The Long Road Home
Lane Finds that the long road home contains some unexpected twists and turns.
By Lane Wallace
January 2002
It seemed
such an innocuous decision at the time. Life had gotten a bit much,
I was behind schedule, the late August weather patterns looked bad,
and I needed to get home to California for some meetings. "Well,"
I thought. "I'll just leave the airplane in New York for now
and come back and get it in a couple of weeks. Life will be calmer,
the weather will be better, and the trip will be much more relaxed."
Talk
about famous last words.
Two
weeks later, life was anything but calmer, and my airplane was
suddenly grounded near ground zero of one of the most horrific
events ever to occur on U.S. soil. Truth to tell, I didn't really
mind having my airplane grounded at first, because I didn't much
feel like flying—or doing anything else, for that matter.
But I had to deal with getting the plane home at some point. Westchester
County Airport was soon granted a limited exemption for Part 91
flight, but VFR flight was still prohibited not only in New York,
but in the 30 biggest metropolitan areas in the country.
And
yet, the new airspace and flight restrictions were just another
challenge in a trip that had already begun to feel more like the
epic journey of the Greek hero Ulysses than a simple cross-country
flight. The original plan had been straightforward. I was just
going to stop in New York and visit for a couple of weeks before
heading back home. But then the Cheetah's engine started having
problems, and I decided it would be prudent to get it fixed in
New York before heading back across the continent.
Unfortunately,
Jerry Parks and his team of wonderful mechanics at Panorama Aviation
didn't have the tool required to do the work, and the engine shops
I checked out on Long Island and at Textron-Lycoming in Pennsylvania
were backed up for weeks. But the solution-oriented customer service
folks at Lycoming were kind enough to loan Panorama the needed
tool, and all seemed well. Then my starter died. Then my battery
died. And now VFR flight out of Westchester County Airport was
prohibited. I didn't even want to ask what would go wrong next—a
wise move, as it turns out. Because the answer, had I been able
to get it, would have involved thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes.
But I get ahead of myself here.
The
immediate problem was getting the plane out of the restricted
New York airspace. Rescue came in the form of my friend Bruce
Williams, a Microsoft FlightSim manager who's not only an instrument-rated
pilot, but also a CFI-I. Bruce thought the trip sounded like enough
fun that he offered to fly to New York and help me get the airplane
home. Had he been able to foresee the tornadoes or how much time
he would spend in Jackson, Mississippi, in the course of that
effort, I suspect he might have rethought that offer. So perhaps
it's sometimes a blessing that we can't see too far around the
corner or down the road.
Returning
to New York at the beginning of October was an interesting experience
in and of itself. I'd seen the photos and television footage,
of course. But walking the streets of lower Manhattan with my
Aunt Lane, whose local firehouse alone had lost 10 men, brought
the reality of the events home in a way no photo ever could have.
So, too, did the view upon my departure from Westchester County.
A
cold front had passed through the day before we left. And while
that meant that I found myself doing my preflight with gloves
on—an experience I'd almost forgotten since moving to California—the
front also left the skies a crystal clear autumn blue, with visibility
stretching 30 or 40 miles. As Bruce and I climbed out over the
colorful fall landscape, I could see from West Point to the West
Side of Manhattan, all the way down to Battery Park. I'd grown
up with the New York skyline—a contour that, as long as I
could remember, had been dominated by the World Trade Center towers.
But now they were gone. It wasn't some awful dream. They were
really gone. And my eyes and heart ached with more than the cold
as my hometown receded into the distance behind us.
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