Wild Blue Yonder

WILD BLUE YONDER

Have you ever made a promise that you wished you hadn't? Have you ever decided to do something, perhaps on the spur of the moment, that, after more calm and reasoned thought you really, really wished you hadn't? And after you'd made the promise, you walked around with a belly full of dread, knowing that you'd be held to that promise and you'd have to do what you said you would.

Well sir, that's exactly what happened to me. The unthinking promise had been made and the action that had been promised was fast approaching.

Lemme tell you how I got into that mess.

It first starts with a man named Paul. (Forgive me, Paul, for any inconsistencies in this narrative. I'm working with a sometimes unreliable memory.)

The first time I laid eyes on Paul was at my new job way back in 1982. I was a freshly-hired computer operator for a regional telecommunications company in northern Ohio. On my first day at work I was introduced to my fellow employees – Fred, Betty, Jim, Ed, Mike, Dave, Susan, Michelle and Paul and some others. Paul stood out from the pack because of his accent – he was a Brit. Medium-sized guy, fairly well built – looked like he was no stranger to physical labor - unruly ginger-colored hair and very memorable, piercing eyes. He was working on second shift when I started, and I was on first, so I didn't get to really know him very well until I was moved to the afternoon shift. I remember asking him when we met if he was Australian, as I used to work with another fellow who hailed from that continent. He assured me that no, he was definitely not an Aussie, he was British and was from one of London's eastern suburbs, a little place called Ilford, about 12 miles east of London. Actually not too far from Barking, Barkingside and East Ham. (I just love those names!) When I listened to him a bit longer I could discern the differences between his speech and my old acquaintance, Sean, who was the Aussie. It was completely different when you actually listened. And not quintessentially Cockney, as his forbears were mainly Irish and the hints of Eire were still in his tongue. Paul, at that time had been in the U.S. for around a half-dozen years, give or take a few. He'd married an American girl and would eventually have 4 children with her, 3 girls and a boy.

When Paul and I eventually did land on the same shift, we seemed to hit it off quite well and became friends. We had a lot of the same interests and we seemed to enjoy each other's company. We both shared a love of fishing and we'd talk about that sport for hours on end. His European idea of a sport fish was, however, baffling to this American. In the U.S. we divided our fresh water fishes into sport or trash varieties. A fresh water sport fish might be a bass, a crappie, bluegill, catfish or perhaps a perch. Trash fish would include sheephead, gar, sucker and carp. I found out from Paul that the carp was considered a highly-prized game fish in England. I asked him if he were kidding. He informed me that no, he was not kidding. The carp was a legitimate prize over there. They even had a big ancient female carp in the zoo and she had a name! I assured him that carp around where we now lived were garbage and not sought after. I even sent him a picture in an email one day of a manure spreader working a field, and instead of it spreading manure, it was spreading carp and pieces of carp from a recently drained nearby lake. Paul sent that picture to some of his friends “over there” and they were mortified to see the mighty carp so badly treated. Almost started an international incident! It was a hoot!

Paul's wife abandoned him and their four children when they were still quite young and left him the responsibility of raising them. I never understood why and I'm not sure he knows the reason himself. But he undertook his new duties manfully and managed, somehow, to do a decent job at raising them. His youngest child, Thomas, recently turned 18 and Paul said to me not long after that he'd “made” it finally – he'd guided his kids into adulthood and was at last “legally” free from having to support them. Of course he knew a parent is never really free from his children. But, in the eyes of the law, his legal responsibilities were over.

He was promoted to supervisor some years after I started work at our office and he was my superior for a while. It never really intruded into our friendship. A few years after that I was promoted to the same level and we shared the responsibilities of the large computer room together along with another supervisor. Eventually he transferred to another department and, a couple years later, was instrumental in my transferring to a new position in that same department. We helped each other out as circumstances allowed.

During my almost 20-year tenure with that company I learned a lot about my friend Paul. He liked the outdoors. He loved fishing and boating and being out in the woods and lakes and rivers. He liked riding motorcycles and riding them fast. He was, quite possibly, the most clever and imaginative man I've ever met, extremely quick-witted and a gifted story teller. I could literally sit and listen to him talk for hours.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't like Paul.

