This is the tragic story of Independence Air, a low-cost carrier that tried to make air travel fun again, but shriveled into oblivion less than two years after it romped onto tarmacs across the nation.

Friday was the last day of a four-day auction to liquidate everything physical that the company had. The airplanes were long gone, reclaimed by leasing companies and creditors. Yesterday saw all the ground handling equipment–baggage loaders, carts, de-ice trucks, catering trucks…–sold to people with flatbed semi trucks at their disposal. Today can only be described as “miscellaneousn+1“. Of course, Geoff and I had to check it out.

For a sense of scale, this was the hanger that Friday’s auction was in. That far wall is about a football field away. In between me and the wall, about 300 lots of “stuff,” including a substantial collection of ladders, drums of turbine oil, lavatory service carts, and aircraft jack stands. There was a separate part in an adjoining building with office furniture and airplane parts.

Our fearless editor Ellen stayed behind, but fully expected us to return with something frivolous for the newsroom. The auction listing was 17 pages long and included 1,103 lots. But that number is very deceptive because many of the lots, like inflatable life vests, were actually several hundred items. Here’s the rundown of some of the more noteworthy action:

• 15 aisle-width wheelchairs: $250 total

• A shelf of random tool bits, including some velco, a bag of plastic wings, and two 15-drawer organizers for screws: $425
• Fiber-optic boroscopes: $5,000 each
• Two tubs of “distaster pouches” (see photo): $50
• A-319 engine sling: $4,500
• Lot 641, about 30 cases of “CRJ specialty tooling”: $48,000
• 8-foot-tall aircraft jack stand: $10
• Ten ‘04 Chevy Silverados with horizontal and vertical stabilizers bolted into the beds, 30k miles, $15,000 MSRP and plenty of dings: $17,500 each

• And my winnings for the day: 2 emergency medical kits at $100 each, contents valued at $1,000 each, plus an automatic electronic defibrillator, $300, valued at about $1,500.

Alas, I have no random junk to claim as my own little sliver of Independence Air, since my winnings were strictly pragmatic and will take up residence in my dad’s clinic. If I had squandered my entire day and not just half the afternoon, I’m pretty sure I could have picked up Lot 700, an electronic boarding sign; or Lot 698, the old-school version of said sign with all the little tags that say “Boarding” and “Delayed” and things like that; or Lot 894, a catering cart, maybe even with peanuts and half-empty Sprite cans inside; or Lot 889, described only as “925 food containers”. Yes, there were many fine things up for bid today for which I simply did not have the patience to wait through a most inefficient process. They started with Lot 400 at 9:30 a.m. and barely made it to Lot 683 (”66 radio base stations”) by the time we left at 2:45 p.m. Less than 300 lots in more than five hours and they still had about 800 lots to go. Good stuff, no doubt. Maybe I should go back and see if anything went unsold…

…In case you were wondering, Lot 944 was a set of two flight data recorders. No, I definitely did not stay long enough to see how much those went for.

There are only three investments in my life that I have come to regret. Two, as my high school friends may recall, were my errant purchases of stock in Webvan and the Nimbus Group. Both of those companies tanked shortly after I purchased them and lost me a few hundred dollars each. I was young and energetic at the time, so I rebounded and moved on.

But today, a crushing defeat for my ego, one more regretful investment and another point against Technology. The offender, of course, is that vile contraption known to most as a Bluetooth headset. I prefer to call it an unruly 3-year-old scampering unsupervised in the Mall of America at 1 p.m. on the Saturday before Christmas. Of course, that makes me the irresponsible parent, but so be it. Yes, a mere 22 hours after acquiring said headset to go with my new phone, and after making two actual phone calls and two more attempted calls, my beloved 3-year-old slipped the surly bonds of earth.

If I had been like every other Bluetooth dork in Washington, D.C., who keeps the Bluetooth headset permanently attached like a blinking blue cyborg appendage, none of this would have happened. But no, I felt like a moron wearing that thing when I wasn’t on the phone, so I relegated it to a pocket.

Apparently the grass was greener on the west side of Dupont Circle than in the breast pocket of my green button-down shirt. Somewhere near the remnants of a giveaway of 1,000 pounds of fresh Louisiana shrimp (inevitable subject of a future post), there is a lone Plantronics 320 headset, its blue LED blinking in the grass. Begone, Bluetooth. There is a reason Americans are so slow to adopt you. Because we are sick of you running away like a spoiled 3-year-old.

Fourth in a series

Enterprise is at once in it’s own remote world, yet delightfully close to the southwestern edge of the Columbia Basin. The town of 1,800 is an easy 45-minute flight from Walla Walla and makes a fine stop for a weekend brunch at the diner near the airport. While neighboring Joseph gets all the cool events like the Oregon Mountain Cruise and the Chief Joseph Days rodeo, Enterprise is still a perfectly legitimate gateway to the outdoors, since that’s pretty much what Wallowa County is all about. Hells Canyon, through which the Snake River cuts, is a bit east, and the Eagle Cap Mountains rise precipitiously nearby. Don’t forget Wallowa Lake State Park, which I just think is cool because of the glacial eskers that protrude from the northern edge of the lake. You don’t really notice them unless you’re in a plane, but then everything makes sense all of a sudden.

Today White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan announced his resignation. Judging from his body language I saw at a press briefing last week, I can’t say I am surprised, and I definitely saw it coming. The best part of all this is a quote from Bush this morning:

“One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas and talking about the good old days.”

And knowing how things work around the White House, I would be none too surprised if rocking-chair time has already been reserved this weekend.

