squawking VFR

Ann Arbor's burrito wars

2009-08-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

You've got to grudgingly admire the cojones on Tios Mexican Cafe owner Tim Seaver.

He's a guy who, when the city of Ann Arbor bought the building he's rented for 23 years, waged a public-relations battle to force the city into helping him move. The city, almost ridiculously, did so, going as far as forgiving his final two months rent at the old location and expediting his new liquor license.

"But I still wanted to beat up on them," Seaver told The Ann Arbor Observer.

He's a guy who, upon finding a new location for his restaurant two blocks away from the original, solicited donations from customers in an attempt to raise $50,000 for the move. I am an educated man, but I cannot for the life of me understand why it would cost 50 large to move this business two blocks into a ready-to-use building.

He's a guy who dishes the worst Mexican food I've ever tasted and charges outrageous prices for the privilege of eating glop.

I've thought about Tios and Seaver a lot lately, in the context of a recently revamped burrito market in downtown Ann Arbor. Chipotle has arrived. One substandard Mexican eatery, Salsaritas, has already closed in the aftermath, and I wonder how long before Tios follows suit.

Based on the fact Seaver resorted to hitting customers up for his move and is already in debt, according to this story, I do not expect it will survive. But what do I know? It has already stuck around for 23 years.

I suspect that it has survived this long for a few reasons. One, for a long time, it just didn't have much competition.

Two, along those lines, Tios seems to be part of a certain group of Ann Arbor-area restaurants that are irrationally beloved by long-time town residents. For them, the usual quality barometers like food, ambience and service are secondary. Their chief criteria is homerism, and their opinions can be summed up like this: "If it's from Ann Arbor, it must be GREAT!"

To these people, Tios has some hole-in-the-wall cache.

To anyone who has eaten a Mexican meal outside Washtenaw County in, say, the past 20 years, Tios is disgusting.

Burritos are filled with a porridge-like substance that masquerades as black beans. Meat is added in microscopic amounts. Guacamole, which costs extra, has the consistency of Jell-O. Pico de gallo is really, really bland. Heartburn is assured.

There's really nothing redeeming about Tios.

That's why I think Chipotle will ultimately win this battle. The demographics around town have changed enough in recent years that enough business people and college students have lived elsewhere before coming to Ann Arbor, and they now possess a base expectation for Mexican food.

Chipotle simply tastes better. By a lot. (Random statistic: Chipotle spends 32 percent of its operating budget on food -- more than any other fast-food chain -- buying naturally-raised meat). Compared to Tios, it tastes far better, is less expensive and has a better location.

Looking at value instead of taste as the chief criteria, Tios still loses. Rio Wraps caters to the low-cost college crowd and tastes better. Not as good as Chipotle, but better. Taco Bell obviously, would be a fraction of the price, and I think that even tastes marginally better than Tios.

Despite all of this, I do not wish for Tios to go away. There are enough vacant storefronts downtown that there's no need to add another victim to the dreary pile of economic casualties, especially a mom-and-pop operation. There's at least a few waiters and waitresses, not to mention Seaver and his wife, who depend on Tios for their livelihood. I wish them well. I hope they succeed.

If there's any reason to offer them hope, I think the fact Seaver now has a liquor license can potentially help his bottom line. That, and its delivery business is unaffected by the move.

But the only thing that may ultimately save Tios is a commitment to serving better food at reasonable prices.

Given that the restaurant is run by a man who threatens to beat city officials who have done nothing but bend over backward to help him, I'm guessing he's not eager to act upon that suggestion.

Synthesizing bromide in an argon matrix

2009-08-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Twenty-five years after his first attempt to test an air-based chemical laser ended in spectacular failure, it appears Dr. Jerry Hathaway's pet project is finally nearing success.

On Thursday, PlaneTalking.com reported that Boeing piloted a modified 747-400 aircraft from Edwards Air Force Base and successfully fired a high-energy laser over the California desert. It was the military's first attempt since the original test destroyed Hathaway's home and equipment.

"This was a significant test of the Airborne Laser's capabilities, demonstrating that the system has truly moved from the drawing board to reality," Greg Hyslop, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems told the Web site in this exclusive story.

First developed in 1985, the laser will again be tested in a missile shoot-down demonstration in coming weeks, building toward "lethal capabilities."

Hathaway, a long-time Pacific Tech professor, was unavailable for comment Thursday. Although Boeing officials could not comment due to the classified nature of the project, it is widely known that he has devoted his career to the Airborne Laser (ABL) project.

His initial research famously ended when students Mitch Taylor and Christopher Knight learned of the military-based nature of their work, and sabotaged the first test by changing the coordinates of the laser's target.

Instead of zapping its intended target -- a JFK-esque motorcade -- the laser beam cooked a gigantic ball of popcorn strategically placed by the saboteurs in Hathaway's house. Heated by the laser, the kernels produced such vast amounts of popcorn that the Jiffy Pop shattered windows and unearthed the dwelling from its foundation.

The on-board laser then overheated and burned. Overall, the pratfall set the missile defense program back decades and destroyed Hathaway's academic reputation.

Dr. Meredith, the dean of Pacific Tech, and a local congressmen rebuked Hathaway because he had misled students regarding the intent of their laser research, as well as administrators regarding his close ties to military officials.

Taylor went on to work as an earth-based engineer for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In a twist, Knight immediately became a fighter pilot known as "Ice" at the prestigious Top Gun Academy outside San Diego.

United Breaks Guitars awesomeness

2009-07-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

If you have yet to see the above video about United Airlines purposely breaking a passenger's Taylor guitar, I wholeheartedly suggest you take a few minutes and watch United Breaks Guitars.

It is hilarious, and it details the airline's long-standing incompetence and criminal refusal to accept any responsibility for its negligence in purposely destroying a guitar, as witnessed by dozens of passengers.

You would think after this latest public relations blunder, someone at the country's worst major airline would think about taking steps to change the culture of this company. But as someone who has kept tabs on United's horrid customer-service reputation for the better part of a decade, I know it won't change a thing.

United has all the public-relations charm of Nurse Ratched.

It is a company that is irreparably broken.

You can see for yourself by reading thousands of customer-service complaints about the airline at untied.com, a web site which provides a courageous public service by shining light on the airline's years-long bumblings with scathing critiques. The vitriol is not only penned by passengers, it's also dished by employees who often tell harrowing stories about the company's complete disregard for safety. SOme of the whistleblowing stories on there are frightening.

One of these passenger letters was my own, a five-page, single-spaced screed, published back in June of 2002 in what was perhaps the angriest letter I've ever written to admonish a company for shabby treatment.

Thanks to the band responsible for the smash-hit United Breaks Guitars for jumpstarting this trip down memory lane. I'm re-printing my letter here:

To: Mr. Jack Creighton, CEO
CC: Aviation Consumer Protection Division

Dear Mr. Creighton:

There is a reason people are flying less nowadays. It has little to do with fear generated by the Sept. 11 attacks. It has everything to do with the fact companies like yours treat passengers like garbage.

Two summers ago, your industry went before Congress and promised to clean up its act after its deplorable performance through the peak travel season. Instead, all passengers face is longer lines, inexplicable delays and a further descent in service.

After that infamous summer, your company printed apologies for its blunders at the bottom of every itinerary. Typed, computer-generated words enhanced the warmth of the oh-so-sincere message.

Clearly, those words were nothing but lip service.

I am writing you today regarding my latest woeful experience on your airline, as well as the general malaise your company's incompetence has created in the flying public.

There are so many problems with your airline, I do not know where to begin. Let us start with my flight, United 428, from Denver to Newark, N.J., on April 19.

Upon arriving at the airport, I find the new security company, hired by United to replace Argenbright, has implemented strict new measures requiring every passenger to be finished with the check-in process one hour prior to departure.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this new procedure, except for the fact your staff is ill-equipped to handle it. And no passengers were ever notified regarding the change.

As is now standard, I arrived at the airport two hours prior to departure. But because you had so few personnel working in the front, I did not make it through this maze of a line until 50 minutes had passed. I was lucky.

An estimated 40 percent of the people in line did not enjoy such success and missed your new one-hour deadline. This resulted in general chaos and well-deserved anger, as passengers were re-booked on later flights to meet this new and previously unannounced change in procedure.

Lets skip that problem for a few moments. Lets pretend your ridiculously strict enforcement of a previously unannounced rule change never happened. Lets skip directly to the problems on board flight 428.

With the flight nearly completed, a freak thunderstorm hit the greater New York area and produced tornado-sized winds. Our flight was diverted to Washington Dulles. As aggravating as weather problems can be, I know they cannot be avoided.

What occurred on the ground at Dulles, however, was a disgrace.

After refueling the Boeing 777 at Dulles shortly after 5 p.m., ground control informed our pilot Newark would reopen at 6 p.m, and that we should be airborne no later than 5:45 p.m. and into Newark by 6:30 p.m.

Instead of making the best out of this situation, the heavy-handed pencil-pushers who run United Operations at Dulles decided to combine two smaller Newark-bound flights onto our plane.

First, we were told it would be one flight. So we watched all the passengers from this first flight climb aboard and find seats. After waiting nearly an hour, we seemed ready to leave.

But then United Operations told us they decided that passengers from yet another commuter flight would be transferred onto our plane. We had to endure the entire process again.

As one of your own flight attendants said shortly after the second announcement, "This isn't a flight. This is a disgrace."

At 8 p.m., approximately two-and-a-half hours after we could have left, we finally left for Newark. Aside from the fact we were denied food during the ordeal, we wasted countless hours on top of the initial weather delay.

Your operations department capitalized on our helplessness.

Your Newark Operations crew fared no better. Although we were only the third United flight to arrive after the fierce storm, according to a baggage handler, it took your ground crew 50 minutes to get our luggage onto the carousel.

Four hours after we were originally scheduled to land, already-flustered passengers had the added pleasure of waiting nearly an hour for their bags.

(And while we're on the subject of Newark baggage claim, I've stood in grimy New York City alleys less seedy than your baggage area. It is a cesspool).

But that is no surprise. From the beginning, starting with the awful security company you hired in Denver, to the end, every aspect of the trip brought nonstop aggravation. All of these problems fostered nothing but animosity toward your airline.

Of course, that animosity has existed since your wretched summer of 2001. But your poorly planned, knee-jerk responses to the Sept. 11 hijackings have only exacerbated these feelings.

Newly implemented measures are nothing more than a big dog-and-pony show, none of which would have stopped the tragedy. For all your PR-spin, you still do not X-ray every checked bag. You still do not bag-match, despite assurances to the contrary. You hassle your paying customers while allowing the real dangers to persist.

And all passengers get for your toothless measures are longer - and unpredictable - lines. An hour at check-in. Two hours in the security line. Another hour at the gate.

By the time I navigate the maze of your disgraceful check-in procedures and arrive at the gate, then fly to my destination, I may as well have driven. I can drive from Denver to Chicago, and arrive only two hours later than if I had flown United.

As more people realize this, many will choose that option, which will only have a worsening effort on your already-poor fiscal health.

Of course, these new procedures only magnified your pre-existing ineptitude. United already flirted with bankruptcy before that day, thanks to years of fiscal imprudence and the crescendo of anger during the summer of 2000.

While I have great sympathy and compassion for United employees who were affected by Sept. 11, I resent the fact United corporate shills milked the sympathy card before Congress and received a $15 billion bailout.

As a taxpayer, I am happy to support a troubled industry after the cowardly attack on our country. As a taxpayer, I am outraged you would request these funds under the guise of Sept. 11 relief, when in fact you are looking to recover from years of fiscal avarice and galling treatment of passengers.

Airlines go bankrupt for a reason, sir. One of which is because they can no longer meet the reasonable expectations of your customers. Why should taxpayers support your anemic airline when well-run companies, such as Southwest, turned a profit through bear-market times?

I have written my elected representatives, urging them not to grant you further financial relief and to let the free market work its course. I have also implored them to revisit the issue of passing a true passenger's bill of rights, which your lobbyists skillfully scuttled two summers ago.

Now, more than ever, passengers deserve that legislation. Two years later, you still treat customers as if you believe we are too inattentive to notice your incompetence or too apathetic to care. I can assure you the latter is not true. We have endured United's shameful conduct for far too long.

Thankfully, Jet Blue and Frontier are finally emerging as legitimate challenges to your monopoly of the Denver market. I am rooting for them to succeed, and will continue to fly them as much as possible.

You are not losing customers such as myself because people are afraid to fly. You are losing customers because you make it inherently inconvenient and aggravating to do so.

I long for the days when the worst complaints about airline service were regarding the food. Now, I hope for the day when United will follow Braniff and Eastern into the bankruptcy courts.

It is not out of any malice these wishes are born. Only when United is gone, however, will we receive efficient and responsible service from a major carrier in Denver. Until then, we can only vent our frustrations regarding your inane procedures, needless flight delays and empty promises.

Please save your canned apology letter for the endless list of affronts.

I've had enough of your company's hollow regrets. If you are not prepared to offer compensatory measures, such as additional Mileage Plus miles or class upgrades on future flights -- measures to show you are genuinely sorry -- than I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with United.

Mr. Creighton, I understand you assumed the title of CEO only in recent months. I wish you well in your efforts to reverse the sagging performance of your company.

But after more than 50 trips in the last three years on your airline, there is only one lesson that reverberates through my mind.

At United, nothing ever changes.

Sincerely,

Squawking VFR

Taking a stab at Air France 447

2009-07-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

Interesting story by Alan Levin in Monday's USA Today that suggests National Transportation Safety Board investigators could look to a plane crash from 35 years ago to perhaps explain what happened to Air France 447.

What's the connection?

Early focus of the Air France investigation has centered on the plane's airspeed indicators, which could have malfunctioned, causing the pilots to tragically misinterpret the readings of their most-needed instruments.

That sounds similar to what caused a Northwest Orient 727 crash in Bear Mountain, New York in 1974.

The USA Today story offers some nice play-by-play of the Northwest crash, but doesn't really get into the guts of the most important part -- the "why." Why did the pilots reacted the way they did to a malfunction, effectively stalling the plane and sending it into a graveyard spiral.

So we'll do that here.

A quick primer on the pitot-static system

There's six basic flight instruments that makes up what's known as the "six pack" in the instrument panel. Three of these -- the airspeed indicator, altimeter and vertical speed indicator -- receive their information from the pitot-static system.

(In bigger jets, the machmeter also receives its information from this system, which is important to note, given the accidents we're discussing. But in the interests of keeping this relatively readable, I'm not going to get into details that will put you to sleep).

In its simplest form, the pitot-static system is comprised of a pitot tube (rhymes with speedo) and a static port.

The pitot tube is typically mounted on a wing or the fuselage, depending on the aircraft, and looks like a little stick with a hole at the tip jutting into the wind. It measures the direct pressure of the air blowing into it. The static port, which is a little hole on the side of the plane about the size of a pinhead, measures atmospheric pressure.

Airspeed is measured by the difference between the direct pressure and atmospheric pressure is compared.

When the pitot-static system fails

Blockages in the pitot tube and static port, while not common, aren't particularly rare either. Ice can easily gunk up the pitot tube, so there's a heater on most pitot tubes. The static port can often get bug juice in or around it, so there's an alternate static source.

Even with those runarounds on potential problems, all pilots must know how those three key instruments are affected when the static port or pitot tube -- or both -- are blocked.

What happens when the static port is blocked?

Well, this is serious because it affects all three instruments. The altimeter will stop at the altitude at which the blockage occurs. The vertical speed indicator will show level flight, no matter if the plane is climbing or descending. The airspeed indicator will show a slower-than-actual speed in a climb and a faster-than-actual speed in a descent.

What happens when the pitot tube is blocked?

In a way, it's simpler, because only the airspeed indicator is affected. But it's also a more nefarious problem. The airspeed indicator will function as an altimeter, showing an increase in speed as the plane climbs, even if actual airspeed is constant.

Northwest Orient, 1974, Bear Mountain, N.Y.

So far, I've given you a lot of basic theory. Here's how it actually applies in the case of the Northwest Orient flight referenced in the USA Today piece:

Crews are usually trained in some capacity to maintain a constant-airspeed climb at such-and-such a power setting.

So imagine you're the pilots aboard this flight, thankfully a repositioning flight with only three crew members aboard. As you continue your climb through 16,000 feet, you notice that you're climbing at 300 knots when you should be at 200 knots.

(I don't know the actual figures for the 727 climb; I'm just using them as an example).

What are you going to do?

Keep in mind one of the basic rules of flight: Pitch plus power equals performance. These guys did what makes sense. They decreased their power and pitched the plane up in an effort to slow down to 200 knots.

Unfortunately, the Northwest pitot tube had iced over. Their airspeed indicator was showing a faster-than-actual indication, essentially functioning as an altimeter and increasing as they climbed. In reality, the pilots were on their target climb speed.

By decreasing their power and pitching the plane up, they slowed down to something slower than their stall speed -- remember that from our original Colgan post? -- and induced an aerodynamic stall and subsequently spun the plane into the ground.

AeroPeru 603

There's another crash not mentioned in the original article that's worth mentioning here, an accident involving an AeroPeru flight in 1996 that had multiple instruments fail because the nimrods washing the plane beforehand taped over the static ports and forgot to remove the tape.

It was a night flight in instrument conditions. These poor folks didn't know which way was up, how fast they were going, or whether they were headed up or down. They crashed into the ocean 25 minutes after takeoff.

There's a fascinating National Geographic special on AeroPeru 603 that I recommend watching on YouTube if you have a half-hour to kill.

While speculation centers on the pitot tube in the Air France crash and AeroPeru involves the static ports, this could nonetheless be a really strong comparison, in the sense that you have false instrument readings caused by massive problems in the pitot-static system ultimately leading to disaster.

Conclusions

Crews are trained how to spot anomalies between the instruments that would lead a pilot to realistically catch the error. On a typical flight in instrument meteorlogical conditions, there's a constant cross-check of the instruments in the six pack to verify and confirm information.

In the heat of the moment, could you miss something that leads to a crash? Absolutely. There has to be a lot that goes wrong to get to that point, but yeah, it is feasible.

You could make the argument that if the Air France 447 pilots had been distracted by a vicious thunderstorm and alarms buzzing about incorrect airspeed readings that there was enough confusion that they did precisely the wrong thing.

That's an awfully big leap to make at this point. I'm sticking to what I said the other day -- there's so much information still missing from the Air France puzzle, that it's not prudent to even make an educated guess as to what brought it down.

But since USA Today is offering up a theory, we'll dissect how it might have applied to Air France 447. Right now, it's as good a guess as any.

Update on regional airlines

2009-06-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

In the wake of a string of deadly regional airline crashes, none more egregious than the Colgan Crash in Buffalo, the Federal Aviation Administration is finally taking some steps in the right direction.

It's listening to Squawking VFR.

After our special report detailing the safety chasm between mainline and regional airlines on May 19, the agency Wednesday recommended several changes that addressed the lapses that led to Buffalo as well as the overall safety of regionals.

A list of recommendations introduced included:

- Addressing fatigue. New rules governing flight and rest time for crews.

- Immediate development of a system for tracking pilots who repeatedly fail performance evaluations.

- Demand that mainline airlines ask their regional partners to "mirror their most effective safety practices."

- Upgrade training standards.

Overall, these are only ambiguous proposals, and there's a ton of pencil-pushing ahead before anything of substance gets done. But the fact the notoriously slow-to-act FAA is issuing these recommendations provides unstated acknowledgment of the severity in the safety gap between regionals and mainliners, which forgive me for mentioning, was first unearthed here at Squawking VFR.

A couple of things stand out from this report.

First, there's the simple fact that the Colgan crash in Buffalo is becoming a watershed moment for U.S. commercial aviation, the likes of which perhaps have not been seen since the crash of an L-1011 in Dallas in August of '85 that prompted sweeping interest, research and investment in equipment to help combat wind shear and microbursts.

Next, the most interesting of these proposals to me is the third, and it's also the one that leaves me most skeptical.

The FAA is essentially saying that regionals should be held to the same standards as the majors, which is great and everything. But one of the main reasons the majors contract with the regionals is because there is less-stringent requirements in place.

When you hire a pilot with 1,000 hours, you don't have to pay him or her as much as one with 10,000 hours. In terms of experience, it goes without saying that you get what you pay for.

And I'm skeptical of how that could really change or be legislated.

Don't get me wrong, it's good -- and past due -- that the FAA is trying. But whatever proposals they bring to the table will probably meet fierce resistance from the airlines and their lobbying minions.

I hope the proposals don't get watered down, because as I've stated before, the flying public deserves something more than the regional owners ducking the blame for an unenviable safety track record.

Air France 447

2009-06-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

Despite overwhelming demand from my readers, I wanted to let you know the post on Air France 447 is going to be very slow in coming.

There's just so little to go on right now, that any speculation I could come up with would be merely a crapshoot.

Squawking VFR prides itself on at least making educated guesses when it comes to figuring out why planes fall from the sky. I can't come close to offering any insight right now, so we'll withhold the post until we can.

In the meantime, I've got a couple of other posts in the hopper that should be ready in the next few days.

A religious experience with Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers

2009-06-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

Two things you need to understand about me and concerts.

1. Previous spontaneous concert-related road trips have ended in disaster.

A few years back, with a day off from work and an evening shift the following night, it dawned on me that nothing stood between me and a six-hour jaunt from Denver to Santa Fe to see the rollicking Philly-based band, Marah, play a little New Mexican bar.

This sounded like a terrific idea, so off I went down I-25 on a blazing summer day in a jeep with no air conditioning, my only companions a few Grateful Dead cassette tapes and the anticipation for the show.

I had seen Marah weeks before, when they blew the roof off some pissant dive bar on East Colfax in Denver, working themselves into a fervor worthy of a sold-out stadium crowd, not for the applause of a handful of mangy drunks sitting on bar stools.

Couldn't wait to see them again, sure that I was catching the next great American rock-n-roll act in its infancy.

So you can imagine that I vomited in my mouth a little when I pulled into the parking lot of that Santa Fe bar, walked to the door and saw a small 8.5x11-inch sign on the door that regrettably stated Marah's van, Adrian, had broken down in the Arizona desert, and that there would be no show tonight.

2. When it comes to seeing Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers, I have even worse luck.

Every time they scheduled a show nearby, often when I lived in Colorado, I was out of town, in the midst of a Broncos playoff run, chained to the desk, etc. It felt like I suffered a dozen near-misses.

When Mrs. VFR and I actually made it to the Gothic Theater to see The Peacemakers, nee The Refreshments, I felt thrilled. Much like the aforementioned Marah show, my anticipation for a ballyhooed live act zoomed sky high.

So when Mrs. VFR developed a violent migraine two songs into the performance that forced us to leave, the experience wasn't all that surprising, given my track record.

Two weeks ago, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers played an underrated little venue called The Ark right here in our hometown.

Where was I? In Chicago.

Where was I the next night when they played Chicago? Back in Ann Arbor.

All this serves as a long-winded preamble to what transpired last Wednesday, when I noticed on their tour schedule that RCPM would play Fort Wayne, Indiana, approximately about 150 miles southwest of here.

The mind started whirring.

Baby sitting? My visiting mother-in-law could provide support. Work? I could surely sneak out a few minutes early, leaving me with just enough time to reach Fort Wayne before 8 p.m. Mrs. VFR? Graciously on board with the plan.

5:20 p.m. I grab a few albums off the messy stacks on the closet floor for the ride and get out the door. I'm a little bummed that it's a solo venture, and that no Facebook friends could see the genius of this quick-turnaround trip when I scrounged for last-minute comrades. But nonetheless happy that, yes, I would finally see a RCPM show.

6:48 p.m. I'm admiring the rural farmland on an empty I-69. A beautiful sunset cast orange rays on red barns. I let the stresses of the job and the soon-to-be no job recede for the first time in weeks as the Rockwellian landscape blurred together outside the car window.

Tranquility was short-lived.

I come around a curve about 10 miles north of the Michigan/Indiana border and find a sea of brake lights and orange-and-white-striped barricades across the highway.

"Road closed."

A state trooper directs all traffic onto a single-lane road off the exit ramp, and I start doing math. Seventy minutes to showtime. Sixty-seven miles to Fort Wayne. Zero on the speedometer.

This looks bad. Immediately wonder if I should give up and go home, if I was going to spend an hour in traffic, if this is just the latest in my series of RCPM mishaps.

7:02 p.m. After zig-zagging through backroads in an off-the-map small town, I've navigate the detour, get back on the interstate and presumably avert the crisis. I'm also in Indiana, having crossed the border at an unmarked site.

In my peripheral vision, I catch what looks like a black plastic garbage bag slowly blowing across the highway. It's not a plastic bag.

Upon closer review, I determine the object is a Frisbee-sized turtle huffing it across two lanes of traffic. He's on the striped center line when I veer to the right to avoid him.

I thought of a symbolic chapter in Grapes of Wrath that describes just such a scene. There's only one truck far off in my rear-view mirror. I think he's got a chance. Godspeed, Mr. Joad.

7:58 p.m. I arrive at Come 2 Go, the venue for the evening's entertainment. Here, I'm hit with the second curveball of the trip.

Come 2 Go is not the bar I assumed it was, with peanut shells on the floor, cheap swill on tap and a country twang in the Hoosier night.

It is a church.

A pot-bellied man wearing army fatigues and a beret collects my $10 entry fee. An illuminated cross hangs in the rear corner of the establishment and casts a t-shaped shadow on the floor below.

Pictures of mission trips and charity events are on the walls. Chairs are set up on a carpet that surrounds a stage that, to the church's credit, seems decked out in state-of-the-art sound and lighting equipment.

What to make of this development?

Mr. Clyne and his merry bandmates are known for enjoying their tequila during the show. Would this not happen? (No, it would not). Would they still be the fantastic live act I'd heard about?

8:50 p.m. The Peacemakers take the stage.

"How many of you have seen us play before," Clyne asks.

A smattering of hands go up, maybe a dozen.

How many of you have seen us play sober before," he asks.

Silence.

8:55 p.m. If you haven't heard of them, they're most famous for writing the theme song to Fox TV's "King Of The Hill," although fans appreciate them more for their straight-up rock that sways into an alt-country style at times.

The Peacemakers are sort of like the Jimmy Buffett of the Southwest, specializing in escapist tales about banditos, missions and south-of-the-border hookers. They bring a mass of hard-core fans to Mexico every year for a couple of hard-core shows.

That's the sort of vibe with which they they kick off the Fort Wayne show, keying up "Americano," one of their signature tunes.

In the crowd, there's about five or six of us rocking out in front of the stage, with maybe a dozen or so others crowding around nearby but demonstrating less enthusiasm. Approximately 50 to 60 others are in attendance, and they situate themselves near the back of the room.

It's a wacky group of concert-goers.

I'd estimate 30 percent of the people there had gray or no hair. Thirty percent were teeny-boppers too young to frequent any alcohol-serving establishments. I'm pretty sure none of the people in the two aforementioned groups had ever heard of Roger Clyne.

Of the remaining third, ranging from 20s to 40s, there's about 10 who seem to know the words to the songs.

Nearby, there's two twins with fiercely curly black hair who look like asexual Pat from Saturday Night Live. They would stand six feet from the stage expressionless and emotionless through the entire show.

There's also an obese man wearing a pony tail and a Randy Moss Oakland Raiders jersey, but he seems to be in much better spirits.

9:00 p.m. Americano finishes.

There's a few awkward claps, but silence in the room.

I fear this is going to be a dead crowd, and a mailed-in performance.

9:01 p.m. Clyne smoothly transitions into Counterclockwise, another excellent choice I hoped would make the setlist. It's got a catchy pop sound that's Mellencampian at times, which I figured would be a hit here in Fort Wayne.

9:24 p.m. Ladies and gentlemen, the national anthem:

So give your ID card to the border guard
Yeah, your alias says your Captain Jean Luc Picard
Of the United Federation of Planets
'Cause they won't speak English anyway

Everybody knows
That the world is full of stupid people
So meet me at the mission at midnight
We'll divvy up there

9:33 p.m. The crowd is stirring a little bit, just enough to eliminate the stony awkwardness.

Some of the folks, chiefly the asexual Pat twins, remind me of the people I met at the Christmas Cult Party of 1999, which I attended with my friend Brian Roth, at which I met Tom Petty, The Heartbreaker, not to be confused with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.

The vibe is the same.

So much like I did at that party, I attempt to view my fellow concert-goers with a wide lens and enjoy the wackiness for what it is: A rock concert in a church. A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I'm even trying to look on the bright side. An audience from all walks of life -- teeny-boppers, grandmothers and a few toothless folk -- unified by the holy spirit of rock-n-roll. Reverend Roger Clyne presiding.

That's kinda cool.

11:02 p.m. Whatever thoughts there are about the crowd, there's no mailing it in from the band.

They put the finishing touches a 2-hour, 15-minute show that is well worth the drive down, well worth the years-long wait. All told, they probably played about 24 songs, reaching back into their early catalog for much of the setlist.

They spent the last half hour or so taking requests from the audience, and finished the night with "Switchblade," a request from yours truly.

I was just as impressed with them after the show. Mr. Clyne and his bandmates stayed around and chatted with anyone who wanted to talk. No big-timing it out of the venue or anything. They have some serious cred, but they don't take themselves too seriously.

They heaped a good deal of attention on a kid who stood up front who looked about eight years old, and was definitely attending his first concert, which was particularly good to see. The kid ate it up, and walked out with a pair of drumsticks, among other souvenirs.

The guy who appeared to be running the show at Come 2 Go also did a bit of crowd-working afterward, making sure everyone had a good time and chatting with his congregants, all in a sincere, genuine fashion.

All in all, the Come 2 Go people seemed like nothing but nice Midwesterners. Kudos to them for their show and hospitality.

Someday, I'd love to hear their story of how they started dabbling in the business of hosting rock acts. For this night, though, it was time to hit the highway and get home.

11:48 p.m. Back on the highway somewhere near Angola, Indiana, and I realize I haven't eaten anything but a granola bar and banana since lunch. Desperate, I stop for my first bout of fast food since September 2007, when I grabbed some Burger King on the way to Nathan's apartment for our very first project meeting.

