Iceland to Greenland

 I was talking with my dad about my mom and other things during the long hours of the flight from Iceland to Greenland.  Both of us were well rested, and I was not anxious and imagining all sorts of worst-case scenarios as I was during the flight from Scotland to Iceland.  Even though the crossing was far more remote than that from Scotland and at 892 statute miles or 775 nautical miles it was a long haul over a very lonely, forbidding sea and even more remote and forbidding land. I was relaxed and just enjoyed driving the airplane. I was again
PIC, dad saying that he preferred me to fly as his reaction times were slower than they used to be and he'd rather just take it easy and let me do the flying while he handled the radios and navigation and kept the dead reckoning plot.  So he occupied the right seat and helped keep an eye on things.  I set the cruise at 186 knots with a 48gph burn -- 1925 rpm, manifold pressure 28.8 inches -- and, despite a little rough weather en route that required altitude changes, reduced speed and tightened safety harnesses, we were dropping into the pattern for Nuuk a little more than four-and-a-half hours after wheels up at Reykjavik, thanks to a brisk tail wind.  There was a lot of cloud cover over Greenland, so there wasn't much to see, but I was surprised to note how mountainous it was.  I had expected it to be a flat, icy plain.

The approach to Nuuk grabbed my attention as the terrain, rising rapidly to over 5,000 feet in less than a mile, allowed only a circling approach to the airfield from over the fjord.   As I made our descent, dropping through overcast on instruments, we encountered ice that built up rapidly.  Thank God we had the original de-icing equipment -- many 18 owners have removed it for various reasons, but dad has kept our Beech as it was originally, an all-weather airplane.  So we had de-icing for the propellers, pitot tubes, wings and horizontal stabilizer which I employed with alacrity and relief. Great chunks of ice flew off the wings and ice flung from the propellers rattled against the fuselage.  I was glad to see it go.  I hated to imagine how we would have faired without our de-icers.   I shut the de-icing boots down as I made short final to runway 23 -- 3,100 feet long -- since they mess with the shape of the air foil as they inflate and deflate.  It's not a problem at higher speeds but once you approach stall speed, you don't want that happening. But we were getting ice even as I turned on to final, so I kept cycling them on when the ice built up, then off when it broke off, then on ... as long as I dared. There was only 2 knots of wind dead ahead and I came in at 2,000 rpm and 20 inches, 45 degrees of flaps, crossing the fence at 75 knots, settled in like a butterfly and rolled out in less than 650 feet.  My dad said, "Now that's the way it should be done!"  Oh, man, I was so pleased with myself.  Take a bow, Wanda!

It was still before noon and we debated whether we should just have lunch, gas up and be on our way to Goose Bay -- I had decided we'd go to the Goose rather than the Gander as it was a lot shorter distance to travel -- but since I figured that I would never visit Greenland again, I should spend a little time here.  In any case, there was some snafu with the avgas bowser and we weren't able to gas up until around four.  That gave dad plenty of time to go over the airplane and make sure everything was all shipshape and Bristol fashion while I found us a hotel and did a little sight-seeing. I was glad I had bought a nice comfy sweater in the Shetlands because boy did I need it. It was mos' def' chilly, in the forties, the air damp with occasional fine rain spitting down.  

Alas, the only accommodations I  could find had only one room left -- there was not a lot of choice -- so dad and I had to bunk together.  I was not looking forward to the snoring.  Heh.   We had a rather too Nordic-style dinner (oh, for a real cheese burger and some curly fries!) at a local joint that offered a live band (energetic Europop), where I got asked to dance by every example of Nordic maleness in the vicinity  -- and gladly accepted. Then we plodded back to our hotel and after planning our route for the morrow and me giving dear old dad a neck and shoulder massage, we hit the hay and, both tireder than we realized, immediately fell soundly asleep, each snuggled deep into our feather down comforters.

