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Gone to the Birds

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A little bit about the birds in my life.

This morning, my rooster started crowing at 4:03 AM. I know this because I heard him. We’re getting on to the time of year when you can leave windows open all night. I think one of the bedroom windows must be open a crack because I heard him quite clearly this morning. I was already awake, of course, so it didn’t really bother me. It just reminded me that I have a rooster. And it made me wonder whether my new neighbors — the folks that moved into the pink house on 328th Avenue — could hear him. And whether he bothered them.

My closest neighbors must hear him pretty good. I asked them once if he bothered them and they assured me that he didn’t. They like the sound. That’s good to know. But when you consider that he does most of his crowing before sunrise, it makes you wonder how early they get up.

One of my other neighbors had a rooster for a while. I could tell because I’d hear crowing far off sometimes, when it wasn’t my rooster. Then the crowing stopped and I knew the coyotes had paid Mr. Rooster a visit.

The coyotes have paid my chickens numerous visits. The first time was way back with my first batch of 8 chickens, all hens, which I used to let out during the day. They’d come down the driveway to where the horses live and spend the morning scratching around in the sand for bugs and other chicken delicacies. One afternoon, when they all came back to roost, there were only five of them. Three had disappeared without a trace. You’d think the horses would protect them, but no. Horses have no interest in chickens.

A funny story here. Every night during the summer’s monsoon season, we have to move our horses out of their lower corral, because it’s in a flood zone, to spend the night in their much smaller upper corral. The upper corral has fence-hung feeders. I’d go to the upper corral in the evening and prepare it by adding hay and a grain mixture we call “bucket” to each feeder before bringing up the horses. The chickens were usually out and about and even though they don’t have enough brains to fill a shot glass, they figured out that there was grain in the feeders. So once in a while, they’d hop up there and scratch around a bit. One day, when I brought the horses up, Jake, our unflappable Quarter Horse, stuck his head in his feeder to get at the grain and immediately pulled it out. A chicken popped out, onto the ground, and ran away. Jake seemed to let out a deep sigh before he stuck his head back in for dinner.

I currently have three hens and a rooster. Over the years, I’ve lost lots of chickens to coyotes, which is why a coyote tail hangs from my Honda’s rearview mirror. More recently, however, the problem has been my neighbor’s dogs. I like my neighbors and I like their dogs. We live outside the town limits, at the end of a dead-end road. There are only three houses out here and we all have dogs. Although leashes are technically required — this is Maricopa County — none of us pay much attention to that. Instead, we’ve trained our dogs to stay nearby. Dogs don’t necessarily understand property lines, so our dogs occasionally stray onto each others’ property. No big deal there. My neighbor’s dogs, Bo and Trixie, often come up to my house to visit my dog, Jack. Sometimes they go down to the wash and play together. They play rough — too rough for my brother’s dog, who came to visit for Thanksgiving. But they have fun and they don’t really bother anyone.

That is, until Bo and Trixie discovered that if they dug under the fence, they could get at the chickens. The fence was my effort to contain the chickens so the coyotes would stop getting them. Coyotes are evidently lazy and are not interested in the hard labor of digging under a fence. Bo and Trixie, on the other hand, like to dig. The chickens gave them a reward for good digging. So one day, they dug under the fence, got in, and had a good chicken dinner, leaving only two live chickens behind as mute witnesses.

At first, I thought the coyotes had done the dirty deed. But then I realized that whoever had done it had left parts. Coyotes don’t leave parts. They take the whole chicken in their mouth and trot off with it. I’ve seen them do this. But I wasn’t putting two and two together yet so I figured it was the coyotes. So we reinforced the bottom of the fence with stakes and filled in the holes and got some more chickens, including the current rooster.

One day around Thanksgiving, I’m lounging around the house with my house guests and there’s a knock on the door. That in itself is amazing; no one ever knocks on our door. No one can ever find our house. If you know where our house is, it’s likely that you know us well enough to just open the door and holler “Hello?” I opened the door and found my neighbor’s three little kids standing there. They’re aged 4 to 8 or something like that. Two boys and their older sister. “Our dogs are eating your chickens,” they reported.

I threw on my shoes and ran down the driveway, followed closely by my brother and whoever else was around. Sure enough, the dogs were in the chicken yard. But these chickens had some survival skills — quite impressive for chickens — and had retreated into the upper part of the coop. The dogs were unable to catch them.

We got the dogs out and secured the chickens in the upper coop, where I knew they’d be safe. We patched up the hole Bo and Trixie had made. And a few weeks later, we installed an electric fence around the outside bottom edge of the fenced-in yard. I was there one day when Bo touched it. He went yelping back home and didn’t return for over a week. Needless to say, they don’t try getting into the chicken coop anymore.

The chickens, however, must be traumatized by all these close calls. Only one of the three hens lays eggs. I get about 5 eggs a week from her. The other two are freeloaders. They don’t know how lucky they are. My chicken-raising book advises you to eat the chickens that stop laying.

