Tag Archives: Howard Mesa

A Quick Trip…

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…to check for mice.

Our shed at Howard Mesa has been a mouse magnet since we had it installed two years ago. Although we’d ordered it with “hardware cloth” — a wire mesh “fabric” — under the floor, the company that built it for us had neglected to install it. They’d also left lots of places where a small mouse could squeeze in through a crack. Once a mouse gets in, it usually builds a nest in a tucked away place, using bits and pieces of throw rugs, upholstery, curtains, or any other material it can chew to shreds. It also leaves droppings that resemble dark brown pieces of short grain rice every place it’s been. And since mice can apparently climb walls, the mouse droppings can be anywhere.

This was a nightmare for me. Each time we went up to our place for a few days, I’d spend the first four hours cleaning the shed. That included sweeping, vacuuming, washing floors, and disinfecting countertops. Since mice can carry hantavirus, it was especially important that I clear the droppings out without prolonged exposure to them.

I don’t know about you, by my idea of a relaxing weekend away from it all doesn’t include four hours of cleanup.

The Battle

Of course, once I realized that this would be an ongoing problem, I began to wage war against the little critters. I started friendly enough, with mouse traps that would catch them without killing them. I could then transport them to a place far enough away from the shed that they’d take up residence elsewhere.

Of course, I could only set the trap when we were around — if we were gone for a few months, the captive would starve and die a death worse than a quick snap of its neck. But there were enough mice in the place that we usually caught one or two per visit.

When that didn’t seem to be helping, we resorted to rat poison, which we’d throw under the shed before we left. The idea there is that they’d eat the poison and die outside before entering. That was a dismal failure.

Once the shed got electricity — we have a small solar energy system up there — we used a portable inverter to plug in mouse noisemaker devices. They emit a sound that’s supposed to drive mice crazy and keep them away. The constant clicking certainly drives me crazy. We put a few of these annoying things around the shed when we leave. But when we return, it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t keep the mice away at all.

Then we bought weather stripping and used it to seal up the area around the shed’s door. The people who had built the thing had done a pretty shoddy job of it and the door didn’t hang right. The weather stripping would keep out drafts, but would also close up mouse entries. At least that was the idea. Well, it helped the draft problem.

The next task was to locate and close up any exterior hole large enough for a mouse to get in. Evidently, they can get in through some pretty small holes. I took a can of that expanding filler stuff they sell in Home Depot and walked around the outside of the shed with a ladder handy. I poked the tube into every crack and filled it with a dose of the filler. I filled cracks too small to get my finger in. Some were near the ground, some were near the roof, some were around windows. The only thing I didn’t do was go under the shed. But I closed up any holes we’d put in the floor from the inside, so I was covered.

I did all this the last time we were up there, which was for Christmas. We left there on December 27 and hadn’t been back since.

An Upcoming Visit

My dad and his wife are coming for a visit this week. They should be rolling in around noon today. I decided to take them on a helicopter trip up to Lake Powell and Monument Valley, with overnight stays at each place. The flight from Wickenburg to Page pretty much overflies our place at Howard Mesa. And since my dad had never seen it, I thought I’d take the opportunity to show it off.

Of course, during the past few weeks, all I could think about is how much damage the mice could cause in nearly four months on their own. I dreaded the thought of opening the door of the shed to show them the fruits of our hard labor and finding the place destroyed by armies of rodents.

I would be beyond embarrassed.

The only way to prevent this was to take a trip up there and check it out before they came. If it was a mess, I could clean it up before I brought them to see it.

Our Quick Trip

Yesterday morning, Mike and I climbed into Zero-Mike-Lima with a bunch of things we wanted to bring up to the shed — including the cowhide we’d bought at Quartszite in January as a rug for the floor. By about 9 AM we were airborne, heading north.

The morning had been overcast, with a rainstorm moving through the Phoenix area from the southwest. Wickenburg was on the edge of that weather system, so although it smelled like rain, it wasn’t wet. There had probably been some virga overhead. The weather forecast for the Williams, AZ area called for widely scattered rain/show showers until 11 AM, with winds from the south or southwest at about 12 gusting to 17. Although some pilots might have waited until after 11 AM for the flight, I didn’t seen any reason to. The longer we waited, the windier it would get. I didn’t want to be tossed all over the sky on my way up there or back.

Clouds over the WeaversVisibility as we left Wickenburg was fine. There were some low clouds about level with the top of Yarnell Hill. (Mike snapped this picture as we approached; it’s kind of cool because it captured one of the main rotor blades.) We passed just under the clouds as we crossed to the right of Antelope Peak. The flight across Peeples Valley, Kirkland, and Skull Valley was uneventful. When we rounded Granite Mountain — I never fly over the top — we saw the top of Bill Williams Mountain shrouded in clouds. It was hazy up there, but any weather that could cause a problem was to the west, where virga came from the clouds and disappeared about a hundred feet over the desert floor.

Arriving at Howard Mesa, I saw that our windsock had seen its last days. It was torn and hung like a faded orange rag from the pole. The wind was coming from the west, as usual, so I looped around to the northeast and set down on the gravel “helipad” we laid out about two years ago. Mike started unloading the few things we’d brought with us while I shut down the helicopter.

