Chapter 31. Growing Sim-Crops in Morocco versus the law.
That weekend Dan wanted me to come down and help him dig holes in the ground, and Jen wanted me to come see her but I had four temporary passports to hand out so I had to work Saturday and not go anywhere else except the grocery store. Dan said we could kill snakes crossing the runway, turn it into a competition. His other game idea was: kill a snake, drink a shot.
He said we'd put two lawn chairs on the runway at the west end and watch for snakes then like a sprint we'd take off running and the one to smash the snake first wins. Of course knowing Daniel like I do I'm sure I knew what the prize would be, so the game would sort of have rules like: heads he wins, tails I lose. If he wins I have to blow him, but if I win I get to blow him. I had stuff to do but I offered to come down and visit for several hours but I couldn't spend the night or sit for hours in the sun watching for snakes. I ended up not going down that weekend but we talked on the phone.
As Dan learns interesting stuff about crop dusting (and desert farming) he passes it along to me. Neither of us were really exposed to farming stuff as kids, we were both typical suburban children who grew up on paved streets and sidewalks, curbs and street lights. There were no cows anywhere near where we lived, but I saw cows and horses on TV. Even back in high school I'd heard people talk about GMO crops and when I moved here and noticed the difference in what is sold in stores I came to learn how GMOs have significantly altered how Americans eat, and possibly why half of all Americans are diagnosed with cancer too.
Here in Africa seasonal crops aren't in stores out of season, which improves the quality. They could import some from the other hemisphere but they're often ruined in storage. Yes, the world can survive without apples and sweet corn all year, and the ones sold in Tangier are real, not Frankenstein apples. There is no such thing as seedless watermelon in Morocco either. I've heard people say our grocery stores in Tangier are sort of like grocery stores in Iowa in the 1950s, except ours have barcode scanners but very few shopping carts since most people own one.
Because there are no government subsidies on the crops they grow here things are very different from the USA where it's mostly sim-corn, sim-soy, sim-wheat, and sim-rice. Dan also said GMO seed is illegal in Morocco, but hybrids are legal as long as man does not edit the DNA. He laughed and said most of the cotton grown in Morocco goes to Egypt, the so-called Egyptian Cotton.' The big joke is Egyptian Cotton' is actually a cotton variety, not a location. Egyptian Cotton is grown in America to sell to stupid people who spend way too much time watching TV.
There is a team of government testers in Morocco who collect farm and grocery store samples of many types of crops to check for DNA splicing, which usually includes the Terminator Gene. The way it works in the USA is like this: you buy enough seed to plant your field, then that seed produces a crop. During harvest let's say the farmer decides to keep a ton of seeds to plant for himself next season. If he does that the seed will not grow (because of the man-made terminator gene), he must buy new seed from the seed company. That is legal in the USA but a felony in Morocco and most Islamic countries. That genetic modification is man-made and illegal to import, sell, buy, or plant. In fact if you are convicted of selling/planting GMO seed the penalty in Morocco is a swift public execution. However, if the prison factories are short on workers your sentence might be changed to prison until death, where you will work the rest of your life without pay. Some prisons grow crops in greenhouses to try to have some seasonal vegetables available all year in the towns near the prison.
One problem that has occurred is some pollen gets picked up in storms and circulates high in the clouds and falls back down to earth hundreds if not thousands of miles away, so it is possible for some GMO pollen from North America to end up in Africa, which could land the farmer in jail while the seed seller is investigated. Some farmers arrested for planting GMO crops have been released later once it was determined the pollen came from overseas. One of the biggest crops grown every year in Morocco is cotton, not soy or corn. And much of the seed imported to Morocco comes from Brazil and Mexico where GMO is also outlawed.
The following week I talked to Dan once a day. He texted me photos of the new triangles as seen from up in the control tower, he also sent me a photo of the first uninvited pilot who landed one day despite the two X's. It was one of the local flyboys in his single wing (1999) crop duster, but this was a much newer plane specifically built for dispersing powder chemicals or seed from long tubes under the wings.
Dan said at first he scolded the pilot but they ended up shaking hands and had a very nice visit. That guy also said Dan should sell AV-Gas. They had a long conversation about selling fuel and Dan got out a pencil, calculator, and pad of paper to show the guy the financial return for selling aviation fuel was near zero and he would end up investing a lot of his life savings just to buy the fuel and a truck to carry and dispense it. He never mentioned he had the truck and the gas but wanted everyone to know it was being done more as a public service than a money making venture. AV-Gas is the #1 most requested thing he should sell at the little airport.
He told the visiting pilot about the group of guys hand-making approach lighting, like they used on aircraft carriers in the 1940s and the guy said he's seen them at air shows, they work fine but can he hard to see at certain times of the day.
They'll also add a narrow beam lamp at the far eastern end to show alignment with the centerline at a distance. One of the local fly boys said he knows exactly how to build one and it will only take him a couple days. The big problem is it will take a lot of wire to run power to it. The fuse box on the pole near the motorhome is about 4,000 feet from the east end of the runway, which is a lot of copper wire. So they'll look into solar charged battery power, LEDs instead of light bulbs.
All the pilots who visited Dan told him his airport was nearly impossible to see from the air but the triangles are easy to see. Only one pilot offered some insight, he said it was probably one of the reasons why the Germans built their airbase on that spot. He said the ground in that area was darker then surrounding land, probably due to some kind of mineral that appears in most stones. It makes the ground appear nearly black from the sky but on the ground it only looks like a lot of dark stones on the ground.
But everyone who has flown over since his painting job has said the triangles are hugely visible from the sky now, and the LZ box is also obvious. The box beside the arrow tells most pilots it's a runway and not a private street.