Was he perfect? Hardly. Who is? He has fought with alcohol pretty much all of his life and has not made much of a battle of it on many occasions. He has carried a love of the brew Guinness from the old country and it still whispers its sweet, dark, malty songs in his Irish ears to this very day.

Paul was also known to all his friends as accident prone. He was fearless in a lot of his endeavors and paid the price for that propensity for recklessness with innumerable bumps, bruises, cuts and stitches, abrasions and many, many close calls. I recall him talking about various things he'd gotten into and he would literally have us gasping with the closeness of his escapes from sure maiming or death. People were a bit afraid to do anything even remotely dangerous with him, knowing his apparent magnetic ability to bring mayhem upon himself and anyone close to him.

We all held our collective breaths waiting for the inevitable catastrophe.

About 8-10 years ago Paul decided he wanted to take up flying. I guess he'd had some experiences back in England with gliders and had fallen in love with being up in the air. At this time in his life he had some disposable income and started looking around at the possibilities available to him to get airborne.

He first started playing around with the ultra-light path to the sky. These are lightweight, slow-flying airplanes that are subject to minimum regulations and thus are easy to get flying in. They account for about 20% of the U.S. Civil aircraft fleet. The governing regulation for ultralights in the U.S. is Federal Aviation Regulation 103 which specifies a powered "ultralight" as a single seat vehicle of less than 5 US gallons fuel capacity, empty weight of less than 254 pounds, a top speed of 55 knots, and a maximum stall speed not exceeding 24 knots. Restrictions include flying only during daylight hours and over unpopulated areas. Paul took some lessons and toyed with the idea of buying one but decided he wanted to do better. He once described ultra-light flight like this: Imagine you nailed a lawn chair to a 2 by 4 piece of lumber. You sit in the chair and a number of people grab the other end of the board and try to shake you off the chair.

So he took flying lessons to be able to fly a real airplane instead.

I remember him telling me about how the lessons were going and how much he loved flying, the freedom of the air, the visceral thrill of being airborne. He recounted his lessons in the Cessna aircraft he was training in and how much fun it was. He also recounted how much trouble he was having trying to land the airplane. He had many days where he told me he thought he'd never get the hang of putting the plane down in the middle of the runway correctly. He was very discouraged. He didn't think he'd ever get the knack.

Finally one day he came up to me and said, “I've figured it out! I made 10 landings yesterday and nailed 8 of them! And the other 2 weren't really that bad!” He went on to tell me the procedures he had used to achieve this memorable accomplishment. He was all smiles and was tickled to death that he had mastered the hardest part of flying.

Soon he soloed and became an accredited pilot.

That's when he posed THE question to me.

“You want to go up?”

Since he was now a licensed pilot he was allowed to take people up with him when he went flying.

I said, “Sure”, and a day was set a few weeks in the future for us to go flying.

So I had LOTS of time to think about going flying with Paul.

I had time to remember ALL the close calls he'd had in ALL his other ventures. I had time to remember ALL the stories he'd told us about almost getting killed doing this and that and the other. I had time to remember ALL his problems learning to fly and ALL his landing difficulties.

I just had LOTS and LOTS of time to play “what if” games in my head. What if he has problems taking off and we fly into some trees and get killed? What if he loses his engine and we fall out of the sky and get clobbered? What if a wing falls off and we fall to the ground like a rock? What if he has a stroke or a heart attack and I have to land the plane? And what about those landings he had SO much trouble learning how to do? What if he forgets how to do them?

Oh my God, what have I got myself into?

So the two weeks go absolutely zipping by. Every time I look at the calendar I see the Saturday I'm to go flying approaching like a fiery lightning bolt.

You need to know now that I'm NOT a good flyer. Yes I've flown before. I've flown airliners from here to there on numerous occasions – to the west coast, to Vegas, to D.C., Chicago, Miami, Oklahoma. Even to Panama and back twice. I'm not a stranger to flying. I even flew the “Tin Goose” - an ancient Ford tri-motor aircraft from the early 30's from Sandusky, Ohio to North Bass Island in Lake Erie to go ice fishing one winter.

But the little guys? Nope. Never been on one of the teeny ones.

