DISCLAIMER: Above Mach one, coolness increases exponentially. Dopler radar will not penetrate Cumulo-granite. Things that are displayed or painted red can hurt you. A good landing is no excuse for running off the end of the runway.
Blundered into the Christmas spirit like a drunk in a row boat. Panting. Swearing. One oar in the water. Lazy circles of furious effort.
Waited till it got good and cold to put up lights. Every year, my wife wants to add something new. Something to out Grizwald the Grizwalds 3 streets over. This year we gave the family of light deer a light puddle to drink from. (Thanks for the idea Doofy.) I pictured something pond-like. Grand. Serene. Twinkling white lights nestled in a glowing blue pond like moon glow.
What I got was just fucking sad. 18ft of blue rope lights coiled on the grass is about a foot in diameter. Trying to spread it out only makes it look like we’re honoring our Wicca roots. Back to the hardware store for another string of blue lights (which were helpfully mislabeled and decidedly green.) Now it looks like a Wicca protest against environmental pollution.
Fuck it.
In the process of “making it go,” I had mentally diagrammed the electrical load distribution. Leading edge stuff. Plug half the icicle lights, the garage frame, the two upstairs window frames, the 5 bushes on the Port side and the plastic Santa into one strand. Plug the other half of the icicle lights, the 8 ground floor windows, the 7 starboard bushes, the deer family, the puddle and the half dozen strands for the “tree of light” into a separate strand.
And then forget the plan, basic fire safety, grade school science and common sense and just daisy chain the whole fucking thing together into one plug.
The whole yard shorts out about 30 seconds after the last pond strand is connected. Since the wife was working on the puddle at the time, I assume it’s her fault. Fiddle with the little puddle lights. Disconnect them. Make sure everything else is still plugged in.
It finally dawns on me that if the whole yard is out, it’s probably not a loose bulb. Spend the next 5 minutes trying to get the GFI outlet to reset. There are scorch marks on the faceplate and the plastic housing of the timer is really hot and malformed. I stare at it for a good 2 minutes trying to convince myself it could have been designed that way.
But it was just working a second ago…? Fucking. Thing. Will. Not. Reset. Keep pushing the “TEST” button. Then the “RESET”. Insert plug. Nothing happens..
Fuse? Fuse. Fusebox? Fusebox in the basement!
I dynamically head downstairs feeling smart and capable for thinking to check the fusebox. (I Still haven’t cottoned onto the fact that 47 strands of lights are plugged into a single plug of a single outlet. Shhhhh don’t spoil it.)
A-ha! The 20 amp dining room breaker has tripped. I reset it. Damn I’m good. Dynamically head back upstairs. Reset the GFI. Plug the extension cord in directly. (Decided maybe the conspicuous bulge in the timer housing might not be a manufacturing defect after all. Maybe it’s broken. Maybe that’s the problem. On closer inspection, the skinny prong of the timer’s plug is now about a half a centimeter shorter than the fat one and sort of black on the end. Huh. Never noticed that before. Piece of shit. Was probably made in China.
Back outside I’m ready for the victory glow. Pulled the puddle out of the chain. That’s got to be it. Plug it in.
“POP!” Sparks arc to the plug of the extension cord.
Hmmmmm. Maybe that’s too much for one plug? Reset the basement breaker and the outlet GFI and plug the whole shitty nest into the OTHER plug on the outlet. (I wish I were making this up. Did I mention I fly airplanes for a living?)
Nothing.
Well shit. I split the load in two. Reset breaker and GFI repeatedly. Nothing. Well I guess I fried the outlet. As I’m excising it for my expedition to the hardware store, a neighbor stops by to tell me how much she likes the lights. After I share my electrical indiscretions with her, she volunteers her husband to stop by and take a look.
“Well sir, I may be an idiot, but there is one thing I am not sir. And that sir is an idiot.” – Peter Griffin.
At this point, could advice really hurt me? Even bad advice would probably be a step up. The husband stops by with some good looking and well deserved thoughts on the stormy relationship between impedance and heat. I didn’t realize they were still seeing each other.
Pull the GFI outlet out of the brick, breaking the all-weather cover in the process. Take it to Gilroy’s and hand it over without a word. Buy a new enclosure too. Install the shiny reminders of ineptitude in their new home – right next to the front door so I can see them every day. The entire load is still served by one outlet, but now its split between 2 plugs and that seems to do the trick.
Taking pride in correctly diagnosing the problem and repairing it is sad, I know. Fuck it. As I said, a win’s a win. The lights work and the house is still standing. I am a champion.
The tree though…… Little worried about the tree.
Day 1:
This trip is peculiar to the west coast. It normally takes about 4:30 to fly out there. Since we can’t fly more than 8 hours in a day, we are done when we get there. Simplicity rules that we may as well fly back the next day at roughly the same time we arrived, so- 24 hours in port.
Neat for killing time and seeing friends, but horribly inefficient if you’re working to “make money.” I could earn 24 hours of pay over 3 days. This trip pays about 10. Fly the red-eye out there. Sit for 24 hours. Fly the red-eye back. 3 days away from home. I try not to think about it.
Leave for work just after dark. (The lights look frickin awesome by the way.) I think the other Grizwalds got us beat this year. But there’s always next year.
