Random Thoughts Along the Earth's Beltline

Sunday, January 25, 2009
We crossed the equator and have already seen the Southern Cross. Polaris has disappeared. The jury is still out on which way water in the lavatory is going to swirl. We should set a blue ribbon panel to work on that. Right now, we are at -1°(south) and 35° 22.1’ west. Before long we’ll cross the prime meridian (0° east, where the clocks start). When we get where we’re going, the coordinates will have changed in both signs, from north latitude (+) and west longitude (-) to south latitude (-) and east longitude (+):
Really, really lost is us:
It was a minus, not a plus.
So where we are, nobody knows:
Instead of heat, it really snows.
The navigator turned us right,
Which very nearly caused a fight
And left the entire crew bereft;
‘Twas not the right, but to the left. (I made that up myself. The end)



Monday, January 26, 2009
S 2° 50.6’ and W 32° 52.8’. Without the S and W, those coordinates are written -2° 50.6’ / -32° 52.8’. It must be entered into navigation functions in that manner, or you could end up half a world away. That is the point of the poem, above. At Cape Town, it will be -33° 52’ / +18° 14’
Signs are set in such convention
As to need a lot of mention:
Getting them wrong is filled with dangers
Of landing amidst unfriendly strangers.
Now east is least, and west is best
When altitudes are flown.
But east is hot when west is not
When position must be known.
Going north is positive, it’s really very sound,
But going south is negative—you’re standing upside down.
(I made that up, too; how do you think I always know where I am?…disregard that.)

The very finest cup of coffee EVER: an event known of but by few.
I do not guarantee the degree of truth in this story, but I know that at least part of it is true. It is about an event that caught up two pals, Glen Tisdale and Cooper Martin, ex-GIs, once-removed. Think of Alphonse and Gaston, or Laurel and Hardy. These guys had always been vagabonds and wayward boys. They were first to get into a “good deal”, always had an inside track and some get-rich-quick scheme, but they were true to their beliefs: they got into it first, and usually into trouble concomitantly. They were like two happy pups, always together running and tugging and finding trouble quite by accident. It was often a lot more trouble than they had imagined. Trouble never influenced them, though, because the only thing they could see was blue sky on the horizon. A trip from here to there was a piece of cake, because they saw only sky, and not the chasms, quick-sands, lawyers, and man-eaters to be encountered on the way. They were not stubborn in the sense of hard-headedness, but neither of them was in any way subordinate, so they were constantly banging their heads together, leaping before looking, and laughing like the devil. Neither was actually a leader—in the sense of “Follow Me”—but each had his own ideas. The problem was that sometimes the same fundamentally flawed idea entered each of those fertile noggins simultaneously. Then it was Katie bar the door.

Coop got into a high-stakes poker game in Tampa, and he won. That was unique to him, actually winning something, but he should have known immediately that there would be consequences to pay. He won a boat, a forty-footer with a single mast and a small diesel engine. It was made of wood planks, or so it appeared to me, and the accommodations included a glassed-in wheel house and a stairwell forward into a combination kitchen, bedroom, crapper, and map room. There were a couple of VHF radios and an HF, a small anchor on about 300 feet of chain, a rear-mounted winch, an air compressor, and an engine compartment. Most recently, a Cuban had owned that boat, so its history remained a mystery, although the Coast Guard, the FBI, and the drug-chasers all had it listed in their records. That sometimes indicates that the vessel had been seized for some illegality. (Could it have been drugs, or immigrants?)
Glen said, “Hey, Coop, that’s great: WE got a boat!”
Coop asked, “What’s this WE?”
Glen: “Because of the bet, Idiot.”
Coop: “What bet? What do you mean?”
Glen: “It was MY car and motorcycle that you bet against that boat. So WE have a boat.”
That’s the way they operated, never a thought of trouble, or losing, or consequences. Speaking of which:
They bought a book about boats and such, took some kind of exam that they were guaranteed to pass, registered the thing at the tax office and became mariners, more or less, in an impractical sort of way. “Hey, there’s Vega. We go north from here.” “No, that’s Sirius. We should head south.” There was no GPS available in those days.
Tapping the chart: “I think you’re wrong. Here’s where we are.”
Pointing with index finger: “No. We’re here.”
Looking aft: “ Well, we already passed that buoy.”
Looking forward: “No we didn’t. It’s up there.”
You get the idea. Life with those two would have been impossible for a wife or buddy.
“Did you get the oil changed?”
“No. You were supposed to do that. I was supposed to buy a compass.”
“No, dammit. I bought the compass.”
“Then we have two compasses. I bet mine’s better. Yours is the spare”
“Fine. What about the oil, Fool?”
“Oil, Shmoil. We can take out the filters and wash them in the ocean and use them again.”
“We can’t do that!”
“We can, too…”

For a year or two, they were fairly benign and learned a little maritime skill, mostly by shallow charter, fishing, maybe shrimping. But then, they began to go out into the ocean, out in blue water, deep water. I have often wondered how they paid bills, or if they paid bills, during the forays. I was not very close to them then, since I was still in the Air Force, and they had long-since separated, but I made a trip out there to see them after I read a note in the paper and then in the Air Force Times”
“ Guantanamo, Cuba: A USAF C-130F airplane has crashed in seas 100 miles south east of Guantanamo Bay, where the aircraft was scheduled to land. Two American fishermen witnessed the crash and have been identified as Cooper Martin and Glen Tisdale, both of Tampa. They searched the area for survivors and recovered one body. Sources refused to comment on the origin of the flight or its mission…”

Glen and Coop were in the area just above the deep trench parallel to and south of the island, but they refuse to say what they were doing there, except fishing. I do not believe that, and the Air Force does not really buy it, either. Their story is a good one, though, despite the legality or illegality of their presence.

