Tours, Tiaras and Two T-shirts

Our summer travels for 2013 have come to an end.  For three weeks I have been away from home (2 of those weeks without my family!) and I have learned several valuable tidbits that I feel compelled to share with you, faithful reader.

Trip #1 Nashville, Tennessee.  I learned that I really am a jewelry diva…. you may be surprised I didn’t admit this until now, but I seriously outfitted my roommates with GREAT accessories several times!  On this trip to the South, I realized that I love the South.  I haven’t been there for several years and the greenness is intoxicating.  The rolling hills of swaying grass call to me.  The magnolia trees waved in the moist breeze enticing me with their ivory blooms and the brick homes with their neat and tidy yards make me wanna spit at the desert and move tomorrow.  The grand finale of the trip was touring Hermitage, President Andrew Jackson’s plantation.  Oh, did he spend good money paying an English gardener that is still making women swoon at the aromas of the flowers he chose!

Trip #2 Southern to Northern California.  This was a high school girl’s roadtrip that reunited five friends after 30 years of separation.  It was non-stop laughs and stories of yesteryear.  One of the roadies brought us all Superwoman t-shirts with hot pink capes and tiaras with pink bling bling.  You couldn’t really miss us…. AT ALL.  It was great fun but tiring for this mama.  By day #4, I was a bit of a party pooper.  I’m still not back to my old self and the car accident was almost five months ago.

Trip #3 Family Vacation at Lake Tahoe, California.  Please see the last blog as to my dire straights due to my husband’s negligence.  So, here is the REST of the story.  In addition to my light blue ONLY shirt, I ended up purchasing one t-shirt, a pink v-neck that had tasteful Lake Tahoe lettering on the front.  I tried it on in the hardware store dressing room, yanked off the tags and wore it to the register.  The attendant commented, “Oh, wearing it out!  Showing your Tahoe pride!”  I shook my head and blurted, “You don’t know half the story!”  So, I wore each shirt on alternating days while the other was in the wash.  I wore my jeans every single day in Tahoe, save one when it was warm enough for shorts. And my two pair of socks took turns hugging my feet or wiping the insides of the washing machine.

Thanks to my hubby and parents who had pity on me, I flew home so as to avoid my already painful arm from sitting in the truck for 15 hours straight.  Yes, on the plane rides I wore my jeans and my blue t-shirt.  This was like a flashback to our trip to Colombia where we only had three shirts each for a month!  On the first flight, a neat-as-a-pin 20-something gal sat next to me with her head aimed at her book the entire flight.  She didn’t say a peep to me (and I kept my nose in my current historical novel as well) until she popped open her hand sanitizer and with pressurization it squirt all over my jeans that I have been wearing for nine days.  I thought it comical that they probably did need sanitizing at this point, but I didn’t feel like telling a stranger that I haven’t changed my pants in over a week.

Not nearly as entertaining as my flight from from Nashville sitting next to the narcoleptic man, I was in LAX on a layover and knew my seat number was 5D.  It is a smaller plane with only two seats on each side of the aisle.  Fine.  However, there was a family with two little blonde haired bundles of screams and energy also in the waiting area.  I hoped and prayed they wouldn’t be seated near me.  I mean goodness sakes, I was only 45 pages into an enrapturing tale from Reformation times set in the Netherlands.  Screaming + Reformation = NOT ON MY WATCH!  Right before boarding commenced, I visited the little girl’s room.  When I wandered back to the gate I heard the quite loud mother of the two girlies tell her husband matter-of-factly, “Whoever is holding the baby is supposed to sit in seat 5C.”  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  This was an emergency situation of gargantuan proportions in my mind.  I went straight to the desk to ask to be moved.  The kind lady at the counter asked, “What is your name, please?”  Not sure why she needed the information, I simply retorted, “Crosby.”  She looked down and then handed me a new boarding pass, adding, “I’m sorry, but we had to move your seat to 8D.”  If we weren’t in an airport surrounded by 87 travelers with cellphones that take photos, I would have jumped over the counter and hugged her little neck and kissed her over-rouged cheeks!

Our story ends with me blogging at our home computer, contented to be in my own house with my two dogs licking my feet, sitting here in my jeans and my blue t-shirt.  :o)  Safe travels!

The Life of a Pilot’s Wife

Fort Vermilion Air Strip c. 1991

The life of a pilot’s wife seems to invoke visions of grandeur in the minds of those who have never been a pilot’s wife.  I’m here today to disprove inaccurate information and lay the truth out for all to witness.  First of all, just have a looksie at the harsh weather conditions we were faced with for three years!  I’m a California girl and that’s a parka with fox fur trim, moose hide mitts (made by Rick’s grandma, Googum) and Sorels!  I’d never tried on boots that came in two parts until we moved to Fort Vermilion, Alberta.  Luckily they came in hot pink!  I guess that the weather was not due to being a pilot’s wife… it was due to a newbie pilot putting in his ‘time’ in the North before heading to bluer skies in warmer climates. 

Just a few glimpses into the strange happenings of a pilot’s family are indeed overdue. 

Glimpse #1.  We were driving our 1971 Toyota Corona Deluxe late at night when the dash lights cut out.  Rick yelled, “The instrument panel is offline!”  I yelled back, “Luckily we’re safe on the ground!”  Made me wonder if he thought he was flying a plane…. they don’t have to pay quite as close attention when they’re up in the air… hmmmmm.

Glimpse #2.  It was the middle of the night and I was stirred from blissful sleep as Rick sat up in bed and yelled, “More left power!”  I replied, “Roger that,” and he laid back down having never woken up at all.  :o)  I wonder what would have happened if I yelled, “Man overboard?”

