Instgtr’s Corner

My biggest dream in life has always been to fly. After graduating from high school I enlisted in the Air Force and became an In-flight Refueling Specialist or “Boom Operator”. Part of the training involves a week at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida for Water Survival Training.

This starts off with 2 days of classroom training learning about the equipment flight crews are issued when we fly over water. There’s the standard parachute along with a one man life raft and a survival kit with the gear you need if you have to eject or bail-out.

After the classroom training the fun begins.   We start with what they call “suspended agony”.   Buckle yourself into a parachute harness, hookup to the overhead lines and hang there for 15 minutes… Next comes “The long slide” - climb to the top of a tower, hook your harness to a 150 foot steel cable that runs down to a lagoon and slide down the cable into the water.

Day four of training was when the “Real” fun happens.   We board a specially modified marine landing craft and head out to the ocean - one at a time they bring us to the back of the boat.   We get into our parachute harnesses and hook up to an I-beam that sticks out 20 feet over the back of the boat.

They push us out, then hit a lever that drops us into the water.   We’re moving forward about 10 miles per hour and we’re still hooked to the boat by a 50 foot rope.   As the boat pulls ahead, the slack comes out of the rope, and when the slack’s gone, we get pulled along behind the boat.

This simulates ejecting from an airplane and being pulled through the water by the wind blowing your parachute.  The idea now is to simply reach up, find the disconnects for your harness and disconnect from the chute.  Not a problem since you’re being pulled along on your back.

Next you repeat the maneuver, but this time you’re being pulled along on your stomach and to disconnect, you have to reach forward to find the releases which tends to drag you down underwater. The instructors like to call this part of the training “trolling for sharks…”

The last part of the training is the best and by far the MOST fun.   First we put on parachute harnesses and water survival kits (including the “seat pack” with your survival equipment and life raft) then, when your turn comes, you go upstairs to the top of the landing craft which has what looks like a “baseball backstop” mounted on it.

You walk out to a square that’s painted on the deck and the instructors pull out a parasail.   The boat is moving forward, so the breeze keeps the parasail up against the backstop.   They hook the parasail to your harness and a speed boat (with twin 250 horsepower engines) pulls alongside and throws the end of a 500 foot rope which they hook to your harness.   The speedboat pulls ahead and on cue from the instructors you start walking forward.

Within 2 steps you’re airborne and the speedboat kicks in the power pulling you up to about 300 feet. You get a signal from the people in the boat and reach out  and hit a lever that disconnects you from the rope.   For the next minute or two you parachute back down to the water.   About 20 feet above the water you release your life raft (which the instructors previously informed you unfortunately has a 100% failure rate) so you get to “inflate it manually” (blow it up…)

After landing in the water, another boat comes and makes sure you’re okay, then picks up your parachute and leaves you there for “3 hours of water survival training”. We’d been told the day before that we’d be there for a good 3 hours, so we paddle together into groups of 3 or 4 - tie our rafts together - pull out some fishing gear, some playing cards and start a friendly game of poker…

I love playing computer games and over the last 25-30 years I’ve played some of the best - along with (unfortunately) some of the worst.   Every once in a while a new game comes out that stands far above the rest and the rumor is that the next “big” game will be SPORE, a game that’s been in development for 4 years.

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If you’re any kind of a game player you’ve probably played at least one of the “Sim” games (there must be at least 100 versions out by now…) and all in all, they’re pretty good.  Well, from what we’ve been shown so far, SPORE throws the best of all of those games together, shakes it all up and gives us a game that’s well worth the wait.

While the game itself isn’t out yet - part of it, called the “creature creator” is available either as a free trial or as a $10 full version.   I downloaded the trial and had more fun with the damned thing than I thought possible.  You have what has to be millions of possible ways to create creatures.   Starting with the basic body shape (complete with a spinal column that can be expanded, sized and shaped) you get the basic idea of what you want your creature to look like.

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Then you start adding from an assortment of mouths, arms, legs, feet, hands, eyes, noses and all kinds of other body parts (including wings, tentacles and all kinds of other stuff)  While you’re doing this, your creature is moving around giving you all kinds of reactions (pull something off it’s body and it jerks around, squawks and complains - add something it likes and it lets you know by nodding, preening and “strutting” it’s stuff)

You can spend hours just playing around with the creature creator - it has a “testing area” where  you watch as it dances around and shows different emotions (anger, sorrow, laughing, fear,etc.) gets introduced to it’s offspring (which is downright hilarious to watch) and another area where you “paint” your creature with hundreds of different colors and patterns.

After creating a creature, you have the option of uploading them to the SPORE website and this is what REALLY surprised me.  In less than 2 months, more than 2 million creatures have already been created and uploaded to the site - and the game itself hasn’t even been released yet!!!