It was cold up there. The temperature was in the 40s, but the wind made it feel a lot colder. I was glad I’d brought my jacket along. We walked up to the door of the shed and I inserted the key. The moment of truth was arriving. I turned the key, turned the door handle, and pulled open the door. The sound of the two mouse noise makers we’d left on could be heard clearly. I looked around quickly — at the floor and countertops — no mouse droppings.

We stepped inside. There were no fresh mouse droppings. The rat poison we’d left was untouched. The place was just as clean as we’d left it.

Mission accomplished. (Really.)

We spent about forty-five minutes tidying up the place, putting down our cowhide rug, and checking water levels in the solar system’s batteries. Then we closed the place up again, hopped back into the helicopter, and headed home by way of Bagdad. (I wanted to show Mike the plane wreck my buddy Ray had shown me earlier in the month, but I couldn’t find it.)

What’s amazing about all this is that it’s a 3 to 3-1/2 hour drive from Wickenburg to Howard Mesa. Each way. By helicopter, it’s about an hour. If we’d driven up to do our mouse check, we would have blown the whole day. But because we flew, we were back home in time for lunch.

Phoenix Sky Harbor to Grand Canyon

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I never thought a flight like this would become so routine.

The call came at 9:30 on Friday morning. The voice had a heavy Japanese accent. He wanted to go from Sky Harbor, Phoenix’s busy Class Bravo airport, to Sedona or the Grand Canyon.

“The earliest we can pick you up is 12:00,” I told him. “That’s a little late for the Grand Canyon.”

Flying M Air offers day trips to Sedona and Grand Canyon. The day trip includes roundtrip helicopter transportation following scenic routes, 4 to 5 hours on the ground, ground transportation to Uptown Sedona or into Grand Canyon National Park, and a Sedona red rocks helicopter tour. Grand Canyon is about 45 minutes farther away from Phoenix than Sedona. I’d need to leave either one by about 5:30 PM.

We agreed on a Sedona day trip. I took down his name and weight, his companion’s name and weight, and his credit card information. I’d charge the card before I flew down to get him and he’d sign the receipt when I saw him. Then I hung up and began the process of planning the flight and doing all the paperwork required by the FAA for charter operations. That includes checking weather, creating and filing flight plans, and calculating a weight and balance for each leg of the flight. I do all of it by computer, using Duats for weather and flight planning and my own R44 Manifest form, built with Excel, for the passenger manifest and weight and balance calculations.

By 10 AM, I was done with the paperwork. I changed into more professional clothes, debating whether I should wear a long sleeved or short sleeved shirt. Fortunately, I went with the long sleeved shirt. I packed some hiking shoes and a T-shirt into my day pack, along with my 12″ PowerBook, punched my passengers credit card info into my terminal, and stuck the resulting charge receipt in my shirt pocket. I was ready to go to the airport by 10:30.

At the airport, I did my preflight in the hangar before pulling the helicopter out onto the ramp for fuel. Both Sky Harbor and Sedona tend to have outrageous fuel prices, so I wanted to top off both tanks in Wickenburg. With only two passengers on board, each weighing less than me, weight would not be a problem. By 11:08, I was lifting off from Wickenburg Airport for my passenger pickup point.

Flying into Sky Harbor

These days, most of my big charters are out of the Phoenix area — usually Deer Valley or Scottsdale Airport. Every once in a while, however, I’ll get a charter out of Sky Harbor. Sky Harbor, which lies just southeast of downtown Phoenix, has three parallel runways, with a row of terminals between the north runway and the middle runway. The general aviation FBOs, Cutter and Swift, are on the southwest corner of the field, requiring me to cross arriving or departing airline traffic for my approach or departure.

Sky Harbor, like many towered airports, has a letter of agreement with helicopter pilots called Sharp Delta. Sharp Delta defines terminology and lays down rules for transponder codes and flight altitudes. It used to include instructions and diagrams for landing on the helipad on top of Terminal 3, but that helipad closed down when they began construction on the new tower. I never landed there. I don’t know if it’ll reopen any time soon, but I hope so. It’ll make things a lot easier for my passengers, who have to get transportation to or from Cutter (my FBO choice) to meet me. Cutter has a free shuttle to the terminals, but it adds a step of complexity for passengers who don’t have their own ground transportation.

At first, flying in and out of Sky Harbor was extremely stressful for me. Let’s face it: I fly in and out of Wickenburg, a non-towered airport. I could fly all day long and not have to talk to a tower or controller. The only time I talk to controllers is when I fly into one of the bigger airports in Class Delta, Charlie, or Bravo airspace. And among pilots, there’s this feeling that the controllers at the big airports full of commercial airliners simply don’t want to be bothered by little, general aviation aircraft. We feel a little like recreational baseball players asking the manager of a professional baseball team if we can join them for practice.

Of course, there’s no reason to feel this way. In this country, general aviation aircraft have just as much right to fly in and out of Class Bravo airports like Sky Harbor, O’Hare, LAX, or even JFK as the big jets do. But since those controllers are generally a bit busier than the ones at smaller towered airports, we need to know what we want and where we’re going before requesting entrance into the airspace, be brief and professional with our requests, and follow instructions exactly as they’re given.

The Sharp Delta agreement makes this easy for helicopter pilots flying in and out of Sky Harbor’s space. And, at this point, I’ve done it so many times that it really is routine.