"Welcome to Wendy's, can I take your order?"

"Yes, what's the least-disgusting thing on your menu?"

1:37 a.m. After a fairly brutal drive spent enveloped in a blanket of thick fog, I finally roll into D-Town. Two vile strips of fry-pit burger lurch in my stomach, and I'm thankful to be home.

I check on Baby VFR, eat some cereal and sack out as soon as my head hits pillow.

All in all, a very enjoyable experience for a Wednesday night.

Special report: Danger in the skies

2009-05-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

If you want to live, don't fly on regional airlines.

Regrettably, that's the only reasonable conclusion I can draw after further analysis of the Colgan crash in Buffalo, an interview with a fellow pilot and a Squawking VFR study of National Transportation Safety Board aviation accident records.

I'm not trying to casually dump on a sector of the aviation industry that people love to kick around. But facts are facts.

Through inexperience, incompetence and gross negligence, regional airlines are consistently putting passengers in harm's way at a rate that exceeds their mainline counterparts.

And when accidents arise, the regional officials are happy to point the finger elsewhere, creating a culture that elicits defensive reactions and cover-ups instead of one that learns from mistakes and offers reform.

Along those lines, there's a ton to analyze and write about after last week's release of the cockpit voice recordings in the Colgan crash -- beyond the territory I've already covered in previous posts.

I'm going to save that for another day.

For now, I'm going to more broadly focus on the regionals. I don't want these statistics that I've unearthed to be missed amid the Buffalo rubble. They deserve their own post in the first-ever special report here.

These results are astounding. I never would have guessed the difference between the mainliners and regionals was so great until I bothered to see myself.

Discounting terrorism-related crashes, I've researched all NTSB scheduled-passenger aviation accident reports since 1995 to the present, looking at accidents that involved U.S.-registered aircraft operating on or above U.S. soil.

Here's what I found:

* Eight consecutive fatal accidents have involved regional airliners. Six of the eight, which have all occurred since May 21, 2000, were caused by pilot error, according to the NTSB.

* Ten of the past 12 fatal crashes have involved regional airliners.

* Mainliners have recorded their safest decade on record. The last fatal mainline crash came on Jan. 31, 2000, when an Alaska Air flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean due to mechanical problems.

* Unlike their mainline counterparts, regional accidents tend to be fatal. Eleven of the 12 regional crashes since 1995 have been fatal. Five of the 16 mainline crashes in the same timeframe resulted in fatalities.

* The disparity is even greater when you look at survivability. Occupants are more than four times as likely to die in a regional accident than they are a mainline accident.

Look at the number of fatalities per accident below versus the total number of occupants on board for regional airlines:

Date Airline Location Fatal/Total occupants
08/21/95 Atl. Southest Georgia 8/29
11/19/96 Great Lakes Quincy, Ill. 12/12
01/09/97 Comair Ida, Mich. 29/29
01/23/99 Colgan Hyannis, Mass. 0/4
05/21/00 Executive Air Scranton, Pa. 19/19
01/08/03 Air Midwest Charlotte, N.C. 21/21
08/26/03 Colgan Hyannis, Mass. 2/2
10/14/04 Pinnacle Jefferson City, Mo. 2/2
10/19/04 Corporate Air Kirksville, Mo. 13/15
12/19/05 Chalk Airways Miami, Fla. 20/20
08/27/06 Comair Lexington, Ky. 49/50
02/12/09 Colgan Buffalo, N.Y. 50/50

By my count, regional accidents have killed 212 of 238 possible passengers in these accidents, an 89.1 percent kill rate.

I'd venture to think that, as I did, most readers assume that aviation accidents tend to be fatal, that an 89.1 percent kill rate would be par for the course. But the statistics do not bear that out.

Not at all.

By contrast, accidents involving the mainline airlines, or "legacy" airlines if you prefer, are statistically much safer and much more survivable.

06/08/95 Valu-Jet Atlanta 0/62
12/20/95 Tower Air JFK 0/468
02/19/96 Continental Houston 0/87
05/11/96 Valu-Jet Everglades 110/110
07/06/96 Delta Pensacola, Fla. 2/146
07/17/96 TWA Long Island, N.Y.230/230
10/19/96 Delta LaGuardia 0/63
02/09/98 American Chicago O'Hare 0/121
11/01/98 AirTran Atlanta 0/105
06/01/99 American Little Rock 12/143
09/09/99 TWA Nashville 0/48
01/31/00 Alaska Point Mugu, Ca. 88/88
03/05/00 Southwest Burbank, Ca. 0/142
12/08/05 Southwest Chicago Midway 0/103
12/20/09 Continental Denver 0/112
01/15/09 US Airways Hudson River 0/155

Mainline accidents have killed 442 of 2,183 occupants in accidents, a 20.2 percent kill rate, and that's assuming you believe that TWA Flight 800 disintegrated over Long Island Sound because of a random spark in the center fuel tank.

(If you think I am counting aviation incidents in an attempt to bolster my numbers, I will state that I am counting only accidents, not incidents, as classified by the NTSB. There's a difference in the government's definition between the two. Accidents are generally more severe and involve structural damage).

How to explain the huge gap in numbers, in terms of frequency of accidents and survivability of them?

A friend of mine who works as a professional pilot, who came up through the regional ranks and now works at a mainline airline, describes significant diffences in not just the experience level of the pilots, but a difference in culture.

"I think professionalism, not rushing the checklist for the game of it, because it's cool to spit it out quickly, excessive talking, experience levels on a situation, are all so very different between the two."

"Checklists were a game for many at XXXXXX Airlines."

"The difference between the two were so big, and unfortunately, the more I know, teh less I want my family or me on the lesser regionals. Can't imagine flying on Great Lakes anymore."

If a seasoned pilot is worried about putting his family on a regional airline, so should you.

What's irksome is that, although it's printed in small type on a passenger ticket, most members of the flying public don't even realize they're purchasing a ticket on a Colgan or a Pinnacle.

They just know they're on Continental, and a plane painted with a Continental Express logo is waiting for them at the gate, ready to take them to Buffalo.

What they don't know, as seen in the stats above, can kill them.

The flying public deserves to know about the gaping differences between mainliners and regionals.

They deserve more than the blame-the-pilot responses they get from Colgan and others when things go wrong -- an injustice that will be looked at further in a future post.

Bottom line, they deserve a full investigation into the training practices and general culture at regional airlines, which sprouted largely when the industry was de-regulated in the 1980s.

The public deserves answers, and then reform.

A cornucopia of aviation thoughts

2009-04-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

A Pilatus PC-12, the aircraft type involved in recent terrible Montana crash.

Ajira Air, as seen on "Lost."

Between a wonderful wife who's back to work, a wonderful-yet-sleep-adverse baby at home and the Great Job Search of 2009, it's been difficult to create a little mental elbow room for Squawking VFR lately.

Which is a shame, because the sky has been full of fertile blogging territory. Here's my best attempt to catch up with what's up in the aviation world:

Seat infringement

Last year, United Airlines officials say they received roughly 700 complaints about "seat infringement," corporate speak for overweight people allowing their girth to spill onto the poor soul sitting next to them.

United is now requiring overweight customers to purchase a second seat if they are infringing upon their seat mates and alternative seating is not available.

I have written many angry letters to United over the years. When I lived in Denver, they were usually the only airline available until Frontier emerged as a viable option. I've been ruthlessly dumped in unintended destinations, lied to about alleged "weather delays" that were not actual weather delays and generally treated like garbage.

Every time, I let United know about it.

So fair is fair: I applaud United for taking a stand, politically incorrect as it may be, against seat infringement.

I can't count the number of times I've had a flight ruined because of this awkward situation. Once, when I flew from Denver to Kansas City, the gut of the gentleman next to me engulfed the arm console and rested on my knee for the duration of our travels.

Another time, flying from Denver to Newark, the man next seated next to me couldn't rest his arms at his sides due to his girth. So instead his elbow rested in my rib cage for the entire four-hour flight.

By the end of the flight, I was ready to go berserk. You get to a point where you see an overweight person walking down the aisle during boarding and you send up a "Please God, don't let them sit next to me" plea.

No one wants to make these people feel bad, but the truth is that seat infringement is every bit as invasive, bothersome and unjust as the scourge The Recliners thrust upon us traveling folk.

I've paid for my postage-stamp-sized space at 35,000 feet. I'd like to use it.

Bravo, United.

Autopilot cited in crash

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a recent report on the 2007 crash of a Citation jet crash that killed six people, including four members of a University of Michigan organ transplant team.

The report concludes that one of the pilots inadvertently turned on the plane's auto pilot instead of the yaw damper, which is what he allegedly intended. The two buttons are next to each other on the console.

Sad deal all around.

Like the recently detailed Buffalo crash, I'm really struck by the simplicity of this conclusion. Are they really saying that if the pilots had only realized that they had made a rather innocuous mistake, they could have simply turned off the auto pilot and not crashed the plane?

Yeah, they are.

I have to think there's more to this story. There just has to be more there.

Auto pilots make a loud, audible beep when they are engaged, and then again when they are disconnected. This feature was created in response to the Eastern Airlines L-1011 crash in 1972 that I've mentioned before, when the crew became so engrossed with a small problem they didn't realize the auto pilot had disengaged and put the plane on a small, gentle descent into the swamps of the Everglades.

With the audible warnings, I just have to think the crew of this Citation knew the auto pilot was on.

Incidentally, my scariest moment in roughly 680 hours of flight time came thanks to a malfunctioning auto pilot.

On August 22, 2006, I was flying with my friend Tim, a fellow CFII, from Jefferson County Airport to Platte Valley Airpark, an all-but-abandoned landing strip about 17 miles directly north of Denver International.

The flight was mostly for fun, but I was also conducting Tim's biennial flight review.

Denver's Class B airspace extends over Platte Valley at 7,000 feet MSL, so we were below that at 6,500, which means approximately 1,500 feet above ground level.

We were in level flight squawking VFR on our way to Platte Valley with the auto pilot on when, without warning or reason, it started trimming the plane into a pitch-up attitude.

It kept trimming the nose up until the trim wheel hit the backstop. The nose rose at least 15 degrees pitch-up and would have easily gone through 20 -- past the critical angle of attack, if you remember my stall lesson from the Colgan post -- had Tim not fought to keep it down with all his might.

The sudden trim-up was bizarre, but the solution here seemed simple enough. Turn the auto pilot off.

I was in the left seat, and clicked the auto-pilot disconnect button near my left thumb on the yoke. It made the loud, audible beep that signified the disengagement. Except the auto pilot didn't turn off. It retained its grip on the yoke and trim wheel.

Tim cut the throttle to help him fight the pitch-up attitude, then we reversed into a pitch-down attitude of about 15 degrees. This wasn't good either.

At the same time, I pressed the auto-pilot button on the avionics console, trying to turn the damned thing off. Again I got the verbal cue that it had disconnected, but it again didn't actually disconnect.

Tim kept fighting the auto pilot. (This is really hard, by the way. Sort of like trying to steer a car after the power-steering quits).

I don't remember how far we deviated from target altitude, but it's possible that we busted up into the Class B or possible that we sunk below 6,000. I really don't remember at this point, but I know our altitude fluctuated by several hundred feet.

What I do remember our general flight path oscillating like a roller-coaster as we did this pitch-up, pitch-down dance. I remember being worried that the full-aft-trim auto pilot was going to stall us, and that with its grip on the yoke, the AP would somehow complicate our stall recovery.

Then I had the brilliant idea of pulling the auto-pilot circuit breaker. I reached under the yoke, and popped it out.

That worked.

The auto pilot released its grip on the flight controls, we leveled off and shuffled along to Platte Valley without further incident.

All in all, the whole thing probably lasted 30 seconds. Maybe 40. We never reached a crisis level, and the whole was over by the time we did anything but react and respond.

When we returned to our base at Jeffco, the owners of our flight school seemed incredulous when we explained what happened. Had we not been two CFIIs, I really think they would have assumed that one of the students had messed something up or not used the AP correctly and dismissed the incident.

But after our encounter, every student at our school got an auto pilot lesson, one that included learning exactly where the AP circuit breaker was on the dashboard.

Tim recalls: "It does scare me to think of what would happen to most folks flying those planes that don't get an autopilot lesson. Can you imagine that happening to a student during their first solo?"

Prior to this incident, I had suffered other auto pilot malfunctions, far less serious - things like it not picking up the localizer on a practice VOR instrument approach or not maintaining the programmed 500-foot-per-minute descent I had asked for.

One of my own instructors had once explained to me that the AP in the 172s gets "hot," and then it doesn't work so well. I have no idea if that's true or not, but there were times that the AP box in the avionics stack was indeed very hot, and that also worried me, from an electrical perspective.

I'm sure the auto pilot in the Cessna Citation II that crashed off Milwaukee is far more advanced than the rickety ones installed in our 172s and I want to make sure that I'm clear that I'm not comparing the two. I'm also not suggesting that what happened to me is what happened to the pilots of the U-M organ transplant plane.

I'm just relaying an experience with an auto pilot.

And why I have an inherent distrust of them.

Elsewhere in the media

I wrote a little bit about the role pilot fatigue may have played in the Colgan crash, and its impact in other aviation accidents. Salon.com's Patrick Smith goes further in-depth on the topic in this report, which is well worth a read, unless the idea of your pilots falling asleep at the yoke at 35,000 feet makes you uneasy.

Passenger lands plane

You may have read this story, in which a passenger took over the controls of a twin-engine turbo-prop King Air and successfully landed after the pilot died in Naples, Fla.

When I first heard this story, I sort of yawned, because the "passenger" was a private pilot and I figured the mainstream media was merely sensationalizing the story like it does with almost every oddball aviation occurrence and that he had some degree of turboprop experience.

But the more I read and the less I assumed, the more impressed I became with Doug White.

It turns out that White is a private pilot with a mere 130 hours of flight time, all in single-engine planes. He had never before manned the controls of a twin, which is a significantly different animal.

The general flight concepts are the same no matter what aircraft type: Pitch plus power equals performance. But comparing the flight characteristics of a single-engine Cessna with the King Air, well, it'd be a little like trying to fly a kite versus an anvil.

Add in retractable gear and a host of other complex systems that he wasn't accustomed to, and White had his work cut out for him.

I'd stop short of calling it a miracle, because his previous experience clearly gave him the necessary stick-and-rudder background to fly and land. But it's nonetheless a gutsy, poise-under-pressure performance that brought out his best under unfortunate circumstances.

"Lost" in aviation translation

For a show that prides itself on nailing down every last detail, one recent episode of my favorite television series left me a little disappointed.

If you watch Lost, you probably remember that the ol' gang returned to the island a few weeks ago by boarding a fictional Ajira Airways flight and flying straight into the path of the paranormal phenomenon that landed them on the island in the first place.

The gang boarded Ajira flight 316 in Los Angeles, which had a stated destination of Guam. But then the producers showed the Ajira flight in question being conducted in a Boeing 737-800 model aircraft.

This is a careless oversight by Lost producers: There's no airline on earth that's running trans-Pacific service with a 737, much more of a short-haul jet.

Perhaps an even worse transgression? Inside the plane, they showed Hurley, Benjamin Linus and company sitting in the first-class, top portion of a double-decked cabin.

The 737 doesn't have double-decked cabins.

In passenger service, that honor belongs only to the 747, a completely different bucket of bolts.

All around, a bad job by the Lost crew on simple technical matters that should have been caught before production.

Skepticism on Montana crash cause

I have my doubts that the terrible plane crash that killed three families in late March was due to an overloaded airplane, the cause drawing a lot of early speculation/attention.

Yes, there were 14 passengers aboard the 10-seat plane. Many of them were children, who obviously weight less than adults.

Furthermore, and probably more important, I'd expect an overloaded plane to crash on takeoff and not upon landing, after it had flown 1,000 miles and burned off hundreds of pounds in fuel.

Keep an eye on whether the investigation turns not only on weight, but on how that weight was balanced throughout the plane.

A plane can be at or under its maximum gross weight, but it also must be "balanced," i.e. the center of gravity of that weight must lie within a certain range, one usually measured in inches from the nose of the plane backward.

That distance is called the "arm."

Exactly where along the arm the center of gravity lies can affect the way the plane handles. If the C.O.G. lies outside the scope of the predescribed range, it can adversely affect those handling characteristics.

Still, I don't think the Montana crash is one that will ultimately be attributed to weight or balance issues. Investigators need to know why the pilot diverted from Bozeman, the original destination, to Butte.

One key question for me, beyond the weight and balance issues and the decision to divert, is how much prior experience the pilot had in the Pilatus PC-12.

I hope it's a lot. The PC-12 is one of the most powerful single-engine planes on the market. For all intents and purposes, it's a business jet that can zoom around at 350 knots. Except it's a powerful single-engine turboprop with the propeller mounted on its nose.

The one thing that's always struck me about the PC-12 is that any yahoo with a private pilot's license and complex and high-performance sign-offs in their logbook can legally fly an aircraft that's really one no beginner should be anywhere near.

I have no idea how many hours the pilot in this particular crash had in type. I really hope it's a ton and that experience has nothing to do with this terrible accident.

But when I heard it was a Pilatus involved, it reminded me that I've always thought it was odd that such a powerful plane could legally be flown in the hands of a short-time private pilot.

Close that loophole somehow, will you Federal Aviation Administration? If it didn't kill anyone in this crash, it's a matter of time before it's a factor somewhere else.

Coming up

If you're a frequent flyer and you love your family, you won't want to miss Squawking VFR's upcoming special report on the comparative safety of regional airliners and their legacy counterparts.

I've examined databases and crunched numbers for my first-ever special report. Let's just say the conclusions are eye opening, alarming and frightening. You don't want to miss it.

A familiar name found amid agate type

2009-04-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

Buried beneath box scores and standings, this item caught my eye on a recent agate page:

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS -- Named Larry Coyer defensive coordinator.

The name probably doesn't mean anything to you, but I smiled upon reading about that hiring, even if I had to squint to see it in fine-print type.

As a sports writer, you never really root for teams, contrary to what fans may think. You root for people. Coyer is one of those people.

Coyer served as the Denver Broncos linebackers coach and defensive coordinator during my tenure covering the team, and he was unceremoniously scapegoated after another Mike Shanahan season gone awry in 2006.

His second chance as a coordinator is well deserved.

Beyond the fact he was a damned good one in Denver, he's probably one of the two or three nicest people I've come across in the coaching ranks in 15 years of sports writing.

(Ceal Barry, the one-time Colorado women's basketball coach, would be one of the others).

An older guy with wispy white hair, Coyer was rarely seen without a pipe in his mouth after practices, when he'd sit by himself for a few minutes of peace on the side of the field after everyone else went inside.

When he lit up, reporters could always wander over and get whatever quotes they needed about his defensive players.

But we could also just shoot the shit with him, and that was better.

That may not sound like anything extraordinary, but here's a little perspective that may help put it into context: Shanahan had everyone who worked in that building so paranoid about talking to the media that most reacted like scared cyborgs to the simplest of questions.

For Coyer to act ... you know, human ... was nothing short of astounding. And he'd sit there and talk for an hour if you wanted.

He had that approach because he was the exact opposite of the control-freak egomaniacs who populate most NFL sidelines.

Maybe that's because he knew what real hard work was all about, growing up in and around the mines of Greenbow, West Virginia.

Maybe because he knew what real loss was all about, having recruited a few dozen juniors and seniors aboard a DC-9 that crashed in Huntington, West Virginia in 1970.

Coyer worked as an assistant coach at Marshall.

He had accepted a position as an assistant coach at Massillon (Oh.) High School a year earlier, otherwise he would have also been on that plane.

Or maybe his low-key demeanor just evolved after coaching at dozen colleges, including Michigan, two USFL teams and leading a vagabond life before landing his first NFL gig. He knew what dues-paying was all about.

A couple things stand out about the man:

- Each Thanksgiving, he invited all his linebackers over to his house for dinner if they were stuck in town and didn't have anywhere else to go. His wife, Jan, would often make his players cookies.

- When Shanahan promoted Coyer from linebackers coach to defensive coordinator, the team held a press conference. He was not accustomed to such a formal gathering. He had about a dozen microphones pinned to his lapel, and it was really his first time in front of the cameras.

When the presser was over, he forgot the mics were still clipped to his jacket. He stood up and walked away, dragging them all with him. I can still picture that scene.

Welcome to the big time, Larry.

- My best Coyer memory came following a brutal 41-10 loss to the Indianapolis Colts in a 2004 playoff game.

The defense had a very strong season, but for whatever reason, the unit flat-out choked in this particular playoff game.

Manning destroyed them from the opening snap, and the Colts led 31-3 at the half.

The most egregious Denver failing came when Marvin Harrison caught a leaping pass over the middle and fell to the turf in front of safety Kenoy Kennedy and corner Roc Alexander.

Kennedy and Alexander conferred to discuss who blew the coverage. But neither bothered to tap Harrison when he was down. The Colts receiver got up, untouched, and scampered another 30 yards for a touchdown.

It was an embarrassing, blooper-reel failure.

In most scenarios, the defensive players and coordinator probably would rather join the witness protection program than stand up and answer questions the how, why and degree of their awfulness.

After that game, Larry Coyer not only showed his face to answer questions about that play and the defense's miserable day, but he sought out reporters to personally apologize for the unit's performance in the halls beneath the RCA Dome.

Every member of the Broncos media pool that traveled to Indy for that game got a one-on-one with Coyer that day. He made sure of it.

"I feel sick to my stomach," he said after that game. "I feel physically ill."

I knew he meant it, and thought for sure he would vomit.

The rest of the team had cleared out of the locker room and was ostensibly on a bus to the airport. Coyer stood among the empty lockers and discarded athletic tape and asked me if he had talked to everyone, and inquired about going up to the press box to make sure.

No one asked him to do that. He just did it, when there was no reason to do so and every reason not to.

Watching Coyer seek random reporters out to personally apologize in the halls underneath that dome stands out as one of the most fascinating and honorable sports spectacles I've ever witnessed.

Here's to hoping his best days in Indy are ahead.

The crash of Colgan 3407

2009-03-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

N200WQ, the accident airplane. Photo taken on approach at YYZ on Oct. 5, 2008, courtesy of Michael Fast and airliners.net

I've seen my share of reports on aviation accidents caused by human frailties.

There was the 1972 Eastern Airlines crash in the Everglades that occurred when a crew became so distracted by a burnt-out landing gear bulb that they were unaware the auto-pilot had disengaged and their L-1011 had begun a gentle descent into the swamps.

There was the crash of a United Airlines DC-8 that occurred near Portland Ore. in 1978, when the pilot, circling because of a potential landing gear problem, ran out of fuel. His FO had brought their fuel crisis to his attention; the captain chose to ignore it.

No less than the worst accident of all time was caused by an impatient KLM 747 pilot, who, despite the objections of his co-pilot, commenced his takeoff roll in heavy fog without clearance from air traffic control and smashed into a Pan Am 747 taxiing on the same runway, killing 583 people.

You can blame these accidents on denial, arrogance, whatever. In the end, though, the pilots knew how to fly the planes.

I'm not so sure about the pilot of Colgan 3407.

I'm hesitant to rip a flight crew, especially the deceased pilot-in-command who oversaw a terrible crash. Seems like bad karma. But reading the NTSB preliminary report, there's really no way to argue around the clear-cut evidence.

Gross incompetence cost 50 people their lives near Buffalo, N.Y.

(Not ice, as was originally and continuously lamented as the culprit in knee-jerk media reports. But when it comes to aviation news, is there another kind?)

The inattentive crew of 3407 let a bad situation fester, then when the warning bells alerted them to the situation at hand, they did the exact opposite of what they should have done to correct the problem. That's no exaggeration.

It wasn't a complicated solution, either. The fixes were things my flight students could describe and accomplish after three or four lessons in a Cessna 172. Again, I'm not exaggerating.

But it never should have gotten to that point aboard Colgan 3407, a Dash-8. As I have said a few times here, it's not one thing that causes an accident, but a chain reaction of four or five different problems that, had any been resolved differently, the accident chain could have been broken.

Colgan 3407 is no different.

Let's look at the accident chain:

The fatigue factor

1. It begins with a departure from Newark that's more than five hours late, which means a flight crew that's been on duty much longer than expected by the time they take off circa 9:30 p.m.

Fatigue, according to the NTSB report, will be a topic addressed when the board convenes in May to discuss the accident. I'm glad to hear that, because crew fatigue is a topic that gets brushed aside too often by the FAA, which although it has rules about mandated rest periods and maximum work hours, does nothing to actually enforce them.

Fatigue, you may remember, was also cited as a factor in the last major U.S. plane crash, when a Comair flight took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.

Pilots need protection from draconian schedule-makers and dispatchers, and also from their own employers. You've never met a group of employers as outright hostile to their indentured servants/employees as the regional airline companies.

It's one of the reasons I chose to abort my aviation career before takeoff; I really don't want to work for an employer who has no respect for me.

The Colgan crash is another example as to why more stringent government intervention and oversight is needed when it comes to crew fatigue. The airlines aren't going to police themselves.

Sterile cockpit

2. According to NTSB officials who have reviewed the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the crew ignored FAA rules about maintaining a "sterile cockpit" during their approach and descent into Buffalo.

A sterile cockpit, you ask? Below 10,000 feet, commercial pilots can only talk about essential flight topics. This keeps the focus on the task at hand during departure and arrival phases of the flight, when mistakes and oversights are magnified.

(Ever wonder why you have to keep your electronics off early and late in flights? It's so operations-critical communications aren't disrupted below 10,000 feet).

Although there's no sterile-cockpit requirement for private pilots, I taught my students to adopt a similar tactic.

We weren't ever really above 10,000 feet AGL, but my rule of thumb for students was that once they contacted approach and/or copied the ATIS information (a broadcast of local weather and airport conditions), then the chatter stopped and concentration commenced.

I'm sure that the crew of Colgan 3407 isn't the only one to kind of shrug its shoulders at the sterile cockpit requirement -- on the contrary, I'd guess the rule is treated with a grain of salt by thousands of crews every day.

But when you study the accident chain of 3407, it has to be considered the second step, because there's no other way to really conceive of how they got to No. 3 without it.

Low and slow

3. So here comes 3407 into the Buffalo area, and the crew is ostensibly chatting away unaware that the airspeed is slowly bleeding off ... slowly bleeding off ... until the stick-shaker activates and warns of an oncoming stall.

That was one of the more elementary rules broken that night: Don't get low and slow.

One of the key things we're all taught -- pretty much from the first time we step in the airplane -- is to nail target airspeeds at low altitudes, because there's simply a lower margin for error when you're approaching the airport. In airspeed, you're flying closer to the stall speed of the plane ... finally approach speed is generally 1.3 times stall speed; In altitude, there's less leeway for recovery from a mistake.

On their approach, Colgan was at approximately 1,500 feet MSL, a little low, according to the report, and they got slow enough to where they stalled the plane.

This is ultimately a little more complex, and maybe we'll save for another post discussions about cross-controlled stalls, the horizontal component of lift, how g-force affects stall speeds and stall-spin accidents.

For now, moral of the story is simple: don't get low and slow.

That's what they did. They got low and slow, and it's the next chain in the accident.

Stall recovery

4. Back to our troubled plane. The stick shaker activates, warning of an oncoming stall.

The proper response in this situation is to initiate a stall recovery by 1) lowering the nose 2) applying full power and 3) retracting flaps in stages. There might be some small variations to this in jets, such as holding the nose steady instead of lowering it, but the general concept is the same.

When it came to step one, the PIC of Colgan 3407 did the exact opposite. He raised the nose.

In explaining why that's important, I need to back up and explain a few things:

You shouldn't mistake a stall for the engines quitting; in aviation-speak, a stall is code for the wings are no longer producing lift.

A stall is an aerodynamic event.

Ever stick your hand out the window and let it float in the wind? It's floating on the same aerodynamic principles that allow airplanes to fly. Lift is being created.

Lift in airplanes is affected by a lot of factors: air density, surface area of the wing, air speed and angle of attack -- the angle at which the wings meet the wind.

This oversimplifies things a little, but pilots can control the amount of lift being produced largely through two factors: airspeed and angle of attack.

(OK, when you start adding flaps and spoilers and such, they can also control the surface area of the wing, but I'm trying to keep it simple).

The faster you go, the faster the wind goes over the wings. More lift is produced.

The more "tilt" there is to the wing, the more lift is produced. If you plotted this on a graph, the amount of lift being produced would grow steadily as the angle of attack increases.

Think back to your hand out the window of the car. The more you tilt your hand upward, the more your hand wants to rise through the air. Until you reach a point where you tilt your hand so far, it plops like an anvil.

In aviation speak, that point is called the critical angle of attack. That is, the angle at which there's so much tilt to the wing, that air no longer flows smoothly around the surface. It's at this point the wing stops producing lift.

Each plane has a particular angle of attack that, if exceeded, lift ceases and the plane will stall. In most planes, the critical angle of attack is between 17 and 21 degrees.

Although airspeed plays a significant factor in stalls, it's ultimately the angle of attack that plays the most important role in the lift/stall equation.

So back to 3407.

The stick-shaker activates, enough of an event on its own to merit an investigation. The recovery procedure is simple, simple enough that my students all know it by the end of their fourth lesson.

The first two steps in stall recovery account for airspeed and angle of attack, controlling those two key things that help control lift: Power increases airspeed and the nose is lowered so that the critical angle of attack is not exceeded and air begins again flowing smoothly around the wing surfaces.

But does the captain of 3407 lower the nose, (also known as relaxing the back pressure)? Or does he maintain his current pitch, which is the proper procedure in some planes?

Nope, he yanks back on the yoke applying 25 pounds of force and pulls the Dash-8 to a plus-30 degree pitch attitude, way beyond the critical angle of attack.

This significantly worsens the stall, and with only 1,500 feet of altitude to play with, there's just not enough room for a recovery.

Raising the nose is a crazy response. It's so contrary to what's ingrained in a pilot's head from one of his earliest lessons. His response is the aviation equivalent to saying "Well, I saw that light was red, officer, so I stomped on the accelerator."

