Parking issues

Just where do you park your helicopter outside an inner city hospital?

Answer: build a helipad over the main road at the front door. Clever.

The air ambulance took off as I was passing, so I stopped and watched. The sound takes me straight back to me days in the oil industry, when helicopters are the essential means of transport. In UK, flying over the North Sea required the passengers to don rubbery survival suits that went from head to toe. Even the smallest suit was too tall for me, so I would have to fold the length of the foot part under my foot before trying to get my shoes back on, and then I would wade from heliport to chopper with large wrinkles of excess leg length around my ankles. Thank God, I never needed to test out my survival skills.

Years later, in Western Australia, I recall flying back to base at the end of a busy day, watching a fantastic sunset and listening to the Doors singing "Riders on the Storm". Wonderful.

Helicopters. Now used as a work horse to whisk wounded patients to hospital, who are too sick to wait through the traffic. What a great use of technology.