Friday The 13th

The day began at 5:30 AM with the alarm clock. Dark outside. Got up and built a good fire in the wood stove and started cooking some coffee. Nikki and I turned on the tube and found out about the Continental Connection crash in Buffalo, NY. Too bad, I thought to myself.

The information began to stream in. The news media is aggravating after a crash. The reporters don’t know what questions to ask. They have these so call experts, usually former airline pilots or corporate pilots who like to get paid to speculate about the cause of the crash. They are so called aviation experts, but they are anything but that. I find them to be irritating blood suckers who get paid to speculate about something they know nothing about.

For me, I wanted to know just a few basic things: the weather at the time of the crash. Nobody asked that question. The size of the debris or impact zone, whether it was small or large, and what the shape of the wreckage field looked like. Lots of fire meant that there was fuel on board. It turned out that the debris field was about the size of one house. The plane hit that house pretty much vertically.

My take on the cause of the accident: structural icing resulting in the loss of control of the aircraft low to the ground with insufficient time to recover. The aircraft probably impacted the ground nearly vertical. Later, as the voice recorder was analyzed, it was reported that the crew was discussing the large amount of ice on the windshield and the wings. Other aircraft in the vicinity were reporting ice.

Again, too bad for everyone on board. I feel very bad for the families. The crew and passengers are at peace now.

After getting my wife off to work, I went to the gym. I tried to avoid talking to people as much as possible. The old guys always want to talk instead of exercise, which increases the amount of time I am in the gym. On a morning of an airplane crash, they always want to talk to me even more. I tried to hide from the obvious conversationalists as much as possible. I got a full work-out in and left.

I picked up my dog Hurk from my ex-wife, Tina, and brought him to my house. We all feel bad about Hurk. He is going to die soon. He has cancer and he is not doing well. We will have to make a decision soon, I fear. I am not looking forward to putting another animal to sleep.

Today is a wet and rainy day in Redding. We have snow forecast for Shasta Lake, but I am not sure we will actually see any. The day is about over now. We are snug inside our house. Reflecting on the crash in New York, I am thankful for my fairly boring day.