It's hard to fathom that a professional flight crew with thousands of hours of flight time and many more in a simulator erred so very, very badly.

Conclusions

I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that when the final NTSB report comes out that there's some unforeseen problem that's not in the preliminary report that explains all this.

I hope that I can come back with a post that says, "You know what? I really whiffed on my Colgan analysis and here's the extenuating circumstance that no one caught the first time around."

I'd much rather hear those things, because an accident of such simplicity scares the hell out of me.

When I think of my family and friends flying around the country and the possibility of something catastrophic occurring, I think it'd be easier to accept if a fan blade cracked because of metal fatigue or if the plane rolled after a mysterious uncommanded rudder deflection.

But this business with a bungled stall recovery? The 50 people killed by something so simple deserved much better.

Sky savages

2009-03-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning's flight from Seattle to Denver, I frequently thought of the great Seinfeld episode "The Chinese Restaurant" where George Costanza yelled in frustration "We're living in a society here!"

It was the latest flight in which I've observed that airline travel generally turns fellow citizens into cretins who think they're in the land of the lawless in their little aluminum tubes at 35,000 feet.

In the spirit of returning some decency to air travel, here are two new rules for that would make things more enjoyable for everybody:

1. Just because the seats recline, that doesn't mean you should plop into your rearward neighbor's lap.

I once broke up with a girl, partially because when it came to this topic, she assured me that she'd use her God-given right to recline on any and all flights, despite whatever hardships it might cause the person behind her.

Such a statement, to me, reflected her true colors. And then she was gone.

Look, I know the seats recline, but they were designed 30 years ago in an era when a tightly regulated industry had the luxury of providing ample leg room, space to read a newspaper and stale lasagna.

Airlines have since shaved nearly a foot off the available space per passenger, destroying any semblance of comfort. Please don't wreck the already-limited space for the poor soul behind you. It's just common courtesy.

2. You shouldn't need a forklift to hoist luggage into the overhead bins.

The savagery in the skies is getting worse.

Fees for checked bags is the culprit.

When oil prices peaked and airlines freaked, they started charging their pax to check their luggage. This, in turn, caused nobody to check their luggage and instead attempt to wedge their belongings into overhead bins.

It's become open warfare for that coveted space.

Savvy flyers know this means you need to get onto the plane ASAP, and thus need to jockey for position in line and wait with bated breath as they call out rows for boarding.

But if you get on board late, you know what? You lose.

Don't argue with the flight attendants. Don't start re-arranging the bags of others who came before you. Don't attempt to wedge your over-sized bag in with hydraulic jacks. Please just give up, check your bag and the front of the cabin and stop pouting.

It wouldn't be popular, but airlines need to start strictly enforcing their rules on acceptable size of carry-on luggage.

Babyville

2009-03-12T21:27:00.001-07:00

Some thoughts on birth and the baby as we enter week seven of parenthood.

The name

True story. One day, at least a year before we seriously considered attempting pregnancy, I found myself standing in the shower spontaneously pondering baby names. Mrs. VFR and I hadn't discussed anything of the sort in months.

But there I stood, rinsing shampoo out of my hair, and the name "Eliza" popped into my head. I immediately loved it. It fit predetermined criteria. Old, but not Mabel. Classic, but not overly popular.

It was more than the fact it merely passed those initial tests. It had this intangible: It just clicked right away. It sounded right. Eliza VFR. Yes.

I filed this nugget away and proceeded with getting ready for my day, thinking I'd unearth that thought again many months down the road. While I was drying off, Ericka came in to ask me a question. When she was done, she said:

"By the way, I was thinking of baby names for some reason. What do you think of the name Eliza?"

We never really considered anything else.

Numbers game

A little background on the mushier side of my marriage: Ericka and I often say "123" to each other, which is code for "I love you."

This is a little tradition that started on her side of the family. When her brother, Bullfrog, was a fierce southpaw on the mound in high school, her mom would always shout "I love you!" to him from the stands, much to his embarrassment.

He told her to stop; she wouldn't budge.

They eventually compromised on 123. One. Two. Three. I. Love. You. Bullfrog allowed her to shout this from the stands, and it quickly became a family trademark that carried over into our marriage.

It's important to us. Our wedding rings are inscribed on the inside with "One. Two. Three" and our wedding date.

So you can imagine our joy when Eliza was born, two days late, on January 23. 1/23.

Darth Vader visits

For the months leading up to the birth, we did a ton of research on natural birth versus C-section and the general labor process. Ericka concluded that she wanted as natural a birth as possible.

There were a lot of reasons for this, but the crux of it was that she wanted to avoid a C-section, unless an emergency required one.

From our studies, we knew that epidurals can often slow down the labor process, leading antsy doctors to administer the drug Pitocin, which speeds it up. Pitocin can also put undue stress on the awaiting baby, thus creating the sudden need for a C-section.

That cycle was burned into our minds. Epidural = Pitocin = C-section.

She was open to the epidural, but was going to give it her best shot without one. And I was slated to be her advocate during the hospital "experience." Her doula. Her voice of reason. This was the great birth plan.

Here's how it actually went down: My poor wife endured 55 hours of labor by the time they finally induced her, which caused her contractions to exponentially increase in severity.

She rolled around on the birthing ball and soaked in the jacuzzi in our room in hopes of soothing the daggers shooting into her stomach. But nothing really dulled the pain. More worrisome, she wasn't dilating. At all. All this pain, and no gain.

So the prospect of intervention was on the horizon when Ericka looked at me, and in a dark, low voice that sounded like Darth Vader, she said: "I want ... an epidural."

I assumed my role as advocate. "OK, let's slow down and talk about that," I said. "We can do that. Just remember that could slow things down, and --"

"NOW!" she bellowed.

"OK, just remember that it could --"

"NOW!" Darth Vader said.

Heil, epidural

I arranged the epidural.

A few minutes later, an anesthesiologist named Dr. Swastik arrived.

I kid you not. That was the dude's name. I wondered why he never changed it. I also wondered if my baby would someday display an irrational obsession with marching band and Meister Brau.

(Poor guy. I mean, seriously, now he's got some wise-ass cracking on him in a blog entry when all he did was deliver a fantastic epidural).

I left the room for about a half hour while Dr. Swastik administered the epidural. When I came back, Darth Vader had departed and my wonderful, smiling wife had returned.

Crowning achievement

The epidural not only defeated the pain, it allowed Ericka's body to relax to the point where she dilated. It occurred quickly, and in no time, she was ready for the home stretch.

She was feeling no pain, so much so, that we were having very nice conversations with our doctor in between pushes.

We did not know if the baby was a boy or girl, and we discussed our naming options with our doc at this point. We told him we had our girl name picked out for sure, but that we had three boy options.

When we were on the break before the second-to-last series of pushes, we finally got around to talking about what I did for a living. When I told him, he said, "Oh, so you must know Reako."

"Indeed I do," I said, and we had nice conversation about the general state of affairs on the local sports scene.

At this point, the doc said, "OK, you can see the head now." And he pointed in the general direction of this pointy, bluish-gray mass with white goop protruding from Ericka's down-theres.

It looked like a moonscape.

I had no doubt that the doc had indeed pointed to a head and that he knew what he was doing, but I concluded in my own mind that I must be looking in the wrong area.

"I delivered one of Reako's kids," the doc then said, jumping back to the earlier part of our conversation, as we geared up for a final push. (This was later verified).

Minutes later, the baby was born. I was stunned silent by the magnificence of this miracle process. The doc looked at us and said, "I guess you don't have to pick a name!"

Crying commenced. I cut the cord. Nurses placed the baby on the warming table. I watched as they poked and prodded her while the doctor patched up my wife.

At that moment, Eliza opened her eyes for the very first time. Her first sight was a proud papa. She stared right at me, and her steely blue eyes melted my heart.

Die Bambi!

Those of you who are already parents may remember placing your precious cargo in the car for the first time and driving away from the hospital as if you had a Ming vase balancing on a toothpick in the back seat.

I was no exception. I have never driven more slowly or been more on the lookout for soccer moms driving Ford Navigators while blabbing on their cell phones.

We weren't more than two blocks from the hospital when I saw an oncoming car careening off snow banks and hurtling toward us. It looked like the make and model Bluto drove at the end of Animal House.

A few minutes later, after dodging that wreck, we approached Pleasantville on a nice, country road when all of a sudden, a damned deer jumped out of the woods and into our lane. You may remember that I've already had a previous encounter with a deer this year.

I had no choice but to lock up the brakes.

At the last second before impact, Bambi jumped out of our lane and into the east-bound one. Just in time to get whacked by another vehicle.

My nerves were shot for two straight days.

Things I've learned

I know that a few of my readers are going to be proud parents any day now, so I'd like to pass along a few tidbits I've learned in seven fantastic weeks. I hope they're useful.

- Babies R Us is an evil place, filled with fear-mongers who prey upon your worst parental nightmares. All their advertising essentially comes down to this: "You're a bad, dangerous parent if you don't have this crappy, overpriced piece of plastic we'd like to sell you."

- If you have a birth plan, be flexible with it. Like I mentioned above, Ericka went in fairly determined to not have an epidural, because it could lead to the C-section. As it turned out, she probably avoided the C-section by having the epidural.

- We squirreled away a little dough specifically for baby expenses in the early months. OK, we didn't, but we thought about doing so. If you've had similar thoughts, save double what you planned. It's not just the big things. It's the series of little things on top of the big things.

- Three consecutive hours of slumber can indeed be classified as "a good night's sleep."

- There's an overabundance of information out there on birth and babies. Take it all with a grain of salt. Ask questions of your doctors, but realize that if you asked 10 different doctors the same question, you'd probably get 10 different answers. I'm not exaggerating. Trust your instincts. It ain't rocket science. They're either tired, hungry, gassy or sitting in their own waste. There's an outside chance they're sick, but that's why you've got a thermometer.

- Being Papa VFR is the greatest thing ever. Enjoy it.

The Cuba thing

2009-02-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

Forgotten among this week's stock-market flattening and Barack Obama's subsequent call to halve the national deficit by the end of his first term was an intriguing item from the desk of Indiana senator Richard Lugar.

The senate's longest-serving Republican called for a re-thinking of U.S. policy toward Cuba.

In a 23-page report that will be handed over to Congressional members later this week, Lugar wrote "We must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests."

It's basically a proposal to end the 47-year embargo of the island, and idea that's time has come.

Although it seems its been conservatives who have been most adamant against Cuban reconciliation, I'm not surprised to see Lugar be the one to propose it.

Despite my liberal leanings, I've always held a great respect for Lugar, a sober-thinking and candid foreign-relations master among the first to criticize former President Bush's handling of Iraq.

He's also worked closely with Obama. When the prez was in the senate, the two collaborated on the Lugar-Obama bill that diminished nuclear proliferation.

(The pair are so tight that scuttlebutt at one time suggested Lugar would be tabbed for Secretary of State, a position that eventually went to H-Rod).

Despite the closeness of the prez and the Senate's eldest Republican, I don't think the Cuba idea will get much traction.

For one, given the economic turmoil, a Middle East in disarray, the energy crisis and our current two-front war, the last thing Obama needs to do is stir up that hornet's nest.

And electorally speaking, the last thing Obama needs to do is stoke sentiment against him in South Florida, a state he won in no small part because of his support from Cuban Americans. To approach Cuba now would be akin to deserting that support.

A better solution would be if the idea of ending the embargo is shelved until Obama's second term.

Then, he has no electoral issues to worry about, and better, the odds are pretty good the Castro regime will be finished. Once Castro's gone, the road to re-establishing economic and diplomatic ties becomes far easier.

For now, the groundwork for such a scenario has been set into place.

I, for one, hope it gets done.

Zeeland represent

2009-02-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

In addition to being a swell guy and my cousin, Keith Reimink is going to go down as one of history's great vagabonds.

He splits his life between Alaska and Antarctica working as a cook/chef/dining manager. Each summer, he runs a kitchen for a lodge in Denali National Park, a stone's throw from the place Into The Wild was filmed.

Each fall, he travels down to the world's least-populated continent and hunkers down on an iceberg for the winter, plying his culinary trade for a bunch of scientists. Occasionally, he graces us with his presence in his home state of Michigan.

This winter, Keith is upping the ante.

He's spending the entire year at the South Pole. He's one of 44 people in the entire world who are staying the winter in Antarctica at the Amundsen-Scott research facility.

In order to do this, he had to pass a battery of psychological tests that prove he's up to this task, which in my opinion, is silly. Anyone who wants to do this must be completely insane.

I'm writing this not only to give my cuz some kudos, but also because two days ago he started a blog to chronicle his many months of darkness. You don't have to be related to Keith to find that it's fascinating reading.

Here's the link -- it's also added to my list on the right -- and I look forward to reading tales of drunken shenanigans from the bottom of the world.

***

Keith's brother, Troy, is also due some belated kudos.

Troy is not only also my cousin, but a fellow Boothie. He works at the Grand Rapids Press as an entertainment reporter, and writes a pretty funny blog, Medium Fidelity, on our shared statewide Web site.

A column that he wrote while still in college on why Gov. Jennifer Granholm is hot may have been the funniest thing I've ever read -- he wrote it at a time I didn't even live in The Mitt and I still fell out of my chair laughing.

So I'm linking to Troy's blog here, and adding it to the right as well.

***

A couple people have asked when Squawking VFR will break down the recent crash of Colgan Air flight 3407. Rest assured, a post is in the works. It's a more complicated accident than some others, so more care is required in the re-construction of this awful accident.

Also, keep an eye out for an upcoming post on the arrival of Baby VFR and the general greatness of fatherhood.

***

If you've noticed some stylistic changes here at Squawking VFR lately, they're not intentional.

I'm really annoyed with whatever recent software update that www.blogger.com has implemented. I can no longer fiddle with the point size of my text, bold the first letter of each entry or center my asterisks.

I used to have all sorts of options for centering, bolding and point-sizing in the toolbar above this little text box. Alas, they have all vanished. It's really irksome.

The Pretenders rock the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor

2009-02-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

(Photo courtesy of thepretenders.com)

Chrissie Hynde stood in a downtown Ann Arbor shop a few hours before Monday's show at the Michigan Theater and eavesdropped on a conversation between a man and a college-aged girl.

The man told her The Pretenders were in town, to which the girl responded, "Who are they?"

"Some 1950s band," he replied.

"Fuck," Hynde chuckled as she recounted the story a few hours later in front of a near-packed house. "It's the '80s! Get it right."

Then she kicked her hard-driving band into a fervent sequence of songs that proved, no matter what decade it is, The Pretenders sound as rollicking and relevant as ever.

Touring off the first band's new album in more than six years, Hynde could have played it safe and trotted out the band's greatest hits catalog. Never one to overly care about what others may think, she instead largely omitted the old warhorses from the set list (notably My City Was Gone, Middle Of The Road and Stand By You).

Which was just fine, because the seven tunes Hynde and The Pretenders played from their new disc, Break Up The Concrete, wonderfully showcased the band's trademarks: her ropy vocals, Martin Chambers' rhythm-dictating drum work and full-throttle guitars.

If that sounds just like the combination that made The Pretenders a power-punk-rock force in the 1980s, well, that's about right.

But in its current form, the band has added a pedal steel guitar that brings weeping flecks of country and western to the new songs and re-casts some of Hynde's older work in a more melancholy layer.

The live result of that addition was a show that mixed tender moments with hard-edged punk and batten-down-the-hatches guitars.

"Boots of Chinese Plastic," the up-tempo lead song on the new album, kicked things off, followed by another newbie, "Don't Cut Your Hair." Hynde slowed things down or a while with an oldie, "Talk Of The Town," followed by "Nothing Maker" and the radio-friendly cut from the new album, "Love's A Mystery."

Then came my favorite moment of the show.

Sending up a tribute to "Dr. Bob," the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, The Pretenders played "The Last Ride," a sad and beautiful song off the new album. On the recorded version, the song is largely piano-driven. But live, with no ivory on stage, guitarist James Walbourne carried the song hauntingly on a mandolin.

It was one of those rare moments where music was both spooky and poignant and new, which just sent chills up my spine.

Hynde got back to the pop, bringing the crowd to its feet for the first time with "Stop Your Sobbing," which was followed by the familiar "Brass In Pocket," and a tribute to fallen guitarists James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon, "Back On The Chain Gang," which might be one of the best songs ever written.

There were some light moments, with Hynde cajoling both pedal-steel guitarist Eric Heyood and Chambers into exhibiting their bird-calling expertise.

At an earlier point, Hynde got a good laugh from the crowd by saying, "It's nice to see so many old faces here tonight."

One of the fresher faces was Walbourne, who absolutely stole the second half of the show with his furious, Red Bull pace that even upstaged Hynde, who seemed gracious and happy to relinquish the spotlight.

Walbourne, a U.K. guy who has recently played with indie pop's The Pernice Brothers, dished out a punishing solo during "Thumbelina," and that was just his warm-up. He revealed more and more of his considerable ability as the show progressed.

By the end, he brought the crowd to its feet on multiple occasions, and took command during an encore comprised of four songs from The Pretenders debut album -- "Kid," "Precious," "The Wait," and "Up The Neck" -- all probably written when he was in diapers.

Walbourne alone was worth the price of admission.

When you factor in the rest of the show, it was a very, very good night in Ann Arbor, a place that is proudly the home town of punk legend Iggy Pop, as Hynde noted.

My only complaint would be that The Pretenders probably just cleared the 1-hour, 30-minute mark from start to finish. Considering all they compressed into that time and the fact they left me wanting more, it's barely worth mentioning.

Facebook's 25 things

2009-02-02T18:03:00.000-08:00

I know all three of my readers are also on facebook, and you've probably already seen this there, but I thought I'd nonetheless post it on Squawking VFR as well.

For reasons unknown, babies, little kids and dogs are huge fans of mine. I am their pied piper. Sharon and Ericka think I should start my own TV show called “Meet Mr. Pete” and pick up where Mr. Rogers left off.

My favorite smell: Jet A fuel at the airport.

My favorite places in the world, in no particular order: Telluride, Colorado, Moab, Utah, Hanging Lake east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado and The Presidio in San Francisco.

From a young age, I’ve been a big Cleveland Browns fan. I never lived in Ohio. I have never had relatives there. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. My loyalty to and frustration with the franchise continues to this day, albeit at a lesser obsessive-compulsive pace than in my younger years.

I once went four-and-a-half years without drinking a caffeinated or carbonated beverage. Not surprisingly, I had never been healthier than during that stretch. Now? Dr. Pepper is nectar from the gods.

When it comes to IT savvy, gadget assembly or general handyman competence, I am a failure. A complete and unmitigated failure.

A lot of people have asked me if, given the Michigan economy and state of newspapers, I regret moving here two years ago. Honest truth: Not for a second. Do I regret purchasing a home 20 months ago? I love our place, but that’s a different answer.

That said, there are things I miss from Colorado deeply. There’s a lot of family and friends there, not to mention skiing and hiking. And the sun.

I’ve got five 14ers under my belt, but the hardest hike I’ve ever done was the Black Canyon of the Gunnison with Kevin.

I think a lot of my friends who I worked with in Colorado would get a kick out of working with me now. I’m not the outspoken pain-in-the-ass I was before. Pretty much the opposite. Apologies to Foster, Hempy and Mike.

Contrary to what most people think of sports writers/editors, etc., I don’t golf. And it’s probably been about three years since I’ve watched Sports Center.

Covering the NFL was a dream job, but I quickly realized that the daily grind of injury reports, quarterback quotes and coach-speak inevitably consumes your time and inhibits opportunities to do real journalism. I lasted four seasons on the beat.

On our first weekend trip together, I got Ericka lost in the Moab desert for hours. We ran out of water and, as dusk set in, couldn’t see 30 feet in front of us. Lucky for me, she stuck with me after that.

Academically speaking, I was a screw-up in college. So when I started studying for my FAA tests, I viewed it as a second chance to give it my all. I got so stressed out studying for my IFR checkride that I gave myself mono.

I got a perfect score on the instrument written, commercial written and CFI written. After the IFR checkride, which came in 30-kt winds, the examiner told me it was one of his best three rides ever. I went from total slacker to total overkill.

On my first flight as a student, my instructor took me directly over the Statue of Liberty, and then the World Trade Center. It was a proud moment, and it’s hard to reconcile that personal satisfaction with the sadness that now accompanies those memories.

I worked at a funeral home off and on during college. Yes, I did a little bit of everything. One summer, I organized a mass burial at sea for hundreds of unclaimed cremains. We dumped them not far from the splash-down spot of Flight 1549.

At some point in college, I got mugged at gunpoint on Central Avenue, about two blocks from my house. Who’s dumb enough to mug a poor college student? You’ve got to love New Brunswick.

Two of my favorite wedding moments were unplanned: When we were getting out of the car to take pictures, a little girl looked at Ericka, and gasped with pure innocence and wide-eyed amazement: “Look Daddy! … A princess!”

The other: I’m a terrible dancer. Between the ceremony and reception, Ericka and I took a few minutes to practice our well-rehearsed dance. We were standing near a creek doing our routine, and a deer came out of the woods, stood within about 15 feet of us and watched for several minutes as I twirled my beautiful bride.

Although I lived in Jersey for 24 years, I didn’t become a Springsteen fan until late in college. Since then, I’ve seen him 10 times in five states: New Jersey, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Florida. I’m spoiled now – I’ve been in the pit for my past four shows.

I’m a fanatical cereal eater. Often, I have a bowl for breakfast. I absolutely must have one just before bedtime.

At various times, I’ve played the piano, guitar and trombone. But I’m a jack of all trades and master of none.

Ericka and I have been so fortunate to travel to Belize and India in the past two years. Seeing the poverty abroad is heartbreaking, but seeing the joy people possess despite their lack of material possession is priceless. What do I remember most? Their eyes.

There are about five dozen more places overseas that I am dying to see.

ENCORE

Being a dad is the greatest thing ever.

I miss my two deceased grandfathers, and would love to kick back and have a beer – or Dr. Pepper – with them today. I’m grateful that I’m in my 30s and still have two grandmothers who are very much alive and in good spirits.

I wish I lived closer to my parents and sister. Wait. Flip that. I wish they lived closer to me.

My perfect retirement scenario: Each day begins with a hike of Mount Sanitas followed by a Goony Bird sandwich at Mountain Sun, with Mrs. VFR by my side.

Dispatches from the global frontier

2009-01-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

If you haven't read my friend Nathan's travel blog yet, you are missing not only some of the best blogging on the Internet, but some of the best travel writing anywhere.

Actually, to call it travel writing is an insult, given a lot of the shillery that passes for travel writing in publications like Outside, Conde Nast and even sometimes National Geographic Traveler. Nathan's a writer who happens to write about travel.

Far from the posh accommodations and glitzy getaways profiled in those mags, he blogs about his trips to a ramshackle African orphanage, a gritty dhow wharf in Dubai and Christmas in Djibouti, among other topics.

Through his words, you'll get glimpses of not only places you've only dreamed of visiting, but places you'd never want to visit. His posts are snapshots at everyday humanity beyond our cozy borders; they can be hopeful and inspiring, unsettling and heart-breaking.

Above all, they make me feel something.

Read his recent post entitled "Three eggs" and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Aviation thoughts on Sunday afternoon

2009-01-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

Carlos Dardano

Sully, meet Carlos Dardano.

Long before we had the Hero of the Hudson, there was another cap who pulled off a miracle landing in a situation similar to the US Airways splash landing earlier this week.

Dardano was piloting TACA Airlines flight 110, a Boeing 737, on May 24, 1988 when it encountered heavy thunderstorms and hail on descent into New Orleans. Both engines flamed out upon absorbing an intense amount of the wet weather.

A flame-out is a little different than the bird strike encountered by US Airways 1549 -- the engine "fire" is essentially snuffed out as opposed to a structural failure -- but ultimately the results were the same.

The engines stopped working.

TACA 110 got its engines re-started while descending through 4,000 feet, but they would not spool past idle. So they weren't of much use. As the 737 glided through 3,000 feet, Dardano declared an emergency. Air traffic control advised 110 there was an interstate directly ahead, but Dardano didn't think they could reach it.

In fact, with more echoes of the US Airways splash, Dardano replied with these intentions, according to the NTSB report on the crash:

"I don't believe we're going to make it there, sir. We're at 2,000 and we're losing altitude. The only thing I can do right now is make a 360 and I'll land over the water."

What actually happened?

Dardano dead-sticked the 737 not into the water, but somehow landed on a levee next to Lake Borgne. Emergency chutes deployed; all aboard were saved. It was a heck of a feat, one that is just as incredible if not moreso than the landing US Airways accomplished the other day.

Especially considering that he switched plans from water to levee with less than 1,000 feet to spare while guiding a 50-ton anvil.

A few days later, mechanics came out to the plane on the levee and put new engines on it; they actually took off from the levee and the plane is still in service.

Much like the frozen turkey test described in my previous post, engines are also tested for water endurance. They basically open up the nozzles on giant fire hoses and flood the engine. As a result of this incident, though, the FAA rewrote engine water-intake standards.

Would love to be a fly on the wall if Sully and Dardano ever met up for a few beers.

***

A couple of aviation-related questions that I have:

TACA flight 110 departed Belize City for New Orleans. Who runs a nonstop from Belize City to New Orleans, even 20 years ago?

In regard to the US Airways crash the other day, I have yet to read where and how high 1549 was when it hit the flock of geese that led to its swim. I'm really looking forward to the voice recorder release and NTSB initial report and getting more intel on the point of impact.

US Airways 1549 came to rest a few hundred feet north of the Lincoln Tunnel. What would have happened if the Airbus and/or its engines sunk and came to rest on top of the tunnel?

Granted, there's a few bajillion pounds of water on top of the tunnel already. Would a few tons of aluminum make a big difference? I have no idea. But I'd love to hear a structural engineer answer the question of whether the tunnel would be compromised.

Heroes and villains

2009-01-15T18:52:00.001-08:00

Less than two weeks ago, aviation experts proclaimed 2007 and 2008 the safest stretch in American aviation history. No fatalities were reported aboard transport-category flights in those two calendar years.

Miraculously, that streak continues today.

There's really no other way to describe today's crash of US Airways flight 1549 into the Hudson River. Plane plunges into icy river? The last time that happened, in 1982, rescuers plucked 78 bodies from the Potomac after an Air Florida jet with ice on its wings crashed on takeoff. Five survived.

Everybody survived today's accident.

The pilot, who gently dipped the Airbus 320 into the chilly waters, is a hero. Not only for his aviation skills, but for twice walking the aisle of the plane after everyone else was aboard a ferry or raft to make sure no one was left behind.

As you probably know by now, a bird strike caused failures in both engines, which is just hard to comprehend. Engines are built to withstand strikes from an entire flock. They must pass strict tests, including simulated bird strikes which you can watch here as frozen turkeys are jettisoned into the engines, before they are put into service.

They're so strong that they can devour a human being, as this one unfortunate soul in El Paso learned, and keep on spooling like they didn't miss a beat.

So to have one engine fail in a bird-strike situation is rare, but not unheard of. To have both be hit and fail, I don't even know how you'd begin to calculate the odds.

If the early indications on the cause of the crash are correct, I'll be interested to see if the discussions turn to the Airbus 320's glide ratio. A glide ratio basically lays out that, for X feet of altitude, an airplane can horizontally travel Y number of feet in a no-wind situation.

(When I was flying Cessna 172s, the ratio was roughly 1:2. For every 1,000 feet of altitude, I could expect to glide two nautical miles. This sort of thing is useful for quickly calculating that, if I'm cruising at 7,000 feet above ground level, I know that if I lose my engine, I need to find a spot to land in approximately 14 nautical miles).

There's a great case from the 1980s where glide ratio came into play in an incident where disaster was averted. Air Canada flight 143 was cruising at 41,000 feet when it ran out of fuel -- the goofballs working the ground crew that day had topped off the Boeing 767 calculating the fuel weight in kilograms when they should have used pounds. But the glide ratio was about 1:12 and the "Gimli Glider," as it became known, landed at an abandoned air force base many miles from where the emergency began.

Back to New York today: Not sure what the glide ratio is for the Airbus 320, but flight 1549 was at about 3,000 feet when it encountered the flock of geese. Newark is ridiculously close to the spot in the Hudson where 1549 took its drink, so close that the captain could probably see the VASI lights at the end of EWR's runways as he landed.

Teterboro, the airport where I began my training in 1999, is just north of the Meadowlands and perhaps another after-the-fact option for the US Airways flight.

I don't mean in any way to suggest that the pilots of today's US Airways jet should have pursued the Newark or Teterboro options. I don't know. But I'll be interested to see what the glide ratio numbers are, how tantalizing those options may have appeared to the flight crew and the pilot's decision-making process on ultimately choosing to land in the Hudson River.

Any way you look at it, he made the right call.

Thanks to the flight crew, though, there are 155 people who can say that the worst part of their day was enduring La Guardia, an airport that I have panned as the worst in the United States.

While their actions were heroic -- a description I don't throw out lightly -- there was also a bit of cowardice this week in the aviation world.

You may have already read about the scumbag who crashed a plane in a brazen attempt to fake his own death somewhere in the skies over Alabama.

Marcus Schrenker called air traffic control and reported that he was badly injured after a bird strike penetrated his windshield. He then set his Piper on auto-pilot and parachuted out of the plane. We later learned that Mr. Schrenker was a financial adviser of sorts who had fleeced his clients, and amid a crumbling marriage, was attempting to escape.

It was total amateur hour for this guy, because his plan unraveled in less time than it took me to write this post. Authorities caught up with him just about the time he slid a razor through his wrists.

Schrenker's case conjured memories of another felon who started his run from the law by parachuting from an airplane. Only this one may have succeeded. If you don't know about the case of D.B. Cooper, you're missing out on one of the great American mysteries.

On November 24, 1971, the dapperly dressed Cooper hijacked a jet traveling from Portland to Seattle, telling a flight attendant he had a bomb in his briefcase. Upon arrival in Seattle, he released the passengers but kept the crew, then demanded $200,000 and four parachutes.

