Tag Archives: war

The Old Grand Canyon Airport

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I finally find it from the ground.

Two years ago, when I was in training to fly helicopter tours at the Grand Canyon, I made daily trips to the Grand Canyon’s old airport out by Red Butte. I don’t know much about the old airport except how to find it from the air. I don’t think its two runways were ever paved.

Oh, yes. It has the remains of a big old hangar on the west side of where the runways were.

I love exploring ruins and remnants of the past. I remembered the hangar last week when Mike, Jack, and I were doing some back-roading in that area. I think we passed near the end of the main runway while driving out toward the Coconino Rim.

Yesterday, while back-roading with Jack southwest side of Grand Canyon National Park, I remembered the old airport again. And since I had to drive right past that area to get back to Howard Mesa, I figured I’d try again to find it.

Old Grand Canyon AirportI won’t go into details about the roads I tried and the wrong turns I took. Suffice it to say that I finally homed in on it. After driving down a two-track road that cut diagonally across the main runway, I parked my Jeep right in front of the gaping hangar door.

It’s a neat old building with a dirt floor and not much else. The shelves are stripped bare and rooms that could have been living quarters show signs of vandalism, including a burned door. There was a picnic table just inside the main door, offering a shady place to have lunch, surrounded by the ghosts of aviation past.

One room in the back corner had fairly new saddle racks attached to the walls; that same room had a Private Property/No Trespassing sign on it from the outside. (Oops!) I guess someone had used it not long ago to store horse tack. There were other buildings nearby that appeared to be in better condition; all of them had the same Private Property signs on them so Jack and I stayed clear. Still, it didn’t appear as if anyone was living there. Since the old airport is in the Kaibab National Forest, I find it hard to believe that anyone would live there. But who knows? The owners of the buildings could have been grandfathered in when the government bought the land.

The Hangar Door at Old Grand Canyon AirportOne thing is for sure: visiting the old airport and looking up at the faded paint over the door spelling out “Grand Canyon Airlines” has given me a real thirst for knowledge about the place. When I’m finished with my road trip book project and trip to Canada (for work), I might start doing a little research.

It would be great to talk to someone who had actually flown there.

Before leaving, I snagged the coordinates with my GPS. Next time I want to find it, I won’t have to wander around until I stumble into it.

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

Howard Mesa

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My windsock.

As I’ve written extensively elsewhere, Mike and I own 40 acres of land at Howard Mesa, which is about halfway between Williams and Valle, Arizona, 5 miles off route 64. If you’ve ever driven from Williams to the Grand Canyon, you’ve passed within 3 miles of it (as the raven flies).

Howard Mesa WindsockThis photo shows my windsock at the top of the property, with a dead tree in the foreground. It was probably taken during the summer; that’s a thundercloud in the making in the distance in the background.

I occasionally land my helicopter not far from the windsock on a gravel pad. It’s a three-hour drive from our house to the property but only an hour by helicopter. We sometimes fly up just for the day — usually to do some work in the shed or check on things.

The dead tree is a whole other story. Here’s the short version.

Imagine a whole lot of land laid out in one square mile sections called…well, sections. The sections are colored on some maps like a checkerboard, with private squares and state land squares. The private squares were owned by cattle ranchers. They contracted with the state to graze their cattle on the state land as well as their private land in what’s known as open range.

Cattle eats grass. The ranchers got the idea that more grass would grow if there were less trees. So they came onto their land (but not the state land) with bulldozers and knocked down all the piñon and juniper pine trees that grew there. The trees died, but since the ranchers didn’t take them away, their carcasses littered the rancher’s land.

The ranchers were wrong. About the same amount of grass grew.

Years passed. New trees grew in place of the old. The ranchers had another brainstorm. They realized that they could make a bunch of money by selling their land to developers. Best of all, with Arizona’s open range laws, they could still graze their cattle on the private property that didn’t fence the cattle out. So they could stay in business without actually owning the land the cattle grazed on.

