RSS FeedChoices
Make no mistake about it., we are what we do.
The work we choose, in the end, chooses us.
The kid who got the job fueling small planes at the local airstrip becomes a pilot. No surprise. And how is it that the bag boy becomes the butcher, the scouts top seller of cookies moves on to selling houses? Was it the worker or the work? And when grandfather puts in a good word for that job at the foundry, is he just offering a hand or acting a larger part, shaping a life for a lifetime?
Me? I would have been a doctor… but I didn’t think I’d have the patients. Sorry, not called for. My dad was funny and so I was shaped or maybe warped.
We all bend toward our own decisions, our choices made consciously but more likely not.
The weather was sunny in San Antonio but that was as far west as you could fly and still be follow visual flight rules… the ceiling was a thousand feet, visibility three miles and that is the minimum. Only a fool would set out in a light plane weather like this without an instrument rating and the instruments to go with it. Most pilots are, wisely, fair weather flyers. Why go when the weather turns raw?
We fly because we need to be some where on business. There are schedules to keep. This makes for many flights launched into the murk on days when I would rather be home in front of the fireplace or tucked against a pillow in my favorite chair in the office.
On this day we choose to fly. That the instrument rating is for, flying when you choose.
Two hundred feet and we were solidly in the gloom, disappearing into the cloud deck over Kerrville like unfortunate travelers in a Twilight Zone episode.
I trimmed the little Mooney for a steady climb to ten thousand feet and let Houston Center know that we were on the frequency.
“Mooney niner five mike kilo is radar contact seven and a half miles northwest of Kerrville at four thousand. Climb and maintain ten thousand.”
“That’s us. Up to one zero, ten thousand for five mike kilo.”
For the next five hundred miles there would be only the occasional glimpse of mother earth, and then only for a moment and then only the parts of her that are barren and brown.
Just east of Fort Stockton a military re-fueling operation code-named Turbo three six checked onto the frequency asking for a block altitude from eight thousand to twelve thousand. We were at ten cruising between layers of cloud, the highest layer marking gentle shadows on the layer below. The one shadow I did not want to see was the shadow of a military aircraft, or two, or more.
That’s a great reason for choosing to fly under instrument rules, you are under the constant watch of the controllers, almost always in radio contact. But with choices come consequences. You can’t fly instrument and just point the airplane in any direction. You have to bend to traffic and rules. In the end, the trade-off is a good one.
The controller advised Turbo Three Six that there was traffic at ten thousand just east of Fort Stockton. That was me and I knew it. But, he said, the traffic is fast and as long as the refueling operation would break of by Fort Stockton the traffic should be no factor. Oh, how I wish airplanes had rear-view mirrors!
We peeked at the oil fields near Fort Stockton, caught a wisp of Interstate Ten as it wafted along the desert near the Pecos River and then said good-bye to the ground and Albuquerque center when we slipped below their radar and out of reach of the radio for fifty or so miles of loneliness.
Our flight took us to FST62, a funny little bend in the Victor airway between Fort Stockton and the Hudspeth VOR. I have no idea why the airway arrows 62 miles into the dessert from Fort Stockton before making a three or so degree jog to the right. But I follow the rules and the airway with the idea that if, while we were radio and radar lost, something should happen we would be easier to find.
At Hudspeth I always look to see why there is a place called Hudspeth and there is never anything to see so I just call El Paso approach and get on with the business of flying. By Hudspeth we have picked up the automated weather report, learned the hourly code and advised El Paso that we are “checking in at ten thousand with Echo’ or Delta or Romeo or what ever is the code du l’heure.
We taxied to Cutter Aviation where the line guys are always hustling even when the hot winds of the dessert in summer are baking the tarmac and anything that ventures onto it. These tough, mostly Hispanic guys should give a lesson to sometimes lethargic crew that owns the tarmac in Phoenix. This time we were marshaled to a spot close to the building and right next to a brightly painted tail-dragger, a high wing affair that sported yellow and red paint, looking perfect in a shaft of sunshine that had found El Paso and no where else for several hundred miles in any direction.
From the other side of the yellow bird, a forty-ish fellow in T-shirt and jeans sauntered over to have a closer look at five mike kilo, inquiring about her pedigree and the weather to the east. His plane, a high wing fabric covered, two-seater was not equipped for instrument flying had been resting in El Paso for two days. I told him that I hoped he liked El Paso and recommended Forti’s Mexican Elder Restaurant, a barrio hideout of hot Mexican food and warm southwestern hospitality. I also recommended that he give El Paso at least another day as this was no day to venture across so much open space under so much closed in weather.
His face fell at the news just as a pair of blue-jeaned legs scooted out from under the yellow bird.
“What’s the word?” asked a perky blonde with braided hair that matched her airplane.
“He says he hopes we like El Paso.”
“Oh.” The legs slid back under the plane to continue the work. It may not fly in weather but at least it looked good.
If there is one thing that sticks with me from all our adventures it is this idea of chosing our destiny. Why do some, too many actually, persist at work that does not fill them up and make them whole? Why?
And worse, why do folks make choices that are actually destructive?
I walked into the local convenience store and was soon lost in the act of looking for an item Melanie needed to finish our dinner. Suddenly, I looked up to see a young man walking up the aisle toward me.
He was dirty from greasy head to barefoot toe. He wore no shirt, only several tatoos. The outfit was completed by a cigarette dangling from his mouth. By the time he made it half way along the aisle a woman, surely his physical counter part walked the aisle in the opposite direction. Except that she wore a shirt, albeit a dirty one, she was dressed identically to the fellow.
“Where’s your old lady?” she dragged on the cigarette.