His request was granted. Cooper ordered the plane back into the air and bound for Reno. Somewhere over southwest Washington, he sent the flight attendants into the cockpit, lowered the aft stairs on the Boeing 727 and jumped into the cloudy skies. Two F-16s trailing the hijacked jet lost him in the haze.

Cooper vanished without a trace.

None of the money, tracked by serial number, was ever spent. No body was ever recovered. Neither was a parachute. To this day, no one knows what happened to D.B. Cooper. He remains one of the most wanted fugitives in American history.

The parachutes, though, are about the only similarities between Schrenker and Cooper. Their respective stories remind me of the line toward the end of Die Hard when Holly McClean says to Hans Gruber, almost with disbelief, "After all your posturing, all your little speeches, you're nothing but a common thief!"

Hans turns to her in a fit of intensity and retorts, "I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClean."

That's one difference between Schrenker and Cooper. But more importantly, I think this is the major diference: Schrenker was a coward who was running away and leaving others to clean up the mess he created.

D.B.? We'll never know for sure, but I think he did it just to show that it could be done.

Some thoughts on Mike Shanahan's demise in Denver

2009-01-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

I never thought Pat Bowlen had the guts to do it.

That was my reaction last week when the news arrived that Mike Shanahan was out in Denver.

Bowlen, the Broncos owner, had endured so many mediocre seasons similar to the one that just concluded. After the others, Shanahan was rewarded with contract extensions that made him among the league's highest-paid coaches, if not the highest. At one point, Bowlen called Shanahan his "coach for life."

Why would this one be any different?

But after blowing a three-game division lead with three games to play, Bowlen severed ties with his coach of 14 seasons.

It was a difficult call. It was the right call.

Sometimes change just for the sake of change is a good thing.

That's the case for both Shanahan and the Broncos.

In the years following the back-to-back Super Bowls, Shanahan became a maniac about winning a third. He walked around Dove Valley every day with bug-up-his-ass irritation and created a sense of constant urgency about fulfilling that goal. That's to his credit.

Out of all the coaches I have covered, I've never seen anyone better about instilling that mindset in his players on a day-to-day basis through the grinds of a long season.

But as the years wore on and the goal remained elusive, I think the missing third ring got to him in a way that clouded his judgment and made him pay a price for his impatience. The coaching staff and roster, especially on defense, was constantly being overhauled.

Shanahan went through defensive coordinators like Kleenex:

Greg Robinson was fired at the end of the 2000 season. Ray Rhodes' defense finished sixth overall, but he was gone after one year. Larry Coyer lasted two seasons, but became the scapegoat after a late-season collapse. Jim Bates came in highly touted from Green Bay, but lasted only one season. Bob Slowik is leaving now.

And when it came to assembling the roster, above anything, Shanahan believed in potential. He became enamored with it to a point where it became detrimental.

He drafted high-risk players like Maurice Clarett and injury-prone players like Willie Middlebrooks and George Foster. He brought in big-name free agents like Courtney Brown and Dewayne Robertson believing he could resurrect their careers.

More often than not, he couldn't.

As much as it drives him insane, he couldn't win a Super Bowl without John Elway and especially without Terrell Davis.

Shanahan never seemed comfortable with the fact that those guys helped him get those rings, and I think he wanted that third in part to show everyone he could get there on his own. Because he was so uncomfortable about that, his legacy in Denver will not only be that he won two Super Bowls, but also that he didn't win the third.

And while there's been a lot of talk in the wake of his firing that he spread himself too thin between his coaching duties and making personnel decisions, I'd like to claim first dibs on this line of thinking.

In fact, it was me who was calling for changes just like this one many years ago. I'm pasting in two columns I wrote on that subject over the years, both of which now seem prescient.

****

This one ran on April 23, 2004, and dealt primarily with Shanahan's lust for gambling on draft day:

ENGLEWOOD - Predicting the outcome of the NFL Draft is an annual headache, a complex journey through a maze of arcane statistics and an exercise destined to end in failure.
Predicting the draft of the Denver Broncos is a little simpler.

Scan the college prospects. Look for players who have minimal experience playing football, guys who have outlandish injuries or the hardest of the hard-luck stories out there. Find those players, and you've found future Broncos.

Mike Shanahan apparently borrows his draft philosophy from Lady Liberty. Instead of taking the hungry, tired and poor, the coach chooses from the injured, overlooked and unstable.

While watching endless hours of coverage devoted to the NFL Draft this weekend, expect Denver to pick a project. The rest of the league may use tangible results, statistics and scouting as criteria for their selections.

Shanahan has one. Potential.

It has been the tenet governing Denver's drafting in recent years. Last year, team officials tabbed George Foster with the 20th overall pick.

They could have avoided a player who dislocated a wrist in an auto accident and only started once his senior season. At the least, the Broncos could have traded down and grabbed Foster eight picks lower. But Shanahan held firm. He wanted the project.

"I really believe he would have been one of the top five picks," he said afterward.

Foster played in one game last season - he earned scrub duty in the regular-season finale against the Green Bay Packers.

Drafting damaged goods has been Shanahan's favorite hobby in recent years. He selected Willie Middlebrooks in the first round of the 2001 draft, despite concerns over a badly broken left fibula.

Middlebrooks hobbled through two injury-plagued seasons. Last year, he saw sparing action as a defensive reserve. As unproductive has he became, he looks like a steal compared to Denver's second-round pick that same year.

Paul Toviessi never even reached the football field.

Denver moved ahead seven spots in the second round to draft the Marshall defensive end knowing full well he had a damaged right knee that would keep him out for the season. As it turned out, the injury kept him out forever. Toviessi retired prior to the 2002 season.

Injured players are not the only ones who prove too tempting to pass.

In 2000, Denver picked Deltha O'Neal with the 15th overall selection. Although listed as a cornerback, the Broncos coveted O'Neal's potential as a kick and punt returner.

He never developed into the special-teams star officials envisioned, and the Broncos gave up on him weeks ago, dumping the disgruntled veteran in a trade with the Bengals.

Recent drafts are littered with examples of players drafted on potential alone, while mitigating factors were ignored.

At 5-foot-5, Quentin Griffin is a shrub playing among Sequoias. Tailback Ahmaad Galloway arrived with two broken legs. (To be fair, at least the Broncos had good sense to wait until the seventh round to draft him). Nick Eason brought baggage of a different kind - personal problems that caused him to flee training camp without notifying a soul last year.

What's wrong with a normal, healthy player who has excelled at his position for a couple of years in college?

Logic dictates that the Broncos will draft a defensive tackle, wide receiver or running back with their first-round choice tomorrow. History says it will be a player with a physical defect or some other blemish on his resume.

There is nothing inherently wrong with drafting based on potential. Surely, reporters would go bonkers if Shanahan walked out of his draft room and announced he drafted a player he believed had no potential.

But potential cannot exist in a vacuum. It must be complemented by other attributes, like a proven track record, gaudy statistics or physical intangibles.

Until the Broncos work some of those qualifications into their draft formula, potential will continue to be Shanahan's siren song.

****

And here's a better one dealing with Shanahan's failure to win a playoff game in the six years following the Elway Era, where I declared his free pass over. It originally ran Jan. 12, 2005.

Later this offseason, the Denver Broncos must decide whether to pay quarterback Jake Plummer a $6 million roster bonus that would extend his tenure. Logic would suggest it would be a major question, considering his inconsistent play this season.
Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, however, suggested Monday only a ‘moron’ would doubt the wisdom in extending Plummer’s contract.

Call me stupid.

The infatuation with Plummer is understandable. He provides the team’s offense with the flash and moxie it lacked under predecessor Brian Griese. Yet Plummer offers weekly apologies for his poor decisions at crucial moments in the game.

None of this should come as a surprise. It was his m.o. with the Arizona Cardinals for six seasons before he arrived in Denver. For two years, he has delivered the Broncos a dose of exactly what everybody expected. So can you blame him for the team’s woes?

Not if you listen to his former teammate, Hall of Fame-bound tight end Shannon Sharpe.

“I don’t even fault Jake,” Sharpe said in December. “I fault Mike, because he puts the ball in his hands. … If you’re on a boat and you know this guy is punching holes in your boat and you still allow him to have a hammer and a nail to keep doing it, I don’t feel bad for you.”

And that’s what it’s about.

Six full seasons have passed since Shanahan sniffed a postseason victory, and it’s time to stop genuflecting in front of the coach just because he wears two Super Bowl rings.

Questions regarding his choice of quarterback are worthy topics of debate, and deserve consideration instead than smug replies. Shanahan has received and deserves credit for the triumphs of yesteryear.

Now, the Teflon is wearing off his sterling reputation. People wonder if John Elway and Terrell Davis brought the Broncos to those two championships and not Mastermind mystique. It’s a fair question. Shanahan has accomplished little without those stars.

Look at the track record since those Super Bowls.

Shanahan hand-picked Griese and Plummer as Elway’s replacements and lavished them with fat contracts. They should be the poster children for his alleged offensive genius. But neither brought the Broncos anywhere near a playoff win.

Draft-day errors left the franchise with albatrosses like Deltha O’Neal, Willie Middlebrooks, Paul Toviessi, Dorsett Davis and Quentin Griffin. In fairness, Shanahan succeeded with selections like Clinton Portis, D.J Williams and Tatum Bell over the last two years.

His record on personnel decisions is checkered, at best.

Add free-agent busts like Dale Carter, Lester Archambeau, Kavika Pittman, Leon Lett, Eddie Kennison and Daryl Gardener into his record and one must wonder why owner Pat Bowlen lets his coach waste so much money.

On the field, Shanahan’s teams have recently fizzled after strong starts. In 2002, the Broncos started with a 6-2 record and missed the playoffs. The last two seasons, they have opened with 5-1 records before midseason collapses ruined a chance at a high playoff seed.

During the season that concluded with Sunday’s humiliating 49-24 playoff defeat, Denver defeated only two teams that finished with a .500 record or better – one of those came against an Indianapolis Colts team resting its starters.

The Broncos, who constantly touted themselves as one of the elite teams in the league, suffered home losses against the Atlanta Falcons and woeful Oakland Raiders.

How does Shanahan explain all the turmoil? Every year, he trots out a different excuse.

Terrell Davis’ knee injury ruined the 1999 campaign. Gus Frerotte played an awful AFC Wild Card Game against the Baltimore Ravens in 2000. Ed McCaffrey’s grotesque broken leg struck a definitive blow into the hopes of the ’01 season.

Brian Griese took the blame for the problems in 2002. Last year, Denver’s defensive backs bore responsibility for a playoff collapse against those pesky Colts. And now?

“Well, we got beat by a good football team at Indy,” Shanahan said Monday. “Playing in that environment is not the ideal situation.”

That’s the best excuse he could muster. The Indianapolis Colts are a good team. And the Denver Broncos are not.

The free pass is over.

After six years of mediocrity, Shanahan must be held accountable. Only Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren has lasted as long with the same employer as Shanahan without delivering a playoff victory, and Holmgren is under considerably more scrutiny.

There is plenty for Shanahan to be proud of during his 10 seasons in Denver. He’s captured two Super Bowl titles with the help of Elway and Davis. His team’s offenses rank consistently among the best in the league and his running game is admired around the league.

It would be difficult for the Broncos to find another coach as accomplished as Shanahan. Yet they need a jolt to shake them out of a six-year rut. Sometimes change, only for the sake of change, can be a good thing.

Pathetic playoff losses call for desperate measures.

Bowlen may deride those who suggest a coaching change and Shanahan may label those who disagree with his quarterback choice as morons.

But it doesn’t take a genius to deduce the Broncos have been worthless for six consecutive seasons, and they appear content to enter next year with the same protagonists in place.

Night moves

2008-12-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

Top: A runway schematic of KDEN. Above: A picture that doesn't really have to do with my post, other than to show the majestic Rockies in a view that can only be captured while flying over them, one I was lucky to see many times. This particular photo was taken while I was a pax, and my friend Tim was executing the published missed approach off 29R at Jeffco, the runway seen above.

Contrary to media reports, the first crash in Denver International Airport's 13-year history did not occur when Continental Airlines flight 1404 veered off a runway Friday night and cut a half-mile long scar through the snow.

It occurred, according to my logbook, on Feb. 5, 2002.

The date was about a year after I earned my private pilot's license, and probably also about a year after I had last flown at night. There are few things better than a night flight, so missing the dark skies, I set off with my instructor, Hazen, to enjoy the scenery and regain my night proficiency.

I also really wanted to practice night landings. They're tricky.

At night, your visual perceptions get twisted in a fun-house mirror. When you're on a long approach, you often get the sensation that you're too high even though you're not, so you need to be careful about descending too low when there's really no need.

When you're closer, it's often much harder to utilize depth perception when you're trying to figure out how high above the runway you are upon descent and landing, and particularly when you should begin the landing flare.

Night landings are a skill that needs to be honed and maintained. I'm pretty good at it now, but certainly was green on this particular night.

According to the FAA, night flight can be logged only between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, so we had to wait a while before departing.

(If you're interested in carrying passengers at night, the agency's definition sort of changes to 'night begins one hour after sunset,' and there's a difference between that and civil twilight, but I digress).

Hazen and I waited until it had been dark outside for a while, and we taxied to the run-up area, set up our VORs and departed Jeffco on runway 29R, climbing out toward Boulder's Flatirons.

There probably aren't many of the hundreds of flights I've logged that I remember clearly, but this one was one of the few. As soon as we took off, it became apparent that it was one of those rare times in Colorado where the weather was absolutely perfect for flying.

Typically, you either get super-clear conditions that are accompanied by turbulence and wind. Or you get a smooth ride, but lower visibilities. Part of the reason for that is simply the stability of the weather systems; part of it unique to Colorado is the way the winds gust out of the Front Range and onto the Eastern Plains. It's almost always a trade-off between those two scenarios.

February 5, 2002 was a rare exception.

As soon as our wheels left the ground, I could feel the silky smooth conditions. Just like a glassy lake, there wasn't a ripple in the air. It's an eerie feeling to feel that still while flying; that's one of the reasons I remember this night so vividly.

And the visibility was unbelievable. When we banked off our westerly heading and turned south toward The Springs, only a few hundred feet off the ground, we could already see the city lights twinkling some 60 nautical miles away. Above us, thousands of stars huddled in the sky.

I tuned in the Black Forest VOR, and we proceeded on our way. We weren't even past the outskirts of Denver's southern suburbs when the alternating green-and-white flashes of the beacon at Colorado Springs were visible. Springs approach control took us somewhere over Monument and brought us in on a long straight-in approach the rest of the way.

I dropped 10 degrees of flaps on final. An American MD-80 waited behind the hold line. And I absolutely greased the first landing. I mean, it was perfect. I was right on the center line, brought the wheels down gently, held the nose off for a while, and basked in some lavish praise.

Flaps retracted. Throttle to full. Airspeed alive. Gauges in the green. We completed the touch-and-go, and jumped back into the air.

KCOS tower turned us west toward Cheyenne Mountain, home of NORAD, and kept us in the pattern for a few more touch-and-goes. None of the landings that followed were as perfect as the first. On one, I started descending too early, then had to counter with more power.

But we completed them just fine. They were sloppy from a technical perspective, but nothing that an unknowing passenger would notice. Just missing some style. We thanked KCOS tower for their help and they handed us back to approach for the trip home.

And that's when the trip got interesting.

About halfway home, Hazen piped up.

Hazen was a through-and-through country boy who primarily worked on his family's farm near the Nebraska border and once suspiciously asked my why I wanted to move to Boulder "with all them pot-smoking hippies." He was hilarious.

"Hell, you want to try something fun?"

"Sure," I said.

He contacted Denver approach when we were down by Centennial. "Approach, N5163H is a Cessna 172, wondering if you're not too busy tonight, if we could do a touch-and-go at Denver."

Legend had it that Denver International Airport would let us smaller guys in for a touch-and-go at night if they weren't busy. While we waited for a reply, Hazen told me the chances of such a request being granted were rare, and that he'd only had it work once before.

"Cessna Five One Six Three Hotel, turn right heading 040, maintain eight thousand, five hundred," approach control replied.

Then we heard the magic words.

"You are cleared into the Class Bravo airspace."

Class B airspace is the airspace that surrounds the nation's busiest airports. It sits above those landing strips like an upside-down wedding cake, with layers that grow longer in diameter the higher up you go. In order to enter the Class B, among other requirements, you specifically need to hear those words above. They said them, which meant our request was granted.

Denver Approach took us far to the right of the city, out near Strasburg, then sent us north, almost to Greeley, giving us heading and altitude changes along the way. They might as well have vectored us to Kansas and back.

But after what seemed like forever, they finally turned us south and told us to expect runway 17R. It was a pretty cool moment. It's not every day a yokel private pilot gets to land at a Class B airport. Certainly a moment worth remembering.

As we puttered in at about 90 knots, control cleared a United 757 to land on 16R, which is the same runway the Continental jet used the other day, except in the opposite direction.

We were about one mile from touchdown, and we could see the 757 at our 4-o'clock position, paralleling our path into Denver International. Again, it's a sight to see when you're in a little four-seater and United is dropping off the group from Bora Bora a few hundred feet to your right.

The 757 gracefully touched down on 16R, and then it was my turn.

I dropped 20 degrees of flaps in two stages, slowed to 65 knots and followed the VASI along the glide path perfectly -- red over white and you're all right, the old adage goes. I had my speed and altitude nailed perfect, a stable approach and no wind.

I couldn't ask for a better set-up.

Naturally, I butchered the landing.

Like I described above, I misjudged the distance between the plane and ground. I thought I was high. In reality, I was only a few feet off the ground. Simple stuff. The result was a no-flare landing in which I pretty much just drove the Cessna straight into the ground. A controlled crash, if you will.

The result was, well ... you know how you feel after attempting a belly-flop into the pool and you smack the water and it stings? That's how this felt.

We crunched flat, and bounced back into the air. I reached for the throttle to add a little power back in, hoping to smooth things out, but it was too late. We plopped back to earth again. Then lurched with a sideload.

Shaken out of my complacency, I brought the plane back under control and brought it back to the center line before continuing with the rest of the touch-and-go procedure. There was nothing but silence in the plane.

Finally, Hazen said in his perfect country accent, "You know why they don't let private pilots in their 172s in here?"

There was a long pause. I didn't answer him.

"Well hell, they're afraid a jackass like you is going to crash, and leave the whole place shut down for the big boys!"

He howled with laughter. And then I did too.

We made the short hop back to Jeffco. I aced the landing there, and we went out for a beer afterward.

A good lesson learned, and a good story to tell.

A new spin on an old tradition

2008-12-17T17:44:00.000-08:00

Hiking the dunes has been a time-honored summer tradition in my family.

As a kid, we used to spend two weeks each summer at a cottage on a little lake near the Lake Michigan shores. My sister, cousins and I spent hours trudging up the mountains of sand, watching the buggies zig-zag up and down them and shaking their remnants out of our shoes and clothes for weeks.

We'd summit the behemoths and then charge down straight into the water. We'd hike the mile or so over to the "Big Lake," then get an ice cream cone afterward.

Over Thanksgiving, Mrs. VFR and I saw the dunes in a new way. Instead of wearing bathing suits, we wore ski gear.

We spent a few days near the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes west of Traverse City. Before sitting down for a fantastic meal, we hiked the dunes with my cousin and her husband. Mrs. VFR made the arduous trek while seven months pregnant.

The harsh winds churned through the sand canyons and we navigated some snow, but it was nonetheless a fun time. There's a few pictures from the hike above.

Sail on, Brian Wilson

2008-11-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

One afternoon long ago, I walked into the offices of The Daily Targum to find Oregon's foremost financial wizard engrossed in a conversation with Mr. J about the Beach Boys and Pet Sounds. He kept referencing it over and over again.

Finally, I asked.

"What's Pet Sounds?"

He was kind enough to overlook my status as a cultural rube and fill me in. In his mind, it was just about the best album in the history of mankind. His fierce devotion to the album made me curious, and eventually I bought the album to investigate.

Kudos to E.P. for his rabid insistence that I check Pet Sounds out, for it has become one of my all-time favorites in the decade-plus since that afternoon in Suite 431. Out of that, a desire grew to see one of the 20th century's true musical geniuses, Brian Wilson, perform live.

Mrs. VFR and I got that chance Wednesday night when Wilson brought himself and his excellent 10-person band to the Michigan Theater, one of two solid concert venues in town.

Maybe it was because it was a little odd to see Wilson sitting center stage in front of his keyboard, reading his lyrics off a teleprompter, but the show got off to a slow start. The audience was dead.

About three or four songs into the evening, the audience pretty much snored through California Girls. (Mrs. VFR, Baby VFR and myself were rare exceptions, up and dancing).

One of the guitar players then wondered out loud whether we had all be lulled by "sleeping gas," and seriously asked if they needed to play California Girls again to awaken people.

It was an embarrassing effort by Ann Arborites. One of music's greatest living composers played our little stain on the map, and the majority of townspeople sat comatose.

Everyone exhaled a little after that well-deserved admonishment, and let loose. Wilson then introduced God Only Knows, what he called "the best song I've ever written," and the show kicked up a notch.

He rolled through an off-the-hits-track gem in Sail On Sailor, then rallied again with Good Vibrations, Surf's Up and Fun, Fun, Fun. By the time the show reached intermission, we were awash in a melodic mix of horns, guitars and layered harmonies.

While those popular Beach Boys hits of the '60s served as the underpinnings of the show, the best part of the night came in the second act.

Wilson played his new album, "That Lucky Old Son," in its entirety, and was joined on stage by three violinists.

At first, I was a little nervous the crotchety old crowd might cringe over the fact he turned away from the Top 40 stuff, but they survived.

The new album is a wonderful compilation, a love letter to Los Angeles, the city that came of age in the late 1950s and 60s and sold itself to America by offering up surfing and T-Bird images that populate the Beach Boys' music.

But Lucky Old Son is more melancholy than sunshine, and there are corners of sadness and regret for every note of confidence. In that way, it reminds me of Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under The Bridge," their look at loneliness in L.A.

It's just a beautiful album that embraces the boldness and heartbreak of the Beach Boys' brilliance, as well as the modern city as a place of hope and aspiration. It's something Wilson could only have written with age and his kaleidoscope of life experience.

And it was a treat to hear it live.

He closed the show with a rollicking six-song encore that kicked off with a cover of Johnny B Goode, and included Barbara Ann, Help Me Rhonda and Surfin' USA. For those last two, he came off the keyboard and joined his bandmates with Fender in hand.

By that point, the crowd had redeemed itself and we left thrilled, knowing that we had spent the night witnessing one of music's elder statesman put on an excellent show with a very, very good backing band.

Two days later, I'm still ooohing and ahhing, and baa-baa-baabbing.

Garden State pride

2008-11-05T17:16:00.000-08:00

A little blend of Jersey and personal history for you tonight:

Before Bruce Springsteen reached the crescendo of his fame and The Sopranos made the Meadowlands a landmark in popular culture, New Jersey had a bit of an image problem.

To the rest of the country, the state was most known for its Superfund sites, syringes on the shores of Sandy Hook, gritty refineries along the Turnpike and stupid 'Joisey' jokes.

There was no avenue to counter those images. Wedged between the New York and Philadelphia media markets, New Jersey existed as a media oddity. She possessed one of the countries largest populations within her borders, yet had no major media outlets of her own.

All of North Jersey congregated around the New York television channels. All of Southern Jersey aligned with Philly. The result? A full-blown identity crisis for the Garden State.

One microscopic exception to this media-created truism was the New Jersey Network.

The NJN was Jersey's branch of public television and radio. Fifteen years ago, when I used to watch the network, public television and radio did not have the geeky cache it has today, so the station's reach was miniscule and its stature pretty much irrelevant.

After airing its nightly lineup of eclectic programming, it closed its broadcast every night at midnight with the above video, a proud tribute to the underrated qualities of the state.

I'm not sure how we first latched onto this nightly farewell, but those of us who lived at 55 Duke Street during college made it part of our evening viewing. First, it was a curiosity. Then a habit. Then an all-out event.

Watching NJN's nightly sign-off was something that was not to be missed on Duke Street.

(What's that? And you wonder why we never had a date?)

At first, I think we were taken with the corny nature of the video. But then, we grew to actually like it. The joke was on us. I won't speak for others, but I can admit now that we actually enjoyed the video -- particularly the black woman wearing the yellow dress and over-sized glasses, who exudes nothing but sheer joy as she bends down to pick up her newspaper.

She got a rousing round of applause every night.

If nothing else, some of this Jersey celebration was pride. We had all attended our "safe" school, somehow failing to join the legions of others who fulfilled their teen-aged dreams of being sprung from cages on Highway 9 and pulling out of here to win. We didn't quite make it across the border.

So we had to rationalize our failures and grasped at the scant positives we could find.

But some of this also stemmed from Bill Gillette's excellent New Jersey history class, where we learned to appreciate the Jersey beyond the cliches -- the one portrayed in the video -- the one that conjoins the cranberry bogs of the Pine Barrens with the ivy-covered campuses of Rutgers College and Princeton.

The one that courageously hosted George Washington as he toppled the British in Trenton, and the one that provided the cliffs for the backdrop of the Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton duel. The Jersey of Sinatra and Springsteen.

The one that is the true home of the New York Giants and Jets, not to mention the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the one that welcomed immigrants to its textile mills more than a century ago and the one that welcomes them to Edison today.

This is the real Garden State.

So those of you who only know the industrial wasteland near Carteret or the murder rates of Camden, let's keep it that way. You keep making your snide remarks, and we'll keep New Jersey's finer qualities our little secret.

And you with the Joisey jokes?

As Tony Soprano might say, go fuck yourself.

***

(Kudos go to Army's most intrepid football reporter for unearthing this video in recent days and giving some of us 55 Duke Street veterans a good chuckle).

News flash: "Dog crap threatens Pleasantville"

2008-10-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Arriving home from work today, I found the inaugural edition of the "Ryan/Ulrich News" stuffed into my mailbox along with the regular pile of coupons, credit card solicitations and bills.

Ryan and Ulrich are two of the streets in our Pleasantville subdivision, so at first I assumed this was someone's nifty effort at creating a hyperlocal news product to replace the "dying newspaper" in our close-knit community.

Upon further investigation, however, I learned this news product was the creation of someone whose target audience was perhaps even smaller than hyperlocal -- microlocal? -- it was directed at the owner/owners of two dogs who have apparently been crapping all over our neighborhood.

"Wanted: (sic) for being off leash," the alarming headline read. "Bonnie and Clyde."

A short synopsis of smoldering anger is accompanied by five pictures, three of the offending pooches in their squatting positions and two close-ups of their brown droppings.

The publication then points out that the writer became a part of his/her own story -- never a good idea for you prospective journalists out there -- and picked up the refuse themselves.

I can sympathize with the letter writer. I'd prefer to not be confronted by this obviously dangerous twosome, and certainly do not want to encounter their curly refuse. I'd prefer that Pleasantville be free of such unsightly products.

However, what bothers me more than the occasional stray turd is the knowledge that there's some neighborhood busybody who has nothing better to do with his/her time than craft and distribute these elaborate newsletters -- leaflets that include freaking pictures of the dogs caught in the act.

A better idea? Invest that time in seeking out the owners of Bonnie and Clyde, and rationally explaining the nuisance created by their lax oversight. I know where one of the dogs lives. It's not that hard, certainly not as hard as investing a ton of time and ill will into a ridiculous newsletter anonymously distributed throughout the neighborhood.

Anonymity is nothing but a veil for cowardice.

Sincerely,

Squawking VFR

A2's Angel of Death

2008-10-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

Quite a few wacky things have happened to the local school's athletic program since Mrs. VFR and I arrived in town.

So many so, that I'm beginning to suspect that I am unknowingly the Angel of Death in town.

To recap:

The day after I was invited to interview in person, Bo Schembechler died. The day of my interview was the day of his funeral.

Within my first months here, the men's and women's basketball coaches, Tommy Amaker and Cheryl Burnett, were both fired.

No. 5 Michigan lost at home to I-AA Appalachian State, perhaps the greatest upset in college football history. The following week, the team loses 38-0 to Oregon, its most lopsided defeat ever.

Lloyd Carr retired after one of the most disappointing seasons in program history.

The local paper ran a four-day series that showed how the school guided student-athletes into gut classes for which they did little to no work.

Rich Rodriguez arrives after an ugly divorce from West Virginia that's litigated in the courts for months, an inauspicious start for the new coach who loses the $4 million buyout case badly.

In 2008, Rodriguez is off to a 2-4 start in his first season, the program's worst start in 41 years and one that threatens the team's 33-year consecutive bowl streak, the longest such stretch in college football. It's fair to say that it's almost certainly going to end this year.

I'm not Lucifer, but if I was, it'd be about time to say, "Hmmm ... I think my work here is done."

Bruce in our back yard

2008-10-08T15:13:00.001-07:00

(Photos courtesy of Devin, who was smart enough to bring his camera)

In its heyday, Ypsilanti, Michigan stood as a shiny, chrome example of the best the industrial age had to offer.

In the 1930s and 40s, its population swelled with middle-class workers who manned positions in Ford's famous Willow Run assembly plant. World War II brought factories that made the Detroit suburb the epicenter of B-24 bomber production.

Like so many other Rust Belt towns now, Ypsilanti has seen better days. Many of its ornate Victorian homes are in disrepair. Its school system is crumbling.

Main Street, Ypsilanti, is the prototype of the Main Street that politicians are referencing in desperate hopes of connecting with Americans worried about their jobs and mortgages. Troubadours who sing songs about "boarded-up windows and vacant stores" would find ample fodder here.

All this is a long-winded way of explaining why it seemed perfectly natural to see Bruce Springsteen walking down the sidewalk there Monday. Ypsilanti could be Atlantic City ... or Freehold ... or any of the other places where people have been left behind, cast aside and left to linger on the fringes.

Springsteen has written about those factories and displaced workers all his life.

He was in Ypsilanti to lead a Vote For Change free concert in support of Barack Obama.

Upon reaching the stage from the sidewalk, he kicked off his eight-song acoustic set with "The Promised Land." It was not the jangly anthem that punctuates a lot of his E Street shows, but a stripped-down version that prompted listeners to reflect upon the serious cause for which we gathered.

