Day 13

I have nearly two weeks of training completed, including two trips to downtown London (to a helipad on the Thames) and one trip to downtown Paris, where we landed next to France's version of the Pentagon.  And one landing so far on the Client's yacht, which I cannot even begin to describe.   Tomorrow begins my shipboard training, hopefully, and then I'll be a little bit closer to going it alone.  

Stewart left Surrey Dr. last night, and is driving north to Spokane.  He has had two grueling weeks of preparing the home for our move, preceded by three grueling weeks of preparation with my part-time help and Mark's whirlwind week of support.   I'm not sure either of us imagined how mentally and physically hard it would be to pack up our belongings, stuff most of it in the basement, and then fix, clean, and prepare the home for our tenants.  And for Stewart to do the hardest part mostly alone, he is completely exhausted.  I say 'mostly' because several of our wonderful neighbors pitched in to help get us across the finish line, and for their efforts we are immensely grateful.   

Stewart will be with his son and two grandkids through the 23rd of July, and then he flies from Seattle to Nice and joins me here, where we will then travel to see our new abode in Bergamo.  

I haven't taken photos yet, my apologies, but it's been chaotic and hectic, with little time for anything but studying, training, and sleeping.  

Day Three

It is Sunday, the third day of my European adventure.  I would like to say that my trip here was uneventful, but I experienced a series of unfortunate events along the way, culminating in Germanwings losing my two pieces of checked baggage.  Which they have yet to find.  A hundred pounds of clothes and shoes, gone.  

Tomorrow I begin my induction training here in Stansted (just north of London), which lasts through Friday, and then I will board a flight to Nice.  Stewart's plan is to drive to Spokane in a week or so, drop the car off at his son Chris', and then fly to Nice on July 24th.   On July 28th we will arrive at our home for the next two years, and begin the acclimation process into Europe.

In the meantime Stewart is continuing to pack and to ready our Surrey Dr. home for our tenants.  I don't need to tell this to anyone who has moved, but having to touch all of your earthly possessions, decide if you're going to keep, trash, store, or donate it, and then deal with it accordingly is a daunting task.  Our friend Mark Beckett came out from Ohio for a week's worth of doing just that, but even after his efforts it seems there is so much left to do, and Stewart is alone doing it, unfortunately.  The good news is that he has managed to fit all of our stored items into the basement, and so we will not need a storage unit.  

I am eternally trepidatious about what we're doing, but excited as well, for both Stewart and me.  I may feel differently after tomorrow's training, but even if it were to all come to an end prematurely, it was still a fun ride.  

Except for the luggage.  I am really ticked about the luggage.  

My Job In A Nutshell

So my job.  Generally I will be flying a single, high net-worth individual and his assigns on and off his yacht and here and yonder, wherever he and/or the yacht may be.  Generally that will take place in the Mediterranean, and often in and around the Cote d’Azur (Cannes, Nice area), although he has been known to travel worldwide.  I will be working as an independent contractor to LuviAir (luviair.com), a company based in the Isle of Man.   The client’s name is not necessarily super-secret, but it’s not common knowledge and so I don’t mention it.  Even if I did you more than likely would not know or recognize him.

My current work shift cycle is two weeks on, two weeks off, with my duty periods generally not involving being embarked on the ship, although that will occasionally happen.   There is no schedule per se; when the client is around it is generally quite busy, and when he’s gone, the pace could slow down considerably.  Which is when I’ll be studying French…! 

 For those more technically/helicopterly inclined:  it’s an EC145, SPIFR, with a flight engineer as a safety pilot.  Eight passenger capacity, Cat A operations where possible.  I will operate under my FAA ticket rather than an EASA one, as it’s a private operation.    No NVG’s, unfortunately, so I will have to reacquaint myself with fantastically dark overwater flights.   

