airborne again

Back in November, when it looked as though we'd be here until January or February (oh, wait, hold on; we'll still be here until February), I struck a deal with my parents. If they floated me a loan of $4,500 I could get my commercial pilot's license before I left for Korea. Miraculously, they agreed. Either they're bigger pigeons than I thought or they love me very, very much.

In order to stretch the dough as far as I could, I decided to train in a cheaper airplane. I'm more familiar with the Cessna 172, but they cost something like $110 per hour to rent these days. For my purposes, I went down to M______ Aviation and picked the cheapest airplane they had: a little red Cessna 152. Two seats. One hundred and ten horses. Tricycle landing gear. Basic instrument package, no GPS or anything. Looks like this:

If that seems mighty small to you, it is. Standing on my tiptoes, I can practically see over the wings. It's rather tricky trying to cram Miss H and myself into that little cockpit. Headroom is plentiful, but the seats aren't adjustable: my legs are stuffed up under the control panel. The 152 is comfortable once you actually get in and get situated, though. Ventilation is more than adequate, too. However, putting two full-size adults into an airplane with a 110-horsepower engine presents some special problems. We had to ensure that we weren't taking off with a full load of fuel, or else the little bird wouldn't ever get off the ground. (Don't worry; we made sure we had plenty for the flights we had in mind.)

But before I could get started, I had to get checked out. I'd never flown a 152 before and, though I technically wasn't required to get checked out in it (the FAA says that private pilots can fly any single-engine fixed-wing under 12,000 pounds without a checkout), M_____ required that I at least have a familiarization flight with an instructor before I took it out on my own. I understood. They had to cover their behinds. And a checkout flight wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience; I'd just have to buy some instructor's time and submit to a few maneuvers under his or her watchful eye.

That's what I thought at first, anyway.

You can imagine my chagrin, my horror, and my utter revulsion when I walked into the main office of M_____ Aviation (which smelled strongly of secondhand smoke) and saw him sitting there.

It was Bob.

Bob the Poacher.

Bob the Loony.

Bob the Motormouth.

He of the Shadowy, Mysterious, Shady Past.

He was the kind of pilot whom all the other pilots said was off his blinkin' rocker. He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a lot of half-baked, erroneous ideas about flying that were dangerous to teach impressionable students. He wasn't fit to fly a paper airplane. The rumors said that he'd been fired from every flying job he'd ever held. Rumors notwithstanding, it was an undeniable fact that he was a poacher. He'd migrated up from some airport down the hill and ingratiated himself with M_____ Aviation's management, allowing him to lay in wait at the door and pounce on any students who walked in. With flattery, high-flown promises, bravado, and a great many tall tales, Bob enticed these unsuspecting neophytes away from their current instructors and under his own wing. This insidious and highly disreputable practice is frowned upon in most flight schools, but not M_____ Aviation. The Dutch matron mysteriously refrained from pitching Bob out the door. Instead, she hired him on as an instructor, even when all her other instructors tacitly resigned in protest.

You may imagine my remorse when I learned that Bob was the one who'd be checking me out in the 152.

Good God, no.

Somebody help me!

Oh yeah, before I go any further, I should explain to you what a checkout is, and why I needed one. Let's say you're a pilot. So far you've flown only one or two types of planes (just like yours truly). I trained in a Cessna 172, and have quite a bit of time in a Mooney M20E. I'd never flown a Cessna 152 before. So, when a pilot is going to fly a new plane for the first time, another pilot (who is familiar with the airplane in question) "checks him out" in the new airplane. The experienced pilot flies with the newbie and gets him oriented. Generally, checkout flights are very short: you do some maneuvers, maybe a few practice landings and touch-and-goes.

Not with Bob. Bob sat me down and did ground school with me first.

Keep in mind, now, that Miss H was sitting in the car, reading a book, and patiently waiting for me to take her flying. Bob was unaware of this. Even if he had been, he might not have cared. He was on a roll. His ego would not permit him to take me flying before he'd demonstrated to me that he knew all there was to know about flying. To some degree, I appreciated the fact that I was getting a refresher: I was a bit rusty, after all. Going over a few things beforehand really helped me get my mind back in the game. But Bob pulled out all the stops. Though the Cessna 152 is not equipped for instrument flying, somehow or other we wound up talking about instrument approaches and landings. This was totally irrelevant to what we were about to do. But Bob was an unstoppable avalanche, and it was only my gentle pushing that finally got him to shut up. We adjourned to the plane to do a preflight check.

Ten minutes later we were in the air. Unfortunately, Bob's tendency to chit-chat, gab and proselytize continued even after we got airborne. I expected to do a few maneuvers and some practice landings. Nope. We did spins.

Just so you know, a spin is very similar to a stall—except for one thing. Instead of both wings stalling simultaneously, one wing stalls before the other. Rather than merely dropping out of the sky in an orderly fashion, the airplane begins to spin violently as it falls earthward. Spins are extremely dangerous and cause numerous fatalities every year. However, they are simple to avoid and (if you know what you're doing) not too difficult to recover from.

Eventually I would have to practice spins as part of my commercial training...but I was in no mood to learn today, especially not from Bob. I'd never flown with him before. All of the awful stories I'd heard about him came flooding back into my mind. I protested volubly, but he insisted. So we spun. Granted, they were only half-turns and not complete revolutions, but they were enough to make my stomach jump, my eyes roll and my hands convulsively clutch at things.

Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard, I kept thinking. Let's just get this over with.

One more spin. In distracted fury and sickening fear, I fixed my eyes on a sticker on the control panel.

THIS AIRCRAFT MUST BE
OPERATED IN THE NORMAL CATEGORY.
ALL AEROBATIC MANEUVERS,
INCLUDING SPINS, PROHIBITED.

it said.

Awesome.

Finally, the ordeal ended. We landed. Bob got out. Miss H got in. She'd been waiting on the ground for nearly two hours. We burned some holes in the sky for an hour. Then we flew back and landed.

That was the last I ever saw of Bob, fortunately. He signed my logbook and I left. I paid him $30 the next day (there was a sort of vile satisfaction in making him wait for it) and that was it.

I've made two flights in the 152 since then: one with a buddy to Lancaster for a bite of lunch, and a long cross-country with Miss H to Twentynine Palms and back. The Cessna 152 is a fun plane. It's a bit slow, but it's stable, forgiving, and fun to fly. I haven't yet made a landing that I've been completely happy with, but for all intents and purposes, I can fly the dang thing.

No thanks to Bob.

Sheesh...

rocks, sand and stars

FOREWORD
What you must understand about Southern California is that, basically, it's a city. The entire region is an unending sea of buildings, commercial and residential neighborhoods which themselves compose independent towns. Some of them are packed so closely together that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. (It IS possible to tell where Redlands ends and Hemet begins, for reasons which Karl Marx could rattle off half-drunk; but that's beside the point.)

It's a macrocosm, really. SoCal is put together much like a town in itself. Each city is a different neighborhood, each neighborhood with its own—ahem—unique character. Over on the east side you've got the low-rent district, full of hicks and wife-beaters and layabouts and canned-beer drinkers, living in vans and campers down by the river; the west side is the plush, breezy, hoidy-toidy coastal resort with miles of beaches, bungalows, and palm trees; the south side is the middle-class, (relatively) peaceful and (somewhat) clean area where the parents and grandparents live; the north side's hilly and scrubby and jam-packed with administrative buildings and the cookie-cutter houses, whence the morning commuters come; and in the smoggy, filthy, eccentric center of town reside the sin and vice and glam and sophistry and commercialism of California's recycled-paper heart.

I live on the east side, which is composed mostly of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts, the Colorado River, the San Andreas Fault, a few dozen small- to medium-size cities and hundreds of dead-end, ramshackle towns: 29 Palms, Barstow, Hinkley, Boron, Amboy, and Needles. Some of those cities are nice places with green golf courses and big stucco mansions and expensive restaurants, like Palm Springs. But for the most part the Mojave is Podunk, devoid of moisture. There's a few national parks, some military bases, a couple of mountain ranges and a big salty lake thrown in for good measure.

Just west-southwest of this desert is the Los Angeles Basin, which is composed mostly of Los Angeles (blargh) and all of its innumerable suburbs and outlying districts. That literally IS one big city. You can walk from Burbank to Irvine to Fontana to Long Beach without touching the ground. Just hop from rooftop to rooftop. You may need a vaulting pole to cross the interstate highways; you may need a ladder to get over the skyscrapers; the palm trees would be handy for moving from one Malibu estate to the next; and Mount Lee might require an extra-large jump (what with those big white letters and all). But you get the picture.

Southern California is a massive metropolis, a single titanic municipal entity, possessing a great many postal codes, enough freaky religions to put Jim Jones off his Kool-Aid, more palm trees than ought to be countenanced by a sane god, and about 20 million people—most of whom spend their time either sitting in traffic or being crabby. Or both.

For someone who hates cities (like me), it's a deplorable situation.

Subjectivity aside, there are a LOT of buildings down here.

AND a lot of lights.

That makes it kind of tough to stargaze.

You can stand anywhere in Southern California at night and it's guaranteed you'll have to deal with some kind of light pollution: either from the beehive of Los Angeles to the southwest, or Laughlin and Las Vegas to the northwest.

Nonetheless, Miss H and I saw a hellacious load of stars on the night of October 11. We were in Joshua Tree National Park, which explains why.

CHAPTER ONE - JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK
Not too many people know about this hidden gem of the desert. Not even the people who live here. It's not like it's some big secret. Joshua Tree lies just south of the small town of the same name (itself east of Yucca Valley and west of 29 Palms) and north of Indio and Palm Springs. It covers over 1,200 square miles (nearly 790,000 acres, or 320,000 hectares, if you prefer that sort of measurement). Contained within that expanse is some of the prettiest desert country you could ever hope to find in Southern California. As-yet unsettled by fat, beer-soaked hicks and their rusty cars, that is. It's got some epic scenery, too. The park is coated with massive piles of Cretaceous granite (quartz monzonite to be exact, rough stuff), eroded into oblong boulders and jumbled in the most wanton manner imaginable. Most of these piles are so unique in appearance and so gigantic in stature that they've garnered themselves unique nicknames, like the Hall of Horrors and the Giant's Marbles.

A female friend of mine once referred to these piles as "God's Legos," which just about says it all, I reckon.

We'd been meaning to take a camping trip for a while, Miss H and I. Then, one week, I unexpectedly wound up with two days off in a row. So naturally I seized the carp and arranged things with my lady forthwith.