PhotoI also have a bird in the house. Alex the Bird is an African Grey parrot. As I type this at my kitchen table, Alex is practicing his vocabulary. “Jack, no! You’re bad! Are you cranky? Hello Mikey. Are you a duck? Gimme that thing. Jack, no! Alex! Hey goober. Fatso. Come on Jack. Wanna go upside down? Are you a chicken? Are you a cow? Are you a cranky bird? Ricky bird. Alex, are you cranky? Alex is a maniac. Okay, Alex the Bird. Hello. Hey, you goober. See you later alligator.” You get the idea. He’s 2-1/2 years old and he says a ton of stuff. In fact, he’s forgotten half of what he used to know. It’s pretty amazing considering that he’ll live to be about 50. By the time I’m dead and gone, he’ll be talking better than most people I know.

Alex also does sound effects, like the dog whining, my cell phone, and the squeal of the back screen door (which no longer squeals, but Alex squeals anyway every time we open it). He whistles pretty darn good, too. Right now, I’m teaching him the theme for the “Andy Griffith Show,” which I downloaded from the Internet. Every once in a while, I play it a few times for him. He practices in the morning — like right now — and I repeat back the part he’s trying to do to reinforce the correct stuff.

African Grey parrots are incredible companion pets. They thrive on attention and will learn to say whatever you take the time to teach them. Like all other birds, they’re messy, but if you have a dog that likes bird food, a lot of the mess is cleaned up as it happens. Every morning, in fact, when Alex has his breakfast (scrambled eggs), he drops half of it on the floor where Jack is waiting to gobble it up. Sometimes I think he drops the food on purpose just to watch Jack.

Unlike the typical African Grey (at least according to most books and articles I’ve read), Alex is extremely affectionate and likes to be cuddled. I hug him every morning before I put him back in his cage for the day and every night before I put him back in his cage for bed. He also likes to play rough. I hold him upside down by his feet and tickle his belly. Although he makes some fussy noises sometimes — his way of saying, “Cut that out!” — I know he likes it. It’s the attention, I think. He trusts me and knows I won’t hurt him. So although our rough play should be scary to him, it isn’t.

There are a lot of wild birds around Wickenburg, too. Hummingbirds abound. I used to keep feeders filled for them, but I’ve been slacking off. I don’t spend enough time at home to watch them. There are also quail, doves, Gila woodpeckers, thrushes, orioles, and more others than I know. When I had my office in the house, I recall looking up out the window one morning to see a Gambels quail dad leading his six or seven baby chicks to a shady spot in my flower garden. I watched them lounge for quite a while, transfixed. The babies were so cute! Then dad decided to move the troop on and they hopped out of sight.

We also have roadrunners here, although I don’t see them very often. Roadrunners are most often found in sandy washes and places where they can find lizards and snakes, which they eat. I was in Lake Havasu City the other day, chatting with some folks at the Nautical Inn when we spotted a roadrunner standing on the deck of a building less than 50 feet away. One of the men told us a story about an exchange between a roadrunner and a coyote that he had witnessed. The two animals faced off with a long chain-link fence between them. The roadrunner made cackling noises, and walked back and forth on his side of the fence, teasing the coyote. The coyote walked back and forth. Little by little, the roadrunner and coyote got closer and closer to the end of the fence. Finally, the coyote seized his chance. He took off, darting around the edge of the fence. But the roadrunner was quicker. He took off (they do know how to fly) and sailed over the fence, landing on the other side. Then they faced off again, on opposite sides of the fence, and the roadrunner started cackling all over again. It was quite clear who was smarter (in case those cartoons didn’t convince you) and the roadrunner was definitely having some fun at the coyote’s expense.

We don’t get many birds in the yard anymore, probably because of Jack the Dog. He chases all animals out of the yard. That’s okay, though. There are plenty of other places for them to go. I’m sure I could get some back if I put out seed for them, but Jack is actually quite good at catching doves and I really don’t want to see any more dead doves on my doorstep. (And they say cats are bad.)There are three red tailed hawks in the area. They live near the golf course on Steinway Road. I often see them together on the power lines there. The are also turkey vultures in town. They just got back from wherever it is that they go for the winter. They look wonderful in flight and many observers mistake them for hawks. But there’s no mistaking them when they’re on the ground around a dead cow. They’re downright ugly!We have owls, too. There was one that lived in the state land out behind my house. Every evening, just after sunset, he’d fly out for his nighttime hunt. He’d land on a tree behind our house and hoot for a bit, then soar past our house and land on the top of a power pole on 328th Avenue. We saw him nearly every day for weeks. And we often saw or heard him coming in early in the morning. But one day, he misjudged his landing on the power pole. His wings evidently touched the power lines in just the wrong way. Fried. We found him on the ground near the power pole. The next day, his body was gone.

