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Tires, Horses, Lost Dogs, Used Trucks, and a Garage Project

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Or, how I tired myself out on a Saturday.

Yesterday was one of those days when you’re just so darn busy doing things that time goes by in a blur, ending in exhaustion and a good night’s sleep.

I woke as usual before 6 AM. I made coffee for me and a scrambled egg for Alex the Bird. Then I settled down at the kitchen table with a laptop to write up my “Feels So Good” blog entry. Mike and Jack the dog came down and had breakfast. Later, I cleaned the remains of the previous day from Alex’s cage, set him up with food and water for the day, and locked him in.

A typical morning.

Taking Out the Tires

Mike had gotten new tires for his new used car. He bought the car a month or so ago and it came with fancy rims and low-profile tires. Those rims and tires really aren’t practical for life on the edge of nowhere, especially when the last mile of road to the house is unpaved. So he bought new rims and tires on eBay. They’d arrived the day before and he had a Saturday morning appointment to get them put on his car. Since he couldn’t take them in his car, I had to drive them over to Big O in his pickup. We did that at about 8:30 AM.

It was a beautiful morning. It had rained steadily most of the day before, so everything was wet. The sky was mostly clear and the sun shined down on all the water droplets hanging from the trees, making everything sparkle. But what was even more interesting was that as the sun heated the moist ground, it was creating thin trails of mist in the washes and wispy low clouds in the low mountains around town. Wow.

Horseback Riding

I dropped the tires off and took the truck back home. My friend Janet called along the way. She’s visiting the area from Colorado, where she now lives. She used to live in Wickenburg and then in Congress, which is one town north of Wickenburg, but like so many of our friends, she moved away in search of a place better matched to her lifestyle. She’s an artist who paints original artwork on turkey feathers. While that might sound tacky, it really isn’t. You can see some of her work on her Web site and in a number of galleries and gift shops throughout the southwest.

Janet has three horses. Although they were in Wickenburg for a few weeks, her husband took them home when he returned a week or so ago. Janet’s here for some more business and to help out a friend before she heads home. She’s got one of their two dogs with them, Maggie, a part hound dog who looks a lot like the dog from The Simpson’s, but brownish red. Janet and I planned to go horseback riding the day before, but weather had cancelled that plan. With nothing else scheduled that morning, we figured we’d try again.

I’d been home less than a half hour when she showed up with Maggie. I showed her my baby chicks — she raises turkeys — and we went down to fetch the horses. We had them both saddled up and ready to go a while later. She’d be riding Jake, Mike’s horse. I’d be riding Cherokee.

By this time, we’d attracted the attention of our neighbor’s dogs, Trixie and the 6-month-old Charlotte. Charlotte had gone for her first ever ride with us about two weeks before and other than getting lost once for about 10 minutes, she did fine. Trixie always follows us. Jack, of course, lives to go out on the trail. And we had Maggie, too. So that was four dogs with two horseback riders.

The hills around our home were green with new grass and really pretty. We don’t get much rain in the desert so we don’t have much green anything. When it does rain, the grass grows quickly, seizing life to produce seed for the next generation in record time. The green stuff out there was mostly about four inches long and looked like a carpet. It would be nice to ride through all that green.

We headed out up the hill to our house and down the trail beside my neighbor’s property into the state land. Cherokee started acting up right away and we had to do a little rodeo routine before he agreed to follow Jake down the trail. Cherokee is lazy and, for some reason, he thinks he can get away with crap like that with me. He tries half heartedly to throw me off but I hang on, give him a good slap on the side of his neck, and we get back to the business at hand. Cherokee is not the kind of horse you put a “dude” on.

We took a trail that headed out toward the golf course at Rancho de los Caballeros, then way back out into the desert. The dogs ran around, chasing rabbits and each other, but always coming back within sight within a few minutes. Janet and I chatted about various things, moving along at a moderate pace along the trails. Janet was leading and each time she came to an intersection, I’d call out “left” or “right” to guide us along the way.

We were at the base of the trail that climbed to the top of a mountain ridge — we call it the “Ridge Trail” — when we realized that Maggie was missing. Janet said she often catches the scent of another animal and takes off after it but she’s usually back within fifteen minutes or so. We climbed the trail and stopped at the top to admire the view (which is spectacular), give the horses a rest and a chance to nibble at the grass, and do a dog head count. Maggie was still missing.

