Tag Archives: travel

Morning Flight to Alaska

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It’s nice when travel goes smoothly.

Last June, Mike and I went to Alaska for vacation. Our travel plans, which were made by a real travel agent, were completely screwed up, as I detailed in “Trouble on the Tundra” in this blog.

While I think the travel agent was to blame for our screwed up hotel arrangements on that trip, I can’t blame her for airline delays. I blame the airline — Alaska Airlines — for that. Unfortunately, I had to fly with the same airline again yesterday. Fortunately, when they get it right, they do a good job. And they got it right yesterday.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

I want to fly in Alaska this summer. Last week, I lined up a job interview with a company based in Girdwood, AK, which is just south of Anchorage. Here’s a quick summary of yesterday’s flight to Alaska from Phoenix.

Before the Crack of Dawn

My flight was scheduled to leave Phoenix at 6 AM, so I was up and getting ready to go at 3 AM. I was out the door in the cool, predawn morning at 3:30 and, after a quick stop for gas in my Honda, was on the road heading out of Wickenburg at 3:45 AM.

The thought of this would send many late risers into cardiac arrest. But I’m an early riser and typically start my day around 5 AM anyway. Getting up two hours earlier wasn’t a big deal, although it did require the use of an alarm clock. Well, that’s not really true, because I woke up about 5 minutes before the alarm would have buzzed and turned it off before it woke Mike.

The drive down to Phoenix was a pleasure. There were few cars on the road on Grand Avenue and Carefree Highway. I set my cruise control at a reasonable speed — that’s one that was unlikely to get me jail time — and zipped on down the road. I had my iPod connected, and listened to last week’s episode of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” from NPR. The top was up because it was quite cool outside.

Traffic on I-17 was light, which you’d expect at 4:30 in the morning. But what you might not expect was getting an excellent parking spot in the West Long Term Economy lot at Sky Harbor. This is the long-term parking lot on the west side of the airport, adjacent to Terminal 2. I got a parking spot about 100 feet from the crosswalk to the terminal, so I was able to park, get my luggage, and simply walk to the terminal where my plane would depart. No need to take a shuttle bus or to remember if I needed the “Roadrunner” or “Gecko” or whatever shuttle on the way home. This probably saved me about 20 minutes of travel time.

I already had my boarding pass printed out, thanks to the miracle of the Internet. And I only had one piece of luggage, which, although not exactly small, would easily fit in the overhead bin of most airliners. So I didn’t have to wait on line at the counter. That saved me another 20 minutes.

A Brief Security-Related Rant

I did, however, have wait on line at security. And although I don’t usually pull out my liquids and gels and stick them in a plastic bag for the world to see, I had a feeling that that morning I might get grief about it. So I grabbed one of their baggies and dumped my entire toiletries bag into it. I’ll use the baggie from now on.

For the record, I have real gripe with this whole liquids and gels thing. First of all, if you don’t pull them out of the bag, they usually don’t bother you about it. In fact, I’ve never been bothered about it. That makes me wonder if (1) they can see it at all and (2) if they really care. Rules like 3-3-1 (or whatever bullshit name they’ve applied to this particular invasion of privacy) are not designed to keep us safe. They’re designed to inconvenience us just enough to make us think they’re keeping us safe. If I’ve taken liquids and gels through in my luggage a dozen times without getting searched, how many others have? Doesn’t their equipment sense the naughty stuff even if it’s inside the luggage? (Jeez, I hope so!) And just because my plastic baggy clearly displays a tube of Neutrogena face cream, does that mean there’s Neutrogena face cream in it? Come on, TSA! Do you think we’re all a bunch of morons? And how about it if you stop playing head games with us and just do a good job getting us through security?