He dove right into "Ghost of Tom Joad," which started with the same melancholy tone of Promised Land, but reached an angrier crescendo with each chorus, during which Bruce clenched his jaw and let spittle fly.

(We could see it; that's how freaking close we were in the second row of the general-admission crowd).

The song was a haunting spectacle, the lines "Shelter line stretchin' around the corner/Welcome to the new world order" seeming particularly appropriate given the stock-market turmoil the last few days.

GOTJ was a special treat for me, because it was the No. 1 song on my wish list of songs that I wanted to hear Bruce do live. In 10 shows, I had never seen this one before, and it did not disappoint.

From there, we got the rare, acoustic Thunder Road, followed by Devils & Dust. Hard as it may be to believe, the rarest of treats was still to come.

Next, Bruce played a gentle "Used Cars," a song off 1984's Nebraska album that he has only played a few times in concert, most recently in 2005. We were mere blocks from Michigan Avenue, and Bruce laughed and acknowledged that playing song here was a good way to get "cheap applause."

But it was so much more than that. It was the quiet, simple highlight of the afternoon. Here's a clip.

He followed with the political stump speech that he's delivered in Philly and Columbus, Ohio, the two other pit-stops on the three-city tour, making a couple cracks about how he had "the tequila all lined up" in 2004, and that this year, he's taking nothing for granted.

A lot of good schtick from Bruce throughout the show.

At one point during Used Cars, he forgot the lyrics, and just said "Awww, fuck off," as the crowd laughed at the awkward pause. At the end of the song, he told us that the occasional f-bomb is "one of the tricks of the trade, ladies and gentlemen."

"No Surrender," "The Rising," and "This Land Is Your Land," another excellent tune that I've always hoped to hear live, closed out the set.

Overall, an excellent 50 minutes. You know it's good when I barely mention the acoustic Thunder Road. It was a unique show, too, in the sense that he was playing outside in the middle of a gray afternoon. It's hard to place it in context with the other arena shows I've seen for the that reason, as well as the political nature of this performance.

But it was a show I'll never forget, and one that outlined a pretty compelling vision for change on Nov. 4 in this Land of Hope and Dreams.

****

I awoke at 6 a.m. on Friday morning to get in line for tickets. Expecting a line of thousands, I arrived to find out that it was me and one other cat on a bench awaiting tickets. By the time they started handing out the freebies, I procured not only one for myself, but one for Mrs. VFR, Reako and a few of our other co-workers.

****

One hilarious note from the pre-concert:

Debbie Dingell, the wife of ancient local Congressman John Dingell, gave a shrieking, boilerplate stump speech that irked the crowd because it sounded like over-amplified nails on a chalkboard.
The crowd wanted Bruce, and as is customary at any Springsteen show, started shouting, "Bruuuuuuuuuuce."

Mrs. Dingell apparently had never been to a Bruce show before and mistook the fervor for boos. "Now, let's not get negative," she said more than once.

"Who do we want to be the next president?!?!?!" she shrieked.

"Bruuuuuuuuuce," the crowd answered.

It was great.

Deer in the headlights

2008-09-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

It was a little after 12:30 a.m.

It had been a long day in the office, and I cranked up the volume on Marah's "Kids In Philly" to ensure sleep didn't take a premature hold as I drove. All I wanted to do was get home, because the alarm clock would be annoying me circa 6 a.m.

I was pleased that KIP was in the tape deck, because the radio offerings were poor. Phil Collins "Invisible Touch" was on, and I'm not ashamed to say that his tunes are a guilty pleasure. But for my energy purposes, it was the wrong song at the wrong time.

So I was about three songs into the tape, minding my own business, when I came around a gentle curve and saw two deer munching on grass about 10 feet off the left side of the road. Being alert and wide-eyed, thanks to Serge and the crew, I took proper precautions and began slowing down.

One of the deer glanced up at me ... and then inexplicably decided to charge the car.

The critter made a suicidal beeline for me. I locked up the brakes, but couldn't stop in time.

Proudly, my bumper punted the deer approximately 40 feet in front of the hood. The animal writhed around on the ground for a few seconds, but then stood up and galloped into a cornfield.

I remained parked in disbelief, reviewing a mental play by play of the deer sprawling out in front of the headlights. When I stepped out to check the damage, I caught a whiff of burnt rubber.

As you can see in the picture, the left side of the Jeep sustained some minor damage, but the bumper held firm. Nice job.

In all seriousness, I feel pretty lucky. A few more inches toward the center, and it might have taken out the entire front of the car. If I had nailed it at a higher speed, I might have gotten banged up as well.

But the luck wasn't all good. There's an unfortunate epilogue to this story.

The next morning, I went to the sheriff's office to file a report for insurance purposes. The process went smoothly, and I headed into work.

As it happens, the sheriff's office is about three blocks from the location where I punted the deer, so I passed the crime scene on my way. I was checking out the area, but no remnants of the collision remained.

I did not leave empty-handed, though. As soon as I looked up after inspecting the scene, I found red-and-blue flashing lights in my rear-view mirror. For a few seconds, I deluded myself into thinking that perhaps I forgot something at the sheriff's office and they were merely returning it.

This was not the case.

Police allege I was moving at 52 mph in a 35-mph zone, although all the signs posted in and around the area label it a 50-mph zone. The cop knocked the ticket down to an "impeding traffic" violation, which meant that I received no insurance points. So I didn't fight it, but I'm still peeved the lady didn't even know the lay or law of the land.

Overall, the final tally is dubious: Two traffic incidents. In the same spot on the same road. In a nine-hour span.

I think I'll start taking the bus. Or at least a new route to work.

In search of a good breakfast

2008-07-28T17:33:00.001-07:00

If I want Italian food, the only places I can really eat it without throwing up are New Jersey, New York and San Francisco. If I want good barbecue, I'm headed for Kansas City or Houston. If I want the best damned fried grouper on the planet, I head to redneck Florida.

And if I want a good breakfast? It really doesn't matter where I go.

It's our nation's most homogeneous meal.

Every fry pit from the Gulf Stream waters to the Redwood Forest can slog out a decent plate of scrambled eggs, hash browns and bacon. Every hotel can manage a buffet that's got those same staples, plus an assortment of melons, pineapple and dried cereals. This is all well and good.

But good is the enemy of great. And across the nation, breakfast is suffering from a lack of imagination. It gets no respect. Someone call Rodney Dangerfield.

This shouldn't be the case. Nutritionists tell us breakfast is the most important meal of the day, that it provides the necessary fuel to make us somewhat coherent, that it revs up our metabolisms. It deserves study in culinary schools, and creative approaches. In theory, we should be focused on it more than any other meal. In practice, we largely ignore it.

Instead, we specialize in lunch and dinner, which have entire conglomerates of restaurants dedicated to their preparation. At its best, breakfast is weakly served at jack-of-all-trade establishments which crank it out with assembly-line monotony.

That's why it is a rare treat to find a restaurant that specializes in this underappreciated meal. Mrs. VFR and I found one such place this weekend, which is what got my mind whirring on the topic, and also thinking about the best breakfasts I've ever had.

One of those has come at a bed and breakfast, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'm limiting my choices to restaurants that any Joe Blogger can walk into off the street. Here are the places I've eaten my top five breakfasts:

1. The Jail House Cafe. Moab, Utah.

This place is exclusively geared toward breakfast, open only from about 7 a.m. until noon. It is located in, you guessed it, a couple of ramshackle old huts that once served as the jail and courthouse in Moab. People were noosed there.

We discovered this gem while camping near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Maybe it was because I'd nearly starved to death after Mrs. VFR and I got lost in the desert the night before, but their ginger pancakes were a thing of art.

The next day we returned, and I loaded up on a scintillating chorizo omelet before hitting that sweet highway. It was magnificent. Since then, we have returned to the Jail House on every trip to Moab. My personal favorite.

2. Orange. Chicago, Illinois.

This outfit is a bit more trendy than the Jail House. (I don't think you can get away with wearing four-day-old clothes with no shower here like you can in Moab).

The first thing you notice about Orange is the juice. You can have whatever kind of juice you want. You can have whatever combination you want. Mango-strawberry? You got it. Papaya-lemon? Comin' right up. And it's all freshly squeezed right out in the open -- no sugary, phony syrups are used for flavor.

The menu? It's excellent. Chai-infused french toast. French toast kabobs. Green eggs and ham, colored with pesto. Fruit sushi. Chicken scrambled eggs. Like a good ski resort, you really need three days there to sample everything they've got to offer.

3. The Five Spot. Seattle, Washington.

A couple of starving beat writers stumbled into this joint on a Saturday before a Donkeys-Seahawks game back in the day. The line was an-hour-and-a-half long, but someone told us we wouldn't regret the wait. They were right.

The menu is a bit more standard than some of the others on my list, but damn, they just do everything so well. I don't know what they put in their omelets that makes them stand out, but their Black Bean Chili Omelet is hands-down the best omelet I've ever eaten.

It also sat like a brick in my stomach. Swear to God, it was the only meal I needed to eat all day.
4. Some little roadside hut, Guatemala.

I can't tell you exactly where this is, but here are some rough directions: Cross the Belize border into Guatemala, go about 25 km down a frightful dirt road, park on the side of the road and look for a gazebo hidden behind a thicket of shrubs.

Suspicion is natural, but there you will find perhaps the best damned breakfast of your life. It deserves a higher ranking here, but since I'm straying off U.S. turf to include it, I've got to keep it here.

We arrived to find all sort of tremendous delicacies, farm fresh and hand-made by these little old Guatemalan women. They may earn the equivalent of a nickel a day, but I don't think the richest chef in America could produce piping hot corn tortillas the way these ladies did.

Homemade cheese, eggs and salsa were stuffed into the tortillas. It was so good, I could cry just thinking about it. Same goes for the pineapple juice that accompanied it. I don't know if it was a different strain of pineapple than we're accustomed to here in America or what, but it was the most pure, delicious drink to ever pass my lips.

I don't drink coffee. Never have. But when they brought it around at the end of the meal, I grabbed some. I figured that if it was half as good as the rest of the meal, I couldn't possibly dislike it. And I was right.

5. The Aut Bar. Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This is the place Mrs. VFR and I ate last week. It's a bit of a wacky joint -- it's pronounced the Out Bar, and it functions as a homosexual haven at night.

In the morning, they serve a fantastic breakfast.

I ordered a bastardized version of huevos rancheros, and I got this huge stack of eggs, covered in tortillas, black beans, cheese, peas and ham. It was fantastic. The combination produced a flavor I had never tasted before.

On the side, they brought Portland Potatoes. Again, a taste combination I've never encountered. Sweet potato hash browns mixed with garlic and sweet onion and a few other spices. Again fantastic. I had to restrain myself from eating too much.

Overall, it was an impressive, ambitious menu that I would never have expected to find in this particular town.

Honorable mentions: When in Denver, you can't go wrong eating the biscuits and rhubarb jam at Lucille's. ... The Millbrae Pancake House in Millbrae, Calif., makes a mean pancake. It's a solid, straight-up breakfast joint near SFO, so if you've ever got time to kill or a flight delay, it's recommended.

Some speculation on the VP

2008-07-07T18:07:00.000-07:00

The lone commentator on my last post asked for my thoughts on who the top contenders are for the vice presidential nods. We'll start with the Donkeys tonight.

Without further ado, here they are:

DEMOCRATS

1. Dick Gephardt, Retired House Speaker of Missouri. Odds: 5-2.

Pro: A conservative Democrat from the heartland. He could probably deliver swing-state Missouri, as well as bring a ton of leadership to the ticket.

Con: He brings so much experience, his selection would run contrary to Obama's image as a Washington outsider who brings fresh ideas to the Capitol.

2. Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas Governor. Odds: 8-1.

Pro: Another conservative Dem from the heartland. As a two-term Dem governor in a state that has gone blue twice since 1904, she'd personifies the ideal of the post-partisan government Obama has envisioned. She probably couldn't deliver Kansas, but she has influence in the Missouri sphere.

Con: Choosing her could be viewed as grabbing a second-tier female just to appease the Hillary faction of the party, and one that ranks as someone few people outside political junkies really know.

3. Joe Biden, longtime Delaware senator. Odds: 15-1.

Pro: He's a foreign policy mastermind who would bring a ton of clout and experience into the role. Serious chops. His strengths nicely complement Obama's weaknesses.

Con: His straight talk can be refreshing and enjoyable, but the arrogance also rubs some people the wrong way. I enjoy it. Hopefully the voters do too.

4. Bill Richardson, New Mexico Governor. Odds: 22-1.

Pro: A perfect candidate in many ways. A Hispanic leader with vast foreign-policy experience from the New West.

Con: He bungled his own presidential campaign so badly that it's fair to wonder if he's not quite ready for prime time.

5. Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator of Nebraska. Odds: 200-1.

Pro: He's been one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq War and President Bush in the senate. He's got the same military cred as McCain and would be an asset in cleaning up the messes Bush made around the globe.

Con: Hagel's views line up with the Repubs on pretty much every other issue, and Obama would incur the wrath of his own party if he selected a Repub. Still, it would show he's got some serious balls, and serious about post-partisan government.

Others mentioned:

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, an excellent reformer who's outright support for Hillary probably costs him a shot, even though he'd wrap up a Rust Belt state. ... Indiana's Evan Bayh would have a better shot, and was my early favorite for the VP spot.

Jim Webb is the party's rising giant, but is better off waiting for his own shot at the Oval Office in 2012 or 2016. Plus, the Dems don't want to risk his senate seat in tightly contested Virginia. Ditto goes for Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill.

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is an intriguing possibility. A Dem Governor of a Repub state which seems poised to be a swing state who is well-versed in energy issues. Arizona governor Janet Napolitano probably gets a look, but if Bam is going to go with a female, he probably picks Sebelius.

John Edwards? I thought he was the best Dem candidate early in the primaries. If Obama picked him, he'd be complementing his strength with another young, we-can-change-the-world senator, much like how Bill Clinton picked Al Gore in '92.

But Edwards lost with Kerry the last time. I don't know if Bam can risk picking a one-term senator, one-time loser.

Squawking VFR will be back with a look at the Repub side of things later this week.

Thoughts on the VP picks

2008-07-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of the swing-state theories.

Every four years, members of the national media spend countless hours speculating on which vice presidential contenders could deliver this state or that state in the general election. Every four years, they get it wrong.

This is not an a storyline, although given the amount of time the political junkies devote to this topic, you'd think swing-state delivery was some sort of sacred barometer on how the Obamas and McCains of the world go about choosing their running mates.

In the last 30 years, there couldn't be a more irrelevant criteria.

Take a look:

In 2004, John Kerry picked John Edwards, his chief rival for the Democratic nomination. Edwards brought youth and "change" to the ticket, but was never really expected to deliver North Carolina. And he didn't.

In 2000, Al Gore chose Democratic turncoat Joe Lieberman, whose home state of Connecticut is irrelevant on the electoral map. George W. Bush chose Wyoming's Dick Cheney as his running mate. With or without Cheney, it's safe to say that Wyoming and its three electoral votes were safely in the Republican column.

In 1996, Bob Dole chose Jack Kemp, who hailed from New York, not exactly a flip-flopper on the red-blue state spectrum.

In 1992, Bill Clinton tabbed Al Gore from neighboring Tennessee. The Volunteer State indeed went blue, a turnaround from its 1988 red status. But given that both Clinton and Gore hailed from neighboring southern states, Gore wasn't looked at as a swing-state VP.

In 1988, George H. Bush chose first-term senator Dan Quayle of Indiana ... and who really knows why? Indiana has gone for a Republican every year since 1964, when it narrowly gave its electoral purse to LBJ. Quayle was not a swing-stater.

On the Democratic side, Michael Dukakis picked Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen, you know, to shore up his Texas base that he so clearly was going to win? Hell, he would have been far better off using the swing-state theory. (And would also have been better off not letting Willie Horton out of prison, and then driving that silly tank down the street as well).

In 1984, Walter Mondale tabbed Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate for one of the worst defeats in Democratic history. She came from New York, allegedly a Democratic base.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan shored up his right-wing base by tabbing Bush Sr. from Texas.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter picked Minnesota's Walter Mondale as his running mate. You could make the argument that Carter, a southerner, picked Mondale to add some Midwest muscle to the ticket. But Minnesota has been gone Democratic in every election but one since 1932. It's the only state that went to Mondale in '84. It's not a swing state.

Swing-state vice presidential theories have been dead for a long time. It's time for lazy journalists to retire this sorry excuse of a storyline.

Terminal condition

2008-06-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of airdisaster.com

Last July, Squawking VFR kicked off a two-part series examining our nation's airports. In it, I ranked the top five based on criteria ranging from runway incursions to friendliness of employees.

Denver International earned top honors amid scant competition.

We know you've all been waiting with bated breath for the riveting conclusion, so without further buildup, here's the list of the five worst airports in America.

1. LaGuardia Airport. (KLGA).

It's stuffed beyond capacity with traffic. It's dirty. The people who work there are rude. Logistically, it's less safe than other major airports.

LaGuardia's two runways are 7,003 and 7,001 feet long. The only two Class B airports -- the nation's major landing strips -- with shorter runways are New Orleans and Chicago-Midway.

The lack of real estate at the 550-acre airport has contributed to several fatal crashes. In 1959, an American Airlines jet crashed on approach into the East River. In 1989, pictured above, a US Air jet crashed on takeoff into the East River. In 1992, a US Air flight bound for Cleveland crashed on takeoff into the East River.

In 1994, a Continental flight aborted takeoff and skidded down a ditch. There were no fatalities in this case, but the plane came to a rest precariously close to the shores of ... the East River.

See a pattern?

The waters block any room for expansion, so the citizens of 2008 are stuck using a facility built with standards set in the propeller-driven aviation age of the 1930s.

The short runways also restrict the size of jets that can use the field because heavier equipment needs longer runways. Once in a while, Delta will fly a 767-300 into LGA. Back in the day, Eastern commonly flew its magnificent L-1011 fleet down to Florida from Fiorello's pad.

For the most part, though, you're stuck on regional jets, 737s and A320s if you're traveling through LaGuardia. All mean cramped quarters for passengers.

Another reason you're stuck on small equipment is an arcane rule implemented by the Port Authority, New York City's regional transportation overseer, that prohibits flights of more than 1,500 miles from originating at LGA.

The airport annually leads the list of airports with the worst on-time performance, an aggravating footnote for passengers already afraid of taking a big drink on takeoff.

2. Chicago-Midway. (KMDW).

Safety takes priority of my criteria. So it's no surprise that Midway takes my No. 2 ranking among the country's worst airports.

Like LaGuardia, it's got short runways. The longest of its five strips measures 6,522 feet, and they're all wedged into a postage-stamp sized space in the middle of urban Chicago.

A recipe for disaster.

(Note that by saying the runways are short, I'm not saying they are inherently dangerous. Indeed, the landing and takeoff data for planes using these runways all fall within the FAA safety standards prescribed to fit their particular makes and models. But it's just reality that a shorter runway statistically provides less margin for error than its longer peers).

As far back as 1949, you'll find a list of pesky planes bothering residents with the occasional foray into a backyard barbecue. The most recent occurred in 2005, when a Southwest 737-300 overran a runway upon landing and killed a 6-year-old boy at the intersection of 55th Ave. and Central Avenue.

Much like LaGuardia, the field configuration is a remnant of a bygone era. Both airports were built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration on small spaces with no room for expansion when aviation transitioned to the jet age.

Yet their use persists.

Add to safety concerns the fact that Midway's terminal has all the aesthetic comfort of a bus station, and it's easy to see how it draws the No. 2 spot.

3. Los Angeles International Airport. (KLAX).

I'll preface my remarks by saying that I like LAX. I like the structure of the terminals. I like its iconic control tower. Jumbo jets from all over the world park at its gates, a scene that triggers dopamine-like injections of wanderlust into my brain.

Spot a Swiss Air DC-1o on the tarmac, and I'll dream of skiing the Alps or climbing the Matterhorn. Watch a Qantas 747 pull away from the gate, and suddenly I'm begging Mrs. VFR to take me to a Midnight Oil concert.

But the fact remains that more runway incursions occur at LAX than any other Class B airport. A runway incursion is defined simply as a plane not being where it's supposed to be while using the airport's surfaces.

Many aviation experts fear that it's only a matter of time before an incursion causes a major catastrophe. Indeed, several have already been averted at the last moment.

In a 2006 incident, a landing United 737 hop-scotched over a Southwest jet that had erroneously wandered onto an active runway. This USA Today article outlines five other incursions that occurred over a multi-week span.

Not all accidents have been avoided.

In a 1991 accident that killed passengers with all the fairness of a falling tree squashing grapes, a US Air flight landed on top of a SkyWest turbo-prop on Runway 24L.

New technology is being researched to help pilots and controllers maintain better awareness of their clearances. The sooner it's standardized and installed at LAX, the better chance the flying public has of avoiding a major accident.

Until then, LAX is Tenerife waiting to happen all over again.

4. Miami International Airport. (KMIA).

A third-world country.

Every time I've used this facility, I've been greeted with chaos at the front door. Check-in procedures are riddled with disorganization on a mass scale. Security lines snake through the terminal. Employees are, at their best, unhelpful.

Some of these problems are caused by fellow passengers. Using only anecdotal evidence, I've concluded that Miami has the highest number of passengers who travel with large chests, crates sealed with duct-tape and other unwieldy storage devices.

They need hydraulic jacks to push their baggage through the aforementioned lines, and the size of their carriage creates obstacles for other customers.

Generally, an unpleasant experience.

However, my worst experience at Miami did not occur in a line upon check-in, but while waiting for an Avis bus to haul me to its rental lot in 2002.

For more than 45 minutes.

Avis prides itself on prompt service, a reason I had chosen to do business with them, so I was highly irritated at the lengthy delay.

Customers awaiting rental-bus pickup are confined to a parking area inside the lower-level concourse. Buses use this area for pick up or idling, and I spent all 45 of those minutes inhaling vile fumes from Avis' competitors' buses, adding lung cancer to insult.

Days later, I still seethed over this experience. So I fired off an angry letter to Avis CEO Jim Salerno that outlined my grievances with his overdue bus and toxic waiting cubicle. I CC'd the Better Business Bureau and Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

To its credit, an Avis flack viewed my situation with "extreme gravity" and offered an apology, along with a $63.15 refund.

Pinky Hall, the Inspector General of the Florida DEP said that his office didn't have jurisdiction over the airport area, so he forwarded my letter to the Dade County Environmental Resources Management's Air Quality Division.

The DERM Air Quality Division didn't have jurisdiction either, but the supervisor dealing with my letter spoke with someone at the U.S. Department of Labor, which in turn placed the case in the hands of OSHA.

In its investigation, OSHA found "pollutant measurements in the lower-level concourse are significantly below the 8-hour maximum concentration of 50-ppm carbon monoxide" that are allowed by law.

Yes! My complaint had saved legions of future travelers from contracting lung-eating tumors. Surely, OSHA, this governmental watchdog, would stop the airport's environmental malfeasance.

The letter continued.

To paraphrase: Even though the conditions are below standard, the airport has been working really, really hard to reduce vehicle emissions in the lower-level concourse area, and that I could talk to them about their efforts if I wanted to do so.

Thanks for enforcing those rules, guys.

5. Kansas City International Airport. (KMCI).

A minor-league shitbox.

Here's what happened the last time I took a trip through this deplorable facility:

This was in the days you could print a copy of your itinerary, combine it with a driver's license, and get through security.

Thornbirds and I returned our rental car and arrived at the terminal 40 minutes before our departure time. Given the curb at MCI is about 30 feet from the gates and we had no luggage to check, we expected to be sitting comfortably at our gate with 39 minutes to spare.

Then the security guard rejected our attempts to pass through the gates.

She told us we needed our boarding passes. This countered the aforementioned written policy, of course, but we didn't protest at this time. We headed for the check-in line.

When we got there, we found the line ran from the counter to pretty much the sidewalk. We didn't move an inch for five minutes.

At this point, I decided to make another run at the security guard.

"Look, it says right here that we don't need a boarding pass. We just need a copy of our itinerary and our IDs," I said, waving those documents into her line of sight as I lost patience. I continued pleading. The argument got heated.

This was either in 2002 or 03, when 9-11 was still a raw wound for airport security. I was conscious of the fact that I didn't want to create a scene at the airport, and our heated conversation with the security guard was approaching scene status.

I backed off, ultimately knowing that in the security guard-versus-disgruntled passenger beef, there's only one winner, especially when every one of the news reports from these sorts of incidents invariably labels the disgruntled passenger a "potential terrorist."

So we returned to the mile-long check-in line. We waited for about 15 minutes, and it didn't budge. We listened to the boarding announcements for our flight and watched passengers walk down the Jetway through the huge glass panels that separated ticketed passengers from the no-boarding-pass vermin.

When they announced the final boarding call, I did something so heinous and hypocritical that I am mired in self-loathing to this day.

I cut the line.

Many of you know that, in my mind, there's no greater social crime. I once went ballistic at Newark (KEWR) when someone did that to me in the skycap line, the first time Mrs. VFR ever saw me lose my cool.

But in this case, I felt a) the security guard's behavior necessitated extraordinary measures, and b) we were going to miss our flight.

Thornbirds and I walked to the counter and explained our situation. Irked, the agent said, "You know, you can go to the gate with a printed copy of your itinerary and a valid government ID."

"We know!" we said.

He printed our boarding passes and we sprinted toward the security guard. I'm sure a wide smirk accompanied the all-important document when I handed it to her, and the troll responded by taking her sweet time in reviewing our credentials, well aware we had only seconds to make our flight.

Ultimately, she capitulated and allowed us to proceed through the metal detector.

But when Thornbirds' laptop emerged on the safe side of the conveyor belt, she declared that it needed a secondary inspection.

The troll grabbed the Dell, held it level with her head and then dropped it approximately three feet onto an aluminum table.

She then declared it good to go.

Gate agents were literally closing the Jetway door. We had no time to lodge a complaint. We could only grab the maimed computer and make a run for it.

Dishonorable mentions:

Detroit International Airport. (KDTW). The McNamara Terminal is Northwest's beautiful new hub. The Berry Terminal is a ramshackle piece of dung. Depending on which one you're using, you'll have a vastly different experience.

Newark International Airport. (KEWR). First, I refuse to use the jingoistic "Liberty" moniker added by hysterical zealots in the days after 9-11. These are probably the same people who invented the phrase "Freedom Fries."

Second, Newark's baggage claim area is as seedy as a New York alley.

Third, Newark is a magnet for flight delays and ground stops.

15 minutes

2008-05-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Mrs. VFR

Resting on a park bench deep inside Lodhi Gardens, Mrs. VFR and I thought we had found a rare slice of solitude in the middle of a madhouse city.

Our senses had been battered all morning by Delhi's claustrophobic masses of people and cacophony of car horns. We barely noticed the faraway group of schoolgirls copping quick glances in our direction.

They, on the other hand, had clearly noticed us.

A small group gathered and huddled. Their glances became longer. We noticed. They pointed. This continued for several minutes. Trepidation finally gave way to curiosity, and they ventured in our direction.

They came, at first, in drips of two or three. But before we knew it, we were surrounded by a crowd.

They didn't speak much English and we didn't speak a word of Hindi. That didn't stop them from enthusiastically taking as many pictures as possible with us. At the end, we shook hands with each girl as they said "thank you, thank you."

We had experiences like this all over India.

People were fascinated with us. All across the country, people wanted to take pictures with us and shake hands.

Paranoid at first, I considered the possibility the picture-posing was a ruse that pickpockets used to gain close access to my wallet. This wasn't the case.

Then I surmised it was an obsession with anyone or anything American. But it wasn't happening to other American tourists. Or to any other white people. So that theory seemed wrong.

When we told Mitra, who lives in Delhi, about these encounters, she said she had never heard of such a phenomenon.

But these weren't isolated cases. This happened eight or nine times, all across the country.

Another group asked us to stop and take a picture with them inside the Taj Mahal. One of the kids asked me where I was from. I returned the question.

"Assam," he said.

"Oh yes, Assam!" I exclaimed.

"You know where Assam is," he asked with wide-eyed amazement.

'Oh yes, northeast India," I said.

The truth is that I only knew about Assam because of circumstance -- Mitra's family hails from the state. But this kid breathlessly reported to his friends that I knew Assam, and that was a big deal.

Outside the Taj, we had two crazy encounters.

Dead camera batteries left one teenage boy so dejected that he hired one of the professional photographers on site to take his picture with us.

Near the entrance to The Taj, one elderly gentleman nearly burst into tears of joy when he handed us his infant granddaughter. We posed for several minutes while the entire family eagerly clicked away. The grandfather's face beamed with pride.

Were these cases of mistaken identity?

Are we, in fact, celebrities unappreciated in our own country?

Something else lost in broken conversations?

We'll always wonder.

To serve man

2008-05-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

I had been marinated in oil and spices, the meat in my legs tenderized.

And now, 45 minutes into an alleged massage, two practitioners instruct me to sit on a small stool inside what looked like an armoire. Three black hoses connect the bottom of the armoire to a boiling pot of water on a stove.

The initial parts of this experience had merely been disconcerting. This latest development sent alarm bells ringing. The time had come to ask a hard question: Was I about to be eaten?

After days of hiking in the Periyar Wildlife Reserve in the southern tip of India, a relaxing massage near the sun-drenched beaches of Varkala, a hippie hideaway on the Arabian Sea, sounded like the perfect antidote for weary muscles.

Mrs. VFR booked appointments for ayurvedic massages, rubs that locals believe enhance overall health. In my eagerness to concur with these plans, I concentrated on the "massage" portion and ignored the unknown "ayurvedic" prefix.

This was a mistake.

When we arrived for our appointments, a woman dressed in a sari whisked Mrs. VFR away. I stood in the lobby by myself for a few minutes, before a boggle-eyed gentleman wearing a grubby v-neck t-shirt appeared in the doorway.

