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#31
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"Badwater Bill" wrote I was sitting there and thinking if I had a heart attack or the power failed, even at 1000 feet per minute glide, I was 22 minute from Earth. If I used 500 feet per minute I was 44 minutes from Earth. .. I feel much more at home than I do during the day when you look straight down 4 miles to the surface at houses or cars moving along on the freeways. It's much easier to have no surface, just stars and strobes in the distance...especially when I'm all alone. How do you guys feel about that? I'm never on edge at night for some reason when I'm at altitude and I'm alone. But during the day, I'm always on edge when I'm alone up there for some reason. It's like I'm not flying at all, I'm just sitting there watching out the window at the beautiful heavens surrounding me. What do you guys feel in these conditions. BWB You said it all, yourself, in your post. At night, it is like a camping trip, sitting in the middle of a field, or floating down the Amazon it a boat. I have done that. So many stars. You realize you are not in a normal place, but the beauty of nature blocks out all other thoughts. In the day flights, there are two many visual cues to remind you that you are in a potentially bad situation. You have that programed into your DNA, from ancient man. A sense of "on edge" is a good thing for a stone age man, ready to flee danger, when he is at risk. See, we are all just primitive pukes, with a better bow and arrow, zipping along where we shouldn't be. That sense of danger, and accomplishment, and pride over controlling the situation is what appeals to us. Anyone that flies, is a control freak. Right? So there it is. You are not in control of your ancient instincts. How does that sit with you? -- Jim in NC --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.608 / Virus Database: 388 - Release Date: 3/3/2004 |
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#33
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Richard Lamb wrote in message ...
pacplyer wrote: ?Hay' Grump, I gotta tell you I thought that was some pretty good enroute poetry last post. You gotta include that with the rest of "The Badwater files" Here's mine: *Soul searching in the thin air* Night flying at high altitude. It is unnatural for airplanes to fly at night up here. Especially in clouds at night. You are balanced on a knifepoint, suspended in space with no sensation of any speed whatsoever. It can be a surreal experience. Maybe it's the slight hypoxia. If you do it for an hour, you may nod off, come back to, and wonder if you're just sitting in a simulator on the ground. Maybe you're just sitting out on the ramp in the dark and you haven't even started this trip yet. Or worse? Maybe you're dead. It just doesn't seem part of this life at all. It seems fake. It seems impossible that here you are floating without any turbulence or stars or anything except these voices in your head. Your breathing is slow and these low detached voices are asking some gatekeeper for the "direct" way home. There's just something supernatural about it all. It is not of this world I tell you. You are truly alone with your thoughts if you're solo at night and the voices leave you. Just you and the stars and the weather. It does have a pacifying effect on the soul. If music can tame the savage beast, then being up here in this dark place with little magic lamps glowing in front of your outstretched hands can cure all your worries about the crumby world below. You are not supposed to be up here, you know it, and the Gods are permitting it for some reason you'll never be privy to. Thank god Apollo is in his Chariot on the other side of the world right now. Why if he saw your complete control of the night heavens, he might turn green with envy and strike your mortal ship from the sky! pacplyer (goddamn it, I copied you again! Something about your love of flying always gets me dreaming ? Thanks Bill.) Saved, for further contemplation flying home some night... You too, pacman. Richard Thanks Richard. pacman |
#35
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Interesting observations by all. Thanks!
BTW, it's McNamara: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...fogofwar.shtml "pacplyer" wrote in message om... Hey Bryan Buddy, I should have said: "Every communist with a piece of sharp Bamboo." My post was not meant as a slight on the people in Asia. And that observation was not gleaned from a barstool somewhere. I have been flying the Orient since 1987 and lived there six years. I married an Asian lady and have 19 dependants in the P.I. Whether you acknowledge it or not, tragic death without any real government investigation is common in SE Asia. The reasons are probably varied and stem from over-population to simple poverty. Now if you're renting helicopters, you're in a whole different social-economic class than my mother-in-law whose neighbors struggle daily just trying to eat. Lucky Filipinos make two-hundred pesos (four U.S. dollars) per day and have a very different outlook on life than you do. This is not to say that they don't have feelings or mourn their dead. But more than a years wages in exchange for the life of one of your seven children so the rest can eat is considered an acceptable exchange for most of the squatters living in Manila. Ninety percent of the population in that country is poor. They used to hold up starving babies against the hotel limo when it got stuck in traffic on the way to Makati. I made the mistake of rolling down the window and handing the kids all the money in my wallet one day. It nearly caused a riot. Several dozen street kids started banging on the roof of the hotel limo with metal coins. The driver was so ****ed at me. "Captain, please don't do that!" The guy loved his imported Mercedes and I had just ****ed up the paint job - big time. Now Thailand is a much more developed country that the Philippines or Mainland China or Indonesia. On vectors into Bangkok, it always amazed me looking out my Airbus at the carpet of fancy tile roofs surrounding the airport. You look out the window near Manila and all you see are helter-skelter scraps of rusting corregated tin in between filthy brown rivers and runoff. Every place in Asia is somewhat different, but cultures on that side of the world more readily accept disaster on a daily basis than we do here. If my single brother was killed due to a bus driver on drugs in the U.S. and I found out it was encouraged by management I'd demand and probably get media attention