I had a fun time this week spraying at the airport, and since several noteworthy/interesting things happened while I was there I'm going to write about it.
Everyone wants to spray at the airport, but I've been lucky enough to get to spray there two years in a row. It's fun because it's a change of pace (a bunch of airplanes, and we get to use four-wheelers) and you never know what to expect; this year was no exception. On Wednesday, our first day there, it didn't take me long to realize that the airport had significantly less weeds than last year. I like to think that this is because we had done such a thorough job last year, but who knows? It was kind of eerie how some areas that were really bad last year were super clean.
Anyway, as we're standing there figuring out what to do next, this scrawny fox comes over and passes right by us. According to Randy (the Fire Chief who accompanied us around) it's a mom fox that lives there and is fairly tame because all the airport guys feed her . . . but they feed her a bunch of junk food, hence why she's so scrawny. Of course I didn't have my camera with me; I was sure to bring it the next day, which is where all the footage for the video came from. Later on Wednesday a plane almost ran off the end of the runway because they landed way too late. Randy was absolutely livid (I haven't heard someone swear that much in a long time). They should have aborted and come around again, but they didn't. Apparently this isn't their first offense- a couple of winters ago they got their licenses taken away for a year because they landed without even calling the tower and they almost hit some snowplows. Just as Randy said, some policemen drove over to them right after they landed and the pilots got in big trouble. They probably will get their licenses taken away again. The scary thing is that we were spraying near the emergency runway area that they landed on about ten minutes before this. Darn those careless retired European pilots.
On Thursday we were working as usual when a plane (the small propeller plane in the video) came zooming low overhead. A few minutes after, a loud siren went off at the main hangar and Randy came rushing over to us and told us to get out of the way over to the side and wait there until he came back. A bunch of emergency vehicles with their flashing lights went across the taxiway to the beginning of the runway. The plane circled overhead while a bunch of other planes took off. This was so that it could use up a little bit of fuel and so the other planes could get out of the way (apparently a crash is a hard thing to clean up). Anyway, what had happened was that the landing gear indicated that it wasn't locked into place when it was about to land. The low flyby in the video was so the tower could get a good look at the landing gear. Luckily, nothing bad happened when it landed, but it was very nerve-wracking. The emergency vehicles were right behind it when it landed though.
On Friday I had the pleasant experience of finding Dyer's Woad at the entrance to the airport. Dyer's Woad is a reward plant that they give us 100$ when we find (50$ two-way). There were a bunch of plants that looked really similar to this one, so I had walked past a few before I realized what it was. This brings my weed reward total to 350$ for this pay check. Another pleasant surprise happened a few weeks ago when I brought in a weird-looking plant that I was curious about, but apparently it was a bad one so they gave me 50$ for it. Yippee!
Anyway, good times at the airport.
