The notes are cryptic; scattered snapshots of a life that would mean very little to anyone except me. Two words-"By myself"-are all that denote the cascade of emotions, experience, fear, excitement and joy that accompanied my first solo in my Cessna 120 taildragger. "Familiarization," reads another stoic entry explaining 15 minutes' worth of signed-off flying time that would seem perfectly ordinary and mundane if it weren't for the brief designation "P-38J"-a World War II fighter plane-in the column describing "type of aircraft."
"Familiarization." I laugh, even looking at it now. I remember reaching over my friend Steve's shoulders to take the controls as we flew the fighter from California to Minnesota that spring day, banking the airplane left and right, giddy with the feel of being in control of a real, honest-to-goodness fighter, even if it was from my crouched perch on the wing. I was on the wing because P-38s don't have an actual jump seat. The only way to hitch a ride in a Lightning is to strap yourself onto the wing spar that cuts through the cockpit behind the pilot's seat. The quarters are crowded, and not recommended for anyone much over my 5'4" height, but my, oh my, the ride is worth it! Sitting on top of the Lightning's wing, the world stretches out around and beneath you, separated only by the Plexiglas canopy bubble over your head. It's an E-ticket ride of speed and sight in a changing hemisphere of earth and sky, colors and sounds all rushing by the wingtips at 300 miles an hour or more.
I remember flashing through towering halls of cumulus columns that day, squealing with delight as Steve cut knife-edged through the pathways of the heavens, catching the shadow of ourselves in a circular rainbow as we came out of the cloud city's streets and rolled, wing over wing, into a clear blue sky. I didn't want the experience to end, and yet I thought I'd burst with intensity if it went on one moment longer. "If I die right now," I remember thinking, "at least I'll have known what it is to be alive."
All of this life, emotion and intensity, encapsulated in the simple droll word, "familiarization." I smile, touch the page fondly and move on, lost in days and years of memories and moments that flood over me like a waterfall. For I have reached one of those momentous landmarks in time-the closing of a logbook, and the start of a new journal of life, time and memories yet to come.
I'd actually been wondering lately where some of the years of my life had gone. They seemed to have slipped by faster than I intended, even though I thought I was paying attention. What had I done with them? The answer isn't entirely in the tattered, worn logbook I've now filled, of course, but an important piece of it is. For cryptic as the notes would be to anyone else, to me they spell the measure of more than a decade, bringing back moments, memories, people and emotions like vacation photos of friends found years after everyone has scattered.
