How can that be?
I am a fixed wing aviator! Glass-cockpit-qualified, even. So what's to laugh about? Just ask any Experimental Test Pilot and he will tell you what hot stuff we are.
My wristwatch says, right on the back, "Die Fliegeruhr UTC" and it doesn't get much more serious than your own wristwatch making threats like that.
Why, I used to hold that bar spell-bound, I tell you. Well, as long as I was paying the drinks, yes, but I really don't think that had anything to do with it. They would have listened anyway, wouldn't they have? No?
I did get Bob Eaton laughing with my story about "combat in Viet Nam" but that time I really was trying to be funny.
Oh well, some of the best laughs life throws up are when we are trying to be absolutely serious. I was telling someone in the bar that I had been Acting Chief Pilot once, as a joke, when the Black Sardine chipped in perfectly serious with "Acting Deputy Chief Pilot," just to keep the record straight. We all had to keep a straight face there but it wasn't easy.
What about a book? Stacy needs to write down all that stuff from Eket. I was trying to get my little Algerian F/O to believe that we really did have a guy who ran his own whorehouse but she thinks that perhaps I am just a big liar. I need something in writing to show people that I am not making this stuff up, such as the 24-hour German or the Experimental Test Pilot.