Yes, I’m still alive and kicking.
In case regular readers are wondering whether I’ve fallen off the face of the earth, the answer is no, I haven’t.
My life has been non-stop craziness since the third week in September and I’ve simply been too busy to blog. That’s not to say I don’t have anything to blog about — I do! I just can’t find a 2-hour block of time to get some good content out of my head and into this blog. This status report will have to do for now.
Aerial Photo Flights at Lake Powell
The thing that started all this craziness was the aerial photo gig I had at Lake Powell. I was there for two weeks, but the last five days were the busiest. I did 14 individual aerial photo flights, each lasting between one and two hours.
I didn’t think it could ever happen, but by the end of the third day, I was actually getting tired of flying over that beautiful lake. It wasn’t until the last two photo shoots that I started really enjoying it again. I flew with a local photographer, Gary Ladd, who directed me to show him the lake and surrounding area in ways I’d never seen it. He brought the magic back. You can see some photos taken during the two flights by Rebecca Wilks, my client for those flights, at Skyline Images. I’m hoping Rebecca lets me share some of her work on the Flying M Air Web site.
That whole gig ended with a 2.2 hour flight from Lake Powell to Deer Valley. The first half of the flight was very pleasant, including the stop for breakfast at Marble Canyon Lodge. But once we got down off the Colorado Plateau southwest of Sedona, the heat and turbulence made the flight very unpleasant. My passenger, Rebecca, was likely on the verge of being ill for some of that time; I was certainly not feeling very good either. Landing at DVT was my return home after being away since May 15, ending four whole months on the road.
Two New Jobs
Back in July and August, when I had no writing work lined up, I started putting irons on the fire. The economy might be scary for people with jobs, but it’s terrifying for freelancers when there’s nothing on the calendar. I started discussions with two different publishers, feeling I had about a 50-50 chance of getting either job.
The good news: I got them both.
The bad news: They had the same deadline.
I worked my butt off for my first full week home, trying hard to deliver content for both of them. I realized that they’d either think I was lazy or incompetent. This was not a good thing, since one of the contracts was a brand new relationship with a publisher I hope to do more work for.
I confessed to both of my editors. I was surprised — and very happy — about how understanding they were.
Now I’m at Lynda.com‘s offices in Ventura, finishing up one of those projects. On Sunday, when I return, I’ll be back at my desk, cranking out new chapters for the other project, a brand new book. I expect to be working on it daily for the next three weeks.
Helicopter Rides
I do helicopter rides every year at the Congress Days event in Congress, AZ. It’s a very small event, but it gathers quite a local crowd. I make the rides cheap enough for anyone to afford them. This year, they were $25 per person, down from $30 per person last year.
This year, the rides gig fell on October 2, which was this past Saturday. Despite my crazy busy schedule, I showed up as planned and did a bunch of rides in 95°F weather. This particular event is extremely blog-worthy due to the challenging flying conditions and I definitely will be blogging about it when I get some time. I just need to assemble some more visual aids. It’s a good lesson in high density altitude flying.
Phoenix to Santa Barbara by Way of Bakersfield
My flight to Santa Barbara (to go to Ventura this week) was a bit of an adventure. The marine layer was in at midday and the glide slope at Santa Barbara was broken. On the attempted landing, the pilot was able to get down to 500 feet (the decision height) and not see the runway. I got a glimpse of the ground through the clouds before he hit the throttles and we ascended back through the clouds.
There was no second try. He flew us to Bakersfield where we were let off the plane in a terminal with a closed Subway restaurant. When the United Airlines flight to Santa Barbara also landed there, they hired a bus to take us to Santa Barbara.
I hate buses.
When a fellow passenger rented a mini-van for a one-way drive to Santa Barbara, I was one of five other people who joined her. The $130 rental plus $20 fuel purchase came out to $25/person and I’m certain that we beat the bus by at least two hours.
So instead of arriving at my hotel by 2 PM, I rolled up after 7 PM after an adventure with five strangers.
That’s worth a blog post on its own, but I’m allowing the memory to fade and don’t want to bring it back by writing about it.
