That was my thing with a helicopter in Hawaii. That's the one thing I wanted to do. My wife wanted to do the submarine. I did not. Turns out the submarine was a really cool experience. The helicopter, it's just something you want to do, right? Yeah, yeah. So we booked the thing. I'm like, as soon as I saw the pilot, I'm kind of like, uh-oh, I can't explain to a man. Just like, did he just wake up? He just had that look about him. And then when he points to his helicopter, like, I'm pretty sure that's homemade. Like, I'm pretty sure this guy I put it together. But whatever, I guess he knows what he's doing because he even painted whatever tours on the side of it. So we get on there. And kind of like you're saying, Ted, you know, you're used to a passenger jet.

You know, everything's pressurized.

You're going fast enough.

It's big enough that other than massive turbulence, it's fairly smooth.

This is not.

I mean, the entire helicopter ride just felt like the worst turbulence you've been in on a plane.

And he's called when he's talking through the headset.

But the thing about Hawaii, whether they're going over water, whether they're near a volcano. If you get near a mountain, everything about the weather pattern around you changes. You know, the wind shear, the humidity. And, you know, once we went over the ocean, he's like, oh, it's going to be a little rough. Keep in mind, in my mind, I was already thinking, this is a little rough. So his version of a little rough is what I would describe as extremely choppy. So you're just bouncing around on this thing. And again, did you get sick or anything? I didn't get sick. I was just convinced that I was going to die. I mean, honest to God, like, and then he goes over this mountain. And I'm like, man, we are awfully close to this mountain. And the helicopter still bouncing up and down obviously we did

not crash i did not die but when we got off of that thing my wife's like i right there's one of your

bucket list items uh you want to do it again i said absolutely not i will never do it again fast forward

we have kids we get to niagara falls they have the same tour this one's over

the falls however these helicopters look like freaking airwolf you know from back and the

pilot and I cannot make this up when you walk to the like the helipad the pilots are standing

in their full aviation suits their hands on their hips the buzz cut the av, the aviators, they look like Superman. They're literally standing like that. And I'm like, all right, I feel comfortable. And I don't know what these helicopters are. They are the Cadillac of helicopters. So oddly enough, on this particular trip, it didn't bug me until we got over the falls itself, because that's just a different, just a different kind of thing. But as you're flying there, you're kind of, you're following the highway. And the river is beside the highway that goes to Niagara Falls. And my son says, dad, if we crash, which great conversation to have. If we crash, I hope we hit the river, not the highway. I said, your opinion's going to change in about five minutes, right? He didn't believe me. The thing goes over top of Niagara Falls. He looks down. And I mean, like I said, Niagara Falls is just unbelievable when you see it in person. And he's like, I'd rather hit the highway. I said, yeah, absolutely, ma'am. Growing up in West Virginia, man, there's very little flatland.

It's almost even hard to get a little league baseball field built, unless you're on top of a strip mine.

Right.

So a lot of these fields and crap like that, they've reclaimed from the coal industry.

But there are no air, I mean, there are very few airstrips.

For an example, where I grew up was a college town.

They traveled with all their sports, women, men, basketball, football, you name it. They had to drive an hour and a half. You'd drive an hour and a half to go to an airport that was big enough for a plane to put everybody on. Right. So you had to drive to Pittsburgh or if you're in the southern part of the state, you had to drive to Cincinnati or Covington. So, or Louisville, if you're down on that part. But there are a ton of Vietnam veterans in the state of West Virginia. And you would drive, you know, just going to my grandma's house, you look over on the side of the road, there's a double-wide trailer. You can see the wheels underneath it. Right. All right. At this point in time, satellite dishes were six, eight feet across. Oh, they were massive. Everybody had one of these. It looks like a NASA installation. Everybody had like huge discs in their yard. And then all the helicopter ride signs that were. Right. Because they, right by their four cars, the ones that they never traded in.

They got a hell of guy.

They don't do that there. There's a small pad for their helicopters. Sure. So a lot of those guys get around, make a couple extra bucks. And my grandfather, you know, he was like, he wanted to take me on a helicopter ride with one of his buddies. It was part of his mail route. All right. And he knew the guy. he's like, yeah, man, he flew in Vietnam for how many years, whatever.

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