But in some cases, it’s best to just go with the flow. So I used a baggie and put it in a bin with my shoes, cell phone, purse, loose change, jacket, scarf, and boarding pass. The other bin was for my computer, which I also had to pull out, completely remove from its protective case, and lay in a separate bin with nothing above or below it. (Again, who’s to say that there’s really a computer in there if TSA’s equipment can’t see that it’s a computer with its expensive x-ray equipment? Why does it have to be out of the case? Are they trying to profile us based on our choice of laptop make and model?)

Of course, sending the boarding pass through in a bin was a bad idea. Even though they never said to keep it in my possession as I went through the metal detector, I had to retrieve it to show the metal detector guy before he’d let anyone else through. This held up the line. But I wasn’t the only one who made this error. The guy in front of me did the same thing — but it was too late to retrieve my boarding pass at that point because he’d held up the line and my stuff had already gone through the x-ray machine.

The only good thing about all this security is that if your valuables go through the x-ray machine before you get through the metal detector, there’s a reduced chance of your valuables being stolen before you can get to them. In the “old days,” I never let my things go down the belt unless I knew I’d beat them to the other side of the x-ray machine.

Ah, the good old days. The memory of going through security fully dressed, without half unpacking my luggage, is sweet indeed.

The Flight

Although Terminal 2 is not one of the nicest at Sky Harbor, they’d fixed it up quite a bit since my last pass through there a few months ago. There was a nice coffee stand where I bought a latte, a muffin, and a piece of pumpkin pound cake for the flight.

When I got to the gate, they were boarding. I stopped long enough to pull my iPod, headphones, and laptop out of my luggage and put my down jacket (borrowed from Mike) in. A short while later, I was seated in 7F with the wheelie bag in the bin over my head and a tiny airplane pillow behind my lower back, belted in and sipping latte.

The plane left on time.

We took off to the east, then banked left to the north. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was bright enough to see the Salt River, Chandler and Falcon Field Airports, and Fountain Hills. Our flight path took us up the west side of the Verde River, past Bartlett and Horseshoe Lakes (which both appeared full), Sedona, and Flagstaff. We probably flew over the top of Howard Mesa, although it could have been on the other side of the plane.

Just before we reached the Grand Canyon, the sun appeared as a bright orange dash of light at the horizon. It grew slowly out of the east, rising almost imperceptibly until it was an orange ball. As it brightened, it cast long shadows over the rugged terrain.

That’s when I started noticing the thin, long clouds at right about our altitude. It took me a moment to realize they were contrails from other jets criss-crossing the sky. We flew parallel to one for a while, cutting across another. Although I’ve seen many contrails from the ground — we all have! — this is the first time I’d ever noticed them from the air. It was very cool.

We flew over the Little Colorado River and Colorado River, now heading north-northwest over terrain that wasn’t as familiar to me. It clouded up, obscuring my view for a while. Later, the clouds broke up again and I could see more unfamiliar ground. Much later, I saw the Columbia River, where it makes its big turn in western Washington state. Then more clouds as we turned to the west and began our descent. It wasn’t until we were below the clouds, making our final approach to Seattle Tacoma Airport that I realized how windy it was. Large flags blew straight out. I got a postcard-view of downtown Seattle before we touched down on the wet runway of the airport.

Once in the terminal, I had to find my gate for the next flight. I was in Terminal N, which appeared to be an island terminal in the middle of the ramp, and had to get to Terminal C. I asked an airport employee and was directed to an underground train system. One stop and I was at my terminal, with 40 minutes to kill before boarding my next flight.

I went for a short walk. The terminal was quite nice, with a big open food court area and lots of nice shopping. (I tell you, there’s better dining and shopping at many airport terminals than I can find in my own town.) I wanted to get a shoe shine, but the shoe shine girl was at her alternate location in Terminal D (according to the guys in the Bose booth beside her shoe shine chairs.) So I bought some sushi and carrot sticks to go at little restaurant not far from my gate.

I spent a short time waiting in the gate area. Planes took off down the runway right outside the window. A few very small clouds floated up the runway about 100 feet off the ground. Clouds were broken in layers around us, with blue sky and sunshine making occasional appearances. Although the weather wasn’t great, it was a pretty day.

