Let Up On The Gas

Flirtatous: "You know I don't like broccoli either?"

Real Mood: Portentous

Prediction: Someone will find a way to put broccoli in a pill form.

I am a firm believer in the notion that everything is somehow CONNECTED.

You may remember the PBS show CONNECTIONS? Creator and host James Burke takes any two historical inventions? Then he demonstrates how they find a CONNECTION in an electric pencil sharpener?

Well I see theory become reality today. Hang on.

It's always a delight to see the jaws of jaundiced 21 year olds drop. 

I take my Broadcast Journalism Television Students on a lot of "field trips." I do this to illustrate to them that since everything is somehow connected? Then anything you see or hear is fair game for the story you're about to tell.

Today we head out to see my friend KMGH TV helicopter pilot Rich Westra. As my cynical gang stares inside the two million dollar TV toy? That nips away at the cynicism. But when Rich starts his speech on what "This Baby" can do? That's when the mandibles become detached.

Rich has been doin' this for 25 years. A few more years than that takes me back to my first close encounter with a helicopter.

With help from my close friend Nancy, I'm picking up my car from an empty parking lot on Beach Blvd in Orange County.

Nancy picks me up at Los Angeles International Airport as I depart a flight that's just been in an emergency landing.

I'm coming from a convention in Cincinnati. You hear a little KAH KLUNK just as we lift off the runway there.

[Rich always does this dramatic demonstration of how much safer a chopper is compared to a jet because it can auto rotate.] 

I can see and hear the rush of emotion in the 13 year old girl sitting next to me. I can tell it's her first flight.

"Nothing to worry about. Just a premature jump on bringing up the landing gear."

"Really?"

"Uh, huh!"

"Thanks!"

Somewhere over Kansas the pilot makes a liar out of me. Seems we blow a few tires when we take off from the Cincinatti Airport?

[which is actually in Kentucky in case you didn't know.]

Well we all start drinking. That might be because the drinks are now on the house. All of us, save the 13 year girl sitting next to me. That would be illegal.

[ Strange that we would start drinking heavily over Kansas which has a law that says you cannot drink on any form of public conveyance. Verne Miller, the Kansas Attorney General, actually tries to arrest people on trains, busses and planes as they  transvere his state.  I guess we're lucky.]

This is the 13 year old girl who now informs me she is the niece of baseball's "Hall of Fameless" Pete Rose. Shortly thereafter I'm told by the flight attendant (called STEWARDESS in those days) that Pete Rose's sister's progeny is now MY responsibility. What are the ODDS? I drink to that!

Somehow we get down okay and clap for the brave pilot. (just like the movies.) 

Meantime back at the empty parking lot at midnight I'm tossing my bags in the trunk. I can faintly hear the WHOP, WHOP, WHOP of rotor blades but don't think much about it.

ALRIGHT, OKAY, HERE COMES CHAPTER DEUX...My internet service took a break and so? So did I.

Okay, where were we?

I crank the ignition, and don't fasten my seat belt.  It's not the law yet, just a suggestion. I gently meander my way out on to the road and head South.

[Why in most of Southern California is the Pacific Ocean always to the South?]

Time alone does not ameliorate the affects of innebriation. But let me suggest two events that will bring instant sobriety and end all threat of a lingering hangover.

Having a LIGHT from heaven shine on your face after midnight on Beach Boulevard is a pretty good starter. Since I appear to be the only oxygen breathing entity in sight? This light is  clearly meant for "moi."

Top that off with the light speaking to you as you mosey down the highway?

And the Rotor Blade GOD SPAKE from on high,  " PULL TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. PULL TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD NOW."

I can now touch my nose and walk a straight line all the way back to LAX.

This Rotor Blade diety is clearly only interested in handing down ONE COMMANDMENT.

Seems they think I've buglarized this office I work in, dumped the goodies in the trunk, and am now headed to find my fence.

That's enough of that story except to say it gets me to thinking about all the BIG BROTHER FICTION we are reading. To experience it first hand is, as I say, SOBERING.

Fortunately tight budgets have kept every public jurisdiction from "poppin'" for one of these ROTOR-GODS.

Many years hence I find myself up cruising around with Rich Westra hypothetically chatting through the head sets.

"You know Rich it's a little scary about how much THEY know about us. Satellites can pinpoint our location within a block, PhotoRadar can ticket us with no chance to argue."

"Yeah, I guess that's right."

"They have these digital cameras at every major intersection now?Anyone with a computer can access a data base that can tell them where I had breakfast this morning."

"Yeah. Hang on just a second. We got something coming up in the monitor."

What comes up in the monitor is a couple, in a miraculously contorted interface, performing the act of procreation, on top of a very large boulder. We can see this on a monitor from more than a mile away.  This is not Paris Hilton asking for a closeup.

"Okay, what were you sayin' Paul?"

"Nothin'!" 

Well, here we are, back at the HANGAR. I'm just glad these invasions of our privacy have gone just about as far as they can go.

Rich is talking to the class about his other enterprise. He now has a helicopter equipped to save Natural Gas companies at least millions of dollars. It can detect gas leaks.

"How, with a photographer's 20 thousand dollar camera?"

"Nope!"

"With the super expensive attached FLIR camera that can pick out your shirt label from a mile away?"

"Nuh uh!?""

"How then?"

"Remember the guy up in Canada who invented Lasik Eye Surgery? Seems he's had some time on his hands driving back forth to the bank. He's developed a laser technology that can detect pipeline gas leaks."

"What kind of gas Rich?"

"Methane."

"Now isn't Methane the gas we........?"

"Yeah, this baby can pick out one part per million. Two parts per million exist naturally in the atmosphere."

"So you're telling me....If I uh.....sitting in my car....standing in a crowded elevator not yet singled out...and you fly overhead with this thing?"

"Uh, huh!"

"And if I've had broccoli for dinner and I'm at the opera about to shake the hand of the Governor.....?"

"Yes sir!"

"And if I'm on Continental Flight 833 departed from Cincinatti headed for Los Angeles, still trying to digest the cheese and bean omelette I got at the airport concession stand, sitting next to Pete Rose's Niece? And now I've been drinking heavily because I've just been told this might be my last flight, and you happen to rotor by?"

" I'm 'fraid so."

Do I owe PETE ROSE an apology?

"Hey Pete, let's cut the deck for it, Ace high!"

"Cut what?"

THAT'S JUST ONE MORE TOPIC WE'LL NOT EXPLORE ON  THE ANNIVERSARY OF PaulsModestMusings. APRIL 28th. I'M TAKING REQUESTS. I WONDER WHAT PETE ROSE'S NIECE IS DOING TODAY? SHE'S NO LONGER 13. I CAN TELL YOU THAT!