7 November:

I know I’ve talked with you briefly about the flying stuff over the last couple of weeks. I had meant to write sooner about my most recent experiences, however, I’ve been consumed with studying for the big FAA written exam on Monday. More on that later. For now, here’s the one I REALLY wanted to write about.

29 October:

I had been trying to get into a flight lesson with our ground school instructor, Brad, and finally was able to schedule one which DIDN’T wind up getting canceled. I was scheduled for 5:00 pm on Thursday, October 29th. Around 1:00 that afternoon, my cell phone rang and it was from Dulles Aviation, the company who runs the training program. Knowing that the weather was questionable, I was fully expecting to hear that no one was flying, and that we’d have to reschedule. However, luck was with me, and Brad had called to see if I could be there any earlier. Since my boss had already told me that I could take whatever time off I needed to finish my training, I told Brad that I’d be there as soon after 4 as I could be.

So I took off from work around 2:30 and headed down the Capital Beltway to I-66 toward Manassas Airport, happy as the proverbial clam.

That was until I saw the clouds to the west.

The ceilings were pretty low, and it looked as though the chance of actually getting aloft was waning. But as I grew closer to Manassas, I could see brilliant sunshine behind the clouds to the west. This gave me some hope that I’d make it up today.

About 2 miles shy of the exit, there was an auto accident, so I was delayed and finally wound up at Dulles Aviation around 4:20-ish. Brad was ready to go, so we dashed out to the airplane, did the preflight and proceeded to the end of runway 34L for takeoff.

I gently shoved the throttle in to full causing the 160 horsepower engine to roar to life pusing me back against the seat. It’s kind of like the experience of flooring the accelerator in your car, but it noisier and you’re wearing headphones. But it’s the same thing. I pulled back on the yoke and the Cessna 172 cheerfully responded by lifting the nose upward beginning it’s take off climb leaving runway 34L behind me where it was supposed to be.

The dark clouds were well above us, but menacing nonetheless. If you’ve traveled in an airliner in cloudy weather, you have experienced it. You can see the bottom of the cloud layer above you with wisps of grey cloud stuff occasionally hanging down and passing closely overhead.

I climbed up to about 2300 feet, and the cloud layer was so close! I felt as though if I opened the window and stuck my hand up, I could touch them. But they were still dark and menacing. Clouds often spell disaster for pilots who fail to heed the warnings of the instructors to stay the hell away from clouds. Being prudent, we hung below them by the requisite 500 feet proceeding southwest toward the practice area.

Ahead of me I could see the edge of the cloud cover and the welcoming sunshine to the west just beyond. As we flew toward the west, the edge appeared to move toward me faster and faster, though we were flying at the same speed the whole way. As I approached the very edge, I could see the sun streaming down from above and illuminating the darkened landscape below.

I lived in Alaska for five years. I drove part of the way up, electing to take the ferry from Seattle to Haines, Alaska. But I drove down all the way five years later. I saw some amazing scenery in Alaska and western Canada. In fact, in all my travels, only that part of the world has shown me such inspirational majesty and breathtaking beauty as Alaska. Hands down. Bar none. The last time I got to experience Alaska in that fashion was in 1990

As the little Cessna cleared the edge of the clouds, I was treated to a sight far more majestic and far more beautiful and far more inspiring. I can’t describe it except to say that it would be something like an insect crawling out from under a very short table into direct sunlight. But that doesn’t do this scene any justice.

The beauty of it was literally breathtaking. And the once ultimate beauty of Alaska was demoted to the mere penultimate, replaced with the view as I emerged from under the clouds.

It was a feeling unlike any other I have ever experienced. It was unique in my experience.

It was magnificent!

And it made all of the angst I had been feeling about flying vanish just as the gray sky vanished behind me leaving me in the glory of the late afternoon sun.

Yep. It’s different now. That view and the genuinely fun lesson with Brad that followed made all of the previous weeks of worry worth it.

Now I know why people want to do this. It’s because of moments like that one.

I talk to myself in the car. Actually, to be more precise I talk WITH myself in the car. They say it’s OK to talk TO yourself, but if you start answering yourself, then well, that’s something different entirely.

Those who know me even casually know that this is completely consistent with my everyday behavior. And while I’ve never been hospitalized for any sort of mental illness, nor has that been recommended, I think it’s safe to say that yeah, I know I’m a friggin’ head case.

Mostly, I talk to the radio. If it’s talk radio, I scream back or agree wholeheartedly. In either case, I’m pretty loud.