Dan told me when he moved to the other end to paint the second triangle a snake crossed the wet paint and left slither marks, but the culprit should be easy to identify. He told me he ordered a pump pellet rifle to start shooting snakes. He might hang out on the roof of the ATC building with binocs and the rifle and make a game of it. Then he said I should come down and we could make it a competition. He said we could shoot empty paint cans but he needs to build a backstop out of dirt and rocks to stop bullets as sort of a shooting range.
He also told me he signed up three more pilots for his annual fee based airplane refueling service. And he got the first pad poured yesterday, it should be ready to use later in the week. He is going to dig the 2nd one this week because he expects just one will not be enough. He said he rarely sees the same airplane fly overhead, so the number of small airplanes in northern Morocco is higher than he estimated.
I suggested he should use the Bobcat to dig a pit, like a machine gun site, with a couple rows of sandbags around the top and stand in that to shoot snakes crossing the runway. Dan said he did not have any sandbags. Then our conversation ended.
Three weeks later I drove down to the airport on Saturday morning and was surprised to see Dan had four small airplanes parked beside the runway, burgers and corn cobs on the grill, and was having a cookout for some of the local pilots who stopped by to introduce themselves. Another guy was way down at the west end installing the home-made approach light array, and two guys were using a pickaxe and shovel to hand-bury a 14-3 power cable to the approach array. All of it was donated, except Dan had to pay for the electricity. He pointed to a tiny lump on the ground near the east end, it was a new solar charged, battery powered LED blinker to help pilots stay centered on the runway. It came on for a full second then off for two while the sun was up and was a home-made gift. It also used a plastic lens so it could only be seen blinking if you were centered on the runway. With a very narrow runway it was very important to be perfectly aligned before touchdown or you could easily end up in the weeds and maybe even upside down if you went off the north side of the pavement. He said it worked like a laser pointer that projected a vertical line, the only way to see it was if you were perfectly centered on the runway.
He said there are cheap Fresnel lenses you can buy online for a few bucks that look like clear plastic sheets of heavy plastic but up close they are like huge magnifying glasses. They focus the light into a narrow vertical beam, like the light from a rotating lighthouse beacon.
The wood box they were installing on west end was the WW2 light array with lenses. It showed a + symbol in light to approaching aircraft but you saw a different color if you were high or low, left or right. It was made of 40w light bulbs inside steel cans which were mounted inside wood boxes, powered by commercial power, so it was only lit up in the afternoon until sunset, it was connected to a timer. Dan said they are eventually going to make it whistle activated, so it will be available all day but turned off. You transmit on Unicom and press the # button on the microphone and it activates the Optical Landing System for ten minutes.
Dan said he applied for his own frequency so they don't interfere with routine radio traffic on Unicom. He thinks they will assign him 120.870mhz for Danville airport operations and control tower, approach clearance. He said he is going to get on the roof of the hangar and paint the frequency up there in ten foot numbers so it's visible to pilots.
The lunch crowd was also discussing having AV-Gas delivered to Dan's airport but his gravel driveway would not support the weight of a semi pulling a tanker trailer. He got out his notepad and ran the math again on buying bulk AV-Gas and selling it out of a converted heating oil truck, over a ten year period assuming nothing needed to be repaired on the truck he would never make a profit because of the cost of the truck to buy and operate with insurance.
They also discussed experimenting with approach lighting that was very low power and could run for days on simple battery power. One suggestion was installing a low power laser at the far end of the runway, a laser that shone a vertical red line that ran down the center of the runway and up into the sky. It would visibly show alignment with the center of the runway but not vertical glide scope. A second one could be used for glideslope which is a theoretical roadway in the air the plane runs down for a perfect gentle landing on the center of the runway.
They say that with dust and humidity in the air at any distance from the runway the laser would appear like a vague red light in the cockpit only seen when aligned left and right. Then the green light would do the same for vertical alignment. If the pilot senses both green and red light coming in the window then he is perfectly aligned. Those lasers use such low power they could run non-stop for days on battery power alone. And reliability of electricity is a big problem in rural Morocco, so they might opt to use lasers instead of light bulbs with an unreliable power supply.
After their cookout was over the pilots left one at a time in their planes. Dan seemed stressed but happy. He walked me to the ATC building and showed me that he acquired a stack of clear plastic Lexan sheets ($50 Euros each) but he needed help installing them. We had to hand-clean the tracks used by the original window frames and two people had to carefully bend the Lexan sheets and get them into the tracks so they were tightly stuck in place. The original windows had wood frames but this was a different install, the Lexan sheets were held in place by pressure, they had to be forcibly bent to fit in place then their shape would hold them in the tracks, top and bottom. After placement he'd glue them so they didn't get blown-out during thunderstorms.
Dan explained he thought the original glass windows in wood frames were installed by using a small hydraulic jack to lift the roof an inch and have several people hold the wood frame windows in place then lower the roof. He said the roof was held in place by gravity on round brass pins.
The other problem with the Lexan sheets is one of us would have to stand on the ladder on the outside to bend the top down to fit in the upper track, there was a chance of falling 16 feet to the rocky ground. Wanting to get the job done I offered to be the idiot on the ladder, Dan accepted immediately.
Dan also said he was going to buy more gallon cans of Drylok to seal the entire roof so it didn't leak every time it rained. He said it's not a huge leak just a steady drip near the bottom of the stairs. He sets out a bucket to catch the rain.