My father, fortuitously, is an avid outdoorsman. We have enough camping supplies in our garage to put an Arab caravan out of business: tents, folding chairs, tarps, pots, pans, cups, tin plates, lanterns, matches, lighters, med-kits, water bottles, ropes, stakes, poles, walking sticks, knives, hatches, multitools, candles, sleeping bags, air mattresses, camp pillows, cots, cooking stoves, gas canisters, the works. Each component would drive a psychometrist out of his mind. There's so much pain, exhaustion, exhilaration, sweat, torture, exertion and triumph wrapped up in these inanimate bits of equipment. Each has a story to tell. A mountain climbed, a rocky trail conquered, a valley explored, a tent pitched in a hidden glen, a hot meal cooked and devoured lustily. Aching calves. Bursting lungs. Throbbing hearts. Backs soaked in brine. A cool breeze welcomed with religious fervor. Sunlight on the leaves. Blinding snow. Birdsong in the distance. A half-glimpse of some forest creature. The chuckling of a stream. The savory chill of mud and water on red-hot feet. Compass needles and maps. Trails and trees. Rocks and roots. Sun and stars. Earth and sky and everything in between.

From this trove (and its memories) I selected the gear I figured we'd need for two people and one night in the Mojave Desert in autumn. We had a tent, a couple chairs, some sleeping bags, an air mattress, a battery-powered lantern, the camp stove, some silverware and dishes and cups, a tarp for a ground-cloth, and a medical kit. I loaded my travel vest with whatever else might come in handy: my Bowie knife, my survival card (more about that later), my three-in-one sporknife (exactly what it sounds like), a deck of cards, a flask of brandy, a good novel, and various other accoutrements. And by "accoutrements," you know I'm talking about more booze. I packed my traveling cocktail set with 500 milliliters of vodka and a similar amount of sweet 'n' sour, just in case we felt the need for some libations in the evening.

We loaded all this into my faithful Jeep on the morning of the eleventh, picked up some grocery items in Lucerne Valley, and headed for Joshua Tree.

CHAPTER TWO - INTO THE DESERT
The hour-long drive was just as scenic as I remember. Once you crest the hill just east of Yucca Valley and begin the quick descent down the torturous 247, and the town opens up beneath you, rock piles and cactus spines and red tile roofs, with the stark and blasphemous granite mountains rising up behind...

A quick left on the 62 and a right on Park Drive had us at the gates of Joshua Tree inside 20 minutes. All civilization faded away, except for the two-lane blacktop we drove on. All had suddenly changed to desert at its most elemental: sand, rocks, mountains, and the titular Joshua trees, arms clutching at the empty sky like an agonal prophet.

The immaculate clarity of the place dazzles the eye and the imagination: all is reduced to lines and colors, the green spikes of the Joshua and the agave standing out against the beige-brown of the sand and shrubs and the blue-hot ocean of sky overhead. Heat waves trick the eye, mirages dance on open ground, and the merciless sun limns all with a harsh white glare. It's been said before by better men, but one can truly believe, standing in the midst of this unyielding and eldritch environment, that one is standing on the untamed surface of an alien planet.

...which does not and should not detract from the charm of the place. Not one little bit. Joshua Tree is beautiful. The park is a feast for the eyes, far more enchanting than many bits of more extreme deserts like the Kalahari or the Gobi. There's more in it, for one thing. The Mojave and Colorado Deserts boast a more rich and diverse biosphere than many wetter ecosystems. On any given day you can see coyotes, roadrunners, rattlesnakes, scorpions...and that doesn't even compare to what comes out at night.

We spent a happy afternoon touring the park. Up to Keys View, to look down upon the Coachella Valley from 5,000 feet up; Indio, Palm Springs, and a myriad-phalanx of date palm farms laid out beneath us. To the west was Mount San Jacinto, the loftiest of the Three Saints, a massive blue-green beast of a landform, stretching to 8,319 feet. At its feet, winding away toward L.A., lay the deceptive San Andreas Fault, ready to blow any second. To the southwest, the grayish-blue void of the Salton Sea was clearly visible; and beyond that, just at the edge of perception, sat Signal Mountain on the Mexican border, ninety-three miles away. Even Coachella's ever-present smog (and that of Los Angeles, drifting in from the west) couldn't prevent us from seeing these miracles.

Good thing I brought my binoculars, though.

We got some unusually clear pictures up there. There was some kid in a white shirt and a baseball cap with a $3,000 camera hanging around his neck, sitting on the stone partition and looking bored out of his mind. I walked toward him to ask him to take our picture. Before I'd even opened my mouth, he was standing up and reaching out his hand for my trusty red Canon.

He took good pictures.

It was a bit warm to hike to Barker Dam, but we settled for strolling through the Wonderland of Rocks.

We got to the campground at about 4 o'clock and pitched camp.

CHAPTER THREE - HOW TO OPERATE A CAN OPENER
I had picked Jumbo Rocks for a campsite because I was vaguely familiar with it. I'd picnicked there before. I seemed to recall that it was a locale straight from Tolkien or Verne, an epic sort of place with titanic boulders sprawled everywhere, bushes and trees and stretches of sand elbowing in where they could.

My recollection was right on target.

Miss H and I snatched a registration form from the box and drove around looking for the most photogenic campsite (farthest from anyone else). Fortunately, even on Columbus Day weekend, the park was deserted. Miss H and I found our site with relative ease. We filled out the form, raced back to the entrance to get registered, and then came back and set up camp.

Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is what a functioning campsite looks like.

