Thinking Out Loud: Random Thoughts on a Saturday Morning
So often it’s the little memories that bring the most pleasure!
For what it’s worth, I started typing this Thinking Out Loud a couple minutes ago with no goal whatsoever in mind. Usually, I have a solid thread or subject in the works. Not so today. This is the result of a rare kind of morning in our household and, while I sat in my favorite chair in front of the TV at 0515 with the intention of watching the news, I didn’t. Instead, my mind took off in a rather disjointed trip down memory lane. Except it wasn’t a lane. It was a string of memory-rocks strewn across a mental stream. They went back a number of years with some as recent as this morning when I saw this week’s student/B & B guest off.
What made this morning unusual was that I didn’t have to dash to the airport. That broke the Ground Hog Day schedule we’ve been living for the last six or seven weeks (it’ll continue for the next several months). I didn’t fly this morning because the student left early. Right now, summer (it’s Phoenix, remember?) is pushing sunrise down to 0530 which forces me out of the sack at 0330. I say “forces” me out early because the tower comes online at 0600. That’s when I want my student and I to be strapped in and cranking N8PB’s tired old IO-360 into life. That’s part of a usually-unsuccessful attempt at beating herds of 172 trainers into the pattern. It’s a daily challenge except for Sunday. That’s when I try hard not to awaken late-rising airport neighbors with touch and goes. So, I don’t fly before 0900. Yeah, I know. I’m a warm, sensitive, fuzzy kinda guy! NOT! :-)
This morning, as I sat in front off the yet-to-be-awaken TV, my brain wasn’t eager to hear what terrible thing had happened since the last time I had it on . So, the screen remained blank and my brain was randomly dancing around doing its own thing. Mostly it was replaying brief episodes out of our past that are pleasant to remember.
One of the first thoughts to surface was me sitting at the end of Runway 3 at KSDL, my home-away-from-home, running up. On tower freq I heard the so-identifiable oxygen mask-altered voice of a military pilot announcing to the world that he was ready to launch.
I moved our tail a little to get a clearer view of the F-18 coming at us on the taxiway. One of our FBOs has the fueling contract for military fueling so we have all kinds of USN/USMC hardware constantly coming and going. It’s huge fun and awe-inspiring when they go into burner. Your rib cage vibrates because of the beautiful, yet obscene, amount of power that’s enveloping us. Very, very cool!
For a couple of seconds, I didn’t think there was room for him to get past us but there was. As he coasted by abeam, he made a gesture that proved to be the most exhilarating few seconds of my airborne life.
He made an obvious effort to turn his helmeted head and look at us. Abruptly, his gloved right hand flashed into view. He firmly pointed his index finger at us and gave us a very dramatic thumbs-up!! He didn’t want us to miss his point. WOW! I returned the gesture!
I’ve never felt so validated! Two edge-of-the-envelope aviators separated by a massive gulf of technology and training were united by the universal recognition that each of us respected what the other was doing. He, a young aerial warrior protecting our way of life and me, the gray dog instructor, ushering yet another newbie into a three-dimensional world that will be totally new to him.
My student would return from that flight, his first in a Pitts, a different person. Everyone does. What the student didn’t know, when that thumbs-up was given us, was that, when we landed an hour later, he would better understand the significance of that pilot’s gesture. And some of the gap that existed between my student and the F-18 driver would be narrowed.
Knowing the foregoing is happening to my students is one of the reasons I value the instructional side of my time aloft more than I do the flying itself. Some folks can’t not teach and that miniscule event made me that even more aware of that fact.
And then there was the note from my daughter a couple years ago.
In BSing with my student/B & B yesterday, Kermit Weeks came up. So, I started talking about how my daughter, through her and Leo D’s production company, Appian Way, rented Kermit’s entire Fantasy of Flight facility. She used it for filming major parts of their eight-part History Channel series, The Right Stuff. I went down and spent three days with her on set. When you see your daughter running 200 people and making everything happen, you can’t help but be proud. In support of the Kermit conversation, I handed my student a note she had sent me prior to starting filming.
I hadn’t read it for a while and this morning, before I taped it back on the wall, I re-read it and choked up.
Dear Dad,
Tomorrow, I start shooting The Right Stuff.
It’s taken three years, a relatively short time on the Hollywood clock, but it’s been intense and informative and become my passion.
What I realized over the past three years is how much of this is because of you.
I hate to fly, yes. But I love pilots. I always have. The bravery, the intellect, the bravado, all things that I know because of you. Things I loved because it was your world. Your different, unique, strange, exciting world that I got to peer into.
So, why not make a show that is for you. About you.
It’s my love letter to you. Something that I hope you’ll watch and be proud of. Something that I hope you see and say, “My kid did this for me”. It’s the ultimate drawing to tape on the fridge door.
So, thank you Dad. Thank you for inspiring me to do what I love—because I saw you do that. Thank you for telling me the sky’s the limit—because it is for you. And thank you for being the first pilot I ever loved. And one I will always love the most.
I can’t wait to show you what I made for you.
I love you.
Jennifer.
‘Gotta sign off, folks. I’m choked up again. See you next week. bd
I once got a thumbs up from Sean D. Departing OSH, late 80's, as a flight of 2, me in an S1C and Brian in a WAR FW 190. Bright spot for a newb Pitts driver.
Three kleenex later reading your daughters note...
I just finished a pairing flying an aluminum tube to Frankfurt and back. My First Officer was a former Snowbird pilot. He had also flown Sea Kings for several years. My Relief Pilot had several thousand hours flying a Turbo DC3 in the Antarctic and survey all over the world. We talked flying, good instruction vs bad, how that technically, you can three point a DC3 but don’t, building airplanes and being humble. In short we all thought each other had done and was doing some cool stuff. Pilots, anything we fly that gets you airborne is a win!