This is an excerpt from a larger list, where I give various activities a Sober Fun rating of 1-10. Entries from this list are scattered throughout my website, or you can find that complete list HERE.

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HELICOPTERS: 7

My thoughts about riding in helicopters has recently changed, and it has nothing to do with sobriety. When you shoot film out the side of a helicopter, the door is removed, and you are basically hanging out the side of the chopper. There is only a small rope across the door, plus your seatbelt (unless you take it off to get a better shot) keeping you inside. Have I been up in a helicopter hungover? Yes. Many times. But I have never been in one drunk, as this is always something that requires a very steady constitution and a good deal of concentration on my part. Shooting from a helicopter is a decidedly sober activity for me.

In addition to whatever it is I am shooting from the side of the aircraft, there is also a gyrostabilized camera underneath, collecting footage as well. I usually have a camera operator, with a lot more practice and finesse at it than I possess, operate the gyro cam for me, to ensure the best results. But I still must oversee the footage, the direction, and the angle that they are shooting, as well as any zooms or pans, to make sure I'm getting the footage I need, the footage I came up here to get.

So, for many years, that was my M.O. on any helicopter shoot: I shot still photos out the side, while another motion picture camera recorded footage for the duration of the flight. Not only can you get much higher than a drone and get a wider variety of shots, I continued to shoot this way for many years even after shooting via drone was a viable option, mostly because I find it so much darn fun.

Or rather, I did think it was fun, until one fateful day when the very helicopter I always flew in, the same one that you see me posing on in the photo above, crashed into a field, killing the pilot and all passengers inside. This happened on the same street as OUR NURSERY, less than 2 minutes away from the airspace that I have been flying and shooting in for all these years. I saw the smoke from Covington's way before I learned where that smoke was from, later, on the nightly news.

I realize that the chances of this happening again, statistically, are exceedingly rare. Still, this tragedy was just a little too close to home for me. Almost every detail of every factor involved was the exact same as a photoshoot flight I might have been on.

So as you may or may not be able to understand, I have been reluctant to go up again after that, at least not in Rowlett.

However, helicopters have never personally done me wrong, and I happen to love flying in them, so they get a Sober Fun rating of 7. It would be higher if I knew how to pilot the craft myself. Sadly, I do not, but one thing I have always especially enjoyed about helicopters is that the mechanism that keeps them in the air is very visible, and makes total sense to me. I like that.

I know how airplanes work too, in theory, but if I'm being totally honest, and at risk of sounding like an idiot, I still don't quite understand why more don't fall out of the sky. There. I said it. They just look so visually heavy to me, that my brain always tells me such a phenomenon isn't meant to be, that air travel in huge, double-decker, airplanes wasn't meant to exist. When I'm riding on one and we encounter intense turbulence, it's like I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or in this case, the plane.

Followed by the voice of some jolly but MISCHIEVOUS GOD saying, "Silly humans! Surely you know you were never meant to fly, how ridiculous of you! What a laugh you've given me all these years!"

**PLUMET, CRASH, FIRE**