Category: Journal

What happens to one, happens to everyone.

Winter storms storm across the southeast.  A beautiful young women booked on a Delta flight to Tampa is rerouted through Detroit.  Her anger builds in waves as she pounds on her cellphone keyboard, seething inside. She storms up to the gate agent and demands to be compensated for her inconvenience and hails her frustration out at the women behind the counter.  The intensity of her words sting everyone around her as the gate agent tries to protect herself.  Explaining that the storms have caused the delay’s not Delta, and forecasting politely, “We’ll get you there.” The man standing next to the young women rages at the gate agent about his flight delay.  The young women hurls back at him, “Shut up I was talking to her first.”  The man hisses, “bitch,” at her through his teeth.  The gate agent’s eyes well with tears as she looks down and pounds on her computer keyboard, seething inside.  She issues a new boarding pass without looking at her face, saying, “I’m sorry for your inconvenience.”  The young women spits back, “You should be.”  She marches away and pushes through the boarding line like a fast moving front.  Her bag collides with a couple, pouring their coffee and papers on the ground, occluding the line as angry words rain all around us.  I put in my earbuds and put up an umbrella of music.  We begin to board the plane.  The gate agent takes my ticket without looking at my face.  I whisper, “I’m sorry.” She looks up and smiles, gray skies in her eyes dissipate

The beautiful young woman blows down the jetway and blusters at the flight attendants.  She throws her bag in the overhead, toppling the other bags already there. The man across the aisle hurls, “Hey, WATCH IT!”  The young women says nothing in response.  He freezes her with an icy glare then looks down and pounds on his laptop, seething inside. The young women slams down in the seat next to mine without looking at my face. I look at hers and say, “Hi.”  The young women says nothing in response. The Captain announces we’ll be delayed at the gate for a short time.  The cabin erupts.  Passengers pelt the flight attendants with demands. I look at my iPad and see severe storms forecasted in Tampa. The baby in front of me starts to cry.  Tempers rise.  Service freezes. Cabin pressures build with fear and frustration as people complain louder and louder. The baby cries louder and louder. I turn up my music louder and louder.  I watch the storms movement on ForeFlight and think I see the pilot’s timing our departure to avoid them. Sudden stillness, the pressure around me is shifting. I take out my earbuds. The mother is lifting the baby up, bouncing him in the air above her seat. The baby giggles louder and louder. The man across the aisle looks up from his keyboard and smiles at the baby.  The flight attendant comes out of the galley to compliment the mother.  I start playing peek-a-boo with the baby as we both giggle louder and louder.  The aircraft door closes. The crew announces our departure.  Cabin pressure drops.

The beautiful young women seated next to me apologizes without looking at my face.  “I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m just having a bad day.” I whisper, “I’m sorry.” She looks up and smiles, gray skies in her eyes dissipate.

Severe storms sweep through Tampa just before the Delta crew lands us safely in the light rain.

It is our conscience that tells us to be conscious that our emotions affect everyone around us, both positively and negatively.

What happens to one, happens to everyone.

http://youtu.be/EyjbUesxAVU

When I first started flying in my PT Stearman Blu, I bought Richard Bach’s book Nothing by Chance and read twice.  It was a dreamscape, a wish book for me, for the life I wanted to build once.  I had the desire to be like those men, a Barnstormer.  It’s more than a story for me because I actually know Richard, and Stu MacPherson and Richard’s son Rob. I flew with Stu and Rob on the American Barnstormers Tour.  I have seen that love of adventure in their eyes, and they still carry it with them, though they no longer fly across the country.   They are all larger than life, real presences in my world, not just characters on a page.  In one of the stories in Nothing by Chance, Richard shows Stu how to choose their barnstorming route with the help of an ant, they called it the “Ant Method of Navigation.”  They followed an ant on the sectional chart as Richard instructs Stu, “You just follow him with a pen, now.  Wherever he goes, we go.”  The ant traveled a route that takes him right off the chart towards the piece of pie, the sugar.  It is a great metaphor of the nomadic, rudderless adventure barnstorming appears to be, if you take the term “sugar” at face value.   Professional Barnstormers picked their stops carefully, and the ones that thrived were master marketer’s.  Perfect orchestrators of larger than life promotions, and dare-devil antics, that would draw even the most cynical towns person to a farm field to see the show, and maybe buy a ticket to fly.  In barnstorming, “sugar” is money.  I’m trying to understand the essence of “sugar” for me at the end of this summer, barnstorming with FiFi.  I found such sweetness flying with this loving band of misfit winged things, and I flocked happily with them when I could, but drifted off route to see people and places that I loved.  My definition of “Sugar” has changed, along with me.  I’m more butterfly than barnstormer this year.

