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macho-curiosity: lighting firecrackers (Black Cat), smok- ing a cigarette (Camel) and the first overindulgence (Southern Comfort). How about driving a car (1969 Mus- tang), soloing an airplane (1969 Mooney Cadet), your first snap-roll (C-150 Aerobat), first jets (T-37, T-38, F-16) and that first type rating (B-737)? Airplanes have always been there for me and keeping my fingers in the GA pie nour- ished a love of flying and kept the passion for flight alive.
You Make Me
Feel Brand New – The Stylistics, 1973
Have you noticed lately the way you feel as you push the throttles up, rotate the nose and retract the gear? No, prob- ably not. Because it’s a busy and critical time in our flight and we have little room for romanticism. The only time that we can completely let go of our type A, left-brain PIC persona in order to savor our type B, right-brain romantic is when we’re along for the ride without the responsibility of being in command. That’s just the way we’re wired. The Cirrus guy and my airline passengers remind me of how awestruck and amazed folks are at the mysterious and magical marvel of the noise, speed, sensations and technology as the ground speeds by then falls away. The same applies to approach and landing. Turbulence can cause the plane to rock-and-roll down final, half-mile forward visibility is zero out the side windows and yet the brilliant, cunning and skillful pilot greases it on as if in control of Mother Nature herself. When seeing the reac- tion and emotions that people have about pilots, it brings back memories. You know, before we became a brilliant, cunning and skillful pilot controlling Mother Nature. It helps me remember that being a pilot is not an everyday, run-of-the-mill vocation.
Existentially Speaking
I don’t really have any marketable skills other than be- ing a pilot. Perhaps it’s all I know how to do because it’s all I’ve ever wanted to know how to do. My first flight was during the same week that I started kindergarten and I never looked back. Many vocations don’t define who you are. Folks go to work, do their thing, go home and then do other, more important or fun stuff. Many of the pilots at my carrier feel this way. While I may have a plethora of “guy skills” and enjoy family, friends, hunting, golf and building things, flying is who I am. At the airline, my airport, at the post office, the bank, the auto repair shop, lawn mower shop, in church, heck, everywhere I go; I’m “that airline pilot Duke guy.” Flying defines who I am. Maybe it defines you as well.
Some might consider this a sad state of affairs, devoted to and coveting such a mechanical endeavor. But I’m certain that flying facilitates an uncommon appreciation
Airplanes have always been there for me, from my first airplane to my military years to today.
for physics, even astrophysics, geography and meteorol- ogy. And there are opportunities to not only think and observe the world existentially (a nod to Kierkegaard, Sartre and Nietzsche), but to routinely exercise all five senses (including taste if you count the crew meal) often with life-or-death consequences (especially if you eat the crew meal) if we misinterpret or mishandle the airplane. The challenges and rewards are mentally, physically, even metaphysically, substantial. Perhaps it’s these challenges coupled with our high intellect, natural good-looks and poorly disguised modesty that allows us to contemplate the meaning of life from altitude. After all, we have all had that “reached out my hand and touched the face of God” moment a few times. Those with nihilistic delusions needn’t fret, your own reached-out-my-hand epiphany will come.
February 2020 / TWIN & TURBINE • 35