Road Stories: Fly like an Eagle

I love stupid jokes. One of my favorites is from a story told by Ron "Tater Salad" White, recounting a memorable flight on a small plane. At one point, after losing an engine, the nervous flyer beside him asks how far they can get on one engine. White replies, "All the way to the scene of the crash."

The month before I started at SHOWCO, Lynyrd Skynyrd took their last plane ride. Among the passengers on the Convair CV-300 that never made it to Baton Rouge that night were two of my future colleagues. DK more or less walked away with abrasions and some chest injuries. He remembered the crash site quite well, from coming to his senses strapped in his seat with one leg pinned back by a shorn tree stump, through the eternity waiting for someone to find them in the woods, with friends dead or dying nearby. He was back to work in a few months, and while he required a couple of stiff drinks to get on a plane, he would get on a plane. I flew with him several times, and he was steady, if a little hyper-attentive.

JO was less fortunate, though his injuries were only moderately worse than DK's.* He remembered nothing before the hospital, and it was a good long time before I saw him at work. Even then he moved like a ghost, and it was apparent to anyone paying attention that his worst scars were not physical. He didn't fly, and didn't particularly like riding in a car. Or much of anything that required interaction. Whatever wounds he carried took longer to heal than our association lasted.

The Convair CV 240. REO's was not nearly as nice as this one.

Image from here.

REO Speedwagon had a plane, a Convair CV 240** nicknamed the Flying Tuna. Our crew had a bus, and didn't fly on it as a rule, but occasionally they would bring someone along for a creative discussion, an impromptu morning party, or an extended ass-chewing. On one long overnighter, when we knew that the buses would be very late getting to the next gig, one of the sound guys and I flew with them so that we could get the trucks unloaded before the rest of the crew arrived. As you may know, REO was not my favorite tour, so you can imagine how I felt about being locked in a flying deathtrap with them.

Fortunately for me I was exhausted, and slept from the time the motors started until the plane bounced onto the runway at Where the Hell are we Today Municipal Airport. This was not particularly easy since the heat was out in the cabin, and it was like 4 degrees in there, but roadies are world class sleepers and I had no trouble at all. In fact, I slept on road cases backstage during concerts on more than one occasion.

But I digress. The point is that I slept through the flight, and had to hear this story from my colleague the sound guy.*** About halfway through the flight he noticed fluid trailing back along the wing from the engine on his side. Since we had already made countless tasteless jokes about the similarity of this plane to Lynyrd Skynyrd's, he was understandably concerned, and summoned the woman who served as the hostess on the flight.

After he informed her of the growing stain on the wing, she didn't even bend over to look out the window. She just asked him how wide it was.

"What?"

"How wide is the trail?"

"I don't know, about four inches?"

"Oh, don't worry about that. We don't even have to get nervous until it gets to be this wide," she said, as she held up her hands about a foot apart. True story.

Most people assume that we would prefer to fly than ride the bus, but flying was miserable, even on real airliner with multiple jet engines and a professional crew. A bus or a crew van was like a rolling hotel, and you could claim your own tiny space and not have to pack up every day. More importantly, everyone but the driver was asleep by the time the vehicle rolled out of the parking lot, and could stay asleep until we rolled into the next one. Sometimes there was a Denny's stop for breakfast, but only if the drive was not too long. And waking up for that was optional.

If you were flying, you had to take a rent car back to the hotel, sleep, pack up, drive to the airport in time to catch the sunrise flight, turn in the rent cars, drink two Bloody Mary's on the plane, wait for luggage, get more rent cars, go to the next hotel and fight with the manager because it wasn't time to check in yet, and then get to the gig in time to miss breakfast. The time for "sleep" usually ended up being an hour or two.

As unpleasant as flying is becoming these days, maybe buses will make a comeback. If they do, count me in.

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* Both had pretty significant facial lacerations. A plane crash will apparently create a large amount of jagged debris moving at good speed. Or maybe it's more accurate to say it throws a lot of debris in the path of the oncoming victims, who are moving at good speed.

** The CV 300 was  a CV 240 with newer engines. So yes, REO's plane was identical to Skynrd's plane, except slightly crappier.

