Reindeer Droppings:

As reported earlier this year has flown by!

Our life this year has been a real “As the World Turns”, full of those at the end of each show moments that leave you thinking “what next!” Thanksgiving was upon us and flew by (turkey’s do fly ya’ know) and Christmas (which had started waaaay before Thanksgiving) seemed to be on us like a summer storm, full of flashing lights and loud noises.

Finally the decorations were up (inside and out)...all 90+Santa’s holding court on their appointed shelves, mantel, and display cabinet. The presents were wrapped and looking royal as they were artfully arrayed around the Christmas tree (Mrs. Clause is really creative).

Finally Christmas Eve was here... We all attended Christmas Eve service and grandpa “gifted” everyone to supper at Carrabbas, (wasn’t that nice of me?)....no one ever reaches for the check?? On Christmas day we opened presents, Bobbie fixed a great brunch (ham with a marmalade crust, cheese grits, egg casserole, orange flavored French toast and onnnnn and on!), and watched movies, Schreck (I may have dozed off a few times...I tried to just “sample” her offerings...really).

THEN we had the desserts, yes desserts, three of them, varied and decorated like Christmas presents!

Well that was last week.

Santa the reindeer were last seen heading north...we, on the other hand, have finished cleaning up after the reindeer (present droppings you know) and are enjoying the "afterglow" of the memories.

The lights are still up, however, everyone’s stocking are no longer crowed across the mantel, so we can have a fire in the fire place again, and it crackles merrily as we contentedly watch movies we’ve been meaning to watch for months.

So...”Ho Ho Ho... Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all.”

Blue Santa's

In my last installment I mentioned our “Blue Santa” collection.

From its humble beginning, a single Blue Santa carved and painted from a cypress knee, it now fills four cabinets (oh...and this doesn’t count the ones on the Christmas tree) and numbers in excess of ninety!

From small, less than two inches tall, to floor models that tower nearly four feet tall. Each has a story, as do most collections, and are from almost every country I traveled during my flying career.

They are made of everything from glass, porcelain, metal, wood and elaborate cloth versions. The themes are also various, serious to comedic, cops, pilots, doctors...all are represented.

Eventually friends started finding and giving us Santa’s...that is when we lost control and the numbers soared. “Thank you, thank you...but please stop!”

We still are on the lookout for that “truly unique” one and suspect that more will come...100! is getting closer each season...so time will tell.

Christmas decorations

It has been a tradition for twenty years to haul out the Christmas decoration the day after Thanksgiving.

At first that wasn’t much of a problem...they all were stored in one place, under the stairs. Well as the years passed, the collection grew, pieces bought on our travels, gifts by friends and on and on. As the collection grew so did the requirement for the number of cabinets and trees to hold this growing collection.

Did I mention the “Blue Santa’s”? Years ago we bought a clever “Blue Santa’s” carved and painted from a cypress knee. That one grew into 90 (that I counted yesterday!). This collection alone requires the empting of every cabinet, shelf and piano top.

Oh...remember the storage under the stairs? We now store the boxes and crates (twenty plus) there, in the attic, and the guest room closet...and that is just the inside decorations.

The garage attic holds all the outside decorations... and that's another whole blog entry.

We are a week into the process and are just about finished and ready to put away the boxes and crates and enjoy the display.

Wow what a year (so far?).

Retirement is one of those “great unknowns”...it could be boring or full of strange twists and turns.

This year is an example of all of them...it started off slow and by April had taken a turn toward the wild side. January, February and March rolled along with the normal few consulting jobs and a little “body overhaul”...knee surgery.

We are not gambler, however, our good friends are. They had been asking us to join them at Coushatta Casino in Louisiana, a two hour drive away, for a night. We did, fed the slot machines, had a nice meal and turned in.

