This photo was taken at PHX Skyharbor Airport in Arizona. Coming at the airport is a haboob, which is a giant sandstorm (remember that scene in The Mummy?). A girlfriend of mine had the opportunity to live in PHX for a year and said that haboobs are like snowstorms–except it’s rocks and sand blasting your skin off and your lungs out. Duck and cover is the name of the game. Needless to say she has since returned to the Midwest where black ice and snow drifts are her worst problem. I have friends who transfered to work at PHX two years ago and they say haboobs + ramp work = suckiness!
Thankfully, my airport is not in haboob territory, but the City uses hot sand on the runways in the winter in addition to plowing. The sand not only melts the winter weather from the runways but also provides traction for the aircraft tires. We’ll have planes roll up to the gate and the underside of the wing, the main gears, and the tires are caked in a slushy cold sand and snow mix. There are times I’ve tried to time darting under the wing to chock the wheels to avoid getting big, cold, gritty blobs of runway mix from falling on my head and down the neck of my sweater. It fails more than it suceeds since the brakes are putting off extreme heat and is melting the snow faster than I can get under and get out. Ick. Remember in Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin would make frozen slushballs just to get Susie? Lemme tell you, the plane is Calvin!
Winter eventually ends and the City plows go back into hiding at the garage. Warm spring rains begin and warm spring winds follow, blowing aloft a large portion of the sand that hadn’t been scraped backup by the plows. The wind blows steadily at the airport (nothing to impede it) with varying speeds, spreading the sand into the sewers, the corners of the building, into dunes on the ramp up to a couple inches high. We would ask the City to send out the vacuum trucks to pick up the beaches that were forming. A couple years ago it wasn’t until we delivered several five gallon buckets of sand to the City’s nice sand-free office that the sweeper trucks were sent out. In the summer you can find large patches of weeds and grasses growing on sections of the concrete ramp where the sand is built up and stable enough to make an ecosystem.
After my first couple years on the ramp, I went to purchase new glasses. Not only had my prescription changed but something just was off. I credited it to old glasses. My optometrist looked over my glasses very carefully and asked, “What are you doing to your glasses?” “Nothing,” I replied, bewildered. “The lenses…. the antiglare coating is gone…. the lenses are microscopically shredded, like they’ve been sandblasted!” Little did he know how right he was!!!
I use to have a dandruff problem most of the year. I was humiliated and felt unclean, buying many bottles of Head and Shoulders shampoo, trying to eradicate the problem. There is nothing like digging a fingernail into your scalp and coming our with a nailful of dirt and grit. One day I was able to take a relative out on the ramp and show him around (pre 9/11) since he was an airplane enthusiast. I showed him several of our parked aircraft and he got to watch a live 757 flight being loaded and pushed. He enjoyed his experience immensely and as we returned to the terminal he wiped the sweat from his bald head. “Oy! Gross! I’m covered in sand!” A lightbulb went off in my head. At the next appointment with my hairdresser I asked her, “Is this dandruff?? It itches and there’s a snow field on my shoulders! Shampoos aren’t helping!!” She took a close look, rubbed a sample between her fingers and said, “No, this is mostly sand. From where are you getting all this sand in your scalp?”
There was one warm spring day on the ramp where the wind was the type you lean into just to stay upright, and I took shelter on the lee of the aircraft body. It was shaded and I looked into the sky (because it was a pretty blue) and watched in amazement at what looked like meteorites. It was the sand from the airfield blowing in for dozens of feet above my head, in a sparkling silicate light show. It was a human sand blasting day. Guys who wore contact lenses on these types of days had massively irritated and running eyes halfway into their shifts. They had the economy sized bottles of Visine in their pockets just to get the particles out.
So the next time you see me rub my eyes or scratch my head and see a light dusting on my shirt, it’s most likely me shedding sand. It’s a gift from winter that keeps on giving most of the year.
Life By Baggage 