14 August 2005 17:26
Monday morning you look so fine...ah, nothing like starting the day off at quarter after four with a little fleetwood mac.
Friday I got travelin' on my mind.
more like sunday i got travelin on my mind. hopefully i'll get to do a bit of gallavantin t'marrow.
though i probably won't get as far as i was this morning. i was flying over mobay about 45 minutes after taking off from kingston here, thinking it would be nice to be able to get there that fast by car. the airspace over mobay was dead as a tomb this morning, I was their only traffic for the hour plus that I was in their airspace. (they tend to do something more like 10-15 operations an hour throughout the morning and afternoon). I don’t know which is worse: a controller who's cranky because you're trying to fly a grid across their approach path (while dodging A320's) at ten in the morning, or a controller who's cranky because you keep waking them up to request altitude changes at six thirty in the morning :).
i apologize in advance, but also offer you hope at the same time. yes, once again i'm going to post on something morbid. but this time, it's only a couple paragraphs.
It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less.
(--George Orwell, August 1931. excerpt the essay "A Hanging" at online-literature.com)
just thought i'd put in the pro-life plug while i had it handy. on a less morbid note (though still fairly depressing), i offer another essay of his: "Shooting an Elephant", which is a much better read (he had 19 years between to the two to sharpen his skills).
having sat here for two minutes attempting to think (unsuccesfully i'm afraid) of a segue that makes some snide comment about hangings and electric chairs, i'll give up and jump straight to the next topic (which does happen to involve lots of electricity). the next topic happens to have been the highlight of my day yesterday.
i'd just gotten back from mexico to a very damp and wet airport. the power lines running to our office trailer have seen much abuse (two or three trees fell across them during ivan. they've currently got a lovely pigtail in the middle. wait, i'll go take a picture for you. but anyroad, the insulation had deteriorated on one of the wires and was bleeding through to the support cable anytime it got wet. it made this lovely fizzing hissing noise and would drop boiling rubber/water foam on whoever was so foolish as to stand under it. i pointed it out to mr. french, our resident handyman from the centre when he was over to unload my bugs. as we were waiting on customs at the time, he took a look at it and ordered a screwdriver, papertowels, and some electrical tape.
i for one don't like getting shocked. i never got my kicks out of seeing how long i could hang onto the electric fence out in the pasture as a kid. sure i would kick, but i didn't like it much. so i'm not the type who plays with the amount of current that tends to flow through 00 gage wire. he was up there prying the wire away from the support cable with the screw driver, then leaning on the wet roof while he wiped the half melted insulation off with a papertowel. to properly understand mr french, you'd have to meet him, but he's (no exageration) always laughing. he'll finish every sentence with a long chuckle. "sure is wet t'day heh heh heh heh heh". "man! that's not good ...heh heh heh heh heh heh, dat wire no good". "ya mohn, heh heh, dem wire stretch too tight heh heh heh heh, me jes tek a likkle piece out here and me splice dem wire back heh heh. dat wire inuh bad shape heh heh heh heh heh heh heh." it cracks me up to listen to him, but a the same time it'd drive me crazy to listen to him chuckling if i had to spend more than an hour with him.
but he was up there wiping that wire down as i came back out with the tape. i open the door the door and he's already chuckling, his grin all teeth like usual. "heh heh heh heh heh gitt'n a bit ticklish heh heh heh heh" (emph mine). that just made my day. one can definately take lessons from him on remaining positive in all situations. there've only been two times we've really seen him down. back when ivan went through and next to everything at the centre was fried or flooded or both, and just the other monday when roland, frenchy, a couple dispersers, and a mishmash of mexican electrical engineers went up to the main offices in town to break into an outbuilding and collect a compressor unit. (all the higher-ups with keys had the day off (emancipation day or somesuch public holiday) and none of htem could be reached. roland was pretty peeved and tore up there (fresh from mexico and still in his flight uniform) to get a little breaking and entering on his record since frenchy wasn't interested in taking responsibility (probably for the best). roland didn't get any flack, but frenchy still wasn't interested in getting in on the group picture they took around their heisted compressor unit (all 200+ pounds of it)).
i gotta run or i'll miss supper. if you're feeling like a little fleetwood mac...
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