Night fell swiftly. Miss H and I climbed up on the rock to view the sunset. Then we broke out the camp stove and the chili and began to cook dinner.

Now, let me first explain something to you about can openers. They come in three main varieties. The first is the electric can opener. Craven, rump-fed poltroons employ these in their Malibu condominiums to obtain the Fancy Feast necessary to prevent their fat-bastard Persians from pissing on the carpet.

The second type is the rotary or hand-actuated can opener, in which the operator "clips" the blade and its rotating gear to the can, holds the apparatus steady with one hand and turns a knob with the other. The blade proceeds around the edge of the can's lid, neatly severing it from the can proper.

The third type is the manual or hand-operated can opener, which is basically a metal flange with a wicked hook carved into the bottom edge.

There's a trick to operating this latter type.

You have to go around the edge of the can with the blade instead of going straight for the middle.

Guess which stratagem I attempted first?

One mutilated can-lid later, Miss H hit upon the brilliant idea of going around.

Things worked much better after that, and we were soon spooning hot chili into our gullets by the white light of a battery-powered lantern.

After that it was time for some s'mores. I, in my infinite wisdom, had remembered every single solitary piece of camping equipment that we'd need, but had neglected to (a) buy bread to go with the lunch-meat we'd purchased, and (b) had overlooked what method we'd use to toast our s'mores. Propane flames don't really impart a desirable flavor to the marshmallows, you see. Natural flames are preferable. If a little bit of the smoke gets into the graham crackers, well, so much the better.

We didn't have natural flames (we'd brought a camp stove instead of firewood, for the sake of portability).

So we settled for eating 'em cold.

Yeah, okay, I know. We're blasphemers. Apostates. Communists. But hey, a cold s'more is still a s'more, same as cold pizza is still pizza and a bad cigar is still a cigar.

CHAPTER FOUR - ON THE DOORSTEP OF THE STARS
And then came the night's grand finale: we made ourselves comfortable at the cement picnic table, turned off all the lights, craned our heads back, and looked at the stars.

And looked and looked and looked and looked.

There were millions of 'em.

The night-black sky was speckled with tiny flecks of brilliant diamond-white, like granules of sugar scattered in a coal scuttle, spotlights streaming through bullet holes in a black wall.

It was the most beautiful sight we'd seen in an eternity. We were far removed from the lights of any town (even Los Angeles was a mere greenish line to the southwest). Constellations which had previously been muted and tired and old now lit up the heavens with renewed energy. The Big Dipper lay suspended in the northwest, glittering as I'd never seen it before, like a rock star playing in his hometown. Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny new stars, too dim to be seen from my backyard, were glowing and gleaming out of the firmament. It was an immensely cheering sight. It did my heart good to think that there were still places in the continental U.S. where you could see starry skies like this (in Kansas, apparently, you can see nebulae...nebulae, for Pete's sake!). It was like the star-spangled opening sequence of Star Wars: a sky literally swimming in stars, every single square inch taken up with twinkling lights.

We gazed for as long as we could. There was far too much to take it all in at once. Plus our necks were getting sore. So we turned in about ten-ish and hit the sack.

I can remember getting up once in the middle of the night for a bathroom break. I was debating whether or not to take the flashlight. I did wind up taking it, just to avoid tripping on (or bumping into) any of the massive boulders that composed our campsite. But I turned it off when I got to my (ahem) lavatory. I looked up at the sky and breathed a deep sigh of contentment.

Then I looked around and realized that I could see by starlight. I had never been able to do that before, not in all the places I'd been or lived. I'd read about people doing it in books (books written in the nineteenth century or early twentieth), but had hardly been able to credit it. Now I could see that it was possible. There was no moon. Nothing but the endless blue-black vault above me, spangled with celestial bodies, the largest and best planetarium in the universe. Everything was dim about me, but I could see. See in the dark. How long had it been since a human being, raised in civilization, had stood in the dark of the world and tried to see his way without a contrivance like flashlight or fire?

We woke the next day about 8:00 a.m., when it was already getting too hot to sleep. We packed up, did one last check around to make sure we'd left nothing behind, paid our camping fee, and left the park by the scenic route. We had breakfast at Denny's in 29 Palms, had a leisurely drive home, and spent the rest of the day vegetating. Not much was said. We were still remembering the stars.

