70 Years Between Jumps

Yesterday was the annual Special Forces day at Skydive Twin Cities.  Every year a group of old SF guys and assorted retired Army grunts come out to the drop zone to make a skydive and tell war stories, mostly to tell war stories.  Among the group of old men trying to one up each other with tails of daring do was a ninety year old ex-paratrooper named Ernie.  When I met Ernie I shook his hand rather gently so as not to break anything in his old withered hand only to have my hand crushed with a grip like iron.  “What kind of handshake is that for man?  I hate a man with a weak hand shake!”  Ernie said as I desperately tried to match his grip.  Ernie then went on to tell us about the last time he jumped out of a plane.  It was June 6th 1944 and he left the plane over a little town in France called St. Mere Eglise with his buddies in the 82nd. Airborne.  He went on to tell us about that long night and what it was like jumping under fire at night.  The weather yesterday wasn’t great and we had to wait for a few hours for the clouds to clear.  When we told Ernie what we were waiting for he gave us a look that was impossible to misunderstand, “PUSSYS!” We finally got him up and he had the time of his life.  When he landed one of my staff, a stunning twenty five year old blonde woman, came up to shake his hand and congratulate him.  Ernie brushed her hand aside, planted a big wet kiss on her mouth and left her blushing in his wake.  What a stud.

50 Inch Club

With thunderstorms forecast for the area yesterday making skydiving just a bit too exciting I decided to take the opportunity to go Musky fishing with my good friends Pat and Marty.  We went to lake Holcombe in central Wisconsin and braved the rain, wind and lightning in pursuit of the fresh water monsters.  Even with getting chased off the lake twice by thunderstorms we managed to get in a little fishing and I tied into this nice fifty inch Musky that weighed in at over thirty pounds. It’s the biggest fish I’ve ever caught and I’m now in the exclusive 50 inch club.  The beer sure tasted good that night.

A Day in the Life of an Airline Pilot

A short video from Capnaux of what it’s like to be an airline pilot.  When I first quit my office job as a property manager and took up flying my eventual goal was to become an airline pilot.  I worked long and hard toward that goal but along the way I started to be seduced by the adventure of general aviation and the lure of the airlines started to wane.  What finally killed the dream was a flight from Cyprus to London in the jump seat of an Airbus 310.  I’d just finished ferrying an Aerostar, the plane not the mini-van, and was lucky enough to get a ride up in the cockpit with the pilots, obviously this was before 9/11.  The beginning of the flight was great.  The start up was filled with lots of switches thrown and knobs turned. Check lists read off with “Roger, check and engaged” reply’s flying around the cockpit.  The co-pilot pushed the throttles forward and the big jet shot into the air.  WOW! what a blast! it was like being on the flight deck of a shuttle launch, for about 30 seconds.  Then the co-pilot engaged the auto pilot, slid his seat back and started filling out paperwork.  And that was pretty much it for the rest of the flight.  The captain was a skydiver so he and I talked jumping for a while but when the conversation dragged I went back into the cabin and drank beer with the flight attendants.  I went back into the cockpit for the landing and was disappointed to see that they left the autopilot on until short final.  The co-pilot did the landing and even though he’d only flown a grand total of 2 minutes that day the captain still spent the entire time taxiing back to the gate bitching him out for the shitty landing.  After thanking the crew for the ride I walked off the Airbus vowing to never ever take a job as an airline pilot.  I’m not saying it’s the worst job in the world, it’s just not for me.