I took a lunch break from wire-brushing Robin's mast -- peanut butter and raisin sandwiches, as always -- and sat on the rear deck of the Forester. Above, three turkey vultures were gliding in a nice breeze. Their flight, as always, was beautiful to see, nearly perfect gliding combining elegant swoops and hovering in place as if painted there in the sky.
And yet, they are such a grotesque-looking beast up close, with their featherless heads and carion-ripping hooked beaks.
In nature if not in Hollywood, you don't have to be gorgeous to create beauty.

It is too cold outside to work on the mast. The temperature is around 40 degrees Farenheit and there is a breeze. Tomorrow and Wednesday are supposed to be near 60 degrees, so I've put off that work for then.
Last week, in a couple of hours, I used a circular wire brush on an electric angle grinder to remove about 30 percent of the easily-reached old paint job, down to bare aluminum. The wire brush took off the tips of a thumb and a forefinger of my heavy leather work gloves, but I escaped injury. I'm guessing the whole job may be completed in another 10 or 12 hours.
The next step will be to apply two types of chemicals to the bare aluminum. These should protect the metal from corrosion in the salt air.
There will then be three issues with which I must deal before the mast is again raised. One is the bolt that goes through the base to hold it in place. It's an inch-thick bolt threaded on both ends. The old one was sawed through in order to get the mast down. I have to acquire a new one. The second item is the electrical connections for the radar. Before I raise the mast, I'll have to be prepared to reconnect the dozen or so wires and shrink wrap them to prevent corrosion. The third issue is the roller furling. There is an odd bend in the part that attaches to the top of the mast, and I need to find a rigging expert to look at it and see if repairs are needed.
Those considerations visit my consciousness from time to time, worrying me as any as-yet-unresolved issue will.
At the same time, I should begin removing the thick, old bottom paint from Robin's hull. I'm not yet sure how I'll approach that -- a sander-grinder? a power scraper? hiring someone with a soda blaster? The first two methods require hard labor by me. The last requires hard-to-find money.
The bottom, which has at least some blisters, will need time for the water to drain from the blister cavities before I set about sealing the whole bottom and putting on a smooth coat of paint.
At the same time as the boat work is being done, I need to get into the next writing job. I've pretty much decided to combine two projects into one -- a new youth novel and a book about my father.
I made one phone call today to advance that project. I'll make another one, too. Progress some times can be slow.

I was digging through one of my desk drawers, looking for a large envelope, when I unearthed a sketchy Xeroxed copy of a hand-written report composed in 1974 by my late college friend, Bill Gartz.
Bill had manipulated his blood pressure test in order to be accepted by the Army flight school during the height of the Vietnam War. Once through school, he served a tour in Vietnam flying fixed-wing aircraft. After that year, he went through helicopter school and returned to Vietnam, flying gun ships and passenger helicopters, delivering troops to the fighting and back or flying cover for other choppers doing that work.
By 1974, the United States was drawing down its force in Vietnam and Bill found himself no longer needed in the Army. Back in the states, there had been no jobs for a chemist, the profession for which he had been trained, and after a while he had taken a job with Air America, the CIA's private air force.
Perhaps you recall, if you are old enough, the iconic photo of the helicopter on the roof of the United States Embassey in Saigon where refugees were huddled, hoping for a ride away from the collapsing city. Here (with apologies for missing segments that I cannot read) is what Bill saw.