“Awww, she’s in jail.”
“Oh.”
Oh? Oh? You don’t know me from Adam but if I wrote at the end of this book that it was dedicated to my wife who is currently in jail would you think, ‘oh?’ I think not.
So I am left with this question about choices: I know that we are the sum of our choices but… are we able to actually choose? Isn’t being aware that there are options part of the choosing?
One of the most important stories in the Bible is the first one, the Adam and Eve apple in the garden parable. It is the story of how God gave us freedom. Without the freedom to choose, we are no different than animals. It is the freedom to choose that makes us whole and the story of these adventures is the story of choice and choosing.
Riding in a cab to La Guardia we enjoyed talking with our Haitian cabbie. You know, say what you want about cab drivers and joke about their inability to speak English if you will but driving a cab is in many instances the very essence of the American dream. What better way to learn a new language and the customs of a new country than to drive a cab?
We’ve met some of the most thoughtful, hard-working individuals ever while riding n cabs. People who have an education. People who often have had the courage to flee repressive governments. People who have a dream and have chosen to follow it.
This cabbie was no different. He was the father of two girls and was working on a degree in pharmacology in his few off hours. He told us about bringing his younger brother to New York and taking a precious day off to make a proper impression.
The cabbie drove his brother all over the city showing him exclusive residences balanced by a tour areas rife with poverty, drugs, and aloholics. At days end they stopped for coffee and the delivery of the punchline: in America you can choose. You can wind up with the druggies or you can live with the wealthy and it is all a matter of choice.
In Dallas I met an attractive sales woman with a mysterious accent.
“I can tell you are not from around here. I bet you’re from Alabama,” I joked.
“I am from Russia,” and she wasn’t joking.
“I kinda figured that. Tell me, what is it that brought you to Dallas?”
“I have degree in pediatric psychology. Here I can choose good job.
Government does not choose for me. It is simple.”
Simple? Perhaps. Easy or obvious? Not for some.
Flying is nothing more than a series of choices, usually involving weather.
Inside I talked to the weather guys and got the news. Another day in El Paso would also be good for Mooneys. But not good for business. So we elected to launch with the idea that if things got really rough we could and would do the most important of all aerial maneuvers, a one-eighty that would take us back to the barn.
I filed for twelve thousand feet and in fifteen too short minutes was climbing over Mexican airspace anticipating a turn to the west and a hand off to the controllers in Albuquerque. Once at twelve we could see nearly forever and the sight wasn’t all that encouraging. Although the Stormscope was clear, no dancing green crosses that promised connective activity, the windshield was full of disappointment and black, black skies just off the nose.
I requested a descent to ten which would keep us out of the clouds. The idea was that below the cloud bases we could see the rain cells and fly around them. This worked for nearly a hundred miles as we zigzagged first north then south, before the mountains grew and the storms began to settle, hunkering lower to suck power from the earth below.
We asked to climb and were cleared to sixteen thousand. I watched the airspeed drop as the little Mooney stuck her nose up and gamely began her climb. Outside the air temperature was ten below zero and falling. I hoped that we had made the right decision. If the lifting action of the storms carried warmer moisture it would freeze in an instant on the cold skin of the Mooney. I pulled open the cabin heat, double-checked the defroster, and switched on the pitot heat so that moisture hitting the pitot, the air speed sensor, would not freeze and render it useless.
At this altitude the air is so thin the little Mooney sips fuel since there is not enough oxygen to drink deeply. The same for us. We broke out the canulas and sniffed the clean clear gas that hissed from the tank suspended behind my seat. All the while we hoped that we would reach the tops and be able to see the larger cells so we could steer clear.
That was our choice but mother nature dealt a different hand and in it she held ice, the bain of aircraft large or small.
“Center Mooney niner five mile kilo. Pilot report. We have light clear ice passing through fifteen thousand.”
No de-ice. No hot prop. No turbo charging to zoom us to the tops.
We could sense the tops. We could hear about them as a King Air reported that he was just grazing the tops at flight level two zero, twenty-thousand feet. We could dream about it but we couldn’t go there.
All we could do was hope. Hope follows choice, never the other way around.
About twenty miles shy of totec intersection, an imaginary point in space some forty miles south of Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, we broke out into the clear at ten thousand feet.
Well, almost clear. We were looking at a wall of thunderstorms that stretched from horizon to horizon. There were choices here. Fly through. Fly under and through. Or maybe take a shot at that little hole just to the north, the one that appeared to be closing between to dark sheets of solid falling water.
We’ll take the hole not the curtain and Phoenix approach gave us the option, a choice we would not have known was ours to make had we elected to remain in the clouds at sixteen thousand.
Funny thing about choices. They are all around us but so often we are in the dark in the clouds, unable to see them. Robert Frost and his road less traveled could maybe have come even closer to truth had he mentioned that it is the choice unknown that makes all the difference.
In a matter of minutes we were through. A few minutes more and we were in the sunshine taxiing to parking at Scottsdale Airport. By evening we were at the DoubleTree enjoying a reception with the client. By morning we would have enjoyed game four of the World Series and be breakfasting in the southwestern elegance of the hotel.
But where ever we are, whatever we would be doing could never be more nor less than the sum total of our choices.
And who would say that the gardener who swept the walk before us would not have been piloting a Mooney had the choices been different.
And just as it is ours to choose, perhaps it is ours to honor the choices of others. There but for the grace of God, and I will add the grace of my choices, go I.
at no time completely escaped what and who I am
I get to go home and they knew it
lessor jobs more accepting because they did not see me as a threat
no matter what you do for your employees.. you are always the boss
your job is to be interesting
get out of the office
