Ford Street

Congratulations to Dan

My friend Dan passed a huge milestone yesterday -- he flew his one-thousandth hour as a private pilot.  This may not seem like a lot of time, but think about one thousand hours.  What have you spent one thousand hours doing (other than sleeping or eating) that you'd like to brag about?  That's more than 41 days straight, out of Dan's life.  He has collected many fine memories along the way, and I've shared in a lot of those memories.  More to the point, I think, is the fact that Dan keeps learning along the way and doesn't become the sort of fellow (and the sort of pilot) who takes anything for granted.  That's how one becomes a dead pilot, and with all due respect to the dead pilots that I know, I don't want Dan to become one of them.  He has just as much respect for the plane, and the process, as he did when he was a brand-new pilot.  He also still has all of the golly-gee-whiz attitude of a brand-new pilot; he still acknowledges, every time he takes off, how flipping cool it is that he's FLYING.  This is why I'll still be flying with Dan many years from now -- because he's safe, and because he loves to fly. 

Dan wrote a post for our other blog that very nicely expresses his feelings on the subject -- I'll let him speak for himself.  That's Dan on the left up there, and Pete, the other co-owner of NY Approach, on the right.  and me, in the back, wishing I were up front.  We were on our way to Yellowstone National Park, on one of the grand adventures that we've shared.

Finally flying again

What a marvelous trip.  (There is a new photo album, over there to the left.)

Pete, Dan and I flew from Long Island out to Wyoming, to Yellowstone National Park.  Along the way we went to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota.  We got quite a late start out of Farmingdale, after discovering that the autopilot didn’t work. Nothing like starting your holiday by spending several hours laying around on the ground on an airport ramp. We ran out of things to do eventually and I was just getting into high-gear ADD mode when the mechanic showed up and we finally got going.

We had lots of great little experiences on our way out, as is usual when flying in a general aviation plane. We flew over the Badlands and passed Mt. Rushmore, lit up like a Christmas tree at night. Pete and Dan could see it from quite a ways off – I didn’t see it till we were closer in, since I was in the back seat. But we flew around it a couple of times, and it was really something to see, out in the middle of nowhere. My favorite stop, though, was Wall Drug, at the entrance to the Dakota Badlands.  We met an excellent airport geezer there at the airport in Wall, puttering around on his lawnmower.  They don’t officially sell fuel there, but let’s just say we got fuel there.  The geezer wanted to know what all of us did for a living, and where we were from, and where we were going.  Turns out the geezer is none other than the long-time mayor of Wall – out there mowing the lawn at the airport.

More than any other form of transportation, I think, general aviation lends itself to the standard traveler-upon-the-road question….”where you heading?”  People traveling in cars say it, yes, but in planes it’s often the first question asked of you.  That or, where you from? 

Sometimes it takes on a life of its own.  While we were traveling through a particularly perilous mountain pass, we happened to come upon another fellow traveling on our “road” so to speak.  He was flying ahead of us, and had just been where we were going.  We wanted to know what the wind situation was, so we chatted him up.  He asks us where we’re going, we say Jackson Hole, WY, he says, where from, and we say, New York.  Really?  The guy says.  What kind of plane are you flying?  A Cessna 172, we say. 

Dead silence on the radio at that. 

“A 172?”  What he wanted to say was, “ARE YOU GUYS NUTS?” but he was a polite fellow, so he just gave us a wind update.  Not so bad, as it turned out, but the pass was still quite an adventure.  My pulse oxygen dipped down to 77 at one point, and we slapped me on oxygen and thought that would be that, then Pete and I caught Dan scratching his head repeatedly as he was readying a course change for the computer and we asked him what was wrong, and he said, “Shit!  What’s 9x6?”  Pete and I hollered “54!  Get the oxygen!”  So maybe next time we all just go on oxygen a little sooner. 

By the way, flying to WY from NY in a Cessna 172 is a little like pedaling a bike from Central Park to Atlantic City.  Sure, you can do it, but you gotta be a little bit nuts.  And, with the headwinds that we experienced, it was like pedaling a bike a little more often than not.  Once we were chatting with a controller, I don’t remember where, asking for an altitude change, and Dan pointed out that “a kid on a bike just passed us, down on the ground” – the response was something along the lines of “yeah, I had noticed that.”  What a riot.  We had planned this trip for a very long time, and we had made a deal with a friend to borrow his Comanche, a lovely little number that can handle altitude better than a 172, and can move faster than a kid on a bike. That deal fell through at the last minute, though, and more than once we grumbled about the plane we were traveling in, though it got us safely there and got the rest of the gang safely back. 

