Regeneration

Back in the antediluvian days of the blogosphere I maintained a website that chronicled my experiences flying air cargo to the far corners of the globe aboard the McDonnell Douglas MD-11.  To my great surprise it attracted a modest following and even pulled in a few quid via adsense.  Utterly void of any sort of useful information, it was nothing more than a haphazard collection of musings, rants and Seinfeldian observations concerning  the airline industry and the flying life in general.  Some people, apparently, found it mildly entertaining as my inbox exploded with kind farewell notes when I finally pulled the plug in 2007.

Gemini Air Cargo MD-11F on the ramp in Accra, Ghana circa 2005.

What I've come to realize in the intervening nine years is that, for all my whining and complaining, I really do love the flying life and I draw great joy from sharing it with others through the written word.  It's also proven to be therapeutic.  It does me a world of good to talk about flying, especially with other aviators.  I have doctor friends who run in doctor social circles, lawyer friends who run in lawyer social circles, IT friends who run in IT social circles and so on, but because I live in small town, Oregon, fifty miles from nearest major airport I have no professional peer circle in which to commune.  I am blessed with a handful of dear, close friends who listen politely when I need to unload, but the simple fact is that a person who is not in the life will never understand the life.  It's a little like being in the Mafia.  Or Fight Club.

I'll never know the apprehension one must feel the split-second before sinking a 10-blade scalpel into a patient or the hand-wringing agony of waiting on a jury to decide the fate of a client, for these professional lives are not mine.  I am, however, intimately familiar with the heart-pounding stress of lining up a fully loaded jet on a snow-covered runway at LaGuardia and the creeping trepidation of descending through the fog into Juneau, Alaska at night.  And, for that matter, the sobering responsibility of holding 175 lives in my hands.  This is the life.  This is the world of professional flying, and it's my sincere hope that those who don't fly will enjoy my pointless ramblings and those who do fly will read the occasional passage and say, "Oh, yeah.  It's just like that...".

Note:  I am not Ernest K. Gann, Richard Bach or Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  I'm a dumb kid from Silverton, Oregon who barely made it through Mr. Scrugg's freshman writing class.  Please bare that in mind.

Also, I know I'm comma happy, and I'm working on it...