about this some kind of way. But ferries to the provinces in the Philippines tipping over with 300 plus over the max rating of the boat are an annual occurrence and only Ex-Pats living there are outraged. An attitude of: "God will protect us" is all you can get out of the victim's families. (bryan chaisone) wrote in message . com... (pacplyer) wrote in message . com... If you ditched in a river or bailed out: Every peasant with a sharp piece of bamboo who saw you for miles around would start making their way toward you to get in on the torture. PAC, My granfather hid a two downed airmen and walked them to safety in Thailand. He was not political. He didn't care that the lands were being bombed by the US. He wanted no part of the bloodshed and he wished the war would end soon. He lived through the occupation of the Japanese, the French...etc. He just wanted peace. I think you grandfather was a great guy. My father-in-law remembers as a little kid hiding in the bushes from the Japanese Imperial Army who killed and tortured many villagers. The infamous "Battan March" went right through the area. I really don't blame people, esp uneducated peasants from wanting revenge from those that were carpet-bombing their country. But when a pilot gets a mission, he is expected to execute it without contemplating the moral consequences of his action. He just hopes he won't get his ass shot off and he hopes he won't have to answer for carrying out the mandate of some screwed-up moron like Macnamere (sp?) Human life in SE asia to this very day just does not have any value. The price of a human life in the Philippines now is about $1,500.00. USD. That is what you are expected to pay the relatives if you kill one of their family members drinking and driving out there (according to the Auzzie ex-pats who have experienced this first hand.) And that's it. Everybody's happy. No trial, no problem. Please hit another one of my family members, I need the money... You had to live there to really experience the indifference. A bus rolls down the embankment with 30 pluss people in it every few months in Bagio. Nobody cares. Bald tires? One lane mud road? Driver on uppers? Nobody cares. I don't even want to know what happened to downed AA guys in Laos or Cambodia. "Pol Pot's family taught me this. hold still.." Sweet Jumping Jesus! People do care, some may not, but majority do care. Noone wants to loose their loved ones for any amount of money. There are people here in the US just like anywhere in the rest of the world that would kill their own mother for a dollar. As poor as those people are, they do care. They are not happy with $1,500.00, but they make the best of the situation. If they had a choice, they would demand more or not loose their loved ones at all. I don't think you really mean what you say above. Do you? If you hang around bars in the Philipines or in Thailand, you will most likely meet the lowest form of human beings in those countries. If you go to the temples during celebrations or to the towns festivals during holiday celebrations, you will meet nicer people than bar people, people who have hopes and dreams for their family, people who have not given up on life. You will see that people do value life and live to enjoy life and further their family's happiness and well being. You will see people rich with culture and tradition, who love their families and their way of life. You know the story about the three blind men and the elephant? Bryan "the monk" Chaisone Hey Brian, hope I didn't offend you. Thailand and Laos are gorgeous and I love the people there. I think about it often. Got to see the largest reclining Buddha in the world, but I can't think of the name of the temple right now. Have fun with those wirrlybirds, pac |
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No sweat Pac, I knew you didn't mean to come out that way.
I just thought I put in my two cents. I think I sent you pictures of my visits to Thailand. My grandfather's picture was among them. He was a great man. You gotta give these simple people credit. They had no TVs, radios or telephones to communicate ideas between villages or each other, but they each form their own oppinion of the war, any war. They don't seam to just jump to each new idea, "oh the Americans are right, oh the VCs are right...etc." The just wanted to be left alone. For thousands of years they have lived that way. They have developed cultures, traditions and way of life. They respected others. Lived slongside their neighbors...etc. for thousands of years. They even seamed to have population under control. Then civilization came around and F'ed it all up. Am I being too simple? Bryan "the monk" Chaisone |
#37
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#38
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(bryan chaisone) wrote in message . com...
(pacplyer) wrote in message . com... Hey Bryan Buddy, I should have said: "Every communist with a piece of sharp Bamboo." My post was not meant as a slight on the people in Asia. And that observation was not gleaned from a barstool somewhere. I have been flying the Orient since 1987 and lived there six years. I married an Asian lady and have 19 dependants in the P.I. 19 dependants, WOW. Can you really claim them all on your 1040? Bryan "the monk" Chaisone None. But at least 100% of what I send gets to them. I have seen rice sacks labeled: "U.N. NOT FOR RESALE" for sale in the market in Olongapo. Unfortunately as well, the local orphanage has had no childeren in it for years and is run by a "priest" who is an active member of the IRA. Safe to assume those charitable contributions are being used to purchase weapons instead of feeding the hungry. You just wouldn't believe what I've seen over there. See ya Monk, pac |
#39
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#40
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Pacplyer wrote:
None. But at least 100% of what I send gets to them. I have seen rice sacks labeled: "U.N. NOT FOR RESALE" for sale in the market in Olongapo. Unfortunately as well, the local orphanage has had no childeren in it for years and is run by a "priest" who is an active member of the IRA. Safe to assume those charitable contributions are being used to purchase weapons instead of feeding the hungry. You just wouldn't believe what I've seen over there. See ya Monk, pac PACMAN, Sounds like you have seen alot. Maybe a vacation to Chiangmai, Thailand will loosen you up. It is a beautiful northern area of Thailand and prices are very reasonable. Bryan "the monk" Chaisone |
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