That’s the way things are here in the desert. Every animal — dead or alive — is a meal for another animal. Nature keeps a delicate balance here that really isn’t a balance at all. For example, because of all the rain we’re having, there’s a lot of grass. That means there’s plenty of food for the rabbits. That means there will be plenty of rabbits this spring and summer. Rabbits are good food for coyotes. So next year, there will be lots of coyotes. It happened the last time we had an El Niño year, so I know what to expect.

That’s all for now; I need my second cup of coffee. And my rooster is crowing again.

Waterfront Property

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This morning, I wake up to find a river running through my property.

It really came as no surprise. After all, Cemetery Wash, one of the five big drainages that feed the Hassayampa River near Wickenburg, runs right through our 2-1/2 acre lot. In fact, about half our land is actually in the wash. But the wash is wide and sandy and it takes a heck of a lot of rain to get it flowing.

Yesterday, we had a heck of a lot of rain. I don’t know the local numbers but I think it reached an inch down in Phoenix. According to the Weather Channel, one inch of rain in Phoenix is like 8 inches of rain in New Orleans or 5 inches of rain in New York. (I’m not quite sure what they mean by that, but it does sound impressive.)

So after a good soak throughout the day, Cemetery Wash was primed for flowing. All it took was the heavy downpour we had overnight. This morning, when I woke up, there was a brown river flowing through the yard. A river running so swiftly, that I could hear it from the house, even with the windows closed.

Trailer in SandOf course, now that the rain has let up to a drizzle, the water’s flow is receding. An hour has gone by since I woke up and the flow is now no more than a narrow stream of brown water. An hour ago, it would have been impossible to leave the house; my driveway was under two feet of running water in some places. Now, I could drive — or even walk — across. A few years ago, I was home alone when a big storm hit. The wash filled with water, all the way across, to a depth of at least four feet. We had some trailers parked in the wash and one of them — a 12-foot flatbed — was washed a mile downstream (see photo). It took a back-hoe to get it out of the ground. The other trailer, a 3500-lb 2-horse horse trailer, was slowly washed about 150 yards downstream. Thank heaven it didn’t get washed over on its side. As it was, we had to replace all wheel bearings in both trailers before we could use them again.

People think its crazy that we live in a house that can be cut off from the rest of town by floodwaters. What they don’t understand, however, is that the flood seldom lasts more than a few hours. Even the big flood I witnessed lasted less than 4 hours. When it was over, I drove the Suburban out into the wet sand, hooked up the horse trailer, and pulled it out to higher ground, just in case it started flowing again. Our driveway is concrete — even across the wash — and although we occasionally lose bits and pieces of it, it usually remains passable after the waters recede. And our house is at least 50 feet above wash level, on a rocky outcropping. So we’re not worried at all about losing the house.

Today, if the ceilings rise a bit (the clouds are still quite low), I’ll take Zero-Mike-Lima up for a flight over town. I’m sure plenty of washes are still flowing and the river must be quite a site to see. I love watching water flow from the helicopter. I love tracing the streams up to their sources or down to the Hassayampa. In weather like this, I can often see waterfalls from the air — waterfalls in the desert!

Public Opinion

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I realize that public opinion doesn’t really matter.

I run a Web site called wickenburg-az.com. Its primary purpose is to provide information about Wickenburg, including things to do and see and businesses that operate here in town. I built the Web site because there was no non-commercial Web site about the town. Basically, if you wanted your business on the Web, you had to cough up big bucks to get it on one of the commercial sites in town — sites that weren’t even updated on a regular basis. I didn’t think that was fair. I also didn’t think any of those sites provided useful information for residents or visitors.

Over the years, the site has become quite a forum for voicing opinions about the way things are going here in town. I admit that I started it. Then John started adding his two cents and since what he submitted was well-written and well-reasoned out, I couldn’t help but publish it online. Along the way, a handful of other people submitted articles and I published them. I felt that these opinion pieces helped round out the site.

Recently, I’ve gotten quite a few opinion pieces from people I’ve never heard from before. I’ve been publishing most of them. Others are a bit over the top, even for me. What amazes me, however, is how many people have written to say they agree with much of what appears on the site — even though these opinions aren’t what’s reflected in the local newspaper or among local politicians.

In other words, the town’s government is pushing one way on many issues and the newspaper is rubber-stamping their decisions. In the meantime, many people don’t agree with or even like what’s going on.

This has me a bit baffled. My understanding is that in a democracy, when the people vote, they are choosing the elected officials that stand the same way they do on most issues. When they vote on a proposition, they’re telling their elected officials that they either want it to pass or they don’t. It seems to make sense that the elected officials would do the things that their constituents expect them to, based on popular opinion. It also seems to make sense that if a proposition fails, it would simply fade away into obscurity — not be put up for another vote when a different collection of people were around to vote on it.