We spent the rest of the afternoon bending and gluing 3x3 (91cm) rigid plastic sheets. Once we got the first one in the rest went faster but we ran out of time before all eight sheets were installed. Downstairs he showed me how this building might have been perfectly level in 1938 but it wasn't any more, but it's damn close. His plastic sheeting taped to the ceiling was still there, must be good grey tape!
The problem with installing the Lexan sheets was they were very stiff and the edges were sharp. First, he applied a bead of adhesive from the tube of glue, a tube like a tube of caulking. But this was the stuff they said would stick to Lexan. He ran a strip of glue in tracks, top and bottom. Next, we had to bend them near where they would end up so all we had to do once top and bottom were in was to use a block of wood and a hammer to gently tap them sideways into place, until the third side came to rest against the concrete pillar. Just before the sideways move he placed a bead of adhesive down the pillar, then we bumped the Lexan sheet against it then let it sit for the glue to cure, which took almost 24 hours.
He held them in the track in the bottom track while I bent them by hand from the upper corners to give them enough of a curve so the top fit in the upper track then we let go. We bumped them sideways to the corner post. The problem with his design was over time the sun would relax the sheets and the stiffness would go away and they would need to be well glued in place just to keep them from falling out. Until then it took a lot of strength to bend them to fit in the tracks. First, we used a paint brush to carefully clean the old window frame tracks which were about one inch wide and half an inch deep, across the bottom and top window ledges. He stood inside holding the bottom in place while I stood on a ladder on the outside, but on two walls I would be about 15 feet in the air. That was dangerous as hell. I got lots of small cuts on my hands trying to bend them while he helped pull them in place, then we had to move on to the next opening because we couldn't touch the first sheet until the glue started to harden. We were only able to get five sheets installed by dinner time.
I also noticed downstairs he had an old wooden door installed so now the building only had one window and two doors missing. Dan looked at my face while I was outside standing on the ladder and saw I was getting tired, he said it was time to take a dinner break, he had dinner in the crockpot. Add a big chunk of chuck roast and fill it the rest of the way with vegetables and a tall glass of water and a lot of salt. It should be done by now. I think this was his first Crockpot ever. The InstantPot craze has not arrived in Africa yet, but it is coming.
For dinner I had a sliced carrot, potato chunks, some cabbage leaves, and thick slices of chuck roast, it was very filling but the meat was overcooked. He said to cut smaller pieces and cut across the grain.
While we ate I Iooked around inside his motorhome and noticed he had what looked like a 22 inch LCD TV and I think he had a TV antenna on the roof so I asked why he didn't turn it on. Dan laughed while chewing a mouth full of food and said everything was in Arabic. Where have I heard that before?
After dinner we went outside and slowly walked the runway and talked. We stopped at the hangar and visited my airplane, it looked exactly the same. So I raised the cover and opened the door and climbed inside and went in the cockpit and turned on master power, the avionics were fine, no faults in the airplane, batteries fine too. I pulled the cover back over the door and walked back to the motorhome, half a mile from the hangar. On the way back we discussed why the original hangar doors were gone, what happened to them. Dan said he was investigating but so far had no clues. He had no idea why anyone would steal hangar doors. As far as he knew they were just wood and glass with wheels top and bottom, and steel plates to hold them together at the corners. I suggested maybe they had some kind of expensive bearings and wheels on top, but I was just guessing.
The door frame and the floor looked like the hangar doors hung on steel tracks on top, and they had narrow steel wheels that ran in tracks in the floor, but it looked like the tracks needed to be kept clean or the doors might not roll very well.
In my mind I wondered if maybe someone in the area had a shelter built out of hangar doors. We should someday mount a camera on an airplane and fly low and slow in a grid over the area taking video of all the buildings within 10 miles looking for the missing doors. I told Dan I bet they were still nearby, Dan said someone recently gave him digital video of the entire area, he should check them closely for his missing hangar doors. He had two old photos of the hangar back when the doors were still there so he knows exactly what they look like. But really, they looked exactly like the rest of the hangar and they were painted to match the ground too, very dark green.
Back at the motorhome I told Dan that we should finish installing the Lexan sheets in the control tower, but he said he was out of glue so they had to wait. He said he'd run to town and buy two more tubes of adhesive then we could finish installing them. We went back to the motorhome and he told me to come back to his bedroom, I sat on his bed while he changed into shorts and opened the bedroom windows. After a short time he got up and locked the outside door and shut off all the lights. I was kind of in the mood but apparently he wasn't. I really liked simply resting the side of my head on his tummy, his belly is very soft and warm, so I got in position beside him and rested my head on his belly once the lights went out.
Since high school he's never denied me permission to rest my head on his tummy like a pillow. I think to him he feels like he's mothering me when he allows it. But I'd bet money if his sister suddenly walked in the room and we were in a position like that he'd fly out of bed and deny any disgusting gay shit was going on. We got in bed in the dark room and after he stopped moving around I could see he was on his back so I gently moved around and rested my head on his tummy. He usually just ignored me when I did it, but I am certain he likes it, he just can't say he likes it. Even though it's very intimate it rarely leads us to oral sex. I tell him everyone needs human contact, that's all this was.
I told him one of these weekends I'm going to bring down my hair trimming and cutting gear and shave him hairless again from his chin to his knees. I'd do it outside during the day in the bright sunshine. I'd have him stand naked by the picnic table and very slowly rotate around so I could shave it all off. Dan can reach behind his body and spread his cheeks apart so I could buzz his crack too. He finds it terribly embarrassing having someone look between his butt cheeks. When he has a line of black hairs growing from his belly button down to his pubes I know it's time to cut down the forest. He really doesn't care about body hair, nobody sees it but him and occasionally me and it grows back quickly, so what the hell!
