The CSI: YEAAAHHH... (part 1)

Before we begin, this requires an explanation: the CSI Yeah comes from the intro to the show CSI: Miami.  The intro song is We Wont Get Fooled Again by The Who.  It usually follows a witty remark from the show's main character, head of the crime lab, Lieutenant Horatio Caine.  In the real world (or my world, anyway) this intense affirmative outburst is reserved only for the greatest of moments.  These moments are rare, and for two to happen in the same day, rarer still.  So it came as a welcome surprise when my world stopped twice for a few seconds to acknowledge the epic events.

I popped out of bed early this morning (very, very new things, remember?) and the thought of being timid is so small that it is noteworthy only because of how insignificant the idea actually is.  I do a little trick that I picked up in Florida and grab a touristy pocket map, a Seattle Magazine, my ipod and a one-way ticket to downtown Seattle, sans breakfast.  On the 37 minute light rail trip, I read about the district and note some interesting things to do.  Flying by the seat of your pants is really fun and sometimes the planned stuff is too boring.  With that as my guide, I note some points of interest, and decide to generally make my way north on foot and see where the wind takes me.  Right off the bat, something catches my ear as I cross a busy street right outside the train station.  It sounds like a rhythmic chanting of sorts, something that might come from a crowd of, say, protesters.

Had I planned to get lunch precisely at (insert time here), I would not have waited a few moments on that street corner to find out.  Before I know it, a few hundred people with a few less cardboard signs are marching down the street.  So I instinctively run toward the nearest light poll and climb.  Certainly not out of fear, but if I'm going to be an expert iReporter, I'll need a better angle.  I shoot some video as the group walks by and sits down in the busy intersection.  Not to be left behind, I walk over to the sit-in and hop on a huge concrete planter, again for the angle.  After shooting and listening to the stories from the group for a few minutes, a gentleman of about 40, with some cameras that brought out my envy, extends his hand to me.  Embracing the spontaneity of the day, I grab his hand and he pulls himself up onto the planter and I share my knowledge of how to stand on the rim without killing the flowers.
"Thanks!"  He says with a smile as he snaps off some pictures.  "The name's Jack Storms!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Okay, the thunder was in my head, but really?  Jack Storms? (booom...)
He went on to explain that he is a human rights advocate.  He basically introduced himself like, Hi, I like this thing and I take pictures of it.  Cool, huh?
Umm...YES.
Now even though I was the only guy on a flower pot, it must be written on my forehead: he asked me if I was from around here.  After hearing about my 3000 mile departure from my norm, he said something with the words "culture shock".  I responded with something to the effect of "I'm not shy".
He smiled.  "Welcome to Seattle!"  [CSI YEAH]
I'll hear Those Three Words again.

After I got my fill of the 99% it was back to the list to quiet my stomach; Pike Place Bar and Grill for fresh salmon sounds perfect.  If you haven't been to Pike Place, it can be quite the labyrinth, but a little wandering never hurt anyone.  As expected, I stumbled upon the main entrance and walked in.  A bit of advice if you end up with your own adventure; DO NOT be shy about saying "One, please" at mealtime.  If you're not comfortable eating alone, just grab a pencil and notepad and people will think you're a food critic.  (And when you post your findings, you will be).  I scanned the menu and since I could combine my breakfast and lunch budget, I splurged on the sampler.  Could there be a dish with any more of the seafood things I like on it?  Battered fried cod, crab cakes and grilled salmon.  No.  Literally, no, I don't like anything else from the ocean but those.  As for the drink, the beer list was long, but after the waiter said "Alaskan Ale", I went deaf.  Slightly hoppy with a little citrus (his words, not mine).  It was delicious, and ice cold.  What's this?  Some unusual looks from the patrons across the room...

To be continued...

The first day of hotel-rental-car limbo

Today is different in that I will make it different.  Let me explain, today has to be different because it should be the beginning of something very, very new.  3000 miles away from what I called home all my life and I've yet to feel like I've been dropped into it.  There is no light switch that has been flipped.  I'm sitting in hotel-rental-car limbo while I decide where my first apartment will be.  This span of time contains experiences that are not shocking my system.  I'm eating take out and fast food.  Been there.  I'm driving around a new place with no GPS and no map.  Done that.  How tragically boring the world has become when nothing fazes me, I must take action to change that.  And yet...

And yet my heart rate is slightly elevated, if I notice it.  I'm talking to myself aloud more for some reason, if I decide to listen.  The sun is sunnier, the clouds are cloudier and the largest mountain in the Cascades is distracting me while I drive on an interstate that has (I'm convinced) no straight portion of road.  That pile of rock is huge and un-earthy.  It's surreal-ness challenges my imagination because ever since I was a kid who lived in a state whose highest peak was not even a mile (who later moved to the flattest state ever settled), the idea of "summitting" a "mountain" was as abstract as anything else I had ever conjured.  Missed my exit.  Oh wait, no I didn't.  The 5/405 interchange is weird.