He escorted me to a dilapidated office around the corner from the lobby. There, I was introduced to "The Doctor," a shirtless man no older than 25.

It took a moment to sink in, but I realized that I would not have a masseuse, and that The Doctor was, in fact, the masseur.

In the States, I would have walked away. No brainer. But in India, it is taboo for men and women to touch each other. Mrs. VFR and I could not hold hands as we walked down the street. In contrast, it's commonplace to see men holding hands -- a normal sign of friendship.

Like the ayurvedic aspects of the massage, I failed to consider these cultural differences beforehand. So that left me with a decision: My wife was already mid-massage. Our driver had vanished.

I stepped forward and The Doctor closed the door.

The room seemed more like the office of a mad scientist than a serene massage studio. On one side, the pot of water sat atop the hot stove. The black hoses emerged from its base like tangled octopus tentacles. On the other, the armoire was positioned in the corner, a round hole cut from its top. An ornate, wooden table stood in the center of the room.

"Take off your clothes," The Doctor said.

I stripped to my boxers.

"All of them," he said.

I stood naked in the room. The Doctor and boggle-eyed assistant tie a sumo-wrestler's white cotton cloth around my loins. They instructed me to lie down on the table.

Molten-hot oil pours from a funky contraption hanging above my head onto my chest. Standing on either side of me, the masseur and assistant rubbed the oil into my skin with rapid motions and perfect symmetry.

They press hard, as if they were squeezing the last bit of toothpaste from the tube. It is painful. It feels like they are going to rip the hair out of my legs.

Friction developed in spots on my quads not saturated in oil. Days later, a nasty rash, essentially rug burn, appears. It takes weeks to recede.

Rubbing continues. Spices are sprinkled onto my chest and worked into the lather. The Doctor also massages the spices into my hair, in much the same manner a chef would apply a rub to a piece of meat before barbecuing.

Next, the pair dig their fingers into the inner and outer portions of my thighs and gouge downward with such vicious force I fear my kneecaps would pop off.

This, I could not ignore.

"That really hurts," I said, wincing.

"Relax," the doctor said.

I never relax, but eventually, I survive the mauling. I'm so covered in oil that I flail on the table like a slippery fish. The assistant helps me upright and directs me toward the odd-looking armoire. He opens the doors and I see the stool.

Steam from the boiling pot of water flows into the bottom of the armoire via the hoses. The doors are closed. My head pokes through the small hole at the top. It's hot.

As the assistant turns up the flame on the stove, I ponder cannibalization for the first time.

I note the ease in which my head could be severed in this position, the similarities between myself and steamed broccoli. I contemplate the earlier work with the tenderizing, marinating and spicing.

"I'm cooking," I said with a chuckle, hoping to receive friendly assurance from my captors this was not the case.

"Cooking," Boggle-eyes said. "Yes! Yes! Cooking! Ha ha ha."

They thought this was hilarious.

"Who will win the U.S. election?" they ask in a clever attempt to distract me from my predicament.

I answered, and we struck up a conversation about the three candidates.

Throughout India, we encountered people intent on discussing the election, George W. Bush and American politics. Since Varkala is in a Communist state and 20 percent of its citizens are Muslims, we stayed as neutral as possible throughout these conversations.

Sweat and oil fell from my body in sheets. It sounded like giant raindrops plopping onto the floor. I feel like I'm melting. This continued for what seemed like forever. At the point I started to feel dizzy, I knew the time for my escape had come. It was now or never.

"How much longer?" I asked.

"As long as you'd like," The Doctor said.

"I'm done cooking."

The armoire doors opened, and as simple as that, I was free. No last-minute attempt to stuff an apple in my mouth or spear me with a kebab. My fears had been for naught.

The Doctor held spices under my nose and told me to snort them. I did. I stood as the pair dried me off with towels. They left the room as I changed back into my clothes, and I was free.

Mrs. VFR was waiting in the lobby. She greeted me with wide-eyed concern. She feared my response to the whole calamity of the male masseur.

But by that point in the ordeal, that seemed trivial. The true danger in the entire experience, she quickly learned, was that her husband was nearly served for dinner.

India pictures

2008-04-30T17:54:00.001-07:00

Mrs. VFR and I recently spent a few weeks in India. There will be much written about the trip, but here are a few of the pictures for starters:

These cats were fired up when I started taking pictures of them playing cricket. They followed us around the ruins of Talaquabad in Delhi quite a bit after that.

Amjer Fort in Jaipur. It reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The Taj Mahal.

Two women working exchange a basket while working in Talaquabad.

The Arabian Sea on the shores of Varkala, a hippie beach town in the southern tip of India.

Papanasam Beach from the North Cliff, Varkala.

Fishing boat.
More reminders of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Mom and Baby elephant.

We spent a day on a bamboo raft trip in the Periyar Wildlife Reserve near Kumily in the southern state of Kerala, and passed one of the locals returning home with his day's catch.

"Care to buy a car, comrade?"

Taxi.

Tampa tidbits

2008-04-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you keeping track of my whereabouts, you know I had a tough decision to make last week while in Tampa, Fla.: Should I extend my trip to accommodate the one-night postponement of Springsteen's show or should I pack it in early and come home?

It was a tough decision. Staying the extra night would cost me a day at work and also cost some bills to rearrange flights and hotels.

Ultimately, I imagined myself reading the setlist in my office Wednesday morning. If I wasn't there, I knew I'd be pissed that I'd missed something cool.

So I stayed in Tampa the extra day. And it was absolutely the right call.

This was the first show since the death of E Street organist and accordion player extraordinare Danny Federici. As noted in my last post, I didn't know if Bruce could rally. But he did, and put on a hell of a show. He unearthed stuff from his early catalog and paid tribute to The Phantom.

Some highlights:

Atlantic City and Tenth Avenue Freeze-out. The former is my favorite Springsteen song; the latter is one that topped my dying-to-hear-live list.

The band took the stage with its back to the crowd and watched, along with everyone else, a video tribute to Danny as Blood Brothers played. They opened the show with Backstreets. A spotlight highlighted a vacant organ with an accordion placed at its base. Bruce screamed the line "We swore forever friends, on the backstreets, until the end."

For the first time in a while, Bruce The Storyteller emerged. He opened a story by saying "Here's one more fairy tale" and then gave us a speech that went something like this: "There we were, on the highest hill in ... Flemington, New Jersey! (I pictured Tillman getting fired up). Bruce continued: "Just the two of us, and we could see all of Flemington. And the preacher said ... I stood stone-like at midnight..." and we got a wonderful throwback in Growin' Up.

One song before Growin' Up, Springsteen invited Roy Bittan off the piano and handed him an accordion. He said, "You better make it good, Roy. Someone's watching." The band played Sandy, a song that always highlighted Federici's accordion acumen. At the end, Bruce and Roy had a tearful embrace.

A five-pack kicked off with Sandy, then followed with Growin' Up, Atlantic City, Because The Night and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Nils shredded his solo at the end of Because The Night.

We also got back-to-back gems in Racin' In The Street and Brilliant Disguise. Roy worked some prolonged magic on the ivories on Racin'. That followed with Badlands and Out In The Street to close the first set. Usually Bruce does one or the other; it was a tremendous two-fer connected by a thundering Max Weinberg solo, in which the cat came unglued unlike anything I've seen from him before.

Other highlights included my second appearance on the Magic tour in the pit. I was one of the lucky 300, and claimed a perch about four rows in front of The Big Man.

Fellow pit denizens included former New York Knicks coach Pat Riley, who stood about 10 feet to my rear left for the entire show. He rocked out.

A little Squawking VFR trivia for you: I have seen nine Springsteen shows in five states. They are: Colorado, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan and Florida.

***

Some other thoughts from the greater Tampa area:

I caught a game between the Chicago White Sox and the team formerly known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays one night at Tropicana Field.

It is the most bizarre place I've ever seen a baseball game.

Outside, the greeters are a little too cheerful. I heard "Enjoy the game!" too many times. The barrage of faux happiness conveyed a minor-league vibe. But it was quaint, and didn't really bother me. The experience soon went sour.

We entered the stadium and got lost on the way to the field.

I wish I was kidding, but that's the truth.

We walked straight into the same entrance as others, but quickly found ourselves lingering outside the executive suites. We weren't the only people making this mistake. There weren't any signs pointing us in the proper direction, so we continued to meander for a while.

After some theorizing, we went back outside and entered through a different gate, then started walking around a giant, red subterranean concourse. There were a few stores hawking T-shirts, some crappy fry pits and that's about it. Sort of felt like a shopping mall. No sign of the field.

We rode an elevator upstairs - the operator was sure to tell us "Enjoy the game!" - and finally caught a glimpse of the field through a curtained door when we stepped off the carriage.

Rather than walk out and see a green-sodded cathedral built to honor Abner Doubleday, we entered what felt like a small gray warehouse. The turf on the field was in tatters. Patches were missing.

No more than 3,000 fans filled the stands on a Friday night, and the majority rooted for the Sox. Foul balls bounced off the bleak-gray roof.

In short, The Trop is a dingy warehouse inside of a shopping mall. I can't possibly see Major League Baseball surviving in Tampa.

***

Tampa itself is an underrated city.

Good eats abounded. Not only do you get excellent pizza-by-the-slice and classic New York delis thanks to all the snowbirds in the area, but you also can find pockets of Cuban food that provide balance to the off-the-track Old Florida fried seafood shacks that I loved.

Never pass up fried grouper bits.

Not far south from Tampa, across the historic Sunshine Skyway, lies Anna Maria Island. An old friend was kind enough to take me kayaking around the island's teal-blue waters. Kamikaze pelicans bombed into the water four feet from our boats.

The kayaking day was most relaxing I've had in a long time. Considering the whole Florida trip was something of an unexpected surprise, I couldn't have asked for anything better.

A dark night on E Street

2008-04-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

On his current tour, Bruce Springsteen has closed almost every show with American Land. It's a joyful folk song about the beauty of the American Dream told through the context of the Irish immigrating to New York City.

On the previous tour, he closed with Land of Hope and Dreams, his grand vision of an inclusive America.

This train carries saints and sinners
This train carries whores and gamblers
This train carries lost souls

And:

Tomorrow they'll be sunshine
When this darkness will pass

For decades, the story arc of every Springsteen concert concludes with these celebrations of life and hope, friendship and love.

That script could change Tuesday night when he plays the St. Pete Forum.

As you may already know, Danny Federici, one of E Street's pillars, died Thursday of skin cancer. Federici recruited Bruce into Child, his first band. That began a collaboration of music and friendship that spanned 40 years.

No one has been alongside Bruce for longer.

In a man whose ultimate mission is to celebrate a world "lined with the light of the living," how will Bruce play mourning this death?

If Bruce got on stage and couldn't sing a word, I'd understand. I don't know what to expect Tuesday night, but it will be the saddest Springsteen show I've ever seen. Maybe it won't be going to a concert as much as it is attending Danny's funeral.

RIP, Phantom

2008-04-18T14:19:00.001-07:00

Music lives forever.

This shouldn't have been a close call

2008-03-04T17:56:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen this video of a Lufthansa Airbus 320 attempting to land in a treacherous crosswind yesterday in Hamburg, Germany, check it out. It's an incredible piece of aviation footage.

Watching these pilots work the stick and rudder on this harrowing approach reminds me of the aviation adage: "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one. ... Any landing you can walk away from AND they can use the plane again? A great one."

Crosswind landings are an art form.

They're the most difficult thing to teach, and certainly the most difficult to learn. Imagine attempting to conduct a symphony while pedaling and balancing on a unicycle at the same time, and doing it gracefully.

I won't go into a technical breakdown of the whole approach, starting with their crab into a fierce wind (about 100 m.p.h., according to news reports), the balance between the aileron and rudder use, and their go-around decision.

After my terrific lesson on spins, I've probably met my quota on aviation posts for non-av people. Just know this: This is a hell of a piece of flying. It took some serious steel nerves to avoid a catastrophe.

But these guys should have never attempted this landing in the first place.

That's where this investigation will eventually end. I hate to blame the pilots, because if they had elected to go to another airport, their pissant middle-manger bosses would have screamed bloody murder for altering a potential on-time arrival.

But ultimately the pilots are in charge of getting onto the ground safely.

They should have never attempted to land at this airport, given the weather conditions.

If they were hellbent on the airport, they should have used a runway that allowed them to fly the approach straight into the wind, not at a crosswind angle to it.

I don't profess to know much about the A320, but I'd be interested to know what its maximum demonstrated crosswind component is.

When engineers are building planes, they certify them as being able to handle a crosswind up to X number of knots. A Cessna 172S, for example, has a maximum demonstrated crosswind component of 17 knots.

That meant the plane could, in layman's terms, track the runway centerline with a direct 17-knot wind at its side.

(Interestingly, the FAA does not call the maximum crosswind component a limitation. They merely say that they've tested it at X knots, and it withstood. That doesn't mean the plane can't withstand higher. It just means that if you choose to land with a crosswind above that number, you're a flying experiment).

Now, I'm sure the A320 has a crosswind component a hell of a lot higher than 17 knots.

But watching the video, you can see that whatever their max is, they've exceeded it.

Notice when the plane is just above the ground, the pilots take the plane out of its crab, straighten the nose and try to point it straight down the runway.

It's precisely at this point the plane gets blown off the runway centerline and toward the left side of the tarmac. If the Lufthansa was within its crosswind component, it would have continued tracking the centerline.

Glad this one had a happy ending, and the pilots did a hell of a job given the circumstances. But they should never have let the approach carry on as long as it did.

When we return again, we'll finish off our two-part series that started in July on the nation's airports and preview the VFR family's upcoming trip to India.

Congressional fool's gold

2008-01-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

On the first day of class my junior year of high school, my political science teacher scribbled this phrase on the blackboard:

TINSTAAFL

After a few puzzled minutes, someone smarter than me finally deciphered the message. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

A rudimentary lesson on balancing the federal budget followed. If the government wanted to increase its spending, it needed to raise its revenues. If it wanted to cut taxes, cuts in service needed to follow. In the end, the numbers couldn't be askew. In the end, someone paid.

I find myself thinking about Mr. Hoelscher's class a lot today, wondering what he thinks of the profound bipartisan failure about to occur on Capital Hill.

Democrats and Republicans embraced a tax rebate plan today that would refund $600 to every American taxpayer or $1,200 to every American taxpaying couple in an effort to apply a tourniquet to the ailing economy.

"Tens of millions of Americans will have a check in the mail," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. "I'm looking for quick action in the House. I hope that the Senate will follow quickly so that we can put this money in the hands of middle-income Americans as soon as possible," Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

Votes in the House and Senate are expected soon.

Look, I like the idea of an extra $1,200 in my pocket as much as the next guy. But this is fiscal insanity. The national debt is more than $9 trillion dollars. In the end, each American will need to pay more than $90,000 to even the ledger.

Any Passaic Valley junior could tell you that the feds either need to chop spending or raise taxes. Instead, leaders on both sides of the aisle give us this fool's gold.

This is perhaps the worst piece of bipartisan legislation encountered since Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 98-2, in 1964. Much like that legislation walked us into an awful jungle war, today, both parties are about to walk us into a financial quagmire.

The difference? You can make the argument that the decade-long Vietnam struggle was unforeseen. Today, we fully understand the consequences of further fiscal imbalance.

I've come to expect such illogic from President Bush, who has cut taxes while dramatically increasing spending since 2000. But I'm equally disappointed in the Democrats.

They're too weak to block this dead dog masquerading as "economic stimulus." They're too cowardly to risk the repercussions of exposing the hollowness of that catchphrase in an election year. Like me in high school, they're pathetically desperate to look popular.

Madam Speaker is no longer in high school, though, and as an adult, should know better than to mishandle the massive responsibility the citizens have entrusted with her.

If she wants to find a true leader to emulate, she should look no further than the floor she shares with Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

And hey, since he was busy dropping out of the presidential race Thursday at about the same time Pelosi was patting herself and Boehner on the back in front of the news cameras, he probably has plenty of time to impart this lesson:

When Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland in the early 1980s, he faced a drastic fiscal crisis as the city's rust-belt economy collapsed. Much like how Americans overwhelmingly favor their quick-fix cash right now, Clevelanders of that day overwhelmingly demanded he sell the municipal electric system to a private enterprise. The sale would reap a tidy profit that surely would have plugged a hole in his budget.

But he refused.

And his critics howled. So much so, in fact, that Kucinich barely survived a recall vote. Voters bounced him from office in the next election, and he endured a 10-year political banishment for this sin until his election as a state senator in 1994.

According to The Associated Press:

In 1994, Kucinich was elected state senator and he then won a seat in Congress in 1996. His once unpopular stand against the sale of the municipal electric system was praised as courageous. In 1998, the Cleveland City Council issued him a commendation for having the foresight to refuse to sell it.

Let's be clear I'm not endorsing Kucinich's already-failed presidential run, nor his policies, nor even necessarily him for this role. But we need a real Democratic leader in Congress.

Someone with the backbone to stand against the rising tide of incompetence and weak will.

Someone who can replace a short-sighted quick fix with long-term vision.

We need our one lone voice in the wilderness.

Where is our Wayne Morse today?

*******************************

You would think the sports section would be the one segment of the media immune to the celebrity pseudo-nonsense passed around as journalism today.

But Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson have crept into coverage every Sunday for the last month or so -- ever since the Chicken of the Sea spokesperson showed up in the stands to show support for her new boyfriend.

It's embarrassing to watch my peers pander to this storyline. That's the bottom line.

Some would make the argument that there's a correlation with her arrival and Romo's dismal performance against the Eagles or a link between a quick trip to Mexico and Dallas' postseason loss against the Giants, and that therefore deems it a credible story.

If that's the case, then shouldn't we also know that left tackle Flozell Adams might have also had his ho/girlfriend/mistress/wife/significant other in the stands cheering him on against Philadelphia when he gave up two sacks?

Shouldn't we be concerned that center Marc Gurode, another one of the Romo guardians, might spent his days off gallivanting south of the border before botching a snap in the playoff game?

The Romo-Simpson stuff is a garbage storyline. I guess gutted newspapers have neither the staff nor inclination to do anything more than follow the herd down the path of least resistance.

Tis the football season

2007-12-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

In week 16 of the NFL season, I finally saw my first Browns game of the year. And I have now seen enough.

Knowing that Cleveland could secure a playoff spot with a win over the lowly Bengals, Mrs. VFR and I made a trip to a local gin mill to see the game. We arrived in the middle of the second quarter -- as it turns out, just in time to witness a sloppy implosion.

Here's the sequence of the first few place we saw:

As we sit down in a booth, Anderson is intercepted going across the middle of the field. On The Nati's next play, Palmer hits Houshmanzadeh on a fade in the end zone. Cincinnati 13, Cleveland 0.
Right after the ensuing kickoff, Anderson rears back to throw and intercepted across the middle of the field. The Nati returns it for a touchdown. Cincinnati 20, Cleveland 0.

My mere presence caused a karma catastrophe. If it wasn't for the Blue Moon just placed in front of me, I think we would have got up and left.

In the second half, Anderson threw two more interceptions, including one in the end zone that ended a Cleveland scoring threat. On the final drive, poor clock management and a horseshit penalty contributed more to what one disgruntled former N.J. Turnpike toll collector might term, in a raspy, whispered tone "disaster."

As it happens so often with the Browns, the outcome was decided on the last play. Anderson sent a stray bullet through the end zone toward, inexplicably, no one in particular as time expired. Cincinnati 19, Cleveland 14.

In short, it was Cleveland Browns football. Always good enough to torture me to the very end. Never good enough to win the ones that matter.

Glad to see nothing changed in my 14-game absence.

There a couple of factors, incidentally, that led to this drought.

With college football occupying my Saturdays in a six-day work week during the fall, Sundays became the default day to do everything else.
I've grown tired of dropping cash at a gin mill to watch the Browns lose and come home smelling like an ash tray. And we only get the Lions at home on TV.

You would think my inability to glean NFL knowledge from anything more than ESPN highlights would hurt the performance of my fantasy football teams, but you'd be wrong. On the contrary, while the Browns have faltered down the stretch, I've gotten great satisfaction from my two fantasy squads, Chester Copperpot and Augustus Gloop.

Before discussing these teams, I hereby acknowledge my awareness of the fact that someday anthropologists will study our geeky fascination with this game and enjoy much laughter at the seriousness with which we take the drafts and seasons.

Duly noted. Guilty as charged. Onto the teams.

Chester Copperpot (11-3) ran away with the regular-season crown in a 12-team league, finishing with the best record and a league-high 1,572 points.

Chet's success can be attributed to impeccable drafting. While I picked up Frank Gore in round one and Edgerrin James in round two, they were mere bit players on a team that also featured third-round pick Tom Brady and fourth-rounder Adrian Peterson, who I stole ahead of W.A. Wilson in a brilliant draft-day maneuver.

Sadly, Brady and Peterson both picked Week 15 to have their worst games of the season -- the start of the postseason in the Not Quite Senile league, leading to an upset. Without its two stalwarts, top-ranked Copperpots sunk faster than the Lusitania, a premature end to a fantastic season.

Luckily, the news was much better with team Augustus Gloop, whose unlikely rise can be measured only in Rocky- and Rudy-like terms.

I started the season with incredibly high hopes for this team. With Larry Johnson and Edgerrin James in the backfield, resurgent Drew Brees at quarterback and Antonio Gates serving as the man-among-tight ends, I thought this team ranked among the top three in a 10-team league.

This was true; it just took a little faith and a lot of time to realize it.

Gloop kicked off the season with a thrilling win over John Oates' Mustache by the narrowest of margins, 91.29 to 91.04.

It was the last win Gloop would see for a long time.

The team lost its next six games, eked out a win and lost two more. Three weeks remained in the regular season and Augustus held a 2-8 record. The playoffs remained a possibility in mathematics only.

Then No. 1 pick Larry Johnson was lost with a season-ending injury.

Rock bottom had been reached.

I had to place untested Earnest Graham, a free-agent pickup, into a tattered lineup that counted Shaun McDonald, Donald Driver and Dwayne Bowe among its starters. (Driver and Bowe combined for one touchdown over the season's final 10 games).

Gloop rattled off two wins over middle-of-the-pack squads to improve to 4-8 entering the regular season's final week, but still sat in ninth place -- with a contest against No. 1-ranked Breukelen Skramble ahead.

Cue the Bill Conti and Jerry Goldsmith tunes.

With everything on the line, Gloop pulled out the improbable 100.71 to 97.49 victory over Goliath. At 5-8, Gloop also scored 15 more points over the course of the season than Longmont refugee M. Kelly to win the tiebreak and secure the eighth and final playoff spot.

The reward for this remarkable run? Another matchup against top-ranked Skramble.

This time in the playoffs. No. 1 vs. No. 8. Could Gloop do it two weeks in a row?

Brees shed some more of his season-long slump. Graham punched in two touchdowns. The Minnesota defense vexed San Francisco. And the Pacific Northwest saw its craziest 1 versus 8 postseason matchup since Dikembe Mutombo surprised the Sonics. Gloop beat Skramble for the second week in a row, this time 126.47 to 112.29, in a playoff masterpiece.

From there, Gloop gathered steam.

The same Brady collapse that dogged Chester Copperpot helped here. Tom Terrific caused The Duke Boys to collapse in the 8-4 matchup one week later, 117.88 to 110.28, and Gloop earned a golden ticket to the championship game.

On Sunday, Augustus faced the league's second-ranked team in the championship game. Team Gloop won, 62.76 to 49.79.

It was complete.

A lineup filled with castaways patched together a run unparalleled in sports history.

It just goes to show you that with a little determination and perseverance, even a fat kid can accomplish his dreams.

Post Office Traumatic Stress Disorder

2007-12-19T14:20:00.000-08:00

Around Christmas, the mall has always been the most grotesque symbol of a holiday gone awry.

Endless lines of standstill traffic snake through parking lots. Parents employ guerilla tactics to seize the last Tickle Me Elmo. The plague known as Black Friday infects otherwise normal people.

But now, I believe there is a worse fate at this time of year.

For all its warts, the mall is, in a sense, a destination. If done properly, negatives can be mitigated and the trip can even be fun.

In college, my roommate and I would make an annual trip to King of Prussia, Pa. to do Christmas shopping for our respective families. It was a good chance to get away, even for a day, and I believe we did this mostly after finals on a weekday.

No such pleasantries can be written about a trip to the post office, a necessary intermediary on the gifting road. There, the worst aspects of the Christmas rat race are on display.

Let's take a look at the typical post office holiday experience:

Much like the mall, the first step in the post-office visit is the unsuccessful attempt to find parking. Unlike the mall, where hope hides down every aisle, the local post office usually has a finite number of spaces. With once cursory glance it is easy to tell they are all occupied.

So the only real option is to join a conga line of cars filled with clench-teethed drivers playing musical chairs in the parking lot.

And once a spot is finally secured, the prize is a spot standing in a long line next to the driver you just cursed out in the parking lot.

The next annoyance: Extortion.

I repeatedly overheard the same sell-job from the cashier to each customer ahead of me. "Would you like to upgrade to priority postage?"

In case you haven't been the the post office for a while, here's an example of how their chicanery works: The clerk tells you it will cost $7 for standard shipping for a package, but that for "only" $8.10, you can send it priority mail.

If this was a private enterprise, I'd be OK with the up-sell. You pay a higher rate for a higher level of service. But the post office is a governmental agency that shouldn't be in the business of so blatantly ripping off the public.

And by up-selling, the post office is tacitly saying that it has the capability of delivering packages at a faster rate, but it is purposely inefficient when it comes to standard-rate mail. A government agency stating that it is doing a poor job on purpose.

I have long suspected that DMV workers secretly revel in doing a bad job, but at least they don't ingrain it in their departmental policies.

Up-selling drives me bonkers.

A quick tangent on two other post-office matters that also anger me:

The years-ago endorsement deal with suspected doper Lance Armstrong. Why does the post office need to spend millions of dollars on a celebrity spokesperson, especially a humorless ass of one? What's next, Doug Swingley racing the Iditarod, sponsored by Social Security? Our government doesn't need to advertise government services.

During a snowstorm in Colorado a few years ago, the state post office said that delivery would be halted for four days. Through rain, sleet or snow, my ass!

I digress.

This up-selling con game becomes worse at the holidays, because the cashiers attempt to lay on the mother of all guilt trips if you decline. They tempt: "Don't you want this to be there by Christmas morning?" They threaten: "I can't guarantee this will be there by Christmas morning if you don't go priority."

For all of the faults of the post office, it is the miserable disposition of my fellow linemates that makes the post office journey a truly dreary experience.

They're in a hurry. They're talking on their cell phones. They're exasperated that they can't carry 12 boxes at one time or incredulous that they can't cut me in line, because they "just have to buy stamps."

No one is more miserable than the dark-haired, middle-aged woman about three people behind me in line yesterday who bumped into an old acquaintance and droned on with a shameless, ear-splitting ode to her daughters, Natalie and Veronica.

Everyone within earshot of this shrew grew tired of Natalie and Veronica stories, especially the acquaintance, who clearly had hoped to never run into this woman again. And who can blame her? Not me.

Not after hearing "Natalie and Veronica had a hard time adjusting to their soccer team after we returned from Australia. ... Natalie and Veronica are going to love their new boarding school in Switzerland." Scoffing at a question from the acquaintance, "Renting our house here would be too much trouble. Natalie and Veronica could never bare to have someone else living in their rooms. (Followed by indignant laughter)."

Then there was a story about the tyranny of Natalie being relegated to the JV swimming team.

Remember the old woman who hung herself after listening to Ted Striker in Airplane? If this woman told one more Natalie and Veronica story, it was going to be fucking Jonestown in the post office.

"Natalie and Veronica ..."

"Oh shit, pass the Kool-Aid!"

I made it to the front of the line in about 45 minutes today, at which time I bought four boxes in which to mail gifts. Four cardboard boxes. They were 15x10x8. They cost me $13.96. They probably cost the post office $0.02 to produce in China.

If the post office was a private enterprise, I'd say they had found a wonderful business model and attempted to buy stock before it went public. But again, the post office is a government department, and I don't think the government should act as such a shameless profiteer.

Nonetheless, I took this ass-raping in stride. My time here was served, and I gleefully headed for the exit.

I don't want to sound insufferable here. The truth is that I LIKE Christmas.

But the holiday has a nasty way of beating people down, especially at the post office. There shouldn't have to be a frantic build-up that starts immediately after Halloween and continues for two months.

Therefore, I propose the following solutions to simplify Christmas:

Attempting to buy gifts throughout the year. I think we all find ourselves in situations where we stumble across some piece of merchandise and say, "Oh, Person X would like that." Now, I will purchase that and hold for the holidays, rather than wait to mid-December and frantically search for a gift.
In partnership with No. 1, I resolve to mail these gifts before December to avoid POTSD.

And then there is this scenario:

Rather than buying everyone gifts, I have been toying with the suggestion of simply donating the gift money to the charity of the intended recipient's choice. I can think of a few worthy charities that deserve my money and attention.*

Maybe this would help to negate some of my cynicism. Maybe it would reinstate the giving portion of the holiday while extracting the crass commercialism. Maybe it would simplify Christmas craziness.

It's just a thought. And maybe it's all a ploy to help me avoid long lines at the post office.

* This, of course, does not mean I dislike receiving gifts. Quite the contrary, I have quite the list of suggestions on my Amazon wish list for anyone interested. And I would definitely miss the unwrappings should my second suggestion about ever come to fruition.

Show a little faith, there's Magic in the night

2007-11-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

See the kid in the picture above?

He's only six, but he's pretty hard core.

We were a few people behind him and his mom while standing in the wristband lottery line at Springsteen's Nov. 5 date at The Palace of Auburn Hills. There was no doubt his parents raised him right -- he was fired up to see The Boss.

A few hours passed as we snaked through the line, hours spent hoping we would be among the 500 lucky people who would gain entry into the sacred ground known as The Pit that night. This was especially important that night, because it was Mrs. VFR's first Springsteen show.

