Waving at Neptune - For the Aviators Out There

From True Course - Lessons of a Life Aloft by Brigid Johnson (which would be me for the new reader).

How well I remember the smell of the tarmac, a mixture of cold air and decomposing dinosaurs that hits your nose as soon as you get away from the lights of the hangar.  Off at the far end of the airport, on another ramp, some old Jetstars, their bones jutting out from what was left of the primordial ooze, fallen victim to time and perhaps a mechanic's lien.

We were parked off in some dark pool in the corner of the airport, where we had circled the wagons of aircraft, one crew chief left to fend off Rustlers during the remaining daylight, while we tried to catch a few hours of shut-eye as our flight would be an all-night one.

The ancients said the greatest of things to be seen are the sun, stars, water, and clouds.  But flying at night we see mostly well . . . dark.  Tonight, the stars may only come out after enough altitude to get over a cold front that had been following our planned route.

I never minded the night flying, the air for the most part, smoother, lighting flashing off in a distance warning you of convection, well before you eyes went to the radar.  I don't think of the earth below, and it doesn't think of me, but for perhaps some kid laying in the backyard on a blanket, pretending to camp out, as I did at that age, tracking the blink of our strobe as we climb out of the airport, wondering to what far off lands we are going, dreaming of flight and the stars.

I went on my first flight at age six.  I remember it as it was my birthday and I also I got my very first watch that day.  It was pink.  It had Cinderella on it.  I made the appropriate thankful noises and then proceeded to try and barter it for a Johnny Seven action toy to no avail.

So, in my watch and my little sailor dress, off we were marched to board Pan Am to San Francisco.  We kids were going to be picked up there by my Aunt and Uncle, who had a farm in Hollister, while the folks went to Hawaii for their 25th anniversary.  I remember looking in the cockpit as we boarded and deplaned and saying " I would like to do that". I remember well the Flight Engineer, first in my line of vision, who not only looked handsome and smart in his military-style uniform, he didn't have to wear a Cinderella watch.

Months later, my Mom, Dad and I, sat in stunned silence in our family room, that of the shag carpeting and orange curtains, as Virgil Grissom burned to ash with Roger Chaffee and Ed White, there on a launch pad of Cape Canaveral.  They were like heroes to those who dreamed of flight and space and glory, jockeys of a race to the Moon, an event that would mark my childhood, and indeed, my generation.  Good men, destroyed by the absolutely unforeseen, there still upon the implacable earth. 

Needless to say, my parents met my later career aspirations of being a pilot with less than excitement, but neither did they make demands that I live my life just to suit them, as long as they didn't have to pay for it. So, as I got older, the toy airplanes gave way to real ones, and the dangers of a headfirst tumble over the handlebars, replaced by that little section of the performance chart that says "Here be Mach Tuck" where I drew little dragons.

Thirty years after that first flight, there I was, but not as the engineer, I'm the skipper, and we're headed out for a night flight.  The payload is calculated, we've fueled and preflighted, the cowling of the engines looming over us, Greek amphoras containing brusque and ceremonial violence, air and fuel, combustion and fire.

With a short salute, we're away from the chocks and on our way, out into the night.  I have no regrets that I'm missing happy hour or Jeopardy or whatever people do to occupy their evening. For I have the warm drowsing air of late summer, empty of geese and full of stars, hands upon the wheel casually, yet within the fingers, wrists, and elbows slumbering forever the capacity for flight, as we head out across the gulf

The sea is a broad expanse that neither eye nor voice can span, and when it's calm it lulls you into a false sense of comfort as the engines hum and you gaze out the window with clear, unconscious eye. You are not pondering thoughts that come to you poignant and silent, the order of your conscious, the conduct of life if there really is a proper way to die.  You are not thinking of the operational capacities of a Vickers Pump or your own limitations.  No, you are thinking about the really cold beer you will have at the end of a day and the laughter of companionship.  That is when you hear it, or think you hear it. That sound.

An aircraft engine has as many variances of sound as a human.  There are satisfied hums, deep-throated snarls, and the incessant whine of someone who is never satisfied no matter what you do for them.  Then, there is that sound, in and of itself, the sound of an aircraft engine over the ocean at night, when there is not enough fuel to turn back, only to go forward to a far away shore

You hear it again.  "Oh, that's not right," you think and then you hear it again, that asthmatic thump.  As you check EPR's and pressures and temperatures, somewhere in your head are the words:  "An engine driven, two-element (centrifugal and gear) fuel pump supplies high-pressure fuel to the engine. Loss of the gear element of the fuel pump will result in flameout."  You feel no fear, only annoyance, at the callous outcry of machinery and cold water that has caught you unawares, making you give up your daydream of cold beer and warm skin and confirming unreasonably, your fondness for narrow escapes.

