when I needed to fly out during the event, I had to enlist the help of FOUR people to prevent bystanders from walking too close to my helicopter while it was preparing to depart. There were no movement/non-movement areas defined!!! No safety personnel to prevent spectators from walking into spinning props!!! Parked cars blocking the doors to many of the hangars!!! And the C-130 they finally got to appear at the event taxied down a taxiway it didn’t fit on and climbed one of its wings up on a hangar. When it put its engines in reverse, it churned up enough grass, weeds, and pebbles to shower the spectators and cover the ramp for weeks. Jeez! As fuel manager for the place, I could be held liable for damages in the event of an accident! And I could only imagine the lawsuit the town would get slapped with.

Frustration at being told that I wasn’t supposed to voice my opinions if they weren’t favorable. What kind of bullshit is THAT? Hello? Aren’t we in America? Isn’t there a document called the Constitution that grants all of us the right to voice our opinions until we’re blue in the face? Or longer?

Frustration at being an employer. What was I thinking?

If I told you what the FBO netted last year, you’d laugh at me. If I told you how much of my personal money I put into the airport building to fix minor problems that the town consistently avoided fixing and making improvements to make the terminal more appealing, you’d tell me I was nuts.

I was nuts. I know that now. I suspected it at least six months ago when I snapped at a customer, after dealing with his complaints and sexual harassment for ten months. I called him something I reserve for people who really annoy the hell out of me. (Something so foul I won’t even repeat it here. But ask me in person and I’ll tell you.) I called him that loudly and repeatedly. He tried to get me removed by the town. If only he knew what a favor he would have been doing me! Six months less of insanity.

I made my decision to quit on Thursday morning. I kept it to myself that morning. The mayor-elect was coming by to visit me at the airport with three members of the airport commission. I decided that if I thought there was ANY chance of a change, I’d reverse my decision again. But when the mayor-elect came by, I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I guess you could say I was DEpressed.

Later, I stopped by town hall to drop off some paperwork. I got called into the Airport Manager’s office. He immediately started giving me grief about a list of airport fixes that were outstanding that I had submitted to him. I broke the news to him so he could save his breath. I dropped the official letter off the next day.

Fortunately, there’s a way that I can make my exit without hurting the airport or the town. The folks at Master Aircraft (the airport paint shop) are interested in taking over. So interested, in fact, that they’re willing to buy my airport assets (just about everything in the building) and take over as my agent until my 90 termination period is up. They’ll keep the place just as nice and friendly as I did. And after watching me for 6 months, they already know what they’re in for, so they’re more likely to stick it out.

Now back to my regularly scheduled life.

Dripping Springs

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Mike and I search for one of my in-flight landmarks and almost find it.

I got Sunday off.

It was a weird thing. I showed up for work and discovered I was the fifth of five spare pilots. And because maintenance had a bit of a backlog, there were only seven helicopters flying. There was no way in hell that I would fly that day. So I asked for the day off. After all, why should Papillon pay me to sit around and do nothing? And why should I waste the day in the pilot break room, watching the crap the guys usually watch on television, when I could be doing something with Mike?

Mike had come for the weekend and although he planned to spend the day horseback riding and cleaning mouse debris out of the trailer, my day off changed his plans. We went into the park for breakfast at El Tovar, visited the new Visitor Information Plaza, and decided to search out Dripping Springs.

Dripping Springs is one of my in-flight landmarks on my return from a North Canyon or Imperial Tour. I fly south across the Grand Canyon, toward Whites Butte, up the right side of Travertine Canyon. There’s an odd-looking meadow there, formed by a forest fire years ago. Dripping Springs. Nearby is a nice view of the canyon with plenty of roads.

We bought two maps that, when used together, provided enough information to get us started. Leaving the park, we made a right at the Moqui Lodge, which is closed for renovations. We followed that improved dirt road west for a few miles, making a right near the railroad tracks. We followed the tracks, then crossed them. Then made a left at a closed-off picnic area and followed a narrow dirt road west southwest into the forest.

