Coming Home: Flight Three
Shelley J Alongi

 

November 5, 2003

Opening the door of the small airport office and inhaling the smell of paint and old coffee was like coming home to an old familiar house. Do you know what I mean? I walked in through the door this afternoon eleven months after the second flight and knew I belonged there. When I look back at what I’ve written about my last flying adventures I’ve noticed something: I’ve always written about them with some kind of frantic calm. Tonight it was different. Tonight it was about just being right; a marriage between mind and heart and something that just fit my personality; the adventurous spirit, the sheer feeling of hitting the spot.
The last six weeks of my life had been especially harrowing and for two days I had been recovering from what I might call severe cabin fever after writing ten book reviews for one class. I was chomping at the bit to do this flight. It had been rescheduled a number of times due to a number of reasons, and this time I was **not** going to be thwarted, even if it was natural disaster that stopped it. It wasn’t. There was no such thing.
Two days of helping sell coffee and enduring constant teasing about how much room there was in the Cessna and what I was going to wear, and what I was going to do there gave way to this: serious reality; professional competence, comfort; true love between passenger and plane. After making last nature calls and getting things ready we headed out to the plane, Todd chattering about how pilots carry flashlights in the cockpit for night flights so they can see the instrument panels when it gets dark.

Standing out by the C172 model P we watched a twin engine start up and head past us and felt the wake from the props as he assumed his position in the cue. Soon it would be our turn..but not yet.

“What do you want to do here?” Todd asked me as we stepped up to the now familiar little plane.

“Everything,” I said. Touching, stepping over the tie-down cables, unchaining the plane, ducking under the struts, avoiding the little sharp corner on the elevator that could give me a nasty forehead cut since it was right at my height; this time I hadn’t forgotten anything about the parts of the plane that we were preflighting; it was the same plane, but in some ways a different plane. I did learn one additional detail: the location of the engine’s air filter. You see, recently, parts of southern California’s forests have been on fire and Todd expressed concern to me about two weeks ago in regard to possible damage his air filter took during a flight because of so much ash being in the air. That little incident mentioned in a casual email to another pilot garnered a story about what happens when air filters clog up. Seeing I was responsible for that I decided I had to know where it was. Oh and there was one more thing. Before getting into the plane I decided I had to inspect the landing gear a little more thoroughly…interesting configuration…Like a bullet, he said…more like half a bullet…kind of cool-looking, that was my estimation. The C172’s landing gear does not collapse, of course, so finally after two flights I took a closer look at it.

As we got into the plane and harnessed ourselves in for the flight, I made some comment about the seat belt technology being old and then didn’t put on the shoulder harness. He reached around me and put it on. I just sat there; I had forgotten something after all.

“Did you say you had 27 books?” he asked as he made sure the switches were all in place.

“Yes. Let’s not talk about that now,” I teased him. “Not now.”

It was time for a flight; not books. We could discuss those later, but now..not now, now it was all about turning the key and checking flight control surfaces and things, and just…waiting. And the cell phone beeping at me because I accidentally hit the button.

“Is it ringing?” asked the twenty-seven-year-old pilot who I found out later had been working here as a CFI for three years and so many months.

“No it’s not ringing,” I said dramatically. “And if it was I wouldn’t answer it! I’m with my pilot, that’s it! Nobody is interrupting this flight! Nobody!”

The weather was certainly chillier than on previous flights--okay so we’re in southern California here--but it was cool, crisp, exhilarating, and downright cold; but weather and wind direction cooperated and we were off. Except we had to hold short for a while and wait our turn. There was a plane landing and a plane doing run up and then it was our turn. Our mission was simple: PAR all the way. Finally assuming our place we climbed out and I noticed something right away: I was paying attention to the conversation between air traffic control, pilots, and ATIS. I suppose eleven months of emailing Todd and my other pilots and reading articles had left their mark. We scanned the sky and listened and did the approaches. But I was sitting there and suddenly about ten minutes into the flight I did something that I don’t think I had consciously done during the last two flights: I relaxed. I could feel my hands and feet untensing; there was a sigh; does that sound weird? Probably, but someone reading this will know what I mean.

“How are you feeling?” asked Todd.

What muse or god picked the timing for that question? It came right after the deep sense of comfort that warmed and relaxed me. It was **just** after that happened that he asked.

“Good,” I said naturally. “I decided to relax,” I continued, but there wouldn’t really be a way to explain that so I didn’t try.

This flight was all about precision approaches to our local military airport which put us right into restricted air space.

“This is as much a treat for me as it is for you,” said my pilot as we listened intently to the directions and the reports of traffic.

“Got it in sight,” said my pilot when we were told of oncoming helicopter or climbing traffic.

“On glide path,” said one controller, then another one as we finished, climbed and went back for more. So who had more fun on this flight? Maybe it was a close match.

Sitting in the right seat I listened and realized something else: I’ve always been good at learning new languages. ATC and pilot conversations to me have become a more familiar language. I’m no expert but I’m not completely clueless. I always did well learning other languages. We would actually talk to each other during lulls and then I would stop talking as ATC and then ATIS interrupted me.