I left Steamboat Springs in a booze soaked birthday haze.  As we drove down from 12,500′ on the two lane pass from Aspen on the way to Denver, I started to wring out my brain and sobered to one thought.  Where do I go next?  Buddy was in yet another borrowed hangar in yet another airport, and I was in yet another guest bedroom in yet another city.  We were both safe and well taken care of.  I had totally achieved the essence of Barnstorming, we could go anywhere in the country we wanted.  I have mined flight waiver email addresses and contact info, so that within a few hours I could have a bank of happy customers lined up to take flights wherever I am.  I knew I could support us.  But where did “I” want to go?   I wanted to go home!  I wanted to go home so badly I ached.  I laid my head against the car window and searched for it, but I no idea of where home was except in my plane.  I had carried home with me for so many years, I had lost all concept of it on the ground.   The only thing I could think of was to buy a  ticket to Lakeland, FL for the weekend.  Get my client mailing list I had forgotten on my computer, get some fall clothes, and get my hair done.  Then somehow get all of that, and me, back north to get Buddy and just fly somewhere, anywhere.

By the second day in Lakeland I was wading through a sea of dirty laundry and months of unopened mail floating on my floor, doing absolutely nothing I should be doing, and everything I wanted to do.  Actually I was having a pretty good time visiting gal pals, doing hair and nails and shopping, but I was not sleeping at all.  I had slept like a baby in hotel rooms and guest bedrooms all over the country, but I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours in my own bed. On the second night I woke up at 4:10am at the foot of my bed, stuck to my comforter after crying myself to sleep.  My eyes were swollen slits, and I sat up in the dark and knew I had to leave.  This wasn’t home to me. I walked out to the kitchen and got a glass of water and looked at my phone, it was full of messages from friends in southern Wisconsin.  For me these texts and voicemails became a map in the dark, and I started to think of where the most light was concentrated…and I saw it.  I saw my route home.  I have always chosen to call a place home, to live somewhere because of a job, or my husband, or family and friends.  This time I knew I would find home where the most love was.  That was my “sugar.”

Within twenty-four hours my car was packed and I was driving away from Lakeland.  Buddy is the last plane I will ever have, and I can’t imagine leaving him alone in a cold dark hangar for a whole winter, I would miss flying him too much.  So I will keep my hangar in Lakeland for a winter base, but mostly because landing there, and hearing Terry’s voice in the tower, still sounds like home.  Lots of love for us there.  But it’s not my real home.  I miss fall colors, and the smell of snow and wood smoke too much.  Florida hasn’t felt right to me for a long time.

I love travel and being nowhere, it will always be part of who I am, and I will always have a home in my plane somewhere in the air below 1500’.  This I know, but I need to find one on the ground as well, it’s time.  So I’ve picked a place to land.  It’s a perfect pink treehouse, right downtown in Lake Geneva, WI where I can walk and ride my bike everywhere. It faces south with light all day so I can paint, and has a porch that stretches all across the front, overlooking the lake. Buddy has a home too, in Hartford at Cub Air Flight, where we will be the guest instructor for September.  There’s soft grass and freshwater and cool nights there, and the best part is…I’m right over a wine bar!  Wish me luck.  It may not be the exact right place, but I’m going in for a landing to see.  I’m not sure this is home, but I know I’m getting closer!