 

Lives II

Huan Nguyen

I talked to my dad about my mother's enduring reaction to her time in Viet Nam, which she left exactly 50 years ago this month.  He also served "in" Viet Nam, in a manner of speaking: flying  missions from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, he never actually ever set foot in Viet Nam. So he really can't relate to her experience in that war. 
She also has the emotional burden to bear of her oldest brother, with whom she was very close, being killed in Viet Nam, at Dak To.  He was the only member of either my mother's  or father's families who was drafted and sent to serve in that war. All the others who served, and I think there were about half a dozen in total, joined the service voluntarily, none as far as I know, in order to serve in Viet Nam, but for various personal reasons including, I assume, a decision to join ahead of being drafted so that they could pick their branch of service and have better choices of occupation specialties and where to serve. 
Of these, only one was ever wounded, and he only slightly.  He had joined the Air Force and was assigned as crew to a U-6A "Beaver" that flew what were, I guess you could call them, a variety of ferret mission.  North Vietnamese unit headquarters used very low-powered Morse Code transmissions to communicate with other units during the night.  What the U-6A crews did was fly very low (within the range of small arms fire) and slow over the countryside listening for these transmissions. When they picked one up, they would maneuver so that they could get a triangular fix on the transmitter, pin-pointing its location.  Then they would call in artillery fire on that location.  On these missions, they were often subject to small arms fire.  On one, my relative's plane was hit and a bullet struck him in the heel of his foot.  Fortunately, its energy was largely spent, the round lodging jammed up against his heel bone.  But it was enough to end his deployment and get him discharged on disability.  To the end of his life (he died of cancer at the age of 66), he walked with a limp.  

The flag my grandparents received upon their son's death.

Other than his injury, none other of my relatives suffered so much as a scratch due to enemy action.  No, I take that back.  During a rocket barrage on her base, while assisting at an operation in a sand-bagged bunker, a splinter of wood from a shattered plywood board struck my mother and drew blood.  She pulled it out and continued on with her job.  The surgeon joked that she was now eligible for a Purple Heart.  Of course, she never put in for the medal, 'though, I suppose, she was technically eligible for it.  She believed such medals should be reserved for the fighting troops. After all, they were the only acknowledgment of their sacrifices they would receive from the government that had dragooned them into its war. That is, unless they were unlucky and didn't make it back home.  Then they would also get a flag.  Or, more accurately, their families would.

So from this dad and I had a discussion about the role of America in the world, and whether, overall, and especially compared to the actions of other countries, it has been good or bad.  It was then that my father recalled a man he had met when he was serving on board the Kitty Hawk when it was forward deployed to Yokosuka, Huan Nguyen.  He was introduced to Huan, who was the ship facility testing officer, as a very remarkable man it would be an honor and a privilege to know.  And so he was.

Huan's father was an officer in the ARVN when the Viet Cong attacked Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968.  He was targeted by the communists for execution as an enemy of the people.  And to inflict maximum terror on those who opposed the Viet Cong, so was his family.  The Viet Cong broke into Huan's home and executed his father, mother, his five brothers, his sister and his grandmother.  Huan himself was shot three times, including in the head and left for dead.  His mother lived for two hours after the attack and Huan stayed by her side trying to stop the bleeding from her cut throat until she died.  For some reason, the guerillas shot the father and sons but cut the throats of the mother, grandmother and daughter.  The man who cut their throats was Nguyen Van Lem.  He was captured shortly afterward and summarily shot dead by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the execution caught in that famous photo.

Asan Beach Park on a recent Memorial Day.

Huan Nguyen, who was nine years old when he lost his family, lived with an uncle until the fall of Saigon when he was evacuated to Camp Asan, Guam.  The site of the camp is now a beach park. I've picnicked there many times. It's also the site of Memorial Day ceremonies, as it was the site of savage fighting during the liberation of Guam in 1944, with the Japanese attacking the field hospital there, bayoneting the wounded in their beds as well as doctors and nurses before finally being driven out by the Marines.