Their heading was north when the C-130 first appeared, leaving its tell-tale exhaust against a lively blue and animated white sky. It would pass several miles east of them on its original course, but suddenly, the number four engine flashed and caught fire. It threw a prop into the inboard engine, apparently destroying it also. Coop saw the flame retardant spray out, but it had little effect on the external fire. The craft immediately turned toward their boat, descending. It was obviously going into the water. They could see the pilot fighting for control, but there was some damage to the flight controls. Just before they landed, the aircraft pitched up, pulled the wing off, and crashed on its back, sinking immediately.

The fuselage ruptured along its spine. Fuel tanks ruptured and there was fire on the water. The left wing continued both burning and floating. There were bits and pieces of flotsam—seat cushions, webbing, olive drab stuff…and a scattering of $100 bills.

They speculated immediately on what they saw: that airplane was carrying the payroll for the US military at Guantanamo. As the fires permitted, the two friends motored closer to the point of impact, Tisdale putting on SCUBA gear. They searched for survivors, but there were none. I believed them when they told me that their first concern was for survivors, because the payroll issue was nothing more than an idea, a spoken speculation. That money could have come from somebody’s wallet. They knew that the trench was virtually right under them because the water became suddenly blue. The airplane may very well be in that abyss, but they had to try to get to it, to get bodies out of it, even to secure anything that might be classified: they were very near Cuba, after all.

Tisdale tied a guy line around himself and went in. He could easily see the chasm, and he could see what might be airplane shrouded by mud. It was right on the lip of the abyss, almost tipping into it. This could be dicey. He swam down to the plane, which was entirely demolished: both wings off, belly up, rips and tears in a fractured fuselage. Oil and hydraulics percolated up, with a lot of debris: maps, cloth, a piece of orange and white parachute, canvas…Tisdale rolled the parachute canopy up in order to keep it from trapping him inside. At the end of the shroud was a staff sergeant. Tisdale pulled the body out of the plane and took him and his parachute up to the boat, now with the unlikely moniker Timid Terrapin. Coop took the dead man aboard as Glen started back down. This time, he got inside the airplane and could see the crew, all dead. An eel was already working its way inside a man’s mouth. Other eels were coming to lunch. He saw the strong box. It had been crushed but was still in one piece. Suddenly the airplane lurched and rocked, settled again, but it was going over the side soon. Tisdale worked his hand into the box several times and pulled out a wad of C-notes. It was in his mind to pay them selves on one trip, then come back and get a body, alternating until they were done. He found a helmet bag floating nearby and stuffed it with money, and the fuselage growled again.

He was reaching for another fistful of dollars when the sea had enough. Her great abysmal maw took the airplane and started down with it. Glen yanked back his hand and struggled to make the exit. As quickly as he was out of the airplane, it rolled over, closing off the escape route, and down she went, bumping and growling for thousands of feet. She was tipped over by a shift in current, maybe, or a tide, perhaps a flying fish happened by and tripped the equilibrium. Glen, though, had a sack full of money. He surfaced and handed the bag off to Coop. They spoke a few minutes, and Tisdale went back down to survey the area for bodies, loot, or equipment.

He heard high speed screws coming, but stayed down to finish policing up the area. He filled a sail bag full of gear, small stuff. In a short while, half a dozen divers came down toward him, US Navy guys. Overhead, the keel of a destroyer was alongside the tiny Timid Terrapin. Glen surfaced with an escort on either side of him. All three rolled onto the deck of the little boat. A navy man confiscated the bag, searching through it. A cop of some sort was also aboard and giving Coop a tough time. Coop offered Tis a cup of coffee, which tasted of brine, seaweed, old coffee, and…something unusual.

“You call this coffee? This is crap”
“Yeh. That’s what the nice policeman said, but I like it strong like that.”
“Well, I don’t.” and he threw it over the side.
“As long as I make the coffee, I want just like that.”
They haggled on, answering insinuating questions. Divers searched the underside of their little boat, the policeman the interior. Glen had to answer many questions about the attitude of the airplane when it went over. where was the staff sergeant when Glen found him? What things were pulled down with the airplane? How many men did he see on the airplane? What time, which direction, blah, blah. They would be called to testify, they and their boat were subject to search and seizure. And so on.

At last the Navy departed.
“What did you do with the money?” asked Tisdale.
“It’s in the coffee pot.”
“Man, that’s a really great cup of coffee.”
“I thought you didn’t like my coffee.”
“I love your coffee, but next time cut the seaweed.”
“How much did we get?”
“About two-hundred thou.”
“That’s not bad. We know where nine million more is.”