Watching the night airshow at AirVenture this year my eyes lit up with the ballet of incandescent winged things, trailing sparkles and smoke through layers of blue twilight.  The  airshow performers were perfect dancing spectacles of glowing grace, twirling and hurling in cloudless skies.  They twinkled at us from a vertical stage that stretched forever, like lightning bugs captured briefly in a glass sky box on our night stand.  It was theater of the air, but a tragic comedy to listen to.  The music scoring most of the acts was so bad I wanted silence. If I couldn’t have dreamy silence, then at least a little night music that matched the airplanes movements, to make me feel as deeply as I was seeing.

Maybe it’s my degree in theater, or the years working in arts marketing and promotions that makes me amazed, and saddened, by the unimaginative staging of airshows.  AirVenture was the first airshow I ever saw.  I remember watching it a decade ago and being quickly bored with the whining and droning of the engines, and performers zooming endlessly up and down without a storyline, or even a relevant musical score.  That afternoon I was ready to walk away when the air exploded with bass and fire and smoke, and the mesmerizing chaos of the Master’s of Disaster pounded my ears and eyes and drew me back in.  Finally a real show, one that raised the hair on my arms and imprinted itself in all my senses.  I still remember what the air smelled like and how their music made me feel watching them for the first time. I’ve always believed music leaves permanent tattoos on our lives.

Lately I’ve heard way too much Lee Greenwood and 1940s music.  During the week at AirVenture I was surrounded by lyrical accents of people from all over the globe.  I was embarrassed that the best welcome we could give them, to the biggest aviation celebration on the planet, was playing, “I’m proud to be an American,”  again and again.  Looking around me during each airshow I saw a sea of young faces, yet all I heard was old men’s voices and old men’s music on the PA.  Where was the rock, the pop, the hip hop – this generation’s music?  I asked the Presten boys, both in their teens, about the music and announcers during the airshow, did they like it?  Both replied, “No, it totally sucks.”  How could the show producers not understand the power of music to influence, and drive a future generation of loyal brand fanatics?  How could they not understand the capacity music has to imprint on our right side brain?  Music defines generations, it scores all of our lives, and every young person there lost the opportunity to have that airshow permanently tattooed in their memory.  The Presten boys, and all the other teenagers at AirVenture, just watched an airshow, when they deserved to feel an airshow.  And all the adults making the decision to play their decades old music, lost an opportunity to make a memory for every young person there.  That’s pretty selfish, adults already have so many song memories of our own.

A few weeks after AirVenture, I sat on Andy’s back deck in Steamboat Springs, CO.  It’s the same deck that has been the stage for decades of lawn parties, sun parties, and snow parties, each one scored to our music.  It was a half-an-hour before midnight and I was hiding.  I’ve started playing a strange game with my songs from iTunes.  I select “purchased” from my playlist and hit shuffle, then see what comes next.  What came next out of my iPhone, was a song by Train – a sticky, beautiful, tragic song for me.  It took me immediately back, almost four Novembers, to when I first heard it.  It had been so hopeful for me then, now it was just hopeless, the only song in my personal songbook that was painful for me to hear. I thought I had deleted it.  But there it was, first out of the box, scoring my night like the hundreds of other songs in my life.  I knew all the time, speed, and distance in the world would never erase the memory of that song, or any of my life’s songs.  Just then my phone lit up with a text from Daniel, known to us simply as “D.”  He had noticed my disappearance from the house party, raging full force downstairs, and was checking in.  D texted me, “hi from the floor below. love my hat. glad we are here with you.”  Sweet Daniel to the rescue.  I texted him, “back deck join me.”  D sat with me in the moonlight and we talked, mostly about starting our own businesses, and taking bold adventures at a stage in our lives when most of our friends were winding their adventures down.  Just before midnight, we stood up to rejoin the party downstairs and I hit shuffle on my iPhone, one more time.  Steve Winwood came next, and I smiled.  It took me immediately back to my first real job after college, at a summer stock theater in Traverse City doing their PR.  For just a few moments I was flying down M22 in my 1984 Mazda, with the sunroof open and singing along to Back in the High Life, racing to Leland after work to make the sunset on Lake Michigan.  I said to D, “Perfect, let’s go drink some champagne!”