Janet was sure she’d catch up to us, so after about ten minutes, we continued on our way. We took a trail down the back side of the ridge that wound through a wide canyon — we call that one “Deer Valley” because we often see deer there. That dumped us out at a big trail intersection and I chose another trail that would bring us home. Our total ride was only about 4 miles, but I thought that was enough for Charlotte.

Maggie was still missing.

Search for the Missing Dog

She was also missing when we got back to my house. By that time, Janet was worried. I told he we’d take the Jeep out to Los Caballeros, as close as we could get to the point we’d last seen Maggie. I gave her every indication of confidence that we’d find Maggie. I felt confident, but I don’t know why. There were thousands of acres of empty desert out there.

We unsaddled, brushed out the horses, and dropped them off in their lower corral. We watched them do some synchronized rolling in the sand, then walked back up to the house to check with Mike about Maggie. No, she hadn’t shown up. I called Los Cab and left a message at the wrangler’s office. We thought there was a possibility that Maggie might have hooked up with other horseback riders out there and followed them back to the ranch.

We climbed into the Jeep and headed out. The ranch was our first stop. Two people had just come in for a ride and were brushing off their mules. No, they hadn’t seen a dog out there. We headed out to the skeet shooting range, which is one of the points accessible by car that was close to the trail we’d been on. Not that close, obviously, but within a half mile. There was no one there, so I parked and we got out. We called and whistled.

Janet caught sight of two riders out in the distance. For some reason, they kept stopping on the trail. Janet thought that maybe Maggie was with them, but we couldn’t see that far (or low) and they were well out of earshot.

We got back into the Jeep and after a few wrong turns, made our way to a little junkyard I’ve seen from the air a few times. I’d actually ridden through it years ago on my first horse and I knew it was pretty darn close to the bottom of the Ridge Trail’s climb. I drove through it, as far as I could before the two-track road ended. Then we parked and got out. We climbed a nearby hill and saw the trail we’d been on right on the other side of a fence. The barbed wire was hanging low in one spot and I gingerly stepped over it to get a better view out toward the wash.

We called and whistled and called. At this point, I started realizing the futility of the situation. If the dog was out there and she heard us, our voices and whistles would be echoing off all the hills around her. How would she know which way to go?

I was on my cell phone, calling the local police to see if the dog catcher had picked up a dog when I caught sight of something moving in the distance. The color was right. It was Maggie, running toward us. I told Janet I saw her, then told the policeman who’d answered the phone why I’d called and that the dog had been found. By the time I hung up, Maggie was with us.

We walked back to the Jeep where I had a dog dish and some water. Maggie seemed glad to have it. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that she’d been away from us for close to two hours. We loaded her into the Jeep and went home.

The Garage Project, Part I

Mike was already working on the project we were supposed to be doing that day: cleaning out half the garage and putting in shelves to neatly store our accumulated crap. (Who’s law is it that says your collection of junk will always expand to fill the available space to store it?) He was very surprised to see us return with Maggie. He stopped what he was doing — pulling junk out of the garage and piling it on the driveway — and kept us company while we ate lunch. Then Janet and Maggie left and we had no excuse not to get back to work.

Well, we actually did have an excuse. Mike had called the owner of a pickup truck for sale in town. The truck, a 1994 Ford with 4WD and an extended cab, was exactly what we wanted to get as a spare truck we can leave at Howard Mesa. The price was within range. Just as we’d pulled all our junk out of the garage, the owner called, ready to meet with us. So we climbed in Mike’s pickup and headed into town. We drove the truck, agreed that it needed a new transmission, and told the owner we’d have our mechanic call him later in the week. Then, after two quick stops at the local Alco store, we went home and got back to work.

Mike had the idea of setting up a camera to do a timelapse movie of our setup. This was a great idea and easy enough. I brought my MacBook Pro out, set up EvoCam software to take a shot every minute and turn it into a movie, and pointed the camera at the blank wall where the shelves would go. Then we got to work.

The shelves were an Ikea product with a typically cryptic name. We’d used them before, in our house in New Jersey, and Mike had bought some new pieces so we’d have enough to cover the wall. What we discovered is that Ikea doesn’t make these things as heavy-duty as they used to. The wood was thinner throughout. Even the bolts were smaller. But they were still sturdy, and went up quickly, despite interruptions by my neighbor’s kids and numerous dogs.

Here’s the video:

Day’s End

It was pretty much dark by the time we finished. Since the forecast didn’t call for any rain, we just left most everything outside, closed the garage door, and came in for supper.

Mike grilled up some elk hamburgers, which tasted excellent with American cheese on them. With that, we had the ratatouille he’d cooked up earlier in the day. We stowed the dishes in the dishwasher and headed upstairs.