Any time I had to fly I was uncomfortable at best and grimly unnerved at worst. I knew when I had to fly that it was, logically, the ONLY way to get where I had to go. It was fast, it was safe and it was performed by millions of people every year without concern.

Still didn't make it fun. Nope. Not at all.

To make things even more difficult, my wife was having a ball watching my nervousness increase day by day. She found my consternation hilarious. She knew that things would be OK. She wasn't worried in the slightest for my safety. And she was enjoying – I repeat – ENJOYING my discomfort! Doggone it! I'd mumble about my queasy stomach and she'd chuckle. I'd moan about my watery bowels and she'd laugh. I'd complain about my shattered nerves and my fear headaches and she'd cover her mouth to keep from giggling.

It was a torment.

Finally the dreaded Saturday arrived. My wife and I got into our car and drove to the local county airport to wait for Paul to arrive with his rented Cessna with my name on the passenger seat.

She smiled the whole way there, dammit!

Too quickly the little airplane landed and taxied up toward the bench where we were sitting and stopped. I hoped it wasn't him but... Yeah, it was. Paul jumped out and, with a big smile walked over and said, “You ready?”

I probably sounded like Minnie Mouse when the “Uh-huh” came out of my dry throat and across my parched lips.

I walked toward the airplane like Saddam Hussein approached the hangman's noose. I heard my wife's hearty chuckles following me.

The plane was LITTLE. It was a 2-seater Cessna – a 150 I think they call it. I slid into the right-side passenger seat and had a terrible time getting the seatbelt out of the doorway and around my shivering belly. And then the door didn't want to shut and I had to fuss and fuss with it. My quivering fingers had difficulty even finally clicking the seatbelt closed. At last that monumental chore was finished and Paul handed me my earphones and mike. “Don't say anything until I talk to the controller and get the OK to take off.” He then started the engine and we began to move. The engine was very noisy and the plane felt very light and agile on the ground, moving up the taxiway toward the end of the runway quickly. Soon he had left the taxiway and had lined up on the end of the runway facing into the wind. The radio crackled with his request and soon we had his permission to take off. He pressed the throttle forward and the engine REALLY got loud then. Soon we were careening down the runway at, what seemed a breakneck speed, bouncing and bouncing, the plane eager to become airborne and then... we were up.

And it was kinda cool. The ground was dropping away like it always does when you fly and the surrounding countryside was opening up and you could see a long ways around. When we achieved whatever flight level he was shooting for we leveled off and started flying around the local area. He pointed down and asked, “What's that?”

I looked and then said, “Hell if I know.”

He said, “You've lived here all your life.”

I answered, “But not at 5,000 feet!”

We flew around a bit more and he did all the stuff you'd think he would. We did the “you take the controls” thing and I did. Didn't like it much. Then we did the “watch what happens when I ease off the power” and we sunk like a rock. Didn't like that too much, either. It was interesting looking around and I did begin to recognize a few places from the air. Soon we had to head back to the airport as Paul only had the VFR license and needed to return the airplane to his home airfield before dark. He swung around and, there ahead of us was the runway for my county airport dead ahead. He pushed the wheel forward and we headed down. The runway grew in our windshield at an alarming rate. Still not too much fun. Soon we were over the runway and he eased off the throttle and, whisper quiet, he touched down.

It was a perfect landing.

He taxied quickly over toward where our car was parked and gave me a quick goodbye as he really had to scoot to make the sundown curfew to his airport.

I walked over to my car on still rubbery legs, feeling a bit like Lazarus returning from the dead. I stopped, turned around and watched Paul take his rented plane up into the sky again on his 20-or-so-mile return flight to his home airport. The plane slowly disappeared into the clear blue sky of a beautiful autumn Ohio Saturday in its last hour before dark.

I'd made it.

Suddenly I felt pretty good. Stomach was quiet. Voice firm. Hands steady. I'd gone up into the wild blue yonder with my old friend Paul and survived to tell about it. I was going to see another day, more than likely.

I looked at my wife. “Wipe that silly grin off your face, woman!” I said. “Ain't nothing funny going on here.”

I think I heard her chuckling all across the parking lot and half way home.

I'll get her back yet!