One evening some years ago, I was late to my 3-11 pm job at E! Entertainment Television. I pulled into the parking lot – or tried to, and was met with a single car whose driver had pulled up to the gated lot and parked in order to use the ATM machine in our building. Parked. In front of the gate. Not on the street, but pulled up to where you wave your badge at the little box and up goes the gate and you get in.

Needless to say, the driver had no badge, except for the ATM card, which had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the gate.

I was really late, and a little bit frazzled, and I started yelling at the top of my lungs, shouting obscenities and calling into question among other things, the size of her ass and her parentage.

Yes, I had the windows up all the way.

No I didn’t think she’d be able to hear me.

Yes, she did.

When she acknowledged that fact that I was referring to her, I got the one-fingered salute and a few choice words from her. I was overcome by my embarrassment and the overwhelming urge to rear end her car through the gate and proceed to work.

So you can see from this little bit of ancient history that I talk in the car under various circumstances and for various reasons.

Today was one of those days.

I have related before the apprehension with which I have approached the flight lessons I have had to date. But today, all the way home about every third of fourth mile from the airport to my home, I kept shouting to myself “That was fucking AWESOME!”

This was my fifth time up in the air, and the second time that I was unable to proceed to the practice area because of bad weather. Last week, I had to settle for doing take offs and landings around Manassas Airport in what I can describe accurately as one helluva lot of wind. Unlike the last time up, though, today’s winds were calm.

This instructor, Chris, was new to me. Chris is a young instructor pilot who appears at first glance to be too tall for such a small airplane. He had called me when I was on my way to the airport to tell me the practice area was closed, and when I arrived, he filled me in.

I asked if the local weather would permit me to do take offs and landings around the airport as I had the last time I was up, and he agreed, essentially saying that if I wanted to spend the money on a non-lesson, he was happy to show me around the immediate skies around Manassas Airport.

I won’t belabor the point, but the last time I went up in that awfully windy weather, it was a less than positive experience. Apart from the normal overload that is student flying, I felt completely uneasy with even being up there. So by the time I got on the ground, I was pooped, frustrated, and frankly, quite discouraged.

This time was completely different.

All the flight instructors are different. Each has his own style of instruction and his own items he checks. Chris’s style and checklist made sense to me. (Not that the others didn’t, but I believe that he teaches more like I learn.) So it was far more positive, far more productive and virtually terror free.

We did four take offs and landings. On the third landing, I said to Chris “I’m having some trouble here. Would you demonstrate what a landing is SUPPOSED to look like?” He agreed and then landed the plane as if he’s set it down on a 3,400 foot long pillow top bed. Nice and soft.

Next time around, I had the right idea, but didn’t do a whole lot better than I had done before. But at least now, I had an idea of what a good landing was supposed to look like and feel like. That was very helpful.

When we finished the lesson, we went over the lesson and he asked me questions from the academic side of my training, and I knew more of these than I had before, so I didn’t feel quite as uninformed as I had the last couple of times.

Chris was very accommodating and encouraging, and I genuinely enjoyed this lesson far greater the others I have endured. Perhaps I am just getting less inept. Perhaps today’s lesson was just the right lesson at the right time. Regardless, today was fantastic. It’s the first time I can genuinely say that I had fun flying and wanted to go again. Kind of like the roller coaster when the ride ends and you run around to the line again because you just HAVE to go again. Yeah, it was like that.

So today’s lesson summary follows: “That was fun!”

No. Not exactly right.

“It was awesome!”

11 & 12 October:

I booked an aircraft for 3:00 pm yesterday requesting the instructor with whom I did my first lesson. He is a former Air Force pilot with gajillions of hours experience. I learned yesterday that he took 13 YEARS off — yes, years — and hadn’t flown until just a few years back when he decided to become a certified flight instructor. That’s a long time! His history in this regard made me feel less worried about having laid off flying for a few weeks.

He could afford to. I, however, could not!

I filed my flight plan all by my lonesome, after which we did a short pre-flight lesson, and off we went. We practiced all measure of stalls, turns, take offs and landings. Some of it went very well, but when we did the stalls, I was reminded quite rudely why I don’t do roller coasters.

Stalls are a routine thing. It sounds pretty intimidating when you tell someone that your’e going out to practice a maneuver where you’re going to put the airplane in such a position that it will no longer fly. But the whole point is that you’re going to learn how to recover from it, should it happen whilst in flight.

