Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Helicopter Ride, Part 2

I've just been over to my helicopter-hating brother's blog and had to laugh at his video response to my first Helicopter Ride post.

He writes: "The video below captures my true feelings about flying.Like the ride described by my sister, we are flying high in the mountains above a glacier. Yes, it is pretty. See the beautiful blue glacial lake? Now see the helicopter fly downwards at breakneck speed like a demonic roller coaster that has jumped the track. Now see the man clutching the seat as his heart tries to jump free from his chest. Now see the response he gives the cameraman for filming said event...."

You see, diversity is what makes family so great. Me, I grin my fool head off when I leave the ground. I love that perilous feeling when the helicopter banks and tilts on its side as you circle a mountain-top.

My brother...loves it, er, not so much. At least, that's what I got from his eloquent hand-gesture gesture to the camera-man on his helicopter ride.


Mind you, I don't have to get in a helicopter routinely as part of my job (he's a forest technologist, otherwise titled as the Grand High Treeplanter.) Our pilot (who owns a logging company) showed us some crazy mountainside spots where heli-loggers are sometimes required to land and honestly I wouldn't really want to try to disembark in any of those places.
No, I think I'll just sit back in my comfortable seat and enjoy the ride.

We flew over Mount Washington, somehow looking far less large without its crown of snow and with all its summer-bald ski-runs on display.

We flew over some of the logging areas near Cumberland---it all looks so neat and tidy from above. (It's much uglier from the ground, trust me.)
From our vantage point near Cumberland, we could see Kim's house!

Then we flew down-island towards Union Bay and flew over the log-sort there. We skimmed very low over the water, like a scene out of the old Beachcombers TV show titles, and some of the seals sunning themselves on the logs dived into the water as we approached.

Other seals just regarded us lazily, as if they couldn't care less that a strange metal bird was hovering beside them.

Now we were starting to head for home, back over my town and then....


....OVER MY HOUSE! :)

See where that red car is turning the corner? The house surrounded by shrubbery is mine. It looked so cute from up high. We circled around twice.

The coolest thing about seeing my house from a thousand feet up was that I couldn't spot a single weed in my yard....

12 comments:

Tai said...

LOL...couldn't spot a single weed! Nope...oooh, there's one!

Are you sure Adam wasn't flying with ME that day? Bet it felt like it!

kimber said...

Your house IS cute, even from a terrestrial vantage! And I must say, those are some lovely, lovely lakes!

Ian Lidster said...

Terrific pictures, my friend. An aerial view of my hometown. May I steal some of them from your blog. I'd like to have them on file. Only been up in a chopper once, for an overhead pot surveillance with the RCMP when I was at the paper. It was very noisy but kind of neat.

Mz.Elle said...

Ohh wonderful pictures!
I love that you got to fly over your house,hee hee

Dagoth said...

Hi Spider

Before reading the last two paragraphs, right after reading "Over My House" I looked at the last picture and said to myself, "Now which house is Spiders?"... "Well thats easy, it must be the one with all the green shrubbery and growing things". Now how did I manage to get that one right...:)

Sounds like you got a most awesome birthday present...

Sugar. said...

Oh, how I miss home! Great pics! Looks like it was an awesome ride! I have yet to fly in a helicopter *sigh*.

Happy belated B-day!

Pol* said...

Great stuff! Great pics! I would say more, but the others all got it down already...

Jocelyn said...

You are a minx! I see it in your eyes. And now that I have aerial footage of where you live, I'll be right over. I won't comment on any weeds in the yard, though.

Lovely photos. You could draw maps of the region based on them.

Mel said...

wow what a cool gift!

Love the pics ! And the seals :)

sage said...

what a neat birthday present--I loved the photos

OB Juan said...

WOW, the log sort sure brings back some meories - my old stomping grounds!

Great pictures!!!!

www.zipaviation.com said...

You are so lucky to experience this tour.