In the darkness we discussed projects and hardware and his plans for the ATC building I imagined I was blowing him instead. We talked for 50 minutes then went to sleep. It was just the right temperature outside and the open the windows let in a nice desert breeze all night long. I think it got down into the low 70s.
That evening I kept an eye on the ceiling for lizards, he says there is always at least one inside. He had no idea where they get inside, but they do. I have not seen one on the ceiling yet, but he has. He says they are constantly pooping these tiny plant-seed size turds that get into everything. When you eat you need to keep your plate or bowl covered always to keep turds from dropping from the sky and landing in your food. Dan said he's probably eaten several dozen lizard turds, ones he's missed. He said they are a little smaller than your average parsley seed. Dan told me he always keeps a short stack of paper plates on the table to cover his food and his glass. He also laughed and said he cannot use any spices or toppings that contain any seeds that resemble lizard turds.
He said one time he was sitting on the sofa reading and a tiny black turd fell from the ceiling above him and he heard it make a slight TICK when it hit the paper, and then he saw the lizard crossing the ceiling heading toward the driver's seat.
I went home Sunday morning. I like the drive home, it gives me time to think about things. I thought about Patrik a lot, and I never told Dan what I did to the bastard who killed Patrik. Dan knew I was heading down to Tiznit but never asked what happened. I guess he assumed the dude was dead and I didn't want to discuss it. Dan never met Patrik, nor did he hear about the twink party, if memory serves that all happened before he moved here.
During our visit he mentioned the bulk oil truck up in Spain and told me the cost and said he really needed it but it would end up being a money loser but all the pilots are asking him to sell AV-Gas and they will get his business. The truck was a re-po but he was reluctant to spend another huge amount of money and open another door to more life complicating shit, but without the truck the airport might never turn a profit.
I knew he had the money to buy it, he was afraid to spend the cash on an unknown thing. I think he needed a push to get him moving toward paying for it.
Dan texted on Monday that he's spent nearly $77k on his 30 acre airport so far, not including the motorhome, his Toyota V6 truck, the Bobcat, or purchasing the land. But I knew he was not at risk of running out of money any time soon. He said his parent's estate is not fully settled yet and he is still receiving checks from the publisher, insurance, and from their investment company as they slowly sold their assets. But the house (and cars) and all its contents are totally gone now. Dan said he has a bank account in Tangier and still has one in Austin, they send wire transfers once a month with about $9k per month. He said he had no idea his father was wealthy when they were a young family. They lived like regular middle class people, just like the rest of the neighborhood. I guess some of that rubbed off on Dan too.
I asked him recently how much money he has in the bank in Austin and he mumbled something so I asked him to say it louder but he still mumbled, but I think he said $1.2mil US. And he has an account here in Tangier too, we never discussed it but I bet it was close to the same amount.
He said the crop dusters who fly for large agri-service companies make their own bulk fuel arrangements so what they really need is a safe place to land and re-load and re-fuel, then take off again. It's mostly the small mom and pop crop pilots who need to purchase fuel. So the demand for fuel might not be as big as he initially estimated. Even the mom and pop crop dusters have to drive to Eddalya to fill their tank with AV-Gas for themselves, so even Dan selling it won't totally eliminate their need to make the trip to the oil depot at the port. He heard some of them use 91 octane gas and use additives to boost the number to 94, but that's expensive. The savings come from not having to drive to the port on that horrible coastal highway which is very curvy and hilly.
Dan said he heard some of the larger companies have contracts with the local state-owned fuel depot and they meet the fuel tanker somewhere in a parking lot and purchase enough to fill the tanks in their trucks. They have an agreed-on site, day and time where they meet to buy AV-Gas from the big tanker. They told Dan if he showed up with his truck they might sell whatever was left unsold in the tanker trailer which could be hundreds of gallons. Ideally the tanker truck drives back to the refinery empty at the end of his delivery route.
Since there are a lot of women who drive to the oil depot in Eddalya to purchase a few hundred gallons of AV-Gas there is an entire industry in that town aimed at female shoppers, the new tanker truck might upset that market a bit.
Allow me to clarify aviation fuels for you. There are two basic types of fuel for airplanes. One type is very similar to gasoline except the octane number is higher than what you can get at a gas station. The other type of fuel is for jet engines and is similar to kerosene and is usually half the price of gasoline in bulk.
People often ask: what does Octane mean? Octane is a gasoline-like fuel, some call it: Fuel-A. The octane number on the gas pump means the percentage that this fuel burns like pure Octane. So 87 octane gasoline burns like a blend of 87% Octane and 13% additives. 91 Octane gas burns like 91% Octane with 9% fuel additives. AV-Gas runs a bit higher than 91 Octane auto gasolines, some people say it averages 93-95 Octane. In the USA that is very similar to Racing Gasoline. You could say that Octane is a theoretical gas that is the chemical model for Gasolines, but for research purposes you can buy a can of Octane for testing auto parts. Some manufacturers call it: Reference Fuel-A.
What's the actual difference inside the engine between 87 and 91 octane gasoline? The length of the explosion when the piston rises and compresses the fuel-air mix... 91% octane explodes longer than 87%, which is the primary difference, the higher the octane the longer the explosion. There is no internal combustion engine made that is perfectly timed so the explosion happens at the exact right moment, so by making the explosion last longer part of it should happen at the right moment. Engine knocking sounds are caused when the spark plug is firing the fuel before the piston has reached the highest position, a higher octane fuel often eliminates that pre-detonation by making it explode slightly longer.