Things got sketchy for a while. We wound up at a locked gate near a clearing. The place looked familiar. Mike and I climbed the fence and walked into the clearing. It was the ponds! Another one of my landmarks. After Dripping Springs, I turn left and follow the boundary road until it turns left, then head for the sewer ponds. Here were the ponds. It was weird to see them from the ground.

We backtracked and made a turn we’d missed. Suddenly, the boundary road was before us, with a sign that said, “No vehicular traffic. Foot traffic only.” Not what I wanted to see.

But there was another road on one of the maps, a road that paralleled this one. We found it easily. And Mike began driving on a road that was almost too narrow for his truck.

The road wound through the forest, sometimes barely wide enough for us to pass, especially on tight turns. The surface was rugged and, more than once, Mike had to shift into 4WD. We reached Horse Thieves Tank, where the road on the map ended and a trail began. According to the map, the trail crossed the boundary road, where it turned into a road again. Mike stopped the truck and we got out to scout ahead. It was very narrow in a few spots, but opened up suddenly. From that point forward, it was easy. And there was the intersection I’d seen on the map, less than a half mile away.

We went back to get the truck and drove carefully to that point. Then we joined up with the boundary road. There was no sign there. We continued west.

The map showed a road leading off to the right. The road would go to Dripping Springs Trail. We followed the boundary road, but couldn’t find a turnoff. It wasn’t until we realized that we’d gone too far and were on our way back that we found it. The road had been blocked off by logs, turned into a trail. We parked at the trailhead while helicopters flew over us.

We were getting close.

Photo

We got out, grabbed our picnic lunch and water bottles, and started hiking. If the map were right, it would be about a mile to Dripping Springs. We followed the trail, keeping to the right when it forked. It was relatively flat and very quiet — except for the helicopters flying over to the west of us. Suddenly, we came upon a wooden structure made of logs that had been arranged vertically in a circle. Mike and I explored it a bit and guessed that it had been a corral. But it was old — there were small trees and cacti growing inside it. It had obviously been abandoned a long time ago. Near the end of the old road, we found an old corral made of logs dug into the dirt.

The road ended shortly after that, turning into a narrow trail that began a descent. But we weren’t near the big clearing I knew as Dripping Springs. And we weren’t near the canyon rim. It was very disappointing. Here I am, at the end of the road. No Dripping Springs here.

At Dripping Springs

While I settled down in the shade and unpacked our lunches, Mike explored a bit down the path. He returned a short while later and reported that the trail started down a hill and crossed a little wash. He thought the springs might have been up the wash, but everything was dry. He didn’t seem too enthusiastic about continuing down that way. So we had lunch in the shade, listening to the helicopters pass by to the west of us every now and then.

We hiked back a while later. The hike back seemed shorter — it always does. Mike drove back on the boundary road — there was no sign about foot traffic in that direction and we weren’t prepared to do the other road again. When we hit pavement, we stopped for beverages in Tusayan, then headed back to the trailer.

The next day, I flew over the area again. I realized that we parked the truck in the clearing I know as “Hermits” when doing my first position report to Grand Canyon Tower. As I flew over the area again and again, I clearly saw a good portion of the road-turned-trail that we’d hiked down. But I still haven’t been able to see the corral or the end of the road.

But I’m not done with Dripping Springs. I’ll find it one of these days.

Flying in May

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A brief summary of my week so far.

I started my first full week of work as a pilot for Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters on May 11. I’m on a week on/week off schedule, and the week starts on Tuesday. I’d already worked at least 20 days since my start on April 12, but this was my first normal week after training and various days off.

I’d planned to fly my Robinson R22 helicopter up to the canyon on Monday, but winds were howling. When I called Papillon’s tower in the early afternoon, Carrie informed me that they’d already shut down for the day due to wind. I figured that if they didn’t want to fly Bell 206L-1 Long Rangers in that wind, I certainly wouldn’t want to fly my R22 there. So I loaded up the Jeep and drove up late that afternoon. I got to the camper just after sunset and spent the next few hours before bedtime putting away groceries, making the bed, and cleaning up after the mice that had moved in (again) and were living somewhere out of sight in the camper.