Sadly, that’s not the way democracy works in Wickenburg. Majority public opinion seems to have little or no bearing on what actually happens in town. Elected officials do whatever they want to, for whatever reasons strike their fancy. I still haven’t decided if they’re motivated by greed — money under the table and other reward promises — or stupidity — being led around by the nose by smooth-talking developers.

The bypass issue is a perfect example. This has been going on for years. The route 93 and 60 corridor has become a major thoroughfare for traffic between Phoenix and Las Vegas and will be part of the Canamex highway that will link NAFTA members Canada and Mexico. As a result, there is a huge amount of truck traffic going right through town.

ADOT brought consultants into town on a regular basis to meet with the public and gain their opinions on the dozen or so options. The public clearly favored an out-of-town bypass that would keep all those trucks south and west of town. Yet the local government and chamber of commerce favored a route that would put the traffic right through town. (I guess it was important to them for McDonald’s and Circle-K to keep selling burgers, coffee, and gas to the drive-through crowd.)

As a result, the “interim bypass” was developed. This monstrosity would put four lanes of traffic along the riverbed near the existing bridge — it isn’t clear yet whether they’ll build another bridge, too — and route that traffic right past the Community Center and Coffinger Park, through a neighborhood and a ranch (thus displacing dozens of people and destroying the values of the remaining homes), and deposit it back on 93 right where a local developer is attempting to build a high-priced housing development. (It will be interesting to see how many people will pay $800K+ for a house overlooking 4 lanes of truck traffic.) Along the way, this crazy plan calls for two “roundabouts” — the old-style traffic circles that are being dismantled throughout the east — so that our “winter visitors” (most of whom are in the 65+ age bracket) can merge with the trucks on their way to and from Wal-Mart in Surprise. (It might be a good idea to move the ambulance base to that intersection, since that’s where it’ll be spending a lot of time.)

All this is completely against the majority public opinion. People who live in Wickenburg year-round care about the town and its atmosphere. We don’t want highways in the riverbed where exhaust fumes will settle and noise will destroy the quality of life and whatever downtown ambiance we still have.

We also don’t want high-density housing, especially when there aren’t enough high-paying jobs to fill those homes with year-round residents. We don’t want an economy that centers around winter visitors who don’t even like to spend their money in town. We don’t want two Dollar Stores or two check cashing places or a pawn shop. We want businesses that will provide good jobs and the goods and services we need.

But in Wickenburg, public opinion doesn’t matter.

Getting Even Closer

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I take (and pass) my Part 135 check ride

I spent most of yesterday with an FAA inspector named Bill. Bill is my POI for Part 135 operations. Frankly, I can’t remember what those letters stand for. But what they mean is that he’s my main man at the FAA in all Part 135 matters.

Yesterday was the second day this week I spent time with Bill. On Wednesday, I’d gone down to Scottsdale (again) to set up my Operating Specifications document on the FAA’s computer system. The FAA has been using this system for years for the airlines and decided to make it mandatory for the smaller operators, including Part 135 operators like me. Rather than put me on the old system and convert me over to the new one, they just set me up on the new one. That’s what we did Wednesday. It took about two hours that morning. Then Bill and I spend another hour reviewing my Statement of Compliance, which still needed a little work, and my MEL, which needed a lot of work.

I had lunch with Paul, my very first flight instructor, and headed back up to Wickenburg, stopping at a mall in a vain attempt to purchase a quality handbag. (Too much junk in stores these days, but I’ll whine about that in another entry.) I stopped at my office and my hangar to pick up a few things, then went home. By 4:00 PM, I was washing Alex the Bird’s cage and my car. (I figured that if I had the hose out for one, I may as well use it on both.) After dinner with Mike, I hit the keyboard to update my Statement of Compliance so it would be ready for Bill in the morning. I added about eight pages in four hours.

A word here about the Statement of Compliance. This required document explains, in detail, how my company, Flying M Air, LLC, will comply with all of the requirements of FARs part 119 and 135. In order to write this, I had to read every single paragraph in each of those parts, make a heading for it, and write up how I’d comply or, if it didn’t apply to my operation, why it didn’t apply. (I wrote “Not applicable: Flying M Air, LLC does not operate multi-engine aircraft” or “Not applicable: Flying M Air, LLC does not provide scheduled service under Part 121” more times than I’d like to count.) Wednesday evening was my third pass at the document. In each revision, I’d been asked to add more detail. So the document kept getting fatter and fatter. Obviously, writing a document like this isn’t a big deal for me — I write for a living. But I could imagine some people really struggling. And it does take time, something that is extremely precious to me.

I was pretty sure my appointment with Bill was for 10:00 AM yesterday. But I figured I’d better be at the hangar at 9:00 AM, just in case I’d gotten that wrong. That wasn’t a big problem, since nervousness about the impending check ride had me up half the night. By 4:00 AM I was ready to climb out of bed and start my day.

