A Day in the Life of a Charter Pilot.

It's a pretty common title I use for these posts, I know.  But, it fits and it implies a little bit of the resignation to this life and the excitement too.

Today, I'm in Kolkata.  Formerly know as Calcutta. In India.  And when and why did they change the name anyway?  Kolkata used to be Calcutta. Mumbai used to be Bombay.  Which reminds me is Bombay Gin now Mumbai Gin?

I got in late yesterday after nearly 26 hours in airports.  I hate airlines, but it was that or several weeks on a boat.  Anyway, got in really late, like close to midnight, India time. We're picking up a Lr-40 and flying it back to the states.  It's a 4 year old Lr-40XR that's lease has run out here.

So, we fly it back. 

We were going to take the eastward route through Taiwan, Japan, Siberia, Alaska and down, but China wouldn't give us overflight privileges out of Taiwan, so it's the westward route for us. I was really hoping to circle the globe on this contract, but instead I get half way around and turn around and fly the same half back.

Right now, we're planning on Kolkata to Fujairah to Luxor to Majorca to Santa Maria to St. John's Bay to the states, but we may take the northern route across the Atlantic through Shannon and Reykjavik.  We'll see what the jet stream is doing first.  We're also picking routes to avoid airspaces like Iran's and as much of the more turbulent parts of the middle east as possible.

All this means that I'm going to miss all my friends in St,. Louis.  I really wish I could've been there to see everyone, but these days making money has to take priority. Y'all have fun this weekend and I'll be thinking of y'all.

What's been going on.

Not that anybody else cares.

I am pretty proud of myself this week.  I managed to hit 3 places featured on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

On Sunday, El Indio in San Diego, CA.
On Tuesday, Rino's Place in Boston, MA.
and Today, Clanton's Cafe in Vinta, OK.

So far, the food is 3 fer 3 as in great eats.  I'll try to hit another place or two tomorrow in Indiana and Ohio.

What I did on my summer vacation.

I went to Blogoradoville this last weekend.  A couple of us gathered there to help do some setup for this years Blogorado.  The plan was to start work on the Blogorado Battle Buggy and maybe do some setup on the range.

We actually stayed mostly to plan.

Here are a couple of pics of the buggy.  Coming along nicely, don't you think?

I'm trying to convince them that this should be the Blogorado flag.  The Skull and Bewbies.  I'm finding it a tougher sell than I first imagined.  Can't figure out why.

Home again

I'm finally home again. I love all y'all dearly, but damn, that was too much time driving.  Next time y'all can come here.

Bring beer.

Quick Update

Just so you all don't think I fell off the face of the earth again and landed in Africa. I'm still in the US. I'm up in Jayhawk territory visiting friends from college with their 3 grade school aged boys. I still haven't gotten to the range to do a sighting or range report on the new OMGBFR.  But rest assured, I'm as anxious as the rest of you to do it.  It should be sunday or monday when it happens.

Till then, stay warm.

Uzi Money

Here's what happened today. And just to head off the wild rumors, no I did not buy an uzi.

The traffic leaving the airport is always bad. I mean an hour to get 1/2 a mile bad. So, we decided to try going the opposite direction and see if it was any quicker. (In crash investigations, this is referred to as link one in the chain that led to the badness).

It looked like a fairly easy navigation (for Luanda) problem. Basically 3 roads, all listed in yellow on the maps. (That means they're 4 lanes, divided, PAVED and at least marginally free of the pot holes that swallow elephants.) Link 2.

Somewhere before we even got to the second road, we got lost. I mean we probably took the wrong exit out of one of the roundabouts. Link 3. The road very quickly stopped being 4 lanes, stopped being divided. Hell, stopped being paved, and don't even ask about the pot holes.

We found ourselves driving through that unique style of shanty town that is 75% of Luanda. It was a rough neighborhood. So we stopped using any sort of map and just kept prominent landmarks at the same relative bearing to us and followed were most of the traffic was heading. Hey, they've got to be going "out of here" eventually. Link 4.

About half an hour after starting this bounce between ruts and pot holes we come upon a traffic jam. Only about a dozen cars bottle necked at an "intersection". We don't know if someone hit someone, a car broke down or what. But there are cops on the scene. Not a good thing in this country. There is no "To Protect and To Serve" motto on the police cars here. If the cops are here, someone's getting beaten, thrown in jail, sent away, or any combination of the three that the cops take a whim to.