I got to do some flying on this trip, which was, as always, exhilarating.  I was a bit intimidated by this particular airplane, having never flown in a glass cockpit plane – instead of all of the usual, familiar little buttons and instruments, you’re basically looking at two computer screens. I kept waiting for the computers to crash.  It’s not a pleasant thought – it took some getting used to on my part.

We arrived in Jackson Hole almost exactly the same time as Pete and Dan’s wives arrived, having flown commercially from NY.  We then all set off for Yellowstone via Grand Teton National Park.  We had a lovely evening at our hotel, complete with cocktails in the grand old lobby (which even had a piano player) and a great dinner. I had to cut my trip short due to work issues, but still spent a glorious day tooling around Yellowstone and meeting all sorts of wildlife.  I had an 8 AM flight out of Jackson Hole on Tuesday (we left NY on Friday) and thus had to start the drive at about 3:30 AM.  A long, slow, perilous drive it was, due to the sheer number of animals holding court on the road in the middle of the night.  Deer, elk, buffalo, numerous smaller critters and one three-story moose.  Most stared disinterestedly at me until I flashed my high-beams, at which point they consented to moving aside and letting me pass.  The moose thought about it carefully but relented. 

It was a wonderful trip, a real adventure.  I loved every minute of it, with the possible exception of that bit through the mountain pass.  It was wonderful to spend time with Pete and Dan, and their wives once we got to Yellowstone, and Dan’s mom and her husband as well. The scenery was amazing; what a beautiful country this is.  I want to go back to Yellowstone sometime, and to the Tetons as well. I renewed my love affair with flying, and with being in the middle of nowhere. I work and live in New York City but it seems that I’m never happier than when I’m very, very far from anything resembling a big city. Yellowstone, and quality time with great friends, really fit the bill for me.

Apollo 1

Today is an unhappy anniversary.  On January 27, 1967, there was a fire on the launch pad at Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral – a launch pad that has not been used since.  Three men died there, on that day.  They were part of the Apollo space program, and they would have been launched into space in February 1967, if all had gone well.  Instead, this routine “plugs-out” test was re-christened Apollo 1, and one Apollo crew gave their lives to make future crews safer. Following are their names. 

Gus Grissom

Ed White

Roger Chaffee

They were working toward what every other NASA employee was working toward – fulfilling President Kennedy’s mandate to reach the moon by 1970.  They were only testing the systems of the spacecraft that day.  They weren’t going anywhere; they were only preparing, as so many of the other astronauts spent so much time doing. 

They tried like the very devil to escape, but ran into design flaws at every turn – their space suits melted, the hatch wouldn’t open, the pressure inside the capsule was much too great to perform the tasks they were supposed to perform to get out.  These three men suffered an unimaginable hell, as they struggled to get out of the spacecraft – which was, at that time, not designed for a quick exit.  Their deaths made future space travel infinitely safer.

It must have been one of the most amazing experiences in American history to work at NASA during the 60’s.  They had so much work to do, and they did it so well and so happily.  Imagine waking up every morning, excited to do the best that you could do in the race to achieve an impossible dream.  It’s nothing I’ll ever know, and everything I’ve ever dreamed about. 

I’ve had their names memorized for so many years that I can’t count them anymore.  I didn’t want to forget their names, in the whirlwind of the glory that followed Apollo 11, and every other flight that has followed.  The guys on Apollo 11 may have been the first to reach the moon, but that was pure luck; those names were put together years before the Apollo 11 flight, and the three guys that died on January 27, 1967 helped the Apollo 11 crew get to the moon.  They helped every crew that has come since.  I fear that they get forgotten, in the annals of space history.  So I repeat their names:

Gus Grissom

Ed White

Roger Chaffee

These guys died in the pursuit of a dream.  How many people can say that? 

First Flight

A little less than 100 years ago, a 7-year-old boy named John Welsh was an errand boy in the bicycle shop belonging to the two brothers who, some years earlier, had made history by conducting the first powered flight out of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in a biplane.

Today is the 103^rd anniversary of that flight, and today Dan and I took a couple of friends flying.  They had never flown in a general aviation aircraft before and one of them just happened to be the granddaughter of that 7-year-old errand boy. It was a Piper Comanche, and New York City put on its best bib and tucker to greet us today.

Dan is very good at the introductory flight routine – he let both Wanda and Rebecca fly the plane on their own for a bit, which just never gets old for him, or for me for that matter. People are always astonished that they are being given the opportunity to fly, and of course they generally botch things very badly and make you suddenly recall everything you’ve eaten in the past day or so but these two women did spectacularly well and it was a great day all around.