“Go ahead,” he would say when the important information had been relayed. I talked more on this flight than on the other two combined. Chatty Kathy? No, but comfortable, yes.

I also noticed that the engine seemed quieter, and it had to be because of the headset; it was a different one. The whole experience was calming; it was like coming home.

After a while we entered the traffic pattern for final to Fullerton. We grew quiet and listened. Suddenly in the flat, professional English of tower and pilots came the southern drawl of the Bonanza pilot wanting a GPS approach to Riverside airport.

“Where’s that guy from?” I smilingly inquired of my trusty pilot.

“Sounds like Texas,” he answered me. The whole exchange was rather endearing.

Then the flight instructor did something that caught me off guard; he wanted me to turn in the traffic pattern. That, honestly, was a bit scary, but he rescued his reputation and my sanity..well okay it wasn’t that bad.

“I’m sure it looks interesting from the ground,” he said.

Sure was interesting from my perspective. I can’t see the panels or out the window so not sure how much to turn I was probably a little conservative in my estimates. I’ll have to ask him next time to let me try again. I’m up for a challenge, anyway. We did something else. After squeaking successfully onto the ground we taxied back to the runway, went back into the air and reentered the pattern again. I think the tower was surprised when he asked if he could taxi again. I was, too. I could hardly believe it had been an hour. Was it already over? So soon after eleven months of planning and rescheduling? I suppose it was over in a way; but not completely over, as it turned out.

There was another revelation, too. When I got out of the plane I wasn’t nervous; I wasn’t so exhilarated that I couldn’t think. I was cold. IN fact during the flight Todd turned on the heat because it was cold, but when we got down on the ground I was comfortable. In fact I was so comfortable that I didn’t realize that my cell phone had fallen onto the ground till one of the line guys pointed it out to the pilot. They pushed the plane back to the tie-down ramp, rechained it, and we were off.
This flight was stimulating in a different way. The first flight was all about anew adventure and new things to learn and satisfying a dizzying curiosity about a little plane; the second flight was about learning what it was like to stall that plane and all about it’s capabilities in recovering from induced stalls; but the third one, was just comfortable, like that old comfortable slipper feeling.

The whole adventure wasn’t quite over, though because last week I asked Todd if he wanted to go to dinner with me after the flight. He said yes. I always go eat after flights. I was actually a bit surprised that he said he’d come with me. So we took care of the business of paying for pleasure and went to eat. I have to say I did do a fare amount of talking, but he held his own and we talked about military planes and aviation books, and his plans to compete in an athletic event this weekend. And here I can’t resist saying that during the course of conversation he told me that Tuesday he had been feeling under the weather and so took Actifed to combat this malaise. Actifed is a stimulant and so he continued his training for the swimming portion of the event. I thought about that story and thought it was kind of ironic that during the past two weeks, perhaps due to the ash, and perhaps just due to my own sinus troubles I had been taking Tylenol and wondered if I would have to call off the flight due to my right ear clogging up. But, no, I said, I wasn’t going to do that; I would just deal with it! So to hear that the pilot was taking FAA approved meds the night before the flight made me smile a bit because of my own concern…you see, it all worked out just fine!

As the barbecue sauce smothered ribs I ordered arrived, we talked about teaching and flying and then I gave free advice about marriage. As he talked about planes or how he waited eighteen years to “control an airplane” I could sense the passion: I call it the sparkly eyes syndrome; I suppose being rather passionate about things myself I can pick up on other people’s passions. I honestly find those kinds of passions endearing because they take the hard cold facts of air currents and the physical properties of airplanes and translate them into real human experiences complete with all of the elements that make people love what they do. It’s obvious he is passionate about flight. I think I can relate to that!

Finally, finishing the meal and paying the bill, I told him I had plans to throw a New Year’s spaghetti bash and he would be on my list of people to invite. Then we paid and he drove me back to my house.

“It was a pleasure flying with you,” he said as we parted at the stairs to my house. Balancing the bag with my jingling bell and preparing to turn I reached out and shook my pilot’s hand. I think it would be hard to say who got more pleasure out of it; but I left it at that and went back to my own world. What a reprieve that one had been. It left me wanting more.

So what does going to dinner and talking about life and books have to do with flying? Flying is fun; we know I think that. But is it more fun and more relaxing when you trust the person who is actually flying the airplane? When there is something in common even if it’s just a year and a half of emails about aviation related subjects is the experience more enjoyable because there’s a type of rapport there? During the last year and a half Todd has answered a bunch of questions about planes so I could write them into my stories. In the course of time he has told me things about himself and I’ve probably said a few things about me. I’ve done two things in the last year and a half: found another passion and made new friends. That can’t be bad, can it?

Sitting in the restaurant I said: “I love small planes. I can’t explain what it is.”

“You’ve caught the bug,” he said, “you’re coming back for more!”

I’ve found something that truly makes me happy. It is something that I can hold on to during the rest of this semester, because I still have a lot of work to do and I’ll need good, comfortable memories to help. So what is the meaning of all this? Am I passionate about flight? Will I “come back for more” as the CFI put it? I think the answer is a resounding “yes!”

      

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"