It involves climbing rapidly and steeply, eventually exceeding the angle at which the wings work. At this point, the airflow over the wing becomes too weak and the wing stops lifting or “stalls.” There’s another version of the stall exercise where you are flying REALLY slowly as if landing, and the wing stalls and you have to apply power quickly to avoid falling like the proverbial rock. Both involve, to one degree or another, a ride that makes weak stomachs like mine decide to do little loop-de-loops of their own.

Yes, I’ve been known to get motion sick. Not violently, as in filling one of those little air sickness bags you get on the airliners. Never have done that, though I was once sitting next to someone who did. Most unpleasant. I just get REALLY queasy. And that’s where this wound up. He demonstrated all the stalls, took me through them together, then on my own. By the time I had done a few of each, I finally had to tell him to take us straight and level for a few minutes so I could recover. He was kind enough to do so, and off we went to the training airfield near Warrenton, VA.

We did four take offs and landings into Warrenton’s airfield, a small uncontrolled airfield about 8 or ten miles (I think!) from Manassas, my home airport. (Gee, kinda cool. I have a home airport now! Whodathunk it?) Finally calmed down from the motion sickness, I did a couple of the take offs myself, the last one being far better than I expected I would be able to do. Landings are still a little intimidating, but they DO come in pairs, these take offs and landings. One without the other is.. well, messy.

Overall, I was pleased with the lesson yesterday, but learned VERY quickly that this is a perishable skill. Not flying for three weeks was probably the WORST possible thing I could have done to myself as far as flight training goes. I expected to experience a setback, but I was really quite surprised at how much set back I was. This will not happen again voluntarily.

I also booked a lesson for this afternoon with Brad, my ground school instructor. I like Brad. He’s smart, likes a good joke, and has the same morbid fascination with fatal air disasters that I do.

Sidebar: I have these dreams. Not recurring, per se, because the circumstances are always different. But they are always very vivid, and always very exciting. In the dream, I witness an air crash. Usually the big planes. I don’t see the devastation up close, but I see the aircraft either strike the ground from a distance, or disappear behind an obstacle and see the fireball. The last thing I usually remember is seeing it, uttering the obligatory “Oh my god!” or some such expression and running toward the accident.

Brad experiences something similar.

Sidebar within a sidebar: I saw a stage play once entitled “CVR.” It was an on-stage recreation of air disasters as if you were standing in the cockpit with the pilots. The “script” is taken from the actual cockpit voice recordings (hence, “CVR”) and the events are performed in real time. It’s a little creepy, but I recommend it.

Anyway, I did the preflight checks while Brad was with his previous student. I then went in for my lesson before take off and we spent a good 20 minutes going over the lesson for the day and some previous material from ground school I should have remembered but didn’t. Then, out to the plane.

I reviewed the preflight checklist with Brad, and we hopped in. I did the engine start up checklist and turned the key. (Airplanes have keys, believe it or not. I had no idea!) So far, I was doing admirably. It was a good thing to be feeling more confident about the training I had received. Brad said “Ok, do your brake check and hold.” So I edged the throttle forward until the wheels started to move and then tapped the toe breaks and stopped the plane quite adeptly. Next, Brad said to make the call to Manassas ground control so we could get going.

I depressed the radio’s transmit button and said confidently “Manassas Ground, Cessna 8191-Echo at the West Ramp with Bravo. Taxi VFR Southwest.” Perfect. Just like it should have been. The ground controller responded with the appropriate information which I dutifully copied down on my clipboard holding the pre-printed form I designed just for that purpose. Yeah, this was working fine. Brad was even impressed.

Just then, one of the other flight instructors, Fayek, who had taught our ground school the first week, grabbed Brad’s attention and pointed out that the nose wheel tire was a little under inflated. After a hand-signal conference, Fayek finally convinced Brad to shut down the engine and have a look. Upon quick inspection beforehand, neither Brad nor I saw the problem. But Fayek had seen the airplane with the propeller spinning which pulls the nose of the Cessna 172 down, essentially squishing the tire and revealing the lack of adequate pressure in the tire.

Damn.

I was doing so well, too.

Unfortunately, Brad had another student immediately following the time I had reserved, so there was not enough time to fix whatever was wrong with the tire AND get in a lesson. So we decided to postpone the lesson until later in the week.

I was genuinely disappointed. I was looking forward to flying with Brad, because from my perspective, he and I think a lot alike, and have very similar teaching styles. (Yes, I used to teach high school and college many moons ago.) So I will have to reschedule this lesson.

