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Brrrrr!!

Picture In my book, The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life I write about flying in wintertime Iowa. My aviation endeavors in Iowa revolved around the lifesaving work I did with the helicopter, and the flying revolved around the seasons. In Iowa there are only three seasons: Summer, Fall and all Winter long. I may have been extremely uncomfortable in Iowa in the wintertime, but the helicopter loved cold weather. Because of the density of the air, the aircraft performed better in winter, the engine was more efficient, rotor blades took a better bite of air and the calculated airspeeds were always a bit higher in cold weather, thus, I arrived a wee bit faster at my destinations. One memorable mission in one of the most bitter cold nights I ever flew comes to mind. The emergency call came in to the hospital around midnight: two vehicles had met head on in a rural area, on a two lane blacktop, after one of them slid on ice. Occupants of both vehicles were trapped. I lifted off in the helicopter at 12:20 a.m. and reached the scene ten minutes later. Rescue crews using the Jaws of Life hammered and tore at the mangled cars, or one of them at least. One driver was dead, a white sheet draped across his front seat. I waited in the cold for the surviving driver, my patient, as I walked along the roadway which was littered with car parts, plastic, glass shards and rubber scattered from the smashed cars. My breath ghosting in the minus ten degree night, I traced the skid marks on the frozen road, following the path the first vehicle took into the opposing lane. The thick, black tread of locked up tires stopped at the point of impact. Both vehicles had caromed off each other, and slammed into opposite ditches.

After thirty minutes, my patient, hypothermic and half dead from blood loss, came out of the wreckage of his car and I flew him to the hospital. He survived. I flew for many winters in Iowa, saw many such accidents and learned that however miserable I was on that frigid, windswept country road that night, my patients had it much worse. It's a good leasson for all of us in this frozen time of year.
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Published on January 06, 2014 05:51
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