Final week

I’m sitting here in my room enjoying immensely the aroma from the fire right next to the house.  There is a little guard house for the neighborhood there, and I’ve often heard the guards talking during the night, but the wind has never been just right like tonight to send me such amazing smells, not to mention the sounds of crackling and popping from the fire.  I can’t think of too many scents that are more relaxing; I guess that’s due to all the pleasant memories of camping and camp fires.  Anyway, I figured I’d write something for the blog so that I had a good excuse to stay awake for a while longer and keep enjoying the fire.  I’ve run out of books to read; I’ve worked through first 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and then The Three Musketeers.  It has taken a while, as I only take time to read on the few nights that I don’t stay late at the hangar or spend time hanging out with family.  I must say both of those are very enjoyable reads, btw.

Uncle John and I have basically completed the motorcycle, and we only have to put on the fenders and air up a tire tomorrow.  Sometime I’ll put up the series of pics showing our progression from the many pieces to one very pretty motorcycle.  It’s been a fun – if at times tedious – project, and I feel like a much more confident/competent mechanic than before, not that that is saying a whole whole lot.

The last few days have included some fun work at the hangar as well.  Today I spent the entire day routing aileron and flap cables through the wing of nine-zero-uniform, the second of two Cessna 206’s that were shipped from the U.S. in pieces, to be completely painted and rebuilt here.  Not only was it fun to put together the puzzle based on the various schematics in the manual, but I also had one of my most triumphant moments ever upon finally sliding a hellish bell crank into place after wrestling it for almost an hour.  We’re talking triumphant enough to even permit a victory shout.

Nine-zero-uniform, as I called the plane above, might sound funny to you, but to me it simply sounds like the name of another team member.  All of the aircraft are referred to by the last three letters/numbers of their registered codename in a very familiar, even affectionate, manner.  There’s nine-zero-uniform, seven-delta-golf, charlie-mike-alpha, bravo-lima-golf, S-I-L and X-P-A (I have yet to figure out why these are typically spelled out normally while the others aren’t), eight-echo-alpha, seven-sierra-papa, eight-sierra-papa, and lima-mike-bravo.  The name of lima-mike-bravo has a particularly touching significance that I didn’t even realize until a few weeks into my time here.  Some of you might be familiar with the story of my younger cousin or John and Anna’s son, Benj, who died a few years ago in a freak accident.  Sometime shortly after that tragedy occurred, AIM Air decided to name one of its Cessna 206’s lima-mike-bravo, meaning “in Loving Memory of Benj.”  Just seeing that plane now causes me to take a second and remember – to remember not only Benj but all of the friends and especially family members who we’ve said goodbye to far too soon.  What a small but cool way to provide a reminder.

Routing cables on 9-0-U

It has taken me a while to get to the point where each one of those funny names actually conjures up an image of the specific airplane it refers to, but I really do love how each one is treated as the name of an important team member, with its own unique qualities and personality.  I still remember the first day when I had no clue what on earth people were referring to when they’d throw a “nine-zero-uniform” into the sentence.  We have uniforms?

The fire has stopped burning outside, or at least the smoke has stopped wafting through my window, so I can go to bed now.

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