The Double LifeBy Don Blanding

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.

And that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell

But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content
With hearth and home dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,
With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings

And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where… just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.
One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back,
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle brain)

But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "no,"
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's life.
The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins...

Cayo Hueso in November.

Its the only place I've been to where I ask for a "rum and ice" and the bartender doesn't look at you funny. On the rocks is a term when you want a dabble of reality.

The names of the places don't matter, and perhaps it might be a better idea to not tell of our friends down here.

There are three sides of Key West, and yes, believe me when I say it's true. The first is the one your uncle knows when he sips that margarita with his faded shirt he bought at Mallory Square. The cruise ships come and go, the tourists come and go, but when they're here, the bars are packed, the streets are lines, the music is roaring and the good times are had by all, perhaps because of the rules of engagement during a vacation far from home. Some leave with pictures, some with souveniers, others even leave behind their bar tabs and their virginity.

The second group is the people that work here. It's become a tourist town with the railroad and many of the people that work here have their own story. Some came down for the summer jobs ten years ago and never left, and others heard that working in paradise was better than living at home. They work in the daytime cleaning the bars from the night before, installing new toilets at the Hilton, and come nightfall, after the sun begins to go down, they work slinging drinks and waiting for a drunk tourist to stop staring at their chests. Life goes on like this and between the difficult hours in the pounding heat and humidity some can even afford the luxuries of fishing and drinking at a descent hour. They are great people, and each has a story of what brought them to Key West and where theyre headed after here...

The third, and perhaps the people we trade drinks with are a bit different and can't fall into eather category. Trucker is an old shrimp boat worker that lost his job when the bottom fell out of the market and wholesalers began farming shrimp overseas. Forty years later, a limp, a bum hand and a broken smile, you'd walk by Trucker without even noticing. Then there's the folks at a tiny bar that begin drinking at 7am. It's off the beaten path and perhaps you might even see the milk man stopping in on his way to work. Our friends do other things but sitting on the porch, blowing smoke watching the papaya grow is a favorite. Just sitting on the swing trading tales of how things have been. I'd love to tell you about the other people but perhaps it's better left to a conversation we might have with a cold beer, an afternoon or shit, maybe even at 7am over rum and ice. 

The air's in turmoil, the rain is soaking the land, and at 45,000ft we're above the worst of it.

We've been on the road for a few days now, travelling across the Heartland into foggy dirty skies of the LA basin and finally up to the northwest corridor where America hasn't yet been discovered.

We used to talk about alternative music, we made fun of the Starbucks junkies, and even threw a few cheap shots at the back country hicks that hadn't yet seen the light...

Between the snowy peaks and the Olympia river valley we let down our 42$M airplane at a place that hadn't seen a plane, much less a spaceship. Tom lent us his '73 suburban for the night. When Kristin asked him about gas prices and the middle east, he exhaled from his cigarrette and pointed east towards the Cascades. "It was all so easy then," he began. Like a Kris Kristofferson song he continued, "you must be from New York." He hadn't shaved in over a week and his dickies weren't stained from coffee. "Your politics and your priorities come from those recycled newspapers I bet..."

A few hours and several drinks into the bag we put some more coins into the jukebox. The sawdust on the floor kept her DC shoes from overtaking the pint glasses clanking behind the bar. It was dimlit but the christmas lights brought of most of the gray hairs from Tom's beard.

"If gas goes to $10 a gallon, you're probably still need to go places, hell you might even do some walking like you should."

Her parent's DNA had done her favours and she didn't need to walk much like many of the Florida vacationers, but she smiled and responded quickly in a Brooklyn accent.

"Hell, you easterners complain about the weather, snow, ice, heatwaves, hurricanes, but you can't control em...hell, some kid in all black wearing trendy glasses is probably typing on his apple right now about the injustices of life in the middle east and CNN will run a spot tomorrow on how life across thousands of miles needs 15 minutes of your thoughts. How many times have you people ever just sat back and said, shit," he paused as he sipped his domestic beer, "we've got it pretty good here." He was looking at the Budweiser Clidesdales trotting through a wintry heaven on a bar poster.

Perhaps Tom had never taken a steamer to the Old Land, perhaps he didn't even own a TV, but we spoke that night about the elk and deer in the cascades and his weekly trek into the mountain lakes and streams. His life seemed so simple away from hollow politicians and the intracacies of world travels.

"You can't let these assholes rent space in your head, don't let the bastards get you down. Tomorrow you'll be 20 years older wondering why you never did the things you promised yourself back in your youth. You'll realize the world will always change, and some shit, you might not even agree with."

