The Oregon coast is where you go when you are tired tired tired of navigating. To go south, they say, keep the blue half of the world on your right.
To go north, however: that’s the problem I had to figure out this morning, and what I’m going to try is my sudden devil-may-care attitude — I plan to keep the blue part on the left, and see what happens.
( A few hours have passed.)
There was an odd feeling, earlier today as I wrote the words “I plan…,” as though I was being reminded about schemes and mice again, plus the meaning of “ganging aft agley.”
No problem with the morning, save the wind was 25 gusting 33 a few miles north, which was no real problem save they were directly on our noses, and forecast stronger as the day warmed. Dan calls them “fortuitous headwinds,” since they mean more flying time for him than a tailwind.
We reached the airport, made ready to fly, and before I even got to the Tail Section Inspection in my preflight checklist, Dan said, “Looks like you have a flat tire.”
There’s a difference between the two. Sometimes we forget, takes a little reminding once in a while.
Puff has picked up one of my traits, I think: it’s easy to say things, promise things, then we’re jostled when it’s time to make it so. I’ll set an appointment, agree to one meeting or another, then time comes to meet and I’ll whine, “Why ever did I agree to this? I’d much rather be alone than keeping my promise!”
Puff isn’t like me, she doesn’t whine. Today, though, it impressed her: running five hours over Nowhere to Land takes hard work ,when the chips are down.
She’s such a gifted little airplane, she doesn’t blink when I go an about she can land anywhere, she’s a STOL airplane (for Short Take Off and Land), whether it’s land or water, Puff’s safe as a helicopter, and without the mass of moving parts.
All the way across the country I’ve been her pilot: where do we land if the engine fails now. And most all the way there’s been an answer: here’s a river, here’s a lake, here’s a road, here’s a sand-bar, here’s a smooth place in the desert it only needs to be a couple hundred feet long.
Today it didn’t matter if she were a helicopter, today it was hour after hour over trees everywhere. Lose an engine in your helicopter today and you’re going down in trees, not much guarantee you’re gonna walk away from that landing no matter how good a helicopter, how good an airplane, how good a pilot you are.
Worse for Dan and Jennifer, I was leader today, all day. Their job was to go where I chose, where Puff flew. I decide to fly over trees, Jennifer’s engine fails, it’s Dan in the trees, Puff and me circling helpless overhead as they go down in a seething ocean of pine.
The forecast was not wonderful: winds to 25 knots on the north part of our journey. Those winds over rugged terrain would be less than fun for us, yet the old pilot’s adage is Never Cancel on a Forecast.
The prudent course: take off and see what it’s like, land if it isn’t pretty. Which we did, Dan and Jennifer leading as we climbed from Carson City over Reno, Nevada.
I once lived in Reno, a quiet, pretty town and if you like flashy lights, there’s an area for that, too.
We were two prospectors out of place crossing the high-tech Class C airspace over the city, but hey, what are radios for?
Did know yon mountainside is not igneous, but metamorphic? No, but I found out today,
Anybody with an aircraft radio scanner along our way is getting a free education on geology. I hadn’t paid much attention till this voyage across the continent, but now it strikes me…this entire country (and by now I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the whole world) is made out of rock!
And all that rock? It’s moving!
We were flying along, our two little SeaReys, and all of a sudden up ahead and to our left, this!
One minute I looked ahead and everything was dead level. The next minute there’s this big cloud of dust and the block of mountain six miles wide it’s come roaring up from below like it couldn’t hold its breath a half-second longer and had to get some air.
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.
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).
(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.
Puff’s covered and asleep at last, though she was all a-twitter over today and must be dreaming re-runs as I type. Today: her longest single day’s flying time (five and a half hours), total wilderness, big city, low level, high altitude (her personal record), big busy airport, little grass strip, her systems flawless, her new friend with a minor problem or two in the air so she could be Sky Shepherd for an hour.
She would have skipped this paragraph, but I won’t. Yesterday we stopped at Bob and Sandy Lock’s home on a grass airstrip, and Puff came in for some kind words from a master craftsman of airplanes. Here they are on the lawn:
Morning air today, it was smooth and sweet as fresh icing on cool cake. Puff hummed northward toward Dan Nickens’ hangar-by-the-lake, barely a breath of wind at a thousand feet, she feeling like the first swimmer at school, diving into an unrippled morning pool. Orlando easing by in the distance east, she didn’t notice.
We skimmed in to land on Dan’s corner of the lake, powered up his ramp without knocking, as though we were friends welcome any time. There in front of his hangar, standing in a sheen of wash-water, stood a beautiful SeaRey. Her N-number (that’s her registration number, all American civilian aircraft numbers start with “N”) ended with CB.
Cindy B hadn’t flown in a long time, and her owner had asked Dan to take her for a flight, find whether she’d be ready for a trip home to Minnesota. There was an aura of sadness about the lovely thing, as there is around any aircraft that stays too long on the ground. Perhaps today’s flight would be the change in her fortunes.