It’s these life songs, these icky, sticky, painfully beautiful, permanent musical tattoo’s, both good and bad, that keep track of where we’ve been – even when sometimes we would rather forget.  They remind us that we should be the only ones who get to score our lives.

At some point, we can all decide which parts of our history to record, and which parts we want to rewrite.

I will be fifty years old next Saturday, and we are flocking west on the B-29 tour.  Further west than I have ever flown, to Denver, Colorado, landing  at Rocky Mountain Metro two days before my birthday.  Denver is home to me, because it is the home of my oldest and dearest friend, Andy.  Andy has been my constant companion for thirty-five years.  His mother and my mother were childhood friends, so he and I grew up just down the road from each other, in polar opposite households.  Though our houses where completely different, we are exactly alike. So much so, we finish each other’s thoughts, and talk over one another in a silly, secret shared language of coded words and show tunes. I always wanted to trade my small, safe, watchful family for his big, wild, unsupervised one.  I suppose Andy wanted to trade his for mine as well.  When I would complain about my parents constant monitoring of my whereabouts, he would remind me how lucky I was to have someone actually care where I was.  It’s taken me thirty-five years to realize he was right, now I’m proud of being loved by so many people, and being expected to check in. It is a privilege, not an imposition, and this summer I’ve all but lost my longing to disappear

The last time I flew in Denver was over a decade ago, in a rented Piper Seminole, to get recurrent as a Flight Instructor at Centennial Airport so I could return to flying again. Two years earlier I had thrown my beeper in the Gulf of Mexico, and resigned from my LearJet job on the West coast of Florida.   I was sick and tired of hauling owners bags, and their ego’s, to vacation destinations across the country.  The rewards I had found being called “Lifeguard,” flying air ambulance, I had lost when I took a pilot job with a jet management firm.  I found myself just automating a swept wing limo, not flying anything.   I was burnt out on commercial aviation and everything else – I couldn’t get out of Florida fast enough.  After a semester in graduate school at the Savannah College of Art and Design, I was awarded a scholarship to a design program in Denver.  It was a perfect escape to somewhere safe…safe for me was Andy and Denver.

I remember sitting in the right seat of the Seminole that morning, with my right arm so numb I could barely hold the yolk.  Soon after I had arrived in Denver, I found myself waking up with my lower arm almost paralyzed each morning.  Andy took me to one of the clinics he managed to see his boss, a physical therapist named Jo.  She told me that I didn’t have a physical injury, but that I was clenching my right hand so tight at night, making a fist with such strength, I was actually paralyzing my own arm by morning.  She was right, I was fighting back in my sleep, something I couldn’t do by day.  The main reason I left Florida was because when I ended a relationship with a long time boyfriend, his response to my leaving was to threaten to kill me.  It was the first time in my life I knew fear, real fear.  I’ve always lacked “stranger danger,” so the idea that someone who I had loved, and who loved me, would actually want to hurt me was devastating.  I blamed myself for choosing so badly, and kept it a secret from everyone but my immediate family.  I came home from visiting the physical therapist that night to Andy’s house, and we sat in his basement, watching the Simpsons, and I finally told him my secret.  My secret was that I was scared to death and being threatened.  Then, as he had done my whole life, Andy’s response was to make me laugh.  He told me, “Oh honey, you’re a huge mess. This guy is a bully and we aren’t afraid of bullies.  We’ll get that arm fixed tomorrow, now let’s have a cock.”  (That’s code for cocktail.)  Andy fixed me and my arm within a month.  He made a plaster cast of my open hand, so I couldn’t make a fist, and wrapped it in an ace bandage.  Then locked my doors and checked in with me each night until the nightmares were less.  He found me a Shrinkyboo (That’s code for psychologist) to talk to, who reaffirmed that this guy was just a jerk and a bully, and that I was going to be fine once I learned how to develop a little “stranger danger.”  I got a good resume and I was hired at Fantasy of Flight, and eventually moved back to Florida to fly again.  I left Denver not completely healed, that would take years, but I had a really strong bandage.

