I came in on runway 24, which was, um, unimproved, shall we say, allegedly grass, 915 meters long, the longest of the two choices I had. There was only a fourteen knot crosswind coming in from due east, the weather was clear, dry and warm but not too hot, so piece of cake. But, to be honest, a grass runway that short had my attention.
I came in steep with 40 degrees of flaps, power a bit high, cutting power to idle, propeller levers full forward right before the threshhold, got the stall warning just as the tires touched the runway, hit the brakes and reversed prop thrust all the way back, flaps up, then props forward at 60 knots, (to avoid FOD damage) trying to prevent overloading the nose wheel, locking the brakes or bursting a tire, and came to a screeching halt with a good 100 meters to spare. I blew on my fingernails and buffed them on my sleeve. But if I ever have to fly down there when that runway is wet, you can just forget it. Back to RSA.
Simple preflight, just CIGAR, gyros erected, avionics set. Left engine started first to reduce the possibility of FOD damage. Began taxing by increasing propeller blade angle rather than with a burst of power, also to avoid possible FOD damage from increasing rpm; this way actually reduces rpm. Kept moving, setting approach flaps at the end of the runway and off we went.
Aaanyways, the reason I mention this is that we have some investments in cattle ranching in Argentina and I was freighting some of our guys to an estancia, as they call cattle ranches down there. We've been reducing our herds stateside for various reasons, but expanding them in Argentina. (In both cases, thank you very much, President Trump.)
We used to sell a lot of our American beef to China but not so much recently, the Chinese having begun sourcing their beef buying to other countries...like Argentina.
While I was at the estancia, I met their Chinese buyer, and, wouldn't you know it, he was the same guy who came to our ranch in el norte when the Chinese were buying American beef. I'd had him up to the house for dinner, taken him for horseback rides and even flew him on sight-seeing jaunts in the Husky. And, of course, took him shooting. All Orientals want to shoot guns. He wanted to shoot a .44 magnum like Dirty Harry used. We didn't have one of those but he was happy with a Colt .45 revolver. The joke was that the safest place to be when he fired was standing directly in front of him.
When I first met him at our Montana ranch, he wouldn't look directly at me but kind of off to the side or down at his shoes. Then, when he thought I wasn't paying attention, he would stare at me, letting his eyes slide over me. But after I talked to him enough and he got used to dealing with me he stopped doing that. Chinese women can certainly be quite pretty, but as a rule tend to be somewhat flat both uptown and downtown. That, I am not. So I guess I unsettled him until he got acclimatized to the landscape.
We were both kind of surprised to see each other in La Pampa, but pleasantly so. I was a bit set back because I couldn't remember his name, Sum Dum Ting or whatever it was, and I think he couldn't remember mine, either. So we were all like, "Hey, it's, ah -- you!" But we had a cordial reunion and also had a laugh about how ridiculous all this switching of import sourcing was. The same big outfits, companies, corporations, run everything, regardless of nationality. The only people who are hurt are the 25-dollar to 35-dollar an hour guys with families to support. You know, the backbone of the country. But what can you do?
So if you wondered why, after China retaliated for Trump tariffs by switching its beef buying from the USA to Argentina, Trump gave the Argentine beef industry 200 billion dollars, now you know.
