Author Archives: Richard

Decisions

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We had a long discussion, Dan and I, filled with pros and cons, consider this and on the other hands.  Our final conclusion is that there is almost nothing on this trip that is worth dying for, or wrecking a faithful trusting airplane.

Not schedule is worth dying for, nor need to fly any particular route, nor distress at staying longer than we planned somewhere along our way.  No photograph’s worth getting killed, although I sense Dan is unconvinced on this one.

We’ve agreed that if one of us goes down in difficult terrain, and exits his airplane in a clearly chipper condition, the other will fly to the nearest airport and commence a ground or helicopter rescue effort.

If the one on the ground is not so chipper after landing, or doesn’t get out of the cockpit, the other will land nearby regardless of terrain and render assistance.

Note after this conversation: My intuition tells me Dan’s going to take Jennifer down low over impossible rocks, when he fancies a good photo to be got.  If her engine fails in one or another of those places, Puff and I switch from Ferret Rescue Service flight crew to the Dan & Jennifer Rescue Team.

I feel like Mr. Phelps of the IMF.  ”If you choose to accept this mission…” and the cassette tape has turned to smoke.  Except we’ve chosen to accept the mission in advance, no matter how impossible.  Times like these, I realize there is some wisdom, staying in bed all day every  day.

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Morning Comes

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The thunderstorms from the lightning night were gone by sunrise.  Early to the airport, Dan and I found Puff and Jennifer barely jostled at their tiedowns, undamaged.

Were my fears for the little seaplane silly, or did those affirmations make a difference?

The concern, I thought, wasn’t foolish, at least for a mortal, as storm-winds sometimes break things.  The rest I’m not dispassionate enough to care.   Our little seaplanes survived the night, and though Puff’s engine cover was mildly shredded it was not blown to Indiana by the thunders.  I breathed a happy sigh, untied the multi-lines that held Puff through the night, and spun her round to face the morning’s breeze while I ran her preflight inspection.

In half an hour we were airborne again, thudding through the winds.  Above a highway for a few miles, I watched while the cars below moved from behind us on the road, passed us and disappeared ahead.  Later the wind increased, but even at its slowest, our groundspeed was still over 50 miles per hour.

The world of aviation, I realized is divided into two parts: the faster machines, and Those Who Get Passed by Cars.  It is the latter group, I think, who watch with most gratitude when the tables turn, feel the reckless joy of actually passing a Volkswagen on the open road!

Then highways were behind us, and the land below looked not quite so welcoming to us as the moon to a passing astronaut.  Not quite, since the moon lacks clumps of mesquite every twelve feet in any direction.  Dan and Jennifer flew blissfully, enjoying landforms down low, cautious me kept Puff high, in case her engine failed we’d have time to pick the openest spot to land.

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Fears, and Flying Anyway

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There’s another flash of lightning in the dark outside the hotel in Stephenville, Texas.  The computer’s showing the storm cell, the color of fire, right on us.

There was no room in the hangars here for Puff and Jennifer.  They’re double-tied down, control locks and covers on but just now in the midst of this weather (FLASH! again and the sound of dynamite rattling the window) — just now in the midst of the storm I’m practicing relaxing, relaxing, (FLASH! at least it’s not in the direction of the airport) that nothing can touch the truth of Puff’s being or mine or Dan’s or Jennifer’s.  The truth of us, the spirit, is not subject to storms of earth of the whims of our belief in material worlds.

Puff was frightened before Dan and I left the airport this evening.  Her only other thunderstorm she was safe in the hangar at Fantasy of Flight, with the gang at the Aero Club.  Now she’s outside, the winds gusting to 38 knots, about 44 mph.  They’re from the north, just about on her nose.  Winds of that speed, if it weren’t for her tiedowns, she’d fly on her own, go tumbled to death.

The forecast calls for winds to 52 mph from the south, and hail.  Forecast’s a guess and it’s most often wrong.  The only event not forecast is tornadoes.  We took our chances with these when we decided to fly this journey, as earlier voyagers took their chances with whirlpools and sea-serpents.

So I’ll know this for her as well as for myself: she and I and all, we’re perfect expressions of perfect life, we can neither be harmed nor destroyed, no matter beliefs or appearances.  We’re here to share the gifts of our discovery and our lives with those somewhere somewhen who may care for what we find along our way.

Nothing in the worlds of illusion can touch or change the truth of our being.  We are guided and protected in our dreams by the fact that we’re dreaming, we are led along our flickering path by our highest self, in whatever form it may decide to take.  That form may even be the appearance of storm, a chance for us to test the trust we have in our own knowing.  A test which I intend to pass and take Puff along with me, no matter what.

At one time I wouldn’t have believed the intensity of my connection with the spirit of this little seaplane.  I suppose I could explain it, but I maybe I can’t…just now I’m not into explaining what so moves and touches me.

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Major Cool Day, Expanded

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Sometimes days that begin a little scary turn out to be worth the courage it takes to live them anyway.  From the picture below, guess which direction we needed to fly:

If you picked the lowest greyest most dismal part of the horizon for the heading we wanted, you win the prize of how it feels when you say, “Let’s take off and see what it looks like when we get there.”