The longer the explosion the better the engine runs, but it also runs hotter, so the alloy an AV-Gas engine is made out of is more expensive. A total aluminum block engine cannot tolerate the increased heat from high octane fuels. In some parts of the world refineries make 87 octane gas and to make higher octane fuels they add solvents to the gas to make it perform like higher octane fuels. It is a cheaper way of getting there. A solvent often used to raise octane is Toluene, you can clearly smell Toluene in 91 octane gas sold in the States. (Toluene is pronounced: TAHL-you-een)
There is a deep-water commercial port in Eddalya with a dozen huge steel storage tanks. They import large quantities of specialty fuels from the Middle East. AV-Gas is something Dan can buy from the huge half-million gallon tank and have it pumped right into the truck with a four inch hose, fill the truck in 300 seconds!
Dan told me he was visited by a man from Tangier, he was the president of a hot air balloon pilots club that had 43 members in northern Morocco, they needed a place to store their gear (like inside his hangar) and could make his airport their home and put on an eye grabbing show every Sunday morning. He said their conversation soon went downhill as he learned the clubs demands.
He told me he ordered four new windsocks on Ebay and they were coming in the mail in a couple weeks, but he needed to buy a long steel pipe to mount it near the runway approach lights. The group of local crop dusters also agreed to pay for two very bright lights to be mounted at ground level at both corners of the runway so pilots can better see during the day where the corners of the very narrow runway actually sit. They also want to install four more at 500 foot intervals toward the east end to help them stay on the pavement during fog or rain. Dan said nobody has figured out how to run power wires to the south side of the runway. Someone has to come up with about 2000 feet of 14-3 wire that can be buried, and a trencher to run it around the west end of the runway.
As a joke Dan said it would be cheaper to build two radio towers, three hundred feet tall on either side of the runway and run the power lines up and over the runway!
One of the local pilots told him there is a local surveyor's office, he should check the area to see if there were any power company easements across neighbor's property to run lines to the other side of the runway, the Germans had to have electric service back then but today the poles are gone but he was certain there was an easement across an adjoining property. Dan commented "that certainly won't make any friends when suddenly the power poles across the neighbor's property return after being gone for 75 years!
They defended their suggestions by saying the current owners would have to know the easement was still there when they purchased the land; it would have been clearly spelled out in the deed.
Dan said he also heard there were local discussions about collecting money to widen the runway from 30 to 50 feet, at a cost of about $50,000 since a new roadbed would be needed too. Dan said it would take a lot of concrete to widen the roadbed! 4800 feet long X 20 feet wide x six inches thick = 49000 cubic feet of concrete. Concrete is sold by the cubic yard, the new roadbed would take about 1800 cubic yards, and there would be a cost to hire a contractor to dig the pit, form the concrete, and level the pour. We're looking at probably $50,000E to widen the runway, that would be a huge fundraiser but it would open the airport up to much more air traffic and maybe even some private jets. Like I said, these guys are used to landing on 12 foot wide dirt roads.
I heard from Jen about her job, she said their customer service ratings are recovering and sales are recovering too. They showed a nice increase from 10% approval to 45% approval after she started a new customer service rep training program, and replaced (fired) the company educator. She said she played back their calls during closed-door meetings and most resigned. Her goal for the next quarter is to see customer satisfaction numbers go above 60% and stay there. She also said she's received some anonymous threat phone calls in Spanish. Some of the employees she got rid of were with the company for over a decade. She said most of them quit when confronted with recordings of their calls but a few were terminated. The threats were reported to the Spain equivalent of the State Police, copies of the recordings were also provided. Not all of them were recorded at first but now she has a new phone and with a button press she can start the recorder.
She also said the elderly couple who own the building where she lives have started inviting her down for dinner once a month and they are very nice people, but sometimes they're hard to understand because they talk really fast and use phrases she never learned in school. She said we have the same things in English and they need to be learned one at a time by stopping and asking for an explanation.
I asked her which language had more old phrases that couldn't be taken literally and she laughed and said English was way worse, but as the Baby Boomers die-off they are taking a lot of those expressions to the grave with them. As a joke I said `thanks' for proving what I knew since early childhood: literal English was better than cultural English by far, and she just proved my point. Jen rolled her eyes and took in a deep breath and continued.
She said she liked to watch the nightly TV news in Madrid and listen to them speak, she said her comprehension of the TV news anchors speaking is about 95%. She uses closed captioning and writes down unknown phrases. We discussed getting together and she admitted she is kind of short on time right now, she often goes to work on Sundays because she has the place almost to herself to get ahead on some of her projects, especially employee telephone training. She is writing the new lesson plans for all those classes for new employees. She spends almost half a day with her office door closed working on new lesson plans and finding new pre-made books in Spanish on telephone sales.
As a joke I asked her if she adopted a cat yet and she laughed and said no, the landlord says absolutely not. But tropical fish or a bird would be okay, but it has to be a small bird like a parakeet. Tropical fish would be fine too, but not a huge 300 gallon tank because of the weight, but maybe a 40 gallon tank would be fine. I let the subject of cats drop. I can tell she still misses her old cat, the one she took to work a few times a week. He had a very dog-like personality.
Speaking of cats Dan said he was going to drive to the animal shelter and try to buy a pregnant cat and bring it home and make it an outdoor animal and see if they will drive off the snakes and lizards. He said he will build them a very nice shelter, warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Part of what made her cat so likeable at work was she sometimes dressed her cat up like a tiny human and the cat enjoyed the attention and always played along.