Glimpse #3.  Anytime you call a pilot for an address or a name they always spell it in the phonetic alphabet.  Over the years I’ve gotten used to it, but it was a surprise for others when Rick said we lived on Yankee Uniform Charlie Charlie Alpha Street.  I’ve still not figured out the numbers… niner, niner… whatever.  I just add er to the end of all of them.   Oner, Twoer, Threeer.  (mockful, I realize.)

Glimpse #4.  We needed a new washing machine and were sitting together, husband and wife, reading washer reviews online.  I would suggest a model.  He would say, “18 cycles!  How many did our old washer have?”  “12”  “Why do we need 6 more?  Our clothes were clean with 12.”  I explained that the new and improved cycles were for specific washing cycles that would be useful.  He didn’t get it.  This went on and on for about an hour.  Finally I lovingly explained, “When you buy an airplane, do you want me sitting there saying, ‘Ailerons?  How many ailerons did your last plane have?  Did you use both of them?’ ”  And he let me pick out my washing machine all by myself.  You gotta talk to a pilot in pilot smack.

Glimpse #5.  I asked Rick to put in a load of laundry.  We have a new fangled LG frontloader that lights up like a cockpit when you hit the magic button.  I heard the laundry basket hit the floor.  The door opened.  Loading.  Door closed.  And then there was silence for about four minutes.  He eventually hollered, “I’m not checked out on this machine.”  WHAT?  There’s only 5 buttons on the washer.  How many are in the cockpit?  Laundry Flight Training followed.

Glimpse #6.  Important Terms to Know:  Gas is for cars.  Fuel is for planes.  We saw a bumper sticker that said, “I love the smell of Jet A early in the morning.”  Rick chuckled.  I didn’t get it.  Jet fuel stinks.  My pilot tried to explain that it is such a familiar smell that means good times are coming.  I guess it’s like the smell of the glue gun??  The sunscreen???  The movie popcorn????

And no, I don’t get to fly with him in his current job, something to do with insurance.  No frequent flyer miles here.  No jump seat privileges.  It’s a glamorous life, for sure!

Stupid but Fun!!!

Have you ever done something in your life that was so stupid it could have got you fired but on the other hand, that “something” was so much FUN!?!?  It was the winter of 1993 and Linda and I were working in Fort Vermilion in northern Alberta.  I was flying as an air ambulance and charter pilot and Linda was teaching kindergarten.  It was approx. 9:42 pm and I was playing hockey at the local rink when my pager went off. (Remember those annoying things)?  When I found a phone, dispatch relayed to me that I needed to be at the airport within 15 minutes for a medivac flight to Fox Lake.  I was a little ticked because our game wasn’t over and I would probably not be in bed until after 1 a.m.  I got changed, drove to the airport, met the other pilot Lance, towed our King Air 90(see above) out of the hangar and then loaded up the paramedics in the airplane.  

There is something you need to know about flying air ambulance in a small community.  Quite often we would get to know our patients fairly well because we would fly some of them on a frequent basis.  So was the case with a certain patient I will call “John Doedoe“.  John was known for faking illness at times so he could get a free flight to town because Fox Lake was a bit isolated (a strike against socialized medicine).  He knew the paramedic lingo and would use it often.  Before the EMT would ask him what his pain level was at John would offer the information by stating, “On a scale of 1-10 my pain level is a 10”.  The medics and the pilots found this quite humorous.

So here we were taxiing out to runway 25 when the paramedic Allan casually asked Lance and I, “Guess who we’re going out to get”?  All of us in unison unenthusiastically said “John Doedoe”.  Allan hinted as he asked me, “Hey Rick, I heard there’s going to be a lot of turbulence out there tonight, right“?  I shot back with “I got the same report“!  We all laughed.  We arrived at our destination on a snow covered runway where the nurses would put out battery-powered lamps on the sides of the snowbanks so we could land safely at night.  (We could always tell when there was a new nurse putting out the lamps because the lamps would be put very close together giving us very little room for error when landing between the lights…but that’s another story).  We loaded up Doedoe and took off for Fort Vermilion.  After levelling off at 8500 feet I decided to have some fun.  I took the yolk and jiggled it forward-back and side-to-side, forward-back-side-to-side.  I could hear the medics in the back chuckling a little.  I offered the yolk to Lance and he did the same but with a bit more force.  The chuckling turned into laughter.  Being the Captain, I was not about to be outdone by my co-pilot so I proceeded to yank and bank and create moderate to severe turbulence.  The laughter in the back of the cabin had turned to convulsive hysteria!!!  At that point, reality overtook me and I realized that I had crossed the line from professionalism to feeble-mindedness!

The next day a friend of ours who was a nurse at the hospital called Linda and asked if I had brought in Doedoe from Fox Lake.  Linda asked why and Deb proceeded to tell her that Doedoe was telling everyone that, “That Rick Crosby was trying to scare me last night!  He was rocking the airplane and making it bumpy”!  I appreciate friends that think the best of me because Deb told him, “Rick would never do anything like that“!  When Linda called and told me what was going on, I knew I was in trouble.  I went straight to the GM of Little Red Air Service and relayed to him what had happened before he heard from other sources.  In a small town of 700 people news travels fast…especially when it’s ‘pilots who make their own turbulence’ kind of news!  A couple of days later the GM called me into his office and with a smirk on his face “tried” to rebuke me for my unprofessional behavior.  I bet he wished he had thought of it first!  He gave me a letter of reprimand and I believe to this day it is still in my file in Fort Vermilion. 

What did I learn from this you ask?  Save the fun for your last day at work!!!