It was a windy Sunday in March. I didn't fly and I wasn't happy about it. I could have flown if I had really wanted to, but I just didn't get to go.
My oldest daughter, Alix, was here for a weekend in Florida with her very likeable husband, Rob, and we'd been busy with other things. They were game about going flying yesterday, but the day slipped away from us and we never went. I had wanted to fly from Tampa to Bartow, to see master mechanic Bill Turley, so as to get a new left main tire. The left main was looking a little threadbare, and we had a couple of nice trips planned over the next few weekends, so I was eager to have everything perfect on our Cheyenne. The maintenance flight to Bartow has been an important form of psychotherapy for me for many years in a Cessna 210, then a 340 and now the turboprop.
I was looking forward to taking Alix and Rob over to see Bill. He's known Alix since she was 10. She was dragged over to Bartow on countless occasions as a child, starting 20 years ago. In those days she tolerated these assignments to accompany Dad with a certain air of resignation. After all, airplanes were my interest, not hers. It is not by accident that she grew up to become a lawyer, not an airline pilot. I was eager for Bill to see how good she looks, how well she's done and how well she's married. But the weather yesterday was beautiful and we ended up going out on a boat because Alix and Rob live in Delaware, and they were eager for some sun. I just couldn't see commandeering them into another trip to the airport.
So I called Bill and told him we weren't coming and then I drove out to the airport to tell the line guys that I wasn't going anywhere and to please put the airplane back in the hangar. At least I got a chance to look at the airplane.
I talked to contributing editor Les Abend on the phone around midday yesterday. He was in New York, getting ready to fly his 757 down to Miami. He told me of his travails on the flight from Miami to New York the night before. Seems he noticed something amiss on the tail during his walk-around and had had maintenance called to investigate. Of course, the tail of a 757 is up there, and no scissor truck could reach the area in question for inspection, so a cherry picker had to be found in Miami, an airport not accustomed to deicing airplanes and therefore not replete with an armada of cherry pickers. When things were finally sorted out, they got off almost three hours late. Once arrived at La Guardia, he told me, the towbar broke going into a gate that requires a tug. All in all, the usually ebullient Abend sounded like a very frustrated flier himself.
Sort of like me on that gusty March Sunday. The kids left that morning, and they were replaced by a cold front, low ceilings, thunderstorms and wind out of the northwest at 18 gusting to 30. If Turley had still been at work on Sunday afternoon, I'd have gone. I talked to him just after putting the kids on the airlines. Although he was already at his shop, he "tries to get out of here by noon on Sunday." How could you ask a guy who goes to work seven days a week to stay later on a Sunday for an elective tire change? So there I was, grounded. It is hard to explain to a non-flier why it is so important to get up in the air. I do know that there is something in the soul that cannot be replenished on the ground. Only a flight will make me whole.