We smoked cigarrettes and drank dollar pints with people that plowed land, fished the streams of america and painted the american dream in a way we only sell in magazines and novels.

It was a late morning when we finally left, and as we drove back we passed a kid tossing papers into the suburbs. Kristin looked over at me and offered me a smoke, Dave in the back didn't smoke but he lit one up too. We rumbled down the road burning gas and cigarrettes as the sun rose without saying much, each with a quiet grin...I'm sure somewhere NPR was reporting the news but there was a empty hole where the stereo had once been....

-jake

Mango Airways

Cowboy Boots.

Perhaps the most astounding thing about traveling is the tourist. We've all seen them, mocked them, or even snapped a memory they will take home in hopes to share with the loved ones back home.

A few weeks ago I took the tube in London randomly dropping in on parts of town and sharing a cigarette with a random 2pm passerby. I didn't take a camera with me to the London bridge, but just my cowboy boots and time to kill.

"I'll kick your American ass!" were the words I heard from just a few feet away. It was 3:30pm on a weekday and I had discovered London. A few coins bought me a stale draught and a tall wooden stool. Just beyond the London Bridge that Dicken's brought us, there's a forgotten tavern behind the fish market that reeks of beer and cigarette smoke. If you get lost among the old pebble streets and tall unlit alleyways deep in the annals of South London you'll find a heavy wooden door with no windows. It's one of the oldest speakeasy's in England and you won't find a sign outside; they don't sell postcards inside. It's a place where women hold their own and men stop in for a pint before they head to the factory, shipyard or other jobs you've never even heard of.

I took a drink of courage bought the two blokes a drink and sat down next to them. You don't buy people a drink you don't know. I ended up drinking the two warm beers. Tommy had a broken leg and used a cane to walk, the outcome of a bar fight just a few months past. The other was probably the one that ran his mouth, but from his awkwardly healed knuckles I let him. We drank alone for several hours with the sixty year old hag pouring us drinks. They both would lean over the bar screaming, waving their hands in conversation telling me about the London that doesn't make the magazines,newspapers or photos tourists bring home.

A few times I touched some nerves as the conversation ran into politics then football. We didn't once mention the museums, the places they'd traveled to or the the places I'd been. What we'd done in our lives, and what we did for a living was as imporant as who was buying the next round. As the tavern became more and more crowded we simply talked as three working types about the injustices of life and the aspirations perhaps we all share in common. They were there to watch the Barcelona game and soon the old hag behind the bar turned into three beautiful bartenders racing to keep up with the growing crowd.

Josey had her black hair pulled back and wasn't offering, but the bearded old men that sat at the bar with their rolled up cigarettes used words I didn't understand, haggling her to come home. One ended up with a beer in his face and the bar cheered and roared on as before. An hour later I was buying drinks for an Old RAF pilot who's name isn't as important as what he'd done in his life.

I asked when the bar closed and I was told, amidst much laugher, "when it's time." So much for clocks and so much for rules. This was the London I was searching for.

I bought Josey a few shots and discovered the penance of drinking with a bartender. Perhaps it was the lack of tourists, perhaps it was the congregation of normal people I didn't fly 3,500 miles to meet. But this was the Lodon I'd take with me. Josey asked of my cowboy boots and the Indians I'd shot from my horse, perhaps it was as relevant as my question about Beefeaters. As we both laughed we finished another rye. She grabbed my hand and smiled before she scuttled away to tend some rowdy blokes across the bar.

The pictures of London I could see from my Marriott hotel room, but the people, the people of London are much different than the vendors at Piccadilly or the Black Cab drivers that drop you off at Buckingham.

As I flew back over the pond my copilot asked me of the places I'd visited and the things I had done.

"You should have taken the time to see the stage of Shakespeare Theatre or the inside of Buckingham Palace..."

I simply nodded and smiled quietly as we climbed through 43,000ft. Perhaps without knowing the people, snapping the photos, riding the tube and visiting the "must see places" seemed halfhearted when visiting foreign places. I'm told the "staples" need to be seen in life, like the Pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Barrier Reef. Perhaps we can even say we know a place because we've spent a week there. But museums, statues and works of art don't make up a people. People create those things as a reminder, not as a representation. Bloody Staples....

I thought about these things as we flew the 6 hours home high above the frozen Atlantic looking out at the contrails of aluminum tubes bringing hordes of tourists eastbound. My copilot thumbed a Reader's Digest as my eyes remained fixated ahead at the great blue ocean.

