The breakfast lounge of The Comfort Inn overlooks the corner of Asylgata and Klubbgata in downtown Stavanger, Norway. From my table I overlook a small café called the FoodStory. This will open at 11 am and the Norwegian waitress will later serve me an $18 sandwich and a $5.00 ginger drink. I won’t notice the 25% tax and 14% service charge till the currency exchange begins making sense to me.
If I look the other direction, I can see the Stavanger Cathedral, a gothic stone structure built in 1125, and directly across from my table I can peer up Nygata, a narrow cobblestone street that leads into the old town, an area of narrow alleys filled with clothing boutiques, restaurants and bars.
This area looks familiar to me — I was in Stavanger in the fall of 2002 when I flew a helicopter from Sarajevo to Stavanger so it could be loaded on a cargo aircraft and delivered to East Timor for another UN contract.
This time I’m here for another reason — simulator training on a Sikorsky 61 — but for now, for this quiet hour in the morning while drinking my coffee I feel like a diver slowly rising from the depths of the ocean, rising from another world, carefully monitoring my decompression to avoid the bends.
Things far too long taken for granted—the rich taste of real coffee, the delicate texture of home-baked bread, the feel of stainless steel utensils in my hand, the silence – are things I take great delight in. And they seem magnified to me in Norway because the country just seems so…sophisticated.
When I’m working in Afghanistan there are no quiet moments. Having a meal at the dining facility, the DFAC, is a test of noise endurance. Near the end of my five-week tour I feel like The Grinch — “That’s one thing I hate! All the noise, noise, noise, noise!”
There is always a line-up to get in, so we wait outside in the 40 to 50 C temperatures; we wait in a line to scan our ID badges; we wait in a line to be served up the latest deep fried concoction the Eastern European cooks have come with. There is a line up at the salad bar, and sometimes a line to get a seat. The soldiers all have their weapons with them, and the room is filled with the clacking of the tripods snapping open, the clunking of the M-16s resting on the floor. The conversation of hundreds and hundreds of soldiers become a deafening cacophony and at times it is impossible to hear the person sitting across from you.
Outside the DFAC is no better — there are helicopters taking off and landing or idling waiting for passengers; there are cargo planes — C-130’s and AN-12’s — roaring past the base constantly; there are trucks and gators grinding along the narrow roads; soldiers gather in groups awaiting transportation or their next orders and their stories all seem louder than necessary. In the B-Huts where we live, there are trucks idling, helicopters flying overhead, people yelling outside, the “Big Voice” speakers announcing a firing range going hot, AC compressors whirring in the background. The latrines and showers are busy all the time. There is no privacy to be had, no quiet moments for reflection.
Usually, I have a transition period in Dubai to be repatriated to civilization. I arrive from Afghanistan in the late afternoon, check in to the hotel and wash five-weeks of grime and dust off, head out for a drink and a meal, and if peace and quiet is needed I can go to my room and wait for the midnight bus that goes to the airport.
But not this time — the day we were to leave, the airport in Afghanistan was closed due to an insurgent attack. We waited for news of its reopening; we came up with alternate travel plans that ultimately went nowhere. Then, moments before we had given up for the day, given up on all the complex airline connections we all had, we were told we could expect to be in Dubai that evening.
The rest of the day, however, seemed hectic and rushed. There was little time for decompression — a quick drink, a brief meeting with the incoming job managers, and off to the airport to catch the flight that would take me to a week of intense training instead of home.
The quiet breakfast lounge in Stavanger was an anomalous bubble. Of course I had to study before coming here — the electronic version of the S-61 Flight Manual was 989 pages. In addition, I had another 432 pages to read in the Company training manual, power point presentations from various organizations, cheat sheets from countless pilots. The 61, after all, has been around since the 1960’s.
Meanwhile in my small library at the B-Hut I had books by Wally Lamb, Patrick Lane, Austin Clarke and Bill Gaston to read. The books were never opened. Truly, it’s time for me to slow things down. Perhaps I could get a Main Gearbox like the S-61 — a series of bevel and planetary gears that take the input shafts of two turbine engines spinning at 18,966 RPM, and reduces that by a factor of 94.4266:1 to get a main rotor speed of 203 RPM.
Yes, that’s just what I need. Some way to slow things down …
Photo Credits
“Ripples” James Jordan at Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Hi Allan: Ah, Norway! I think we paid some $50 for coffee and pie in Oslo. Still, your experience so far HAS to beat working for the BC government, eh!