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> Readers' Tips and Tales
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Tuesday, June 17 Gonzo Congo
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Debra Lovell |
R.I.P. in Disneyworld?
my husband and I were just discussing this on our last vacation. I plan to be cremated and I thought I'd have the ashes divided up among my friends and have them scattered in places that are dear to me or also places I never got to (hopefully there won't be too many of them when the time comes). Potential sites include my hometown, a sleepy little burg in the rolling hills of southern Indiana; the German Alps; Manhattan; some stunning ocean beach, someplace warm; the North Shore of Lake Superior; and Chicago, maybe over the Michigan Street bridge. I'm still working on the list. As much as it's reviled by real travellers, I think it'd be kicky to drop a little dust at Disney World. Just open up the bottle and shake it out while you ride through the Haunted Mansion! I could hang with those ghosts for an eternity! Tony Swallow |
Great old rides (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, whatever)
i had an old 3-cylinder 2-stroke Saab with freewheeling, that I drove in Kenya (drive on left, steering wheel on the right) That car was wonderful -- built like a tank, front wheel drive smooth bottom could 'swim' through mud that would trap anything else. Driving on rolling open road in freewheeling was a joy unequaled in all my driving experience. Like coasting on a bicycle -- working with the terrain. Of course the scenery helped a lot. I especially remember coasting down into the Rift Valley approaching Lake Nakuru full of pink flamingos -- beautiful. Don Bradley |
Fear of Flying
of course there are zillions of "airplane" movies and NONE about bathtub deaths, but the point is that why do people persist in their irrational fears and in their clearly erroneous ways of decision making. Does the poster of the "User's Manual" comment NOT really know that the use of checklists, particularly in emergencies, is a GOOD sign. Due largely to complexity, fatigue and hypoxia, most aircrashes are "pilot error", but even the Gimli Glider incident shows that a whole series of pilot errors can be undone by a pilot's flying skills. The trouble is that nowadays, all the pilots are in it for the money and very few have any ability or experience in flying: they only know how to sit and watch computers that are flying the plane. The systems are so reliable and so redundant that by the time anything goes wrong, the pilot has a difficult job in rejecting the concept of infallibility and in deciding what to do. For true aviation safety we must re-instate the one-legged stool. Unplug the computers, make the pilots fly the planes: the only experience pilots actually get in handling difficulties now occurs only in simulators (when they are prepared for and expect a problem). The problem is that fuel is so expensive the airlines WANT the computer to adjust the throttle forty times a seccond so the plane levels off EXACTLY at the right altitude, rather than having a clumsy pilot, waste fuel by overshooting/undershooting with his lousy CARBON based senses and costing the airlines extra money by having the more skilled and reliable SILICON based system being turned off. How many passengers would fly if they knew that the moment the pilot touches the yoke, the computers are turned off and that therefore the pilots do not even fly with their hands on the controls, they only enter waypoints and altitude holds etc but never touch the controls. Bookmark Readers' Tips and Tales Issue No. 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8 |
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