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                    *     *     *     *     *  Flag of Denmark.      I hope you’re fond of pickled herring, dear reader.       Founded as a fishing village in the 10th century, Copenhagen became the capital of   Denmark-Norway   in the early 15th century.        Despite their Viking-raiding heritage; I determined t he Danes were easy to get along with – plus they all seemed to speak English – and although their city was extremely clean, I personally felt it to be too cold and sterile for my taste.   Winter there was a bitch; apparently prompting numerous suicides.       The Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup lies on the southeast edge of the Amager Island, alongside the Øresund  Strait , hence the airport is surrounded on three sides by water.             ...
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            *     *     *     *     *       Don Mueang International, Bangkok, Thailand      Monday 27 th September 1999      It’s at night, I’m in command of a B-747-200, and I’m sweating bricks; not from heat but purely from stress.      So what’s got Mrs. Chisholm’s little boy so stressed out, dear reader?       Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I’ve just suffered an Engine #4 failure and a fire in Engine #3, which I’ve shut down and extinguished.   Presently I’ve got two engines remaining, Engines #1 & #2 on the left wing, setting up a monstrous yaw to the right...that I’ve managed to neutralize with rudder trim.   The 747 is sluggish in this lopsided, two-engine configuration, so I go back to my helicopter training...with gradual, smooth, ...
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                                  * * * * *  Kilauea at the Big Island.      On the next day, 17th October 1991, I went back to the flight school at HNL, and rented me a new Piper Cherokee 180, along with the same instructor I had on the helicopter. The Cherokee is a low-winged monoplane, with a single Lycoming 180 HP engine, which gave us a solid cruising speed of 140 mph.       I hand-flew the Cherokee (the fun part) while I had the instructor handle the radio and navigation (the boring part). The instructor guided us past the west sides of Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe and Maui – observing all these islands in the far distance.      Later he set me up for a run down the northeast coast of the Big Island, which in a word was stunning.       I viewed a series of cliffs a thousand feet high covered in green, with dee...
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