Risky Business

I certainly had an adventurous weekend! You know me, I have to have something going on, at least monthly. But this one is different. Wasn't planned. Not in my job description, but duty called.

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A little background info first. I had a chance to fly on plane to test some equipment when I was in Seattle. The flight was on a small King Air 2 prop plane (6 seater) that was flying very close to ground, flying very close to mountatins, and flying very close to antennas. I thought about it for about 250 milliseconds, and said "No".

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Fast Forward to last Wednesday. "Jez Chill, do you want to fly?" This time, I gave it 500 milliseconds of thought, and said "No". Thursday comes, and my management comes and personally asks me to get my ass on the plane. Of course, I said "YES". The adventures begin. I'll try to keep the summaries brief.

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Due to very bad weather, it doesn't look like we're going to fly. So I head off to lunch with my management. I'm tagging along, since I normally don't eat with the "Good Old Boys". I guess it was the one manager's turn to drive to lunch. He can't see well, his reaction speed is 2 seconds too slow, and it's always an over reaction.

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We get a cell phone call, the weather cleared up, so head off to the airport. Up until this point, I didn't think I was going to fly, so I was relieved. Now I'm asking a million questions to see if I should call & triple my life insurance policy real quick.

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At the airport, the first flight of guys were leaving as we were preparing to jump aboard. One guy is sick. Looks like he ran a marathon, and was running straight for the bathroom. Come to find out later, his management forced him to go despite his desire not to. Now I'm really worried.

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So we fly into the North Georgia mountain area. Of course, nothing but mountains of forests and a few antennas. The wind was whipping the plane like it was made of paper. We flew 500 ft above the forest, getting within 500 ft of mountains & antennas ahead of us. OK, that wasn't too bad, equpment works, I'm ready go home.

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Uh... no. That was just the first mode. The second mode requires us to fly at 300 ft!!! OH SHIT!!!! I'm sweating like the sprinkler system went off. One manager is telling stories how his squad searched and found the wreckage of a plane that crashed a month earlier at one of the mountains. Everyone is trying to turn up & readjust their air vents. And now here we are flying just above the tree tops and avoiding mountains & antennas by LESS THAN 300 feet.

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I forgot to tell you, instead of the test pilot flying, one of our guys somehow worked a deal to let him fly instead! WTH?!?! So the test pilot is giving the havne't-flown-a-plane-in-20-years pilot directions the entire time.

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We returned safe & sound. I swear, this was not part of my job description, but it was pretty cool when I look back on it. Scary though. Just when I thought I was safe, I get in the car with the blind manager... I think that ride back was scarier than the plane ride!!!

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Garage Work

I spent Saturday hanging up dry wall on an unfinished wall in my garage. I've never done it before, but it was pretty easy. I called my neighbor over, he approved of my handiwork, with several good suggestions. Here are pics of my progress. I feel like such a stud now. :-)

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Hoop Dreams

I bought some new kicks, so I ready to play some basketball. I was thinking, the shoes was the only thing I needed to allow me to jump as high I used to... back when I could dunk the ball. No luck. but my feet sure do feel better! Unfortunately, my youthful thinking convinced me that I should dive for a loose ball. What the hell was I thinking? So now I'm really sore, and there's a big chunk of skin from my knee still lying on the floor somewhere. *ouch* My hot tub sure came in handy last night!

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Big-Screen Debut

I saw myself in The Gospel on Friday. 3 scenes. Things that didn't make sense at the time now do make sense. It's great how careful editing makes nonsense sensical. We did switch seats in the church scene to make it look like a different day. But we also additional scenes on a different day, but I didn't see myself then.

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There were 2 scenes that I got called to be in, the basketball scene when Boris is talking to the kids in the gym, and a scene in a bar / cafe. Boris is like, 6'5", and they wanted folks that looked like basketball players. But anyone standing next to him is going to look like short, and I saw that on screen. Maybe next time, I'll have a little more advance warning, and I'll make arrangements to leave work and make my mark on "Ghettowood".