I fly from Wickenburg down to the Metro Center Mall on I-17 and Dunlap. By that time, I’ve already listened to the ATIS recording for Sky Harbor and have dialed in the altimeter setting, which is vital for helicopter operations down there. I wait for a break in the radio action and key my mike: “Phoenix Tower, helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima at Metro Center, Sharp Delta, landing Cutter.”

Phoenix TAC

My usual route.

The tower usually comes back with something like, “Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima, squawk 0400. Ident.” This means I should turn my transponder to code 0400 and push the Ident button. The Ident button makes my dot on the controller’s radar stand out among all the other dots so he can see exactly which dot I am.

“Zero-Mike-Lima identing,” I reply as I push the button. I don’t know if ident can be used as a verb, but other pilots do it, too.

I keep flying toward the airport, heading southeast toward Central Avenue, waiting for clearance. The controller might give an instruction or two to a big jet landing or taking off. Then he comes back on the radio. “Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, radar contact. Proceed via Sharp Delta. Remain west of Central.”

That’s my clearance. He must say either “proceed via Sharp Delta” or “cleared into the Class Bravo airspace” for me to enter the surface airspace for the airport. Because I’m a helicopter using Sharp Delta, I get the Sharp Delta clearance. An airplane or a helicopter not on Sharp Delta would get the other clearance.

I continue toward Central Avenue, the main north/south avenue running down Phoenix. Most of Phoenix’s tall buildings are lined up along this road. I need to stay west of Central and descend down to about 1800 feet MSL (mean sea level). That’s about 600 feet AGL (above ground level). When I’m lined up a block or two west of Central, I turn south and head toward the buildings.

If I have passengers on board, this is usually pretty exciting for them. I have to stay low because of other air traffic, so I’m not much higher than the building rooftops. These days, I have to watch out for cranes for the few buildings under construction downtown. But it gets better. By the time I cross McDowell, I have to be at 1600 feet MSL — that’s only 400 feet off the ground.

Somewhere halfway through Phoenix, the controller calls me again. “Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, contact tower on one-one-eight-point-seven.”

I acknowledge and press a button on my cyclic to change to the south tower frequency, which I’ve already put in my radio’s standby. “Phoenix tower, helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima is with you on one-one-eight-point-seven.”

“Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, proceed south across the river bottom for landing Cutter.”

I acknowledge. At this point, we’ve crossed the extended centerline for the airport’s north runway, which is less than 5 miles to the east. Commercial airliners are either taking off or landing over us, depending on the wind, which will determine runways in use. I’m always worried about wake turbulence, but it’s really not a problem because we’re so far below.

I cross the extended centerline for the other two runways and approach the bed of the Salt River. It’s usually pretty dry — dams upriver have trapped all the water in five lakes. I’m only about 300 to 400 feet off the ground here and need to keep an eye out for the power lines running along the river. Once across, I turn left and head in toward the airport. I make my approach to the west of Swift, follow the road that runs between the taxiway and the FBOs, and come in to Cutter. They’ve usually heard me on the radio and have a “Follow Me” car to guide me to parking. I follow the car in until it stops and a man jumps out. He uses hand signals that tell me to move up a bit more and then to set down.

That’s all there is to it.

Well, I should mention here that I’m seldom the only helicopter in the area. One of the medevac companies is based at Swift and has two or three helicopters going in and out of there. I also pass a few hospitals with rooftop helipads. And if there’s traffic or an accident or a fire or an arrest going on, there’s usually at least one or two news helicopters moving around. So although I don’t have to worry about other airplanes, the helicopter traffic can be pretty intense.

That’s how it went on Friday. I shut down the helicopter and hitched a ride in a golf cart to the terminal. My passengers were waiting for me: two Japanese men. My contact was probably in his 30s and his companion was possibly in his late 50s. After making sure they both spoke English, I gave them the passenger briefing.

“Can we go to the Grand Canyon instead?” my contact wanted to know. “We really want to see the Grand Canyon.”

I didn’t really want to fly to the Grand Canyon, but there was no reason I couldn’t. Changing the flight plan would be easy enough and I’d already checked the weather for the whole area. I warned him that we wouldn’t have much time on the ground and that we needed to leave by 5:30. I didn’t want to cross any mountains in the dark with passengers on board.

So I did what I needed to do and we departed for the Grand Canyon instead of Sedona.

To the Grand Canyon

I won’t bore you with the details of leaving Sky Harbor. It’s basically the same but backwards. South departure, west until I’m west of Central, then north low-level over the river bottom. They cut me loose when I’m clear to the north.

My two passengers enjoyed the flight through Phoenix, even though they were both seated on the side opposite the best views. (They’d get the good view on the way back.) They both had cameras and were using up pixels with still and video images. We crossed through the west side of Deer Valley’s airspace — with permission, of course — and headed north. I pointed out various things — the Ben Avery shooting range, Lake Pleasant in the distance, the Del Webb Anthem development, Black Canyon City. Once away from the outskirts of Phoenix, I pointed out open range cattle, ponds, roads, and mountains. We saw some wild horses grazing near some cattle in the high desert past Cordes Junction.

I took them along the east side of Mingus Mountain and showed them the ghost town of Jerome and its open pit copper mine. Sedona was to the east; I told them we’d pass over that on the way back. We climbed steadily, now on a straight line path to Grand Canyon airport, and reached an altitude of over 8,000 feet just east of Bill Williams Mountain. From there, it was a slow descent down to about 7,000 feet. Our path took us right over our place at Howard Mesa, which I pointed out for my passengers, and right over Valle. I called into Grand Canyon tower, and got clearance to land at the transient helipads.