Before long, I was on my Seattle to Anchorage plane, seated in 16F. (I’m a window seat person, in case you haven’t noticed.) There was an empty seat between me and the man on the aisle and, as the incoming crowd thinned out, we marveled at our luck on the otherwise full flight. But just before closing the doors, they let two more passengers on board: a heavyset man and his much thinner wife. We got the wife.

She was a very pleasant person, but a talker. (Yeah, I know; I’m a talker, too. But I know how to shut it off. She didn’t.) She lived in Fairbanks and spent her summers in a motorhome in Yuma, AZ where her sister lived. (I can tell you more about her entire life, including her kids and grandkids, but I’ll spare you.) They were going back to Fairbanks to surprise a friend of theirs for her birthday. In a month or two, they’d drive back to Fairbanks from Yuma in their motorhome.

It was nice chatting with an Alaskan about Alaska, although I can’t seem to come up with many points worth sharing. We did talk a bit about fishing and about how the tour companies tend to do as little as possible to satisfy the tourists, who generally have no clue what they’re missing. We also talked about cruise ship passengers being more interested in shopping than actually seeing and learning about the port cities they stop at.

The whole time we flew — and it was a 3-1/2 hour flight — it was cloudy beneath us. Until we got about 45 minutes outside of Anchorage. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t looking down at clouds. I was looking down at snow covered mountains.

Of course, I’d had much the same view on our flight to Anchorage in June. This time, however, the air seemed cleaner and crisper and the view seemed more spectacular. The mountains came right down to the ocean, with snow almost all the way to the bottom. There was no beach, no rocky shoreline for a stroll. Just ocean and then those tall peaks.

I don’t know how tall those mountains were, but I’m sure most were at least 5,000 feet. They were rugged and rocky and looked as if they were made of granite. There were pine trees along the lower elevations of many of them. And, looking to the east, that’s all I could see: rocky, snow-covered mountains.

The woman beside me took an interest in the view and leaned over for a better look. She pointed out a few glaciers — there were dozens of them! — and places where she and her husband went fishing from their boat, which they keep in Valdez. Then the clouds moved in again, hiding the ground from view. I looked out on the horizon and saw the top of Denali (Mount McKinley), way off in the distance.

Then we descended through the clouds, The next time I saw the ground, we were approaching Anchorage and I could see the airport from our downwind leg. We came in from the north, over the mud flats, which were littered with large blocks of ice that hadn’t been there in June. I reminded myself that it was still winter, a fact that was confirmed when I felt the cool breeze on the jetway as I walked out into the terminal.

Only the day before, I’d been wearing a t-shirt as I walked around Las Vegas.

The End of a Smooth Flight

I was in a rental car, on my way to Girdwood, within 30 minutes of landing at Anchorage. The only reason it took me that long was (1) I stopped to look at the historic photos of the airport on the way to the Rental Car counter and (2) I couldn’t remember which rental car company I used, so I had to ask at five of the eight rental car desks before I found my reservation. (I never claimed to have all the answers. And besides, isn’t it impossible for everything to be perfect on a trip?)

There’s a lot to be said about packing light. Because I only had one piece of luggage and because that piece of luggage was small enough to carry on board with me, I saved a ton of time by not having to check it and then retrieve it. (I also didn’t have to worry about the airline losing it.) Because the luggage had wheels, transporting it was easy. I think that my choice of luggage and the way I packed is a big part of what made my trip so smooth.

I’m just hoping my return trip will go as smoothly.

Composed at a B&B in Girdwood, AK with ecto.

Skip the Massage; Get the Facial

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The joys of a real spa.

Yesterday, for Valentines day, my husband treated me to an overnight trip to the Scottsdale Fairmont Princess. The Princess is a five-star resort in North Scottsdale with amenities that remind me why I work so damn hard sometimes.

