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Letter to a Friend (Epilogue)
I am on board a flight to Salt Lake City. Today has been very intense. I sit in a cramped under-cushioned airline chair, beaten. My look is that of a deer caught in a truck's headlights; tired, drawn, smelly, but most of all, frozen. Living like this, even briefly, is all anarchy to the soul.
My mind, this night, is unable to concentrate and drifts toward a noisy sleep without rest. Sanity, confusion, lost opportunity, and loneliness all wrestle for a place in my brain.
I remember a trip last summer. Susan and I got away for 12 days. A brief time in Knoxville, Atlanta, Baltimore and Annapolis, sales calls mostly, but some time for us, too.
We spent 21.5 hours in the Bonanza; 13 hours of it in Instrument Conditions, and 10 minutes in a thunderstorm I will never forget. This was my first encounter with the beast in such a light aircraft.
From Knoxville to Atlanta, I had asked for radar vectors around the storm. A storm I'd seen on radar 45 minutes earlier at the weather office in Knoxville..."was dying," they said, "Level 3 now, but just level 2 rain showers by the time you get there." With this scenario, vectors around it might not be necessary, I thought. Until I saw the lightning.
I was totally in the clouds with no reference to ground or sky. Then two quick brilliant bursts off the nose. My reactions alternated between right and wrong. My breathing went into reverse. Susan asked all the obvious questions, all would have to wait to be answered. I am slowing down the airplane while trying to raise air traffic control...no response!
Putting on my sun glasses and trying to remember to squint so as not to be blinded by the closing flashes. "Jesus," turn off the autopilot, then...penetration
Quickly, a 2,000 foot per minute updraft, my wings pitch right, then left. My instruments are behind the aircraft's gyrations and are impossible to interpret. I only hope I'm pitching right as many times as I'm pitching left. My response seems sluggish, my mind is starting to seize. I audibly cry, "No, where the hell's ATC?" That bastard is frozen in some dry radar building in Atlanta and killed you. Oh, he'll be admonished and perhaps even demoted, but your ass is cooked.
"Quit that," my mind said, "fly the damn plane." I looked at Susan. She had that appearance of stoic panic, you know the kind where you're afraid to breathe. Because if you do the demons working on the plane's exterior might pick up your scent as well. I flipped the throttle down to 15 inches. Normally, I'd slow to 120 mph, but my airspeed's climbing to 200 mph, I'm in a dive. No, the altimeter shows a climb. Now a violent down draft. The plane plummets; the airspeed falls...
"React you stupid son-of-bitch." The
plane shook again fearfully then numerous
shorter tremors, then...smooth.
Radar control finally calls, says the worst of it is over. I asked him about the delay in his response. He said, "he didn't hear any calls." Too bad telling a lie over FCC frequencies isn't punishable by death. I took his name hoping to cost him a good night's sleep.
The blessings of my life; Susan, my boys, my health, my passions, all renewed themselves in that 10 minutes. That memory and those blessings stream in the window of this airliner. I peer down at 9:15PM to a small thunderstorm, tops at about 30,000 feet. The same size as the one I was in... But today's storm is off my right side around Vernal, Utah. Inside it, I imagine a small plane with another scared man at the controls trying to get through this thing alive. Screaming over a radio with no response...and me up here, in a 737, just noting how beautiful thunderstorms can be.
The struggles of our life never seem to
fully measure up to our worry of it. Only perspective
lets us live in fear but with hope.
With appreciation:
Ed O'Brien
I am on board a flight to Salt Lake City. Today has been very intense. I sit in a cramped under-cushioned airline chair, beaten. My look is that of a deer caught in a truck's headlights; tired, drawn, smelly, but most of all, frozen. Living like this, even briefly, is all anarchy to the soul.
My mind, this night, is unable to concentrate and drifts toward a noisy sleep without rest. Sanity, confusion, lost opportunity, and loneliness all wrestle for a place in my brain.
I remember a trip last summer. Susan and I got away for 12 days. A brief time in Knoxville, Atlanta, Baltimore and Annapolis, sales calls mostly, but some time for us, too.
We spent 21.5 hours in the Bonanza; 13 hours of it in Instrument Conditions, and 10 minutes in a thunderstorm I will never forget. This was my first encounter with the beast in such a light aircraft.
From Knoxville to Atlanta, I had asked for radar vectors around the storm. A storm I'd seen on radar 45 minutes earlier at the weather office in Knoxville..."was dying," they said, "Level 3 now, but just level 2 rain showers by the time you get there." With this scenario, vectors around it might not be necessary, I thought. Until I saw the lightning.
I was totally in the clouds with no reference to ground or sky. Then two quick brilliant bursts off the nose. My reactions alternated between right and wrong. My breathing went into reverse. Susan asked all the obvious questions, all would have to wait to be answered. I am slowing down the airplane while trying to raise air traffic control...no response!
Putting on my sun glasses and trying to remember to squint so as not to be blinded by the closing flashes. "Jesus," turn off the autopilot, then...penetration
Quickly, a 2,000 foot per minute updraft, my wings pitch right, then left. My instruments are behind the aircraft's gyrations and are impossible to interpret. I only hope I'm pitching right as many times as I'm pitching left. My response seems sluggish, my mind is starting to seize. I audibly cry, "No, where the hell's ATC?" That bastard is frozen in some dry radar building in Atlanta and killed you. Oh, he'll be admonished and perhaps even demoted, but your ass is cooked.
"Quit that," my mind said, "fly the damn plane." I looked at Susan. She had that appearance of stoic panic, you know the kind where you're afraid to breathe. Because if you do the demons working on the plane's exterior might pick up your scent as well. I flipped the throttle down to 15 inches. Normally, I'd slow to 120 mph, but my airspeed's climbing to 200 mph, I'm in a dive. No, the altimeter shows a climb. Now a violent down draft. The plane plummets; the airspeed falls...
"React you stupid son-of-bitch." The
plane shook again fearfully then numerous
shorter tremors, then...smooth.
Radar control finally calls, says the worst of it is over. I asked him about the delay in his response. He said, "he didn't hear any calls." Too bad telling a lie over FCC frequencies isn't punishable by death. I took his name hoping to cost him a good night's sleep.
The blessings of my life; Susan, my boys, my health, my passions, all renewed themselves in that 10 minutes. That memory and those blessings stream in the window of this airliner. I peer down at 9:15PM to a small thunderstorm, tops at about 30,000 feet. The same size as the one I was in... But today's storm is off my right side around Vernal, Utah. Inside it, I imagine a small plane with another scared man at the controls trying to get through this thing alive. Screaming over a radio with no response...and me up here, in a 737, just noting how beautiful thunderstorms can be.
The struggles of our life never seem to
fully measure up to our worry of it. Only perspective
lets us live in fear but with hope.
With appreciation:
Ed O'Brien