For the past two weeks, I’ve been immersed in a whole different kind of second life. Sure, I’ve dipped into Linden Labs very excellent (and addictive) virtual world, but never managed to get really involved.

But I’ve got a completely real second life going on right now. For the time being, I live in half of a nice little duplex in the southwest corner of Kingman, AZ, just where Route 66 tumbles out of the high desert canyons and down to the sunwashed mesas of the Nevada border. You’ve seen Cars, right? This is the place.

Every morning, my housemate Justin (see pic) and I pack our lunches, gather our stuff, and head out to “work” at the local airport. We do stuff there – fly, write up lesson plans, shoot the breeze in the shade of the Sheble porch with the instructors and local characters that seem magnetically drawn to any old airport worth its salt.

Then it’s back home, stopping at Safeway for more peaches and milk – forgot the laundry detergent again – and a run to Office Depot to replenish my stash of Post-It tabs before tomorrow’s class.

Check in with Justin, who’s channel surfing to clear his head from four hours in the Frasca sim, and hangar-fly the day’s events while I throw together my first-order approximation of this evening’s bachelor cuisine. Homework after dinner, and wave off for an early bedtime. We’re both due back at the field by seven tomorrow for more of the same.

A perfectly nice little life – one that could just keep going on like this indefinitely. It’s only time to time that I remember that isn’t my real life. Well, it’s as real as it gets, but there’s another life back in California waiting for me to step back into it like an empty suit. How far away it all seems from this dusty world I now live in…