Bill’s trip to Wickenburg would include my base inspection as well as my check ride. That means I had to get certain documents required to be at my base of operations, all filed neatly in my hangar. Since none of them were currently there, I had some paperwork to do at the office. I went there first and spent some time photocopying documents and filing the originals in a nice file box I’d bought to store in my new storage closet in the hangar. I used hanging folders with tabs. Very neat and orderly.

I also printed out the Statement of Compliance v3.0 and put it in a binder. I got together copies of my LLC organization documents, too. Those would go to Bill.

I stopped at Screamer’s for a breakfast burrito on the way to the airport. Screamer’s makes the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had.

I was at the airport by 8:45 AM. I pulled open the hangar door so the sun would come in and warm it up a bit, then stood around, eating my burrito, chatting with Chris as he pulled out his Piper Cub and prepared it for a flight. He taxied away while I began organizing the hangar. By 9:00 AM, I’d pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out onto the ramp. At 9:10 AM, when I was about 1/3 through my preflight, Bill rolled up in his government-issued car.

“I thought you were coming at 10,” I told him.

“I’m always early,” he said. “Well, not always,” he amended after a moment.

Fifty minutes early is very early, at least in my book.

He did the base inspection first. He came into the hangar and I showed him where everything was. But because I didn’t have a desk or table or chairs in there (although I have plenty of room, now that the stagecoach is finally gone), we adjourned to his car to review everything. That required me to make more than a few trips from his car to the hangar to retrieve paperwork, books, and other documents. He was parked pretty close to the hangar door on my side, so getting in and out of his car was a bit of a pain, but not a big deal.

“You need a desk in there,” he said to me.

I told him that I had a desk all ready to be put in there but it was in storage and I needed help getting it out. I told him that my husband was procrastinating about it. I also said that I’d have a better chance at getting the desk out of storage now that an FAA official had told me I needed it. (Of course, when I relayed this to Mike that evening, Mike didn’t believe Bill had said I needed the desk.)

Chris returned with the Cub and tucked it away in Ed’s hangar before Bill could get a look at it. Some people are just FAA-shy. I think Chris is one of them.

Bill and I made a list of the things I still needed to get together. He reviewed my Statement of Compliance, spot-checking a few problem areas. We found one typo and one paragraph that needed changing. He said I could probably finalize it for next week.

My ramp check came next. I asked him if it were true that the FAA could only ramp check commercial operators. (This is something that someone had claimed in a comment to one of my blog entries.) He laughed and said an FAA inspector could ramp check anyone he wanted to. And he proceeded to request all kinds of documents to prove airworthiness. The logbook entry for the last inspection was a sticky point, since the helicopter didn’t really have a last “inspection.” It had been inspected for airworthiness at 5.0 hours. It only had 27.4 hours on its Hobbs. Also, for some reason neither of us knew, the airworthiness certificate had an exception for the hydraulic controls.

Then we took a break so he could make some calls about the airworthiness certificate exemption and log book inspection entry. He spent some time returning phone calls while I finished my preflight.

Next came the check ride, oral part first. We sat in his car while he quizzed me about FAA regulations regarding Part 135 operations, FARs in general, aircraft-specific systems, and helicopter aerodynamics. It went on for about an hour and a half. I knew most of what he asked, although I did have some trouble with time-related items. For example, how many days you have before you have to report an aircraft malfunction (3) and how many days you have before you have to report an aircraft accident (10). I asked him why the FAA didn’t make all the times the same so they’d be easier to remember. He agreed (unofficially, of course) that the differences were stupid, but he said it was because the regulations had been drafted by different people.

That done, we went out to fly. I pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out onto the ramp and removed the ground handling gear. Bill did a thorough walk-around, peaking under the hood. He pointed out that my gearbox oil level looked low. I told him that it had been fine when the helicopter was level by the hangar and that it just looked low because it was cold and because it was parked on a slight slope. Every aircraft has its quirks and I was beginning to learn Zero-Mike-Lima’s.

He asked me to do a safety briefing, just like the one I’d do for my passengers. I did my usual, with two Part 135 items added: location and use of the fire extinguisher and location of the first aid kit. When I tried to demonstrate the door, he said he was familiar with it. “I’m going to show you anyway,” I said. “This is a check ride.” I wasn’t about to get fooled into skipping something I wasn’t supposed to skip.

We climbed in and buckled up. I started it up in two tries — it seems to take a lot of priming on cold mornings — and we settled down to warm it up. Bill started playing with my GPS. The plan had been to fly to Bagdad (a mining town about 50 miles northwest of Wickenburg not to be confused with a Middle East hot spot), but when he realized that neither Wickenburg nor Bagdad had instrument approaches, he decided we should fly to Prescott. I told him that I’d never flown an instrument approach and he assured me it would be easy, especially with the GPS to guide me. So we took off to the north.

