Dammit

 Travel blogs are supposed to be fun. Adventures. Cool things and beautiful sights. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they are. Then there's the one percent.

A friend of ours died in a crash this past week. Investigations are still pending, obviously, and will be for about a year, probably. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is our friend is dead.

What hurts is he was one of those guys. One of the guys who has been at it long enough, skilled enough, astute enough, and fast enough that we've all settled in and accepted that these guys are going to retire, not die. It's a small group ~ and it's even smaller now.

When discussing My Favorite, I often joke "Yeah, he's one of about twelve people in the country who can do (this)." Now, he's one of eleven.

Educated speculation is that he thought he had dropped his line but hadn't, so he was dealing with swinging weight he hadn't expected, sending him into a nosedive. Who knows why the line didn't drop or why he didn't know it (assuming that's what happened). Other, also educated speculation, is maybe it was a loss of tail rotor control. Another question.

My Favorite and I were on a staycation ~ more on that in a second ~ so agreed to lock it away and be very present with each other for two days, then feel when we got back home. That's what we did. Thursday and Friday, he received and sent texts, everyone checking in, everyone saying "I love you" in their own ways, everyone grieving.

We're back in the world now. He was a friend, so we are shaken, but he wasn't a daily part of our lives, so our foundations are fine ~ unlike so many other people's. Still, the industry is a smaller, lesser place than it was Tuesday morning. And we will miss him.

Fair winds, Dan.