*** Lighting people and sound guys have always had a friendly rivalry about who's most important to a show. But we sincerely hated them for the fact that the got more sleep than us, and generally had less equipment to hump. And unless sound check ran really long, they got to dinner first. This is part of the reason we insisted on calling them "sound guys" instead of "audio engineers," which they preferred.

Fear itself

Stephen King's house in Bangor, Maine. 

Remember when you moved into your current house or apartment, and how unsettling it was to go to sleep there for the first few nights? Or is that just me? New noises, odd lights, and unfamiliar surroundings all seem to combine to awaken some deep and primitive insecurity that leaves me feeling as exposed and vulnerable as if I were sleeping on the side of the highway.*

This phenomenon was probably more pronounced than usual when we moved into this house a decade ago. It's big, it's old, and it's oddly shaped, so it made lots of noises and I was forever getting lost in it at first. The quietness of the street seems to make the noises all that much louder, and the streetlight at the foot of our driveway throws odd shadows through the front windows. Frankly, it was terrifying.

Of course, we accommodate quickly, so the anxiety faded in a few days, and now eleven years later I feel more secure in our old boomerang-shaped house than just about anywhere else in the world. At least until two nights ago.

That was when Biscuit woke me around 3:30 AM saying that someone had just pounded loudly on our front door. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of waking to a sudden loud or frightening noise, but it will get your heart going nicely. We wandered the house, peeking furtively out of windows, finding neither prowler nor any indication of anything unusual. We both eventually slept a little more, but it made for a long night and a long next day.

Maybe she dreamed the noise. Maybe not. The fact that I didn't hear it doesn't mean much. I once slept through a tree falling on my house.** The part that is interesting to me is how quickly that first night feeling can return, and our safest refuge once again seem as insubstantial as a house made of straw.

Our monkey brains are excellent at papering over our more primitive systems, so by the next night all was back to normal, and I once again slept the sleep of the dead. Though I'm still a little more attuned to the odd creak or shuffle.

Stephen King once said that what really frightened him was the thought of an unexpected hand closing over his as he fumbled for the light switch in the dark. I think I know exactly what he means.

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* I've slept on the side of the highway. I don't recommend it.

** True story. Though in my defense, it wasn't a really big tree.

Airline Wars 2: The Royal (Dutch) Treatment

The day after our hellish American overnighter from Honolulu, we set out across the opposite ocean for Europe. After an hour and a half commuter flight to Atlanta, dinner at Arby's, and killing some time marveling at how big a bag of M&M's one could purchase at the Duty Free, we reported for our 10:45 pm KLM flight to Amsterdam.

The difference between KLM and American was apparent from the first second we saw the flight crew. All twelve or fourteen of them showed up as a group, as confident and purposeful in their powder blue raiments as if they were headed out to nuke a rogue comet. You could almost hear the theme music playing as they strode up the concourse, nodded to the swooning gate agents, and disappeared down the jetway.

The music stopped suddenly with that scratching record sound when we started to board, and my boarding pass triggered the little red light that said I wouldn't be sitting in seat 41G with Biscuit after all. We had booked the flight with Delta, and one problem with these international partnership arrangements seems to be that the reservation systems don't work together worth a damn. Fortunately, Biscuit batted the baby blues at the young man sitting in my former seat and he agreed to swap with me. The music was back on, especially when the doors closed and we realized that there was no one between us in our little cluster of three seats.

The economy seats in the Boeing 777 were not what I would call spacious, but there was three inches or so between my knees and the seat in front of me, which was three inches more than I had on the American 767. And the sides of the headrests could be pulled out to keep one's head from rolling side to side when trying to sleep. There was a pillow and blanket waiting in each seat when we got on the plane, and before the doors closed, the flight attendants distributed clip-on headphones to everyone for use with the video system in the seat back in front of us. There was a remote control embedded in each armrest, and after the safety briefing they explained how to use the remotes to watch movies or television, or play games. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Hall Pass, as well as bits and pieces of a couple of other things, just to see if I would like them. This kept me busy and entertained for well over half the flight. Between movies I would tune in to the "where are we and how fast are we going" channel, which was fun and educational.