before you fly

Commercial aviation really is evil. You know why? It's conditioned me to be unconcerned about relieving myself before taking to the air. This is, obviously, a luxury not afforded by the Cessna 172 I'm training in. Are you wondering why I brought this up? You shouldn't be. Today was my two-hour, 100-mile solo flight between 29 Palms, Victorville, and Apple Valley. And guess what I forgot to do before I took off? So there I was, at 7,500 feet above sea level (fortunately, there was no sea in sight, or things might've gotten really bad). Warning signals start flying back and forth between my bladder and my brain. Ah, the heck with it, I thought to myself. I'm halfway to 29 Stumps already. I'll be back in no time. I could afford to be that cavalier because my bladder has an excellent track record. If I'm doing something important, my bladder generally has enough sense to shut up and leave me be until I'm in a position to empty it in a dignified, sanitary manner. Except for a few (cough) black marks in the ledger, my childhood was free of embarrassing accidents in the car or in public. In the bar with friends, everyone is excusing themselves after the second drink; I'm good until the fifth round. Even after a long day in town doing errands, I usually don't even feel an urge to go until about 30 seconds after I walk in my front door. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a thing of beauty. Step up and buy your very own self-sealing, travel-safe bladder, the E-Z Pinch! Stays comfortably full for hours! Alarm won't go off until you're home and dry! Five easy payments of $19.99! Buy now and save on underwear! Well, during this flight, I had one piece of viscera down there about to go on strike. It really hit me after I'd gotten to 29 Palms, done the requisite touch-and-go, and was over Yucca Valley once again, headed west. DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING! In roared a message from the engineering level, in manic Scottish brogue: "Red alert! Red alert! Pressure rapidly approaching critical levels, Captain! I don't think I can hold her! Evacuate immediately! Evacuate immediately! Mayday! Mayday!" The dam was about to burst, people. Well, okay, it wasn't that bad. I've had it bad before. The running-into-the-bathroom-gotta-get-there-yesterday-'cause-Old-Faithful's-a-comin' kind of bad. This wasn't as bad as that. But it was getting there fast. I applied a little more right rudder to center the ball, and trimmed and trimmed and trimmed trying to get the danged plane to level completely and fly straight. That way I'd pick up a little more airspeed. Who knew what kind of difference it might make down the line? (Oh, this is just too, too ironic. I looked out of my window just now as I was typing and the plumber was driving by.) Right as I was about to fly over my house, about 25 miles or so from Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville (my second and second-to-last stop), things started to get critical. So I resorted to an old trick I'd taught myself when out on one of my six-mile walks. I manually released a bit of adrenaline into my system. You can do this if you train for it. You just sort of tense up your midsection in a manner that I can't properly explain in prose, and there you go. Clenching your jaw and shoulders helps, too. It doesn't hurt to think of something alarming, either. I usually put myself in the shoes of one of my favorite comic book heroes at one of their most desperate hours. Say, Monkey D. Luffy fighting Rob Lucci right when the Buster Call hits, or Hellboy going up against the frost-giants in the north of Sweden. Anyway, aside from increasing your heart rate and decreasing your reaction time, adrenaline also puts calls of nature on hold. It does for me, anyway. It mystified me at first, but later on, when I thought about it logically, I discovered that it makes evolutionary sense. If you're slouching through the Pleistocene and a saber-tooth jumps out at you, you're going to do what any self-respecting Neanderthal would do: run like the dickens. You don't have time to be worrying about doing your business. That little shot of panic-juice helped, but it didn't do the trick. Things started to get bad about five minutes later, when I was directly over Apple Valley. The airport was shimmering tantalizingly just four miles to the north; but I resisted the temptation to hang a hard right and land there. This was my long solo. I had to land at Victorville first before I came home, otherwise the total mileage wouldn't add up. If I completed the solo that day, I'd have only an hour of instrument work and three hours of night flight left (and a checkride) before I was completely, utterly, abjectly done with my private pilot's license. The stakes were too high to stop for a piddle. So on I flew. Fortunately, SoCal Logistics is a towered airport. I never fly into towered airports. My nervousness at having to speak to a real person—to actually have to ask permission to do stuff—set the adrenaline flowing again. Whew! Crisis averted. The alarms died away down south and I was able to concentrate on making my radio calls. "Victorville Tower, Skyhawk 42126." "Skyhawk 26, Victorville Tower, go ahead." "Skyhawk 42126 is 10 miles east of the airport, requesting permission to enter your airspace and do a touch-and-go." "Skyhawk 26, enter left base for runway 2-1. Winds calm, altimeter 30.1. Report left base." "Victorville Tower, copy approved entrance to left base, will report left base, runway 2...1, Skyhawk 42126." Okay, that was done. I could come inside. Now I just had to tell the dude when I entered my base leg and get cleared for landing. Then I'd let him know I wanted out after that, and get the heck home. A few minutes later... "Victorville Tower, Skyhawk 42126 entering left base, runway 2-1." "Skyhawk 26, not in sight, clear for the option, runway 2-1." "Victorville Tower, clear for the option 2-1, Skyhawk 42126." He hadn't seen me yet (there was a big cloud of steam in the way, from the factory at the end of the runway), but there was no one else around. I was okay to land. I did, and just after I'd gotten back off the ground... "Skyhawk 26, state your intentions." "Victorville Tower, say again?" (I didn't hear him too well.) "Skyhawk 26, state your intentions." "I'd like to depart the pattern to the west." Oh damn. I meant east. "Skyhawk 26, right turn-out approved." "Victorville Tower, I'm sorry, I meant east. My bad." "Skyhawk 26, left turn-out approved." "Left turn approved, copy. Skyhawk 26." Just before I exited Victorville's airspace, the controller came back on the radio to let me know he was letting me go: "Skyhawk 26, frequency change approved, have a good day." "Victorville Tower, frequency change approved, copy. Thanks very much." The leftover butterflies held out until I'd landed at Apple Valley (just ten miles away, thank goodness), taxied, secured the plane, and settled up with the flight school inside. I almost walked out of the door, in fact, before I remembered that I had an appointment with the porcelain throne. I haven't had a pee that satisfying in a long time.