Tuesday morning, I found myself set to be a break pilot. That means I didn’t have a helicopter of my own. Instead, I’d fly at lunchtime for other pilots. The wind was already blowing hard that morning and, by 10:30 AM, we were shut down. At one point, the wind hit 50 knots. All the pilots gathered in the break room and waited. At first, the weather hold was until 1 PM. Then 2 PM. Then 3 PM. None of us expected the wind to die down, but by 3 PM, it was flyable. The other pilots filed out and into their helicopters and spun up. The loaders loaded passengers. I watched from the break room window with the other two break pilots. It was past lunchtime and we wouldn’t be needed at all. I didn’t fly that day.

Wednesday was a completely different story. It was still a bit windy, but not too windy to fly. And I had my own helicopter, Copter 20.

Now there’s a weird thing about these helicopters. They’re all different. They all have their own little quirks. Some are fast, some are slow. (The high skid utility ships are usually slow.) Some are clean, some are impossible to keep clean. Some are dry, some leak live sieves. (Copter 12 comes to mind.) Some vibrate on the ground, some sit smoothly. Some rattle in the air, some don’t. It’s kind of like they have personalities. Like people.

I’d flown Copter 20 before, but couldn’t remember anything about it. It wasn’t much of a leaker and it turned out to be relatively fast. So fast that I wound up catching up to Copter 8 a few times when I happened to take off right behind it. I don’t like catching up with other helicopters because then you have to pass them. When you pass them, you have to stay in front of them. And your passengers think you’re ripping them off because they’re going to get back 2 minutes before the helicopter you passed (they get back two minutes later). They don’t realize that the other helicopter is just plain slow.

Of course, I’m skipping over the weird part of the day. The fact that I couldn’t seem to start the damn helicopter. My fault. After going more than 10 days between starts, I forgot part of the procedure. Duh. Too embarrassing when the Chief Pilot has to start it for you.

It was windy, but certainly flyable. It must have been. I flew 4.9 hours. That’s a bunch of North Canyon Tours and three Imperial tours.

Thursday was another day. Less wind, and I was third priority in Copter 12. Copter 12 leaks to the point where you can say it’s bleeding. But there’s a saying around here about Bell helicopters: if it’s not bleeding, it’s not alive. When I talked to maintenance about the leakiness, they told me it was like a Harley and I shouldn’t worry about it.

Helicopters are a lot like Harleys, then. They leak, they vibrate, they’re slow, and they make a lot of noise.

Copter 12 is also fast. Fortunately, I didn’t catch up with anyone. Although I was the third priority pilot and should have been flying most of the day, things got slow. My first flight, an Imperial Tour, was the nicest flight I’d done since starting the month before. Smooth, easy to maintain altitude, and perfectly relaxing. I even had English-speaking passengers, so I could talk to them about what we were flying over and near. A good tour. The next two tours were not as good. It got progressively rougher, especially around the Dragon (west side of the canyon). I did three flights and took a break for lunch. Then, after lunch, I did another flight. That flight was weird. I started to take off and heard the torque horn. The torque gauge read 102.4. I asked for a pad and landed. They pulled the passengers off. A guy from maintenance came out. He patiently explained that torque can climb as high as 105 for up to 5 seconds before there’s a problem. If the gauge isn’t blinking, there’s no reason to stop. They loaded the passengers back on and we took off again. My door popped open just after takeoff. I had to wait until I was in stable flight over the forest and on course before I could slow down and slam the damn thing shut. How annoying. The rest of the day was spent in routine safety and drug abuse training. Then I made a trip to the big tower (covered in another TravelBlog entry). When I got back, I found that someone else had already closed out my helicopter for me. So I hung around and helped the other pilots close out theirs. Total flight time: 3.4 hours.

Today, I was a spare again. But I preflighted two helicopters with Ron, another spare. I flew an Imperial Tour for someone’s lunch and would have flown a North Canyon tour if the passengers had shown up. Instead, I shut down. That flight had been in Copter 21, which I decided I liked. I think it’s very fast, but I could be wrong; there was no one near me during the flight to judge. I did get back right on Hobbs time. I didn’t check the clock; I always forget to do that.

More another time…gotta run.