In an interview, Huan said, “The images that I remember vividly when I arrived at Camp Asan were of American sailors and Marines toiling in the hot sun, setting up tents and chow hall, distributing water and hot food, helping and caring for the people with dignity and respect. I thought to myself how lucky I am to be in a place like America. Those sailors inspired me to later serve in the United States Navy.” 

And that's what he did.  But first he went to university, earning masters' degrees in electrical and manufacturing engineering as well as information technology. He is an alumnus of  Carnegie Mellon.  He was commissioned as an officer in the Navy in 1993. Besides serving in Japan, he has also served in Iraq and Afghanistan while rising through the ranks to rear admiral, serving as deputy commander of cyber engineering at NAVSEA. 

Huan has said, "Growing up in the war zone, it is literally a day-to-day mental attitude. You never know what is going to happen next. The war is at your doorstep. Images of gunships firing in the distance, the rumbling of B-52 bombings on the countryside, the nightly rocket attacks from the insurgents—it becomes a daily routine. There is so much ugliness in the war and living through a period of intense hatred, I didn't have any peace of mind.

War, war, always war.

"It is not easy to get over the trauma of losing your entire family. It has been over fifty years, but it is something I will never forget. Every day I asked myself: 'Why me?'

"I thought of myself as a curse. In my mind, bad news was always around the corner; it was just a matter of time. I was afraid of building relationships just to lose the people I love. I was afraid of losing everything.

Tet Offensive, 1968.

"I have often thought of the actions of my father the day he died. Why did he make those decisions that ultimately led to not just his death but those of my mother and siblings? Would I have made the same choices?

"The message I have come to understand from his example is that it is about service before self and doing what is right with honor. What I experienced and learned from that event is about honor, courage, and commitment. The same ethos that the Navy I serve pledges today to uphold — honor, courage, and commitment."

When he was promoted to admiral, Huan said, “It is a great honor to attain the rank of admiral. I am humbled to become the first Vietnamese-American to wear the flag rank in the U.S. Navy. The honor actually belongs to the Vietnamese-American community, which instilled in us a sense of patriotism, duty, honor, courage and commitment to our adopted country, the United States of America. This is our America, a country built on service, kindness and generosity as well as endless opportunity. These values are what inspired me to serve.  And what a great honor and privilege it is to serve our Navy, to serve our country.”

God bless America. You may not say it, but they do.

So....  What...?

I guess what I'm thinking, what I'm trying to convey is that, as screwed up as America may be, as many mistakes as we make, as many things wrong that we do, we are still a worthy country, a worthy people, trying our best.  We often do not realize that, or grow cynical in the face of rah-rah phony shows of patriotism by contemptible politicians and their hangers-on, crooks and cowards that they are, but others who come to us from far different and far worse backgrounds see that it is true.  If we falter, feel the country is done for, they seize the flag before we let it touch the ground and run forward with it.  We're in a particularly bad time these days, with, it seems, psychopaths and lunatics, criminals and incompetents, in charge of just about everything.  But we must persevere somehow, abide and outlast while enduring the unendurable.

Here's Douglas Pike's analysis of the Viet Cong's deliberate use of terror against civilians:

The Viet Cong Strategy of Terror

The ad below was created at the behest of Admiral Huan Nguyen about a dozen years ago. Unfortunately, thanks to the deteriorating competence of American leaders, civilian and military, and in particular the implementation of Critical Race Theory in the armed forces, things are rapidly becoming not what they were.  But none-the-less....  Notice that at the end of this mini-video, the camera zooms out from Guam, where, in many ways, the admiral's real life began.  His love for America is profound and sincere.  If the descendants of those who founded this country, and others who came after, give up on it, men like the admiral will carry on and fight to force it back to its original ideals. 
I hope they win.