I was dead asleep by 8 PM.

Moments to Remember

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A drive through the desert on a starlit night.

Ever have one of those moments you wish you could remember for the rest of your life? I’m not talking about simple recall here. I’m talking about remembering with the detail you need to relive the experience in your mind.

I had one of those moments [again] on my way home from Phoenix last night. I’d driven down in the afternoon to pick up my husband, Mike, who had driven his Honda down that morning to pass it on it its new owners. I took my Honda S2000, which is a convertible, and because the weather was so perfect yesterday, I had the top down. After dealing with traffic on the afternoon drive through Phoenix, I finally connected with Mike on Chandler Avenue (or it is Boulevard?) in Ahwatukee. From there, we headed back into Phoenix, to one of our favorite restaurants: Tarbell’s on 32nd Street (I think) and Camelback. After a wonderful meal full of interesting flavors and textures, presented with perfect service, we climbed back into the Honda and headed northwest for home.

Tarbell’s is probably about 60 miles from Wickenburg. We took Camelback west to the 51, followed that north to the 101, and took that west to the 17. Then north to Carefree Highway and west to Grand Avenue and northwest to Wickenburg. I had my iPod plugged in, playing just below distortion volume on my Honda’s very disappointing stereo system. (The 2003 model year did not include speakers behind the headrests; what were they thinking?) I’m used to the less than satisfactory sound quality competing with road and wind noise, so I enjoyed the classic rock — mostly 70s and 80s — that I made Mike listen to. (The rule is, the driver chooses the music.)

The drive north on the 51 at night is always interesting. On most nights, you can see the landing lights of the jets on their way in from the north to Sky Harbor Airport just southeast of Phoenix’s downtown area. Last time I took this route home, I’d spotted at least eight aircraft, lined up into the distance. But last night, there were never more than four.

We stopped for gas at Carefree Highway — last gas for about 30 miles. My Honda gets between 25 and 30 miles per gallon, depending on how I drive. Because I don’t drive it very often, I tend to drive in a way that gets me lower mileage. (Hey, girls just wanna have fun, right?) But on a long highway drive, if I keep my speed down near the speed limit, I can go far more than 300 miles on a 13-gallon tank of gas.

Then came the part of the trip I’d like to store in my brain for periodic detailed recall: the drive west on Carefree Highway. It was about 7:30 PM, and even though it was a Friday night and Carefree Highway is a favored route for the Phoenix to Las Vegas crowd, there weren’t many people on the road. Once I passed the new Game and Fish Building (with its deplorable new traffic light) and rounded the bend at Lake Pleasant Road, I brought the car up to speed, set the cruise control, and drove while classic rock blared out into the night.

It was dark out there — it usually is at night — and a slim crescent moon hung in the sky, bright side down. I say “bright side” because the sky was so dark, you could clearly see the entire moon, even though most of it wasn’t illuminated. The crescent hung there in front of us, surrounded by stars, sinking ever lower into the sky. Above us, the sky was black as — well, black as night, to use an appropriate cliche. There were more stars than a city dweller could imagine; so many, in fact, that it was difficult to pick out the standard patterns of the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, and the Pleiades among them. And being that the sky was perfectly cloudless, those stars stretched in every direction.

What I should have done was pull over to a safe spot off the road, killed the headlights, and spent some time just looking up. Because frankly, when you’re driving 65+ miles per hour on a two-lane road in the middle of the desert at night, you really can’t steal too many glances at what’s directly above you. What’s in front of you is far more important to monitor.

Yes, it was cold — probably in the low 50s. Although the top was down, Mike had his window up and the heat was on. And yes, I hate the cold. But the cold was part of the entire experience: dark night, fun car, open roof, loud music, crescent moon, countless stars, cold wind.

The moon dipped behind a hill as we got onto Grand Avenue and drove the last ten miles to Wickenburg. In town, the carnival at the Community Center offered a bright contrast to the otherwise dark night. Town was surprisingly empty at 8 PM on Wickenburg’s big Friday night of the year.

I drove home, coming down from the kind of high you can only get from having real fun.

Chasing Desert Racers

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At the Best in the Desert/BlueWater Parker 425.

I spent this past Saturday doing one of the things I really love to do: chasing racecars with a helicopter.