At the Grand Canyon

Once inside the terminal, I asked my passengers if they wanted to go right into the park or take a helicopter overflight. I’m not allowed to fly over at a comfortable altitude, so if my passengers want to overfly, I set them up with Grand Canyon Helicopters or Maverick Helicopters. Both companies fly EC 130 helicopters — the Ecostar — which are much nicer than the old Bell Long Rangers I used to fly for Papillon. I prefer Maverick these days (for mostly personal reasons that I’d prefer not to go into here).

“What do you recommend?” my passenger asked.

“Well, if money is not a concern, I definitely recommend the helicopter flight,” I told him. And that was no lie. Everyone who can should experience a flight over the east side of the Grand Canyon. It’s the longer, more costly tour, but if you don’t mind spending the money, it’s worth every penny.

“Okay,” he said simply.

I didn’t have Maverick’s number on me, so called Grand Canyon Helicopter. A long tour was leaving in 20 minutes. I booked it for two passengers and we walked over to Grand Canyon Helicopter’s terminal.

The helicopter returned from the previous tour and they switched pilots. The woman pilot who climbed on board was the tiny Japanese woman who’d been flying for Grand Canyon Helicopters when I was a pilot a Papillon. I told my passengers what her name was and that they should greet her in Japanese.

Grand Canyon HelicoptersThen they got their safety briefing and were loaded aboard. I took a photo of them taking off. Then I hiked over to Maverick to meet the Chief Pilot there. I had 45 minutes to kill and planned to make the most of it.

I was back at Grand Canyon Helicopters when my passengers’ flight landed. They were all smiles as they got out. I called for transportation into the park and was told it would be 20 minutes. As we waited, the Japanese pilot came into the terminal and spent some time chatting with us. She’s 115 pounds of skilled and experienced turbine helicopter pilot — a dream come true for any helicopter operator. This is her fifth year at the Canyon. They call her their “secret weapon.” When the van pulled up, she bowed politely to my passengers, saying something to them in Japanese. I think they really liked getting a reminder of home so far away.

We took the van into the park and were let off at El Tovar. It was 3:20 PM. I told my passengers to meet me back there at 5 PM. It wasn’t nearly as much time as I like my passengers to have, but our late start had really limited our time. I left them to wander the historic buildings and rim trail on their own and went to find myself something to eat. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day and was starved.

What’s weird about this particular trip to the Canyon is that I don’t think I spent more than 5 minutes looking into the canyon from the Rim. I didn’t take a single picture. This is why the word routine comes to mind. It’s almost as if the Grand Canyon had ceased being a special place. A visit like this was routine. It was something I’d do again and again. If I didn’t spend much time taking in the view this trip, I could do it on my next trip. I think that’s what was going on in the back of my mind.

The time went by quickly. I had lunch, browsed around Hopi House, and took a seat on El Tovar’s porch to wait for my passengers. I was lucky that it was a nice day — I didn’t have a jacket. Several people told me it had snowed the day before and there had been snow on the ground just that morning. But by the time we got there, all the snow was gone and it was a very pleasant day. Not even very windy, which is unusual for the spring. But as the sun descended, it got cool out on the porch. I was glad when my passengers showed up just on time.

I called for the van and was told it would take 20 minutes. That’s the big drawback to taking people to the Canyon — ground transportation. I’d rent a car if there was a car there to rent. But there isn’t, so we’re at the mercy of the Grand Canyon Transportation desk. The fare isn’t bad — $5 per person, kids under 12 free — but the service is painfully slow, especially during the off season. It’s about a 15-minute drive from Grand Canyon Village to the Airport in Tusayan, but between the wait and the slow drivers, it stretches out to 30 to 45 minutes. That’s time taken away from my passengers’ day at the canyon.

Back to Sky Harbor via Sedona

We were in the helicopter and ready to leave the Grand Canyon Airport at 5:45 PM. At that time of day, the airport was dead. Tour operators have a curfew and cannot fly over the canyon past 5 PM this time of year; that changes to 6 PM in May. So there wasn’t anyone around. Fortunately, the terminal was still unlocked with people working at the Grand Canyon Airlines desk when we arrived so we had access to the ramp.

I’d put in a fuel order before we left earlier, so both tanks were topped off. We warmed up and I took off to the south. I set the GPS with a Sedona GoTo and the direct path took us southeast, past Red Butte, east of Howard Mesa. We saw a huge herd of antelope — at least 50 to 100 of them! — in an open meadow about 10 miles north of I-40. It was the same meadow I’d seen antelope before.

We climbed with the gently rising terrain. The forest ended abruptly and I followed a canyon east and then south, descending at 1000 feet per minute into the Sedona area. The low-lying sun cast a beautiful reddish light on Sedona’s already red rocks. The view was breathtaking. My passengers captured it all with their cameras.

We flew through Oak Creek Village, then turned toward I-17. I started to climb. There was one more mountain range I needed to cross. Although a direct to Sky Harbor would have put us on a course far from I-17, I prefer flying a bit closer to civilization, especially late in the day.

At one point, I looked down and saw a single antelope running beneath us, obviously frightened by the sound of the helicopter above him.