 

Lives

When I was rummaging around in some old storage boxes and suitcases a while back, I came across this empty cigarette pack.  I wondered why on earth anyone would save such a thing.  Normally, something like this would just be trash you would throw away without a thought.  So I asked my mother if she knew anything about this.  When I showed it to her, she paused, started to say something, stopped, took the package from me and held it in her hand, looking at it as if it was the relic of a saint.  She brushed a finger across it.  I waited.  She said nothing, but just kept holding the package, looking at it.  Finally, I said, "Well?"  Then she explained that this was a package of cigarettes that my aunt, the one I wrote about in my post Conversations with a Ghost, had discarded and that she, my mother, had retrieved and saved.  She had forgotten all about it and wanted to know where I found it. I told her and she spent an hour going through the worldly remnants of a life, not speaking, sometimes picking something out and holding it, pressing it to her heart, reluctantly putting it back.  Afterwards, we had a long conversation not only about my aunt, but about many, many things, especially how brief this life is, and how much we should treasure each moment, and each other, because soon enough we will all be gone and nothing will be left of us but a suitcase or cardboard box filled with old books, out of style clothing, empty cigarette packages and other useless junk that sooner or later will be thrown away by those to whom these things mean nothing.

The famous photo of Kim Phúc.

  I also found this little booklet that belonged to my mother. She bought it when she was a volunteer with the Barsky Unit of the Children's Medical Relief International hospital in Saigon in

Kim Phúc being treated in the Barsky Unit.

the early 1970s. The Barsky Unit treated burn victims, many horrifically burned by napalm.  You've seen the little girl running naked screaming.  That was Phan Thị Kim Phúc.  My mother treated her among many, many others. 

Kim Phúc (center) recovering in the CMRI burn ward.*

Glancing through the book, the phrases it taught don't seem like they would be of much use to a burn care nurse.  Before volunteering with CMRI, my mother was an army nurse serving in Viet Nam, based in Cu Chi.  She wouldn't have had much use for a Vietnamese phrase book then as her patients were American soldiers.  She won't talk about that time of her life and only reluctantly talks about her time with CMRI. Outwardly, the only sign she ever reveals that shows she was in Viet Nam is that she hates the sound of helicopters and she can detect the sound of a Huey or Chinook before anyone else can hear anything.  If she is outside when she does, she goes into the house.  If she is inside, she goes into the bathroom and turns on the exhaust fan.

*The grease pencil marks on this photo are because it was used by my mother's home-town newspaper in a story about her service as an Army nurse and volunteer with CMRI shortly after she returned to the States.

The Japanese woman who emigrated to the States back around circa 1980, whom I've written about before (Next Generation), seems to be losing her English. Having learned English at an adult school when she was in her thirties, she always had a heavy accent and vocabulary largely limited to business and commerce -- she would "issue" a check, never merely write one, for example -- but now sometimes her English is unintelligible.  When I ask her to repeat what she has said, she grows peevish and barks, "Listen!"  I'm the stupid one because I can't understand; it's my fault.  So I listen more intently but all I hear is gibberish. Her mind is retreating into her earlier life.  She's growing old.  That's all.  

These days, she often reminisces about her life in Japan.  Among other things, she talks about when she graduated from a commercial high school -- one that taught employment skills for those not college-bound, and applied for work. She thought if she worked hard and was loyal to the company she would advance, but she discovered that in ultra-sexist Japan that was not going to happen.  In fact, in one job, her boss told her that she would never be promoted because she was too ugly.  The only women who got raises were the tee-hee tootsies who giggled at the boss's jokes.  On a trip to the USA, she was astonished to see female department heads bossing around men.  From that moment on she was America-bound.  And, indeed, once here, she did very, very well for herself, as I've written.  I also wrote about her mother (A Life), who dearly loved America and Americans, owing her life to them. (I wrote in her profile that she is still alive, but since I wrote that, she has passed away.)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”
~ Anais Nin.
 