After about 15 minutes, (no time at all in Luanda) the traffic starts moving again. Right past the cops. Now, we're two white guys, in civvies, in a part of town that two white guys in a Hyundai Getz should NOT be in. The traffic snakes it way past the cops and the bigger meaner of the two takes that chance to cut in front of us to get across the dirt rut that's the road. Johnny is sitting next to me saying, "Just go, JUST GO" out of the side of his mouth and I'm doing my damnedest to not look the cop in the eyes while mentally levitating all the other obstacles out of my way. Just as the cop gets to the other side of our car, he looks in, sees said white guys and the following flashes across his face.

1. Surprise, because hell, two white guys here, just ain’t possible.


2. Anger, what the fuck are two white guys doing here!


3. And whatever someone’s face looks like when they realize they’re about to get to beat two white guys in a part of town that they ain’t supposed to be.

At which point I gunned the engine and moved with alacrity away from the scene.

Pucker factor, about 6.5 Cops carry uzi’s here, or AK’s if they’re feeling bad.

People back in the states laughed when I told them that I keep a bunch of hundred dollar bills in my wallet as “Uzi Money”. (No, I’m not gonna tell you exactly how much, but there are more than 3 figures to the left of the decimal point.) When someone sticks an uzi in my face on this continent I’m gonna shove hundreds at him till he goes away. That is what uzi money is.

Random sighting today

I was at the shopping center in Luanda Sul today and saw this in the bookstore window. I was pretty much gob-smacked.

In the Immortal Words of...

The Great Bill Murray...

Koo Chakalaka-laka, Koo Chakalaka-laka, Koo Chokalaka-laka....

It's beef for chriminey...

I've come to believe that South Africa, as a general rule*, can take a piece of beef, no matter how bad and truly make it terrible.

*There may be individuals who are the exception. But if there are, they don't live in South Africa.

Observations.

In a surprising hollywood got it right moment.

Women here actually do carry everything in baskets balanced on their heads. I read somewhere they can carry up to 10 times their own body weight.

Here we are.

Or me rather. I'm sitting in a hotel in Luanda, Angola now. Waiting to hear from the new job. My thoughts on Africa so far. South Africa was a strange mish mash of England, America and something all their own. But that may be because I was in a casino for the 4 days I was there. Angola is seriously under construction. There are buildings going up everywhere. Most of the money appears to be coming from China. At least that's what all the electronics and other machines are labeled in. Someone told me that China put 5 billion into Angola last year alone. But that's not surprising when you consider how much untapped resources Angola has. If I were a country bent on massive development like China, I'd put a lock on all the resources I could for at least the next 25-50 years. Oil, minerals, diamonds, Angola has it all.

Talking with the other pilot I came over with, the dollar is crashing bad against all foreign currency. Not surprising, given the way they've been treating the printing presses back home.

One thing that struck me as I came in were all the crashed Migs that were still scattered around the airport and I'm told there are still hulks of tanks left over from the war with South Africa down south in Angola. I'm told there was a very large tank battle in Angola. I'll have to do the research on that and read up on it.

Hot-lanta, baby

I've been in ATL for the last few days. And when the lightning strike took out the phone and DSL here at the farm, out of contact too. But I should be home tomorrow and the fun shall be related then.

A Weekend (sort of) in A Day in the Life of a Charter Pilot.

So I made it back, through (around rather) the storms last night to actually sleep in my own bed.

My weekend in sunny west coast climes was replaced with a totally different weekend jaunting around Wisconsin.

We were alerted at the last minute, that due to a mechanical issue we'd be winging a well known celebrity to his concert dates in the great state of cheese and beer. When I got that call all it meant to me was a lot of back of the clock flying. Goodbye circadian rhythm.

Looking at the trip sheet though. It struck me that we actually had a block of time sitting in the home town of Lavern & Shirley. By block of time I mean roughly 30 hours. Hey, that's an eternity when you're flying charter.

And what would two enterprising men of legal age do with said time in said city? Right in one. We toured breweries. Yes, plural. First we went to the brewery where the "champagne of beers" is made and took their free tour with free beer at the end. And you can't beat free, let me tell you. Even if it was only 3 samples. I'm not an American Style Lager fan. Cold and tasteless is not a beer flavor, it's an abomination. But having said that, Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat was a nice little fruity quaff. The amount of beer produced in that one place and the size of the warehouse (5 football fields) and how quickly it's filled and emptied (basically every 24 hours) really qualifies this place as a factory more than a brewery. But the tour was fun, the tour guide was cute and the beer was free.