It had become a windy day while we were taking care of business in my hangar and the car. The winds on the ground were about 10 to 12 knots and the winds aloft were at least 20 knots. This did not bother me in the least and I have my time at Papillon at the Grand Canyon to thank for that. I’d always been wind-shy — flying that little R22 in windy conditions was too much like piloting a cork on stormy seas. But last spring at the Grand Canyon, flying Bell 206L1s in winds that often gusted to 40 mph or more, turned me into a wind lover. “The wind is your friend,” someone had once told me. And they were right — a good, steady headwind is exactly what you need to get off the ground at high density altitude with a heavy load. But even though gusty and shifting winds could be challenging, when you deal with them enough, flying in them becomes second nature. You come to expect all the little things that could screw you up and this anticipation enables you to react quickly when they do. Frankly, I think flying in an environment like the Grand Canyon should be required for all professional helicopter pilots.

Bill and I chatted a bit about this during part of the flight and he pretty much agreed. But when he told me to deviate around a mountaintop I’d planned to fly right over, I realized that he wasn’t comfortable about the wind. Perhaps he’d spent too much time flying with pilots with less wind experience. Or perhaps he’d had a bit of bad wind experience himself. So we flew south past Peeples Valley and Wilhoit before getting close enough to Prescott to pick up the ATIS at 7000 feet.

Bill made the radio calls, requesting an ILS approach. Prescott tower gave us a squawk code and Bill punched it in for me before I could reach for the buttons. Then Prescott told us to call outbound from Drake. That meant they wanted us on the localizer approach (at least according to Bill; I knew nothing about this stuff since I didn’t have more than the required amount of instrument training to get my commercial ticket). I think Bill realized that they weren’t going to give us vectors — Prescott is a very busy tower — so he punched the localizer approach into the GPS and I turned to the northwest toward the Drake VOR, following the vectors in the GPS. All the time, the GPS mapped our progress on its moving map, which really impressed Bill. At Drake, I turned toward Humpty and Bill called the tower. When they asked how we would terminate the approach, he told them we’d do a low pass over Runway 21L. I just followed the vectors on the GPS toward some unmarked spot in the high desert. We did a procedure turn and started inbound. Five miles out, the tower told us to break off the approach before reaching the runway and turn to a heading of 120. Traffic was using Runway 12, with winds 100 at 15 knots and the tower didn’t want us in the way. So I descended as if I was going to land, then turned to the left just before reaching the wash (which was running). Once we cleared Prescott’s airspace, we headed south, back toward Wickenburg.

We did some hood work over Wagoner. I hate hood work. It makes me sick. I did okay, but not great. Fortunately, I didn’t get sick. But I did need to open the vent a little.

Then we crossed over the Weavers, did a low rotor RPM recovery, and began our search for a confined space landing zone. Personally, I think the spot he picked was way too easy — I routinely land in tougher off-airport locations than that. Then we did an approach to a pinnacle. No problem. On the way back to the airport, we overflew the hospital because he wanted to see LifeNet’s new helipad there. He agreed with me that it was a pretty confined space.

Back at the airport I did an autorotation to a power recovery on Runway 5. It was a non-event. With a 15-knot quartering headwind, only two people on board, and light fuel, Zero-Mike-Lima floated to the ground. I did a hovering autorotation on the taxiway, then hover-taxied back to the ramp with an impressive tailwind and parked.

“Good check ride,” Bill said.

Whew.

After I shut down, we went back to his car, which we were now referring to as his mobile office, and he filled out all the official FAA forms he had to fill out to document that I’d passed the check ride. Then he endorsed my logbook. Then he left. It was 2:30 PM.

I fueled up Zero-Mike-Lima, topping it off in preparation for flying on Saturday, and put it away. I took the rest of the day off. I’d earned it.

SpongeBob SquarePants and Other Highlights of the Week

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A review of a somewhat trying week.

It’s Friday at about 5 AM. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop and cup of coffee. Alex, my parrot, is having his breakfast atop his cage. He’s quiet right now, except for the sound of his beak hitting the ceramic bowl each time he picks out a piece of scrambled egg and his tiny footsteps as he moves into his favorite eating position at the edge of the cage top where he can watch me. The refrigerator is humming and the heat is on. Other than that, and the sound of the laptops keys as I hit them, the house is completely quiet.

The last of our house guests are gone. They left on Wednesday morning. I feel an incredible amount of freedom. “Free at last” was the way Mike put it when he got home on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t think we’ll have back-to-back house guest groups again.

The refrigerator has just clicked off.