We watched the sun set behind the Bradshaw Mountains as we came up on Black Canyon City. There was still plenty of light as we came up on Deer Valley Airport. I transitioned through the west end of their airspace and continued on.

Sky Harbor was considerably busier when I tuned in and made my call. But my approach was the same as usual. My passengers took more pictures and video as we passed downtown Phoenix just over rooftop level, then crossed the departure end of the runways and made our approach to Cutter. It was just after 7 PM when we touched down.

We said our goodbyes in Cutter’s terminal, where I got my passenger’s mailing address in Japan so I could send him a receipt for the additional amount I’d have to charge him for the longer flight. They called a cab for their hotel and I paid the landing and ramp fee Cutter sometimes charges me. (I don’t mind paying the $17 fee because my passengers nearly always use their free shuttle and I rarely take on any fuel.) Then I hurried out to the ramp for the last leg of my flight, back to Wickenburg.

Flying Home

It was dark by the time I was ready to leave Sky Harbor. This was the first time I’d depart Sky Harbor at night. Of course, just because the sky was dark doesn’t mean the ground was dark. It was very bright, well lighted by all kinds of colored lights.

I launched to the south just seconds before a medivac launched from Swift. We were both told to squawk 0400 and Ident. I never caught sight of the helicopter behind me, but he had me in sight. Together, we flew west to Central. Then he headed up Central Avenue and I headed direct to Wickenburg. The north tower cut us both loose together as we exited their space.

The flight to Wickenburg was easy. I simply followed the bright white line drawn on the ground for me by traffic heading southeast on Grand Avenue. The road goes from Phoenix to Wickenburg and is the most direct route. At night, it’s lit up by traffic and very easy to follow. When I got closer to Wickenburg, the red taillights heading to Las Vegas far outnumbered the white headlights heading toward Phoenix. After all, it was Friday night.

I set down at the airport in Wickenburg and gave the helicopter a nice, long cool down. I’d flown 4.1 hours that day and was glad to be home.

Leopard Postponed — What's a Writer to Do?

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It’s all about timing.

Yesterday afternoon, not long after the stock markets closed in New York, Apple put a one-paragraph announcement on its Hot News page. The announcement told the world (or whoever happened to be watching that page) that because Leopard resources had been used to finish up the iPhone, Leopard would be delayed. Instead of seeing the finished OS in June, we’ll now see it in October.

Why it Matters to Me

I took the news with mixed emotions. I had begun working hard on my Leopard Visual QuickStart Guide for Peachpit Press. The book will be the eighth or tenth (I’ve lost count) edition of my Mac OS VQS, which is one of my biggest selling titles. The book is important to me; the last edition accounted for half of my annual income for two years in a row. When that book is ready to write I drop everything — even helicopter charters — to work on it.

The most important part of it is getting it done on time. When Tiger came out in 2005 only two authors had books in stores beside the brand new software on its release date: Robin Williams and me. Both long-time Peachpit authors with reputations for churning out books that satisfy readers. If Robin’s book sold only half as well as mine — and I’m not fooling myself; it probably sold twice as well — we kicked butt. It was a great reward for hard work and grueling deadlines. But I have to say honestly that my Tiger book was one of the ones I’m most proud of.

This Time was Different

This time around, things were definitely different. The software wasn’t ready yet — that was obvious in the way certain features just didn’t work right. Lots of bugs to iron out, but few developmental releases. It was almost as if Apple’s Mac OS team was overwhelmed. This announcement from Apple explains a lot. Apparently they were overwhelmed, but not by the task at hand. They were overwhelmed by being shorthanded to tackle the task at hand.

Add to that the fact that my screenshot software of choice, Snapz Pro, “broke” in Leopard. Don’t misunderstand me; it did work and it took fine screenshots. But the shortcut key to invoke it did not work — even when I fiddled with Mac OS settings and tried other shortcut keys. So, for example, there was no way to take a screenshot of a menu.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Visual QuickStart Guide, but they rely on screenshots to communicate information. The book is full of step-by-step, illustrated instructions. I estimate that my Tiger VQS has at least 2,000 screenshots in it. Some screenshots show windows, others show menus. Almost every single one is less than a full screen of information. Now think of how much fun it might be to take 2,000 screenshots with something as awkward as Grab or, worse yet, Apple’s built-in screenshot shortcut keys. And then manually edit every single screenshot in a graphics program like Photoshop. Not having Snapz Pro (or something equivalent, if something equivalent exists) was going to seriously slow down my workflow.

What was even worse for me (and all other writers, I assume) was the “secret features” Steve Jobs alluded to when he first showed off Leopard. I had no idea what they were. And no one else did either. What if those features changed the way part of Mac OS X looked? All my screenshots would have to be redone. And what if the features were big enough to warrant their own chapters? Or replaced existing features? That could mean significant reorganization of the book, with changes to all the chapter and feature references. I could be working my butt off to finish a 700+ page book, only to have to redo major parts of it.

So I was under a lot of pressure. I had the ticking clock that said the software would be out “this spring.” That meant before June 20. I knew my publisher needed 2-3 weeks to get the final files printed and turned into books. That meant I needed to be done writing and editing by the end of May. But not knowing what the future would bring, was crippling me, making it difficult and frustrating to get things done.

I was not a happy camper. So when the announcement came yesterday, it was a bit of a relief for me.