It turned out that its dark was worse than its bite, but it was some comfort to me along the way, knowing that Dan was leader so if anything bad happened it would happen to him first.

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Quiet Day in Louisiana

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“It’s the Corps of Engineers against the combined Red and Mississippi rivers,” Dan had told me yesterday.  ”The Corps is holding its own right now, but sooner or later in the next thousand years there’s going to be a wall of water forty feet high coming down the Atchafalaya River, and the place we’re standing is going to be the bottom of the new Mississippi.”

Naturally I didn’t believe a word, it’s silly geology-talk.  Geology major, math minor, law degree, combined Master’s with geology and coastal and oceanographic engineering.  Rock-hounds, what do you expect?  Idly curious, however, I checked the Internet.

We had decided to stay one more day at the hotel in Morgan City, Louisiana, and all of a sudden I wished we hadn’t, don’t care how tired, how bad the weather this afternoon, don’t care tornadoes on course, let’s get Jennifer’s engine running and we’re outta here!

He calmed me down.  ”This is not likely to happen before we leave tomorrow,” he said.  I stepped down from the top of the hotel-room desk.  After all, I reasoned, Dan is staying tonight at this very hotel, himself.

So I got to rest in the middle of the day.  Dan picked up the carburetor floats as I slept, installed them.  Jennifer’s engine is now running perfectly.  Trouble is, can I sleep tonight, thinking of what happens with the diverting of “the combined flow of the Mississippi and Red Rivers to the Atchafalaya River, which will lead to flooding along its banks in places like Morgan City, La.”  More than ten feet deep flooding, after that first 40 feet has whistled through.

Not likely to happen before tomorrow.  Just in case, though, I’ll add 30 feet to Puff’s tiedown ropes and ask for a room four floors up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m glad Dan’s other degree isn’t nuclear engineering.

Storms and Sharks, a Tale along our Journey

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Sorry I fell asleep last night in the midst of writing.  Couldn’t keep my eyes open…how did Charles Lindbergh stay awake, those 33 hours to Paris in 1927, and I get zonked out by a few weeks of low-sleep nights and a little crosscountry flying?

Remember, long time ago, we talked how aircraft crashes don’t happen by themselves, there’s always a chain of events leads to the moment things come apart?

Some wild weather had come through the Gulf of Mexico before we left Florida heading west, monster storms going up, tops at 60,000 feet with Class Three hail, condition Severe, more than 90 lightning strokes per minute, Indigo on the NexRad display.  It had not been the kind of weather through which you’d care to fly your SeaRey on the way to Seattle.

We had lucked out on our timing so far, clear skies, a few small non-deadly cumulus clouds but mostly sunshine.  It was forecast to continue, but not forever, so Dan and I had hoped to get past the Mississippi Delta, that cauldron of tempests, before the next storms outbroke.

To do it, we needed to have our wheels off the runway by six am yesterday.  Steps One through Six in the chain: I slept through my phone alarm ringing, I misplaced my radio headset and lost some time before I remembered I had left it in the airplane, the weather guys said the storms probably wouldn’t kick off till afternoon, I didn’t listen to Puff at the airport saying go-go-go, or Dan’s quiet patience as I made notes about the colors of the sky…whether to call it “wine-dark” in the direction we were headed when I so abhor alcohol and perhaps should I call it a “tannin sky” after the color of the Suwanee River after he told me where the water got its own dark hue would most people who had not landed on the Suwanee in a seaplane know just what that color is…minutes stretched by with my delays and when we finally started engines and taxied for takeoff there was a long wait for air traffic through a Restricted Area before they’d clear us to depart.

One reason and another, we took off late, link building on link, you see.

After takeoff, wheels up flaps up, boost pump off engine instruments in the green (so called since the factory paints a green arc on the engine instrument dials under the normal operating range for temperatures and pressures), I took over as flight leader as Dan needed to get some photographs (next link in chain: Richard takes over as flight leader).

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Apology

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sorry, everyone.  belief of tiredness o’ertook me writing , about the ttime Dan called out the sharks.

will finish jjjjjjrnal tomorrwq.   ‘nite/

r

Best Day Flying, Ever? (Update 1)

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(5 a.m. next day note: The following journal post was finished past midnight, written fast, it barely begins to tell the story of this one day.  I hope for bad weather, and time on the ground to update.  Thanks for your patience.  –  R))

Hard to say, there have been so many magnificent days in the air, but if today isn’t at the top it’s way high on the list.

In the air by nine a.m., early fogs turned into clear skies.  Striking beautiful country that hour of the morning.  Eight hours’ flying today would take 24 to tell new experience, boy’s desert island adventures, Jennifer’s landing-gear failure in the air and Dan’s solution to the test, hours of low-level over untouched lands; in short, everything I was wishing for and more…in one day!

I may fall over, perfectly tired after this astonishing day, so some photos first in case that happens:

These two spotless SeaReys, by the end of the day, would be covered in sand and salt and moments become stories they will tell to years of hangars-full of airplanes.

Here’s Dan Nickens, first minute of first hour of first day of transcontinental flight, unaware that what would would be an emergency to any other pilot would happen to him in next few hours.

 

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