I imagined knowing Shakespeare through Cliff's Notes, understanding Picasso through a poster or faking a British Accent under my London Fog overcoat. Perhaps one day I'll visit the Queen's gems, perhaps one day I'll wish to brag about my photo atop the Tour Eiffel, but not today. I'd rather spend a few pounds in a pub that was passed over by Fodors and get to know the people that are the pulse of a city.

My "Eastman-throw-away" can't share those things when I come home. The photos would surely get shown a few times then stored in some box tucked away in an attic for years. But how different is a photo you took of St Peters Cathedral from something you've seen in a magazine? I'm not religious, but how can you recant the feeling of the cold stone floor hurting your knees as you confessed your intimacies alone with only the tall echoes hundreds of years in the making among candle lit darkness? Life happens behind the photos...my camera stays at home and instead my pair of cowboy boots head to foreign lands with me.

The photos perhaps remind us of a moment, perhaps a place in time or a view we might remember, but life happens behind the pictures...

Sure a picture is worth a thousand words, but what are a thousand words worth?

---Jake

DesMoins Iowa.
We stopped into a small restaurant just a few steps away from the airport. With time to kill we started talking about the next trip to Houston and what not.

There was an older woman eating alone next to us and I said hello, starting up a polite conversation. She had flown in from Philadelphia and would not be staying long. She was here to see about some houses.

We told her we weren't from the Navy and that we were pilots. She didn't think much of it till we started talking about why she was here.

She had purchased several houses for around $40K and was fixing them up to sell. She was originally from Stewart NY, had lived her whole life in Philadelphia and was finally in Wyoming for the past 35years.

She was paying a man $300 to drive from Cody Wyoming to Iowa to help fix some houses.

"He's a drunk and he won't stop leaving the bear cans on the floor..." she started.

"But he sure can fix anything, and he's cheap."

I asked her if he was just a nice guy from back west and she began.

"You know if you'd walk into the bar in Cody with those city shoes (my flying shoes) they'd know you weren't from around there." I chuckled quietly as she continued.

"Men there look like men, and you know something? They can dance! You wouldn't think that someone that rides fence or works a farm, or whatever they do, could dance, but I tell you what!" She leaned back into her chair sipping her diet coke as she looked me in the eye, eager to keep talking about the Wild West.

"The country seems to atrract men like the cities tend to attract women, so when you go to the bars there just aren't too many women. The guys will come to your table and ask your girl to dance. It's just what they do out there, no one gets mad or anything, it's just different."

I could tell by her flare that she was keen on the manners and slow life of the western mentality. I didn't tell her I came from out west and still wore my ropers around tound.

"One of these days I'm going to make it to Cheyenne..." I started

"Oh honey, you need to. And pay the extra couple bucks for the good seats. You actually get to sit so close to the action," her body started to move up and around like a bull ready to buck.

"you can smell the bull, and I tell you, if you if you had one of those chords around your, you know, you'd be kicking too..."

We all laughed and joked about the 8 seconds that made the men we never read or hear about. It was about pride in the moment, the sound of the crowd, and the adrenaline of knowing that when the gate opens, no matter what condition you are in, willing or not, you are face to face wih death, several seconds no one will ever share with you.

The cowboys drink, spit, keep an odd job here or there, but they work as Rodeo Riders, going from town to town. Sometimes they win, sometimes they don't. It doesn't pay well, but the life's worth living.

"You should see them in their ironed pants, cowboy hats and figures. They don't look like you, she glanced at us. They're square men and you don't see many of them cityside."

We talked of flying and going to the majestic big town of Wyoming.

"When you guys fly in, you'll get there on a 10 person plane. And there might be 10 people on the plane. But when you get through the terminal you don't go to the baggage carousel. Everyone stops for a beer or a cup of coffee."

She continued describing the slow way of life, slowly recollecting to our interest, but more to keep her close to her home amidst this city restraunt we all were gathered. I never got her name or what she did, perhaps she was a famous novelist, perhaps she was a runaway convict that could weave a tale. When it was time we paid our bill said our goodbyes and drove away thinking about Cheyenne. Perhaps I should practice my two stepping, perhaps I should have told her I'd been through there on a ride out west, stopping only to enjoy the scenery over a cigarrette.

Nevertheless, tonight we sleep in Houston, perhaps tomorrow west of the Rockies. My boots have been around the world, seen things I never could have imagined existed, and today have been corrupted into trying the smell of tobacco, dust and bull sweat for an 8 seconds that perhaps can not be paralleled.

The unknown lies in front of us, perhaps in our minds as well, perhaps right in front of us....

Heading to the Keys soon...under water I hear... What's to fear?

Always looking for new talent at 41,000ft...
(c) Mango Airways, Inc.