The Problem with the Postponement

There is a problem, however: timing.

I had planned to work on my Leopard book for April and May. Then comes my annual secret project (which I can’t talk about until after publication) for the month of June and a bit into July. Then my annual one-month stay at Howard Mesa to get some work done on our property and knock off a few articles for Informit and possibly try to reconstruct that mystery novel I was working on (which was lost in the great hard disk crash and backup screw-up of February 2007). Then we’d planned to take a vacation to the northwest to continue our search for a new place to live. By that time, it would be September and the helicopter business would be heating up again; I already have two charters lined up for that month. Also, around that time, I’d be ready to start work on my Word for Macintosh revision.

There was a plan B for this summer, too. It consisted of me getting a job as a pilot for someone else, flying somewhere other than Arizona. I could work on my secret project while I was away and escape Arizona’s brutal heat and get to fly someplace different. I have a very good lead on a job in St. Louis (of all places) and a few possibilities in Oregon and Washington. But nothing finalized.

Now these plans for the next six months of my life are completely up in the air. Assuming an October 1 release of Leopard — this is just a date pulled out of the air; I swear I don’t know anything and if I did I wouldn’t repeat it — I have to be finished with the book by the first week in September. So I’ll work on it in July and August. While I still have my secret project to work on in June, I don’t have anything lined up for the rest of April and the month of May.

What’s even worse about all this is that I can’t work on a VQS at Howard Mesa or at a summer job elsewhere — I need a desktop computer with a big monitor to do the layout — and I can’t take a vacation when I need to work on this book. (See above for how important it is.) So my whole summer schedule is completely screwed up.

And It’s a Money Problem, Too

And since I get paid advances when I work and I don’t have anything lined up between now and the beginning of June, I’m not going to see a payday until the end of June or July. Ouch. So my finances will be screwed up, too.

It gets even worse. If the book had a release date in June 2007 (with the original release of Leopard), I’d start seeing royalties at September 2007 month-end. But because it won’t be released until October, which is after the start of the last quarter, I won’t see royalties until March 2008 month-end. That’s a 6-month payday delay for a 4-month publication delay. Double-ouch.

But that’s what the freelance writer’s life is like: a financial roller coaster.

What to Do?

Today I’ll be making some phone calls. The goal is to pin down exact dates for all of my known projects so I can decide, once and for all, if I can get a pilot job according to Plan B. And, while I’m at it, I’ll try to pick up a small book project to work on in May. (Not likely but remotely possible.)

Then I’ll get to work doing other things that I’ve been neglecting — cleaning out the condo I want to rent, washing the helicopter, organizing my office, reserving rooms for next year’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure trips.

After all, life goes on.

Open Range Cattle, Howard Mesa

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Talk about road blocks!

A few years after buying our place at Howard Mesa (north of Williams, AZ, south of the Grand Canyon), my editor, Jeremy, came to visit us down in Wickenburg. It was January, right after Macworld Expo. As I do with all of our out-of-state visitors, I took him to the Grand Canyon.

Since our property was along the way, I decided to take a short detour to show it to him. We’re proud of our lot at Howard Mesa, mostly because of the incredible views in every direction. We like to show it off.

It had snowed hard the night before our visit and the ground was covered with a thick blanket of the stuff. I was driving my Jeep which was still relatively new and had good tires. The roads at Howard Mesa are not plowed in the wintertime — in fact, we’re pretty lucky if they get graded during monsoon season. And, of course, with only two houses on our side of the mesa at that time, it wasn’t as if a lot of people were going that way. Still, there were relatively fresh tire tracks to follow, so I could find the road.

Open Range CattleWe came up the state road, rounded a bend, and were rather surprised to see this small herd of young open range cattle in our path. As you may be able to tell by their faces in the photo, we weren’t the only ones who were surprised. I clearly remember rolling to a stop in the road about 50 feet from these animals, snapping a photo, and then just waiting for them to move. They didn’t.

I inched forward with the Jeep, trying to encourage them to get out of the way. I was probably about 20 feet away when one of them decided I was too close. It whirled around and started back down the road in the direction I needed to go. Since cattle are herd animals, within moments they’d all turned around and were trotting down the road.

I followed.

At this point, we still had about a mile to go to get to our place. The cattle may have been trotting, but they’re not exactly fast. When I sped up, they didn’t. They were already moving at top speed. I didn’t want to frighten them or hurt them.

Well, I had a Jeep. Jeeps can be taken off-road. So I found a break in the vegetation at the side of the road and drove around them. That was enough to scare them off the road. They cut cross country through another lot. I pulled back onto the road and we continued our trip over the existing tire tracks.

A while later, when we arrived at our place, we saw the cattle standing as a tight herd across the road, looking in at us. But they didn’t get in our way again.

Christmas at Howard Mesa – Part I

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I was dreaming of a white Christmas.

On the Friday before Christmas, Mike and I loaded up the truck with a bunch of things, including some furniture, food, tools, Jack the Dog, and Alex the Bird. At about 9 AM, we headed north, to our property at Howard Mesa.

In Wickenburg, it was raining. It was the first time there had been enough rain there to actually get your skin wet for at least a month. Part of me wanted to stay behind and enjoy the weather. But the other part of me knew that it was likely to clear up in an hour or two and I’d just be disappointed. We don’t get many good rainy days in the desert and Friday was not going to be one of them.

