Austin and Helicopter Crashes

Morning all!

Well, Terminal 5 opened today at Heathrow. That went well didn't it? Hopefully they'll get it sorted before the Houston flights move there from Gatwick at the end of April.

Anyway, I went to do my HUET training in Lafayette, Louisiana a couple of weeks ago. HUET stands for Helicopter Underwater Egress Training. This is mandatory training for all those who travel offshore in helicopters, and was a lot of fun!

Because helicopters are nasty things that shouldn't really fly if you actually sat down and worked it all out, they have a tendancy to crash all over the place. When flying over water, they tend to dump you in the drink upside down, because some engineer thought it would be a great idea to stick the engines on top, thereby making them float upside down pretty well. This is just one reason you should always be deeply suspicious of engineers.

I drove the 3 and a bit hours east along I-10 to Lafayette, and stayed overnight in a very 1980's Hilton. The morning saw me in class for a couple of hours, getting a skim through different types of helicopter, how to jump off oil rigs, why you shouldn't work in the North Sea and other exciting and deeply reassuring things.

After a relaxing, and not at all nervous lunch, we changed and went to the pool, where we were duly strapped into a mockup of a helicopter fusalage, and dumped upside down into the water. If you got out, you passed.

Well, actually, it was a bit more gradual than that. We climbed in, and whilst the helicopter was held a couple of feet above the water we were told and shown how to jettison the doors and windows. The helicopter was lowered into the pool, and we had to unbuckle, and swim out of the openings - a piece of cake.

The next run saw us dropping in with the doors and windows in place. The idea was to wait until the inrush of water had stopped, remembering to take a breath before it came over your head, jettison the door, keep one hand on the exit and unbuckle with the other before swimming clear.

The next run was fun. In we went, but immediately rolled upside down. Water was pouring in - remember to take a breath - feel for the door latch - where is it where is it - it's by my knee it's by my knee - pull, hand on exit, unbuckle and swim clear... Phew! It sounds simple, and really is, but it's amazing how disoriented you get when underwater and upside down and strapped in. You know really thet the door latch is still by your knee, but your mind tells you that for some reason it is now moved, just because you're upside down... Here's the place we did it, if you'd like photos!

Following this run we did some more, but this time you had to wait (still strapped in and upside down) while the person next to you jetissoned the window and exited before following them. The window just pushed out with a good shove - but it only works if you're strapped in. If you do what I did and try to open the window after unbuckling yourself, you simply push yourself away from the window as there is not much to brace against.

After the drowning, we spent the rest of the afternoon floating around in the pool, inflating life rafts and jackets, learning how to climb in them, making floatation devices from your overalls and all manner of interesting things.

The water in the Gulf of Mexico is nice and warm (~80 deg F year round) so you stand a great chance of survival if you get out of the burning twisted pile of helicopter that's just screamed into the sea at a million miles per hour.

Anyway, on to more benign stuff...

Went over to Austin with some freinds a week or two later. Had a nice time in the Sunny weather doing a little wondering about Hamilton Pool, just outside Austin where there is a nice green natural pool in the limestone which is a good place to swim in the summer. Just took some pictures this time though, and spent a while trying to photograph turtles, but always just got a little too close causing them to plop into the pools.

It was very nice to get that feeling that summer is around the corner, with the Hill Country spring breeze, pleasant temperatures, blue sky and fresh smell - perfect.

Labels: HUET, Louisiana, Work

posted by Sam @ 8:57 PM 1 comments

Brief Catch Up...

Jesus. It's March.

Since I last put fingers to keyboard to finely craft a post here, I have bought Christmas presents, got on a plane back to the UK, made it as far as Gatwick before transferring to a British Airways Fog Busting Bus to Manchester, seen the family for Christmas, even seen the Germans (Shout out to top cousins Ashley and Lewis!), before travelling back to London, spending a week there for work, travelling back to Houston, settling back into the routine for a brief 2 weeks before starting a new job, doing a little local flying before travelling to Geneva and onwards to Morzine for a Ski Holiday with the parents and Tom 'n Megan. Back to Houston a week later, and the following on board another plane to Santiago, Chile for a quick work gig, back to Houston for 2 and a half weeks to pick up the new job for a bit before back to Santiago again.

I have been back in Houston for nearly a week now, and have just about unpacked and got my apartment back to looking reasonably presentable again, although the odd sock still loiters under cushions awaiting a trip to the washing machine.

So, yes, it's been busy, and I've had little time to get bored, although have just recently been thinking about spending vast amounts of money that I don't have on some property. We have an ancronym at work - OPM. It stands for "Other People's Money" and I think it sounds a great idea. I should head down to have a word with the nice folks at Wells Fargo Bank about getting myself a mortgage. I just think that I should get some tangible assets behind me.

With this new-found ambition, I headed out on Friday (day off) to have a little look at some of the new apartments that are being built near work. There's one that I really liked, but looks like I slightly misjudged the market - it's $720,000, which needless to say is just a little more than I can afford right now! Ah well... Back to the drawing board... There are lots of lower priced properties around here too, a little further out of town, but Houston is a bit weird for holding real estate value over time - as there are no planning restrictions or zoning laws, new developments appear all the time, so areas can drop in value quite substantially after as little as 5 years. Not what I want in an investment.

So maybe I should just keep renting - it's a great for no hassle...

Anyway - back to the opening paragraph...

Skiing this year was in Morzine, not far from Cluses and Geneva. We had a great self-catering Chalet on the slopes on the edge of Morzine Village and right next to the lifts. As the snow in the Alps was pretty bad this year, we were lucky to be able to ski from the door, but we could and did all week. We had a huge dump of snow one night which made for one of the best powder days I've ever had the following morning. The holiday was marred somewhat by Mum managing to wreck her cruciate ligaments whilst getting off a chairlift on the first day. A really annoying injury, and potentially quite serious, necessitating an emergency evacuation from the slopes and an ambulance to a clinic where X-Rays were duly taken, and hundreds of Euros extracted for crutches, a leg brace and various drugs. Recovery is proceeding well, but these things are slow.

The Alps really are amazing, and it's great that we've got the opportunity to go most years.

Once back in Houston, I only had 3 days back at work before heading off to Santiago for another session speaking about Petroleum to the Graduate Programme. Again, it went down really well, and I had a great time, this time spending a lot of time pounding the streets of Santiago. The city is really busy, bustling, with plentiful parks and fountains, but at night the parties start late and go on until daylight. I went to see the statue of the Virgen (yes, that's how they spell it!) Mary standing atop San Cristóbal hill. She looks out over the city of Santiago which sprawls along the foothills of the Andes. The statue is partly the work of French sculptor Bartholdi, of the US Statue of Liberty fame.

I repeated the trip just last week, this time spending Saturday there as well, which was yet another opportunity to see more of the place that I had before.

Labels: Apartment, Chile, France, Houston, Travel, Work

posted by Sam @ 12:07 AM 2 comments