The developers split up each section of land into 10-, 36-, and 40-acre lots. We bought one of them.

So now you know why we have dead trees like this one on our land.

The good thing about all this: there’s no shortage of firewood.

Howard Mesa, Arizona, photo

Zen and the Art of Ikea Furniture Assembly

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I experience a Zen-like calm while assembling Scandinavian-designed shelves and cabinets.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating. But it certainly was pleasant — at least for a while.

Our storage shed at Howard Mesa was in desperate need of some shelves and mouse-proof cabinets.We needed the solution to be cheap.

In a fit of confusion, we’d gone to a Wal-Mart in Prescott and bought some crappy, Chinese-made modular shelves. Of course, we didn’t know they were crappy at the time. Although I hate Wal-Mart and hadn’t stepped foot inside one for more than two years, for some reason we thought we could find what we needed there. After all, Stan raves about the place. Maybe it had changed in two years. It hadn’t. (People say I’m too hard on Wal-Mart but I know I’m not.) And the “furniture” we bought was so poorly made that we brought back all the pieces we hadn’t assembled. We’re still trying to figure out what we’ll do with the three pieces we did put together.

Back to square one.

I was going to try Office Max when Mike suggested Ikea. There’s one down in Tempe, near Phoenix. I didn’t think they’d have what we wanted, but got online to check their catalog. That’s when I found the Träby series of cube-like shelves with optional doors and drawers. We went down to Ikea with the truck to see them in person. They were exactly what we were looking for. And — surprise, surprise — all the pieces we needed were in stock. I loaded up the cart, checked out, and loaded up the truck. Yesterday, at Howard Mesa, I began assembly.

If you’ve never assembled Ikea furniture, you really are missing out on an experience.

First, open the box in which the item’s pieces are packed. You’ll find the box completely filled in with furniture pieces, bag-wrapped hardware, and the minimum number of foam inserts. There’s no wasted space in that box. Since Träby had a natural wood finish, each piece was wrapped in clean, blank newsprint paper.

Now unwrap the hardware and sort it out. There will be pieces you’ve never seen before (unless you’ve assembled Ikea furniture in the past). You might want to sort out the furniture pieces, too. Each one will be slightly different and have tons of holes pre-drilled into it.

Open the instruction booklet. The whole thing is pictures. Line drawings of furniture pieces and hardware with arrows and numbers. In fact, it looks a lot like a coloring book before a kid has gotten to it with crayons. My favorite picture is the one of the man with the pointy nose on the phone; they phone wire is connected to the Ikea store. In words: Call us if you need help.

Next, get your tools ready. You’ll need a philips head screwdriver. That’s it. Okay, sometimes you might need a hammer, but if you do, the hammering job is so light that you can use the heel of your shoe or the handle of the screwdriver.

Now sit on the floor with everything around you. And follow the numbered pictures in the instruction booklet. You’ll screw in weird, tall screws that stick up an inch or more, then stand a panel on top of them and use round do-dads to hold it in place. It’ll be rock solid when you turn the round thing, as if there are ten more screws doing the job. Back panels slide into slots and are held in place with other slots.

What’s amazing about the assembly process is that everything is so incredibly well designed that the pieces can only go together one way. When you’re finished assembling a piece, you feel as if you have performed the final function in a long string of tasks that bring that piece of furniture into existence. You feel as if you’re part of the Ikea team. Like there are a bunch of Europeans nodding their approval at you from across the ocean.

I say Europeans because Ikea is a Scandinavian company and the Träby shelves I bought were made in Poland. The workmanship was quite impressive for such inexpensive furniture. And everything is designed right down to the last screw hole.

The cabinet doors went on just as easily. The only hard part was bending my body in such a way to get the screws into the right pre-drilled holes. The hinges had all kinds of adjustment screws, but I found that if I just used the center setting for each screw, the door hung properly — the first time, every time. Sheesh.