On a side note, all through the tour and around the factory walls were US flags and signs thanking our servicemen. My friend pointed out that our company, with all of it's DOD contracts doesn't have one even tiny flag in any of it's hangers or offices. It spoke volumes about that type of people I work for. This brewery thought enough of our countrymen to show it's colors even though it's product can't go into the countries that our servicemen do. And my company, that's turning profits off of the very same institutions and people couldn't care less.

But enough soapboxing.

After that tour we drove a few miles down to the river and checked in at Lakefront Brewery for their tour/fish fry. Every Friday they have one. The price is good, 11 bucks gets you the tour and a 5 dollar off coupon for the fish fry.

The difference between Big Giant Beer Factory and these guys was amazing. Hand crafting instead of machine driven. Fermentation kegs named Moe, Larry and Curly (complete with portraits) instead of "Fermentation Vat #12"

First off, we were about an hour and a half early for the tour. The guy setting up the kegs in the beer tent said if we wanted to wait he'd be down to sell tickets about a half hour before the tour and here's a couple of cups, just be kind and tip and feel free to pour as much as you want taste test the ones he had on tap. And off he went. Being the conscientious men of good moral character that we were, we proceeded to tip heavily. In retrospect, I think that guy was one of the higher ups in the company, like owner. Anyway, after have a couple of very nice beers, an IPA, a stoutish type and a cherry one. The guy we were drinking with stood up and announced the tour would be commencing. You got to love a job where the REQUIREMENT is to drink.

Turns out he is one of the master brewers there. The tour consisted of 4 stops, all on the brewery floor. The first two were a quick primer on beer brewing and it's history. The last stop showed the bottling and kegging process. Is kegging a word? The third stop was, of course, another taste testing station. Because the buzz would have harshed if we'd gone the whole 30 minutes without a drink.

While the guy was no where near as good eye candy as the other tour guide, he was a whole lot funnier. While describing the kegging process he told us a story that became the battle cry for the night.

You see, there's a hole in kegs where they pour the beer in, and this hole is called, I kid you not, the bung hole. And after filling, the bung hole is stoppered with a bung. A sort of birch wood cork. Birch wood is used because it absorbs moisture and swells up better sealing the bung hole. Just regular birch, not old growth or anything like that. Well, one tour he had happened to have a very activist, very green lady on it and she asked what type of wood was used. He, being the good brewery tour guide he was, was none too sober and told her it was made out of the rare old growth bung wood. And sure enough, come Monday morning, he gets a call from the company president asking why there were eco-protester marching outside the brewery? And why were they screaming to save the Bung Tree? And for the rest of the night the toast rose up, Save the Bung Tree!

Trust me, it's funnier after a couple of beers.

And, for the record, Breweries are some of the greenest industries around. Everything is recycled or reused. From the used grains being dried and sold to local farms as feed, to the excess heat being sold back to the electric companies as power. It don't get much greener. If you care about stuff like that.

There's a reason I prefer micro-breweries products to Great Big Beer Factory. If you're ever in the land of beer and cheese get yourself a six pack of Lakefront's beers and try them. You will not be disappointed.

The fish fry was great. Some of the best fried fresh water fish I've had in a long time and they even had an oompah band playing. Folk's, it couldn't get much better than that.

It was a good day.

Light Blogging ahead.

Expect light bloggging for the next few days. I'm just getting back from an overnight. (It's 3:15 am) I'm out on 2 two day trips back to back. Then I'm off to chase a plane to who knows where for up to 8 days. Fun, fun, fun.

On a side note. I've noticed that I'm blogging more and more about politics and what the cerebrally challenged in D.C. are doing and less and less about flying and shooting. So, I'm going to try to flip that around. As stupid as some of our representatives-in-name-only can be, I'll let that be blogged by better writers than I. Which pretty much means everybody I read.

We'll see how long I last.

I'm back

And in one piece too! As for as charter trips go, this was one of the better ones. We got 24 hours in the DC area and I met up with Old_NFO for a bit of fun. We went to the Sully wing of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. The cool bit is Jim knows a lot of the cool back stories of some of the airplanes there. Like the P-61 Black widow is in there because someone wanted to get married in front of one and he donated $500,000 for the privilege. Of course, the airplane was just rolled in, no restoration work was done on it at all. But there it sits.

