Sunday and no mail?

[Ric Moore]

On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 10:46 -0500, Matthew Carpenter wrote:
> On Sunday 17 December 2006 14:20, Ken Moffat wrote:
> > Ric Moore wrote:
> > > Mighty quiet! I firefox'd into gmail just to make sure evolution wasn't
> > > broken and not fetching the mail. There was none! Jeeeez... Ric
> >
> > Power still out at my place. Much of the Seattle area is out. Cold at
> > home, so came to daughters house.
> 
> I was in Seattle all last week.  Flew out Thursday night.  My first flight 
> (through Portland) leaving at 7:30p was postponed and eventually cancelled 
> Portland was bad too).  The second flight, leaving at midnight, was postponed 
> until 1am and probably should have been cancelled.  I was prepped and ready 
> for the afterlife.  You know it's windy when the plane feels like you're 
> taxi-ing fast down a bumpy dirt road and you're still at the gate...  First 
> 10 minutes were truly awful, until we got to about 15,000ft.  But hey, I 
> guess I got a direct flight to Chicago, rather than bouncing through Portland 
> first.  Oh well.  I'm safe and live to tell.  If I get out there again, maybe 
> I'll remember to look you up, Ken.

Flying out of Helena Montana was always good for a little excitement.
After living there awhile, you're ready for anything that excites, even
flirting with the "here-after". Nothing bigger there than the little
11-13 seater commuter turbo-prop airplanes with NorthWorst. We called it
Dogpatch Airlines as it started in Butte, then on to Helana, Great Falls
and finally Billings, where you could board a real jet liner to
civilization. Since you have only three seasons, July, August and
Winter, they just land on the snow and fly the plane on the ground. God
help you if they hit the brakes. <cackles> 

We were flying back from Detroit (company planned it so you could see
Mecca where the paycheck came from yearly) in the dead of Winter in a
full blown blizzard. Nothing novel about it, there were blizzards there
routinely. The pilot said there was some kinda "hole" through the
blizzard that he was going to fly into to make it safely to Helena.
Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! What great news to hear! <shudders> 

>From Great Falls back to Helena required flying over the Continental
Divide several times. The pilot switched on the landing lights and Lo
the damn plane was about 5 feet above the tallest cedars. Down in the
darkness there were things running, lit up by the lights. That was
eerie. If we crashed would they be things that would eat you? No
telling. A Badger ate the sidewalls off of one of my company car tires,
just north of Yellowstone, and I just let him. He ran when he finally
bit through and it exploded. Bon Apatite! Well, he pissed on it first,
then ran. Then I had to change the tire while looking over my shoulder
the whole time and avoiding the Badger Blessing. My car trunk stunk
forever.  

So we're descending through exactly what he described as a tunnel in the
driven snow and did one of those Vietnam three point landings. He just
kept flying with the props in reverse and blowing snow like Santa Claus.
We could see through his window and that made my heart thump watching
the nose of the plane drunkenly lurching from side to side as he revved
up on prop then the other to stay straight. They pushed up those landing
stairs, once we finally came to a halt, that had more ice on them than
the runway did and that was fun, too. I lit up about three cigarettes at
once, when I "de-planed" and puffed away with my hair standing up, like
my "Reefer Madness" cousin. It's seventy degrees here today, and I do
not miss the Great Northwest... until the chiggers and ticks start
eating on me in the Spring.  Cheers, Ric
 


-- 
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My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
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