Since there is all this talk of shaking things up over there, does anyone know what Allison Janney is up to these days?

Third in a series

Named after timber maverick Charles Drain, the tiny town of Drain is so much more than a humorous exit sign on Interstate 5 these days. With a population of about 1,100, Drain has staked out its territory as one of Oregon’s premier retirement communities, since the timber business is a shadow if its former self and the tax rate (as a result) is ridiculously low. Drain even has its own newspaper, the Drain Enterprise. For the curious tourist, the small town offers at least two covered bridges and the Drain Castle, the home of Charles and Anne Drain built in the late 1880s. Drain has been a remarkably resilient town, since fire destroyed most of the city in the 1900s, and the railroad pulled out shortly thereafter. For the southbound-driving traveler, the exit for Drain is even more rewarding, since it is also the ramp for Curtin, Oregon.

Every self-respecting journalist can smell a good press conference from a mile away. The sweet scent of free stuff wafts into our very psyches, making us question where our loyalties lie and how objective we really are. Such was the case yesterday, at a scintillating press conference hosted by a bunch of groups recognizing National Public Safety Telecommunications Week. To their credit, they put on a pretty polished event that, especially in the Q&A, was remarkably candid for such a spectacle.

My second-favorite part was the plasma TV in the background that mapped, in real time, the location of every 911 call made on a cell phone in the U.S. It’s kind of wild to think of someone calling 911 from the side of the road somewhere in Alabama, having their latitude and longitude transmitted to a network operations center in Seattle, and then piped over a VPN to a laptop in Washington, D.C.

But I digress. My favorite part by far was the gift they handed out to all of us. A small, zippered, ballistic nylon wallet thing slightly larger than what you’d use to hold a few CDs. The front, emblazoned with the logo (such that it is) and Web site of TeleCommunication Systems, the company that made the plasma TV thing go. Inside, to help you in any emergency, when seconds count, lives are on the line, and you’re on the side of the Interstate with your cell phone in one hand and this wallet thing in the other: A seven-foot retractable Ethernet cable and an LED book light.

Suddenly, everything makes perfect sense. Danica suggested that in the event of a mugging, you could temporarily blind your assailant with the book light and then cuff the bastard with the Ethernet cable until Homeland Security arrives.

Second in a Series

Far from what most people would consider civilization, it’s still possible to have fun in Burns, even when the alternator in your Skyhawk turns itself into an arc welder. Situated at the northern edge of the Great Basin and south of the Blue Mountains, 2,850 people plus about 50 youths at the maximum-security Eastern Oregon Regional Youth Correctional Facility call burns their home. There’s a diner with remarkably tasty curly fries that you’ll drive by on Highway 395 through town, and there are always cattle-related things going on in Burns. Burns is the largest town in Harney County, the latter of which is mostly BLM rangeland for, well, ranching. If you find yourself flying in, the folks at the airport are very friendly and down-to-earth, and the courtesy car is far cooler than any other I’ve ever used. A former police car, it still has molded plastic rear seats with foam-lined recesses for your cuffed hands. The speedometer says “calibrated,” there is a sticker on the dash that reads “Do Not Use Overdrive During High Speed Pursuits” and the searchlight still works. The enterprising driver can successfully pull over cars by flashing said searchlight on and off. Not that I would know.

This post goes out to the woman sitting in Car #3 of the Orange Line toward New Carrollton who was reading 1984. Me: two bags of Trader Joe’s groceries and scintillating reading on the federal budget deficit. Dude behind me and next to you: spouting off pretty much every known stereotype about women, girls, women he had divorced, women who shop, women who don’t do grocery shopping, women who argue, women who don’t argue and women from New York City. This, mind you, was all in the 180 seconds between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom/GWU. Longest 180 seconds of my life. To wit, if I were continuing on to Metro Center as originally planned, I would have made a compelling and succinct argument simultaneously refuting all of his baseless stereotypes and establishing numerous specific instances in which women not fulfilling social stereotypes has been a good thing. Sorry that didn’t happen. I bet if I were on the ball enough, I could have gotten the entire car applauding at the end. It’s like a Craigslist Missed Connection, except really more of a Missed Oration.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in an indefinite series exploring small towns in Oregon State. If I get bored with it or if I run out of towns (both of which are highly unlikely), then we’ll switch to another state, or perhaps even a province. The main objective here is to prove that there are more than just hippies in Oregon, and that there are more cities than just Portland. If you were given a blank map, would you be able to correctly mark Eugene and Salem in relation to each other? That’s what I thought. Now try it with Enterprise and Joseph.

First in a series

John Day is home to about 1,630 people, nestled in the John Day River valley in central Oregon. The town has an airport to its name, as well as its very own Best Western Inn. As the map indicates, it is by-and-large in the middle of nowhere (3 hours from Bend, 6 hours from Portland), but that doesn’t make it an uninteresting place. There are, to the best of my knowledge, two things worth seeing. The first is the Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum, the 16th site in Oregon to be designated a National Historic Landmark. For the geologically inclined, there’s also the John Day Fossil Beds, which as the name implies, are really old mattresses. And if you look closely enough, there also happen to be really really old Cenozoic rocks and fossils. The name is a bit misleading, since there are 3 “units” all rather far apart from each other, and only one, the Sheep Rock Unit, is close to John Day. But of course, that means the other units are near small Oregon towns of their own.

Since my limited knowledge of CSS has apparently failed me, what do I need to change to make this whole thing wider? There’s obviously something I’m missing, since just changing the wrapper width didn’t do anything. Take a look at the code and the stylesheets and let me know how to widen. Cuz obesity is the new polyester.