Then it is gone, if it ever occurred at all except in your mind, the engine only emitting a steady, slow hum, like somnolent bees.  But your senses are back on red alert, that seeming malfunction that the mind hears on such over-water trips, ministering to boldness as forged as its own pretense of fear. What is it to fly such a vast distance, one youngster asked me once? I replied, "It seems like 999 minutes of boredom and 1 minute of stark terror."

You either loved or hated your ship.  Aircraft, in general, are easy to fall in love with, with their ever present potency and  mysterious uncertainty.  Even as a child I dreamed of them, watching  them fly overhead, the contrails a heroic thread, the sun glinting on their promise. But they varied among even the same make and model, twins of different mothers.

As we cruised along we discussed which ones we loved, and which ones we hated.  For there were the mornings when you went out to the flight line and there, on the tarmac, perched four large birds, three of them bright, shining, and gleaming, perfect in form.  And the fourth, older than the dirt upon it,  with a stain of fluid on the ground underneath, the Scarlet Letter of hydraulic fluid.  Even if you got a good aircraft,  there would be days they could be as unruly as a mule, refusing to start, to move, and occasionally willing to give you a swift kick.  It is sometimes the smallest of things that can be your undoing.

But it's not just your own craft turning on you that you have to be concerned about on such trips.  Weather over vast waters is its own continent.  Perhaps not so much now, but 20 years ago, when I was a pup with four strips on my delicate shoulders that were not yet tarnished, weather planning for extended overwater operations was less meteorology and more alchemy. I think about many long flights, our course drawn out with paper, not electronic blips of a satellite fix, a small x marking a fuel stop, a small cross marking our destination, a line marking the path. where we as Pilgrims, sought out that holy place, that grail of a full night's sleep.

We fly out across a vast expanse of water, our eyes looking out ahead, from below, the silent watch of drowned sailors' shadows, water moving like breath, breathing in and out to the sea and beyond. Gravity weighs us down like anchors, our craft fighting the eddies and currents of the front's swift passing.  In the windshield are the reflections of those eyes, scanning, taking in the gauges, the small tics of EPR, and fuel flow.  I picture my eyes then, and they are my eyes now,  the eyes of a child and an ancient, one who looks at everything as if it is new, one who has seen so much death that they will never be alone.

The years fly by, between those eyes of my youth and the eyes that shine back at me from this small computer screen. Then, one night, it is the last flight. I was hanging up my professional aviator wings and going back to school to get my doctorate and pursue the other passion in my life. I hadn't planned on being single again, I might as well be single and doing what I'd always wanted to - separating bone from ash, solving the puzzle.  Part-time flying would keep food on the table during that time, but it wouldn't be this type of flying. It would never be this kind of flying again.

As we cruised along at altitude, we told some stories and reminisced, so many good memories intertwined with the days in which we scared ourselves silly and went out and happily did it all over again. As we finished our stories and the controller started that inevitable step downand frequency change that heralded the descent, the cockpit got very still, very quiet. Choice and desire was going to change my life in the next year.  The thought was sobering and a little scary.

Yet in some ways I was almost exhilarated to make that step. The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, restless, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discontent, that we are likely to step out beyond our experience and start searching for different ways or truer answers. Answers that will give our lives clearer meaning. I wish the airman that taught me how to fly was here to watch this, but he too had gone West, caught up in the unforeseen.

As we finished the before landing check, I noticed the tiny pinpricks of lights as cars inched along flat strips of highway, people trudging to work so very early, or coming home so very late. I wondered how they could live like that, never taking chances, never giving up that secure existence for a chance at a dream. Never having the world below them and their heart in their throat in a high G-turn at low altitude, the smell of a jet engine and everything that powers it making them feel alive and reborn. Never knowing what it is like up there, the world and all it's petty problems trailing behind them in a contrail of white as we wave at Neptune, far below.

My eyes twitch, not fighting the tactile tears which some might say are a woman's trait, of which man knows naught about, just dealing with the dust that suddenly came into the air as I look at my crew.  I take a deep breath, wanting this last landing to be perfect, the delicate chirp chirp of wheels that aren't Rodan stomping Tokyo, but a small, delicate bird alighting on a small branch.  Or at least no hoots or hollers from the stands about arresting cables or chiropractors.

Chirp, Chirp.  Yes! Polite golf course applause from the seat adjacent to mine

After all was said and done, gear pinned, doors closed, goodbyes said, I stand on the ramp, in pools of water that rained down in acknowledgment, alone. I thought again of those that have taught us these things, skills passed on from airman to airman. Skills will translate to more than one occasion where that muscle memory in those hands and wrists and elbows kept me alive.

I think of those men and there's a catch in my throat as if there is no air, as if by their being dead and gone, they've taken all of the remaining air with them, all they had compassed and claimed; all they had postulated, the reasoning of sun, stars, water, and clouds that we later laid our own claim to.  I give a little salute to the dark shadowed form of my bird and the sky and walk, out into the implacable earth.

- Brigid