Over the Atlantic

The flight back from Old Blighty was enjoyable and interesting.  My dad flew left seat on our excursion to the Shetlands but he had me fly most of the time, including take-offs and landings.  He was evaluating my piloting skills, determining whether they had eroded, and

I didn't land like this! The old man lies!

my ability to still handle the big tail-dragger, especially in crosswind landings, and even just in taxiing: the Beech has a reputation for ground-looping if you let it get ahead of you. It has a non-steerable, castoring tail wheel.  You steer with differential braking and throttle -- carefully!  You lock the tail wheel for take-off and landing, otherwise you could totally lose the airplane.  I read an accident report of a Beech 18 crash at Van Nuys where the pilot lost control while taxiing and slammed into a hanger. The plane exploded and burned killing all on board and also burned down the hanger, destroying the three  planes inside.  So taxiing the 18 is nothing to be casual about.

As part of our preparation for the Atlantic crossing, we checked out our survival gear: a life raft, immersion suits and an EPIRB for the raft. (The ELT would go down with the plane if we ditched.)  I also bought a PLB when I bought my immersion suit in Glasgow.  Dad and the crew had already bought theirs in Gander. I hadn't even thought about the need for survival equipment when I let the two big oafs talk me into letting my little boys fly with them across the North Atlantic.  If I had, and genuinely realized the extreme danger they could face, I would have screamed No!  But I never thought about it.  The next time I want to know what an idiot looks like, I'll go find a mirror.

We left Glasgow at night, with me in the left seat as PIC and the popster as co-pilot.  The decision to depart at night was mine, as I wanted to arrive in Iceland in the morning with the sun behind us, and I wanted to have the full day to settle into our hotel in Reykjavík and get the Beech refueled and serviced.

The Beech has positive stability around all three axes and is very easy to fly, even in turbulence.  Trimmed up, you can even fly hands off, and it's very friendly for instrument flying.  As the engines droned steadily and the hours passed not much was happening.  My dad began to doze so I suggested he go back into the cabin and lie down on the couch and nap.  He did that without protest, which I thought a good sign of his confidence in my piloting abilities.  Soon enough he was snoring like Don Ameche in "The Bickersons," the old radio comedy routine.  It sounded like he was sawing through a steel pipe with a hacksaw.  And just who was Gloria Gooseby anyway?

So I had the airplane and the vast canopy of stars all to myself, the drone of the engines a comforting background noise that I soon didn't even notice -- I would only have noticed it the sound stopped.  I put the plane on autopilot when I went back to the little girl's room and when I fixed myself something to eat, made fresh coffee or just to stretch my legs, otherwise I enjoyed the feel of the plane through my feet and hands.  I kept a dead-reckoning plot of our position which I compared to our GPS reading, so should our electric gizmos go on the fritz I would have some idea of where we were and where I should point the scareplane.  I was please to see how closely my dead reckoning positions matched what the GPS was telling me. 

Overlaying the tension of flying hundreds of miles across the North Atlantic at night, I felt a sort of contentment, for want of a better word, sitting in the cockpit alone with the soft glow of the instruments and the blackness of the interior of clouds, broken suddenly by the startling emergence into starlight, auroras and meteors as the clouds fell away, tumbling down like a snowy staircase in the starlight and the light of the waning crescent moon soaring up behind and to the right of us as it rose after midnight.  Some of the meteors streaking across the night sky left persistent smoke trails, clearly visible. Others popped like flashbulbs at the end of their runs. The auroras shimmied across the sky in wavering curtains of aqua blue and green. I felt like I was seeing things a human being was not meant to see.  The overwhelming impression I got was indifference: the earth, the entire universe, was wheeling through an eternity measured in billions of years while we puny humans measured our brief lifespans in tens of years.  If we existed or didn't exist it was nothing to the universe. 

I did not land like this. Don't listen to that old geezer!

