Moments

I was flying captain on a Boeing 757 and we were dealing with the usual summer weather; lots of thunderstorms. Flying at flight level 350, we had just managed to slip through a very slim opening in the line and broke through to the other side. 

The sun hit the thundercloud to our left and the clouds below, casting what I can only call a rainbow shadow. I could smell the hint of ozone from the storm we had just avoided. I was comfortable, alert and in charge of one hundred and fifty three people who depended on me for safety and comfort.

It was a moment.

As I sat there I quietly told my future self: “Kevin, you have to remember this, all of it, because this won’t last forever.” I mentally gave myself a “roger that,” soaked in the moment and moved on to the next thing.

We pilots measure our flying lives using the hours and tenths of an hour listed in logbooks, but our true flying lives are found in moments.

I have quite a few hours in my flying background. Time spent towing banners, circling points while demonstrating turns about a point and tons of hours shooting crappy weather approaches in transports as big as the 777. These hours tend to accumulate quickly when you are flying a hard seventy to one hundred hours a month. 

The memories of time I have spent in the cockpits of various aircraft have faded and blended into a hodgepodge of gauzy scenes. When you are flying all the time one hour tends to look like another.

My recall of past flights is ambiguous due to the fact that I am a human and my memories change from day to day. Humans tend to fill-in memories with snippets of other thoughts and recollections meaning that your remembrance of things past is not only clouded by your humanity, it is also impossible to prove.

A good example of this is the time I was a DC-8 flight engineer in the very early 1980s and a homesick Cuban in coach was hijacking us. He said he had a gun and wanted to go to Havana. Once we found that he was drunk and wasn’t armed we continued to Atlanta where some nice police people “helped” him off the airplane and into a nice warm paddy wagon. 

My job during that flight was to communicate the situation with the airline via the company radio. My memory of this night is that I had a calm, gravely voice. In reality, I am sure I sounded shrill and scared and a little confused. I am willing to bet that a lot of my old aviation memories that portray me as a steely-eyed hero weren’t that way at all – my brain just prefers to remember it in a way that I like.

The real stuff of aviation or any other life is made up of crystalline moments in time. These moments for me aren’t stored like other memories. I don’t just remember them, I feel, smell and hear them. These aren’t recollections of accidents, trauma or high drama. If you were flying with me that day you may not have noticed anything special about the moments I cherish.

I have always known that my flying life would not last forever. Parts of it have passed never to return. I seriously doubt that I will ever tow another banner or carry another load of skydivers. Life goes on and I had to let go of those hot afternoons flying the Cessna 182 so I could move on to fly 777s and now I fly Cubs and Cessna 140s.

So it goes.

But I have moments; times when I noticed what was happening and told myself to remember this forever. On other occasions I may not have told myself that the moment was special but my consciousness recorded every bit of it anyway. I can call any of these moments up at will and experience them again and again. 

I am soloing

As I turned my rented Cessna 150, N22276, into position on runway 4 at Lakeland Drane Field I was consumed with a combination of fear and excitement. I had gotten myself in that position after only five point two hours of total time with a flight instructor who, knowing I worked at the flight school as a line boy, probably valued his free time more than he was awed by my aeronautical skills so he cut me loose for solo way earlier than he should.

I prayed to God that I survive this thing and then pushed the power up on that mighty hundred horsepower engine and took flight at age sixteen all by myself for the first time. I can still feel the heat in the cockpit and smell the fifty-weight oil that I had smeared on my jeans from a day of pumping avgas.

Over a football stadium

I am towing a banner over a home game at FSU. What the banner said does not matter but I will tell you that hearing a huge crowd’s roar come up to you though the open cockpit window of a tow plane is a moment that you can feel and hear and taste for a lifetime.

An hour on the ramp in LAL saying goodbye

I am leaving to go to college the next day. This is my last shift as a line boy. I will never pump avgas or pull an airplane out of a hangar for money ever again. This evening is warm and comfortable and the rows of airplanes that I have tied-down, washed, fueled and cared for are swaying in the breeze.

There is no way to prove this, but the airplanes on the ramp at LAL spoke to me that night. What we discussed will remain between them, and me but our conversation changed my young life and sent me in a direction I had never considered before. 

I am still on the journey that began with that conversation. If you live near the airports I frequent now you might notice a gray haired guy walking slowly between the airplanes having a quiet conversation. I have had more in-depth conversations about life and religion with airplanes than I ever have had with humans. Was my teenage ramp talk with airplanes an unworldly or even hallucinogenic moment? Maybe.

We could go on and on with moments I have had in my flying life. I don’t know how to explain them any more than to say that for me, these moments exist in real time. I can call them up at will and relive exactly how they unfolded and felt.

I hope you have millions of these moments by paying attention to the little voice in your head that says: “Hey, pay attention! You are going to want to remember this.