My shitacular transport and I have come to an uneasy holiday detente. It has acknowledged my right to ignore the annoying warnings that it is out of coolant. And I recognize its right to whine about the coolant I’m not going to replace. No more juice. Not if you’re just going to spit it on the floor.
I have mentioned my nifty shifter knob before. $12 replacement for the $200 part from Volkswagen. Solid metal. (Really fucking cold in the winter by the way.) It used to have a button in the center which would cause the hidden lights in the circumference to chase around. Nothing a hunting knife and a pair of pliers couldn’t fix.
Well, its NOPI soul must be trapped in econobox purgatory. Some imprisoned sprite of after-market car personalization forever burrowing out of that now inert metal bulb.
There are six small hex nuts imbedded in the top (to change the batteries I assume.) The 5 o’clock screw backs out constantly . I am always absently trying to screw it back in with the heel of my thumb. It sticks up just enough to be irritating. I can never get it in past about 85%, screw as I might.
Every time I collect my car for drive-to-the-airport visitation (my wife and I share custody. Whoever’s going to work gets the suck,) that 5 o’clock screw has backed way out again. The genie is tunneling out. Well that’s my $12 NOPI genie, and it’s not going anywhere.
When I check in the plane is at the gate, but the flight is delayed an hour. Low clouds and visibility in SFO. Arrivals are backed up. Go to the plane anyway. The best place to not give a fuck is in the direct path of people on their way to giving a fuck. That way I can leap out out of the shadows as they approach and pretend I was giving a fuck the whole time.
The Capt. is already on board. He is of a type. Seriously, if they made a “cargo pilot becomes airline pilot” action figure, it would look just like this guy and all the other guys who look just like this guy. Compact and beefy. Longish hair parted in the middle like AJ from Simon & Simon, only it’s balding in the back, uncombed and coarse like horse hair. Leather jacket. No hat. Black backpack that screams “professionalism is for pussies!” as his secondary bag. Scuffed Jensen pilot boots (Sorry Nad.) His shirt is washed but not ironed and it looks it. He smokes. Excuses himself a few times while we wait for passengers, to go burn one on the ramp.
Cargo all the way. These guys go a little feral from lack of exposure to human beings. Never startle a cargo pilot. They bite.
We finally launch for SFO. Dispatcher filed us for FL300 because the headwind up high is forecasted to be wicked. We stick it out down low for a while. But the ride sucks. We are burning almost 500 gallons more per hour at this altitude and the winds aren’t any less down here.
Over LIT we climb up to a respectable 380. The ride is better. The winds are 180mph right on the nose. Das allta wind. Groundspeed is down to about 300kts. It takes us 6 hours to fly 1800 miles. (Go ahead. Check my math. I’ll wait.)
Heading out to the van, a tall black kid is walking pretty close behind me singing “bop bee da bee bop this is the soundtrack to my life….” I sure hope that’s a radio song because if not, the implications are disturbing. I key into my room it’s 0415 <> time. Suck with a side order of damn.
Day 2 & 3:
Wake up around 0830. Don’t feel any pressing need to do much or move much. Gelatinate in bed for a while giving every channel 2 seconds of due consideration.
Take the BART to Berkley to see The Jeff, one of my few friends with a real job. Like most of my friends, The Jeff is smarter than me. (Surrounding myself with brighter bulbs, gives me a chance to agree a lot and be reflectively smart. Sort of zebra camouflage approach to being intellectual.)
His 18 month old daughter communicates entirely with one word commands. “Pet. Up. Spin. Sit.” I have a lot of practice doing what I’m told, so we get along well. Spend most of the day with them soaking my dishpan conservativism in the gentle Palmolive liberalness that hangs over Berkley like a fine mist.
Nap for 20 minutes back at the hotel. Off to work at 0200 <> time. At the gate a man brings his daughter over.
“Go ahead. There’s the pilot. You can ask him.” She looks nervous.
“Do airplanes ever crash?”
‘Airplanes crash. But our planes… Our airplanes don’t crash.’ She looks less relieved by this obvious lie than I would expect. I give her a pair of wings. Invite them up for photos in the cockpit. Give her my hat.
The weather is terrible. The inbound crew told us several of their passenger threw up on the way in. My policy is to give passengers bad news ahead of time, so they won’t think I’m oblivious and incompetent. (Just Incompetent.)
‘It’s gonna be a little bumpy at first. But don’t worry ok?’ Again she shows me her “not feeling any better about it” face.
It’s “a little bumpy” like Elvis is “a little dead.” Raining. Windy. Windshear. Like driving a car with square wheels down the side of an Egyptian pyramid. Doesn’t let up till we’re out of California. Mountain waves start over southern Colorado. Slam the thrust levers to idle to keep from over-speeding, then full power to keep the airspeed from plummeting as we go down the backside. Rough ride all the way to <>.
Our viscous headwind on the way out, however, is now a glorious tailwind. 140 knots right up the tail pipe. 620 mph groundspeed. Make it back in about 3:30. Weather is down to 1/8 of a mile in <>. Strong inversion layer. 66 degrees Fahrenheit at 3000 feet. 35 degrees on the ground. Don’t see shit till the rabbit strobes us in. Let the plane autoland and brail our way to the gate. Not a fun flight, but it does keep you awake.
– end of line.