There was a period where Dan was super busy and said he built the first 10mx10m re-fueling pad on the south side of the runway and was digging the pit for the second one nearby. He got a small company with five planes to sign the contract for the rest of the year at a fixed discounted price. But they still have to follow the first come -- first served guideline. And they understood they were not allowed to re-load on the ground, the plane had to be fully on the pad, one plane per pad at a time for 30 minutes or less. He said some days there were two planes waiting for their turn. They get thirty minutes per plane then have to move off. So some of them with adjustments to make fuel and re-load on the pad then roll the plane off the pad and finish any mechanical adjustments before taking off. Dan is wearing a VHF aircraft radio on his belt to manage traffic to make sure there are no crashes. He also got another Porta Potty placed beside the west wall of the hangar.
The drone racing people brought over their diesel powered generator (on a trailer) and welded a ten foot pipe to the steel frame of the hangar and mounted a flag pole pulley on top, so now the place really resembles a proper airport. The new windsock will be the highest thing on the entire property. Dan said it will get struck by lightning eventually. The windsocks are due next week. Until then he put a long strip of old pillow case material on the top of the pole, like the tail from a kite.
Four weeks after our only `date' I got an email from Luis in Madrid he apologized for being scarce but he's been super busy studying every day for upcoming mid-term exams. He said he has been a complete hermit since he started school because he cannot fail and wants to graduate with a GPA near 3.8 or higher. He never mentioned getting a scholarship.
In the USA the levels of licensure in order are: Student, Sport, Recreational, Private, Commercial, Instructor, Transport, and Remote. Each licensed pilot must also be rated for a certain class of aircraft: Airplane, Rotorcraft, Glider, Lighter-than-air, powered lift, powered parachute, and weight-shift. And there are other classes like single or multi-engine that land on ground or water. Endorsements made in the pilot's logbook must be placed by licensed instructors with the FAA authority to do so. One endorsement all commercial pilots must have is Instrument Rating, which is one of the most time consuming and difficult to earn. Instrument rated pilots can fly during decreased visibility, within reason.
The pilot and co-pilot on a commercial passenger airplane must hold an: ATP (airline transport pilot) license with instrument certification, a first class medical certification, and at least 1500 hours logged in a front seat in that aircraft. Dan and I earned our Private with instrument rating while attending school with the State Department. We earned our instrument ratings at the facility in Wichita Kansas in a Cessna Citation.
Luis said he is going to be a commercial airline pilot (ATP) one of these years but he's not old enough now, but he has a lot of schooling to go, and he is in college studying for his Master of Science in Aeronautics. He hopes to be the captain of a commercial passenger or cargo jet by the time he turns 28, which is nine years from now. I was going to ask him how deeply in debt he'd be but decided to not bring it up. I suspect based on how he speaks that he does not come from a poor family, but he never mentioned his background. I personally have a hard time seeing him flying for KLM with shoulder length hair, but he is tall which certainly helps. When he showed me his home neighborhood on Gmaps from above it looked like just more suburban sprawl to me, but I think they might have been what we call in the states: McMansions, meaning they are large, pretty, but cheap and blow down easily. You see them in the Midwest on TV sometimes (3500sq ft on a slab with no basement) when they get a tornado and all the houses are large and most of them get roof damage. The tornado blows the roof off but leaves the rest of the structure intact because the roof was never properly tied to the walls: further evidence of a McMansion, cheap construction.
When you drive through a neighborhood of McMansions they all look like they were designed on the exact same architectural software (Microsoft Home Designer for Windows).
I should admit that since our date Luis has replaced Dan in my jerk-off fantasies.
Who do you dream about?
Does he know you dream about him?
Do you fantasize about situations you would never actually participate in for real?
For me the answers are: Dan & Luis, yes, yes. Sometimes I dream of kinky stuff I would probably never do for real, like restraints and pissing. I think my piss dreams are caused by having to pee while dreaming about Luis in bed. I would never let anyone tie me to the bed or grab my throat during sex.
My fantasies about Luis are usually similar to the ones I had with Dan, he visits for an entire day and I confiscate his clothes and can do whatever I want to his body without any restrictions. He cannot deny my requests, like his body is an all-you-can-eat free buffet. With good behavior he can earn back his clothes. I've told Dan I think of him when I jerk off but he acts like he doesn't hear me.
In reality I suspect Luis can only come twice a day. I just don't think he is a big producer, he spurts but no long distance squirts. I bet as Luis gets older his semen output will increase with exercise. Lots of younger guys do not produce pre-come until after they turn 21. I forgot completely how much semen I put out when I was a teen. Maybe we all start off small and increase in volume with use. Luis did produce pre-come but all of it disappeared inside my mouth. I think the pleasure from an orgasm also increases a lot with age, so an early orgasm of a 13 year old is nothing like his orgasms when he turns 50.
People say things wear down with age but I honestly believe sex often improves with age and practice. One thing some people find surprising but a lot of young men struggle to get an erection and learn to use Viagra. Most people believe that is only used by men in their 70s, but the truth is a lot of young men in their early 20s use it too. Some guys are just not well plumbed for sex.
Days later I actually got another text from Luis, he invited me to visit him in Madrid because he won't be down to take care of his grandfather again for months. He told me he lives with his parents but he has the entire 2nd floor of the house, they cannot come upstairs because of the stairs. I told him I would be in touch. Initially I had no idea how I could get to Madrid without Jen finding out eventually and being pissed off if I didn't visit her. He texted me a bit later and said he has a private entrance too and he owns a scooter which carries two people and can run on the highway.
I also heard from Dan that the drone racing club has sent him dates for the next two competitions and one of them is coming up in three months.
I got a rather upsetting phone call I never anticipated, I probably should have expected it but I was caught unprepared.