It was great to get away from town — even for such a short time — to go to a place where “service” and “quality” are more than just words thrown around by people who’ve never experienced them. The Princess’s staff members go out of their way to provide excellent service and make you feel special from the moment you walk in the door. The bellman who escorted me to our room not only pulled my small wheelie bag for me, but pointed out the various restaurants, shops, and other points of interest along the way. In the room, he showed me how to work the thermostat, hung up my jacket before I could stop him, and even fetched ice for the ice bucket. That night, when we went down for dinner at our second choice restaurant, the hostess there tried again to get a table for us at our first choice. (No luck.) We wound up eating in the Princess’s low-end restaurant, which still offered better service, a more interesting menu, and better prepared food than any restaurant in Wickenburg. (I will admit that Rancho de los Caballeros has a better wine list.) Even room service this morning was a special treat: fresh fruit and plain yogurt for me and blueberry pancakes with fresh blueberries, strawberries, and whipped cream for Mike, all served up with today’s New York Times.

Ah, civilization. I guess I miss it more than I thought.

But the highlight of the trip for me came after Mike left to go to work. I made an appointment at the Willow Stream Spa, which is part of the Princess complex, for an aromatherapy facial.

While I’ll admit that I’ve experienced a true spa only five times in my life, this was, by far, the nicest. It featured wide open spaces, pleasant aromas, the sound of falling water almost everywhere, and friendly service. After checking in, I was escorted to the women’s side of the facility by a woman who played tour guide. She pointed out features that included a waterfall (where spa guests could enjoy the spray or high pressure of the falling water), hot and cold plunge pools, steam room, aromatherapy inhalation room, and Swiss shower with 12 shower heads. (We skipped the private rooftop pool — the resort seems to have a swimming pool everywhere you turn — because it was a cool, rainy morning.) Even the waiting areas were warm and comfortable, the kind of place you could easily spend the day with a good book.

I was assigned a locker, terry robe, and slippers and told where to meet my “service provider.” I wasted no time getting undressed and slipping on the robe. By the time I found a seat in the corner of the waiting area, I was already relaxed.

When I tell my friends that I prefer a good facial over a massage, they think I’m crazy. I think it’s because they’ve never had a good facial.

Here’s the brochure description of what I experienced this morning:

Arizona Aromatherapy Facial. 60 minutes. Restoration. Ease tension through the healing gifts and remedies of the desert. Choose from desert lavender for balance or chamomile for restoring your skin from the desert sun. Th healing is all encompassing with an invigorating lavender foot experience, a scalp and hand massage, as well as couperose skin ampoule.

(And yes, I’m very glad I don’t have to write this kind of silliness. I simply could not spread it thick enough, if you know what I mean.)

The point is, a good facial tends to more than just your face.

My service provider, Heather, led me to a private, softly lighted room with the gentle sounds of New Age music. While she stepped out into the hall, I slipped out of my robe and into a “cocoon” of sheet-lined towels on a special padded table molded to keep my body in a reclined sitting position. Then Heather returned to get to work.

She began with my hands. She put some creme on my nails and cuticles, then used fragrant massage oils to massage my hands. Then each hand went into a baggie with a warm sand-filled mitt over it. I can’t describe how good it felt. It was like wearing heated mittens on a cold day.

She then moved on to my arms, which got an excellent massage with more aromatic moisturizers.

Then she started on my “face,” which began at my upper chest and went all the way to my hairline. Lots of steam and different cremes and exfoliating gels and moisturizers. She told me what each one was as she applied it, but I don’t remember any of it. They all smelled really good. There was a hot towel on my face and shoulders whenever something needed to be wiped off.

Then the neck, shoulder, and scalp massage. I cannot imagine a back massage feeling as good as this.

Then more cream on my face and a warm towel while she went to work on my feet and lower legs, with moisturizer and a good rub. They got plastic baggies and warm booties, too.