Our path took us up Route 93 to Route 89, through Congress and up Yarnell Hill. We stopped at the Cornerstone Bakery for some fresh baked goods to munch on in the car and enjoy on Saturday morning for breakfast. It was a freezing rain there, but nice and toasty in the bakery, which was filled with the usual collection of locals.

Back on the road, we took 89 through Peeples Valley, turned toward Kirkland at Kirkland Junction, got on Iron Springs Road in Kirkland, and followed that to the first traffic light in Prescott. Then Williamson Valley Road to the Pioneer Parkway to Willow Springs Road to 89A. In Chino Valley, we stopped at Safeway, where Mike filled the truck with diesel and I hurried through the store to get veggies and a few last-minute food items. By this time it was snowing pretty hard, with just enough wind to blow the flakes at about a 30° angle to the ground.

Back in the truck, we followed 89A to Ash Fork, where we got on I-40 eastbound. The snow was sticking up there, coating the road with a thin layer of snowy ice. Trucks and cars were taking it easy, preferring a self-mandated speed limit of 35 or 45 MPH rather than the legal 75 MPH limit. It was slow going, but I’m sure it was better that way. Alongside the road, a light dusting of snow covered fields and trees. It looked more like Christmas than it has in a long while for me.

At the exit for the Grand Canyon (the third exit, the one that’s really for the Grand Canyon), we got off and followed Route 64 northbound. There was a lot of snow on the ground there but very few vehicles. Still, we both felt relieved when we reached the turn for Howard Mesa and began our last five miles of the trip. 20 minutes later, we were pulling through our gate while the snow swirled around us.

The entire drive, including the two short stops, had taken about 4 hours.

Inside our camping shed, the temperature was hovering around 35°F — which was pretty much the same temperature as outside. Mike turned on the gas and I struggled a bit to get the heater turned on. He unloaded the car while I turned on the fridge and started putting things away. Jack the Dog immediately got to work terrorizing whatever small rodents had made homes in the fire pit outside. Alex hung out in the truck where it was warmer. He didn’t come in until the temperature had risen to nearly 50°.

My first main task was to clean up after our unwanted lodgers — the mice. The shed has a mouse problem that we’ve tried everything to solve. The last time we were there, we’d gotten desperate enough to leave poison around. I had to scoop up what remained of it (only one of four pieces) before Jack came in. Then I had to uncover the furniture and get the vacuum going to suck up the mouse droppings that seemed to be just about everywhere. I used a lot of disinfectant cleaner on the floor and countertops. I took my time about it — there really wasn’t any reason to rush; I had all day. I had my iPod sitting in the iHome base, playing Christmas songs. Within two hours, I was pretty much done.

In the meantime, Mike was working in the bathroom on the plumbing. On our last brief visit (by helicopter during snow showers), we had discovered that most of the pipes had frozen and cracked. Mike had brought along pipes and connectors and tools to replace the broken pipes with new ones. The job required that he cut away one wall to access the pipes and do a lot of disconnecting. There was no running water in the shed and wouldn’t be until the pipes were repaired. Even the 5-gallon water cooler jug was mostly frozen; I had to light a candle under its spigot to get the water to flow.

I made us a hot lunch of canned chili with scallions and cheese, then washed up using water I boiled on the stovetop. It reminded me of the old days at Howard Mesa, when we’d camped out in our pop-up camper. That camper was wonderful on warm summer nights, but it lacked basic conveniences, such as a refrigerator or toilet. We’d use the tiny two-burner stove to heat water in the morning for coffee and washing up. During the day, we’d use those solar shower bags to heat water for showering and washing dishes. (They really do work in Arizona; we once had the temperature of the water in one of those bags up to 110°F — too hot to shower in!)

After lunch, I went on mouse cleanup duty on the shed’s little loft, which is where we sleep when we camp there. I discovered a place where they might be getting in; I’ll work on closing it up this weekend. Outside, the snow was still falling lightly. Everything was covered with a dusting of it. Jack the Dog was still hard at work at the fire pit, with the fur on the lower half of his body soaking wet. Oddly enough, it wasn’t windy, even though the weather forecast had called for wind gusts up to 28 MPH. A low cloud hung over the mesa, cutting our view to only a few miles.

Before the end of the day, Mike had finished replacing all the cold water lines. He connected the hose from one of our water tanks to the shed’s water line, turned on the pump, and pressurized the system. That’s when he saw the cracks in the hot water lines. We turned off the pump and disconnected the hose, then let any water in the lines run out.

The sun went down and it got dark. We brought Jack in. I made leftovers from home for dinner. The heater, which had been set to 85°F, had gotten the temperature in the shed up to a high of 64°. It didn’t seem that cold. We settled down on the sofa with my 15″ MacBook Pro on a folding table in front of us. I popped in a DVD from the first season of 24. We watched two episodes. We’d heard a lot about the show but had never actually seen it. So I’d added it to my Netflix queue (along with the second season of Boston Legal) and we were checking it out for the first time. Not bad. I can’t imagine watching it with commercials, though.