The call came from the States, it was a funeral home in Lubbock Texas asking how to get a body flown home from Morocco. They said they called the embassy in Rabat but they forwarded their call to me since I was the national expert.
I could not mention that I was a good friend of the dead person and they never actually said the name of the deceased. I got out my notebook on flying the deceased back to the states and explained to them it was an expensive two step process. Someone had to pay 100% up-front for the overseas part, no exceptions. They picked KLM Freight to transport the body to Atlanta then it was a routine transfer to get him back to Lubbock. What I told them to do was to ship him by Royal Air Cargo from Rabat to Tangier then fly him to North America on KLM Air-Freight from Tangier to Madrid to Atlanta, the cost would be about $10,000. After getting the body to Atlanta getting him back to Texas was routine and much cheaper because they had the cargo space and equipment.
When I got off the phone my eyes started to tear-up and I sat in my office chair trying not to cry for about one hour. Luckily, nobody came in the front door.
Dan spoke endlessly about the oil tank truck in Spain, how he needed it and the bank would be removing the boot soon because the bankruptcy trial was over, but Dan wasn't ready and he didn't have the time to drive up to Spain to look at it, then there was the problem of how to get it to Morocco, he didn't know if the car ferries would take such a large vehicle, it would have to be weighed and measured and those numbers given to the captain of the car ferry. If they couldn't move it across the Strait then it had to go by commercial cargo ship which would be super expensive, just to cross a ten mile waterway that some people actually swim across.
I got tired of hearing Daniel moan and fret about the truck so that weekend I decided to go learn the facts myself. Sometimes Dan makes things sound worse than they actually are, but yes, he was very busy and it was risky leaving the airport alone for two entire days. The only time he can really get away from the property is at night when the runway is closed.
Without telling my friends I went to Algeciras to check out the tanker truck, I went with a tape measure and lots of cash in my backpack. I left work on Friday and put a sign on my office door inviting anyone who needed me to call or text. Then I took the bus to the jet ferry dock and paid to go to Algeciras where I rented a car and drove up to the impound lot where the truck was stored. That was a ninety minute drive so I was running a little late; I got there at 1:25pm. First, I measured the outside dimensions of the truck. Next I put down a ($40k) security deposit and they removed the boot and I drove it down to Algeciras to weigh it on the truck scale owned by the jet-ferry company. I got the printed receipt and had one of the car ferry managers come see the scale numbers and the measurements. They told me they could transport it to Tangier but it would need to be chained down and they would take it on the next jet ferry, so I paid in cash and handed them the key and drove to the bank to pay off the loan.
After I paid cash for the balance due on the oil tanker truck I took a taxi back to the impound lot and got my deposit back. Then I drove quickly in the rental car back to Algeciras and returned the car and walked to the jet-ferry pier. It normally cost $60E to take your car across the Strait if you also buy a passenger seat ticket. I paid $220E to transport the tanker to Tangier and they had to limit the number of cars on the deck due to the weight of the truck.
They have to get the right amount of weight on the ferry to make sure it aligns properly with the piers on both sides, despite the tides. But in the strait the difference between high and low tide is only a few inches.
By the time I got back to the ferry pier they'd already parked the tanker in the exact center of the car-truck deck and chained it down. Cars and small trucks do not need to be chained, but this truck was like 700 pounds under their max weight limit and 20 inches short of their vertical height limit, they were taking no chances which made me feel better. I purchased a ticket and got a seat with a view of the car parking deck on the jet-ferry.
It surprised me they never asked for proof of ownership when I parked on their truck scale, at the moment they drove it on their boat I was technically not the owner yet, and they were helping me steal it. But I soon paid the bank and they signed the title over to me and then it was legal.
At 6:29pm we arrived at the port in Tangier and my oil truck was the last vehicle to get unloaded, they slowly backed it off and parked it backwards near their parking lot entrance for me. I thanked them for the fantastic service and drove the oil tanker home and parked it in visitor parking at the apartment complex, and called the office to tell them it would be there for 48 hours, it was mine for a few days. The tanker only had 1/3 of a tank full of diesel fuel left.
At home I called Dan and asked how his work toward getting an oil truck was going. Dan said he was afraid to spend that much money on an unknown thing, he didn't even know if it would fit on the car ferry. He tried to change the subject to snakes but I asked him if he had dinner yet and he said no, but he had leftover soup in the refrigerator. So I told him to drive up here (now).
"Why? What's up?" He asked.
"Never mind, get your butt up here now Bro." He just mumbled okay and hung up the cell. I glanced at the clock.
Since he moved to Morocco I have never ordered him to do much of anything, he was of course curious but agreed. Dan got in his Toyota and drove over, about 35 minutes during the dinner hour. He parked in the KFC lot and came upstairs. I could almost predict when the hallway door would open. I left the door unlocked, Dan usually doesn't knock when he gets here. My time prediction was off by five minutes.
Dan walked in (7:09pm) with a look on his face like he was expecting to see I was badly injured or something, or maybe I had a hooker to share, but he walked in and went directly to the bathroom. After he was done I grabbed his hand and guided him back into the hallway and let his hand drop. We went down the hallway and got in the elevator.
"What's up Alex?" He asked me in English.
"Walk with me, I got something to show you." I replied in Spanish.
I`m sure he assumed we were going to eat at KFC, but we walked past the entrance and went outside past his truck and followed the winding wide sidewalk between the apartment towers and ended up coming around the corner of the last building and then he saw it, the tanker truck (he'd only seen photos of online) was sitting there in the exact same spot as he parked his motorhome after he bought it. We slowly walked all the way around it looking closely at everything and I handed him the key.
