Defying Gravity

 

I’m writing this post while sitting on a chair.  IN THE SKY!

What’s amazing to me is not that I can type these words on a laptop, or even that I can transmit them to servers on the ground, or even still that you can access them from just about anywhere in the world.  Those feats all pale in comparison to the fact that I’m soaring five and a half miles above the ground, barreling forward at 527 miles per hour.

I’ve just spent the last several days immersed in the wonder of spaceflight, capped off by witnessing the last Space Shuttle launch in history.  I had intended to use this time on the plane to record my reflections on that incredible experience, but seeing the clouds out the window of my DC-9 reminded me that flight is not a miracle reserved for the chosen few who have the privilege of visiting space.

Flying has become so routine that we focus on the inconveniences of travel logistics instead of the incredible accomplishment that aviation represents.  All at once, we are fighting the forces of the universe while acting in concert with them to harness their powers.

My first flight was in 1984.  For my sixth birthday, my parents and sister visited family on the West Coast.  We flew from New York to Dallas, then to Las Vegas, then to Los Angeles, then back to Las Vegas, Dallas, and New York.  It was a lot of flying for anyone — let alone a young family — but I had a blast.

For many years after that trip, I usually had as much fun in the air as I did at our destination.  Owing to my father’s extensive business travel when I was younger, we had enough frequent flier miles to go just about anywhere, anytime.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to have visited London and Copenhagen, as well as cities across America, before age 10.

I have fond memories of being invited by flight attendants to visit the cockpit during flight.  I would meet the pilots, snap a photo, and receive a pair of junior pilot wings.  In those days, I always grabbed a pack of the playing cards that were available on each flight.

I grew up in Roanoke, in Southwest Virginia.  When we moved there, the airport was straight out of Wings — basically one large room with all the counters and shops around the perimeter.  There were two gates, and no jet bridges.  When it rained, you could borrow a Piedmont Airlines golf umbrella to walk to the plane.  (The new ROA has two levels, six gates, and jet bridges.)

I started to love airports — especially the big ones.  They’re basically small cities, operating 24 hours a day with a level of precision necessary to keep hundreds of flights moving on schedule.  Sometimes I would just sit and watch all the motion with fascination.

My mother always tried to throw my siblings and me unique birthday parties, and one year she arranged for my party to be hosted by the Roanoke Regional Airport.  We got to tour the control tower and terminal, and sit in a propeller plane.  I was probably one of the few children anywhere to have received cake and presents in an airport conference room.

I’m also a collector, so it’s natural for me to keep track of the airports I’ve visited.  I now have a page called the Flight Quest, on which about 60 friends keep track of our airports.  As of this date, we have 3,169 unique visits to 683 different airports.  It’s not unusual for us to book unnecessary transfers, or to use slightly inconvenient airports, just to pick up new locations.  In fact, I flew in and out of Melbourne instead of Orlando for my trip this week, primarily to get my 59th airport.

I’ve often thought about becoming a pilot.  It’s not just because it’s a job to which many kids aspire, but because it combines many interests of mine like science, gadgets, travel, and service.  I almost enrolled in ground school at my local community college once, but I decided not to when I realized how expensive the hobby would be to maintain.

In 1998, my friend Danny invited me to fly with him in a powered parachute he built himself.  The contraption is basically a go-cart with a fan on the back, hanging from a parachute by shoelaces.  It barely looks groundworthy, let alone airworthy.

The flight was incredible.  I thought it would be like a roller coaster, but we ever so gently lifted off and floated through the air.  At a constant speed of 27 miles per hour and an altitude of about 1,000 feet, we surveyed the area for about an hour before practicing touch-and-goes on the runway.

It was also my first-ever use of GPS; I had just purchased a receiver, and I used it to record our flight path and lay it out on a map.

At some point, commercial flying became a little less fun.  I think it was around the time when I started traveling by myself, and I realized all the things my parents had to do to make sure our trips went smoothly.  As a kid, I had the luxury of just following my parents out the door, and pretty soon we’d be in another city.  As an adult, I had to book the flights, get to the airport, and deal with all the hassles of checking in, clearing security, getting to the gate on time, etc.

After 9/11, much of the remaining joy of flying was ruined by stricter rules, packed planes, and a general sense of stress.  I remember one of my last flights prior to that turning point, in late 2000.  After boarding the turboprop in Roanoke, bound for Dulles, I watched as the pilot entered the cockpit, took a banana out of his briefcase, and placed it on the dashboard.  I could watch out the windshield during the flight, because the curtain to the cockpit (yes, the curtain), was open the whole time.

* * *

I wrote the second half of this post on the second leg of my trip home.  As I was just reminiscing about happier times in the skies, and lamenting the fact that kids can’t visit the cockpit anymore, I was pleasantly shocked when a flight attendant came over to a boy in my row just now and asked if he’d like to see the cockpit and take pictures after the plane landed.  It’s not quite as cool as during flight, but it reminded me of feeling special as a kid.

(In another bizarre coincidence, it turns out the reason why the kid is flying to DC today is because he won a state poster contest about tobacco prevention and is competing at the national level this week.  When I was about five years old, I won 4th place in a very similar poster contest sponsored by the American Lung Association.)

The flight attendant asked the boy if it was his first flight.  With a shrug, he said “Nah, it’s like my eighth.”  Turned out it was his mom’s first flight, though; her son had taken his previous flights with dad.  During the flight, the mom said that she was having trouble hearing because her ears kept popping.  The kid replied, “Yeah, after you fly a lot you get used to that.”