Getting High

“Where you been, boy? I haven’t seen you post anything in a coon’s age!”

Um, well, that’s true. There are a number of reasons for that. One big one is that I’ve been focusing on getting high.

Yes, I fear that I’ve been reverting to an old habit. Something I took up in the late 80s, and once experienced, it can be addictive. Something I spent hundreds of hours doing. Something I set aside circa 2001, because it was expensive and I’d found other outlets. Yet, still, especially on nice summer days, when I’d see others indulging I’d look on, wistfully.

No, I’ve not been indulging in a massive drug habit. What kind of guy do you think I am?

Even if the point of it is to get my head in the clouds.

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It’s possible a few long time readers may know, but odds are most don’t; I have a pilot’s license. Private pilot, single engine land. Nothing fancy, I’ve flown mostly Cessna 150’s, 152’s, 172’s, and a Grumman Yankee. Small planes, big enough for two if they’ve been dieting, or maybe four in the 172 if one of them’s a kid.

Acquiring the license was a childhood dream. It’s my late Uncle Bud’s fault.

He was a pilot, and a good one. I saw him do steep turns only 50 feet above the ground that made me wonder what kept the airplane in the air. Of course, he practiced that maneuver; one of his jobs was crop dusting. But my dream was born in a float plane.

Bud was the sort of guy that had a lot of irons in the fire. One of them was a small fishing resort on the banks of the Sandy River in north-central Minnesota. And along the banks of the river, he kept a Cessna 195 on pontoons.

Naturally, all we nephews and nieces thought that was the coolest. And when we had the chance, we’d bug him for a ride.

Most of the time, those wishes would come for naught. But once in a while…

Just climbing into it was an adventure. You had to maneuver onto a pontoon that liked to float away from the dock, then step up and into the cockpit, always with the potential for a wet, embarrassing misstep. Then, once in, the arcane instrument panel and control yoke presented an alien alternative to the wheel and dashboard of the family sedan we were much more familiar with.

Instrument Panel of a Cessna 152 in MS Flight Simulator. We’re old friends now.

Belted in, he’d start that big rotary engine. Part plane, part boat, we’d now have to taxi/float to an appropriate section of river where we’d have enough room to take off.

The take off was more like riding a speedboat. Bringing the engine to a roar, we’d gather speed, bouncing over any waves, and looking down at the pontoons we’d see the water spray spewing off to the side. Then, suddenly, magically, the spray stopped, and we were in the air.

Although the 195 is a good size plane by my piloting standards, it’s still a small plane. And small planes are a whole different trip than climbing onto a commercial jet and zooming off to some distant destination. Kind of like the difference between riding in a sports car and a bus. In a small plane, you know you’re flying. When you peek out the window, the feeling is immediate. The aluminum skin and plexiglass windows are but a fraction of an inch of something between you and nothing, thousands of feet above the ground. When you bank, the angle may only be 30 degrees, but out the window it looks like 45. And when you bank 45 degrees plus, which an airliner will never do, you can start to feel the g-forces. Bumps that a commercial bus (er, jet) wouldn’t notice are more like driving a dirt road with potholes.

In the 195 as a kid, it was a strange, new world. Houses like toys. People like ants. And what went up, had to come down.

Landing on the water was sort of an, “um, are we really going to do this?” But sure enough, Bud would line us up, and we’d gently descend until we’d get to where it seemed like the water should be, then we’d float, eventually, finally, splashing in. We’d then be a speedboat again, doing in reverse what we did to get into the air.

Floatplane landing in Anchorage, Alaska

And when we’d get out of the plane, the big grin on our faces held the hidden promise of, “I want to do this when I grow up.”

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And so it was. Every summer since 2001, when the weather was nice and the private pilots flew their little planes overhead, I’d look up wistfully and think of the days when I was one of them. I’d remember the feeling of looking out the windows, over the cowling and through the blur of the propeller, and under the wings at the scenery. (Or over the wings in the case of the Grumman). Or looking down, past the wheels and at the ground far below, feeling like a bird, knowing I could go where I wanted – in three dimensions. (Air Traffic Control permitting, of course.) It’s a 3D feeling I’ve only otherwise had doing scuba.

So in the last Black Friday(ish) sales push, when an aviation site I had used for some drone training offered a sweet deal on ground school, I figured it was time to stop being wistful and start doing something about it. As I’d been away from aviation for over 20 years I knew I’d have to start over. My license had not expired, but the knowledge behind it had become very rusty. Revisiting ground school, even though I would not need to retake the written knowledge test, would be the first step.

I’d forgotten how much content there is. The ground school course has over 500 short videos, quizzes, and section tests designed to get the newby past the written test. Even with the grounding I had from doing the training circa 1987 and actively flying for almost 15 years, it still took me all winter and a good chunk of the spring to get through it. Blogging took a back seat. (Although admittedly, I didn’t have much to blog about.)

Come spring I still needed to find an FAA medical examiner and jump through all those hoops. Even for a third class flight physical, it’s still much more comprehensive than a routine, every couple years civilian physical, and this old body has seen a lot of wear and tear since the last go around.

Then there’s finding a smallish local airport to rent planes and get flight training. I ain’t flying out of Portland International. While it’s a little like riding a bike, and I’d been practicing via Microsoft Flight Simulator quite a bit, safely doing it for real isn’t something you just start doing again. I’ve only just restarted flight training. While it shouldn’t take as much time as learning from scratch, it’ll be a more extensive refresher than simply getting ready for a standard biannual flight review. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, other aspects of life have demanded their own chunks of time. I recently jumped into the EV (Electronic Vehicle) realm. That’s another new paradigm to absorb. And not long ago we did another trip, greecing the gears for a new set of blog posts. Stay tuned for that, too.

And regarding Bud’s Cessna 195 that’s as old as I am? It’s still flying too. An FAA lookup on the tail number tells me it now belongs to a guy in Grapevine, Texas. I’d bet it’s on wheels now rather than pontoons, (although there is a big lake in the area), but it just goes to prove that with a bit of maintenance we old dogs can still do our tricks.