So it’s fitting that this year I return to Denver.  I find the closer I get to the mountains and the closer I get to fifty, the closer I get to being fearless.  To me being fearless means letting go of the death grip on certainty and safety nets, and just free-falling, head first into some magical unknown.  Believing I’ll not only survive it, but thrive in it, wherever “it” is.  You have to really know fear to believe you can become fearless.  People ask me, “Aren’t you afraid of flying by yourself?”  No, I was afraid of not being alive, to fly by myself.  People ask me, “Aren’t you afraid of test flying your brand new Speedmail?”  No, I was afraid of a message on my answering machine, from the man who threatened me.  I didn’t recognize the phone number, so I googled it, and the call was from an office at the FAA.  It wasn’t lost on me that he had called from his office at the FAA, so I would know that he could track me, “flight follow” me throughout my life, and threaten what I loved most, being a pilot.  When I heard his message, I threw my answering machine in the trash, along with all my home phones, and repeated Andy’s words, “We aren’t afraid of bullies!”

The icing on my cake this birthday year is I’m playing make-believe  in a graphic novel for my new Jimmie Allen Flying Club, with the most creative group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.  I have none of the qualifiers most women use to measure their lives by this age, and no safety nets.  I have no husband, no children, no house, and not even a date for my birthday dinner.  To make it all the more crazy-perfect, I have absolutely no idea what the future will bring and I should be scared to death…but I am having the time of my life!  I am free-falling fearlessly into tomorrow, by savoring every minute of today.  Especially happy that my phone blows up each night with people who love me and are waiting for me to check in that I am somewhere safe, after a beautiful flight from nowhere.

 I’m very proud of my flying career and what I wrote documenting my journey. The posts have multiple meanings to the reader but only I know the intended message in each.  This was about why things don’t happen to me.  Why there was a group of men, none of whom I had a sexual relationship with exception of Chuck, who were always there protecting me.The metal has a memory was a cautionary tale directed at one person who is living a very inauthentic life – that it would take a toll on their health. A third theme is being broken, unable to move forward.  A fourth is my getting a wonderful birthday gift, so only I know what this means and am left guessing what others might think.  I imagine we all like to think we had something important to do with our lives. That’s probably just ego talking. People often said to me they wish they had pursued a flying career. I held my tongue and didn’t reply, “Well, what stopped you?” Most pilots who have flown professionally know that what is really being said, without being said, is that they didn’t want make the sacrifice. The money is always the sacrifice. Building time, being a CFI can be achieved while holding a job and holding on to all the luxury items that people like in their lives. But the years after are the dog years, sleeping on floors, wearing a beeper, getting paid 20k annual salary to build turbine time. Fact is, if you don’t pursue something then you are happy where you are. People like to be comfortable, even if they’re called to do greater things most prefer to be comfortable than to change. They’re happy. And I’m always glad to hear someone is happy in the life of their choosing. All I ever wanted was one honest conversation.

At dinner in Madison last night, I got a text from my friend Chuck Gardner who flies the P51 , with a picture of his throttle on the Mustang broken completely in half.  My first thought was poor little Mustang.  All those different hands and all the years of rough treatment on one thin piece of metal, connecting so many pilots to the heart of that plane.  Metal has such a long memory…my second thought was of Jon Hedgecock.

Jon was Chuck’s co-worker and a pilot at Warbird Adventures in Kissimmee Florida, who gave hands-on flights and instruction in the WWII advanced trainer, the T-6 Texan.   Jon was a beautiful man, he was also physically beautiful, with a long mane of wavy brown hair.  He was witty, sarcastic, and an excellent pilot; beloved by everyone he flew. Jon died in the T-6 with another pilot, May 6, 2005.  In the months following the crash, we learned it was due to a metal fatigue failure of the forward lower wing attach flange, discovered by the investigation team from the NTSB. The FAA issued an AD, an airworthiness directive, that all T-6’s had to have fluorescent dye penetrant inspections of the wing attach flanges, at intervals of 200 hours time in service. The inspection method described in the AD said it, “Should be capable of detecting relatively small cracks that are still growing relatively slowly,” from stress fatigue.  Jon and his passenger’s death, and the weakness that was discovered in the T-6 wing attach flange, may have saved other’s lives.  Too bad they don’t have dye penetrant inspections for people.