This is the perfect opportunity to test my feeble skills of perception and make some observations.  If I could be a fly on my own wall, if I could observe myself and take notes, think of all the stuff I could learn.  I could figure out what it feels like to not know a place at all and then slowly become aware of every inch of it until I can call it home.  I can try to watch my cognitive maps take form in my mind.  Maybe I can identify geographic locations by associating them with emotions, experiences, even smells.  Hmm...using the chemicals and electricity in my brain to observe the sensation of the other chemicals and electricity in my brain that forms my memories.

There is no place in my brain that has been set aside for these experiences and there is no place that will record a shocking fear or depression or otherwise normal excitement about where I am and what I am doing today.  The memories themselves are of course, the very very new things.   It wasn't a surprise to me when I realized that I showed up here with all the tools I would need to experience this place in situ.  Of course, I might also have the tools I need to create the new tools that I will need.

I will admit something that is an incredible surprise.  This place, Seattle, is an apex of awesomeness. My definition of awesome involves seeing cloud formations that I've only read about and looking up at any given time and seeing at the very least, one airplane overhead.  It also includes an incredible network of roads that seems to embrace and marry the topography, rather than surmount it.  I'll bet cars have so much fun out here.

Test Pilot

As a flight instructor, sometimes I get to test fly the flight school airplanes when they come out of their required scheduled maintenance.  I say I "get" to because I think it's a privilege to fly the planes without having to pay.  But more importantly, I get an overwhelming sense of connection to test pilots all over the world.  One might chuckle when I call myself a test pilot,  flying a plane that has withstood the test of time for longer than I've been alive to become the  most popular training aircraft in the world. But if I were to brush off such an event and treat it as routine I would be doing a great disservice to the people who trained me, and to a greater extent, the many men and women who died to learn what we know now.  Even as you read this there are aircraft larger than your city block being flown at thousands of feet, slower and slower and slower, until they begin to fall out of the sky.  It is done this way, as it has been for over 100 years, because there simply is no other way to find out.  We must find out what the machine we've created is capable of.  Not because the authorities say so, but because as pilots and engineers, if we are  to present our machine to the population in an attempt to better mankind, we must be able to say with the utmost confidence that this plane is safe, and this is how it works.  Test flying is not the final frontier.  It is not really a frontier anymore at all, rather, it is the accepted way to come to these conclusions.

As I run through the paces of starting the plane and taxiing to the runway for our test flight, I can't help but think about how much this simple act has changed in the past century.

Throwing men into experimental planes back in the 30s, 40s and 50s was barbaric at best by today's standards (although, if they were anything like me, it would not have taken much convincing to strap their asses to a plane who's model number started with an "X").  In the military it was commonplace to literally hurl bodies into the darkness attempting to understand the rules faster than the competition.  Pushing the envelope isn't just a saying, it is the only way to learn how to fly.  The learning curve was very steep.  On average, 1 man a week for many years died in the name of learning.  The lives of the pilots rested on the shoulders and slide rules of the engineers that designed the experimental planes that they used to probe the unknown.  There were no computers to calculate the airflow over a section of the wing, much less the whole aircraft.  The planes that rolled off the assembly line sometimes bared the result of lessons learned during testing.  "Stiffeners" would be added to the plane to strengthen a weak part that failed during the test flight.  Added  fairings corrected areas that created too much drag.  

Today, the Boeing 787 is 3 years late and perfect, and people are complaining.  But I digress.  There are no cameras or on-lookers for my cool-morning test flight.  The guy in the control tower doesn't even know the plane that I am flying was in a hundred pieces the night before.  Throttle response is good and we roll down a runway that is 7 times as long as we need it to be.  Up off the ground, no more usable runway, so we can't land on it if the engine fails now.  Higher, the fields near the airport property become usable and then further, higher, no longer an option in an emergency.  Finally through the dead zone and the original runway is again available, though in the opposite direction (a 180 degree turn can be performed safely at this altitude).  Free and clear for now.  The higher the better.

Learning how to push an aircraft through the sound barrier is like trying to eat one Pringle.  It can't be done.  However, there is a finite number of Pringles.  Back then, we knew there had to be a solution, we knew we had to find that last Pringle.  We needed to keep going faster, slamming these planes against that shock wave to see if we could get through it.  If we failed enough times, maybe we would give up and label it impossible.  Turning on 4 liquid-fueled rockets on the back of a test plane might work.  That was the way Chuck Yeager and others did it, though he was the first.  After many attempts and modifications, we finally succeeded.  For Yeager, the event was a horrendously violent experience followed by the smooth freedom that is the reward of supersonic flight.

My reward is the smooth freedom of normal operation.  The plane sounds and feels right.  Check the gauges, do the usual maneuvers, and back on the ground before breakfast.  This plane is safe, and this is how it works.