All this took about an hour. I was completely relaxed, feeling almost on the verge of sleep. I don’t think I said more than a dozen words during this time — and anyone who knows me personally can attest to the fact that I rarely keep my mouth shut.

Heather finished my face with some moisturizing oils and unwrapped my feet and hands. Then she left me alone again to rerobe. She met me outside the room with a cup of cold water, then escorted me back to the waiting area, where she recommended ten to fifteen minutes in the inhalation room. I made a beeline for it.

Now I need to make a distinction between aromatherapy at a quality spa and the kinds of “aromatherapy” products you can buy in candle shops and cosmetics shops and home shopping parties. The crap you buy for home use at these places is crap. It’s over-scented, made with chemicals that could probably make you sick if you use them often enough, and gives aromatherapy a bad name. While I don’t buy into the idea of certain smells giving certain benefits, I do know that a room full of fresh air that is lightly infused with the scent of eucalyptus or mint or rosemary or some combination of these things clears my sinuses and makes me want to breathe deeply all day. It also makes me want to throw out all those crappy, smelly candles I’ve managed to collect — mostly as gifts — over the past ten years. I don’t want a cheap alternative. I want the real thing.

Anyway, I had a great time at the spa, although I didn’t stay very long. I didn’t have a swimsuit with me, which is required for several areas. But I made a conscious decision to do this more often, despite the rather high cost. Whether I return to the Princess’s spa or start checking out the ones in other luxury resorts in Phoenix and Scottsdale remains to be decided. (Frankly, I can’t imagine any other facility being nicer than this one, so why try the others?) All I know is that I deserve to be pampered once in a while and I’m going to make sure I get the pampering I deserve.

As for facial vs. massage, why not give it a try? Report your findings in the comments here.

Tourist Photos from San Francisco

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Or fun with a camera.

Note to feed subscribers: You may not see the photos in this article in your RSS reader. That’s because of the way they’re embedded. If you like photography, I do hope you’ll take a moment to visit the site and see the photos. If you don’t, just skip it. I understand.

I was in San Francisco last week for Macworld Expo. In the old days, I used to spend every day at the show. Nowadays, I’m more interested in seeing things outside the exhibit hall. With a half day to spend on my own, I took the cable car from Market and Powell to Fisherman’s Wharf. Here are some of the photos I took that morning.

I started my day just after sunrise at the corner of Powell and Market, five or six blocks from Moscone Hall, where Macworld Expo is held each year. This is the terminus for two of San Francisco’s three cable car lines. The photo here shows one of the cable car drivers turning the car around for the trip back to Fisherman’s Wharf. Although the photo is distorted (because of that darn fisheye lens I like so much), the ground here is relatively level. They manually push the car onto the turntable and turn it, then push it back onto the main track. After paying off a homeless person for telling me that I could buy my ticket on the cable car — it was either that or buy a newspaper I didn’t want to carry — and assuring another homeless person that I didn’t need him to take a photo of me and the cable car with my camera, I climbed on board.

The cable car took off up Powell a while later with a surprising number of people on board. The corner of Market and Powell isn’t far from the BART station and apparently the cable car is a valid mode of transportation for commuters. There certainly weren’t many tourists on board at 7:30 AM. We climbed up Powell, dropping off passengers here and there. I took this photo when the car was nearly empty. Again, there’s some distortion from the fisheye lens, but I think it’s a cool shot of the cable car and its driver.

The car deposited me at Bay Street about two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. From there, I wandered around, taking photos of the area. The sun was too low to get the shots I wanted, so went in search of breakfast. Boudin’s Bakery was there and I stepped inside. I love freshly baked bread, but I was on a diet and trying hard to avoid excess carbs. But I did get a good photo op when I saw this “Bread Line” sign. It was just too ironic for me to pass up.

