A Little Scotch and Perspective

"The way to get really stressed out is to go mountain climbing over molehills." ~ Unknown

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

It has been an interesting week in the World of Aviation. We live in a wonderful world full of marvels. Too often we forget this. I just saw this interview with comedian Louis C.K. Please stick with it, the link to aviation comes at the end of the clip.

Click this to see video

You gotta love: "You're sitting on a chair in the sky!" and "Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?"

I have been looking for an opportunity to include this email I sent to friends and family back in January of 2007 and watching that interview clicked with me.

Jan 19, 2007 from N619FE

Howdy All!

When I wrote about this trip earlier, I truly did not expect that I would see or do much that would merit reporting to my loyal readers. I was wrong. Several things of merit have occurred.

Nothing much happened to report up through start and taxi at Anchorage departing for Indianapolis. As we approached the hammerhead for takeoff, Anchorage Tower told us we were to "Follow the Alaska 737." Sure enough, off to the left was a 737 approaching the same hammerhead as us. So, I stopped the airplane, set the brakes and let them pass in front of us to take the runway. As it got close we noticed it had a really interesting paint job, especially when taken in juxtaposition with the snow, ice and gray wintry conditions predominating at the Ted Stevens International Airport. Here's a picture:

Pretty cool we thought.

The 'drive' down to Indy was uneventful. The sun set a half-hour after takeoff and we droned in the dark for 6 hours. The route took us over Edmonton, through Northwest Montana, just south of Fargo, ND, just south of Minneapolis, over Rochester and into Indy.

I have often heard that flying long haul is a lot like sitting around an electronic campfire. Instead of staring into the flames, you stare at the gauges, get semi-hypnotic and occasionally conversation springs up. Just west of Fargo, we had what I hope you will find an interesting exchange. But first I have to set the scene.

(Note: When I sent this out as an email, I included the name and history of my FO. I am uncomfortable with including names in this public venue. So he is ‘Bob’.)

A new hire, 'Bob' is a recently retired AF Lt Col who spent his career in the AF. He's a really fun guy to be around and joy to fly with.

About the Canadian border we flew into the core of the jet stream and we easily had a 120 knot tailwind, which means our ground speed was 600 knots (nautical miles per hour) or roughly 660 mph. That means that I and the 200 plus tons of metal, plastic, freight and kerosene strapped to my butt are moving over the ground at about 10 miles every minute. That's really "hauling the freight."

I had the Nav Display set to the 640 mile range so that I could see how our track into Indy would progress in relation to all the airports within a 600 mile circle of us. It also meant that I was looking at all the stuff we would fly over in the next hour or so. Most of the time I'm pretty jaded about how fast jets move, but that night I could see where the Minneapolis and Rochester Airports fell in relation to our track. And, I could see that the distance between those two airports only took up about 1/6th of the distance we would travel in the next hour. That's when the scale of the thing hit me. I takes me a little over an hour to drive my car from home to Rochester and I was about to fly 6 times that distance in the next hour.

I mentioned this to ‘Bob’, one thing lead to another and I wound up pointing out how awed I am when I fly from Memphis out to Oakland, CA. That route of flight takes you over the California and Oregon trails for a short 4 hour flight. There in my air-conditioned cockpit, sitting on a sheepskin covered seat with 5 way comfort controls that I have adjusted to my precise requirements, drinking chilled bottled water and eating a catered meal, I look down on that rough terrain and am in awe of the struggle and hardships the pioneers who made their way in wagons out to California and the West underwent. Those guys were tough.

This prompted ‘Bob’ to tell a really cool "It's a small world" story.

The next piece of background info is for my non-family readers. My family's ancestral home lies in the upper northeast corner of Oklahoma with the surrounding environs of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas thrown in, centered on the little town of Big Cabin - The Hay Capital of the World. Bob's home is just across the OK/MO border in Neosho.

His grandmother just turned 100. When she was a little girl, her parents loaded her in a wagon and made a several month trip from Ohio to Neosho. The hardships and boredom of being in that wagon for months, bouncing on the trails, evidently made an impression on the little girl.

Imagine:

"Are we there yet?"
"No, not for another month."
"Daddy, Jaime's bugging me!"
"Am not!",
"Don't make me stop this wagon!"

Convinced that world travel was not for her ever again, she stayed in her little town for the rest of her life - never leaving.

Well, until recently. There was a family reunion in Ohio last year and the family finally convinced her to go. Being the Matriarch and knowing this family legend, they got her a first class ticket on the flight up to Ohio. After the short hour and half flight, the standard question: "How was your trip?" was answered with a very enthusiastic: "Boy, that was a lot nicer than the last time!"

I remain,

Dad / Geoff