Ventura and Beyond
So here I am in my hotel in Oxnard, CA, right near the border of Ventura. It’s 6:40 AM. At 7:30 AM, I’ll be in a soundproof booth, recording my words of wisdom and mouse clicks for another new course. I’m not sure if I can talk about it yet, but you’ll hear about it soon enough. I’m happy to be here, despite the clouds and rain.
Once I get home, I’ll get back on my regular schedule of blogging. I need to blog. If I don’t write here at least four or five times a week, I get a little crazy. So just have some patience and I’ll do the best I can.
Scud running is dangerous and I don’t do it without full understanding of that danger. Not once did I ever lose sight of the ground or immediate surroundings. When I realized I could not go forward the way I was going, I went back. As you can clearly see by shape of the white line U-turns I made, I was required to turn in two very tight places. These are turns that an airplane could not accomplish, especially since they were made in narrow canyons with no view over the canyon walls. The photo here shows how low the clouds were on that third attempt — the successful one. At several points, I was 200-300 feet below the clouds.
I left Wenatchee Heights with my 5th wheel RV hooked up behind my husband’s Chevy pickup. The first day’s drive was relatively short: from Wenatchee Heights to Walla Walla, a distance of only 190 miles. Only a small portion of the drive was on a freeway (I-90); the rest was on back roads through farmland.
In Walla Walla, I stayed at the 
On Friday night, I got the trailer hooked up again and mostly ready to go. I needed to be on the road early for the next leg of my trip: from Walla Walla, WA to Draper, UT (south of Salt Lake City), a distance of 606 miles. I was on the road not long after dawn. The route took me south almost to Pendleton, OR, then onto I-84 through Oregon and Idaho and down into Utah, where I picked up I-15. The landscape started with farmland, then mountains, then more flat farmland, then more mountains, and then finally into the Salt Lake basin. I’d driven the route before with my underpowered Ford F150 pickup towing my old 22-foot Starcraft. It wasn’t fun then; Saturday’s drive was much more tolerable. I stopped three times for fuel and twice for food. It was very unlike me to make so many stops; I usually try to get food and fuel on the same stop, but the situation made that tough. I rolled into Draper, UT’s Camping World parking lot at 6:15 PM local time, just 15 minutes after the store closed. I’d called the week before and knew I could park out back, so I did. I even got to hook up 50 amp power.
On Sunday, @AnnTorrence picked me up for a drive to Ft. Bridger, WY. There was a 
Monday — Labor Day — was my last drive day. I drove from Draper, UT to Page, AZ, a distance of 370 miles. I got a very early start, pulling out of the parking lot at 6:30 AM local time. By the time I stopped for fuel two hours later, I’d already gone more than 100 miles. (I parked with the big rig trucks and discovered that my rig was about as long as theirs.) This part of the drive was mostly on I-15, but started east on route 20 to Highway 89, which took us all the way to Page. The roads were mountainous and there was a lot of climbing and descending. There were also a lot more vehicles on the road, making driving a bit more of a chore.
The only food stop I made along the way was at the Thunderbird Restaurant at Mount Carmel Junction. The place is a bit of a tourist trap, but it does have good “ho-made” pies (whatever that means). Odd thing happened when I tried to leave. They couldn’t give me a bill because the computer was down. Apparently no one knows how to do basic math. All I had was a piece of pie with ice cream and an iced tea. They apparently expected me to wait until the computers came back online. With Alex the Bird in the front seat of the car, that was not an option. Finally, my waitress disappeared into the kitchen where she may have used her “lifeline” to get help with this difficult math problem. The verdict was $7.79. I was afraid to count my change.
My husband, who’d flown up in his plane and spent a few hours swimming in the lake, met me at the lodge restaurant for lunch. Afterwards, we put fuel in the truck and parked it (temporarily) at Page Municipal Airport. I gathered my belongings — forgetting only two things, one of which was vital — and we loaded into Mike’s plane. Then we started the long (90 minutes), hot (90°F+), and bumpy (I almost got sick) flight to Wickenburg. The only sights of interest along the way — keeping in mind that I make that flight about 1000 feet lower at least a dozen times a year — were a handful of forest fires east of our Howard Mesa place and a heavy rain shower coming out of a remarkably small cloud near Granite Mountain.