He unlocked the door and climbed up into the seat, inserted the key, put it into neutral and glowed the plugs and started the motor, the truck idled smoothly. He sat there staring out the windshield for a few moments then shut off the engine and got out and locked the door and dropped the key in his pocket. Daniel raised one hand to his face to cover his mouth, and then he wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve and started to cry. He reached out and held onto the driver side railing as he softly wept, it took him several minutes to get control over his emotions again. Dan never looked up at me as he fought inside his brain to re-gain control. He kept one hand over his eyes during the worst of his emotions. I should have pocketed some tissues in my apartment before we walked outside. I moved close to his side but did not stand there and watch him cry, I know he thinks it's horribly embarrassing.
Of course he still needed to clean the tank and replace the pump and meter and the nozzle on the end of the hose, and install a ground wire reel and retractor, but those were all little things. I invited him to spend the night. We walked back to my building and he drove his Toyota over and parked it beside the oil tanker and we walked to my apartment and he had me explain how I got it home. I sat on the sofa while he stood by the kitchen counter and pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check about two hundred Euro-bucks over what I paid for it, so I signed over the title. Now it was his oil truck.
We walked down the street and bought a frozen pizza and a 12 pack of warm beer and had a nice evening, that night I blew him on the sofa, and then we slept together like spoons, me in back. He took off his shirt as soon as we got home with the pizza, so I sort of knew what was coming.
The next morning we went out to the tanker and opened the big hatch on top which is plenty big enough for a man to climb down inside. He said there was a basic steel ladder welded inside the tank too. The inside of the tank was bone dry and very clean shiny stainless steel, he said it looked like it was cleaned already. He actually stood inside the tank and walked around with a flashlight while I was on top by the hatch, but he said there was very little oil odor inside. He said we should drive it up to Eddalya and get it filled with AV-Gas then drive it down to the airport, I told him I'd drive his truck. And that's what we did. Luckily he brought cash.
The road from Tangier to Eddalya is winding and hilly; you can see it on gmaps, its about 21 miles door to door. The actual oil depot is not in Eddalya but west of town on the highway by the port.
It cost him about $3,140E to fill the tanker at the port. On the drive to the port we stopped at a store and bought two rolls of paper towels, so while we were waiting for his turn to fill the truck we both went inside and hand cleaned the bottom inside of the tank. It took them like three minutes to fill the tank. They left some air at the top for expansion. While we were there he applied for a dealer account so he paid wholesale instead of retail. But the tax is paid at the wholesale level, not retail on AV-Gas in Morocco. After filling the tanker we drove to a gas station to check air pressure in all ten tires, engine oil, and top off the diesel fuel tanks and we left Eddalya for my apartment. He had to buy a tire pressure gauge.
He dropped me off at home and tossed his keys, so I drove his Toyota down to the airport. While I was there I saw the first concrete pad he made for re-loading airplanes. It looked like a bare concrete patio that was sunken a bit in the center and had a drain in the middle too. It was about 30 feet square and was shaped kind of like a big shower floor, with a rim around the outer edge so if they had a spill it would contain the fluid. The thing looked like it could hold hundreds of gallons. I asked about rain water and he said there was a drain in the middle he would have to open when it rained, but it had to be capped when they were re-fueling airplanes. About fifty feet from the first one he had another hole dug and lined with 2x6 boards, the bottom was covered with reinforcing wire mesh, he was ready for them to pour the next pad. There was a four inch white PVC pipe sticking out of the center which would become the rain drain like the first one, simply unscrew the cap and let the water soak into the ground.
He said he used the bobcat to dig a small pit he filled with rocks then placed the plastic pipe so rain water could quickly soak into the sandy ground. I pictured them attracting snakes in the morning but never said it out loud.
Movement in the sky near the hangar caught my eye, the steel pipe they welded to the hangar wall and his kite-tail windsock at the top seemed to work okay. I also saw the new Porta-John sitting beside the hangar, this one had an actual key lock on the door so users had to ask for the key. Dan also installed a flagpole base but had not assembled the actual pole yet, just the base. He said that was where a couple video cameras will go to record the entire area used for re-fueling airplanes and people using the Porta-John. He said his ass will be well covered to avoid liability. The problem with the camera is there is no electricity on that side of the runway yet, but he's working on it. He's been saying that since the runway was re-paved.
When we first arrived at the airport he parked directly in front of the hangar and told me he was going to park it in the far end of the hangar to keep it out of the sun while he replaced the pump and meter.
I said I needed to get home so we got in his truck, he drove me to the bus stop. But on the way to town he reached across the seat and rested his hand on my shoulder and gently gripped the back of my neck, 110 minutes later I was back in Tangier walking home. By the end of the day a new pump and meter were on order and so was a nozzle but he still had not located a ground wire retractor. He expected next month he would be selling AV-Gas. He actually could now if he poured it directly into a gas can instead of an airplane. He said there was only one brand name for fuel pumps and meters so ordering was simple, he searched for the model he had now and then specified a pump and meter for AV-Gas. Dan said it took a regular gasoline pump and meter, there was no special version for AV-Gas.
You should have seen the look on his face when he saw the truck sitting in the lot by my apartment, it was better than seeing the face of a child when a new bicycle was parked beside the Christmas tree. Anytime I can make my brother that happy its time and money well spent. At first his eyes flooded with tears and he kept reaching up to wipe his eyes as we walked over to it without talking. He only lasted about 90 seconds before it overwhelmed him and he actually cried like a kid for a few moments.
Legally, I actually only owned that truck for six hours and ten minutes!
Contact the author: borischenaz mailfence