"On the morning of the 29th of April, 1975, I awoke, due to incoming rocket/mortar fire in the vicinity of 259 (the USAID building), at 04:30 hrs. From the roof where 10 - 20 other people were, we could see fires in the Tan Son Nhut area as well as small arms tracer rounds throughout Saigon. Nothing significant occured until Air America helocpters started landing and shuttling crew members to the AAM ramp/operations area at TSN. I was on the second shuttle (Fosburg was the pilot) out of 259. We arrived at the AAM ramp, which was receiving 9incoming rockets/mortar fire, at 9:30 hrs. I immediately gathered my flight gear and luggage and placed it (uninteligible) there ouside the operations building were other people were placing the belongings. A short time later while we were waiting instructions, Frank Andrews came running in saying that the VNAF were taking our helicopters from the FCCS ramp. Myself, Collard, Genz (?), Vaughan & DeJesus grabbed our flight gear, and whatever personal belongings we could carry, which was minimal, and jumped on a helicopter (Freedman) that took us to the FCCS ramp. There were a few VNAF/ARVN in some aircraft and around the area. I took A.C. 115 and departed, along with two armed ARVN/VNAF who asked me to 'please help us'. Upon landing at the AAM ramp, Ed Adams disarmed and dispersed my univited passengers, and instructed me to depart the AAM ramp area. Since the Air Traffic (AAM/VNAF/NVA rockets & mortars) was heavy in the TSN area, I went downtown to the Brinks BOQ (Ha Ba Truri (?) Street) area and awaited further instructions which came shortly, telling us to find a suitable roof top to oand on and shut down to conserve fuel. I considered landing on helipad #'s 21 or 22, however, since there was no one on either pad, and I wasn't certain there were any Americans in either building, I decided to look for a more suitable place to shut down. It was then I heard Fosburg say that he thought the embassy roof top (H-749) where he was shut down, could hold two helicopters. I went over and landed there. Fosburg and I were invited down for some coffee. We tried to contact AAM operations by telephone but were unsuccessful. After an hour, we were asked to take some people to the Blue Ridge, which we were told was near NEWPORT. We both questioned the lcoation since the Blue Ridge was 20 miles off the coast of (unitel) a day earlier, an there was heavy fighting for 36 hoursin the NEWPORT area. We were assured that they ahd the location correct; fortunately for all concerned, they were never able to get the passengers together before we confirmed our suspection that the Blue Ridge was still off the coast. An hour after landing on H-749, Fosburg was directed, by V-01 operations, to another helipad to pick up some people . I departed an additional hour later, the time was now 13:00 hrs, with a load of eight American passengers for the DHO t4ennis courts (DAOTC). Upon returning to H-749, I was directed to shut down while more passengers were assembled. The Embassy was obviously having trouble getting people in position to be picked up on the roof. I don't know if they were having difficulty deciding who should go but every helicoptr had (unintel) ground time while loading up passengers. The number of passengers was not always as large as it could & should have been also. I tried to explain Williams [?] and his assistant that fuel was going to be a problem and that time could be running out so it would be best to maximize the loads and minimize the ground time. Fifteen minutes later, I departed with another load of 8 passengers (they really paid attention to me)for the DACTC, returning to H-749. I then made a few shuttles from H-749 to the DACTC. At 14:00 hrs I was directed to 35A. I didn't know where it was and didn't have a Saigon helipad map and no one on UHF or VHF radio could help me out, so I took an Embassy guide who directed me to H-21. I never did figure out what the 35A was. He kept showing me a piece of paper with 35A on it while directing me to land at H-21, which is where we landed. We departed H-21 with 20 people (6 Americns, 8 Vietnamese and 6 children) and headed toward (unintel). I passed on to VOI operations my intentions and that there were still 10 - 20 additional people on H-21. Within 15 minutes, one of our helicopters reported that he landed and cleared H-21 of people. When I arrived in the vicinity of the Blue Ridge, I was told to land at the Oklahoma City, which I did, with 100 lbs of fuel left. All the passengers, except the embassy guide, deplaned. After refueling, I headed back to Saigon. The time was now 15:30 hrs. Prior to landing at H-749, I checked H-21 for any additional Americans. There were 10 - 15 orientals peacefully sitting there but no Americans. Since Victor operations was direced me to H-749, and H-21 was reported cleared of people over an hour earlier and there was no American currently on H-21, I