How Tall Is Tom Hanks?

While perusing through Kevin Garrisons web log this morning (http://kevincreates.com/blog.html), enjoying my grande coffee of some sort from a foreign nation which I've never heard of but am quiet sure, given enough time, we will liberate the shit out of via high explosive ordinance (See also Sand Covered Nations) I was struck by question from the CSR at the desk that simply caused a complete and total vapor lock within the circuity of my brain.

Normally while at the airport I'm occupied with professional methods of goofing off during the slow periods, or I can be found scurrying around the T hangers during my free time and off days, but this particular morning I'd decided to camp out at the front desk which provides the most direct link the interwebs, while keeping a watchful eye on the ramp and open ear to the tower frequency. While blissfully ignoring the troubles of the world and day dreaming about burning precious blue octane at several thousand feet, the question in subject drifted across the room, into my ear and caused the melt down within the synapses, leaving me giggling and somewhat unable to reset.

"How tall is Tom Hanks?"

Rediculous right?
It's the sort of benign meaningless question that really doesn't warrant a response, as who would know such things just off hand, but either the absence of sleep from the night before or the lack of effect that the Foreign Java Juice should have been providing, caused me to completely vanish within the universe for a fraction of a second while the upstairs Vista executed a reset/restart. I can imagine as I sat with a blank stare, blue screens of death flickering across my eyes

"How tall is Tom Hanks?"
From nowhere this question came, one minute a bored wistful CSR banging out sales slips from the night before, next a great provider of mental conundrum that placed within certain range of intelligence agencies, would bring the entire operations of agents and analysts to their knees, pleading WHY!!!!!!!!

Now just what the Hell does this have to do with aviation, other than the event occurred at an airport? Contemplate this. You've just been flying for five plus hours on a long haul IFR, it's very dark, you're getting close to your drowsy stage and the bladder capacity is nearing a critical level. Picking up the ILS and lining everything up, completing the checklists and setting up for the last landing of the trip, you focus and try to hold the glide, course, and power in equilibrium to the coveted greased on touch down all while juggling one handed if you're bird doesn't have an auto-pilot. From nowhere in particular the question "How tall is Tom Hanks?" drifts across the headset and everything on your brains little view screen just goes blank. The NTSB report would probably read something like the following.

Cessna 172
Damage Significant
2 injured
Cause: PICs failure to maintain control of the aircraft while executing ILS approach. Controlled flight into terrain.

It's moments such as these that, while I laugh along with my co-workers occasionally, under no circumstances should I allow myself to become too distracted by interesting questions that demand the concentration of the cosmos, not for the simplicity of the answers to be obtained, but the very contemplation on why the question would be asked in the first place. Good luck to all of you whom this may plague now while flying IFR, KW takes no responsibility for whatever mental locks result as relaying this mornings transgressions.

Back to the IFR books, I bet Gleim or the Kings never had to deal with this sort of distraction.

KW