Reminiscences

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Reminiscences

Reminiscences

I’ve talked about retirement in the past, it is a life decision that is looming either in the not too distant future or the not near soon enough future, it depends upon the day of the week. Whenever I broach the subject of my retirement, I’m usually queried about what I want to do when I retire. The short answer is I don’t know, but I usually give the flippant answer, “bicycle, travel, work around the house and then make inane comments on Facebook to all of my friends.” After this trip I know that I’ll never be a full-time world traveler. It will be too expensive to do full-time for one, but now I’m sure that I’ll get homesick before too long on the road. I’ve never had much of an idea of what I’ll do next in life. Looking forward to retirement, where I’ll have more freedom to do what I want than I’ve had in a long, long time, why should I plan things out too much? I think that it would be better to take things as they come.

If It Bleeds It Leads

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Space Needle and Chopper

Space Needle and Chopper

‘If it bleeds it leads’ is an old newspaper adage that means that the bloodiest most violent news story is usually the first one featured. Following in that grand tradition, today’s post features one such story where the news crew created their own bloody headline. This morning in Seattle, next to the Space Needle the KOMO-TV traffic copter crashed and burned on takeoff. Both the pilot and the announcer in the helicopter were killed and a passing driver was severely injured when the flaming chopper landed on his vehicle.

Last Friday, I was at Seattle Center, home of the Space Needle, when I saw the KOMO copter come in for a landing on its helipad, right across the street from the Space Needle. I caught it in the above photo, as it passed by the Space Needle. I was there with Carl Sagan, when it came in low and slow. It also made one heck of a racket. That was later in the day, than when today’s crash occurred, which was during rush-hour. I saw the regular KOMO traffic copter land on Friday. The one that crashed today was a loaner, while the regular one was in the shop for service, but I bet you that the aircrew were the same people both times. No cause for the crash has yet been identified, but I’m sure that one will eventually be found.

I’m not so sure that we will ever be able to say the same of the missing Malaysian 777 airliner. It has been missing for over ten days and I don’t think that we are any closer to knowing where it is than on the day it was lost. The torrent of speculation as fact combined with politically motivated misinformation makes me uncertain that anything that we’ve ‘learned’ so far is the truth. The investigation seems be continually hobbled by ineptitude, partisanship or both.

From the NW to the MW via SW

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From the NW to the MW via SW

From the NW to the MW via SW

We came from the Northwest and travelled to the Midwest via Southwest. Now we’re back in the Lou, after at least for me being on the road for 23 days. It was a great trip, but it’s nice to be home again. Anne got her usual vacation cold, only this time on the back half of the trip, but even so, she had a good time too. Here is a shoutout to Jay and Carl for putting us up for a week and for putting up with me for even longer.

Carl Sagan gave us a ride to the airport. This time only Anne was TSA pre-approved. Was it something I said? She ended up getting rounded up with me and all of the usual suspects though. I checked her in just before me, but simultaneously another couple was also checking in. We ended up being interspersed, when we queued up to board. Our flights were OK, even when I was getting kicked in the back of my seat by tiny feet and the little girl’s older brother was making fake (hopefully) barfing sounds. There is nothing like a little downtime to put life back into perspective. Or maybe it was the free adult beverages on Southwest in honor of Saint Pat’s day. We connected through Milwaukee, in the heart of the frozen (Let it go, cold never bothered me anyway) northern Midwest. We had a great view of Chicago under a full moon on the was down to Saint Louis, but unfortunately I had stowed my camera. Now it’s time for both of us to go back to work. All good things must come to an end, but it was fun while it lasted.