More than words

The Lament

Harvest Moon Country Friday, July 12, 2002

The eyes are the window to the soul or so I have been told. And yet who among us has not seen the individual at his most impressive walking with stick or guide dog. A person who believes that they are living life to the fullest and have conquered their fears and knows the joy of that accomplishment.

Eighteen years post radial keratotomy operation with its glare night and day. A moon that has eight other quarter moons that are displayed to the top left and present themselves in a downward arc, propagating in diminishing appearance until we’re back to the moon at the bottom center right.

Does that make any sense to anyone else who doesn’t look through eight radial keratotomy cuts?

You never know what it’s like until it happens to you. It happened to me one eye at a time.

Dr Morlege insisted that I try it first? Try looking through glasses with one eye healing from refractive surgery and the other hanging on to the old vision. The experience was some sort of half in half out the door visual experience that made it difficult to take a step off the side walk to the street.

You can’t undo the cuts.

I had to make it work I had a new career as a locomotive engineer; it was an exciting time.

I had my own 12,000 ton coal train 115 cars, five locomotives, 15000 hp and 178 miles of mostly new track that ran through the harvest moon country of eastern Wyoming, a High Plains desert now, it was an ancient seabed and now a topography shaped by the last ice age. The loaded coal trains, leaving the mines of Campbell County rolled through the undulating territory south towards Douglas Wyoming. Crawling along at 10 or 12 mph as we would climb the washes and then a 45mph sprint downhill until the next hill.

Just a few miles outside of Douglas we descend a winding track of welded continuous rail into the Platte river valley, by Bridger junction and the old Chicago Northwest connection, where the Platte River spreads out to make the Glendo reservoir, then descending one more time until the track is at river grade through Wendover Canyon crossing over the North Platte River into Guernsey Wy at the end of the Gillette to Guernsey run.

After the R. K. surgery I could not be outside without sunglasses; cloudy day, sunny day, winter’s day or summer. The starburst and halos-night time glare either sprang from or surrounded all the lights in my night time environment and became a challenge I had to overcome. It was like a dirty pair of soft contact lenses had been permanently attached to my eye balls.

The worst that it got was on a double mainline with a long siding to one side or the other with three trains moving at three different speeds, in two different directions. During the day this is not a problem but at night the conflicting visual references induced vertigo or more commonly known in the aviation industry as spatial disorientation and could come on suddenly with all the panic and fear that vertigo can induce.

Exciting times, one return trip pulling empties up the hill out of the Platte River Valley just before the railroad crosses over Highway 59, I was looking at my rearview mirror and coming up out of the valley behind me on a training run was a B-52. Very surreal to see a B-52 in your rearview mirror, intercepting the locomotives and waving his wings the pilot throttled up to full power and those eight Pratt & Whitney's belched eight black exhaust trails. Exciting times.

I was a pilot myself and during instrument training, what they call under the hood training, I had learned to shake off vertigo, to trust my instruments and their readings and conquer the fear and the feeling of loss of control. The lessons served me well in the nighttime running of a train with few outside visual references or when those that I did have were lost in star patterns and halo and glare from inside and outside light sources.

The railroads worked us 60 and 70 hours a week and fatigue, burnout, employee turnover and train crashes were acceptable losses to the management. Unless the crashes made it to the press then everyone would take notice. Then you have the press asking politicians pointed questions and for awhile you could lay off for day or two with out being threatened with disciplinary action.

Then you have this informed consent paperwork that hangs over the experience to intimidate you and threaten to bring on the wrath of their lawyers if you even think of complaining. Ignorance is bliss to the corporate world that hides behind legalisms in their superior position in the modern world, insulated protected until finally the statute of limitations absolves them of any a liability.

Dissatisfied customer to say the least. Many of us should not have been picked as candidates for refractive surgery, especially RK.

When I first heard of lasik my first thought was that I wished I had waited. That was 10 years ago now that I have found SE, I find that some people are still wishing that they had waited for a new and better procedure.

So where am I going with this? The change in US Army policy will bring an inevitable increase in RS numbers mostly young people and I hope mostly happy with the results of their eye surgery. Those of us who have to live with an unsatisfactory result from Refractive Surgery could become lost in the statistics. Surrounded by the commercial hype, Government policy changes that could move millions into the RS market and a feeling that I, will be lost as the statistically insignificant.

If the Railroad Retirement Board grants my occupational disability as I hope, then I guess I will go find something else to do with the rest of my life. If they (RRB) don’t - I will still find something else to do and thinking all the while that this life is sure going fast.

I sit before my only candle
Like a pilgrim sets beside the way
Now this journey appears before my candle
As a song that’s growing fainter the harder that I play
But I fear before I end I’ll fade away
But I guess I’ll get there though I wouldn’t say for sure --------- Jackson Browne

Miles Mulloy

That was ten years ago, Railroad retirement is a good thing , convert your auto to CNG , it is still exciting times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHRKUHPLNU corprate video of the first train over the coal line
http://visionsurgeryrehab.evecommunity.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/3686055494
some people who have had bad out comes after refractive surgery

The Great (soap opera) Romance

She said,

My nose is too big and my breasts…. Too… far apart

I have a bad back …and one.. leg is.. shorter.. than the other


He thought,

You forgot the buck teeth

She glared and said,

There once was a lady named she
Who didn't really care for the sea
But the mountain she loves and always dreamed of
A house a home in a tree

But despite all her plans
She met a young man
Who made music and made her love him