We picked up the usual tourista doodads, they're in the mail tomorrow Rita.

After the museum, Jim casually mentions that he wants to go pick up a Winchester lever action that he dropped off for a cleaning at his smiths. We go in, and in a sort of "oh, by the way" way, he says he'd like to pick up a ambi-mag catch too. I'm turn to him and ask, "is that like the Norgon ones I've been looking for?" He looks at me like I'm crazy and says this is the place were the guy invented them.

It was a major DUH moment for me.

Let's see, I want to by Norgon Ambi-Mag Catch... they're made in Virginia... I'm in Virginia... Jim originally told me about them... Nope, I got nothing. Is all this supposed to mean something?

I met the inventor, picked up a ambi-mag catch at a great price and Jim's just chuckling away because apparently I can't put 1 and 1 together to make 2.

In my defense, 1 and 1 can equal 3 for sufficiently large values of 1.

We swung by a gun shop where I picked up more ammo. This time just a brick of CCI .22 ammo.

I then scammed Ambulance Driver's book Life, Death and Everything In Between: A Paramedic's Memoirs and an S.M. Stirling book out of Jim's library. I finished Conquistador this morning. I've got a plan for it too. More on that latter.

Are you sitting down?

North Carolina has Ammo! .45ACP, .223, .380, 9mm! Compared to the ammo dessert that was the DFW area last weekend, woohoo!

And Great Fun Was Had By All

Others have done a much better job of saying what a great party it was at Phlemmy's this last weekend. Friday's meat orgy at Texas De Brazil was a blast. Everything's better when wrapped in bacon. Saturday the party started at 1 and never stopped. I'll admit I went all fanboy when Lawdog and AD showed up. These two won't admit it, but they're a couple of the best story tellers in the blogosphere.


I spent the weekend developing my art.

I call this one "Everything's better with Breda's Pig Candy."

This I'm entitling "Love the Pig Candy"



Do Not Question My Art!

Finally, here's a group photo of everyone at the party:



Sunday, Phlemmy, Matt, Farmgirl, AD, JPG and I went had us some shooty goodness at the range. Here's my impression of Phlemmy:


Let's try the Browning .22
Click-click ping, Click-click ping, Click-click ping, Click-click ping, Click-click ping


Try the S&W Airweight
Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping


Here's a .17HMR
Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping


Shoot at the golf balls
ping-whizz, ping-whizz, ping-whizz, ping-whizz



Try this AR-15 at 115 yards
Bang ping Bang ping Bang ping Bang ping Bang ping


Try to miss the log at 120 yard
Bang ping bang ping bang ping bang ping
Me: No, I said miss...
Phlemmy: I'm trying, I can't



I snapped a pic of her at the range Sunday.



We definately need to do this again.

For the record.

I hate hotel internet. Stupid thing wouldn't let me log in to Gun Nuts: TNG till it was almost over. Excuse me while I go down the the front desk and kick the night manager.

Out of Pocket.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be spending 6 days in Nassau, The Bahamas. Aside from the whole cloud in the silver lining part of no friends and family during the season of friends and family, it ain't half bad. I spent Thanksgiving in the Caymans and now I'll spend Christmas in the Bahamas. Not knowing what the internet connection will by like, I may or may not be able to blog over the next week. I just wanted to wish you all a Merry (or Happy if you're Canandian or British) Christmas while I had the chance. I hope you get what you want from Santa.

Edit: As usual we're up to plan D right now. We're turning right around and coming back to head back out there monday. So, it's two days in the Bahamas instead of 6. Thems the breaks.

Out of Pocket.

I'm getting ready for a 5 day trip starting tomorrow. My job being my job, every now and then we get a "paid" vacation to somewhere nice. This trip sends us to the Caribbean. Yeap, that's right. I get to spend a nice weekends relaxing on the beaches of Grand Cayman with the Caymanites Caymanonians Caymanists Caymantans Islanders.

Apparently, Thanksgiving is a November tradition only in the U.S. or October, if you're Canadian.

So, I'll be soaking up the sun alone while you all are shivering away in your homes with your turkey and stuffing and ham and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies and warm bread and yams with the mini marshmallows (mmmmm....) all the while surrounded by friends, family and loved ones.

Leave it to me to find the cloud in that silver lining.