Approaching Reykjavik, dad was still sleeping.  He seemed really tired and I thought this whole trip must have taken a lot out of him.  I was pleased that he felt so comfortable with me driving that he could completely relax and let his poor old body get the rest it needed.  Of course, he had taught me to fly, as he did all his chil'ens, so he knew I could handle the plane no matter what situation might develop.  I decided to let him sleep as I got on the horn with Keflavik, Reykjavik's international airport. I dropped through some broken clouds but otherwise flew through a beautiful, clear morning (CAVOK), eased the Beech onto Runway 1 with a 19-knot crosswind (070 degrees).  Piece of cake. Well....   the demonstrated 90-degree crosswind component of our model Beech 18 is 16 knots so I definitely sat up straight and paid attention as I sat that little puppy dog down on the centerline and held it there.  Really not a big  deal: at our weight I came in over the threshhold, windward wing down, a little faster than I normally would have at 95 knots and, with a long runway ahead of me, didn't drop the flaps (they reduce rudder authority), set it down on first one main, then the other, and eased forward on the yoke to plant them firmly -- you don't continue to flair a taildragger like you do a trike; if you do, the plane will go airborne -- and added a bit of differential power and some rudder.  When we slowed to 60 knots and the rudders began to lose effectiveness, I dropped the tail with no delay, as I wanted to get that locked tail wheel down on the ground quickly to help maintain tracking, and pulled the yoke all the way back.  At the end of the run, I unlocked the tail wheel to taxi, using braking and differential power to steer. All routine for this airplane: no fuss, no muss, no rough stuff. But it's definitely no Land-O-Matic Cessna.

 Dad didn't wake up until I parked and shut down the Wasps.  The sudden silence brought him bolt upright, groggy but ready for action.  
"Relax, pop, we're here." 
"You should have wakened me and let me help you." 
"Nah, you were pooped and no help needed.  And look!  Such a beautiful day in such a beautiful land.  We made it!"
"Well, hallelujah, so we did.  Will wonders never cease?"

Truth be told, I was enormously relieved to have crossed what in my mind had been a vast and forbidding sea without incident. My ear had been attuned, hour after hour, for the slightest change in the sound of our engines. I stared hard at the instruments, never letting more than a few moments pass before I checked them again.  The immersion suit I was wearing was a constant reminder of potential disaster.  And why were we wearing our immersion suits?  Because should we need to ditch, there would be no time to put them on.  I rehearsed again and again in my mind what I would do in case of a ditching, opening the rear door, or if that wasn't possible, kicking out the escape hatch, grabbing the raft and manhandling it into the water -- I could do that, couldn't I?  I would have to.  What if dad were injured, could I get him out before the plane sank?  What if I were injured? What if we were both injured?  What if -- ?

But nothing happened at all.  The Wasps are long-proven, very reliable engines, with a failure rate of 11 per 100,000 hours according to the NTSB, and the Beach 18 itself was designed when they weren't sure how strong they needed to make an airframe for it to be safe, so they made it as strong as they could.  So the airframe, like that of a DC-3, has no lifespan. 

The folks at immigration thought it quite charming that a father and daughter had flown across the ocean together in their own plane, and such an old-fashioned one at that.  So we had a nice, if brief, chat.  Ground crewmen had also come over to check out the old bird -- the airplane, not my dad!  They promised to take special care of it.

We got a hotel a short walk from the terminal and next to a car rental place. I wanted to drive around the island a bit and see what it looked like and do a bit of shopping in the city, which I was told was about an hour's drive away, but dad said he would see to the airplane and get it ready for the flight to Greenland, then sack out.  Apparently, you had to make a special request to get a bowser of avgas rather than jet fuel, and there were other issues to deal with, from getting the right grade of oil to pulling the engine cowlings and going over everything to make sure nothing was loose, cracked, worn or leaking.  Dad was nothing if not careful and he didn't trust anyone but himself to either do what needed to be done or supervise those who did it.