We held Nos. 495, 496 and 497 in the lottery. When the security czars drew No. 175 and said people who held the 500 numbers after that would find themselves in The Pit, there was a lot of hooting and hollering from myself, Mrs. VFR and Ever Jolly Lee Rasizer, who had stayed in town for an extra day after covering the Lions-Broncos game Sunday.

We were led into our pen and set up shop about four people deep on the left side of the stage, directly in front of Clarence.

After waiting for a few more hours, Bruce and the band came out and kicked things off by ripping through Radio Nowhere, Night and Lonesome Day before taking a breather.

Somewhere in that set, Mrs. VFR tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, there's the kid who was next to us in line!" I look over, and sure enough, there's the kid. Front row of The Pit. Dead center. Rocking out on top of his pop's shoulders.

We wonder how they wound up so close, since they were only a few people away in line, but then went back to rocking out ourselves.

Fast forward to the encore. Bruce walks out to front and center, and looks down at the kid's sign. "What's this? ... This kid's been rocking out all night! Let's do it!" He called the band together for a quick audible, and then we were indeed blessed with Ramrod.

It wasn't only Boss Time, it was this kid's time.

Not only did Bruce play the song -- the highlight of the night -- but Bruce leaned into the crowd and let him strum his guitar for a while. Then after the song ... Bruce handed him his harmonica. Then ... Clarence handed him something. Then ... after the encore, Max handed him his drumsticks.

Bottom line was that the whole scene added a bonus to what was already a very good show -- and also that the kid cleaned up.

In an odd sort of way, I felt bad for the kid. Think about it: He's only six years old, and every concert he goes to from here on out is going to be a downer!

But it was a tremendous addition to a very good night. A fantastic night. One of the best two or three of the eight Bruce shows I've seen.

Radio Nowhere sounded phenomenal, and when he broke into Jackson Cage, I'd like to think that I was the first person in the arena to recognize the throwback. Jackson Cage, Ramrod were tour debuts. We got an all-time debut in I'll Work For Your Love.

I've heard him do She's The One with the E Street Band before, but I don't think I ever heard it as rocking as it was that night.

The Palace crowd gets some kudos too, as it matched Bruce's frenzied pace for the entire 2 hour, 5 minute show. When he wrapped up a delightful American Land -- a great show-closer -- the crowd was loudly pleading for more. I could have swore I saw Bruce hesitate and consider those pleas before exiting the stage.

Perhaps the best crowd I've been a part of.

There could have been more Roy Bittan. The Professor is the best musician in the band, and I've always enjoyed seeing him spotlighted. He could have played a little longer -- 2 hours, 5 minutes is by far and away the shortest Springsteen show I've seen.

But he packed a lot into 2:05. The energy never ebbed, neither from the band or from the crowd.

There's probably more to say about the show and about the album, but I'll save that for a later post.

Oh, one other highlight was when we returned home and Mrs. VFR, fresh off breaking her Bruce cherry, said: "I get it now."

***

For now, I'm going to go back to watching the Rams and Gus Frerotte complete their implosion against the Seahawks. Wow, Pendleton, that 4th down play to end the game was freaking painful. Something I'm used to seeing on the shores of Lake Erie.

***

Another football thought this Sunday afternoon. The Lions played Thursday, so I should be getting two games right now. But that's not the case.

I'm getting zero NFL games in the 4 p.m. slot. I'm getting figure skating on two channels.

It's a Sunday afternoon in late November. Is this America or communist Russia?

Emptying the notebook

2007-10-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

Driving home from work tonight, I listened to Alice Cooper's syndicated radio show for about 10 minutes. It's something I've done many times before since moving to a market that carried his show, but it wasn't until tonight that this notion crystallized:

This is a good show. A very good radio show.

Now, I'm not saying it is as good as this cat, but as far as the other alternatives in the vast wasteland of pussified mainstream radio, Cooper rises far above his counterparts.

His show has a laid-back feel, much like a Charlie Rose interview. Cooper is pensive, thoughtful and intelligent. He tells insightful stories and anecdotes, and it's obvious he's got a knowledgeable catalog of rock-n-roll history in his brain.

Stuff that no one else has the knowledge base, time nor inclination to share with listeners. And I think it's important to note he's sharing stories. He's not talking at his listeners, he's having a conversation with them. It's an important distinction.

You won't find him going into offbeat artists the way Little Steven's Underground Garage often does. But he will slip them in; I heard him play some Old 97s the other day. You will also hear him play songs from popular artists you'd never hear anyone else playing.

A few weeks ago, he played Bruce Springteen's "For You."

Tonight, he had a nice anecdote after "19th Nervous Breakdown" about the Stones playing that during their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was also their first in-color appearance on American television.

It's that sort of bit that I appreciate.

Elsewhere, I'm "spinnin' round a deal dial," listening to too many yahoos trying to be funny or wacky, snarky or witty. All dumbed-down garbage, watered-down Stern.

Cooper is a refreshing change.

----------------------------------------------

I'll admit that it took me a while to become a regular visitor to Fox Sports' Web site, even after the network hired Mark Kriegel, one of my favorite columnists, a while back.

But I'm in a groove visiting the site, and that has everything to do with the fact Kriegel is in an excellent groove.

He's back. Look out, Lupica.

In recent weeks, Kriegel has weighed in with some good one-liners on the baseball playoffs, a column on Red Sox fans turning into what they hate, a column on white cornerbacks going the way of the do-do bird and more.

Rock-solid work all around.

It's too bad thin-skinned Lupica whined so vociferously about his evisceration on sj.com that Leon Carter had to chase Kriegel out of New York.

It's really a shame because Lupica used to be a great columnist. Then he started caring too much about cultivating his "image" and writing fill-in-the-blank October columns off his couch.

Maybe if he would have concentrated more on his work, his act wouldn't have been so tired and Kriegel would still be in New York.

Either way, it's been a long wait and it's good to be back into a Kriegel routine.

----------------------------------------------

When Mrs. VFR and I interviewed at our current location, one of things touted about this area was the wealth of local live music. This appealed to us, big time.

It took 10 months, but we finally got off our arses and heard some tunes.

Last week, we went to The Ark, a small 300-seat place to see The Samples, an excellent veteran rock band based in Boulder. The Samples are a big deal throughout the west. Year after year, they regularly sell out Red Rocks' 9,500 seats.

Here? We were privileged to be among 60 or so people to see them on a rainy Midwestern night. And they put on a hell of a show. They did everything from rock out to meander through some of their more piano-driven songs to perform a heartfelt acoustic tribute to frontman Sean Kelly's mom, who died 15 years ago this month.

At least from the perspective of a fan in the seats, it made it more intimate that it was such a small crowd in a small venue. I don't know that the experience would have been the same elsewhere.

They could have mailed it in given the circumstances. But they brought their best stuff, showed they are still aces after 20 years on the road, and their efforts were much appreciated by those who were there.

The whole thing also made Squawking VFR a little homesick.

It became acute during the song "Indiana," which contains the following lyrics:

I remember the first time I drove
Through Indiana
Watching semis hauling grain
To the west
They're gonna make it all the
Way to Colorado
Where the mountains touch
The sky and rivers bend

The bout of homesickness has lasted a few days now.

Especially since Mrs. VFR enjoyed a short trip back home last week for a wedding shower.

----------------------------------------------

We'll be back with a review of "Magic,"Bruce's new album in a few days. And we promise we'll wrap up our two-part series on our nation's airport shortly after that.

It's like riding a bike ...

2007-10-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I was one of the few people in America who could honestly refute the adage that started with my title phrase and finished with, "Once you learn, you never forget."

I'll admit it. I forgot.

It had been approximately 19 years since my last full-scale bike ride until I hopped on a two-wheeled vehicle last week. The occasion to break the drought came when Mrs. VFR and I traveled to Mackinac Island, a small spot on Lake Huron in between the mitt portion of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

No motorized vehicles are allowed on the island. It's a throwback to a different time. The only modes of transportation permitted on the island are horse and buggies, bikes and your own two feet. Ferries transport guests from the mainland to the island.

(I found it curious, though, that town officials apparently have made an exception of their ban for fat people who drive their personal carts).

Not being morbidly obese, my transportation options were limited to 1) walking; 2) gagging on the smell of manure on horse-and-buggy rides; or 3) breaking the streak.

To be fair, I have been on a cycle once or twice in the 19 years since a spectacular crash ended my bike-riding career back in the fifth grade. I think there was a shorter Mackinac trip with my parents back in the day and an ill-fated trek around a Moab campground that lasted all of eight seconds.

But this time, there was a need for competence. We had plans to pedal around the perimeter of the island, grind up and down steep hills and down trails that led through a dense forest.

We rented a 1-speed at our hotel. Multiple gears would only be a complication, so that was fine. About an hour after our arrival, it was time for the big test.

It started smooth. Straight worked OK. Turning presented some problems - I couldn't turn sharp enough before hitting the curb. Stopping was a bit of a disaster at first -- I wanted to bail because I couldn't find the brake.

Then I realized the brake wasn't on the handlebars; it was one of those deals where you reverse the direction of the pedals. Soon after that discovery, I am proud to say the rest of the biking was reasonably smooth.

Mrs. VFR took a picture of the maiden voyage downtown after my remedial lesson, which is posted above along with a few others from the weekend.

But first, here's a little of the back story about why I went approximately 19 years without a bike ride: In fifth grade, my yellow-and-black Huffy dirtbike was in the shop. So one day I borrowed my mother's bike, which was considerably larger, for a ride that I had taken many times before.

The route led from our home in downtown L.F. to a trail behind the Cedar Grove Municipal Pool that followed the path of long-forgotten railroad tracks through the woods. These ended near the top of Francisco Avenue, a long road that resembled a mile-long ski jump.

Typically, my friends and I would dive-bomb the hill, reaching speeds of 45 to 50 mph, according to the speedometer on my Huffy. We indeed dive-bombed Francisco Avenue on the day of my tussle with the asphalt.

Being a fifth grader, I hadn't really considered the possibility that my transition from a kid-sized bike to an adult-sized one would make much of a difference. But halfway down Francisco Avenue, I learned I was wrong.

As I reached warp speed, the handlebars started to wobble. This had never happened on my Huffy. They started to shake. They started to shimmy. Before I knew it, I was completely out of control.

I went down hard. The bike fell to the left, and the asphalt tore lots of skin off my face, arm, hip and legs. Inexplicably, I fell on my left side, but broke my right arm.

Mom's bike was totaled in the crash, and I was lucky no cars pummeled me further.

Francisco Avenue was sort of off-limits as far as bike rules in the VFR house went, so I scraped myself off the pavement and lied through my teeth about the location of my accident. (A friend along for the fateful ride later ratted me out for no reason; we weren't friends much longer).

But that meant two bikes damaged. By the time the cast came off my arm, both were growing cobwebs in the back of the garage.

The drought began because of the lack of a functioning bike more than out of any fear. But it nonetheless took root. Nineteen years later, we arrived on Mackinac Island.

And we're back

2007-09-17T17:51:00.000-07:00

I think I've used that headline before. I mean it this time.

After I had a solid run of four posts in two weeks, I've fallen into a blogging drought. Which is fine, because I do enough blogging at work to make my head spin.

It's not necessarily quality blogging, as we practice here, but more the maintenance and updating the blogs of others. It's a process which has grown in scope and tedium.

But there are some quality posts on deck -- most notably, the culmination of our much-anticipated two-part series on the nation's airports.

For now, I will continue to revel in Cleveland's surprising victory yesterday over The Nati. Not sure where it ranks in key victories since the '99 return, but it's got to be top three.

The Browns have never really learned to close out a game since they returned, and I had no reason to suspect they would Sunday, especially after their embarrassing 34-7 defeat in the opener, which was followed two days later by the trading of their starting quarterback in a move unprecedented in NFL history.

(No team had ever traded their week 1 starting QB prior to week 2).

If there was ever a team that looked dead in the water after one week, it was the '07 Browns.

Yet they came out Sunday beyond fired up. What they lack in talent, they made up for with a lot of heart and guts. A shameless cliche, you say? Yeah. True. But something got into those crazy cats on Sunday. Might as well credit that.

I won't make any bold predictions off one effort for the rest of the season. For now, I'm content to have my suffering silenced, if only for one day.

A hearty welcome

2007-07-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Squawking VFR would like to take a moment and announce the arrival of his sister on the World Wide Web. Rachel VFR has started a blog devoted to recounting her favorite comfort food experiences.

While she may not be much for seafood and spice, Rachel is a Garden State native, and I'm willing to bet her space will fawn over Jersey diners, raise pizza-by-the-slice to mythic proportions and revel in Taylor-ham-on-a-hard-roll excellence.

Welcome, Rachel.

For those of you who have never left Jersey on a permanent basis, you may not grasp that the aforementioned foods are not readily available on every street corner elsewhere in the country. A shock, I know. I ran into that problem in the Rockies, and my frustrations boiled over in a letter to Denver Post food critic Greg Henry.

To welcome a blog that I believe will honor the sanctity of diners everywhere, let's take a walk down memory lane and review that letter now:

July 29, 2004

Greg,

I'm writing to convey my disappointment with your recent review of the Cheesy Jane's restaurant in Centennial.

Aside from my bewilderment as to how you could endlessly gush over such an ordinary fry-pit -- let them pay for an ad if they want undeserved, unvarnished praise! -- there was one particular sentence that caught in my throat, as it were.

"Like any diner, Jane's serves scrumptious shakes and malts."

My problem is with the use of the word 'diner' to describe Cheesy Jane's. Burger joint? Sure. Luncheonette? That would work.

But diner is wholly incorrect. I have eaten there. I know.

By the strictest definition, a diner is a restaurant shaped to look like a railroad car. Cheesy Jane's, situated in the middle of an urban-sprawl strip mall, certainly is not that.

I'm willing to cut you some latitude there. But even a looser definition of what constitutes a diner would certainly include the following stipulations:

1. It is open 24 hours a day (Cheesy Jane's is not).

2. It serves breakfast all day long (Cheesy Jane's does not).

3. It has pies prominently displayed in a case near the cash register -- prefereably spinning. (Cheesy Jane's does not).

Not even the vile Gunther Toody's diner chain would qualify under those basic standards. That place is a sorry excuse of a restaurant chain, and its owners should be prosecuted for mutating the proud history of authentic diners, but I digress.

In conclusion, I find it utterly unpalatable that a restaurant reviewer at a newspaper with the stature of The Denver Post could make such a fundamental error. Please be more thoughtful with your future choices in wording.

Sincerely,

Squawking VFR

Mr. Henry responded with a one-word answer: "Whatever."

That necessitated a response of: "It's reassuring to know you put an iota of thought into your job, you sorry excuse for a hack."

The Honeymoon

2007-07-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

(Photos from top: View from the lodge during a rainstorm; Guatemalan fast food; a plant outside our hut; Toucan Sam; a Guatemalan lake we saw passing by from the road; Mayan ruins at Tikal; a view spelunking that reminded me of something out of Goonies.)

Chickens and pigs played in the dirt road. A woman stood at the edge of a nearby river, doing the family laundry. Soldiers stood at the border with machine guns, but seemed more interested in playing dominoes than rooting out crime.

We waited on line behind an Amish couple that was entering Guatemala carrying baskets for produce. When they were done, we paid our $21 U.S. dollars per person to leave Belize, a tourist racket if there was ever one. Belizians didn't have to pay to depart. Only foreigners.

A sign warned us of consequences for bringing books, literature or other propoganda into the country. I wondered if the Time I had brought along for reading material on the trip qualified, but I kept that thought to myself and the magazine in my backpack.

The border building was open air, kind of like an airplane hangar. We walked in one side, and out the other. Large ceiling fans spun above us. It looked like it had been built in the 1950s. It was the most modern structure we would see for some time.

No, nothing to declare. After leaving the line to depart Belize, we moved to the line to enter Guatemala. We were called to the desk, and a processor started stamping our papers.

And that is when it happened.

He started examining Mrs. VFR's passport with a high level of interest. He paused. Something was amiss. I got worried. With a crooked smile on his face and in a thick Spanish accent, he looked at her and said, "So ... is your brother ... Deuce?"

Even in one of the most remote spots on this planet, we cannot escape that horrible fucking movie.

That was one of the many highlights from our honeymoon, belatedly completed at the beginning of this month. We spent a week in Belize, one day of which was spent on a jaunt to Guatemala to see the Mayan ruins at Tikal.

We did not spend the other six days lounging on a beach. No, we stayed at an incredible adventure lodge in the middle of the Central American jungle. No electricity. We used oil lamps for light. Screens on our hut protected us from the monkeys at night. They didn't prevent the occasional frog or big, hairy, brown spider from visiting, though.

It was amazing how quickly that we didn't care that we had no TV, no lights or any of our other stuff from home.

During the days, we did expeditions. We hiked through the rainforest and rappeled off a 300-foot cliff. We spelunked in a cave. When we were about a mile in, we started swimming from room to room with our headlamps, helmets, boots and pants on. Then we jumped off waterfalls into deep pools inside the cave.

(OK, and there was one day when we went to a beach resort and lounged, but that was only because the Carribean was too rough for snorkeling). We also visited the tremendous Belize Zoo and Blue Hole National Park.

Oh, and we ate live termites one day in the jungle. They taste like minty carrots.

At night, they served huge buffets at the lodge, and we'd sit around with our fellow travelers, recount our expeditions and plot more for the next day while drinking Belikin Beer. Great times, and good people.

Belize is a wonderful country. It has a bizarre mix of native Belizians, Guatemalans, Amish, Mennonites, Chinese and Taiwanese among its population of about 275,000 residents.

It was humbling to see the poverty people live with. We thought Belize looked poor with its three main paved roads and tiny dilapidated bungaloes dotting the side of the road. Then we went to Guatemala.

It makes Belize look like Dubai.

All in all, it was all a fantastic experience. There's nowhere else on Earth like this place. We cannot wait to return.

stupid parent tricks

2007-07-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

I know we're in the middle of my two-part series on airports, but we're interrupting that to discuss an outrageous case of parental neglect and irresponsibility. It also has a link to aviation, so I am kind of staying on topic.

Perhaps you have already heard about siblings Blake and Briana Sims. The 15-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied from one parent's home in Dothan, Ala. to the other parent's home in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Along the way, they missed their connecting flight in Salt Lake City, where they were marooned for nearly 24 hours with no supervision. Cue the hysterical mother, Adriana Ables. Read the complete story in today's Salt Lake Tribune for full background.

As a preface, I'd like to think there aren't many people who are more critical of the airline industry than myself. I've made all the requisite jokes about flying U.S. Scare and how Delta stands for Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport. I penned this furious missive to United Airlines. (Scroll down to June 17, 2002). I've written numerous other angry letters to Continental, Frontier, and still more to United.

Mrs. Ables described an experience that was "beyond incompetence," words that I probably have used myself to articulate airline travel. Except in this case, this person should have been describing her parenting skills, not the airlines.

She clearly has no concept of accountability.

From the very beginning of her children's ordeal, she showed extraordinary lapses in judgment and indifference toward the transport of young Blake and Briana. She deserves the blame she is so vocally directing at the airlines.

Let's look through the facts here. According to the Trib:

Ables' ex-husband, who purchased the tickets for almost $2,000, said his Alabama travel agent explained he didn't need to pay an extra $75 fee for unaccompanied-minor service for Briana because Blake was older than 12.

Except they did need to pay for the service. Delta policy clearly states any unaccompanied child under 15 must have purchased the service. It is the airline's safeguard to prevent just the sort of calamity that followed when the Ables/Sims family skirted the policy.

This willful disregard started the chain of errors that led to Blake and Briana checking into a SLC hotel by themselves.

I don't know if the family ignored the policy to save the $75 fee -- essentially trading their children's security for spare cash -- or if their claims their travel agent misinformed them are true. Either way, this is not Delta's fault.

Errors: Family 1, Delta 0.

The next moronic mistake came when the children were booked on flights that gave them only a 28-minute window to connect in Salt Lake City. That's a Mission Impossible squeeze for most adults. Chances are there's going to be a delay. If the travel agent chose those flights, the parents should have immediately objected. Do these parents have their head in the tarmac?

Errors: Family 2, Delta 0.

The flight from Salt Lake City to Fairbanks that was to take the Sims children home was the last flight of the day. Luckily, Delta has guidelines in place to prevent unaccompanied minors from being booked on the last flight of the day, thus preventing them from being stranded in a connecting city. A pragmatic fail-safe. But wait, the parents flouted that rule. How was Delta supposed to know?

Errors: Family 3, Delta 0.

Sure enough, the plane is leaving Atlanta more than two hours late due to high winds. Here is the part of parental stupidity that really gets me. Blake dutifully calls home from the plane on the ATL tarmac to report they are ready to depart after the two-hour delay.

Does Mom put two and two together and say to herself, 'Hey, if they are delayed two hours in Atlanta, I guess that 28-minute window in Salt Lake City is going to be a wee bit of a problem?' Of course she doesn't. She's a moron. An absolute imbecile. Her quote on that phone call: "He said, 'We are OK, but we'll be late.' It didn't occur to me that they were going to be stuck in Salt Lake."

Well, lady, it should have occurred to you. Too bad Delta doesn't have a policy against stupidity.

Errors: Family 4, Delta 0.

When the flight arrived in SLC, 30-something passengers were re-booked on flights after missing their connections, including Blake and Briana, who stood in line with the rest of the crowd and received their hotel and food vouchers.

They took the shuttle bus to the hotel, checked into their room with a credit card, and ordered food. Let's look at that another way: The airline provided them with transportation, food and lodging, the kids never telling the agent or hotel they were in over their heads -- and only calling home to mom when they were waiting in line for the shuttle bus.

No errors here. The airline provided its passengers with exactly what it should have.

I might remind you the older brother is 15. As one reader pointed out in the comments of the story, this kid is going to be driving a car next year. The circumstances are unusual and admittedly not ideal, but I think he's old enough to handle them. Hell, at 15, I was booking my own trips to Cleveland so me and my dad could fly out for Browns games. Pops VFR went on the trip, but left all the reservations and planning to me.

Which brings me to another point. Pops? Mom? You were sending your kids on a three-legged journey -- Dothan to Atlanta, Atlanta to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to Fairbanks -- that spans the continent. I'm sorry you felt the urge to divorce and move halfway around the world from each other, but for an undertaking of this size, one of you should have made the trip with the kids, especially if you were already worried about them fending for themselves, although obviously not to a point where you would chalk up the extra $75 for that protection.

Errors: Family 5, Delta 0.

The kids handled the day just fine, watching TV and eating pizza in their room. Mom, on the other hand, was busy flying off the handle, blaming the airline for her own poor parenting skills and summoning a lawyer.

Short of outright physical abuse, I cannot imagine a worse parent. She took no interest in the kids' travel plans until something went wrong, after deliberately ignoring all the safeguards designed to stop just such a goof.

She sounds like the type of mom who blames the teachers when her kids get bad grades at school, the type who blames everyone but herself for the circumstances that she is 100 percent accountable for.

Mrs. Ables, an airline is not a babysitter, nor a parent. Those roles falls squarely on your shoulders. If you are unable to properly care for your children, I suggest you contact your local Division of Youth and Family Services, if a Delta representative has not already deservedly done so.

Landing strips

2007-07-09T19:42:00.001-07:00

After some extensive recent travels, I've come to appreciate good airports. They can make the difference between a reasonably comfortable travel experience and an absolutely wretched one. In an attempt to draw up a list of the best five U.S. airports, I've come to the conclusion they are few and far between.

I had a hard time finding five.

Picking the worst, though, was easy. There are many worthy candidates.

Below you will find my top five. All conjecture is based on experiences as a passenger, pilot and aviation enthusiast. A list of the worst will appear in a few days.

BEST

1. Denver International Airport. (KDEN).

As the beat writer covering the Donkeys, I was blessed to routinely use the best airport in the land. It exceeds expectations on all levels.

From, the outside, it is asthetically pleasing, doing its best to blend in with the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. On the inside, it has wide concourses and a good restaurant selection. The train transportation never keeps you waiting very long.

Once derided because of its ability to chew luggage, the baggage system now has to be the most efficient I've encountered. Most of the time, my bags were coming off the conveyor belt before I reached the claim area. Bonus points for the conveyor created specificially for skis.

Denver has five runways that are more than or just less than 10,000 feet, a barometer of sorts for a landing strip's ability to handle large aircraft -- the kind that fly overseas. It says a lot about a city's status to support that kind of traffic, both customer-wise and with the physical asphalt.

The long runways also make Denver an option for space shuttle landings, although to my knowledge, that's never happened.

Denver also holds a special place in aviation lore, because it is the lone Class B airport -- B's are typically the nation's biggest -- where I have landed as a pilot. Late one night, I landed a Cessna 172 on runway 17L while a United 757 touched down on 17R.

Good times.

2. San Francisco International. (KSFO).

To an extent, SFO mirrors Newark and Boston. All three were built in the same era and share many interior resemblences. But it stands above those two for many reasons.

For one, the concourses are cleaner. The food area is much cleaner, and more high-quality choices are available. For example, sandwiches on sourdough bread are pretty good.

SFO also gets bonus points for being the scene of many Dirty Harry takedowns. Callahan can stop a hijacking at SFO before the opening credits are finished rolling. (See Force, Magnum).

Its mass transit system to downtown is also probably the easiest to use among all major airports, surpassing even Chicago O'Hare.

Where it really stands out, though, is from the perspective of someone who is merely a fan of airports. The runways extend into San Francisco Bay, making final approach there something of a thrilling experience.

United and plenty of other international airlines use SFO as a gateway to all of Asia. It seems like every 15 seconds or so, there is a 747 thundering down a runway and lifting off toward points in the Orient.

Near the gates, there are usually six or seven lined up in a row, a sight I've never seen at any other airport. It is an impressive display of equipment. (See picture above). It also brings back memories of a time when such trips were exciting instead of a hassle.

I think Denver and San Francisco are the head-and-shoulder favorites. After them, the drop off -- and real debate -- begins.

3. Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International. (KCVG).

Maybe it's because it is dominated by one carrier, but I've always found connecting through The Nati an efficient and easy process. Delta uses it as its primary northern hub, and I've connected through on several trips.

It's a newer airfield, and all the terminals have wide concourses and are clean. I suppose those aren't exactly high standards, but you'd be surprised at how few places can meet them. I cannot speak to the food in the terminals.

4. Chicago O'Hare. (KORD).

A lot of people would probably place O'Hare on their worst list. It has a confusing layout, which can make sprints for flights intolerably long. It has its share of rickety buildings, especially on the E concourse, out of which it runs its United Express puddle-jumpers. It inevitably has more than its share of delays.

But O'Hare gets a nod a sentimental favorite. It is the heart and soul of America's aviation puzzle.

It is usually No. 1 or No. 2 on the list of the world's busiest airports, according to number of passengers served. It is also always No. 1 or No. 2 on the list of most arrivals and departures, not surpringly.

The sheer scope of what O'Hare handles is impressive. And to do it when the field faces routine disruptions -- thunderstorms in the summer and snow squalls in the winter -- is quite a feat.

I also like O'Hare because of the fact you get such a variety of airlines landing there. Probably as many as LAX or JFK. I once got to see Air Force One parked on the ramp as I taxiied by in a crappy little RJ.

Here's a little bit of O'Hare trivia: It's identifier is ORD because the field was built on the site of an apple orchard in the 1930s.

5. Portland International. (KPDX).

You've got to love an airport so beloved by its city, that a lot of the city's residents have adopted its identifier, PDX, as a nickname for the whole town.

I've only flown in and out of PDX once, but had an overall good visit. There aren't many thrills to speak of, but it is clean and simple. There were the least amount of lines I've faces anywhere as a traveler and the airline service reps were shockingly helpful.

I'm not the only one who is fond of PDX, which offers free WiFi access in its wide concourses. Readers of Conde Nast voted it their favorite American airport.

On a clear day, you can often get a great view of Mount Hood on the long approach from 30 miles to the west.

Honorable mentions: I have never been to Washington-National, now known as Reagan. But I have heard good things. I've heard there are good eats in Atlanta, but have only connected there once in a hurry.

Boston gets a thumbs-up for construction of a new control tower. Milwaukee is surprisingly nice, although if you are flying on Midwest Express into its hub, its easy to see why you're already in a great mood.

San Diego has a good layout, but has lost my luggage too many times to merit consideration. LAX has the might of a San Francisco or Chicago, but has too many near-accidents on its runways.

I'll return in a few days with my list of the worst.

Have a great day

2007-06-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

An odd phenomenon has been transpiring in the last three or so weeks.

When I park my car every workday morning in a parking garage down the block from my office, an employee of this parking garage tells me to "have a great day."

Employees are perched at all exits on stools, and say "Have a great day," as I groggily exit the structure. For every customer that enters or exits the building's lobby, this process is repeated.

It is astonishing that a parking structure company would waste its financial resources by paying people to wish me a good day - both in the morning when I arrive and again in the eveing when I head to D-Town.

This seems to be their only job function.

Lest you think this is some marketing gimmick to differentiate their parking garage from competitors, there is not a battle for consumers of parking spots in this town. Parking spaces are few and far between. Demand is high. Supply is low. Customer service should be low on the list of priorities, at least according to Adam Smith.

Anyway, this new employee-driver exchange inevitably leads to two varieties of awkward social interaction. Either the employee, usually a college-aged person, puts the effort into looking up from the book he/she is reading and gives me a "Have a great day," much like the faux-perky flight attendant wishes me a "buh-bye" every time I wish to exit a commercial airplane.

Or the parking employee is mailing it in, and can barely be bothered to look at me and mumble "Have a great day."

Either way, it is awkward, because I now must anticipate some sort of greeting and formulate a response. Do I match the eagerness of the enthusiastic greeting? Do I give a response to the half-hearted gesture? Do I ignore those entirely?

The mere fact I must contemplate such things at an ungodly hour is an unwanted intrusion and hassle.

Before you dismiss me as a grouch, let it be known that I have no problem greeting a person I consider a friend, a co-worker, perhaps a merchant I'm engaging with for the purposes of a consumer transaction. I'm not too cantankerous for a friendly hello.

But this is icky. Someone whom I have no actual meaningful connection to has been hired for the express purpose of posing as my friend. It's friend prostitution. If they were not "on the job," do you think they would give me the time of day? Of course not.