Back outside at the Wharf with the sun still too low for shadow-free photos, I asked one of the fish guys where I could get a good breakfast in a place the tourists didn’t go. He pointed up the street to a “hole in the wall” called Darren’s Cafe. While waiting for my meal, I snapped this weird self-portrait with that fisheye lense. I don’t look happy here, probably because I knew the camera was shooting a picture up my nose.

After breakfast, I strolled north along the wharf area, stopping a few times to take photos of the fishing boats. Unlike most tourists, I didn’t stick to the well-trodden places. I poked around on all the piers, taking my time and seeing as many different things from as many different angles as I could. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and light wind. Not very cold, either. Here are a few of my more interesting shots in that area.

After a while, I found myself in Aquatic Park, which is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. There are a number of old, art deco buildings there and the light was just right to get creative with some shapes and shadows on a round building that used to house a public restroom. A flight of stairs curved up the side of the building to an observation deck on top. But the views from up there didn’t interest me as much as the stairs, shown here.

From the park, there were sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. But the best views were obviously from the curving arm of the Municipal Pier. So I took off on foot along the long, crumbling concrete and steel pier. The only people on the pier were a handful of Asian fisherman, although when I reached the remains of the building at the far end, another tourist pedaled up on a bicycle. We had a short chat before I walked back. Here are the photos I took along the way. They show, in order, the rust of steel embedded in the concrete, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz.

It was nearly 10 AM by the time I got off the pier. I had to check out of my hotel by 1:30 PM, but I had a few errands to take care of on the way back. So I walked up to the cable car terminus at Hyde, which is just a few blocks away. By this time, the tourists were coming out and there was about a dozen people waiting. I snapped a series of photos of the cable car being turned. If I look at them quickly in sequence, they look like a movie. Here are five of the six shots in miniature:

Cable Car Turning at Hyde

On the way back to the Union Square area, I had a nice conversation with a woman who lives in San Francisco and uses the cable car to commute back and forth to work across the city. I couldn’t help but be envious. How wonderful it would be to ride in an open seat through such a beautiful city every day.

Over Quartzsite

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An interesting photo gig.

I got the call about a month ago. From France. A photographer with a name I couldn’t easily pronounce wanted to photograph Quartzsite, AZ from the air during its busiest time of year. This year, that’s January 19 through 27.

About Quartzsite

Quartzsite, in case you’re not familiar with the place, is a small desert community about 20 miles east of the Colorado River, right on Interstate-10. During the summer, it’s a glorified truck stop, with gas stations, a handful of fast food joints, and a few of the necessities of everyday life for the 1,000 or so people who live there year-round. But in the winter, it’s home to numerous events, including gem and mineral shows, a huge RV show, and flea markets. That’s when the snowbirds flock to the place, filling in the otherwise empty campgrounds and spilling over to the millions of acres of BLM land around the town. The population swells to an estimated 100,000 people, most of whom are living in extravagant RVs and motorhomes.

From the air, this is simply amazing. Quartzsite is nestled in a valley between two small mountain ranges. I-10 cuts through it east/west while route 95 between Parker and Yuma cuts through it north/south. The town is a concentrated sea of white rooftops. Scattered all around, in every direction, grouped in the BLM-approved camping areas, are more white rooftops, sometimes arranged in circles or rows.

Sadly, I don’t have a single photo of the place that shows it off.

Back to France

I gave the Frenchman a quote. He’d have to pay for me to fly to Quartzsite, fly around there for his photos, and fly back. We estimated that at about 3 hours: 1 hour ferry, 1 hour photo shoot, and then 1 hour ferry. At $495/hour, which is my current going rate, it wasn’t going to be cheap. He didn’t book, but that didn’t surprise me. About 90% of the calls I get are from folks who are “fishing.”

Two weeks went by. I got CCed on a message to a Frenchman from Robinson Helicopter, Inc. They told him that the closest Robinson helicopter operator to Quartzsite was Flying M Air. In other words, me.