We had dinner in the hotel that evening and chatted about the flight from Scotland and discussed plans for the crossing to Greenland.  A couple of men at the next table overheard us and joined our conversation.  It turns out they were British Airways crew and had seen our Beech 18 come in.  They complimented my father on the smooth job he had done landing the big tail-dragger in that strong crosswind -- they knew the reputation of the 18 for making fools of indifferent pilots on landing -- and when he said he was actually asleep in the cabin and that his little girl (meaning me, lol) had set the plane down, they were dumbfounded.  I don't think they really believed it.  I didn't care if they did or didn't.  My vanity is not tied up with how well strangers think I can or can't drive an airplane.  Okay, I was annoyed a little bit, but then I saw the funny side of it and under my breath began to scat sing "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," the Irving Berlin tune from the musical Annie Get Your Gun.  My dad gave me a sideways glance.  I stuck my tongue out at him.  The Brits had no idea.  

Thereafter I sat back and let the menfolks chat about their various astounding adventures.  Dad let the bus drivers do most of the yarning, and, boy, could they tell some tall ones. I felt like saying, hey, pop, tell them about the time over Haiphong and ... or that time in the Gulf of Sidra when ... or in the Straight of Hormuz when those ... or over Baghdad the time that .... but nah.  If I had, dad would have shrugged and said they were just typical days at the office.  You'll never get anything out of him about that stuff.  He's not interested in impressing other men.  He's interested in seeing if other men impress him.  If they do, they might be worth getting to know and be friends with.  The rest?  Just part of the passing parade.

Très sexy, non?

 Addendum: El jefe wanted to take some retro 1940s-style plane-and-dame "cheesecake" snapshots with the Beech.  I didn't bring anything that would work for that, not expecting to be posing like a Petty girl.  We went shopping for some Forties-looking glamor rags but the would-be Ewing Krainin wasn't satisfied with anything the local shops offered. The closest get-up I could put together was cut-off jeans and a tee shirt. I hadn't brought any heels so had to buy a pair and the only size that fit from the limited selection available was not something I would have chosen if I had my druthers.  Jef had me pose standing leaning against the fuselage with a hopefully seductive, come-hither look (rather than appearing like someone who's about to  sneeze),  then wanted me to lie down on the wing and do the same, and while trying to do that I almost lost my balance and fell on my heinie.  Ah, the things we do for love.

Art originally on an Okinawa-based B-24.

Of course, the usual hanger flyers were lounging around the aerodrome and moseyed over to gawk as jef clicked away.  They opined freely on what we were doing.  The kibitzers good-natured comments made me smile, sometimes laugh.  I enjoyed basking in the male gazes of some half-dozen members of the patriarchy, loafer division, 3rd class. Alas and alack, they were more interested in the bodacious Beech than my bodacious bod.  They all wanted to climb aboard and go for a ride -- in the Beech!

Reprobates and scoundrels!

And here we have two of the grand instigators and culprits of this mad adventure, both looking innocent and happy as clams.  And ready to do it again.  My mother brought the boys home safe and sound and wildly excited to tell their mom everything they had seen and done, from firing a Spencer carbine light-loaded by a park ranger at a Civil War battlefield to gazing at an erupting volcano in Iceland to visiting the dungeon in the Tower of London.  They also saw the Spirit of St. Louis at the Smithsonian, toured the USS Constitution, took a boat ride on Loch Ness and visited the Normandy D-Day landing beaches.  They had so much fun and did so many things without me that I regretted turning down the offer to go with them.  I was happy for them but also began to feel kind of sad, realizing what a memorable part of their lives I had missed.  It was a portent of the days ahead when they, invested in their own lives, will forget to send mom a Mother's Day card and will want to be with their own families on Thanksgiving and Christmas and they'll promise to come and visit next year, for sure.  Oh, well.  Just another dumb decision to add to the ever-growing list. But maybe I am being selfish.  Maybe my original decision, that the boys should spend time with men doing man things, was best -- for them, if not for me. And, on that note, I shall close for now and write about the rest of the trip later.

      

         

 

 

 

 

Next:  On to Greenland

 (To be continued...)

Eighties Interlude

 Busy, be back soon. but in the meantime enjoy the grand era of bubblegum pop.  Frivolity, thy name is the Eighties. Plus it's great music to dancercize to and keep in shape while having fun and enjoying yourself.