The Flying Wire

It has just been pointed out by people who claim to have my interests in mind — their true motives remain open to question — that the Paul Gazis’s Aviation Page now shows up at the very top of a Google search for ‘Adventure Gazis’, ‘Gentlemen Gazis’, and ‘Gallant Gazis’. Ho ho! I cannot help but feel smug. All of those Ottoman warriors can eat my dust

But I haven’t dared check other two-word search phrases based on the same underlying principle. The possibilities are too numerous. And some of them fill me with very real twinges of fear…

In 1991, a Frenchman named Gerard d’Aboville rowed across the Pacific Ocean. Alone. With no support crews. Or weather routing. Or Mission Control at Houston Space Flight Center to monitor his vehicle through the Tracking Data Relay Satellite system. It was an incredible accomplishment: one that prompts astonishment, disbelief, and two distinctly different reactions. People who Get It say, “Wow!”. People who Don’t Get It say, “Why!”

Both of these reactions are quite reasonable. But the gulf between them is vast. In an effort to bridge it, I offer this quotation from d’Aboville himself, in an interview with Paul Theroux:

“Only an animal does useful things. An animal gets food, finds a place to sleep, tries to keep comfortable. But I wanted to do something that was not useful, not like an animal at all. Something only a human being would do.”

The wind has shifted to the northeast, shutting down all our local flying sites here in the Bay Area. This can happen in the spring. A high pressure system settles over the Sierras, the air becomes stable, downslope winds — a milder but more persistent version of Southern California’s famed Santa Anas — begin to blow, and a pattern develops that can persist for weeks. Down here at sea level, temperatures are high and the air is calm. On top of the surrounding mountains, temperatures can climb even higher, with nighttime gusts that top 50-60 MPH.

What do we do on unfliable days like these? New pilots, ignorant of just how long conditions like this can last, will greet each new day with optimism amd hope. Mature pilots, whose years of experience have brought them wisdom, will relax, meditate, and pursue other activities, secure in the knowledge that better days will return. As for me… I just whine a lot

Bryn Colvin and Tom Brown’s Tales From the Copper Age takes place in the town of Hopeless, Maine, where the residents find life a little darker and more dangerous with every passing day. This work swept me in from the very beginning. I still can’t say why. It’s not just that it takes place in Maine, though it does bring back wistful memories of childhood (it was an atypical childhood). And it’s not just Bryn’s art and Tom’s story, though the former is haunting and the latter superb.

Somehow, Tales From the Copper Age seems like more than just a webcomic. Comics tell a story. Bryn and Tom’s work seems like a glimpse into another world. Some of this comes from the details, which can be uncanny. Two characters walk up a path. Small creatures with tentacles hang from the trees. But the characters ignore them, as if this was just an ordinary part of their world. “What is going on?” you wonder. The answers, when they arrive, only lead to more questions. Then there’s the story, which I urge you to discover yourselves. Finally there is the background, which is revealed in hints within the tale and in and the accompanying newspaper, The Hopeless Vendetta.

These hints form pieces of a puzzle whose extent remains a mystery. Who were Salamandra’s parents? What is the origin and nature of her powers? Why was Annamarie, who seems to have powers of her own, willing to release her to the orphanage? Why are there so many orphans? Who is the Blind Fisherman, and how does he fit into this tale? How did the town of Hopeless, Maine, get cut off from the rest of the world? Why did its inhabitants seem more annoyed than alarmed when the dead left their graves? What is it with these demons? And why are small creatures with tentacles hanging from the trees?

I hope someday to learn the answers. So I encourage you all to check out Bryn and Tom’s work, tell your friends about it, and bring in more readers until those answers arrive.

I was sitting at my desk, typing away at my computer, when it died. With no warning. Suddenly, utterly, and completely. One moment everything was fine — or as fine as can be expected with anything that involves the Dark Lord of Redmund — the next: no power, no lights, no fan, nothing.

The problem was almost certainly the power supply or the motherboard. Given the Known Perversity Of Man-made Things, I suspected it was the motherboard. But when I pulled and tested the power supply, it wouldn’t run, so I figured what the heck, threw in a new one, and… tah dah! Back online!

The question now becomes, what to do with the old power supply. If I was irresponsible, I might be tempted to take it to some flying site deep in the wilderness, launch, climb up to 8000′, pull the thing out, and… drop it. Whee! Indeed, I’ve long suspected that bombing was invented because It’s Fun To Drop Things — the supposed military applications of this practice were just offered as an excuse. It’s even more fun when those things blow up, and bigger explosions are better, which led to a natural escalation that continued until August 1945, when people realized that things might be getting out of hand.

But I’m a mature and thoughtful individual who would never dream of doing anything so childish. Right?

Part of the fun of creating a story like this is checking the logs to see where readers are coming from. California is still at the top of the list, because that’s where the site got started. But for many months, Ohio and Texas have been battling to take over the lead. This makes a certain amount of sense. Ohio has a long airship tradition. It’s where Goodyear began their operations, and the USS Akron, ZRS-4, was named after the city in that state. Texas seems like a great place for airships. It’s big, filled with big places to fly, and I’m sure that Amarillo, the world’s major source of helium, was on the short list of proposed names if the US Navy had ever flown a ZRS-6.

Recently, Massachusetts has been moving up to challenge them. This came as something of a surprise. True, the state does have a long involvement with airplanes — among them everyone’s favorite racer, the Granville Gee Bee — but airships are an entirely different matter. To the best of my knowledge, none of the great ships of the 20s and 30s ever landed there, and the thought of building an 800′-long dirigible in, say, Lowell, is difficult to imagine.

There you have it. It’s a three-way battle now: Buckeyes versus Cowboys versus Yankees! Which state will be next to enter the fray? Email your friends, start a readership drive, and see if you can edge them out to take the lead