HELICOPTERS AND SHIPS

This will be a short post because it’s almost eleven p.m. PST and I’m working on deadline to read the second set of edits for my new book coming out next month. But I have to tell you my great idea.


Behind our house (not close, but visible), some high tension towers have been built and are now being outfitted with whatever it is that goes on top of those things. This is all done by helicopters which fly in bringing equipment which they place on platforms. Workers are also flown in. Imagine seeing men dangling from the choppers and then set on the platforms!

At times the helicopters carried cables and wires and the pilots skillfully poked them into openings in the towers, then flew up and around and pulled the cables through on the other side. Awesome. So it gave me an idea.

What else occupied the news last week? The cruise ship on which 4000 people endured terrible conditions when the ship lost power and stranded them at sea for five days. As a character in my book NORTH BY NORTHEAST says about cruise ships. “Once they start, you can’t get off–it’s prison with a chance of drowning!”

So... why doesn’t every cruise ship have a helicopter landing pad on top? They’re certainly large enough, and the helicopters could bring in food, batteries or other equipment and even take away those smelly waste containers we heard about. If I were a passenger I’d certainly feel safer with a heli-pad than a bocce ball court on top of the ship.

Remember you heard this great idea here first. (Do they give Nobel Prizes for that sort of thing?)