| The ramblings of a ???? |
| I have finally gotten around to starting a record of my year to year life. (Day to day sounds like too much work). I have been planning this for quite some time and I have wanted to do it for two main reasons. One, my memory is crap! I came to this realization over the last couple of years, during this time I had a number of conversations with long time friends about stuff that has happened to me that I have no memory of! Conversations along the lines of, "Hey, remember that time we all went to .... and did .... and then buddy fell in the .... ?, that was a good time!" (Ironically I can't even remember a decent example). Anyway I remember thinking, while friends reminisce about these types of things, that they sound like pretty cool things to do, things I would have liked to do, even things that I can see myself searching out to do, but try as I might I can't remember the damn thing at all! (on one occasion there was even photographic proof I was there!) |
What good is it having a good time and experiencing all these interesting things if you can't remember them? I am hoping that by recording the memories I do have others will surface, and if not at least I won't lose the new ones. (unless of course I forget where I saved this file! HaHa) The second reason is perhaps a little arrogant. In the world of helicopter flying there are thousands of really interesting and riveting retellings of goings on while out working. I realized one day that the stories being told are just the tip of the iceberg. Most aren't relayed because they are everyday and even mundane in this fairly tight circle we call the helicopter industry, but to the non-helicopter world they can be very entertaining. Quite a few books have been written about this other stuff and went on to sell well. I suppose I am hoping that at least some of what I have done is interesting to others. Time will tell if it is just an arrogant thought. |
| I'll begin by introducing myself I suppose. (Almost like at some gathering of kids where you have to stand up and tell everyone your name even though it's pinned to your chest and written in two inch high letters plain for everyone to see). My name is Greg McColm (actually it is Gregory but I have always preferred Greg). I was born in 1971 in Salisbury, Rhodesia. Since then I have put on about 185 pounds and reached a height of 182 centimeters. I know this to be accurate because I went for my annual medical three days ago and they are the professionals at this kind of thing. |
| For a living I fly helicopters. I learnt to fly straight out of high school and the story of 'how' is a good illustration of my fate/destiny/luck, a recurring force in my life. Like plenty of kids in my generation I always wanted to fly, I built tons of model airplanes through most of my teens and read all sorts of books about aviation. (I also built a few tanks and ships but that doesn't fit in properly with this theme.) Somehow I managed to do well enough at school to get into university which my Dad was very happy about. Not long after getting my matric results he came to me and said something like," If you are still interested in flying how would you like to learn to fly?" My answer was obvious and off Dad went to look into flying schools. Now in South Africa the school year ends sometime in November so at that time every school that wasn't already full was closing down for the holidays, with Varsity starting in February that left me SOL (Shit Out of Luck) Dad came back and broke the news to me, that was that then! A few days later I was surprised when my Dad came to me again and said," Since there are no vacancies for airplanes how would you like to fly helicopters?" I do remember my reaction this time and it was basically "Sure". After all they fly too right? Now if any helicopter pilots ever read this I know they will be thinking something along the lines of HOLY SHIT... YOU LUCKY PRICK! |
| So at the tender age of seventeen I went through to Rand Airport in Germiston, a satellite city to Johannesburg in South Africa, to a helicopter flight school called Helicopter Logistics. While I was up there training I stayed in what used to be some sort of military housing right on the airfield property. It was being run as private accommodation under the name of The Wig-Wam. The place was fairly basic, my room had an old metal framed single bed in it with a small closet and a sink against the wall. The room hadn't been painted since the improvements but that didn't even get noticed. (What exactly had been improved also went unnoticed!) |
| This was just heaven for a guy like me. My days consisted of learning to fly helicopters, eating pub style lunches at the Transvaal Flying Club and hanging out at the viewing area, which was the roof of the building attached to the control tower, and watching aircraft land and takeoff. In the evenings I studied and occasionally hung out in the common room. A few months previous I had been on holiday with the family in the Drakensberg and had met an Afrikaans girl by the name of Ilsa, she was still finishing high school and lived on the other side of the city in Krugersdorp. Her family was fantastic to me, they drove across Jo'berg a few times to pick me up so I could visit with their daughter! When they got tired of that they gave me the son's VW beetle to run back and forth. Apparently this was no big deal because her brother could easily catch a bus to university and back and so didn't need the car as much as me! |
| Anyway, on the weekends I would go and visit in Krugersdorp. Ilsa would wait on me hand and foot, she made an excellent Dom Pedro (an alcoholic drink with ice cream - hey I was young!). So at seventeen I was flying helicopters, had food in my belly and a roof over my head and I had a very pretty girlfriend, I wanted for nothing! Well the flying went well and the sparse room prepared me for my dorm at university, where I didn't always have food in my belly. The pretty girlfriend however didn't last long. Who could really blame her, perhaps the role of blonde waitress wore off, I don't know. Actually I do know, she met some local guy and she very wisely traded up for that years model! |
| So in February of that year I became
the youngest person to hold a South African helicopter pilots license and
I was headed to the University of Natal's Durban campus and learnt the
true definition of a university, "The fountain of knowledge where
young people go to drink!"
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