We flew down the Hudson River, and on to South Jersey Regional Airport to have some breakfast in one of those charming, full-of-personality airport diners. The food was pretty good but that’s not really the point. The point is, you fly there and you sit and eat and watch other people fly in, and you enjoy your friends and the conversation while you eat, and then you fly home. It really can’t be beat. 

At the airport diner, there was a gentleman sitting in back of us, with his colleagues, going on and on about how irresponsible and juvenile email is, as a form of communication. He said, if you want him to know something, you write him a letter and slap a 37-cent stamp on it, and he’ll take you seriously.

Of course, I thought this was thoroughly amusing.

Particularly since stamps don’t cost 37 cents any more.   

And it sort of tied things together nicely for me, upon reflectiion.  There I was, sitting with the granddaughter of a little kid who worked for Orville and Wilbur, who I am obviously quite grateful to, and this guy is ranting about email vs. snail mail. Who knows what his granddaughter will accept as a common form of communication? Or transportation, for that matter? 

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Day.

A night's flying

I went flying after work last night with my two excellent friends Dan and Pete. It was a gorgeous evening here; clear and cold (but not too cold). Visibility was about a thousand miles and there were lots of stars out, and even a planet or two. We had a lovely time hopping around in New York and Connecticut; both Pete and Dan had to do what are called “stop-and-go’s” which means that in order to retain the privilege of carrying passengers at night, they had to do 3 flights around the traffic pattern. Basically just take off, fly around the pattern, land, stop, take off, fly around the pattern, land, stop, etc.  (Pilots have to do this once every three months to stay current.)  These aren’t particularly exciting for whoever is sitting in the back seat but the evening more than compensated for it, as did the rest of the night’s flying.

Being in a small plane, hanging in the night sky, is one of the greatest gifts I know. It is utterly quiet, calm and peaceful.  Going flying at night after a work day is an especially gratifying experience, because you have the recent memory of the workday to think back on while you’re hanging in the sky. No matter what kind of person you are, night flying forces you to reflect on things. If you’re naturally the type of person who reflects on things, night flying is a profound experience. We three spent a good deal of time laughing and discussing flight procedures last night but we also spent a great deal of time in silence, enjoying the moment. It is hard to believe that anything bad is going on anywhere around you from 3,000 feet up; all seems well and exactly as it should be. Landing after such an evening can be jarring because quite suddenly you’re back on the Earth and you have all matter of things to deal with, from refueling the plane to getting yourself back home from Westchester County Airport after a wonderful evening.

Oh, and there were chicken wings too.   It really was a great night.

Pilot Pete

My friend Pete left today for Colorado, to begin training for his private pilot’s license.

Suffice to say that I’m insanely jealous.

I think that there is a difference between the words “jealous” and “envious” and I’m not envious of Pete, because I wouldn’t take anything away from him. He’s been waiting for this for a long time, and I’m thrilled for him right about now. We all make choices, after all, and I chose to devote the next 2 or so years to graduate school, and I wouldn’t change that. I need to get a new shoulder installed, so to speak, before I can think about getting my license, so all I can do right now is wish Pete well, and I can’t wait to go flying with him. Well, I’ve been flying with him lots; I mean, I can’t wait to go flying with him as the pilot in command. YOU GO, BOY! 

You can follow Pete’s experiences on www.nyapproach.com, which is another blog that I started, with Pete and my friend Dan, who’s been mentioned here on Ford Street quite a bit.

Of owls and fireworks

 

Went flying yesterday.  No, not in the sexy jet; in the rather grubby Piper Arrow next to it.  It’s one of those machines that starts on the 6^th or 7^th try, with everyone inside closing their eyes and praying until the propeller starts to turn.  Then, hooray!  You know you’re going flying. 

On the way home, the evening looked gorgeous from the ground, and I wish I could say that it was gorgeous from the air.  But in fact it was hellishly hazy.  The haze couldn’t hide the dozens of fireworks displays, though, coming from all over CT and lower NY.  I love to watch fireworks from the air.  I’d love to fly over the East River on the 4^th of July; that would be spectacular. 

Below is a picture of a fake owl protecting an airplane at Republic Airport in Farmingdale.  It seems foolish, no?  But, as my friend pointed out, the airplane is very clean indeed; there is no bird poop anywhere on it.  And, as another friend pointed out, if you were a bird looking for a nice place to nest, you wouldn’t pick the engine of that particular airplane. 

Still seems foolish.