Europe, The Prequel

This past February I received an e-mail from a fellow helicopter pilot and friend, asking if I was interested in a position opening up in his company.  I was semi-retired at that point, having left a great job with Mercy Air in October of 2013, although I was variously freelancing as an aviation safety and risk consultant and flying with Corporate Helicopters.  But I was intrigued, not because we were seeking a change necessarily, but because it offered a chance to return to my nautical roots (without the 6 month deployment with six thousand other people part),  and the position was for Europe, a place we both wanted to explore.

So after some discussion of the possibilities and a little bit of “what the hell”, I submitted my CV.

A month or so passed, and I received an e-mail indicating I had made the top ten (out of more than 80 that had applied).  A video interview ensued, and job interviews not being my strong suit I thought that was the end of it.  But several days later I was invited to London and then the Isle of Man for a face-to-face interview, and during that trip I was offered the position.  

I was a little stunned, at the end.  And for a period of time the reality of what I had signed up for sort of hit me, like buyer’s remorse—I wondered if Stewart and I were really up for it, and if we had trumped up the positives of a European adventure and hadn’t quire thought through what it would entail.    But in the end we came to the same conclusion, that this was the right decision, however unplanned and serendipitous it all came about, and we should buckle down and make it happen.

More than anything this change has been a philosophical one for me, as was my departure from Mercy Air.  Like (most) everyone else I struggle with the ultimate purpose of my life, and how one derives meaning from it, to the extent that one can.  But while I’m grappling with those questions, in the meantime it seems clear to me that I should, in the relatively brief time remaining of my life, experience as much as I can possibly experience, and to leave the comfort and security of what I know and try something new. 

I’m also going to say something potentially very sappy:  one of the few times I have spontaneously starting crying in a movie was during the first ten minutes of Up!, when the newly married husband and wife map out their life of adventure and excitement.  But their day to day busyness of life get in the way, and before they realize it they are too old to pursue their dreams and then, quietly, the wife passes quietly away.

 You truly only live once, and regret is the last thing you want to experience when there’s no time left to do anything about it. 

U.S. Navy, Circa 1993

So one of the things I "discovered" while in the Navy was Chrysanthemum Tea.  In Hong Kong, I believe, and it was quite addictive.  I had kept three cans of it as a souvenir, and as I was attempting (in vain) to organize our crawl space, I came upon them in one of my memento boxes.  

I drank all three, and had happy flashbacks to my tours of Kowloon.  Slightly more metallic than I remember, but after 20 years in a can what can you expect.  And it still had the pull tab opening, where the ring pull and tab come off entirely.  Ah, memories...!    

So 

Holiday Gift Part 1

Santa brought me the book below, that I have found quite enjoyable.  It consists of a series of short vignettes that portray the more unusual and surprising mechanisms of evolution.   For example, there are a group of 'false' fishes:  fishes because they look very much like what a layperson would quickly identify as a fish, and yet they are more closely related to a cow than a salmon.  Come to find out, some of these false fishes were transitional actors to life's eventual movement onto land, and their skeletons provide the telltale signs of changes that would be required to do so.  

There are also discussions of five fingers, of large vs. small size, and body armor.  Having just come from a trip to the Galapagos last year I found the explanation of the land tortoises's skeletal anatomy fascinating.  

In 2006 Richard Dawkins published a book called The Ancestor's Tale, that follows along similar lines but in far greater detail, and with enough scientific nomenclature to give you the distinct impression you're back in an intermediate college biology course.  Equally as fascinating, but intimidating at times and not as accessible as de Panafieu's effort.  

Thank you, Santa!  

Burbank!

Brother Greg, sister-in-law Heidi, and niece Andi were in town last week, checking out Burbank and environs.  We met up with them at the Ghetty Museum (a must-see if you're in LA), and had a nice dinner afterwards.  Aren't we the cute group!  

(family explainer:  Greg is the younger brother of Stewart, and is married to Dr. Heidi Graham, both Army retirees.  They live in Alexandria, VA, with their angelic dog Sam.  Andrea, aka Andi, is Greg's daughter, a budding architect living in Kingston NY.)  