Just after we took off, and before each of the two hot meals we were served, the flight attendants distributed hot towels for a quick wipe-down of any road grime. Granted, the towels were paper, and not the scrubby little washcloths I remember from JAL back in the day, but it was still a welcome treat. Dinner was a sort of beef stew or chicken medallions, with veggies, bread, butter, crackers, cheese, and dessert. It was airline food, but some of the best airline food I've had in a while. Soft drinks, beer and wine were all complimentary. The beer was Heineken and the wine came in a carton, but it was still free.

Dinner was followed by a course of coffee or tea and biscuits (cookies to us Americans). The flight attendants retired after all the rubbish was collected, but quietly cruised the aisles every half hour until breakfast with trays of water, juice, and soft drinks. There was also a collection of snacks at each galley to which peckish passengers could help themselves. I snagged some cookies and a couple of little Twix bars on my mid-flight trip to the lavatory. As you might expect by now, one on one encounters with the flight attendants elicited expressions of helpful curiosity, in contrast to the hostile glances I received two nights before.

About an hour and a half before we landed, the crew started the process of waking us with another round of hot towels and beverage service. Hot breakfast came next, followed by more coffee, tea, and biscuits.  The little cookies were these awesome cinnamon shortbread numbers like you get on domestic flights sometimes, but with two of them stuck together with caramel. I liked them a lot. One smooth landing and short taxi later, we deplaned in Amsterdam, tired but amazed at how different two flights could feel.

KLM showed us that they didn't just rock the transatlantic flights when we took a 737 to Oslo a couple of hours later. They fed us each two sandwiches for lunch, as well as the same two rounds of beverage service and tea in a little less than two hours. And narrated the whole thing in three languages. I've been trying to figure out ever since this flight how I can get more of my domestic trips to connect through Schiphol airport.

Next Time: Delta tries to keep up

Dream police

Last night I had a dream, and I was in it, and you were in it with me. And everyone that you know, and everyone that I know was in my dream. I saw a vampire, I saw a ghost, and everybody scared me, but you scared me the most. -- Randy Newman

I had a very disturbing dream last night. It doesn't really matter what it was about. It was one of those that seems like it goes on forever, and there are characters and a plot and all sorts of stuff happens. It was so clear in my mind when I awoke that it took me a minute or so to determine that it was, in fact, a dream. It took much longer to convince myself that this was the first time I had dreamed this, that it wasn't building on a series of previous episodes, and that the whole thing had probably taken less time then I thought.

When I was a small child, between the ages of about four and seven, I had a recurring nightmare. Unlike most of my dreams before or since, this one was as clear as watching TV. I could draw the setting from memory, even now. I know this, because I just did.

Somewhere between then and adulthood, my fears either subsided or submerged, because I have had only a handful of nightmares since, and this dream is the first to wake me in years. I'm a heavy sleeper and a slow waker, so I rarely remember dreaming at all, much less what I was dreaming about.

And when I do remember a dream? I tend to let it drift away with the fog that fills my head when I awaken.  I will try to hang on to a sex dream every now and then, but that's really more about trying to stay asleep until it's over. Or hang onto the feeling of warmth and love that tends to ride along. Otherwise, dreams belong to the night, and I find that trying to remember the details just ends up sticking me with some emotion I didn't earn. I'm starting to think every dream is a manifestation of some emotion.

I used to believe that dreams were significant, a window into our deepest thoughts and feelings. And there is still probably a little of that. But the older I get, and the more I learn about how minds work, the more I think they are primarily the semi-random artifacts of nightly cleanup. Sort of like the pile of stuff you see at a garage sale. Some is significant, but most is just old crap that no one ever needed. Poor decisions, unbidden gifts, articles left behind by guests and family.

My first wife used to wake up mad at me for things I had done (or more often failed to do) in her dreams. I mean, she would be really angry. And it would sometimes take a day or two to get past it. I think I prefer forgetting, and starting every day with a clean slate. Maybe that's why I usually wake up happy.

Nerdvana (Part 2)

I think we left our story after the launch of Endeavour was scrubbed on Super Bowl Sunday morning, and the wife and I had suffered the drive from Hell back to our hotel. My head hit the pillow about 8:00 am, and I was aware of nothing until almost noon. We had scheduled an extra day in our trip because of the shuttle's 70% scrub rate, so we had one more chance to see a launch. The next attempt was scheduled for 4:15 Monday morning. Because of weather and other events at Cape Canaveral, we knew this would be the last attempt for a while.

