Beggar Lady

Below is a photo of a famous tombstone monument, in the likeness of the deceased who is laid to rest there, Caterina Campodonico.   She was a peasant nut-seller who saved all of her money in life so that she could be buried at the Cimitero Monumental di Stalieno in Genoa (or Genova, as the Italians call it).   The quality of the monument is striking, but even more impressive is that this cemetery has hundreds upon hundreds of such sculptures with wildly varying themes, from family death bed mourning to the deceased being carried to the heavens by angels, to ships caught in tempests at sea.  

The cemetery was commissioned by Napoleon in 1805 (who then ruled Northern Italy), but not opened until 1851.   Upon his visit there, Mark Twain remarked:

“... We shall continue to remember it after we shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded corridor extending around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble, and on every slab is an inscription—for every slab covers a corpse. On either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and therefore, to us these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world.””
— Mark Twain via Atlas Obscura

Stewart and I stopped by enroute back from Nice, and although the grounds have fallen into some disrepair, the statuaries are still quite impressive.  

Prugne

Stewart and I have been eating fresh plums for breakfast from the tree in our back yard in Bergamo.  As most Americans won't recognize the size or shape of the fruit, it is actually a special kind of plum named Ramadi'n, originally from a small area in Piedmont.   

The variety almost disappeared because the trees were difficult to raise (and the fruit not very commercially viable), but our landlord Marcello's Mom received a cutting from his uncle, from one of the few trees left, which she successfully grew into her own tree.  And then she gave a cutting to Marcello, and his tree is now flourishing.  Which makes the prunes even better, knowing they're a small part of the Moro family and heritage.  

There are actually more than 20 different kinds of plums in Italy, each with a number of varieties.  

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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!