Holden Caulfield would have a field day with these phonies.

Someone at my office has pointed out that perhaps these greeters have an alternate purpose: weeding out any riff raff that attempt to enter the premises. And to be fair, that is a possibility. The occasional Dodge -- and only Dodges, for whatever reason -- has been stolen from this six-layered deck, and there is the occasional bum who craps in the corner of the stairwell.

But I have never witnessed an employee investigate the legitimacy of someone's presence in the structure.

Overall, there's a broader question to be answered than merely "What the hell are these employees doing?" It's about what I, as a parking consumer, expect from my parking deck. Here's a rough outline of what I consider to be a Parking Decker's Bill of Rights:

I expect to find a space in the morning.

I do not expect an employee guiding me in between the yellow lines, like the way rampers guide airliners into their gates with fluorescent cones.

I expect reasonable security measures to be taken in preventing the theft of my car or items within it.

I expect it to have proper lighting, in order to deter any lunatics from going Jesus Rossi on an unsuspecting motorist.

I expect to be allowed to escape in a timely fashion, without long lines at the pay window.

It's a nice bonus if the stairwells don't reek of urine.

And I include that last one only as a bonus, because I don't think any Parking Decker has the expectation that a parking garage is going to smell like the White House Rose Garden, much like you don't use an outhouse expecting it to smell like maple syrup.

By its nature, a parking garage is not a place I want to spend any meaningful length of time. If they can follow the above rules, I'm a happy customer.

Stop trying to dress it up. I have enough friends.

"How can you run when you know?"

2007-05-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of the 27th anniversary of Kent State today, I present my top-five protest songs of all time.

Note that I tried to avoid songs that conjured images of flower power, tie-dye shirts and general hippines. While that music may be the very definition of protest music, I thought it was just too easy to pick from that collection. Papa Dylan is off limits too.

This had to be at least a little challenging, even if Vietnam inevitably slips into a few of my choices.

1. Ohio. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

While it skirts the area I outlined above as off limits, I'm including it for two reasons. One, it deals with a specific event. Two, it's the best protest song ever written, hands down. The best protest song by perhaps the best protest-song writer.

If you've ever caught the VH1 Behind The Music special on CSN&Y, it delivers a fascinating retrospective on this song.

All these years later, David Crosby and Stephen Stills recount the tale of Neil Young writing this song with wide-eyed awe. Their story goes something like this: Two days after Kent State, Neil Young walked off alone into the woods.

After a few days of solitude, he emerged and played this haunting song.

Two weeks later, it was on the radio. Twenty-seven years later, it's no less powerful. It perfectly captured the massacre at Kent State. Every time I hear it to this day, I still get chills thinking about what happened that day.

2. Eve of Destruction. Barry McGuire.

If Ohio summed up political unrest through one specific event, Eve of Destruction did so on the broadest possible terms. It gets included here because, despite its subject matter, Barry McGuire is an outsider to the whole hippy era.

He was kicked out of the Navy at age 16 for being under age, and later became a born-again Christian right about the time Kent State was happening, circa 1971.

He's a one-hit wonder, but his one hit just about knocks your socks off. In one gritty burst, it sums up a turbulent decade and offers a prescient look at the Mideast turmoil of today.

A sampling of my favorite portion of the lyrics, of which you can find the complete version here and a link to the hard-core video here:

You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace

And from earlier in the song:

You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'
You don't believe in war, but what's the gun you're totin'
And even the Jordan River has... bodies floatin'

The cat has some serious chops.

3. Born In The USA. Bruce Springsteen.

C'mon. You knew The Boss would show up on the list somehow.

The first two songs on the list were pretty obvious . As discussed on Squawking VFR before, Born In The USA might be the more misunderstood song of all time.

Long considered as some sort of blind, patriotic anthem by Ron Reagan and his friends, it's actually the opposite. Originally titled "Vietnam," BITUSA is a scathing view of the shameful way America treated its veterans returning from The Nam.

The song was slated for a more somber, accoustic treatment and initially recorded for the Nebraska album. (Springsteen performs it this way on the Live In New York album, disc two). But he changed it up for the BITUSA album, with the intention to give it a more angry, volatile treatment.

Came back home to the refinery
Hiring man said, 'Son, if it was up to me'
Went down to see my VA man
He said, 'Son, don't you understand'

4. This Land Is Your Land. Woody Guthrie.

As Bruce notes during a speech on his 1975-1985 Greatest Hits, This Land is Your Land is "an angry song, an answer to Irving Berlin, who just wrote God Bless America."

Guthrie, the father of folk, was incensed that Berlin wholly ignored the hardscrabble aspects of American life during the Great Depression when he penned God Bless America. Guthrie originally titled his response, "God Blessed America for me."

Not only was Guthrie protesting Berlin, but the wide gap in wealth between rich and poor. Besides being a beautiful song, I think TLIYL holds America accountable for what it is supposed to be - an inclusive melting pot - and exposes the more grim reality that took hold during the Depression.

Here's a verse that is often chopped off the end of the song, written by Guthrie, a one-time proud Communist:

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office, I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

5. Blue Sky Mine. Midnight Oil.

First of all, Midnight Oil should be recognized as one of the great (only?) political bands in recent memory. They thrived spinning songs about corporate shenanigans and the disconnect between modern-day greed and the traditions, history and culture of Australia.

Frontman Peter Garrett even won a seat in the Aussie version of Congress in the 1990s.

You could take their entire body of work as a worthy entry here at No. 5, but I'll single them out for Blue Sky Mine, which opens by extolling the blue-collar virtue, "If I work all day, they'll be food on the table tonight."

But the greedy sugar company in the song cooks its books, and in the process wipes out an entire town that depended on its business. Like Barry McGuire, it presciently pre-dates the American corporate chicancery by 10 to 15 years. Peter Garrett would probably love to duke it out with a scumbag like Ken Lay.

Good stuff, all around.

The drafting of a dynasty

2007-04-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

What a great day to be a Cleveland Browns fan.

There are not many days I can say that. In fact, I can't think of another day in decades that has made a mark on the franchise quite like Saturday.

There have obviously been plenty of dark days when Browns fandom felt more like a sickness. Too many to list. Some major, some minor. But for the first time since art modell - a name not deserving of capitalization - moved the franchise, there is hope.

Hope can be a dangerous thing, of course, bringing only further despair and descent into the pigskin insanity. But it'd be hard to argue that in this particular case. The Browns got better Saturday. They got better in a hurry. They made a bold freaking move.

Not since Cleveland drafted Ozzie Newsome and Clay Matthews in the first round of the '78 draft has there been this kind of optimism.

Joe Thomas and Brady Quinn? Hallelujaih!

Thomas was the guy I wanted at No. 3 all along. Since the return of the franchise from purgatory, three regimes consistently failed to address the offensive line. After six years of watching quarterbacks flee for their lives, the Browns signed center LeCharles Bently, the first indication the latest regime got it.

Bentley was crippled by the Cleveland Curse and may never play a down for the Browns, but at least they showed interest in correcting the problem.

Now they've got Thomas, a left tackle to dominate for the next decade. Finally. He's going to make an immediate impact. Running and passing games are both immediately upgraded. With Eric Steinbach now at left guard, Kevin Shaffer can switch to his more natural right tackle position. God, if LeCharles can ever play again, it's going to be the best line in football.

But they weren't going anywhere - no matter who the quarterback or tailback were - until they addressed the line.

I wanted Thomas ahead of Quinn at No. 3 for that reason. Also, admittedly, because I'm not entirely sold on Quinn. I haven't seen him step up and win a big game. Quite the opposite, in fact. But that was my same criticism of Peyton Manning eight years ago. He could never beat Florida when it counted.

Shows what I know.

I believe Quinn has Pro Bowl potential. Even if he turns into a middle-of-the-pack NFL starter, this is a great upgrade. Not to mention great story. How many draft prospects come out and say, "I want to play for Clevleand!" (Not since Bernie Kosar).

Cleveland paid a steep price to move up and select Quinn at No. 22. Next year's No. 1. It's a top-10 pick. We know a 6-10 or 7-9 record is probably the best we can hope for from the 2007 team.

But I figure if they had Quinn rated as a top-10 prospect this year, then it's worth it. If they believe he is a franchise quarterback, then it's worth it.

They essentially spent their first-round pick in '08 on Quinn, and paid the price of a second-rounder to get him this year and start the building process that much sooner.

What an opportunity. Even better, Brian Billick was on the phone with Quinn when the Browns slid into the No. 22 spot, up from No. 36. Baltimore was talking trade with Kansas City at No. 23. Always nice to get a small measure of revenge over that creaky bastard in Baltimore.

The Browns roster has been devoid of talent for seven years. In those seasons, they have had exactly one Pro Bowler. Jamir Miller in 2001. One Pro Bowler in seven seasons. There's probably 60 to 80 Pro Bowlers every season.

So the Browns have had 1 in 490 chances? Jesus, what a talenteless team.

Not anymore. Two huge building blocks are in place after Saturday. Maybe three with the cornerback they took out of UNLV in the third round, who had transferred out of Southern Cal after some legal quandaries.

Next year, Quinn will take his lumps. But the foundation is set. For the first time in a long time. Probably for the first time since the Newsome/Matthews draft established the teams that became the Kardiac Kids in the early 80s, then the teams that played Denver a few years later.

Congratulations, Cleveland.

Corzine crash

2007-04-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

This entry may make a point so obvious, you wonder why I took the time to actually lend thought to it. You know, like when newspaper editorials proclaim 'cancer is bad' or something of that ilk.

In light of recent events, however, this issue apparently must be addressed.

Reports detailing the investigation into the near-fatal car crash involving New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine indicate that the driver who caused the accident will not be charged because he is, according to reports, a "special-needs driver."

Let me get this straight.

A car illegaly veers from the road's shoulder into oncoming traffic, nearly causing the death of the highest-ranking state official. It's a pretty open-and-shut case. But the conversation among investigators goes something like this:

Investigator 1: "We've solved the case of the missing red pickup truck. This guy should be charged with vehicular homicide should the guv not make it. He should at least be ticketed for a multitude of traffic offenses."

Investigator 2: "Well, the guilty party is retarded."

Investigator 1: "That changes everything. Not only will we give him a free pass on this one, but we'll return him to the roads of the Garden State where he can continue to menace other drivers."

Investigator 2: "Sounds good."

Imagine if your family had been wiped out by a mongoloid on the road. By not charging the guilty party here, it's like state officials are saying we should be like, 'oh, he didn't know any better.' As if that makes the accident any better.

What ridiculous loophole in Jersey law exists that allows retards to have driver's licenses? This is a bad idea. C'mon. That should be obvious.

Pretty soon, The Joker will be taking class trips to assassinate the governor.

The guilty party in this case, 20-year-old Kenneth Potts, seemed unrepentant and unaware of the weight of his actions. The Record of Hackensack reports:

"A neighbor, Linda Tizol, said Potts seemed frazzled when she saw him leaving the house Saturday morning.

“He just screamed at his Dad: ‘What do they want to lock me up for? It’s not my fault he wasn’t wearing his seat belt,’” Tizol said."

The bottom line is this:

If the guy is mentally sound enough to possess a valid driver's license, then he is mentally sound enough to be charged with the consequences of his actions. If he's "special" enough that he cannot be held accountable for his actions, he shouldn't be on the road in the first place.

Charlatan Vivian Stringer

2007-04-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

We now know what the "C" stands for.

Charlatan. This is what C. Vivian Stringer has become.

The Rutgers women's basketball coach was once the type of person who wore conviction on her sleeve and fierce determination on her face. A coal miner's daughter. A proud woman, a great woman, who has overcome an unfair share of personal tragedy.

She embodied the type of coach and person you'd want your kids - boys or girls - to play for, to learn life lessons from.

All those admirable qualities haven't up and vanished. But in the wake of this week's Don Imus scandal, C. Vivian Stringer looks like a hypocrite and opportunist.

For anyone who might have missed it, the cantankerous lout of a talk-show host called her Scarlet Knights, fresh off a loss in the NCAA championship game, a bunch of "nappy-headed hos," a phrase oozing of racial and sexist disgracefulness.

The Scarlet Knights, who, like their coach, are proud and fierce, were rightly offended by the crude slander. Stringer and her team called for Imus' firing. His comments, while par for the course of talk radio, were deplorable. No doubt, he should be fired.

The brewing controversy reached its crescendo Wednesday when Stringer and her players held a press conference. Stringer spoke for 30 minutes, and, as others have noted, sounded a little silly and overblown, alternately playing the victim card and grandstanding in what amounted to a recruiting infomercial.

It would have been nice if she reserved some of that contempt for former Rutgers University president Fran Lawrence.

Many of you may remember that Lawrence made a pretty big boo-boo of his own in November of 1994, when he told an audience of academics that minorities did not have the "genetic hereditary background" to compete on standardized tests.

Stringer was still coaching at Iowa when the remark was uttered, but it framed the context of her arrival on The Banks.

Those three words embroiled the campus in strife. Protesters halted play during a Rutgers basketball game against No. 1 UMass. They blocked traffic on Route 18. Marches were organized, rallies held. Lawrence fought for his job. It was a big deal.

Eager to appease the hornet's nest he had stirred, Lawrence searched long and hard for a minority candidate when the women's basketball job opened in the spring of 1995. Rutgers had a problem before his remark - 0 of its 23 coaches were minorities.

Now, Rutgers and Lawrence were desperate to land a minority coach.

So desperate, in fact, they paid Stringer approximately $325,000 to take control of the program. At the time, it was an unheard of sum for a women's coach, a figure that dwarfed what perennial NCAA mastermind Pat Summitt made at Tennessee.

But RU was desperate. And Stringer was all too willing to play along.

Knowing about the controversy that preceded her arrival, she showed no outrage whatsoever. Asked at the time about the fact her new boss ostensibly thought that black people were intellectually inferior, Stringer told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she believed "athletics can have a healing power."

It's an answer that is her prerogative. I won't begrudge her that. But why don't the same sentiments apply to a washed-up talk-show host?

One person made a truly frightening statement. One was a clown making a crass remark. One was a person taken seriously by some of the brightest minds in the country. One toiled as a jester for decades.

Lawrence was in a true position of power. The head of a major university. Someone who shapes policy, guides students. A leader. Removing him from a prestigious office at an academic institution would have confronted real racism at its core. Here was a real chance to make a difference.

But Stringer gives him what amounts to a free pass.

Imus? He's your everyday bigot. A man so irrelevant that his radio show ranked No. 14 in the New York market. Chances are few people would have even heard his remarks had he simply been ignored.

When he asks for forgiveness, he's denied that healing power.

Apparently, forgiveness comes with a price tag of $325,000. The sell-out special.

Sounds cheap for the price of Stringer's soul.

and we're back

2007-04-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

This is the moment I'm sure you have all been waiting for.

The cross-country move is officially complete. The VFR's have found a new home. Boxes have been moved and unpacked. And now that there's at least a hint of spare time, we're pleased to annouce the return of Squawking VFR.

Countless hours of blogging lay ahead.

We would have been blogging sooner, but some technical difficulties brought upon us by the incompetent foofs at Comcast.

After they allegedly returned our service, it took them three days and $264 to actually get us back online. That, and more than 15 phone calls and three hours worth of waiting on hold from yours truly. It is only because I am kind and benevolent that I restrain myself from wishing cancer of the eyes upon their CEO.

Here's the breakdown of my latest encounter with the evil phone/cable/internet cabal.

Service cannot simply be transferred from our previous address to our new address. We must pay a fee of $100 to disconnect, then $125 to re-connect here.

The disconnecting Comcast people told us to keep our former modem, only to threaten to destroy our credit because of our failure to return it - this while we were talking with the mortgage lender about qualifying for our home making our credit a most-important issue.

The clowns come to our house to install the new service. It is simple, they say. Once they are done monkeying around outside, they give us a disc to run on the computer, which they say will complete the installation.

Naturally, said disc does not work.

I am told from the installation people not to worry, that the billing department can automatically activate the account from their end. It only takes a phone call.

I call billing. After waiting an eternity to talk to a real person, the real person cannot find our account, thus making it difficult to activate our service. Much nonsense, and a lot of holding, ensues. It is decided that I am not a Comcast customer. I am a Comcast Classic customer. I am transferred. More holding ensues.

(Note: I called the damned 1-888-Comcast number, and I never was made aware of, nor was given an opportunity to note the regular/Classic distinction upon placing my order).

New person cannot locate my account. It is again decided that I cannot possibly be a Comcast Classic customer. I am put on hold again. The gentlemen comes back to the phone only to announce he is transferring me again.

Somewhere in this transfer, I am hung up upon.

I call back. Repeat steps 1 to 8.

After much holding, all Mrs. VFR can hear from the other room is me talking to the person unfortunate enough to be stuck with me. "Can I help you?" "Yes, you can transfer me to your supervisor." "What seems to be the nature of your problem sir?" "Nothing you can help me with. Please switch me to your supervisor." "Can I -" "No. Supervisor! Supervisor! SUPERVISOR! SUPERVISOR!"

After yet another failure, I had been on the phone for an hour and a half. It was time to go to sleep, and try again the next night.

Long story short, I succeeded in finding a competent supervisor at Comcast. It took another hour's worth of calls, but the clowns eventually found our account, transferred me to yet another department, where people actually could activate our service.

Needless to say, a formal letter of complaint will be filed with the Federal Communications Commission about the dangers of monopolies run amok.

But that's not for tonight. Right now, we are happy to be back online. We now return you to your regularly scheduled musings.

posing a question

2007-01-18T18:38:00.000-08:00

The Squawking VFR family is still getting settled in its new surroundings. While I spend another week or two finding the grocery store and other assorted necessities, please ponder an answer to the following question:

Between World War II and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which event had a greater influence on the course of American history?

I will wait to post my answer, because I do not want to taint your minds before you respond. Toddy, I know Gordon Schochet will weigh heavily on your shoulders as you think of a reply.

Hoodwinked

2006-12-16T19:15:00.000-08:00

By the time the summer of 2004 arrived, I had proclaimed myself a seasoned hiker.

Hiking had been a growing hobby since I moved in August of 2000. That first summer, I was so out of shape, I could barely climb the steps to our apartment without starting to sweat. But slowly and miraculously, I got fit in the summers ahead and tackled some of Colorado's famed 14ers, mountains that stretch above the 14,000-foot level.

Four years into hiking, I felt ready to tackle some out-of-state terrain.

Erik P. and I hatched a great plan. We would hike Timberline Trail, a 40-mile loop around Oregon's Mount Hood. During our time on the Banks, I don't think E.P. and I ever once mentioned an interest in hiking to each other. But since we departed Jersey, we had both developed an appreciation for it.

Plans were set a few months beforehand, and I had much anticipation for this great new adventure in the Pacific Northwest.

Flying into PDX, Mount Hood was easily visible out of the left side of the airplane. It was my first glimpse at the great giant. Its elevation is only 11,249, smaller than the 14ers I've done, but it is much more majestic. Unlike a lot of the Rocky Mountains, Hood dwarfs any other peaks in the area and stands alone on the horizon.

Stealing a glimpse of Hood on that early July afternoon only heightened the anticipation. I couldn't wait for that next day.

It was great to see E.P. when I arrived and meet his wife-to-be. We visited REI to get a few last-minute provisions that cool summer night, and in the morning we set off for Government Camp, Oregon, where the trailhead was located.

We planned to do the loop over a three-day stretch, and had plenty of supplies for the duration. Flashlight, check. Boots, check. Plenty of water, check. Tent, backpack, you get the picture. I also had my ski hat with me, gloves, long underwear, etc. It was probably in the 60s to 70s in Portland when we left, but it made good sense to expect cold nights at high elevations. Our pre-hike food-and-shelter plans seemed up to snuff.

An hour-plus east of Portland, we arrived at the Timberline Lodge next to the trailhead in the late morning. In the middle of a full-bore blizzard.

It was snowing sideways. People were skiing past us in the parking lot, which was engulfed by a couple feet of snow. It was frigid. Ice immediately formed in my stubble. It was July. I don't know if I've ever been colder in my life.

I looked over at Erik. He had I-just-saw-a-ghost, deer-in-the-headlights fright plastered all over his face. I was thrilled with his reaction. In no way was I mentally or physically prepared to spend three days traipsing around in a snowstorm.

We huddled inside the lodge, where skiers were warming themselves near the fire, immediately decided that we were in way over our heads and made a new plan from scratch.

We drove about 15 miles down the road -- the snow vanished at a slightly lower elevation and temperatures instantly returned to mild summer conditions -- and we enjoyed three days worth of day hikes in the Hood River area.

It worked out great. I'd say our hikes were probably no more than eight miles long each day. We got in some great camping, hung out in the excellent town of Hood River, drank microbrews at the Full Sail Brewing Company and generally enjoyed the lush, green Pacific Northwest and Columbia River Gorge.

The entire time, Mount Hood loomed on the horizon from any direction, as if it was watching our every move.

It was an incredible trip with a good friend.

I've been thinking about it quite a bit these last few days because of those poor guys stuck on Mount Hood, fighting for their lives.

Obviously, there are some major differences between them and us. They started their venture as a group of experts attempting a summit in the middle of winter. Serious business. We were fair-weather fans committed to nothing more than a fun summer hike around the base.

But I think both cases show that you never know exactly what to expect, even when you think you do. As the current crisis shows, it can still be dangerous, despite the best of preparations. Here's to hoping they get home safely.

The Mitt

2006-12-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

By now you have heard that Mrs. VFR and I are moving to Michigan. It is probably fair to say this is as big a surprise to us as it is to everyone else. Amid finding a place to live and making moving arrangements, there have been a few times that we've looked at each other and said, "Can you believe we're moving? ... To Michigan?"

It is fair to say we're a bit blindsided by this new reality, but we are very excited. It's a great town, great job, great paper. I don't think I could have envisioned a better overall situation. We're ready to dive in head-first.

A couple people have asked how and when this all came about. I sent in my stuff a while ago, and got the first phone call a couple of days before the Nov. 4 event. There was a hiatus for about 10 days, then it progressed once things settled down. We visited in late November. The offer came about 10 days later.

A couple people have also asked what all this means for flying. It means that I'm going to stop considering it as a career and return it to favorite hobby status. At this point, it wouldn't make sense to go from square 11 in journalism back to square one in aviation.

I will most certainly keep all of my licenses current and use them often to travel around our new state. I've already checked out a few landing strips in the area.

Once I settle into the new gig, maybe I'll even look to do a little freelance instruction if the opportunity presents itself. We'll see. Right now, my focus is on the new job and helping Mrs. VFR get settled.

So that probably spares all of you future snooze-inducing posts on stall-spin dynamics and acronyms like TOMATO FLAMES plus FLAPS and GRABCARD in FAR 91.205 (c) and (d).

You may even be rewarded by the move, because it will only enhance my music-related entries. Out here, I can only count Big Head Todd and the Monsters and The Fray as hometown influences.

In Michigan, we will be in the home of Motown, The Supremes, Gladys Knight and The Pips, Bob Seeger, Madonna, Eminem, Ted Nugent of Damn Yankees fame, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and The Jackson 5. Not saying I'm a rabid fan of all those, but when you put that group up against the Colorado exports, it's a slam-dunk.

Our movers arrive one week from today. We will hit that sweet highway, as Dave Brown would say, the day after Christmas.

Hope you all have a great holiday.

benching plummer a mistake

2006-11-29T19:46:00.000-08:00

In the span of five short days, the Denver Broncos season veered from a promising course toward a potential wasteland.

The team entered Week 11 of the NFL's calendar with a 7-2 record and sat atop the AFC West Division. Then its staunch defense got blown to smithereens by LaDainian Tomlinson, and the team lost to San Diego, 35-27, at home. Four days later on Thanksgiving, Denver's offense tanked against Kansas City in a 19-10 defeat.

Before they could scarf down a turkey leg, the Broncos went from contending for home-field advantage in the postseason to hangers-on of the last AFC playoff spot.

Casual observers could find any number of scapegoats for the short slide. An unfriendly schedule that left them tired. A defensive tendency to look mortal against the likes of Chargers greatness.

Broncos coach Mike Shanahan blamed an easy target, quarterback Jake Plummer.

Plummer has been benched in favor of rookie Jay Cutler, who will make his NFL debut Sunday against Seattle. It seems like a popular fix. But it's wrong. It's a mistake. It's a move that will cost the Broncos their season.

Plummer is being, ahem, unfairly crucified.

He was no doubt part of the problem and not the solution in those two losses. He completed 25 of 39 for 216 yards against Kansas City. One touchdown, one interception. Against San Diego, he was a little worse, completing 46 percent of his passes, zero touchdowns and one interception. But his flat performances weren't worthy of a benching.

Those stats are pretty much the going rate for the guy. Nine years into his career, you know what you are going to get.

When the Broncos signed him prior to the '04 season, they knew he wasn't a reclamation project in the mold of a Trent Dilfer or Rich Gannon, quarterbacks who toiled for years and suddenly had the proverbial light bulb flash above their heads. Plummer is what he's always been -- at his core, a gambler.

Sometimes it works. Last year, he enjoyed a 90.2 QB rating, threw 18 touchdowns to 7 interceptions and led the team to within a whiff of the Super Bowl. Sometimes it doesn't. He committed four turnovers in that AFC Championship Game and has more INTs than TDs so far this season.

But what cannot be derived from recent numbers is the sorry bunch of clowns surrounding him on offense.

Shanahan has done an admirable job of maintaining an elite offense for the last 10 years, tweaking the roster at all the right times. Until now. The last remnants from the Super Bowl teams have finally crumbled, and the replacements are not even mediocre.

The offensive line is in tatters with the season-ending injury to left tackle Matt Lepsis, last year's retirement of Dan Neil and Tom Nalen's aging. Rod Smith is an old receiver who can't take any pressure off Javon Walker. Smith is relying on savvy and experience, not physical strength. Denver can't find a reliable third receiver -- a problem for at least a decade that has now metatisized in severity.

Once upon a time, the tight end was essentially the team's third receiver. Even beyond the heyday of Shannon Sharpe, you would expect to find the likes of Dwayne Carswell and Jeb Putzier fixtures of the game plan. Not anymore.

The running game frightens no defense any longer. Maybe it's a product of the problems on the line, but maybe it's that Shanahan seems to be equally displeased with Tatum Bell and Mike Bell, who are seemingly shuffled from starter to the inactive list back to starter on a weekly basis.

Or maybe the transition from long-time offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak, now in Houston, to Mike Heimerdinger has been less seamless than we thought.

Bottom line, blaming Plummer for the shortcomings of the offense is a little like blaming the deckhand for not diving in and saving Leon Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro.

But the switch has been made, and Mastermind Mike is placing all bets on his prized rookie, Cutler, whom Shanahan traded ahead in the draft to pluck with the 11th overall selection. His crowning was originally scheduled for summer '07. But now it's arrived prematurely, and the timing is unfair to Culter.

Thoughout recent NFL history, the midseason switch to a rookie quarterback is the quintessential white flag, a signal that a team has declared its current season unsalvageable and one that sprouts hope for the years ahead.

But the Broncos aren't that team. They're 7-4. If the season ended today, they'd be headed into the playoffs (toward another creaming in Indianapolis, we can only hope). They've still got a powerful defense, typically a key ingredient for a deep playoff run. It's late November. There's five regular-season games remaining.

Right now seems like precisely the wrong time to bring the rookie into the huddle. This kid could be the second coming of John Elway -- I'm not knocking Cutler.

But either way, he's going to encounter growing pains that will take more than one month to straighten out. Either way, the Broncos can ill afford to experience those during the middle of their playoff stretch.

This is their last shot at a playoff run before they lose a year or two to rebuilding the offense. Smith and Nalen are about done. Next year, it's time for a wholesale revamping of the offense. Those two will need to be replaced. Neither of the Bells is a viable option at running back. Cutler will need some time to grow.

It would seem Plummer would be the best short-term option if the team has any hope of making the most of this last chance.

Instead, Shanahan seems intent to scuttle the season by pushing the panic button way too soon.

An airline gripe

2006-11-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

I have a proposal that might revolutionize airline travel, making it a much more comfortable experience for the vast majority of passengers.

Let's eliminate reclining seats. From now on, all seats stay in their upright positions not only for takeoff and landing, but for the duration of flight. End of story.

Listen, I understand the seats possess the reclining function. In an ideal world, we'd all kick back and put our feet up on an ottoman while we gallavant across the country at 35,000 feet eating truffles and filet mignon.

But the financial reality of the situation is the airlines now treat us like cattle, allotting us no more space than sheep get in the trucks on the way to the slaughterhouse and feeding us peanuts, if we are lucky.

You would think passengers would treat each other with just an ounce of respect and/or dignity. We're all in this together.

Unfortunately, there are too many people out there flying coach who deign themselves more important than the rest of us. They refuse to adapt to the era of reduced leg room and are adamant about claiming more room for themselves, even at the expense of fellow travelers.

These are the same people who logjam the boarding with their futile attempts to cram overstuffed suitcases into the overhead bins. They couldn't fit them using hydraulic jacks, but they just don't get it. They sit their pushing and pushing with dumbfounded looks on their faces.

So they get into their oversized arses into their undersized seats and immediately thrust themselves into my lap.

It should be noted: I am an average-shaped fellow. At 6-foot-1, 180 pounds, I probably represent the average male traveler. And when that seat swings back, you might as well opt to crush my kneecaps with a vise.

Seats can land crippling blows.

I love when their seat actually balances on my knees. The unruly passenger often becomes agitated that their seat cannot reach the fully reclined position, and they push back with all their might, as if they are rodeo performers trying to stay on the bull.

There's no hope of unfolding my tray table with the yahoo in front of me riding in the lap of coach-class luxury, no shot at reading a newspaper or magazine. On United, the quarters are so cramped, it is difficult to read even a book in such conditions.

My only recourse is to repeatedly kick the offending seat and make the flight as miserable for the Pig Vomit in 4A as he/she has made it for me.

I think I could be elected to public office by a wide margin if I ran on a platform of this lone issue.