Wednesday solo and Thursday triumph

On Wednesday our cross-country flight was canceled, again on account of the wind. Sometimes this desert really gets on my nerves. So instead Harold had me solo to Barstow and back. Golly, it was a beautiful, calm day, and I got to fly over the horrendously gorgeous Granite Mountains. I did a few touch-and-gos at Barstow-Daggett Airport, practiced my short field and soft field landings, flew back (stopping over the barrens to try some steep turns), and then came home and landed. The next day was Thanksgiving, a real mother of a blowout. Man, it was good to have turkey and sweet potato soufflé and green bean casserole with Ma and Pa after five years of Thanksgivings away from home. I didn't fly Monday or Tuesday this week due to...that embarrassing thing that happened to me which I can't tell you about. But I managed to schedule a lesson for Thursday, December 3. And on that Thursday, the winds were finally calm enough for us to fly to 29 Palms. Was it ever a grand flight. 'Twas odd to finally be able to see over the San Bernardino Mountains behind my house without actually driving up Highway 18 to Big Bear Lake. They were all dusted with snow, too, and mottled with blue shadows in the low-lying winter sun. That was our southward view. To the north there lay the whole expanse of the Mojave Desert, with its stark mountains, rocky hills, dry lakes, and vast wastes of Joshua trees and tumbleweeds. It was a religious sight. After 20 minutes in the air, heading eastbound, we spotted an enormous gout of dust rising from the flats a few miles ahead. The 29 Palms area is well known for the rather large Marine base nearby; Harold peered at the dust and reckoned it was probably a tank platoon out practicing. If one more awesome thing happens on this flight, my subconscious mind whispered to itself, I'm gonna fire off and explode. The nearly 100 miles between Apple Valley and 29 Palms disappeared almost too quickly. We almost didn't find the airport. Even with the purple line on the GPS pointing right at it, the thing was darn hard to see. We were practically set up to land on a dirt strip before we spotted the actual, paved airport at one o'clock, off our nose. After that it was a piece of cake. We made a slight deviation to the south to avoid flying into the restricted airspace above the Marine base. Neither of us felt like being intercepted by jet fighters. We got back on track, flew over the town of Yucca Valley (it was so weird to see it from the air having been there so many times by car), set up for landing, did a touch-and-go, and were off again. It's a nice little airport they've got there. Small, dinky, and out-of-the-way, but that's how I like my airports. They've got an incredible view, too. The scenery's to die for. Kind of like this picture here, but quite a bit more panoramic (as viewed from higher up). The flight back was just about the same as the flight out, only in reverse. This time, however, since we were flying west, and I was in the left (and southernmost) seat, I got a better view of the mountains. That "something else cool" happened, too. I learned about Flight Watch. Flight Watch is a nationwide flight service, available on the 122.00 frequency, that gives pilots weather reports and advisories whenever they want 'em. Flight Watch can also help you if you're having trouble, or have gotten lost or something. Is that cool or what? It's like an omniscient aviation god, benevolently watching over its bio-mechanical supplicants. Harold called Flight Watch up on the radio. We contacted the Los Angeles branch; we were less than 100 miles away as the crow flies. Harold gave the responder a "pilot report": an up-to-date, eyewitness weather report, from altitude. He reported our position (over Yucca Valley again), the visibility ("unrestricted," better than 10 miles), the outside air temperature (40 degrees Fahrenheit), and the winds ("smooth ride"; no turbulence whatsoever). "It's just a nice day up here," Harold concluded. Harold also concluded, later, that the fellow we talked to at Flight Watch must've been lonely and bored. He didn't want to get off the line with us. He asked us if there was anything else we needed, and reminded us of some turbulence warnings that were slated to take effect later in the day (Zulu time). He finally thanked us for our report and signed off. Harold and I had been looking at each other and grinning all through the conversation, just from the inherent coolness of it all. Now we sat back and chuckled. The plane drew closer to home. Hold it! I'm almost done. I've got one more neat thing to discuss and then I'll let you go. If you've hung on this long uninterrupted (bathroom breaks and sandwiches notwithstanding), congratulations. Glance away from the screen for 20 seconds to rest your peepers. Finished? Okay. I finally got to fly over my house. It's true! I live on the way to 29 Palms from Apple Valley (though obviously closer to Apple Valley). On our return trip, we overflew my house, snuggled up in the San Bernardino foothills. I casually mentioned this to Harold, and he said this: "You want to circle it?" My mind screamed, "HECK YES!" My mouth said, "Can we?" Harold said, "Sure! Let's pull the power back here..." As we got closer, I asked Harold to note the time (so I could tell Mom the exact hour when I'd flown over, so she'd know it was me). Harold held up his cell phone instead. "You know, you can call her," he suggested. "ALRIGHT!" my mind hollered. "Okay, I'll do that," my mouth said. Harold took the controls while I fumbled in my flight bag for my own phone. I took off my headset (exposing my ears to the thunderous roar of wind and 150 horses) and dialed Mom. "Hello?" "Hey Ma, it's me!" "Hi!" "Guess where I am right now." "Are you over the house?!" (She heard the engine noise and knew I was still in the plane.) "Yep! We're coming in from the east, we should be overhead in a few minutes." "Fine! I'll come out." And there she was, just a tiny pinprick against the grayish-white swath of the gravel driveway, bouncing up and down and waving her arms for all she was worth. "Rock your wings," Harold said. I did, and the whole plane waved back. We finished the circle and flew back to Apple Valley Airport. Mom was thrilled. She'd been waiting every day to hear me fly over, but always my flights had been rescheduled or canceled. Finally we got our chance. Nice to know somebody on the ground knows you're in the air, and wants to wave at you. Thanks, Ma. Anyway, that was how we got to 29 Palms (or, as pilots often refer to it, "29 Stumps"). Whoo-ee. That was an ordeal, wasn't it? My life lately seems to consist of nothing but these frustrating-but-somehow-still-fun-cum-enlightening ordeals. Next, I should be soloing out there, and thus add another 1.8 hours of pilot-in-command time to my logbook. After that, Harold says, we just have to work on night flying (yippee, I can't wait!) and a little instrument work, and then I should be... ...finished. Wish us luck, lads.

