Once-In-A-Lifetime Flying!

Shelby Swartz first wrote me some years ago when she read Tahoe Deathfall and liked the flying sequence. She had wanted to learn to fly. Over the next several years, she took flying lessons and periodically sent me photos from "up in the air so blue," as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote. 

Although we had become penpals, I first met Shelby in person when she came to some of my festival events. She even sent me a photo scrapbook of her flying experiences. It was fun watching and following along as she told me tales of her flying.

How lucky I felt that she cared to keep me informed of her progress. She became a friend.

A few weeks ago, she wrote and invited me to come flying. She'd gotten her pilot's license, was now working on her instrument rating, and she said she'd like to fly me from the Bay Area down the coast to have lunch in Hollister, a town not far from Monterey Bay.

Whoa. Flying down the coast for lunch?!

I started crossing off squares on the calendar, an exciting countdown to what I imagined would be a highlight of my year.

Little did I know just how bright that highlight would be!

Last weekend, my wife was exhibiting her paintings at the Saratoga Fine Art show. (For those of you who don't know the "peninsula," Saratoga is a town just south of Cupertino, whose most famous business is Apple.)

Shelby flies out of the Palo Alto airport. (For those of you who don't know, Palo Alto is the location of a certain school called Stanford.) So I drove up to Palo Alto and met Shelby Sunday morning.

Shelby took me out on the tarmac to a small tail-dragger plane called a Super Decathlon, which is a kind of sports car-version of a small plane. 

Note my skill and charm at taking a selfie with Shelby. 

(You think my lack of ability with phones is theatrical? I had to ask Shelby how to take a selfie. I only have the phone so I can take credit card payments. How's that for being a good American capitalist?)

Turns out Shelby - who is graduating from San Jose state with a degree in aviation - has been taking aerobatic lessons and even did some aerobatic flying at the Borrego Springs air show, which is just south of Palm Springs.

(In a bit comes another "little did I know" moment. But I get ahead of myself.)

Shelby took me through the "pre-flight" process, where you check every little thing to make sure the plane is in good shape. The Super Decathlon has tandem seating. Pilot in front, passenger in back. The main controls are a stick, not a yoke. You control the rudder with foot pedals. In the most basic explanation, lean the stick left, the ailerons put you into a left bank and you turn left. Pull the stick back, the elevator pushes the tail down, and you climb. We'll save rudder use for a future discussion.

Shelby helped strap me into a five-point seatbelt system that gave me a little hint of what astronauts must feel like. I asked her why the plane had such a complex seatbelt. Without any trace of drama, she said the five-point seatbelt system is good for holding you in your seat when flying upside down. Hmmm...

Next, she gave me a headset and mic. Then she got into the front seat, fired up the engine, and the propeller turned into a blurred circle.

When the traffic control in the tower gave the word, we paused to do a run-up, which is speeding up the engine while the brakes are on and checking the performance and the various instruments. When the tower gave the word, Shelby released the brakes, gave the engine full power, and the plane sped down the runway. I expected a short takeoff roll. But we seemed to barely start moving when the plane seemed to leap into the air. (Later, Shelby said that a Super Decathlon basically jumps into the air. In a line a writer would be proud to use, Shelby said, "The plane doesn't want to be on the ground.")

We took off to the north, climbed steeply, banked to the west, headed directly over the red roofs of Stanford. We went above the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains. Looking south and north, we could clearly see the San Andreas Fault, the ridge where the tectonic plate of the Pacific is gradually moving north an inch or so a year, scraping against the North American plate. 

Soon we approached the coast.

Once we were over the Pacific, Shelby turned south. The vistas were spectacular.

Here is Santa Cruz. Even more beautiful from above than on the ground.

After a time, she let me "take the stick." (The back seat has one just like the front seat.)

So, recalling my own solo flying from 40 years ago, I practiced a few turns (I wasn't too bad), and I tried to maintain a constant altitude as I turned (failed at that!).

Then she asked me something over the headset. I couldn't quite hear the words she used, but I gathered she was asking about a "maneuver."

Sure, I told her. We were facing south down the coast. A pleasant lovely ride. Nothing could be more relaxing.

Next thing I knew, she did a hard bank, put the plane 90 degrees on edge, left wing pointing directly at the ocean, right wing at the sky. Then she pulled back on the stick and the plane did the hardest, tightest bank I'd ever experience. The centrifugal force drained the blood from my head as the plane jerked around 180 degrees in about a second, and we were now facing north! I was trying to take a breath when she did it again, and in a moment we were facing south again.

Hello, aerobatics! The sweet young woman I was getting to know turned out to be some kind of kick-ass sky warrior! Who woulda thunk a plane could do that!

But the good news is I didn't pass out from loss of blood to my brain. More good news is I'm blessed with a lack of susceptibility to air sickness. (Later, back at the Airbnb, I looked up the maneuver. Turns out it is considered tame in the aerobatic world. But the pilots commenting universally said, "It will give your passenger the willies.")

Well, maybe what I experienced was the willies. Or maybe it was just a wakeup call. Ground control to self: your blood is in your feet. Hang on until that pilot with the killer skills puts things back in their proper place.

"That was a blood-draining maneuver," I said when we were once again flying straight and level.

"The guage says we pulled three Gs," she said with the same nonchalant calm someone uses when they say they had a banana for breakfast.

I was calculating that. For a moment I weighed almost 500 pounds.

Later, I also learned that it is the maneuver of choice if you fly into a box canyon and realize there is no outlet and you can't climb fast enough to get out. This is what an airborne about-face feels like, dude.

We landed in Hollister and had a great lunch while Shelby, with much animation, told me all about aerobatic maneuvers. She's fascinated by the physics of flying. 

Example: "You probably know about spin recovery," she said.

"Not much. You push in the the stick and rudder in the direction opposite the spin, right? The goal is to regain lift on the wing that's stalling, right?"

"Yes. But what about when you're in an inverted spin?"

"Whoa. You mean, if you're flying upside down and you go into an upside down spin?"

She grinned.

"That's out of my league, Shelby. My brain can't follow that."

At that point she explained the complexities of inverted flying. Wing lift is pulling you down, not up. Things are reversed from what you think. I got to thinking of the Yeats poem. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The center cannot hold.

It was a great discussion. The ride back to terra firma in Palo Alto was lovely. What a great time.

Bottom line?

Shelby Swartz is an ace pilot, destined for great achievement in whatever flying realm she pursues. Awesome flying skills, charming demeanor, generous with her time and knowledge, a friend I'm proud to know.