Things changed when it came time to do the drawers. I’d bought two sets of them. Each set had a big drawer and a small drawer. When I opened the box, I got a shock: the drawer insides were lavender. You know. The color. Popular around Easter.

I followed the instructions to assemble the drawers and found that the pieces fit together admirably well. But I hit a snag when I screwed the roller tracks into the cubes I’d already assembled. I kept stripping the screw heads before I could get the screw all the way in.

Now this was weird. I’d been screwing things in all afternoon and hadn’t changed my technique. I hadn’t stripped a single screw up until that point. Now I was stripping the heads on every single screw, unable to get them all the way in. What had changed?

I looked at the box the drawers had come in and saw my answer: Made in China. I guess Poland wasn’t cheap enough for the folks at Ikea headquarters. They’d outsourced to China, like everyone else. The Europeans who’d been nodding their approval were now snickering at me.

I got fed up and stopped only halfway finished with the job. I’ll need Mike to get two of the screws out so I can try again with a fresh set. I’ll go to the hardware store today and buy new screws. Hopefully, they won’t be made in China. Or, if they are, they’ll be made with slightly better quality metal.

Lessons to be learned here? Cheap is cheap for a reason. Even Ikea outsources to China. The best-designed furniture can still be rendered useless by poor-quality hardware.

Today I’ll put together the last shelf cube. With luck, I’ll get that same feeling I had yesterday at the end of all my successful assemblies. But when I feel those Europeans nodding their approval, I’ll ignore them.

As for the Träby shelves and cabinets — they look great and are rock solid.

[posted with ecto]

Ikea, furniture, Poland, China

On the Intelligence of Quotes

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Maria Speaks Episode 27: On the Intelligence of Quotes.

This short podcast is a reading from a recent article I wrote on my book support site for Microsoft Word users. It explains the difference between smart and straight quotes and tells you how to work with them in Microsoft Word. You can read the transcript of this podcast and see the accompanying screenshots at www.aneclecticmind.com

Transcripts:

Curly or “smart” quotes are single and double quote marks that curve in toward what they surround. This blog, if viewed in the intended font, displays all quotes as smart quotes. Smart quotes are also often referred to as “typographers” quotes because they’re common in printed work like books, magazine articles, and other documents.

You may not realize it, but a smart quote character is actually a different character than its corresponding straight quote. Think about it: it has to be. After all, it looks different, doesn’t it? That means it has to be a different character.

These characters are easy to type on a Macintosh. For example, to get the “ character, type Option-[. to get the ’ character, type Shift-Option-]. (Although there must be some way to type these in on a Windows computer, I don’t know how to do it; perhaps a reader can use the Comments link to share the keystrokes?)

Special CharactersIn Word, you can also use the Special Characters pane of the Symbols dialog. Choose Insert > Symbol to display the dialog and click the Special Characters tab or button. Scroll down to find the character you want (they’re listed at the bottom of the list) and double-click the one you want to insert it. This is a rather cumbersome way to get the job done, but it does work.

AutoFormat as You TypeFortunately, Word offers a better, automated way. You can set an option in the AutoFormat as you Type pane of the AutoCorrect dialog that will automatically convert every straight quote you type to the corresponding smart quote. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click the AutoFormat as You Type tab or button in the dialog that appears. Then turn on the “Straight quotes” with “Smart quotes” check box. (As you can see, that’s the only feature I have enabled in this pane on my copy of Word; I don’t like Word messing with the formatting of what I type, as I discuss in “Three Ways Word Can Drive You Crazy[er] and What You Can Do About Them.”) Click OK to save your setting.

From that point on, every time you type a single or double quote, Word will convert it to a smart quote. If your computer isn’t very fast, you might actually be able to see the conversion happen. And, if you use Word’s Undo feature, you can undo the conversion to revert the character back to the regular quote you typed.