Tuesday: slow flight and steep turns

On Tuesday of last week, my joint flight to 29 Palms with Harold was called off due to high winds. Instead, we flew out to the barrens halfway between Apple Valley and Barstow and practiced a few maneuvers I hadn't done in a while: slow flight and steep turns.

Both are pretty sweet. With slow flight, you reduce the throttle (to slow down) and tilt the nose up (to maintain your altitude). I believe Harold and I introduced a little flap as well, just to give us more lift. Pow, there we were, cruising along at about 70 miles per hour or so, tilted back like we were doing a wheelie in midair, the land inching by beneath us. It's cooler than I made it sound, believe me. Normally a Cessna Skyhawk's cruising speed is between 100 and 120 miles per hour, depending on the wind. The plane becomes airborne at 60 miles per hour, so it's pretty impressive that we were still able to stay up and just inch forward at 70.

Why do pilots practice slow flight? Well, I'm glad you asked. It comes in handy for landings, that's why. Nose tilted back, throttle reduced, flaps down...that's a plane just about to touch down on the runway. Knowing how to bring the plane into and out of slow flight is essential for pilots. The only other thing you might use slow flight for is if you've roped some poor suckers into a flightseeing tour and you want to show 'em something reaaaaaaaaalllly cool on the ground. When you turn in an airplane, particularly a Cessna 172, you usually never go beyond what's called a "standard rate" turn: that is, 30 degrees of bank. Any farther and you're in a steep turn. You want to be careful with steep turns, because of a little thing I like to call the vertical component of lift.

When you fly level, like this...
...the vertical component of lift is king. That's what's opposing weight (see the aviation glossary at the bottom right for the four forces of flight) and keeping the airplane up. However, when you do a steep turn, like this...

...suddenly you don't have a vertical component of lift anymore, really, because the wings are tilted so much that they aren't lifting the plane up. What you have instead is the horizontal component of lift, which is the way the air moves over the ailerons and changes the direction of the plane. The reason you have to be careful is this: with steep turns, the vertical component of lift (which holds the plane up) is reduced severely, supplanted by the horizontal component of lift. If you reduce the vertical component too much...what's going to hold the plane in the air?
If you said "not a friggin' thing" you are CORRECT! Here, have a cigar. So what you have to do with steep turns is monitor four things very closely:

• airspeed: Too fast and you'll climb. Too slow and you'll stall and fall out of the sky. Make sure you've got enough throttle in to keep you in the air, but not so much that you climb. During your final flight examination (known as the checkride), you are expected to stay within 100 feet of your starting altitude while performing a steep turn. It's harder than it sounds.
• attitude indicator: A handy little instrument that tells you whether you're climbing or descending (pitch) and how far you're tilted right or left (roll). It rolls when you do, and pitches up or down when you do, so you can look at it and immediately know what your plane is doing. The instrument itself looks like this:
  For steep turns, you want one of those little orange wings in the center there pointing precisely in between either pair of hash marks (at ten and eleven o'clock or one and two o'clock, respectively).
• horizon (the real one): Keep your eye on the horizon outside the cockpit. Keep the nose of the plane pointed dead at it, not high, not low. (You can do this by pulling back on the yoke, or pushing it forward.) That way you'll stay level while turning.
• turn coordinator: This doohickie likewise tells you how much you're rolling, but it also has a little ball suspended in kerosene which lets you know if your turn is "coordinated" or not. Take a look:
  
  A coordinated turn is one in which all of the control surfaces are working in harmony and nothing's out of whack. A Cessna 172's propeller spins to the clockwise. That means there's a considerable amount of torque; the propeller keeps trying to pull the plane off course (even on the ground). So to counterbalance that, you have to keep a little pressure on the right rudder pedal to balance that torque out. When turning in mid-air, that torque will pull the ball to the left; right rudder will center it, and the plane will be straightened out and turn in a smooth and coordinated fashion once again. You really want to keep that ball centered, because if you happen to stall and it's not, that means one wing is going to stall first. And when one wing stalls first, you don't simply fall out of the sky. You go into a spin. A spin is just about the scariest thing that can happen in an airplane. So keep that ball centered! I think I've heard that directive from my instructors more than any other.

Without further ado, I humbly present the steps to doing a steep turn.

Pound in some throttle to speed up a bit and compensate for that loss of vertical lift. Roll the plane into a sixty-degree bank (right or left, whatever) with the aid of your attitude indicator. Monitor the turn coordinator to make sure the ball's centered, and keep your eye on the airspeed, all the while keeping your nose level with the horizon outside. Keep doing this until you do a complete 360-degree turn. When you get within 30 degrees of your original heading, roll out and reduce throttle. If you do it right, you'll wind up going the same speed you were before you began, at the same altitude, at the exact same heading.

It took me a little practice back in Cheyenne. It took one or two tries to remember here in California. But I got it. Soon I was pulling off slow flight and steep turns like a pro. As a postscript, I'd like to add that steep turns are probably not something you'll want to do if you're carrying passengers. Unless you like people barfing down the back of your neck, that is.