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Beauty

“Water is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.”
— Derek, Zoolander

(One of my favorite types of movies is slapstick, dating back to the movie Airplane! and continuing with such titles as Zoolander and Shaun of the Dead.  It appears to be a difficult genre, as it's done so badly so often, but when done right it is hilarious.)

Holiday Card Map Explainer

On the back of our holiday card is a marriage equality map from Wikipedia.  Despite a setback in my home Commonwealth of Kentucky, marriage equality advocates have nonetheless made surprising and unprecedented progress in 2014.  And since Stewart and I have been involved in both the marriage equality (and DADT repeal) movements, we thought it important to share.

It was not, on any level, motivated by shaudenfreude.  And I'm not even sure that's even possible, given the preponderance of the world map indicating a distinct lack marriage equality, and given Africa where imprisonment and at times even death for LGBT citizens have been incorporated into the legal code.  

To briefly summarize the colors, navy blue are states/countries with full marriage equality, mustard means marriage equality is in some form pending (in the U.S., usually the result of a favorable court ruling followed by a stay of the ruling), and light blue/periwinkle represents a 'less-than' recognition (e.g., domestic partnerships).  Interestingly, although all of Mexico is not navy blue, if you get married in those parts that are, then everywhere you go within the country it's recognized.   Sort of like Arkansas is for us right now.   

The map was current at the printing of our cards, with the last change being Finland, where marriage equality just passed the legislature.  Here's to 2015, and hopefully more progress.  

Merry Christmas, Maybe

The book I'm reading now is the 'Historicity of Jesus', by David Carrier.  It is quite a dense and lengthy tome, written from a hard-core historian's perspective, and I keep making the mistake of attempting to absorb its contents right before bed.  But it's one I should have read decades ago.

The term 'historicity' refers to the issue of whether Jesus of Nazareth actually existed as a person, or if he were mythological in nature.   I'm only halfway through the book, but I'm getting the distinct sense that the evidence for an actual, physical Jesus is quite slim.  The Gospels in the New Testament were all written many decades after Jesus' apparent death and resurrection (and all by unknown authors), and there are no recorded eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life--either in the Christian Bible or elsewhere.  Think about that:  not a single, documented eyewitness account of Jesus ever existing. 

 All that Christians have to go on, then, is the canonical statement that the words of Scripture were (divinely) revealed to their authors, even though it is widely accepted that those same texts have undergone significant redaction and alteration over the centuries.   And when that is all you have, without any sort or degree of independent corroboration,  one is hard pressed to distinguish between divinely inspired/revealed and simply made up.

The other disconcerting conclusion is that savior/resurrection myths appeared to be a small cottage industry back in the day, with numerous stories/myths/revelations each competing with one another for the hearts and minds (and money and power) of the people.  There are at least 15 such saviors--all predating Jesus of Nazareth--who strangely have nearly identical stories, down to their virgin births, an attempt to kill them when they are a baby, rising to power (or being called a king or king-like), meeting a mysterious death often involving crucifixion, his/her body then turns up missing, etc.   There are so many of them that historians have invented a formalized measurement for it, the 'Rank-Raglan hero-type'.  And within the savior cottage industry there is a subset of Christian sects, each with their own story of Jesus (of Nazareth), battling it out in the public sphere.  None of them survived, save for the one we know of now.  

Imagine living in the first or early second century CE, hearing of Jesus of Nazareth's death and resurrection, and thinking, "sheesh, another one?"  

What I also find interesting, layered on top of this, is how neat and clean Christianity looks now, two thousand years later, and how little most Christians know about its very un-neat and un-clean origins.  And quite possibly, all made up from pre-existing mythologies of the period.   

None of which, by the way, mars my expectation of Santa Claus coming next month.  Merry Christmas!