The two seaplanes leaped off the water into that cool still air and pressed into the wilderness of northeast interior Florida. I hadn’t quite realized how much jungle there is in the United States till we had flown for nearly an hour with only a rare sight a human being. Traffic may have been hissing down the Interstate, but that’s a narrow thread of civilization, sewn at the edge of land that looked as if it hadn’t been touched in a thousand years.
Jungle.
And crystal waters, too:
(Photo by Dan Nickens)
Flying low over water in a seaplane looks dangerous to me, when I watch the video. Driving the freeway, how many times more dangerous is that? Puff’s moving nearly the same speed as a cross-country automobile, 60 to 80 mph depending on winds, though it seems much faster down low (much slower up high); she doesn’t have to stay in a fixed hard lane ten feet wide with a weaving population of cars, trucks, motorcycles, merging traffics and drivers of various temperaments; she can climb in an instant, turn any direction at any time; she can slow and stop on the water whenever she wishes, for a long as she likes, without inconveniencing, annoying or affecting anyone else in the world; her flights aren’t oppressive requirements to get from one place to another, they’re adventures, every one.
Twenty minutes later, another jungle:
Another twenty, we all turned down to land at Northeast Florida Regional Airport, St. Augustine, an airport with three runways, with AWOS and ATIS and Approach Control, with VOR and RNAV and ILS approaches, control tower and ground control and FBOs .
The two SeaReys parked on the line in front of four count them four corporate jet aircraft, while Dan and I had a bite to eat with his parents, come to meet him at the airport.
Off again into a 20-knot wind and at once the civilized jungle was gone again, we were back in wilderness:
(Photo by Dan Nickens)
Aloft again, climbing, “I may have a little problem,” Dan said.
ALTHOUGH THE WIND WASN’T. Puff came out of Kermit’s Aero Club a little dazed, I felt it at once. We taxied over to the end of the parking area, engine perking over as the oil temperature came up to minimum for flying, and she had naught to say about her time with the warplanes. I sensed her silence was out of courtesy: If You Don’t Have Anything Good to Say, Say Nothing.
The only other civilian airplane in the hangar was the replica of the 1911 Curtiss Pusher, who was as buried by war stories as was Puff. Seems that warplanes get their own kind of post traumatic stress syndrome, either from their service in battle or from missing the battles they were built to engage. Imagine living through a 2 a.m. thunder-and-lightning storm with a bunch of PSTD’d warplanes and you’ll understand my little SeaRey didn’t get much sleep, even with her engine shut down and cold.
Puff, who doesn’t know what war is, or why, went silent amid the combat tales, and stayed silent even when we were ready for takeoff from the grass runway.
The wind was straight down the centerline, and before I had the throttle pushed full open, Puff was flying. An awkward two-minute flight to our home lake, a water landing close in to protected shores while a strange wind whisked the deeper parts of the lake into dark swirls of lion’s-paw wavelets. A stiff breeze, yet not a whitecap in sight.
Up on her beach and tied down, she was instantly asleep, nothing to say.
I had hoped to do some flying, but felt as oddly uncomfortable with the wind as Puff had felt with her military companions. Technically there was no reason not to fly…perhaps a little, as the wind was gusting to 20 knots. That much wind I can work with on land, and I feel Puff’s confidence there, too, but our limits are closer on the water and nobody’s comfortable on the edge of limits. A seaplane pilot once told me early on, “Landplane pilots have their worries, but sinking is not one of them.”
Most of all though, was this eerieness about the wind, about these hours, as well. Puff and I didn’t connect today, for some reason she was no more speaking to me than she was to the warbirds in the Aero Club. I’m grateful to Kermit Weeks for giving her shelter, even if my airplane can’t at the moment acknowledge the same.
The rest of the day I tinkered with little things — tailwheel didn’t need new bearings, just some air in the tire; fixed the headrest; practiced loading most everything that’ll be going with us on the trip. Maybe it’s just been too long, three days now with just a few minutes in the air.
Has she suddenly realized that I was a military pilot, once, and now all of a sudden I’m a stranger? Must this friendship with her go through every analog to a human relationship, including odd estrangements, communication shutdowns?
I’m glad for the miasma. This happens almost never, and now that it has, it’ll be the last miasmafication for the next several years…over, done, moving ahead.
ON THE PRIVATE website for SeaRey builders and flyers, there was a post last night which was a warning, too. The warning was be careful when the engine fails, since from an altitude of a thousand feet, the post-writer’s airplane was unable to make one complete circle before it was on the ground.
He didn’t go into much detail, so I assumed his airplane was heavier than Puff, his turn may have been different than I would fly. It didn’t feel to me as if Puff would be that unforgiving. An F-84F or a Boeing 737, I’d agree, but Puff? It was hard to sleep, thinking she might be keeping a secret from me.
This morning, preflight inspection complete, I started her engine and she came awake, splashing carefree into the lake while her oil temperature warmed.
In a few seconds, she slowed. ”Something wrong?” she asked, her voice in my mind.
“Oh, thinking about the comment…”
Of course she knew which comment, as her spirit’s linked with mine when she’s awake. ”Not you and me, about that can’t-turn business,” she said lightly. ”Not true for us.” As if that were the end of the story, case closed where shall we be flying today.