At 5:30 the next morning the “turn toward the wild side” occurred. Finding your cell phone at 5:30, deep in sleep, isn’t that easy. Half asleep I answered..”hello”? My contact, an always perky person said...”How soon can you get to Houma Louis.iana and work with us on the BP oil spill”? I woke up quickly after that! “Late this afternoon” I replied. He replied...”Ok, come prepared to stay thirty days”.

Three months later I was finally released...see earlier blog entry.

I am now three months behind on my consulting committments and ready to settle down to a somewhat more predictable routine when another turn toward the wild side occurred. I had two TIA (transient ischemic attacks...mini-stokes...no damage but a real eye opener). Oh...and my blood sugar, cholesterol, thyroid and everything else was “out of whack”. Seem like working seven days a week, ten to fourteen hours a day, are not that good for a sixty five year old!

Well that was twenty five pounds, many mile of walking and an adherence to a diabetic diet ago. The odd part was that I never felt bad before, during or after this adventure, however, all my blood work now pronounces me back to normal.

So once again I headed out to catch up on my previous commitments and spend a little time in the retirement mode (remember “I am retired”).

Now, with Thanksgiving just around the corner and Christmas not far away, we have caught up on most of the commitments and had no new adventures...thank you!

My Lost Summer

The summer slipped by and I missed it! Buried deep in the bowels of the BP Incident Command Center in Houma LA, dealing with the oil spill, from "O" dark thirty to "O" dark thirty (that's before sunrise to after dark), time slipped away.

Finally the job was done and we returned to our "other" lives. Just as I was settling into my return to full time retirement I had to deal with a medical problem and there went the remainder of the summer.

Well I am back...better than ever and I will try to post more often.

Working the spill

When the phone rang at 5:30 AM on April 29, 2010 I had no idea what was ahead of me. I was invited to join the BP Spill response team in Houma LA as the aerial dispersants aviation consultant. What did that mean? All I was told was to bring enough cloths for thirty days.

Thirty days, then sixty days and finally ninety days went by before I was released and these were long days that started a 5:30 every morning and extended into the night, usually around 7:30 PM or later, seven days a week.

Aerial dispersants had (4) C-130 aircraft, (8) sprayer / spotter King Air’s, (3) DC-3’s, (3) AT802 [ag planes] and two more spotters. This small fleet (20)of aircraft was located at Stennis Field MS and Houma LA.

We were part of a three prong attack on the oil. Skimmers, and burners attacked the oil near the spill source and the aerial dispersant group was responsible for the large expanse of oil that spread for mile across the Gulf.

At first light the spotters were out looking for appropriate targets .Once found they would lead the larger spray aircraft onto the oil and guide them through the dispersant phase. Trip after trip, day after day, week after week they battled the spill.

After two storms, and the well capped we began to see the “dispersible” oil disappear. Our flying dropped off to nearly nothing and finally we were demobilized (all but a token force) and I went home.

I am still digesting the experience, some of it was good and some bad...but that’s life. Sadly there was much misinformation, agendas and egos that slowly worked their way into and clouding the mission...keep the oil off the beaches!

Working the spill

Lights on ships working offshore and in the onshore Incident Command Center (ICC) burn through the night, working their assigned tasks in the largest oil spill in history. Literally thousands of people are involved in securing and cleaning up the spill.

Life begins for the day shift around 6:00 AM and runs through the early evening hours (midnight for some). Bleary eyed and holding on to a hot cup of coffee we stagger in for our early morning briefings, group, division and tasking meeting consume the first few hours...then we are off to our sections to continue plowing through the myriad of detail necessary to make this work.

I am the aviation advisor to the Dispersant Operations Group. We have a small armada of specialized aircraft fitted to spot and spray dispersants. The aircraft are off at first light...guided by the spotters using data from electronic laden aircraft gathering data, they are sent to specific targeted areas.

The spotters, smaller twin engine aircraft, guide the larger four engine C-130’s, flying at 50 feet off the water, onto the assigned areas. Spraying the dispersant materials they fly repeated flights throughout the day.