Once we were convinced that we were not going to sleep anymore, we got ready and went to meet an old colleague of the wife's who works at Patrick AFB. After a pleasant visit, and a "just what the doctor ordered" breakfast at Breakfast at Lilly's in Satellite Beach, we decided we might be able to squeeze in a one hour nap before the Super Bowl. In what we have come to think of as typical JD style, my friend had invited us to watch the game at his home, despite the fact that he didn't really know us, they had a house full of company, and they were both going to have to be up all night for the second night in a row. Their hospitality was over the top (including a place for another quick nap after the game), we had a great time, and of course the game was awesome. I also had the unusual experience of watching a Super Bowl sober, knowing that we had another long night ahead.

Many of the actual VIP's had gone home after the previous night's scrub, so JD and his wife had a chance to give us a different experience than we had the night before. We had the great good fortune of riding with JD, whose pre-launch ritual is to ride around the base talking to people and watching some of the other prelaunch rituals. Our first stop was what he calls the Astro-parade, where the astronauts get in their big Airstream van and ride to the launch pad.  There is something cool and sort of "Forest Gumpish" about witnessing things in person that we have seen all our lives on TV. The astronaut van was cool like that.

The next stop was the airstrip, where we watched a couple of other astronauts take off in a T-38 on the pre-launch weather flight. This is also where the shuttles that have to be piggy-backed in get unstacked from the top of their 747 carrier, so we got to see the tower where that happens.

After riding around some more until we were well and truly disoriented, and had talked to approximately every person standing watch somewhere at Kennedy Space Center, we returned to the Saturn V center to await the next attempt. The weather had been cloudy all day, and we were not optimistic. Fortunately, our naps were holding up, so we were not nearly so tired as the night before.

About an hour before launch, the weather started to clear. It was not crystal clear by launch time, but apparently clear enough. After listening to the traditional roll call of department heads and "go" responses, we heard the Director say, "You are go to launch Endeavour." When the message was relayed to the crew, you could hear the excitement in their voices. A spontaneous cheer went up from the crowd at Banana Creek, which I'm sure was echoed at all the other viewing sites.

The launch itself was magical. The shuttle was behind the launch platform from our perspective, so the first thing we saw was a tremendous brightness when the main engines started. It got even brighter when the solid rocket boosters lit. They tell me it's brighter than the sun, and I don't doubt it. The shuttle came into view about a second later. If you hold your fingers at arm's length about an inch or so apart, that's the apparent size of the shuttle from three miles away. It was small, but clearly visible. I can't describe the sight of that little thing riding an enormous column of flame. It's just one of those things you have to see to understand. The sound hit us about fifteen seconds later, and just kept getting louder. I found I was quietly repeating the word "go" under my breath.

A shuttle launch doesn't even begin to compete with the best that nature can do, but it is impressive, especially if you engage your brain a little. When I heard, "Endeavour is now traveling 6000 miles per hour, altitude 65 miles and 200 miles downrange," it was really hard to reconcile with the fact that I could still clearly see the glow from the main engines. It really was a special moment, and one I'm glad I got to experience.

JD got us through the crowd and back to his home in no time, and we were in our hotel by 5:30. After a few hours sleep, we started the long drive home, exhausted but happy. The wife commented on the drive home that she couldn't think of a better way to spend a weekend, or better people to spend it with. I couldn't agree more.

Nerdvana (Part 1)

It has been a dream of mine to watch a manned rocket launch since I watched the Gemini and Apollo missions on TV as a kid, but it seemed like a dream that was destined to go unfulfilled. Not that I couldn't make it happen. It just seemed like there was never a good time, and they usually don't go off on time, and it's crowded, and on and on and all the reasons we use for putting off the things that we will someday wish we had done.

That's how it stayed until a few months ago, when I got back in touch with my old high school friend JD. After a distinguished military career, JD landed a high-ranking position at Kennedy Space Center, and he invited us down to watch a launch of the space shuttle. Realizing that this was likely to be my last chance to see a big launch, I jumped at the opportunity. Endeavour was scheduled to lift off Super Bowl Sunday at 4:35 am, carrying the Tranquility module (and the Colbert treadmill) to the International Space Station. We decided to drive down instead of trying to fly, mostly for the flexibility, and the ability to carry whatever the hell we wanted without paying for a bunch of checked bags. It's about a twelve hour drive from here, not much further than a trip to see the in-laws.