The venue was the Best in the Desert Racing Association’s BlueWater Resort & Casino Parker 425, which featured highly modified trucks, cars, and buggies racing on a 140+ mile dirt track through the desert. My client was a television producer who videos these events from multiple cameras and turns them in TV shows. For this event, they had a total of 15 cameras, includibut thingsng one in my helicopter and several in the trucks out on the course.

I flew the helicopter with the cameraman and my husband, Mike, working as a spotter, on board. The cameraman sat behind me with his door off. Mike sat beside me.

We started before dawn at the Parker Airport. I started up at 7 sharp and was warmed up and ready to fly by 7:15. The police escort was leading the 300+ participant vehicles to the starting line on Route 95 in downtown Parker when we began circling about 500 feet overhead. The cameraman had a list of 15 targets he needed to video. The first one was the 15th truck in line at the start. Racers were released 30 seconds apart. When our first target was released, the fun began.

Desert Racing TruckI chased the car down the paved road and onto the dirt track, descending as I left the downtown area. Soon, we were racing beside it just 70 feet up on the long straightaway that heads due east. Mike kept an eye out for wires, calling them out as he saw them. My attention was split between the truck, the wires, and the track in front of me. I worked the cyclic and collective hard, climbing, descending, slowing, speeding up. Both arms and legs worked automatically to make the helicopter do what I needed it to do. Spectators below me went by in a blur. The track made a 90 degree turn to the left and I paused at the inside of the curve just long enough to pivot so the cameraman could keep the camera on the target. Then down the short straightaway to the edge of a steep drop with high wires on one side. The truck descended the hill while I climbed over the wires. I met the truck on the other side and we raced together through a tree-filled dry wash.

“Okay, peel off,” the cameraman instructed.

I turned away from the target and followed the road back. Now we had to find the next target. All we had were numbers — we didn’t know much about how the vehicle looked, other than what class it was in. I had to fly low enough to see them. The first one of us to see a number, called it out. We got the next target halfway back to town. I lowered the collective to slow down and made a sharp 180 degree turn. Then I was on that truck, following it to the wires and into the wash.

We repeated this process about seven or eight times, each time picking up our target a little farther away on the track and ending a little farther down the track. I got to know exactly where all the wires were. Sometimes, I’d look down in time to see a spectator wave up at us or snap a photo. I think there were more photos taken of us that day than of any one racer.

This went on for over an hour.

Then, suddenly we could no longer find any of the targets we needed to video. That started a search up and down the track, flying low enough to read the numbers. Every once in a while, the cameraman would pick out a “trophy truck” or a vehicle driven by someone well-known, and ask me to follow it. I’d follow as closely as I dared, putting the cameraman close to the action. Inside the helicopter, through our noise-reduced headsets, we could sometimes hear the engines of the racers below us or the sirens of the vehicles preparing to pass. We watched one driver slip off the track and race along beside it, scattering spectators who had been standing too close. We shot some video of a modified Hummer flying through the air after a particularly bad bump.

I suppose I should mention here that I wasn’t the only helicopter at the event. There were at least five others: 2 R44s, an Astar, a Eurocopter, and a Bell Jet Ranger. In most cases, they’d been hired to follow a specific race vehicle or team. Once they left the area, they didn’t come back for a while. So keeping an eye out for aircraft wasn’t a serious issue.

After two hours, we headed back to the airport. I shut down and placed a fuel order. Then we drove over to the BlueWater Casino for breakfast. The cameraman the cameraman met with some of the folks he works with to see how many vehicles on his list were still in the race. Each vehicle had a transponder and satellite communications device so it could be tracked from headquarters at the Casino. According to the cameraman, fewer than 50% of the vehicles finish the race. Most of them break. And if you saw the track, you’d understand why.

With an updated list, we headed out again just before noon. We were expecting one of the target vehicles in the pit area, so we stayed nearby. There was a “serpentine” area just east of the airport, with winding, bumpy tracks in a big field surrounded by spectators. I think there was about 5 miles of road there, and it was so twisty that even from the air, I had trouble figuring out the route. We spent about 15 minutes there, filming the action of vehicles skidding around the sandy curves, throwing dust high up into the air. At some point, I realized that I was probably putting on a better show for the spectators than the cars and trucks were.

We spotted a target vehicle as he was leaving the pits and took off after him. More chasing at low level, avoiding wires, slowing when the truck slowed, speeding up when it speeded up. We peeled off and continued down the track, looking for more targets. That’s when we started seeing the breakdowns. Trucks and cars and buggies on the side of the road with parts peeled off of them and drivers bent over their innards. One team was changing a tire. Another was taking the hood off the car. We saw a fender alongside the track. Later, we saw a prone driver with his companion performing CPR. (The rumor I heard was the driver suffered a heart attack or stroke while driving and died on the race course. I have not been able to confirm this yet.)

