Luckier Still: More recollections of the writing life

Continuing the previous post, thinking of memorable times on the job and while researching a story:

• During an expediter run on a construction job in 1980, I was assigned to make a stop at a dynamite wholesaler. I left with my VW Rabbit carrying a hundred pounds of DuPont Tovex, sporting a nifty triangular sign on my rear window: DANGER - HIGH EXPLOSIVES - KEEP BACK 300 FEET;
• Accompanied an Austin police officer on a weekend-night shift. When he went into a house to check on a domestic dispute, he pointed to his shotgun and said "If there's trouble, feel free to use this;"
• Spent a morning with Moulton Taylor, inventor of the first practical flying car;
• Had a lengthy talk with Harrison Ford about his time in helicopters; 
• Climbed a tower crane during a construction-machinery trade show in Houston;
• Jumped out of a helicopter during water-rescue practice with the LA County Fire Department;
• Attended a reunion of Vietnam-era pilots who flew for the CIA front company, Air America;
• From Henry Kaiser's key man Clay Bedford, I heard how the shipyard at Richmond, California, built a 9.000-ton Liberty ship in less than five days;
• Joined an afternoon of counterfeit-product raids with a private detective, sheriff deputies, and lawyers from the Disney Corp;
• While doing stonemasonry, learned that hitting a big slab of limestone with a sledgehammer makes a very loud "bong", lasting less time than striking a brass bell but about as loud (This requires the slab to be perched atop other rocks, so the vibrations aren't dampened);
• "Rode the block" from the top of a Kansas oil rig, but declined the crew's invitation to join in heaving chain around a spinning drill pipe (this, after seeing one roughneck's mangled hand);
• Learned how to drag oak logs up a hillside with a choker cable and a winch;
• Spent many happy hours running a Case backhoe; 
• Rode with archaeologists in a Bell 206 helicopter doing fieldwork above the Arctic Circle; and
• Made a teeth-clenching drive up a New Mexico mountain hauling a trailer-mounted air compressor and drilling equipment:
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