landed at H-749 to drop off the Embassy guide, waited 10 minutes for passengers for DAOTC. Victor Operations then directed me to 259 (USAID Building) where I made several shuttles to the DAOTC. The operations at 259 was very smooth with minimum gorund time and full passenger loads. When I was down to (uniteligible at length)at 259 and headed for the Blue Ridge. This time I was directed to the Midway, where I landed at 18:00 hrs and secured, since we were directed to be on the ships prior to sunset by ACP/(?) All things considered, AAM did an outstanding job. I only wish we had started earlir and that fuel was available in Saigon. The treatment I received during my nine (9) nights on the Midway was excellent. The communications or rather the lack of communications from Air America proved to be my only problem. After nine nights we still had no instrucitons , from the company, on what we shoud do with ourselfs or the aircraft. after arrival at the Philippines our processing smoothed out and we were on our way to HKG the following day. At HKG, the only backlog was at the travel desk which did a commendable service considering the extremely heavy work load. I wonder why AAM didn't get some additional help in this area. Any questions will be entertained at . . . "
Bill Gartz never did work as a chemist. He married his Vietnamese girlfriend, and he kept finding work flying helicopters in remote corners of the world. He died in a helicopter crash while one of his students was flying over an Asian jungle.

I returned last night from four days of skiing with college friends Charlie and Curt in New Hampshire. The weather was ideal and the snow conditions nearly perfect.
Since this was the first time since last February that I had skied, my skiing was at times imperfect, my control often borderline.
Skiing is unlike bicycle riding in that it all doesn't necessarily come back to you once you step into the bindings. But it is like bicycle riding in the sense that to do it successfully requires faith. Even more so than bicycle riding, skiing is a fine metaphor for how we succeed or fail in life.
I had skied from the age of five when I joined the ski team my freshman year in college. I was in great physical shape and, in the autumn training which involved a lot of running, I excelled. Once the snow fell, however, I discovered how inadequate I was as a skier.
But one team member, a senior who was an elite racer and who, today, would have been an olympic candidate, took the time to explain to me the fundamentals that every good skier understood. His name was Pat Cunningham, and that he stooped to encourage and instruct a hopelessly green and untalented kid speaks to his qualities as a human being.
What Pat told me was quite simple. Keep your (body) weight forward and on the downhill ski.
When your weight is forward, it is concentrated on the balls of the feet. When wearing ski boots, your shins are pressing firmly against the tongues. There is no weight on your heels.
Your downhill ski is the one nearest the bottom of the slope. In practice, when your weight is on this ski, if you tip uphill, you can catch yourself with your uphill ski. And if you tip downhill, you can simply slip that downhill ski back under you.
The issue is that most of us have a natural fear of falling and so our normal reaction is to lean uphill, away from the danger. We'd rather have our weight on the uphill ski. We'd rather be standing on our heels if they are farther away from the dropping landscape.
Leaning back, standing on one's heels leads to disaster. When the skis slip downhill, as they certainly will thanks to gravity, you are left with no way to catch yourself. That which supports you -- the skis -- have abandoned you and you fall.
In order to ski successfully and in control, you must lean forward and embrace the danger. And here to me is the metaphor. Success in any endeavor requires diving fearlessly into it, abandoning all reservations, flushing from your mind any potential negative consequences, adopting totally the confidence that you will succeed.
It takes me a few days before I can reach this blissful state every moment I am riding skis. And so, in any one run, I may be doing extremely well in the business of committing myself and, the next moment, be sitting on my heels, unconciously retreating from the constant threat presented by the slope.
Four days was not enough to get past the flaws.
But there were those moments, those exhillerating few seconds when, approaching the crest of an extremely steep pitch, I was able to throw myself forward, leaving feet behind, bending body in order to angle the steel edge of the downhill ski sharply into the firm snow so that it bit into the crust, directing the inertia of my plummeting body left or right, again and again, slingshotting from one turn to the next as the speed built.
In those moments of abandon lie ecstacy, the life fully lived.