I should mention here that this feature is enabled by default, so if you never changed this setting and you want smart quotes, you don’t have to do a thing to get them.

Now suppose you have a document that was typed without smart quotes. Perhaps a passage of text copied from a Web site or a document someone wrote with a plain old text editor. You want to dress up the document for printing and smart quotes are important to you. Do you have to retype all those quotes to “educate” them? Heck no! Just use Find and Replace.

Find and ReplaceFirst double check to make sure that the “Straight quotes” to “Smart quotes” feature is enabled as discussed above. Then choose Edit > Replace to display the Find and Replace window. Type the same plain old double quote character in the Find What and Replace With boxes. Then click Replace All. Word will replace the dumb double quotes with the correct smart quotes and tell you how many it replaced. Click OK to dismiss the confirmation dialog. Then type the same plain old single quote character in the Find What and Replace with boxes and click Replace All. Word replaces all the dumb single quotes with smart single quotes. Click OK to dismiss the confirmation dialog and close the Find and Replace window.

If you do this a lot, you might consider writing a macro that does the job for you. But that’s beyond the scope of this article.

What if you have a document with smart quotes and you need to turn them into straight quotes? Easy enough. Follow the same process, but before you use the Find and Replace window, check to make sure that the “Straight quotes” to “Smart quotes” option is turned off. Find and Replace should dumb up the quotes.

Now that you know the tricks, there’s no reason why your Word documents shouldn’t have the smartest quotes around.

Microsoft, Word, smart quotes

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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We watch the Mets wipe the floor with the Diamondbacks.

Mike bought the tickets months ago. I didn’t expect to be around when it was time for the game. But when a book project dragged out and cherry drying fell through, I found myself still in Wickenburg when game day rolled along.

We went down to Chase Field — formerly the Bank One Ballpark or “BOB” — for the game. This was my second visit to the stadium and it still awed me. It is as unlike any New York baseball stadium as possible.

First of all, the ballpark is in downtown Phoenix. That means you can walk to it from just about any location down there. Not that anyone walks. The city streets, which are wide open on a Sunday afternoon because no one has any reason to be there, become the main thoroughfare for traffic to and from the game. In New York, this would cause gridlock. But in Phoenix, it just means a little longer wait at the various traffic lights, depending on which direction you come from.

We came from the north on Route 51. As we approached I-10, one of those programmable signs — you know, with lights that spell out messages — told us to take I-10 west. We could see the stadium to the east, so we went east on I-10. The next sign told us to take 7th Avenue. We knew the stadium was just west of 7th Street, so we took that instead. There was a slight detour due to construction around the Convention Center, but within minutes of leaving the highway, we were pulling into a 5-story parking structure on the northwest corner of the ballpark.

The ballpark is pretty new — completed within the past 10 years. It’s surrounded by restaurants and parking structures and is a short distance from the Convention Center, which is being expanded. It’s a covered structure, rectangular in shape, with a roof that slides back in the evenings to let in the cool air.

Not that there wasn’t any cool air in the ballpark. On the short walk from the car to the ballpark doors — after passing through required contingent of scalpers — we were walking through some of that June 100+° dry heat that Phoenix is so famous for. We crossed a plaza that surrounded the building where various vendors were playing loud music and selling beer and showing off products. (That’s the closest you can get to a tailgate party at a Diamondbacks home game.) Then we stepped through the doors of the ballpark and into air conditioned comfort. Yes, the entire ballpark is air conditioned.

Shade and air conditioning. I don’t think the folks back in New York realize the significance of watching baseball without having to suffer through sweltering heat. (Or the sound of jets flying to and from La Guardia or the screeching of subway cars.)

Chase Field is kept clean. I mean really clean. Unlike Yankee Stadium, where you feel as if you need to go to the game wearing clothes that you can throw away afterwards.