Desperate to find one last vehicle on the cameraman’s list and looking for exciting footage, we followed the entire 140-mile course. It stretched from Parker through the empty desert as far east as Cunningham Pass (north of Wenden) and around Planet Peak (near the Bill Williams River) to the northwest. This much-reduced map gives you an idea of the distance — I’ve highlighted the track in light red so it’s easier to see.

Parker 425 Map

Much of the course was pretty boring from my point of view — lots of long, straight stretches. In one area, the road ran alongside a set of high tension power lines, making it tough to get low enough to see car numbers. But things got interesting on the last 4 or so miles, when the track headed into the mountains south of the Bill Williams River. The cameraman got some excellent footage of a car winding its way down a narrow canyon. I had to stay high — there wasn’t enough room for me to fly alongside it. But when the canyon opened, I dropped down so he could get some close-up shots.

After trying a few more times to find the missing buggy — we were in touch by radio with the satellite tracking people — we headed back to the airport and I shut down.

We’d flown a total of 5.0 hours. The sky had clouded up and lighting wasn’t as good as it had been earlier in the day. Although we’d planned a third flight for the finishers, the cameraman. The cameraman decided to skip it.

It had been a great day. Not only did I do a lot of flying, but it was the kind of flying I really love to do — challenging, exciting, and with a goal other than going from point A to point B.

Why can’t all my gigs be like this one?

Note: If you were at the 2008 Parker 425 in February and have photos or video footage of a plain red helicopter (no stripe) flying with the cars, please let me know. I’d love to show them off with this post or elsewhere on this site.

February 7, 2008 Update: I added a photo Mike took during the flight to give a better idea of what was going on at Parker.

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

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Oh, so true.

I just got these from my brother-in-law. If anyone out there knows the original source of these pearls of wisdom, please pass that information along so I can properly credit him/her.

My favorite: the first one.

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

  1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
  2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
  3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
  4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
  5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
  6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.
  7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.
  8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
  9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
  10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Flying with Cars, Take 2

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Another gig at the Proving Grounds.

I spent yesterday afternoon sweating my brains out, flying in formation with cars.

I’d been hired once again to take a film crew around a proving ground tracks to get some footage for a internal marketing video. Last time, there had been one car. This time there were two. Last time it had been in September. This time, it was July.

The Flight Down

Mike came with me from Wickenburg. We topped off the tanks at the local airport here and took all four doors off. We’d filled a cooler with ice and bottled water and Gatorade to bring along. I also had a hand-held radio for Mike so he could listen in while we were flying. The flight from Wickenburg took about 50 minutes. It was hot — about 110°F/42°C — and even the wind through the open doorways did nothing to cool us. I had a small spray bottle and would douse my loose-fitting cotton shirt down with water as I flew. 2 minutes later, it would be completely dry again.

It was also bumpy. The desert, baked throughout the day by the broiling sun was sending waves of thermals straight up. But a 10 to 20 knot wind from the southwest was breaking all that up. As a result, the flight was like riding on a poorly maintained road with big, fat, soft tires. Bumpy but seldom jarringly so. Someone prone to motion sickness probably would have puked.

There were also dust devils: towering updrafts of swirling dust blown laterally across the desert floor. At any one time, looking out at the open desert, we could see at least two dozen of the damn things, some of them at least 500 feet tall. We were flying at about 500 feet above the ground, so dodging them became part of our flight path. If it looked like we’d hit one, I’d alter course to pass to the west behind it. This probably added a few minutes to the flight, but I wasn’t the least bit interested in getting very close to any of them.

By the time we got to the proving ground and landed on a piece of road where everyone waited, I was tired and red hot — literally! — my face was completely flushed — and partially dehydrated. It was a good thing we had an hour to kill before the film crew would be ready. I spent it drinking water and Gatorade in the air conditioned comfort of the facility’s lunch room.

The Film Crew

The film crew consisted of the same director and photographer as last time. The photographer had a big, professional video camera that he sat on his shoulder as he taped the action. The camera was attached by a cable to a small monitor that the director could hold in his hands during the flight.

The photographer was strapped in not only with a seat belt by with a rope that tied the harness he wore to the bar between the two front seats in the helicopter. In addition, they rigged up a come-along strap on the helicopter’s frame between the left and right side of the helicopter and had the camera attached to that by two separate straps. We clearly would not be dropping either the photographer or camera out of the helicopter.