The staging airports looks like a military operations with trucks full of fuel and dispersant meeting each arriving aircraft, refueling and re-loading dispersant they are sent back out for another run.

The ICC is full of scientist (PhD’s), rooms full, enough to start a small university. As with any group of learned folks there is the inevitable disagreements on approach, however, debate isn’t allowed to stop the process and consensus is developed faster than in most academic situation...it’s exciting to watch!

How long will it last?

Great minds and engineering talent are assembled in Houston and Houma LA working tirelessly to solve the problems and one by one they are solved.

Exactly when no one knows...so your editor will be detained, working a small part of the aviation issues...I’m the “briar patch manager”...whenever there are thorny aviation issues they throw me in.

As you have probably read / heard the BP spill has mired itself into a political morass. Our group, the aerial dispersant group (twenty aircraft ranging from C-130s, Turbine DC-3, Ag planes and a host of King Air spotters), has become the focal point of much of the controversy...."to use or not to use".

Most of the media representation is distorted and not factual...a battle we fight daily (not we but the Unified Command), bad reporting unfortunately becomes the "reality" of the day.

Example...a local reporter reported that the National Guard was throwing away spill booms....when in fact they were cleaning up the packing material it came in!!

We have over 1000 people (military, government and civilians) working in our center (24/7) to make this work and work correctly.

The aerial dispersant groups have effectively been grounded for days and the plume of oil is growing daily and beginning to impact the beaches and marshes.

Daily we are getting reports of people being "sprayed" and becoming ill...yesterday we got a call from a fishing boat 100 mile offshore saying he was being sprayed...AND we had not even take off yet!!!

There are a lot of people trying to become "spillionaires".

Knee Surgery

When I was still flying we had what was called an “aging aircraft program”...essentially to deal with old airplanes and was an “inspect, remove or repair” program to keep them flying safely.

Well I seem to have fallen into the category of an aging airframe and some of my parts seem to warrant the “repair” criteria.

Some time ago (actually months ago) I felt a strain behind my right knee while putting the cover on our boat. Nothing unusually...I seem to mysteriously strain, cut, bruise and other wise “ding” the old airframe from time to time...never realizing it at the time and only when I see a stream of blood trickling down my arm or hand do I realize that I must have passed too close to something sharp and never even felt it!!!

Oh well....I “gimped” around for months thinking that this too would eventually heal and I’d chalk it off to old age and wear and tear. Meanwhile my “inspector” (read that as spousal support and oversight committee SSOC) kept recommending I see a doctor. I finally gave in when it was no longer an occasional limp but a full time “Chester from Gun Smoke” type of limp.

An MRI revealed a...”tear in the posterior hom of the medial meniscus”...no wonder it hurt, with a name like that!

By the time the surgery was scheduled I had long given up on the “it will heal itself” philosophy and was saying “bring it on!”

So...at “O” dark thirty (0630)” this morning the SSOC drove me to the outpatient surgery unit at the hospital and they sharpened up the knitting needles (arthroscopic surgery...poke holes and “darn up the damage”) and did their magic! After giving me a nap inducing cocktail of “happy juice” it was lights out...great nap!

No pain (I walked out on my own landing gear) and we were in Denny’s at 0950 for breakfast.

TEXAS WEATHER

Like huge gray battleships the weather fronts have come, cannons blazing, pounding ashore. Many of the winter storms rolling across Texas start way out in the Pacific and gathering strength they come...dumping torrential rains and snows on the west coast before heading for Texas.

Somewhat depleted, they reach Houston and the Gulf Coast where they pick up additional moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and, re-energized, head up the east coast. One after another, like the endless waves of the sea, they roll across the country.

What a winter!

Last summer we were experiencing the worst drought in years with record high temperatures...now records lows and a lot of rain.

We have had measurable snows for two years in a row!

With long periods of rain we have reduced the drought in most of the state...good news you say. Well yes, however, the grey skies and rain do make one wish for warmer dryer days (I suppose I’ll complain about that next).

But that’s another posting.