Last Friday at this time, I was preparing for the first day’s breakfast for the second group of house guests, Mike’s mom and her friend Mildred. I wake up very early and need coffee quite soon after getting out of bed. Once I’m awake and in the kitchen, Alex is awake. And once Alex is awake, he’s talking and whistling just like any self-respecting parrot. At least he doesn’t scream. But some of those whistles can be pretty bad. If I can put his breakfast in front of him quickly, I can minimize the noise, since he’s generally very quiet while eating. But sometimes he just doesn’t want to come out of his cage and other times he eats quickly to get on with the noisier part of his morning routine. As a result, any house guest who is not deaf is likely to wake up not long after we do. Then he or she wanders into the kitchen and comments about how early it is. This week, I prepared the coffee pot for my guests when I made my own coffee. They drink decaf, I don’t. I have a Black and Decker Cup at a Time coffee maker which brews one cup of coffee at a time, right into the serving cup. This is my third one; I’ve had one for about fifteen years now. Mike doesn’t usually drink coffee in the morning and I won’t drink coffee unless it’s very fresh. I mean, it has to be brewed just before I drink it. (That’s the reason I’m willing to pay $3 for a latte; at least it’s made fresh for me.) I also have a 12-cup Braun coffee maker. That’s what I fixed up for Julia and Mildred every morning. As soon as one of them appeared — normally Julia; Mildred is hard of hearing so she doesn’t hear Alex in the morning — I turned on the pot and let it do its thing. Whether they finished the eight cups I brewed them every morning was up to them. (Of course, 8 coffee pot cups only equals 4 real cups.)

Julia & Mildred at the Grand CanyonI went to work on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I didn’t spend much time with this group of house guests. That was probably a pretty good idea, since I was already suffering from house guest burnout. Mike took them to the Grand Canyon on Sunday, since Mildred had never seen it before. Mildred, like Julia, is in her 80s and was born and raised in New York. They live in the same apartment building in Queens, with lovely views of the Throgs Neck Bridge. They’re New Yorkers, through and through. (Who else would arrive with two dozen real bagels, lox, cream cheese, and white fish?) This trip to the west was a real eye-opener for Mildred.

She told me that she wanted to see the Grand Canyon because of something her grandson had said. He told her that he’d had all kinds of religious training, but he’d always had small doubts about the existence of God. But when he went to the Grand Canyon, he said he knew there had to be a God because there was no other way something that beautiful could exist.

Mike had reservations for two rooms on the rim for Sunday night, so that’s when they had to go. But on Sunday morning, when they left, snow showers were forecasted for that day with snow predicted for Monday. Temperatures were in the low thirties during the day. Julia didn’t want to go, but left it up to Mildred.

“We’ll give you some time to think about it,” Mike said to her on Sunday morning.

“How much time?” Mildred wanted to know.

“How much do you need?”

“Twelve minutes.”

“Okay, let us know in twelve minutes.”

“I want to go,” she immediately replied.

So they went. We advised them to bring warm clothing, but when it didn’t seem as if what they’d packed was warm enough, Mike packed a few extra coats, hats, and pairs of socks. I watched them drive away, knowing I had just over 24 hours to myself.

Unfortunately, I really needed that time off. Earlier in the week, I’d stepped foot into my rental house to learn that the previous tenant and her son had trashed the place. The carpet, which was soiled throughout with dog poop and urine, right down to the padding, had to be replaced. The walls had to be repainted. Celia, my cleaning person, had spent about six hours trying to clean the kitchen and needed another day to finish the house. I’d spent about two hours with her that Thursday, just dumping trash left in the kitchen and throughout the house. The painter’s prep guy had been there on Friday, taking down the window coverings and prepping walls and window sills. I’d stopped by that day with two friends of mine to remove the 1,100 AOL CD ROM discs the tenant’s brat had thumb-tacked to the ceiling.

I spent Sunday just lazing around the house. I read, I even watched a few movies on TV. The weather was rainy and not very pleasant. I didn’t really want to be outside anyway. And I certainly didn’t want to go into the house on Jackson Street.

On Monday morning, I went to work. I’m between books right now. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a book lined up yet, though. I actually have two of them. One is a revision of my Mac OS X book for the next version, called Tiger. The other is a revision of my QuickBooks for Mac book. I’m under contract for one book and will soon be under contract for the second. Both books are for Peachpit Press. But I’m also working with an eBook publisher to do a pair of PDF format books for a new eBook imprint called SpiderWorks. And I usually spend the time between books writing articles for Informit.com and FileMaker Advisor.

That’s not all that’s on my plate. I’m also doing work for Flying M Air, my helicopter tour company. I’m waiting for the delivery of my Robinson Raven II helicopter. I got the bad news on Monday: the helicopter’s delivery date had been pushed back three weeks and would not be until the first week in January. That meant I’d have to cancel the gig I’d tentatively scheduled for December 31 at Stanton. One of the things I needed to do for Flying M Air was line up other flying gigs. There’s the potential to make a lot of money at these gigs and I’m trying to schedule at least two a month to cover the cost of the helicopter. Lining up gigs meant finding events that helicopter rides would work at, contacting the organizers, and getting permission to fly. I had about a 50% acceptance rate among those people who responded, but not everyone could be contacted by e-mail. I also needed to finish up the paperwork for my Single Pilot Part 135 certificate. This would enable me to offer air taxi services, which is not possible under my current Part 91 status. (This is all FAA stuff.) Finally, I needed to get permission from the BLM and state land offices to land my helicopter at the remote locations I wanted to fly passengers to.