But the day was by NO means wasted. I gained a great deal of confidence with pre-flight procedures. During the before take off review with Brad, I got a chance to learn that it was unwise to do a brain dump of the ground school subjects, because they WILL be asked of you later by the FAA examiner. I learned that having more eyes on a situation lessens your chance of a problem or a disaster, so it’s good that someone else was looking at that front tire. (Though this is not really a new lesson. I am always happy to have passengers in the car with me warn me of impending calamities. I will NEVER be angry at anyone for being a “back seat” driver in a car I’m driving. Seems as though this is sound advice for the aviation world as well.)

After all, it’s one thing to dream about an air disaster. It’s another thing entirely to actually BE in one.

Has it really come to this? Have the events of these last years shaken my confidence so deeply? Or have I always been paralyzed by the possibility of failure?

It’s easy to ignore in everyday life. You get into a routine and establish a sort of procedural equilibrium that keeps you on track and is moderately self-correcting. Kind of like a gyroscope that resists change to its spin around the three axes. If you stay out too late, yeah, you suffer for a day or two, but your mind and body recover quickly and you get back in the routine in relatively short order. Other things take a little longer, but only a little. Like vacations. Go away for two weeks and see how much longer it takes to get back in the swing of things. Usually you’re at about ninety percent by the time the jet lag wears off. That’s not so tough to handle.

So why did I spend all week trying to find excuses to cancel my flight lesson today?

I know at least some of it had to do with the fact that I hadn’t done my part by putting in the additional study time to approach it confidently. But hell, I can memorize radio frequencies and learn radio communications “scripts.” Hell, I used to memorize whole three-act plays without an enormous about of trouble, so I know it’s not an uphill battle to shoehorn the necessary information into my head.

So why did I spend all week trying to find excuses to cancel my flight lesson today?

Get this: I took the dogs out this morning for their respective excretory reductions in mass and liquid, and looking up at the cloudy, grey sky, half of me thought “Oh, thank GOD the weather’s lousy! I won’t have to fly.”

HAVE to fly?

I’m supposed to be WANTING to fly. In fact, I am paying a shit load of money to BE ABLE to fly.

So why did I spend all day trying to find excuses to cancel my flight lesson today?

Once I finally got out of bed around nine-ish, I looked outside. Perfect day. And we’d just had our ground school classes on weather, so I was pretty confident that a cloudless, blue sky and calm winds would not prohibit me from going off into the wild blue yonder. “Ok, I can do this,” I think to myself. “Let me run some errands and I’ll still have oodles of time to get my act together.”

So I got to Target and buy a book bag for all my aviation references for class. I stop by and check on the RV, and then call the Toyota dealership and see if they can fit me in for my 85,000 mile service. They are kind enough to do so, and I head over. “OK, there’s still time. If I get out of there in short order, I’ll still be able to make it.”

After about 45 minutes, Eddie, the service writer I’ve known for awhile comes in and tells me that their nineteen point inspection showed that I needed a new water pump, and serpentine belt.

“How long will this take?” I ask mind rushing through rough calculations of time and distance. Can I get all this done and still make the lesson at 4?

Eddie assures me that it won’t take too long and if it’s going to take longer than normal, he’ll let me know so I can cancel.

So why did I decide to use the water pump replacement as my excuse to cancel my flight lesson today?

I had the time. I had the skill to do the lesson. I was soon to have the now fully functional Prius chomping at the bit to demonstrate its new-found health by whisking me to Manassas Airport by 4pm.

Why was I so relieved when I called and canceled?

This is perplexing from the perspective of logic. There was no good reason NOT to go, and I made it a point to stretch an “emergency” auto repair into a good enough reason to avoid flying.

Needless to say, I am neither pleased with my decision nor myself. This is unacceptable behavior. I knew this all along. Yet, a part of my brain decided that for whatever reason, it wasn’t going to happen.

Check that. Reason and my brain played no roles in this decision.

OK, time for take two.

This will not happen again. I will not allow myself to avoid flying again. I will not permit whatever insecurities, fear of failure, fear of success, or chicken-shit cloud forms around my head to impede my better judgment. I KNOW better. I cannot allow myself the luxury of another such failure.

I didn’t used to be like this. Challenging tasks didn’t paralyze me. They were exhilarating. I never avoided things because they were hard or frightening. I’ve jumped out of jet aircraft, for crying out loud!

What the fuck happened?

Here I stand, looking around and wondering what happened.

It’s up to me to keep this one little failure from becoming an epic one.