Another week went by. I got an e-mail message from the Frenchman. He wanted to know about dates and weather. I told him that the weather in Arizona this time of year is usually perfect. He tentatively scheduled a flight for January 25. But since he wouldn’t provide a credit card number, I wouldn’t guarantee it. If someone else put up a card for the same date and time, he’d be out of luck.

The Gig Happens — Suddenly

On Saturday morning, I got a call from Etienne. He was in Arizona. He wanted to do the flight that afternoon because the weather forecast for midweek wasn’t very good. Was I available?

Oddly enough, Mike and I had planned to go camping in Quartzsite that weekend but had decided, just the night before, to skip the overnight trip and just drive out there for the day on Sunday. So I was available after another flight booked for 10 AM.

Etienne picked up an RV from a rental place in Mesa, AZ and drove it up to Wickenburg. He parked it in the airport parking lot. We had a pow-wow to go over details on timing. Then he went into town to book a hotel room — don’t ask me why; I don’t understand either. At 3:15 PM, he was back.

We took off to the west with coats on and his door off.

Fuel Concerns

I’d filled the helicopter’s fuel tanks to capacity. That’s close to 50 gallons of fuel. At my normal rate of consumption, that would last close to three hours. Unfortunately, we were expecting to be out for a full three hours. There’s no fuel between Wickenburg and Quartzsite. The closest fuel is Blythe, which is 20 minutes farther west. If we went there for fuel, it would add 40 minutes to his flight time. It would also have us crossing through very dark desert — and over several mountain ranges — long after sunset.

So I filled an approved fuel container with another 5+ gallons of fuel and tucked it into the back passenger area. There were two paved runways between Wickenburg and Quartzsite, as well as numerous other landing zones. If fuel got low on the way back, we could land, shut down, add 5 gallons, start up, and get back. Of course, if we spent a lot more time in Quartzsite than we expected to, we’d have to detour to Blythe anyway. Five gallons was only about 15-20 minutes of fuel.

The Gig

The flight out to Quartzsite was as boring as I remembered it. Etienne had asked me to show him Arizona. I warned him that the ferry flight didn’t have much of interest, but he assured me it would be interesting to him. I think that by the time we were on our way back, he agreed with me. The landscape is mostly flat, empty desert, with the exception of a few small communities, some of which have farms. We cruised over all of this about 700 feet off the ground, doing exactly 100 knots. Why 100? Because with a door off, that’s my maximum airspeed.

We crossed over two tiny mountain ranges: one just west of Salome and the other just west of the intersection of Route 60 (which we’d followed) and I-10. After the second one, Quartzsite came into view. We’d been in the air less than 50 minutes.

Etienne had envisioned a shot that included mountains in the foreground, Quartzsite in the middle, and the low-lying sun in the background. Problem: the mountains to the east that he was thinking of for his foreground were simply too far away to make the shot work. So we headed into town to see what he could do.

Thus began at least 90 minutes of aerial photography over Quartzsite.

At Etienne’s request, I started by climbing up to about 3,000 feet over the town. I circled the town several times while he shot down at it with two different cameras, each sporting a monster zoom lens. I spiraled down to get closer to the town while he snapped away. Then we flew up and down along the freeway and the BLM camping areas. Then out to the west, to get a shot of the town behind a sunlit mountain. Then lower over the camping areas, with me flying sideways at about 10-20 knots groundspeed so he could shoot right down at the campers.

By this time, most folks had returned from their day at the markets and were gathered around within their “circled wagon” compounds. It was impossible for them not to see and hear us, so there were a lot of people waving up at us. I think each group was competing to be included in the photos.

We broke off from that and started following campers on the Interstate or side roads as they moved to their campsites. We must have followed five different rigs, following above and behind them. I’m sure none of them realized they were being followed. (It reminded me of that scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta’s character is followed by a helicopter as he drives around the city.) Etienne was especially interested in rigs that included motorhomes pulling cars. We hit the jackpot when we found a motorhome pulling a pickup that had an ATV in the back of it. There must have been $400,000 worth of equipment down there, driving out into the dusty desert to dry camp.