Now this pissed her off as a young man named O`Goff
So she turned her love lights to dim

And though she was determined
To do well as a hermit
He decided he just wouldn't give her

The choice for the choosing
A love for the losing
And they`d live happily there in after

Now the courtship was lusty
Though they wasn't too trusty
And the kisses flowed like a river
An kooshla macree
Will always be dear to me

Now the moral is clear
Though the rhyme brings a tear
And we all know the end to this story
Be happy be sad be glad or be mad
But live in a tree with the dear


He said,

It was our first kiss
Breathless and passionate
The master miss - of.- a boy in bliss

Gratifying………… never lying
What she loves… is my tireless trying
What…I pilot ------ yet never flying

We loves the lust…. but lament the trust
Her hero… my dream girl, but love, is a bust
From the Badlands of Dakota to Oklahoma red dust

We try…. and we try….. but never to cry
The love of my life…. till the day I die
Our life..passes, in the, sound of a sigh

Your voice calls my name an interested glance
I do take the chance for the great romance
Now she's turning 60 and I still want in her pants…..!

Michal Doyle says

I knew I knew I knew by now I knew better

I knew what to do on the immediate receipt of your letter

Don't open it don't even receive it
OK go ahead and read it but don't you dare believe it

You don't love me I don't care what you wrote
And I don't love you I don`t care what you thought
I should ignore you put you in your place
OK I meet with you tell it right to your face

You don't love me I don`t care what you say
And I don't love you I got over you just the other day
I'm not interested in the same old stories
Don’t talk so fast
OK one more time but honey this is got to be the last

No I don't want a drink I don't drink anymore
OK a bourbon but cut me off at four
I can`t afford to let my heart to get trashed
OK one more time but honey this is got to be the last

You don't love me I finally learn the truth
And I don't love you since I have before my youth
Now all our mistakes are finally in our past

OK one more time but honey this is got to be the last.

The good old days

Is it possible they could be back for a while?

Thinking about the time that I was flying low over the tulip fields of Mount Vernon Washington;

And I know - it was totally a no-no - but we sure were having fun and I was following a Robinson B1 RD and we were flying in formation and playing follow the leader. I had paid for a coworker to have a short introductory ride in ultralights.

Arlington Washington is just down the road from Mount Vernon Washington where there are thousands of acres of tulip fields. Giant splashes of color from 1000 ft. in the air, as viewed from our ultralights. Following one of the head guys of the Robinson's B1 RD's and my coworker we headed out from Arlington Washington for a short flight to the coast and over the Mount Vernon tulip fields.

The B1 banked and descended sharply and what fun that was to follow that move and in seconds we are in a low-flying formation only feet above the tulip fields. As we flew over the tulips on our right side were some long tables, where a couple of women were standing there working. As we flew by at no more than 10 ft. off the ground and 50 ft. from the women, I looked over to waive, but they never looked up or acknowledged in any way that two ultralight airplanes were flying by 10 ft. off the ground and 50 ft. from them.

Coming up to the end of the tulip fields was a few lines of electric and telephone wire on your typical telephone poles. I had just watched the B1 RD pull-up and head for altitude and the coastline. I firewalled the throttle and pulled back on the yoke, my little 40 horsepower 447 Rotax Super Cadet pulled me right up to 40 ft. above the telephone lines and the road and then seized.

Silence and 40 ft. instantly turn into 35 ft. and luckily I had hundreds of acres of flat farmland spread out in front of me to land. And just like that -- what - three seconds at the most I went from good time flying to sitting in the cockpit of my little plane, intact and on the ground, stunned at the silence and stillness. Still watching the B1 RD disappear into the distance I jump out of the plane and ran swinging my arms and my helmet hoping they will turn and see that I'm not behind them. But it becomes clear in seconds that they're not going to hear me hollering or see me................ and I'm not alone.

All my jumping up-and-down and running and hollering had captured the attention of a small herd of dairy cows. As an experienced farmhand, I had little concern for myself but mostly what those big old Holsteins could do to my airplane. I took a last look at the boys in the B1 RD and by this time they were just speck in the sky, and that herd of Holsteins was moving fast.

By the time I got to the airplane the cows were on me, easily overwhelmed by their size I was pinned between them and the airplane. Suddenly I have cows sniffing my butt, rubbing their head in my crotch, sticking their wet mucus dripping nose in my helmet, then the big one stuck her head into that group right in my face.

She sends that tongue out and runs it up into one of her nostrils and I'm thinking oh no, isn't the engine quitting bad enough? Then she sent that tongue out again and it went up the other nostril and I screamed -- not the tongue! And in that startled dairy cow moment they blinked twice and I was gone sprinting for the fence line with a half a dozen heifers behind me. My adrenaline sent me up and over the fence line and into the country road, of the tulip country, of Mount Vernon Washington, where I had just buzzed the community's prize tulip fields.

One minute it, you are on top of the world and looking down -- -- and then -- -- the next minute you are standing on the side of the road next to the tulip fields you just buzzed and those two women still had not raise their heads or acknowledged the event that had just happened or my presence in any way. So with a bunch of dairy cows standing at the fence looking at me with hungry eyes. It was a humbling experience to stick out my thumb that day. It was 1987.

So here we are in 2008 and hopefully only a couple of weeks away from the test flight of my series one project. Turning 60 this year and sometimes these days I sort of feel like I’m standing on the side of that road again wondering what the heck just happened.

http://www.eaa.org/ http://yankeflyer.com/default.aspx