I slept badly. It’s the stupid hot/cold/hot/cold middle-aged woman thing, combined with the sounds of sleeping someplace different. It was pretty quiet when we first got to sleep, but at about 3 AM, the wind finally kicked up, blowing from the west right at the loft’s only window. I’d left the window open a crack — I’m always worried about asphyxiation in a closed space with a gas appliance running — and Mike had to close it. Sometime during the early morning hours, the wind shifted around to the northeast, which is the back side of the shed. It wasn’t blowing hard enough to shake the building, as it sometimes does. Just loud enough to hear it rushing past in the piñon and juniper pines scattered over our 40 acres. The sky had cleared and there were billions of stars out.

In the morning, the temperature in the shed was 43&degF with the outside temperature 28&deg. This was a problem. The heater was turned up, still set on 85°. As we moved around, making coffee and tea, washing up with water heated on the stove, we started finding drafty places. Around each window. Where the water heater sits against the outside wall. Around the edges of the door. I got my assignment for the day: caulk.

Mike decided he needed something from the hardware store to keep working, so we made a trip down to Williams, AZ. The town was remarkably busy for the time of year. I think it’s because the Grand Canyon Rail Road is doing a special “Polar Express” to the Grand Canyon each day and that’s attracting a lot of families. The town also sets up a real Christmas tree on side street off Route 66 and blocks off the street so visitors can walk around it. Nice.

We took care of business in the True Value hardware store, buying about $90 worth of stuff that included a new front door mat and weather stripping. Then we hit Safeway for a few things, stopping at the Starbucks counter on the way out for mocha lattes.

By the time we got back to the mesa, before lunchtime, a lot of the snow had melted. Mike got back to work and Jack continued his vigil at the fire pit. Sometime during the day, he started barking at something — we looked out the window in time to see an antelope hopping away across the road. One of the open range cows also came by, but since we’d kept the gate closed, she didn’t get into our property. (Cows have done a lot of damage at our friends’ place on the other side of the mesa, making us very glad we fenced in our entire lot years ago.)

Soup and sandwiches for lunch. The shed temperature was in the low 60s while it remained in the 30s outside.

I went through a whole tube of caulk on the windows. The shed was built with window frames that they’d stuck standard sized windows into. Unfortunately, the frames were about 1/2 inch too wide and tall for the windows, leaving a gap on at least two sides. They’d finished the outside of the windows with trim, closing up the gaps a bit, but they were still drafty. And one window leaked. I’d fixed the leaky window during the summer but had never thought that the gaps might cause drafts in the window. So I went to work with the caulk gun, which I’m actually pretty good at using. I ran out of caulk before I’d finished all of the windows, but I’d closed up the worst of the gaps.

Mike, as part of his pipe insulation procedure, had sealed up around the water heater with Fiberglas and foam insulation. I used garage door weather striping around the front door. The door was made to fit the shed and it doesn’t fit quite right. You can see light through the cracks around the door. Even with the thick rubbery weather striping, you can still see light in a few places. But it’s a lot better than it was.

Mike finished up all the piping by sunset. Hooked up the water again, ran the pump, and pressurized the system. No leaks. He turned on the water heater. I washed dishes from lunch. He cleaned up. Then he was ready for a shower.

Unfortunately, he’d waited too long. The outside temperature had dropped and the hose, which had never fully defrosted from the night before, had thickened up with ice. The pump was unable to bring in enough water. His shower was very short-lived. He stepped out, cranky and miserable. I was just glad I’d let him go first.

Getting water from the tanks to our camping equipment had always been a problem in cold weather. In the spring of 2004, I’d moved up to Howard Mesa in our horse trailer with living quarters, which also had a pump to get water from the tanks to the inside plumbing. Unfortunately, during the night the hose would freeze and the pump would try in vain to get the water out. That would run down the trailer’s battery and burn up the pump. So I had to turn off the pump each night and use the trailer’s internal water storage system for water. Not a big deal. Once every few days, I’d fill the internal tank so there was always water there when I needed it.

But here at the shed, we don’t have internal water storage. All the water has to come from one of the big tanks. The closest one is about 40 feet away. Because this is not a permanent setup, we didn’t dig a trench and put in a pipe. We use a hose. And the hose freezes every night, even though we do our best to drain the water out of it.

At least it hasn’t cracked yet.

Anyway, we spent Saturday night much the same way as Friday night. A nice hot dinner and two episodes of 24 on my MacBook Pro’s wide screen. The shed was much warmer — it had gotten up to 71°F by late afternoon. I slept well, waking about an hour before dawn. Outside, the moonless sky was bright with stars.

This morning, the inside temperature was 57°; outside it was 31°. I like to think it was my excellent caulking and weather striping that kept the shed reasonably warm overnight.

Today, Christmas Eve, I’ll finish cleaning up the shed — didn’t get much done in the bathroom with Mike making such a mess in there. Then we’ll put up the Christmas lights. Later, when it gets warmer, we’ll go for a walk around our fence line, making repairs and looking for castoff elk antlers as we go. It’s beautifully clear outside — I can see for at least 50 miles in every direction — and, as I write this at 10 AM, its already nearly 40°. It’ll be nice to get out. And I’m sure Jack the Dog is looking forward to a good run. He’s been going nuts every time the coyotes start howling nearby.

This afternoon, after a nice hot shower (got my fingers crossed), we’re going up to the Grand Canyon to meet some friends for dinner at El Tovar. Then dessert at our friends’ house on the other side of the mesa.

I’m looking forward to driving back to our place tonight, to seeing those red Christmas lights all alone in the middle of nowhere.

[composed on top of a mesa in the middle of nowhere with ecto]