So I had a lot to do on Monday and for the rest of the week. But I was in full procrastination mode. I get like that sometimes. I keep busy doing things that need to be done, but I somehow avoid doing the high priority things. For example, I really needed to get together an outline for my Mac OS X book. I had the beta software installed and had spent some time looking at it. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that I finally submitted an outline. Apparently, my editor is also in procrastination mode, because although he promised to get back to me the next day with comments, I never heard from him.

The whole week went like that at work, keeping busy from the time I arrived — normally around 7 AM — to the time I left — about 2 to 3 PM. In between, I made lots of trips to Jackson Street, to check on the painters, let in the carpet guys, and measure the place. Measuring was for a special project. I’d gotten a phone call from someone at ADOT (Arizona Department of Transportation). She was looking for unfurnished rentals for some of the people who’d be working on the bypass project in Wickenburg over the coming years. Holy cow! Is it possible that I could get the place rented that quickly? When she asked for square feet, I made a special trip to measure the place for her. I now know it’s 1,400 square feet. I also measured the condo my office is in. Heck, if they’re willing to rent that, too, I’ll move out into one of the studio apartments I own (something I’ve been considering for a while) and let them have it. It would be nice to get some regular income from that place again.

I also had to begin the process that would take my former tenant to small claims court in an attempt to get back some of the $4,300 I spent to restore the house to rentable condition. The limit for small claims court is $2,500 and I’m going for all of it. It cost me $2,200 to replace the carpet she destroyed and the back bedroom definitely required professional repainting. I took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, the painters tore out the carpet (because of the smell) before they painted, so I didn’t get as many photos of the carpet while still on the floor as I would have liked. No matter. My friends John and Lorna helped me photograph carpet sections, including the underside, outside on the driveway. I printed the photos yesterday and they do a fine job of documenting the damage. I also took a few carpet sections that I could display in court. I wonder if the judge will want to sniff them.

The rental house is coming along nicely. The carpet guys, who were supposed to come next Tuesday, had a cancellation and were able to do the job yesterday. They very kindly used some vinyl tile leftover from another job to retile the front bathroom, charging me just $30 for labor. I can’t blame the damage there on the tenant — it was already pretty worn — but it’s nice to get the place fixed up a bit more. At this point, I’ve already replaced all of the floor covering in the house and I’ve only owned it for four years. I replaced the back bedroom’s floor covering twice. Today’s the day when I write the big checks to pay for all of this work.

Meanwhile, that entire property is up for sale. It includes the house and four studio apartments in a separate building. The studios are fully furnished and quite nice. The house will be wonderful when it’s done. There’s a potential buyer lined up, and he’ll be presenting a formal offer today. But I already know that his price is low and he wants me to finance part of the purchase. I’m probably going to have to say no. When I’m finished typing this, I’ll crunch some numbers to see what I need in case I need to present a counter-offer.

Plan B is already in the works. I’m getting a separate water and gas meter for the house. If the rental with ADOT falls through, I’ll officially split the house property from the apartment property — they’re already on two separate tax parcels. I’ll sell the house and use the money from that transaction to pay off the mortgage on the whole property. Then I’ll move my office into Apartment #4, which is bright and airy and has excellent views of the mountains. I’ll fix up the condo and sell that. That won’t get me as much money as the sale of the house and apartments, but I will own the apartments free and clear. Income on the three remaining apartments is $1200/month. Expenses are less than $400/month. So that’s a nice little income each month. And if I need cash, I can always refinance the apartments and take out a loan on it.

So that gives you an idea of what’s going through my mind. A lot. Too much, maybe.

Last night, we went out to dinner at the Mecca with John and Lorna. I’m getting to be a regular at the Mecca. They make excellent margaritas. Afterwards, we talked John and Lorna into coming to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which was playing at Wickenburg’s oneplex next door. I’d heard good reviews about the movie on NPR. But those reviewers must either have kids or undeveloped brains. The movie did have a few jokes that only an adult could pick up, but there weren’t enough of them to sustain me. Seeing a movie like that makes me glad I don’t have kids. Thank heavens the movie was short. Fortunately, National Treasure starts today and I think that’ll be a bit more enjoyable for the over-six crowd.

So it’s Friday morning, at about 6 AM. Alex is in full talking mode. “Hey now!” That’s his favorite new thing to say. And “Are you a duck?” Mike will be down shortly and Jack the Dog will be with him. Mike will have tea and Jack will eat up all the egg Alex dropped on the floor. I’ll put this away and clean up around Alex’s cage. In an hour, I’ll go to the office and try not to procrastinate any more than I already have this week. And, with luck, the meeting with the possible buyer will go well and I’ll sell my rental property once and for all.

But at least the house guests are gone.