Today was an unexpectedly good day. I started it with the normal good intentions of getting a bunch of stuff done towards this project. As usual I got going early taking care of responding to some communications and doing research for the project. Having the luxury of working from the house, I have gotten used to, and even enjoyed, taking short breaks to help with things that used to stack up as weekend honey dos. But I try not to take too much time during the day away from the tasks at hand. Keeping the discipline of working during work hours is something that has always felt like an imperative. So when i got a call from an old friend to do some “offsite networking” I had a difficult time with it. I understand the importance of relationships so I took the break to go.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that I did. Kevin is a guy I worked with about 7 years ago, we hit it off then although we have many different opinions about things. I think it is the mutual respect we have for each other, although you wouldn’t guess it by the way we talk to each other. So being a practical guy, Kevin asked if I would go with him to do a couple of his errands while we were chatting. Hell why not, I might actually be helpful too. Apparently he needs to run some parts down to his plane. So while we are chatting away we pull up to the hanger and pull out his plane. Then and starts a preflight check. Strange why bother doing that for a plane that needs parts.
Well, Kevin has been working extra hard lately and this happens to be his “working plane”. This is great news since it is the one that we will be flying down to Pleasanton to deliver the parts for his other plane. So as part of the preflight check he walks around the plane and inspects it for issues. I have issues right off the bat. This thing is made from aluminum that is as thick as the old style Fosters beer cans. Since I drive an old car I have seen the difference in metal thicknesses. The metal on this plane I can literally destroy with my bare hands. But since I don’t really feel like dying, I touched it as gently as the way I stroked my daughters heads when they were first born. Kevin has about 150 hour of flying under his belt and, as much of a redneck as he was brought up as, he is a very responsible person. I was not too concerned about dying in his plane because I know him too well. If he was going to die, I know deep down in my heart he would without any doubt NOT want to do it next to a bald fat guy. I knew he would be VERY careful.
The flight actually went over my house and I managed to shoot a couple of quick pictures. Man that is cool. I understand why Kevin likes this. While it is incredibly freeing to be able to move in 3 axis, it is also very tech and geeky. The preflight checklist, the flight jargon on the radio, the need to remember ludicrously minute details, they are all reminiscent of our geek pasts. The mechanics of the plane were very comfortable for me. This plane was built 2 years before my Jensen Healey. While my car has almost the exact same horse power I would imagine it is significantly heavier than the plane. On the other hand Jen is both a hardtop and a convertible and the plane is only a hardtop.
The trip down to Pleasanton was pretty quick. The tower in SA kept us on a specific compass heading, altitude and airspeed. Since flying like this can get boring, Kevin showed of a modern upgrade that Jen doesn’t have. Autopilot! Man that is cool, we got some time to talk a little tech and catch up on each others lives. The busy madness of the past five years have kept me somewhat isolated from many of the friends that I have come to value over the years. Wow that makes me feel old, but back to the story. We got down to Pleasanton and were cleared by the SA tower to land in Pleasanton. It’s a quiet little airport. It’s so quiet it not only has no air traffic controllers, but while we were there for over an hour, we were also the only plane.
After delivering the parts to the hanger, we headed back to the plane. That’s when Kevin surprised me. “Hey, do you want to take off?” Errrr, sure. I am a pretty paranoid sort of person, so I had been paying attention on the flight up. Kevin gave me a quick 5 minute guide to what to do and gave me plenty of opportunity to say no thanks without being embarrassed. With him taking care of the rudder pedals and the radio, and me running the the stick and the throttle we headed for the sky. This plane only needs to hit 60mph to take off. I confidently accelerated the plane up to 60, and pulled back on the stick purposefully. Up we went. South Texas in the beginning of summer has plenty of heat rising off the ground and the turbulence caused the plane to pitch quite a bit, but with Kevin’s calm instruction I kept the wings level and the airspeed pretty close to 80. This is the preferred climbing speed for this plane. Kevin let me make a couple of turns during which he made the radio announcements, about going crosswind and downwind, and then he mentioned approach. I gave him a puzzled look. He said, “well your takeoff was so good I figured you would want to try a landing”. OK, that is seriously concerning.
Pleasanton may be a lonely airstrip, but they do have a set of lights on the left of the runway that let you know if you are coming in at the right angle. Between that, and Kevin taking back control of the throttle and making some slight stick adjustments, we made a landing. He immediately called out ”my plane”, to which I replied “your plane” and removed my hands from the stick. He then accelerated and performed a lovely touch and run and we headed back to Boerne. The flight back included a buzz over his parents home and a lot more discussions of where things are headed in the technical world as we see it.
I had a lot of other work to get done today that I never got to. But the way I see it, spending time with someone I respect and who’s company I enjoy, doing an activity that people aspire to. Isn’t that why we work in the first place? Kevin took time out of his busy schedule to share with me something that he is passionate about because he felt that I would appreciate it. He was right, but I wouldn’t have figured that out from behind my desk. The Bard said “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. The most important part of that message was not about the family feud as much as it was about taking the time to smell the rose in the first place. Tomorrow I will be hitting the grind stone hard, but today was a very good day.