Everyone on the film crew wore black shirts. These are obviously people unaccustomed to life in the desert. It doesn’t take long for a desert dweller to realize that black might look cool but it doesn’t feel cool with the sun shining down on you and a UV index of 10. They also drank a lot of Pepsi. No matter how many of us “locals” recommended water, they’d guzzle Pepsi and some weak tea looking concoction they kept in one-gallon plastic water jugs. I didn’t ask what it was.

Throughout the flight, the director would yell commands to me and the photographer through the helicopter’s intercom system. He had to yell because the photographer was hanging out of the helicopter to get his shots and his microphone was out in the 20 to 80 knot wind (depending on our speed, of course). The director also yelled into a handheld radio that the driver was tuned into, giving him directions.

Of course, the most challenging thing about communication was not the wind noise but the language. They didn’t speak good English.

The Flying

The kind of flying this time around was mostly chasing the car around the speed track (a large paved oval with sharply banked curves) and the dirt track (a smaller oval with a dusty dirt surface). I’d fly alongside, anywhere from 10 to 100 feet off the ground, but usually around 30. Speed ranged from a hover to as fast as 80 knots.

If you’re a helicopter pilot, you know that this kind of operation puts me in the shaded area of the height-velocity diagram or so-called “dead man’s curve.” I’m full aware of the dangers of this kind of flying and communicated them to my passengers.

But frankly, my willingness to do this kind of flying is what got me the job two years ago. They’d asked two other local operators to do it and they both said no. I think that the fact that they were flight schools played heavily into the decision. Wouldn’t be a good example to set for newly minted CFIs. Besides, I really think that this kind of “extreme” flying is best done by experienced pilots. Although I only have about 1,800 hours right now, that’s a heck of a lot more than the typical 400-hour flight school CFI.

The challenging parts:

  • Going from a near hover to highway speed in a very short time.
  • Keeping an eye on the car and the obstacles around the track, including poles with wires, antenna towers, tents used to hide cars from passing aircraft (believe it or not), and road signs.
  • Flying alongside the car at 20 feet above the ground, making smooth “hops” over lower obstructions (signs, tents, etc.) as necessary,
  • Swooping past the front of the car and turning so the camera didn’t lose sight of the car until it was past us.
  • Getting back into shooting position quickly after a technical shot so the photographer could maximize his video time.
  • Understanding what my passengers wanted me to do, especially on those occasions when they couldn’t agree and gave conflicting commands.

The best shots probably came close to sunset, when we were working with one of the cars on the dirt track. The clear sky, low sun, and dust combine to make magical scenes. Most of the shots used in the video from last time were ones from the dirt track. My job was to keep the setting sun, car, and helicopter in a line so the photographer could get sunset footage.

The Machine

I really enjoy this kind of work. Flying a helicopter from point A to point B is mildly interesting, but doing the kind of flying needed to photograph moving cars (or boats, for that matter), is extremely challenging. It takes all of my concentration to deliver what the photographer and director want.

But what’s probably best about it is the way my arms and legs go into a certain autopilot mode. I think of what I want and my body reacts to make the helicopter do what needs to be done. There’s very little thought involved. I’m just part of the machine — the brain, so to speak. And when flying — or doing anything with a piece of equipment, I imagine — becomes so automatic and thought-free, that’s magic.

The Trip Home

We finished up just after sunset. Rather than shut down and go inside for some refreshments, I decided to keep it running and head home. I wanted to get home before it was too dark. I was exhausted — I’d flown over 4 hours that day, including a flight from Howard Mesa and the ferry flight to the track — and was depending on the last vestiges of adrenaline to power me home. So the film crew got all their straps and cables out, Mike got in, and we took off.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the Low Fuel light was flickering 2 miles from the nearest airport. Another plane was on final when I came in for my approach. I meekly asked him if I could land first because of my fuel situation. He gracefully pulled his twin engine airplane into a 360 turn to the right to give me additional room. By the time I set down at the self-serve pump, the fuel light was shining brightly. I thanked the pilot of the plane again after he rolled out from his landing.

It was still 104°F/40°C most of the way home — an hour-long flight in growing darkness. I’m accustomed to flying at night — I think every pilot should be comfortable with that skill — so it wasn’t a big deal. It was also very smooth; hardly any wind until we neared Wickenburg.

The only problem was the dust that had evidently gotten into my eyes during the last bit of shooting. It really messed up my contact lenses.