I haven’t seen the game yet, but from what I’ve heard and read, there are a number of things going for it.   First, there won’t be a “monthly cost’ to play the game.   The game software creates the planets (I’m not sure how much (if any) input you have in designing your planet) then put your creatures on the planet along with other creatures that you download from the game site.  Then you sit back and watch the creatures you’ve created interact with each other - will they become friends?  Will they fight each other?   Will they learn?    Will they destroy each other? (and the planet as well?)

We’ll just have to wait and see…   The countdown is on - and the release is set for September 7, 2008.

Back when I was a teenager, Roger Miller had a top 40 hit that I always thought was one of the best songs I’d ever heard - it was more a “story” than a song - maybe some day I’ll find a recording of it…

He was born one mornin, it was cold and it was snowin.  And from the start he never had a chance, and though his doctors said he couldn’t live, his momma had some faith to give, and they brought him to her and his momma named him Vance.

He was sick a long time then, I used to sit by. I’d rub his head, and he would squeeze my hand.  But he never cried… he’d grit his teeth and smile at me cuz he couldn’t speak and that’s when I began to respect the little man – and I think Vance was 3 right about then.

He started school one day – he came home and at the doorway – I could tell the little man didn’t want to come inside.  He’d met a girl, but her boyfriend Smitty had caught him walkin home with her and nearly killed Vance.  But then Vance never cried - and the only thing that Smitty hurt was pride.

And he said “Poppa, do you become a man – when you’re 21?” And I said “Age doesn’t make a man a man, my son.”  He looked at me so puzzled, with eyes so young and kind – and I think Vance was 7 about that time.

I guess they say the first love is the very best – at least it was with Vance – cuz he’d scratched “Becky” on his desk. But Becky went with Smitty – Vance was very small – and he used to dream what it’d be like to be tall.

Then a few years later Vance came in one day and told me and his momma that he had to go away, to be fitted for a uniform, and though his Momma shed a tear, he kissed her and said he’d see us in 2 years. And he looked at me and said “Poppa – I’m gonna be a man”

Well two years to the day, Vance came walkin in the driveway and I didn’t recognize him from his size till he got near – he came in and he hugged his momma and said “hey Poppa, little man, wanna go with me somewhere and grab a beer?”

So we were sittin at this table when this fella at the bar started buggin Vance, callin him “Soldier”Vance kept his cool, and he said “Poppa, that guy’s Smitty, and he’s to be pitied now, cuz that’s the same guy that used to bully me in school”

Then Smitty said the wrong thing when he brought up Becky’s name. Vance finally stood and said, “Boy… what’d you say?” And it did my heart so much good when Vance hit ole Smitty and it took two of Smitty’s friends to carry him away.

Well, Vance left the very next mornin and it was cold and it was snowin and from the first, life hadn’t been much fun, but he’d finally made a stand and he’d become a self made man – and incidentally, he’d just turned 21.

A friend of mine and I had gone down to Crawford’s grocery store after school. We parked our bicycles on the side of the store and ran over to the church next door to get a drink from the drinking fountain, then came running back down a hallway and into the alley.

The next thing I remember was crawling out from under a car. I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten under the car, but since I was only 6 years old at the time, I was small enough to pull myself out. I realized I was bleeding, so I went into the grocery store walked up to the cashier and asked her if I could borrow a towel. She turned, looked at me, screamed and fainted…

The lady who was driving the car never saw me and thought she’d hit a dog or something. The friend I was with tried to tell her, but by the time that had happened, I was already in the store. I never lost consciousness, which they say was a miracle, because my skull had been split open. The scar starts just to the left of my right eye and goes up over the top of my skull and down the back.

There was brain damage that effected two parts of my brain. Motor skills and short term memory. I was in the hospital for a while with 180 staples and stitches in my head and another 70 in my stomach where they had to go in to take care of internal damage.

The investigating officer was a very close friend of my father and when dad told him he wanted to know everything - no matter HOW bad it was, he told him that the chances I would make it through the night were less than 20% and that if I did survive, there was a chance I’d end up being a vegetable for the rest of my life.

A few weeks later I came home and eventually went back to school. Unfortunately, school wasn’t anywhere near the same. The loss of motor skills had a major effect on trying to print or write and the loss of short term memory made trying to learn things a nightmare.

The 2nd and 3rd grades were the worst time in my life. I wasn’t getting anywhere and I could just barely use a pencil. Half way through the 3rd grade, my parents took me to a specialist that came up with a “therapy” that made my life even more miserable. He told my parents that I needed to sit down for an hour after school everyday and print pages from books.

For a nine year old this was absolute torture! All my friends were out playing and I was stuck in the kitchen with my mom, printing from some stupid book! Well, this went on for the next two years and although my printing (and writing) are nothing to brag about, something did happen… By the time I started the 5th grade, I could spell better than most of the kids in the class. by the 6th grade, my sentences and thought processes were up to an 8th grade level and I was actually starting to enjoy reading.

