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Happy new year everyone!

If you've been watching my personal blog you will have seen that I've actually been back for a while now. The reason I've been quiet on xooglers is that Google legal has asked to talk to me about it (no big deal I am assured) and we've been having trouble making contact.

[UPDATE: I was hoping this would just pass, but I guess I'd better clarify before it spins wildly out of control: Google has not asked me to stop blogging. They have not even remotely hinted anything of the sort. All they have done is ask to talk to me, and I have entirely on my own initiative stopped writing Google stories as a courtesy to them until we're able to make contact and I hear what they have to say. So I'm sorry to disappoint all you conspiracy theorists looking for a juicy tidbit, but there is nothing more sinister going on here than a game of phone tag.]

[UPDATE2: We finally made contact. The conversation lasted all of five minutes, and the message was basically, "We think Xooglers is great, but please be careful not to reveal any confidential information, and if you have any doubts about what might be confidential please feel free to call us and ask." No big deal. So I should be picking up the story again later today.]

So in the interim I thought I'd tell a story that Google can't possibly object to because it happened in 1997, a year before there was a Google.

Doubtless what fascinates many people about Google is the vast amount of money it has generated. Larry and Sergey are now billionaires. They've bought a 767 (which is not quite the splurge it might at first glance appear to be). What is it like to have all that money?

Well, I have no idea what it is like to have that kind of money, though I can report from firsthand experience that having some money is awfully nice. But it's no panacea. Money can let you eliminate some of life's headaches, but it comes with some of its own. Don't get me wrong, I definitely place these in the category of "nice problems to have", but they are nonetheless problems.

My most direct encounter with "that" kind of money came in 1997 when I attended a technical conference in Santa Barbara. Because SB is pretty close to where I live and I'm a pilot, I decided to fly myself there. At the time I was flying an old Cessna 182RG, which is a pre-dark-days four-seater with retractable gear (hence the "RG". No, it's just a coincidence that my new initials are RG. The plane I'm flying now is a Cirrus SR22, which has fixed gear.)

(As long as I'm digressing I guess I should explain that the "dark days" were the period in the late eighties to early nineties when no small planes were being manufactured in the U.S. because of liability concerns. At the time, common law held that an airplane manufacturer was liable for manufacturing defects in the airframe no matter how old the airplane was. In 1994 Congress passed the General Aviation Revitalization Act which limits the liability of aircraft and parts to 17 years after the date of manufacture. 17 years still seems like a long time to me, but apparently it's enough to let you make a business case, and since then the U.S. aircraft industry has undergone a renaissance.)

Anyway, it turned out that I was not the only one who had flown their own plane to the conference. There was a very highly ranked executive of a major software company there as well. I won't say who it was or what company he was with. I'll just call him "Chuck." I had actually met Chuck several years earlier when I interviewed for a job (which I didn't get) so I re-introduced myself and we started chatting. It turned out that both our planes were parked at the same place at Santa Barbara airport, so I offered to give him a ride to the airport when the conference was over, an offer which he declined.

So the conference ends, I get in my little rental car and start to drive out of the parking lot when here comes Chuck running after me waving his arms. It turns out that his ride to the airport hasn't shown up and can he take me up on my offer after all? Sure, I say, hop on in, which he does. He then goes on to make himself comfortable by taking off his shoes and putting his feet up on the dash. OK, whatever.

We get to the airport and we both walk into the FBO. My plane is off in the boonies, but his is parked right out front. It's a Falcon 2000, pretty much top of the line in its day (about $30M worth of plane I believe). The red carpet is rolled out (literally) and a little army of crew people are running around getting the thing ready. I pick my jaw up off the tarmac and wish Chuck a pleasant journey.

I walked over to my plane, which seemed very, er, cozy at this point, and started preflighting. In the distance I can hear the Falcon spooling up its engines, and then spooling them down again. Then once more, up and down, and again. And again.

Hm, that's odd, I think. Why don't they just leave?

Then they shut the engines down and open the door. Hm. Doesn't look good.

I go back inside the FBO and there's Chuck sitting on the couch looking very unhappy. "Disaster," he says to me. One of the engines has a broken part. They can't take off. And he has to be in Europe in eighteen hours for a wedding.

Since he had no where to go, Chuck invited me for a tour of his plane. It was a pretty sweet ride. Overstuffed leather upholstery, a nicely stocked bar, I think there was even a shower in back. But the part that really got my attention was in front: it was the first time I'd ever seen a glass cockpit up close.

Being in a plane like that without being able to go flying is kind of like being in a candy store without being able to eat anything, so I hung out for a few minutes, then thanked him for the tour, and took my leave. I offered to fly him to LAX where he could catch a commercial flight to Europe but he declined, which was probably the right thing to do. Flying in to LAX is theoretically possible in a small plane (I've actually flown to JFK in a four-seater once), but it's not something you'd want to do lightly, and at the time I was probably not experienced enough to do it right.

So I flew home. It was a perfectly clear night, and the city lights were spectacular. I marveled at the fact that I was going home while behind me a man worth many billions of dollars was stuck at the airport like an ordinary shmoe.

Postscript: thinking back on it now, I have no idea why he didn't just call a charter company and arrange for another plane to come pick him up. For a few hundred thousand (which should have been chump change by this guy's standards) you can have your pick of the fleet at your beck and call. Maybe if I ever run into Chuck again I'll have a chance to ask him.