I..just... 

Be Nice

I have failed in my life to live by the "if you don't have something nice to say, then say nothing at all" credo. Because not saying something nice sometimes is just irresistible.

I am at a loss for words, however, with this link. I can't even say anything bad. I'm paralyzed.

http://www.funny-dog.com/rainbow/

"There's a demon that lives in the sky..." 

"Gear: Check. Fuel: Check. Hubris: uh, we got a problem here with the Hubris levels..."

Really, really rich s.o.b. Steve Fossett is, as I write, flying non-stop around the world. Or attempting to.

Yesterday when asked to make some comments on the flight he said, "I am the ultimate test pilot."

I'm sorry. Come again?

There are a bunch of old test pilots who read this, and I'm sure they each blew coffee, or bourbon - or whatever it is old test pilots drink while they read - out their noses.

There's been a whole lotta un-be-lieve-able flying done by a cadre of seriously tough, smart people. Test pilots have been put through an enormous amount to advance aviation. Much of it shoe-string. Much of it doing things that they couldn't prove would work until they went up in the air and tried it. There are a lot of test pilots dead well before their time.

Fossett, while he is indeed on a delicate, challenging mission, is flying a single seat jet of the most futuristic design, with the most advanced set of instruments, in constant contact with dozens of troubleshooters, with crews on all continents, and boats ready to scramble, all financed by Richard Branson.

Look outside yourself, Steve...

Me. The 6. Rainier. Last week. 

Flying.

I love to fly.

I flew, first, in the womb I am told. Tay and Ellie would fly in the Cessna 172 to visit their various parents. Incredible as it seems, I have recollections from the crib. Nap time, the slatted wooden blinds allowing cracks of afternoon light, listening to airplanes fly over head. Years later I learned that was the Woodside VOR route into Palo Alto airport.

My first personal flying was in gliders. I was sent off at the age of 14 to the desert outside of Edwards Airforce Base. My grandfather sat in our chilly room at the Desert Aire hotel, watching the Watergate hearings. I took lessons in a Schweitzer 1-33 from a woman named Carol Moe, upon whom I had the most terrific crush. Every day was hot as hell.

Carol soloed me, and cut the tail off my Calaveras Redskins t-shirt, writing the date and details of my accomplishment, and pinned it to the ceiling of the trailer that served as the ground base at the Crystal Aire glider strip.

I was sent back the following summer to learn more and fly more, this time living in my uncle’s camper. He left me there with the camper to fend for myself for a week or two, flying gliders by day and learning about the creatures of the desert in the evenings. It sounds like child abuse now, but then I seemed to understand it. Or perhaps I just accepted it. But I flew the thermals, and amazingly got the glider back to the strip every single time.

It astounds me now, having known 14 and 15 year olds, that they let me fly these things alone, trusting I wouldn’t bend them. I've known a bunch of adults I wouldn't trust to get it right. But every year many teenagers fly like this without a problem. It's a great challenge, and I was lucky my father had the insight to push me to do it.

I took flying lessons in my 16^th year. I took them with Jim Douglas in a 1946 Taylorcraft. Jim seemed ancient to me then. But he’s still around the Calaveras county airport, which demonstrates to me the bias youth injects on age. He truly is old now – he recently stopped flying.

I took just a few hours of flight training at that time. Disastrous home life and hormones assured that I was not going to be focused enough to get my license.

When I was 21 I was fresh back from a year in Australia (another testament to lack of focus – I took a year off from college to work in the outback) and returned much more focused. I had a light second semester, and set out to get my license. I did that, six months later.

Variously after that I have flown a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have. Financial limitations directed my avian options. I flew hang gliders for a bit, then I got a good job and could afford to rent airplanes; I left whatever number of jobs after that and ended up flying paragliders for some fun. I broke the hell out of my ankles doing that, and another time broke my tail bone. It’s a great way to fly on the cheap, but get training. Use your head.

Six years ago I got tired of renting airplanes. I hated writing the checks after every single flight. It seemed stupidly expensive. I had gotten my instrument rating (a source of much check writing.) I just decided if I was going to fly, I had to quit dancing around it, and commit myself to an airplane. I’d also just been broken up with, and felt I needed to commit to a passion that remained.

Since then I have flown twice as many hours as I had the entire time between the ages of 22 and 37. And as much as I don’t have to write checks after every flight, I have not successfully deluded myself. It's expensive. I know. But it’s mine.

One of the cornerstones of my passion is that it requires me to be totally there. I fly, that's what I'm thinking about. There's not enough bandwidth to let the other stuff of the day in. The phone will not ring, I will not surf the web, there is no CNN. I am busy. Busy, challenged, full of thought and joy.

I sat down to write this because I was musing on how much fun it is to take other people flying. I simply love to fly. There is no exaggeration when I say that every single time I leave the ground 'I feel it again.’ It varies in intensity, but pretty much I just marvel at the ability to slip the bonds and go three-dimensional, every time I’m in the air. And sharing that is incomparable.

People I stick in the right seat have fascinating reactions. There are some standard reactions. But I can see, usually, the people who connect with it, and those who don’t; those who dig it, and those who don’t. That’s four categories, not two. Some people don’t connect, but they are understanding. Other’s don’t dig it, but they connect the part that it’s awesome.

Upside down is something I only do with particular passengers. A roll is when you stick your nose to a point on the horizon then roll around it. So the mountain in front of you is upside down for a second or two. And most people are astounded to find out that it’s just a perfectly coordinated turn: when you do it right, if you shut your eyes, you won’t even know it’s happening. You can hold a glass of water in your hand (or gin if you’re the nervous type) and not a drop spills. It is marvelous.

A loop is for special passengers. That’s a maneuver that pulls G-forces: your face, your stomach, your ass, it all gets pulled dowwwn. At the top of the loop, the upside down point, you’re back at one G. Then at the bottom of the loop when you pull out it's more G-force. G’s make you airsick. At least it makes some people sick. I can only stand a few minutes of this action…and it’s time to go home. I dunno how the big boys do it.

I have a morbid fear of heights. Put me on the edge of a roof, vertigo. Beyond the fourth step of a ladder, I’m looking for handholds. (My palms actually sweated when I wrote the thing about roofs.)

I tried rock climbing in college to beat the fear of heights. It didn’t work. I simply hate to get close to something I can fall from.

But flying just doesn't ever feel like I'm on the edge of something I can fall off of.

I think that being in airplanes since the time I was a zygote I just know they’re okay. It’s always been about freedom, in all dimensions, on mostly sunny days, being with people I’m having fun with.

Love it.