Our seats were in section 207, on the second level, right near first base. We came in through the wrong door, so we had to climb up one flight. Upstairs, the hallway that ran behind the seating was nearly empty. No crowds, no noise. Kind of eerie. There were concession stands selling the usual baseball fare, but few people on line. Some guys tried to get us to guess how many baseballs were in a glass container — I still don’t know what they were trying to sell.

Acura ClubMike had paid $52 apiece for the seats. I thought that was a little high. But it appeared that it was some kind of special concierge seating that included waitress service. (Huh?) It also included admission to the Acura Club, on our level in the outfield. Since we got there before the game started, we decided to check it out.

The Acura Club is a restaurant set up just inside the foul pole outside of right field. It has several levels of tables on the wall of the stadium, with each seat having an excellent view of the game. It appeared that we could have had lunch there, while we watched the game. We’d already eaten, so we settled on dessert. Since the place was half empty, they didn’t seem to have a problem seating us for just a few innings.

Chase FieldThe game started and we watched it while sipping iced tea and waiting for dessert. The Met started the inning and they promptly scored 3 runs. The Diamondbacks stepped up to the plate and stepped away scoreless.

Our desserts were delivered. Mine, a slice of banana cream pie, was completely covered in a non-dairy whipped topping that needed to be scraped aside. The pie was okay. Mike’s, a “giant chocolate cream puff” was definitely giant and chocolate, served with fresh strawberries. It looked very rich.

As we ate, the second inning came and went, scoreless. I’m not sure, but that may have been the inning when the Diamondbacks loaded the plates and then had their runner tagged out as he tried to run home. The throw from the outfield was amazing. A good play that had the Diamondbacks fans groaning.

The Mets stepped up to the plate at the top of the third and proceeded to score three runs. The Diamondbacks took their turn and went scoreless. I was staring to feel sorry for them.

Chase FieldWe left the Acura Club and went to our seats. The sound was much louder there, but the view was better, being so much closer to the action. There was a surprising number of Met fans in the audience, some of them even wearing Mets jerseys and hats. So when the Mets scored 6 more runs a bit later in the game, there was quite a bit of cheering. I really felt sorry for the D’backs at that point. They were losing 10 to 0.

Acura ClubThere was a faint glimmer of hope a bit later in the game when one of the Diamondbacks hit a home run. It went over the right field wall into the swimming pool area. Yes, I did say swimming pool. One of the oddities of Chase Field is the swimming pool just outside of right field. It appears that you can rent it for parties and the like during the game. I took this photo from the Acura Club; you get the idea.

The Diamondbacks pitcher was pulled from the game a while later. He was booed off the field.

In between innings and while the Diamondbacks were changing pitchers, there was entertainment on the big Sony screen. One guy proposed to his girlfriend, live for all of us to see. Then the Kiss Cam focused on couples to kiss for us. Then the Muscle Cam for kids and adults to show off their muscles. There was a dance contest on top of the Diamondbacks dugout and some kind of video race between Ketchup, Mustard, and Relish to see which was the best topping for hot dogs. A kid got to play announcer for two innings, announcing the Diamondbacks players as they came to bat. And, of course, there was the constantly roving camera, picking out people in the crowd to focus on. The Sony screen had better entertainment than the game.

The fans beside me were Diamondbacks fans and I don’t think they were too happy when Mike cheered every time the Mets scored. At the top of one inning, when Petro Martinez (a Met) came to bat, a Diamondbacks fan nearby yelled out, “Pedro, you suck.” Pedro then proceeded to make a base hit. A Mets fan in front of us stood up, turned to the Diamondbacks fan, and yelled back, “Diamondbacks suck.” There was no fistfight. After all, the way the Diamondbacks were playing, even a die-hard Diamondbacks fan couldn’t argue.

We left right after the seventh inning stretch, just before the Diamondbacks came back to the plate. The final score of the game was 15-2.

baseball, Chase Field, Diamondbacks, Mets