I am not mechanically savvy and I am very comfortable with the knowledge that “I fly em but I don’t fix em.”  So when I asked for help for how this could happen to my plane from my airplane guru Jack McCloy, to understand this failure and Jon’s death, he told me simply, “Metal has a memory.”  He explained to me in “Sarah speak,” that if I pulled too many G’s and overstressed my wood and fabric airplane, exceeding its limits, it would break right there and then.  Wood and fabric airplanes are lucky that way.  If we push them beyond their limitations they are honest enough to tell you immediately.  Then we can go beneath their skin and inspect them to see exactly what’s been broken. Metal airplanes like the T-6 are so strong, and built to be so tough, that they can be pushed to, and beyond, their manufacturer’s published limits, and still not fail.  They can be over-stressed  by pilots, becoming weaker and weaker until one day they simply can’t take anymore.  The day that they do break can come without warning, because they’re so tough they accumulate their stresses, holding them within.  Poor metal planes.

I flew up from Brodhead to KMSN early to do some work and wait for FiFi and gang to join me for the big Bomber Show this weekend.  I also have a fuel leak in my fuel selector valve and feel the responsibility to be very careful getting us into Oshkosh. The selector valve is working perfectly in the main tank position, and so there it will stay until we go to Sammy Taber’s place after Airventure. I have an ever growing army of helpers coordinating a caravan of Jimmie Allen Flying Club stuff for me north. They have gone to Herculean efforts to get everything there, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  My best gal pal Jenny Jenn, is running all over Polk County to pick up signs and posters to deliver to Jack and Sally to be driven to Oshkosh.  Wade is flying into Madison for a extra set of pilot eye’s in my front seat.  The Kimball’s are driving in to Madison early to join me, and Mirco is coming in from Italy to unveil our latest creation.  We are writing a graphic novel for a new Jimmie Allen Flying Club.  I first met Mirco two years ago at Oshkosh, sitting with the Kimball’s in the IAC pavilion.  Once Mirco and I started laughing together we never stopped.  On that first meeting he said, “Sarah, you are Indiana Jones. I call you Indy from now on, because we are going together on a great adventure!”  He was right, and for two years now we’ve worked on my dream of reinventing the Jimmie Allen Flying Club in a relevant way, and that it would be designed for teenagers, they are the decision-makers I really want to reach.  So my Italian twin Mirco, and I have developed this wacky virtual office playground, where we Skype or FaceTime for hours to communicate across continents, while I’m flying all over the country in Buddy.  I’m spending so much virtual time with him, I am now virtually part of his family.  Mirco even takes me into his house on weekends, so I can say Ciao Bella to his wife Monica and his children Simone and Frederica.

Sometimes, late at night Skypeing, Mirco and I are really tired and become more serious.  In between my endless story updates, layout ideas, and compulsive design changes, we talk about some of the deepest and scariest things we both face in our lives. Just like the wood and fabric planes we are both trying to save, we allow ourselves to break, then we look beneath our skin to see exactly what’s been broken.  We patch and repair ourselves by laughing, Mirco and I are lucky that way.  Mirco moons Sarah, Sarah tells Mirco a really, really dirty joke, Mirco draws a smiley face on his toe and shoves it back in the computer camera, and on and on until we’ve forgotten what we were worried about, and go back to coloring happily together.

So in my imaginary world, work has become play, and play has become work, all the while effortlessly creating beautiful winged things and dreamscape. When Mirco and I are done with it, we send it all to Mary, a gifted young artist in Illinois, to draw Jimmie, Sarah, and Buck into the comic we are building together.  Mary Claire and her brother Jack gave me the best birthday present ever when they sent Mary’s drawing of me as a comic character, standing by my Speedmail, and asked, “Have you ever considered doing a graphic novel, a comic?”  How incredible is that? For my 50th birthday I get to be a 18 year old girl again, solving the mystery of, “Who is Jimmie Allen,” and discovering a hidden world with a private airfield and a wooden hangar full of fabric planes waiting to be built and flown by a bunch of my friends. Happy Birthday to me…Yippee!