What can I say… My name is Bob Salter. I am Captainbob's alter ego, or is it the other way around?
Anyway, it all started when I wanted to be older. Now I want to be younger. There was a time when Charles Kuralt, the CBS News Correspondent, made me and other television reporters of my generation self-conscious because we had so much hair. Now I am self-conscious of my Rogaine habit. For me, pride is about doing five different kinds of tongue tricks, most of which will make a woman blush, and having passed the trait down to one of my three children (who now can excite a boy's imagination.)
While I am bragging, twenty nine is how many rejections I received for my great American novel. Indy winner Bobby Rahal was in my Boy Scout troop, and I shared an elevator ride alone with Bill Clinton in Little Rock when he was Arkansas Attorney General and dating the hottest chick in our newsroom. Thrown in the deep end of Sunset pool the first time, I panicked. How was it that when thirty-something I went four consecutive years without missing a week of water skiing? There is this bittersweet recurrent dream: my son (now a hulking 6'3” 230 lb.) speaks to me as a 5 year old. His soft little boy's voice, the one I would have heard had I not been at the lake or the hangar.
I am able to write this now because inexplicably I zoom climbed while flying an ultralight low in a Texas canyon. An instant later, when I should have been, I was not clothes-lined. A nearly invisible power line sailed harmlessly inches below my feet. Is that God? It wasn't me.
Of course there are other what ifs… if my marriages had worked, if I stayed anchoring at KSAT, if I hadn't sued Belo, Inc., or hammered Sheriff's candidate Jerry Airola on live TV. What concerns me now is the annoying grinding noise my nearly new ten speed makes. Will this be my demise? After four hard spills, the value of past road rash and broken bone is the wonder of highway ahead; knowing already what smarts, and what is smart. So, crushing my prostate and other valuables, I ride the ride. What can I say?
I ran the ski course at 22 and half off. Interviewed Chuck Yaeger, James Michener, and yet-to-be President George W. Bush. Stood inches from the Pope. Soared with the Thunderbirds (twice). Wondered what it would be like to fly down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and then did it many hundreds of times. Shot a back course localizer to absolute minimums in a blinding thunderstorm in time to watch my daughter graduate from Texas A&M University. Pushed out hard, many times, on the top of an outside loop screaming at 200 miles an hour and -4.5G. Walked up to Tom Brokaw and collected an Emmy. Welled tear-filled at pictures of the house for which my youngest daughter worked so hard, proud it was so much nicer than where I live. Sat alone on an abandoned oil platform eighty miles off shore in a gentle breeze, reading for hours. Wedged myself back into my children's lives. Listened to the struggle in the back of my helicopter today as the medical crew pounded on the chest of a man who lay dying too far from the hospital.
The point is I pretty much got what I asked for.
I don't think there is fate… until one stops asking.
The views and opinions expressed in Captainbob’s Flight Log are solely those of the individuals expressing them, and do not represent the views of Classic Lifeguard, Classic Aviation or Air-evac Lifeteam, its management, or its parent company.
Captainbob examines the specific and shared duties of the flight paramedic and flight nurse, as he, Lissa Robbie, and John Bingham respond to a vacation tragedy at a south-central Utah dude ranch. A 54 year old ranch guest has taken a 25 foot plunge off a 'zip' line. Time is running out. Teamwork is the patient's only hope.
Captainbob sees a really expensive helicopter land at Page, Arizona airport only to discover he is rubbing elbows with adventure, and two really tired guys. They are pilots Scott Kasprowicz and Steve Sheik who are flying 20,000 nautical miles, crossing every meridian on the globe, in an effort to break the current record for circumnavigating the globe in a helicopter. Captainbob, in a historic interview (okay at least a fun interview) speaks with the sleep-deprived pair, and gets his picture taken with them.
Ride with Captainbob in the Bell Helicopter 407. Hop aboard the fast and maneuverable, BH 407 with Captainbob, Medic Topher Stuart, and Flight Nurse Ed Parry as they fly from Page, Arizona on to the Navajo reservation at Kaibeto, Arizona to care for a 25 year old man run over by car. The flight crew describes the medical, and performance capabilities of this rotary-wing workhorse.
Just days after the release of a four year study on Native Americans and alcohol abuse, Lifeguard One crew Ed Parry, Celeste Cottam, and Captainbob see the tragic statistics in bloody detail. Its the story of a killer party that turns Kaibito, Arizona and six Native Americans upside down.
At the gas pump, and in the scenic outdoors of Arizona and Utah, there may be nothing better than a motorcycle. Still, it's hard to deny that more motorcycles mean more motorcycle accidents. Join flight crew Ed Parry, Jered Hansen, Deanna Amoss-Lange and Captainbob as they see the statistics in painful detail aboard Classic Lifeguard One.
An experienced hiker chooses an off-trail path to one of the most exotic, and beautiful sights in the Grand Canyon: Tapeats Cave. One missed step ignites a life and death battle, involving National Park Service heli attack, and Classic Lifeguard One. Join flight nurse Lissa Robbie, flight paramedic Jered Hansen and Captainbob as they take part in a technical rescue that leaves them with visions of Tom Clausing, the medic killed in the Flagstaff, Arizona crash of Lifeguard Two in June, 2008.
When Classic Lifeguard crews get to the scene of an emergency, they must act quickly and wisely. Their mercurial methods are a product of years of training and practice, not the least of which is continuing education. The entire team gathers twice a year to take another step up the learning ladder of a science where no truth is absolute: emergency medicine. Join the Classic team as two terrible roll over accidents on the road turn lectures into more than just idle talk.
© 2021 Scott Salter
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