Letters, we get letters...

Got an email from an old friend. One of those sorry I'm late but happy holidays deals, and for as many as I've been sending I fully understand. Some folks use things like email address books and the like but email from me to you has always been a private affair because I'm just not a mass-mailing kind of guy.

Anyhow, Tim is recovering well from some health problems and remains a testament to live how you want because you're gonna die anyway. Exercises each day, has his meals prepared by a dietician, doesn't smoke, drinks only socially, yadda blah.

And has a heart attack once every couple years.

Scared the crap out of us at first, but most of his friends have come to the conclusion that heart attacks for Tim are severe cases of the flu for other people, and we take the news of each of his stays at one hospital or another with crossed fingers, a hale & hearty get-well-quick card, and forget about it.

Tim is independantly wealthy and for years raced cars as a hobby. Made some money doing it too, but to him it was nothing more than pocket money because we're talking seriously loaded here. Got his own plane a decade or so back and his email caused me to remember the first time I flew with him.

Beautiful day to fly. Crisp, bright and fresh. We get into this small contraption with wings, don't ask me what kind of plane as I am too lazy to look it up and do not remember, and fasten ourselves into what had to have been an 8-point harness rather than the flimsy little seatbelt-shoulder harness yahoos. He's letting the engine warm and tells me that if I need it, there's a motorcycle helmet behind my seat.

?

"A lot of guys get killed being tossed from the plane," he tells me, "and head injuries are a bitch."

Okay. So we take off and I'm looking for the special PUT HELMET ON NOW blinking light but never found one. We're humming along, and as we get over the no mans land areas far away from cities he begins to descend.

"You know I like speed." He tells me. "Going way low gives me that whoosh feeling, ya know?"

I knew. I was beginning to get the whoosh feeling myself but he paid little attention and went lower and lower still.

"Almost crashed the damn thing not too far from here one time," he went on, "didn't think anyone was around but...what the hell was that?"

I answered that it was just a cow, Tim, and he continued with one dreadful flying story after another. We landed just swell thank you, and he didn't even need the landing gear to be fixed that time.

Here's to Tim and his deathwish. May he never get it, and most of all, may I never be with him if he does.