The eagle, the courageous and the blind.

How’s your vision?

You can see clearly if you know what you’re looking for. And you’d have to know what you’re looking for to see the most significant thing in this picture.

It’s a light post, right? Just a big old light stanchion, in this case, on the ramp in the gate area at Orlando International Airport. Is that it?

Look again. Hard to see, but on top of that light post, patiently, quietly and with silent dedication to his task: a bald eagle.

He’s pretty well known among the ground staff and many of the flight crews who pass through the airport. I look for him when we taxi in; he’s usually perched there between flights, something I can relate to, but most folks at the airport don’t know he’s there.

Probably they don’t know because they’re too busy attending to their own travel, their own vacation or business or whatever reason they’ve come to the airport. Not surprising, really.

Unlike the solitary eagle, this is hard to miss and in fact this is mostly what you see in the Orlando airport. But more important than the overweight sunburned vacationers is what makes the magnificent eagle  so difficult to spot: quiet pride, dedication, deadly strength, deliberate discretion, maybe even a camoflauged exterior that blends in with the surroundings. Qualities that like the perch on top of a light stanchion are difficult to see unless you know they’re there and are willing to look hard to see them.

But I do. Maybe because I look with different eyes, because I care about what the solitary dedication and quiet pride in an obscure picture can show you if your eyes are open and focused.

Maybe since unlike most travelers, I’m not there for my own purposes, and as with the Orlando airport, I’m there a lot and so I see things, I take time to look for things others passing through don’t consider. Like the eagle.

A light stanchion, a pay phone, saying goodbye to families–you just have to look, and care. But I have to say, it’s more than just seeing what’s in front of your face. What you don’t see, but which if you care, you know is even more important.

I see this too. On our airline ramp, as one of our fallen eagles makes his way home. Not from vacation, or business, or whatever reason most people fly these days. But from sacrificing everything in the world for you, me and the unseeing regardless. Whether or not we care, or see, or know. The price is paid daily, by our best, brightest, youngest, most courageous and dedicated.

I don’t have a picture of this, but I can’t forget the image of our ground crews as reverently as humanly possible, removing a soldier’s coffin from my jet’s cargo hold, then solemnly placing it on a special, curtained cart to proceed to a waiting, devastated family downline. I don’t have a picture, because I’m usually standing in reverent silence near the cargo hold.

I stand on the ramp, escorting the military escort who stays faithfully with the remains in transit. Then, after paying my respects, I go upstairs into the terminal once again. And that’s the part I hate.

Because there in the terminal, no one knows what’s going on below, on the ramp. No one sees the eagle, no one looks; everyone’s about their own vacation or business or trip. If it were up to me, the flag draped caskets would be raised into the terminal and solemnly carried through while every unseeing self-absorbed passenger in the lounge put down their cell phone or iPod or laptop and stood in quiet respect for the best and strongest among us sacrificing all so that we might go about our travel, our lives, our future. But that’s just me.

I guess it all comes down to what you see, and what you look for. Anyone can see the eagle, and everyone should. Thank God, it’s there regardless.

Donate time or money to the U.S.O., the organization that cares for our military men and women: click here.

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Just don’t ask . . . and I won’t have to lie to you.

God almighty, the brain cells I extinguished in the Hofbrau Haus.

After I graduated from college, I had almost a year to cool my heels before going to Air Force flight school. So, I ended up in a job as a desk clerk in a hotel near Munich. I’d had six years of German in school, could read and write German pretty well, but there were two major problems:

1. I didn’t really know squat about German history in general or Munich history in particular.

2. I realized that even though I knew the language, everything out of my mouth sounded to the Germans like what I hear from the guy in my yard with the leafblower who I can hardly understand.

This was a problem because as part of my job, I was supposed to lead city tours for guests who requested a guide. My boss “Frau Doris” gave me a cheap info book and shoved me out the door with camera laden guests. I came back six hours later and told her I couldn’t lead any more tours because I really didn’t know jack about half the stuff we were seeing–and that the guests were asking about.

“No problem,” she said,  glugging down her daily liter of vodka–really, she never would have hired me had she been sober. “You just make something up.”

“What?”

“Yes, just make something up. They won’t know.” She fired up another cigarette. “And by the time they figure it out, they’ll be 6,000 miles away. So what do we care?”

I’ve stored that away in my Important Realization File.  And many tourists now show their pals pictures of the distinctive architecture in Munich:

Those twin minarets are a result, they tell their friends smugly, of the Turkish invasion of 1200 b.c..  Well, at least that’s the first thing that came to my mind when they asked. But sooner or later–and 6,000 miles away–some knowledgeable person gutting it out over their boring vacation pictures would finally say, “What?! There was never a Turkish invasion of Germany.” What did I care? It shut them up at the time.

I bring this up to illustrate a point: most of the time, if I don’t know, it’s probably because I really don’t care. So, it’s better if you don’t ask me in the first place. Yes, this extends to in flight.

I don’t want to spoil anyone’s childhood or anything, but here’s the truth: my P.A. in flight–you know, the “this is your captain speaking” cliche they use on TV but is kind of useless since I actually have a name–is canned because it’s easier for me to do over and over ad nauseum. So, I make up a few cities we’ll be flying over, add our flight time for an ETA, and the weather is always “partly cloudy” and whatever temperature I guess it should be. Then when we land, if the weather’s garbage, you will have to accept that this is the part that’s cloudy in my “partly cloudy” report.

Don’t even start with the “what are we over” crap either. Here, you tell me:

Okay, what street are you on? Can’t tell? Either can I–and this is what I’m looking at to navigate your jet five miles above your city or state or whatever. No wait–there it is!

Right? Are we good now? And yes, it’s partly cloudy–this is the part that isn’t cloudy. Plus whatever temperature I make up because it’s kind of a pain to convert degrees Centigrade to Fahrenheit.

The actual weather at our destination? Here you go:

Isn’t “partly cloudy” a lot easier to deal with? We’re going anyway and I’ll handle this when we get there.

Now, I could go on all day about Munich fables, plus don’t even get me started on the translations! Once, after drinking with a guest, he–okay we–decided that it would be funny if I wrote his wife the note she needed for a hairdresser in town and in German, made it say “bitte mein kopf rasieren.” Which means “please shave my head.” Seemed pretty funny till she returned with a crewcut. Thank God it was a weekend so Frau Doris was drinking at home and couldn’t fire me.

Maybe you want to stash all this in your “Important Realization File” and reflect on it briefly before you reach for the call button to ask for information.

Any other questions? If I don’t know the answer, I’ll sure find out for you. Or more likely, just make something up. Still want to ask about our arrival time? Didn’t think so. Now you’re catching on.

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Sent in by an alert traveler, this begs the question, “Anyone feel a draft in here?” plus, of course, “what were you thinking?”

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Today was a good day for recording and mixing. Do you want comatose, or Spinal Tap? Both, you say? Here’s the former

Tempest (Think ocean, storm, rocks, waves . . .)

And here’s the latter

Monstrous (Fire up that bong)