We did some more shots all over town as the sun started sinking to the west. Etienne got some really interesting shots at the dry camping campground southeast of the I-10/95 intersection.

The sun finally disappeared, but Etienne still snapped photos.

My fuel situation was interesting: I was showing 1/3 tanks of fuel. If we broke off soon, we might still make it to Wickenburg without stopping.

I think Etienne read my mind. He announced that we were finished. I swung out to my right, added power, and headed back. I’d already programmed the GPS for Wickenburg and I made a beeline for it.

Flying Back

The flight back was almost as boring as the flight out had been. The only difference was the moon and the fuel situation.

The moon was nearly full, out in front of us to the east. Each time I passed over a body of water — the Central Arizona Project canal, a cattle tank, etc. — I’d see a quick flash of light as it caught the moon’s reflection. Beautiful.

The fuel situation kept me on edge, wondering if we’d make it all the way back. We were still excellent shape as we flew over the first paved strip at Salome. About 20 minutes later, we were still in reasonably good shape as we passed over the second paved strip at Aguila. And when we landed at Wickenburg in the darkness, we still had fuel and no low fuel light.

When I finally shut down, I was amazed to note that we’d flown 3.3 hours on the full tanks of fuel. Based on what we had left in the tanks — at least 5 gallons because of what the gauges said and there was no low fuel indicator — I figure we burned only about 13-14 gallons per hour. My normal burn rate is closer to 17 gallons per hour. But one look in the Pilot Operating Manual confirmed what I vaguely remembered: maximum range speed is 100 knots. So the fact that my speed was limited by the door being off helped us save fuel.

Since the airport was dark and the FBO office was closed, Etienne and I finished up the paperwork in his rented camper. He was shivering; sitting beside that open door all the way back had chilled him to the bone. I went back to the helicopter, put the door back on, and closed it up for the night.

At Macworld Expo

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Are you there? I’ll be there soon.

As this is appearing online, I’m boarding a plane for Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This is yet another one of my quick in and out trips — I really can’t afford to be away from my office for more than two days. I’ll arrive in SF around 9:30 this morning and depart around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. In between, I’m staying at the Nikko.

I have a lot to squeeze into this trip:

  • Wednesday, 12:00 PM – meeting with two editors, one publisher, and a representative from an online publishing group regarding ebooks and ebook piracy issues. I’m tired of seeing little ebook revenue while copies of my ebooks are floating around on file sharing sites. Armed with some excellent feedback from an ebook reader, I’m going to propose some changes to the way my work appears in ebooks. I also hope to spend some time talking to one of my editors about a book we hope to start next week.
  • Wednesday, 2:00 PM – appearing at the Peachpit Press booth on the show floor. I’m doing a 45-minute presentation and hope to cover some productivity tips and tricks for Leopard users. Peachpit will be videoing the presentation for eventual distribution online.
  • Wednesday, after 3 PM – seeing the show floor. I’ll be walking around armed with my cameras: Treo for instant Web publishing of images, Nikon D80 with fisheye lens for a very different look at the show floor, and video camera for content I hope to put together as a short Macworld Expo movie.
  • Wednesday, after 6 PM – attending one or two parties (depending on how tired I am).
  • Thursday, before 1 PM – see Wedneday, after 3 PM. More of the same.

If you’d like to see photos from Macworld as they are taken, visit my TumbleLog. I expect to start sending photos as soon as I arrive in SF. I’ll try to make them interesting.

Product ImageI’ll also be giving away two copies of my Leopard book during my Peachpit booth presentation. One of them will go to the first presentation attendee who tells me he/she read about the giveaway here.

If you’re at Macworld Expo and want to say hello, drop by the Peachpit Press booth. I usually pop in now and then during my time on the show floor. I’d to meet you!