JD called a few days before the trip to talk over the plans, and invited us to a KSC reception on Friday night. Knowing that it would be close on timing, we left the house early, dressed in our party clothes. We would have made it on time, too. I realized the flaw in our plan when we passed the sign that said "Now Entering Eastern Time Zone." We were going to lose an hour that was not accounted for in our schedule. Luckily, my car is capable of going faster than it had been going.  We were almost back on track when we hit a ginormous traffic jam in Gainesville, involving three separate accidents on I-95.

Anyway, we got to the reception about a half an hour late, but didn't really miss anything. We located JD, met his wife and her cousins, and proceeded to shake off some of the road dust. Within about 15 minutes I had a chance to see JD standing at the front of the room with the Director of KSC and the Director of NASA talking about what a great asset he was.  This was when I first realized that my friend might not be just another NASA employee. About 10:00 we realized we had been up for about twenty hours in a row, made our apologies and drove the half hour to our hotel.

After a decent night's sleep, we had a quick breakfast and made the hour drive to the KSC Visitor's Center. We had a couple of hours to kill before the VIP* briefing, so we toured the exhibits and rode the shuttle launch simulator, which I have to admit is pretty cool. JD delivered the first third of the briefing, and I was impressed. His particular blend of drive, leadership, humor and love of people seem to fit his new life perfectly, and spending time with him was at least as much fun for me as the rest of the trip.  While JD was always (mostly) serious and dedicated about doing something real with his life, he was not really a star at much of anything in our high school, and I think some people there would be surprised that he has matured into a proverbial "leader of men." It was fun to see him work a room of 400 people with the skill of a politician, but without the lying. I could definitely see a political career in his future. I know I would vote for him.

We had a few minutes after the briefing before they closed the launchpad, so we hopped into JD's car and hauled ass out to see the shuttle. While we weren't exactly standing on the gantry, we were much closer than I had imagined we would get. I could clearly see "Endeavour" printed on the side of the orbiter. We only had about five minutes to gawk and take pictures, but it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We drove past one of the big crawlers on the way out to the pad, which was also pretty cool.

Knowing that sleep would be hard to come by from here on out, we drove back to the hotel for a nap. We slept for about an hour, and spent two more lying in bed wishing we were sleeping. We had a light dinner and headed back to KSC about 10 pm.

The next few hours were the hardest of the trip. We had been standing or walking for much of the day, and it was getting to be past our bedtime. We wandered the Visitor's Center, watched the IMAX movie, shopped for warmer clothes and looked for a place to sit until it was time to queue for the bus. We stood in line for about an hour for the relatively quick trip to the Saturn V Center at Banana Creek, where we would watch the launch. We arrived with about two hours to kill until launch time.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the Saturn V building, though I don't think any shot I could take would do justice to the scale of the building, or the giant rocket suspended overhead. I primarily would like pictures of all the exhausted people wandering around or slumped over or lying on any available surface, so I could have some way to remember how tired we were. It looked like an airport after everyone has been snowed in for a couple of days.

The weather was so clear that I wished for my telescope when we first got to Banana Creek, but within an hour a low overcast had moved in and the launch was in jeopardy. We listened as launch control changed the launch status from 80% go, to 60%, to 30%, to red, back to green, back to red, green and red again. They scrubbed the launch a little after 4:20 am. By that time we were just happy to be able to get back on the bus for a short nap.

The drive back to the hotel was a nightmare. It was fairly easy to get out of the VIP parking lot, and we got away from KSC with no real trouble. About a mile and a half later we hit a solid line of cars that was barely moving. We spent almost two hours traversing the next two miles, and it was nearing 8:00 when we pulled into the parking lot of our hotel. Trying to stay awake, alert and engaged on the drive home reminded me of my worst days on the road, and it took all the will I could muster not to drift off to sleep.

This turned out to be the low point of the trip, and things steadily improved from this point. But thinking of that Sunday morning drive has made me too tired to continue. I will have to take up the second half of the trip later.

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*There are around 4000 VIP tickets for a given shuttle launch. The experience is definitely superior to what you can buy tickets for on the Internet, but it's not exactly a night in the Lincoln bedroom.