High School turned out to be even better. I was getting A’s in my english classes and was actually enjoying school. Aviation had always been a lifetime dream and after I graduated from high school I joined the Air Force, where I became an In-flight Refueling Specialist, hooking up and delivering fuel to jets flying at 500 miles per hour.

I came home on leave one day and was talking with my dad - with tears in his eyes he told me that he was damned proud of me - that’s when he told me that he’d been told that I probably wouldn’t live through the night and if I did, I’d probably be a vegetable for the rest of my life - that was by far one of the best days of my life.

Later after leaving the Air Force, I was working as a house parent at a place called the Arizona Boy’s Ranch and decided to implement the “copy from a book” as part of the nightly studies for the boys - one of the boys fought the idea until I told him he could pick any book he wanted - he looked at me and said, “Then I’ll use a  comic book” I told him that was fine - as long as it was a book. He came to me a week later and said, “Ya know what Dennis? - - - These comic books are pretty stupid - aren’t they?”

He switched over to the encyclopedia and started coming to me with, “hey, there’s all kinds of neat stuff in here…” A couple months later one of the teachers from the ranch came to see me, “What are you doing with your boys? Their grades have all shot up over the last month or so…” Needless to say, it wasn’t long before they started using the program at the ranch.

Looking back now, that accident may have been one of the best things that ever happened to me…

When I turned 14, I joined one of the local Boy Scout troops and over the next few months went on quite a few camping trips, but there was one trip I’ll NEVER forget… Most of our trips were overnight trips, leave on Friday after school, spend the night and come back late Saturday afternoon.

We made this particular trip during the summer, which meant we had more time, so we stayed for three nights instead of one. I really didn’t know where we were going other than it was somewhere near Flagstaff here in Arizona.

It took about 4 hours to get where we were going and the plan was to make camp for the night then hike into the main camp the next morning. The sun had gone down and it was pitch dark when we got there, so we pulled out our sleeping bags, made a campfire, had supper, told a few stories then went on to bed.

The next morning I woke up to a bit of a surprise. We were at the top of the side of a canyon that dropped off about half a mile straight down! Some of the other guys had been here before, but for most of us, this was the first time. I looked down the side of the canyon wall and thanked the stars I hadn’t had to get up and try to find a “convenient bush”, we were only about 50 feet from the side of the canyon…

We made breakfast, packed up, and started down the “hairpin” trail that wound back and forth to the bottom of the canyon. When we got to the bottom I asked one of the other scouts how far it was to the campgrounds, “It’s about 10 miles to the falls.” Falls?, no one had said anything about waterfalls. This was starting to get interesting - - - little did I realize…

The desert canyon was about half a mile wide, but the further we went, the narrower the it became, eventually getting down to about 20 feet wide and going up hundreds of feet. It was a really beautiful place, there was a small stream wandering back and forth across the floor of the canyon which thankfully this late in the morning was completely shaded - it was a good 100 degrees out in the sun.

The canyon opened up into a wide meadow that stretched for miles and in the distance I could see what looked like a small village maybe half a mile away. The trail led up to the village which turned out to be Supai, the home of the Havasupai Indian tribe. We all paid a $2.00 entrance fee then hiked another 2 miles to Havasu Falls, the campgrounds where we were headed.

If I’d been surprised waking up next to a canyon, it was nothing compared to seeing Havasu Falls for the first time. This is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world… The water has a blue-green color that comes from the minerals in the area and naturally forms dozens of small pools at the base of the falls. There’s a small lake at the base of the falls and it’s easily the most beautiful “swimmin hole” I’ve ever seen.

We setup camp, got into our swimming suits and hit the water. A huge tree overhung one side of the lake with a rope hanging down that was perfect for swinging out and dropping off into the turquoise tinted water. We’d been swimming for about half an hour when Chris (one of my best friends) noticed the water from the lake ran off down a creek that we decided to follow.

The creek was shaded by trees and lazily wound around in some places deep enough that we couldn’t feel the bottom. We swam in the creek for about 20 minutes, then made our way back up to the campsite.

After lunch we heard some of the guys who had been here before were going to hike down to “Mooney”, so we decided to go along. Chris and I noticed that the trail pretty much followed the creek we’d been in earlier.

Finally after 15 minutes of hiking we found out what “Mooney” was. A 120 foot waterfall that we had no idea existed. It was named after Mr. Mooney, who had been killed when he went over the falls years ago. Chris and I looked at each other with chills running up and down our spines - if we’d have continued swimming another 100 feet, we’d have joined Mr Mooney and gone over the falls…

That was definitely one trip I’ll NEVER forget!