Monday: RPMs and magnetos

Do you have any idea how tricky it is to find 29 Palms Airport from the air (even with help from that little purple line on the GPS)? Jeez, they hid that sucker. We were only five miles away from the place when we spotted it, but we did find it, and landed on it. And thus, after three days of cancellations and postponements, Harold and I finally managed to make it to 29 Palms. This marked the second dual cross-country we've done together, and the longest: nearly 100 miles round-trip. I now have barely seven hours of requisite flight-training left, and then I'm through with my private pilot's license. I wanted to spend all four days of Thanksgiving weekend with the fam-bam, so I scheduled my three weekly flying lessons on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. Yep, I'd be flying three days in a row: quite a cram session. That didn't bother me. There was some exciting stuff in the offing. On Monday I'd be soloing, but I'd have the reins to myself: nobody would be in the office, even. The book with the key and the required documentation would be left in the plane for me, and I'd simply walk straight through the airport building, climb inside N42126, and go. How cool is that? Tuesday and Wednesday would be given over to cross-country. On Tuesday, Harold and I planned to fly to 29 Palms, a town of some size and scenery west of here (near an also-sizable Marine base). On Wednesday, I'd solo to 29 Palms and back. It didn't fall out like that, though. Heck, no. Let's start with Monday. I got to the airport, duly bypassed the flight school office, and sauntered right out to the plane. I leisurely performed my preflight inspection, a self-satisfied grin on my face as I planned the takeoffs and landings I'd practice and the maneuvers I'd pull over Bear Valley Road. I climbed in and started the plane, not without some difficulty. It's been getting down below freezing at night lately and when it's cold, the engine gets cranky (no pun intended). So I primed the bejesus out of it and finally fired 'er up. Everything was proceeding normally until I taxied down to the run-up area for runway one-eight. As soon as I tried to throttle the oldLycoming engine up to 1700 RPM for my run-up, something weird happened. Dumbo swooped down out of the sky, opened the door of the plane, and handed me a complimentary in-flight bag of peanuts. No, no, I'm just kidding. That would've been really cool, though. What actually happened was this: the RPMs started fluctuating rather severely. Instead of smoothly accelerating up to 1700 (from 1000) the tachometer needle jumped and jerked and stopped and started. The engine's smooth roar suddenly tripped and staggered. I powered down quickly, then cautiously powered up again. The same thing happened. The third time, the power succeeded in reaching 1700 RPM, but it wouldn't stay there. The needle wobbled back and forth, as did the pitch of the engine noise. Not good. Well, I didn't want to muck with it if there was something screwy preventing the pistons from revving smoothly. I didn't want to be caught in mid-air with my pants down. Not in an airplane, anyway. So I taxied back to the ramp and, lo and behold, there was Harold. He'd just dropped in to the airport for a few minutes with his eldest son before driving all the way down to Oceanside to pick up (heh heh, didn't I think this was appropriate under the circumstances) a new engine for N42126. "You just heading out?" Harold asked as I got out of the plane. "No, just coming back, actually," I answered as I unfolded myself. I proceeded to explain the trouble. Harold, puzzled, got in and (with me standing over the right seat, with the door open), proceeded to fire up the engine. Before I tell you how that went, let me share a few choice words about what it's like to be standing anywhere near a propeller aircraft when it's going full blast. You know how when you're riding in a car you're completely oblivious to the amount of air that's moving past just inches away from you? That invisible element, howling along at ridiculous speeds, casually and undetectably deflected by the windshield? Well, now picture yourself standing under the wing of a Cessna 172, only your head and shoulders inside, the door open, directly behind the propeller whirring at full speed, the engine roaring, the wind screaming past you. I felt like I was going to get caught with my pants down after all, because the wind was about to tear 'em off. There was absolutely nothing wrong that Harold could detect. It seems that in between the run-up area and the ramp the mysterious engine ailment had melted away. Perhaps literally: Harold figured Imight've had a little ice in the carburetor. The run-up had probably melted it (or me turning on the carb heat halfway down the taxiway and therefore negating the reason for returning to the ramp in the first place). Harold believed me, and I know he didn't hold it against me or think me silly or overcautious. He's a good man and a good instructor. Plus he knows that, in the world of flying machines, there's really no such thing as overcautious. (My old flight instructor Mike used to tell me, "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.") But I felt pretty stupid regardless. Anybody's bound to feel frustrated when they perceive a problem (say, a hideous monster lurking just outside the window) and then when everybody turns to look, the problem has vanished. Makes you doubt yourself. Anyway, not to be thwarted by some minor technical difficulties, I jumped back in the plane and taxied back to the run-up area for the second attempt. No soap. This time it wasn't the RPMs, it was the right magneto. During run-ups, it's customary to check the magnetos and make sure they're both working properly by turning them off one at a time and seeing if the other still runs. You do this by flipping the key in the ignition switch to "L" (leaving the left magneto on, and turning the right off), then back to "BOTH"; then flipping it to "R" (leaving the right on, and turning the left off) and back to "BOTH." As you do this, you observe the tachometer and make sure that the RPMs don't drop by more than, say, 250 (when one of the magnetos is off). Well, darn. That morning, whenever I turned the key to "L," the tachometer needle would fall like an egg from a tall chicken. I had to flip that switch back to "BOTH" but quick; the RPMs were falling off so fast I was afraid the engine would just die right there. I repeated the test three more times, with the same result each time. The hell with it, I finally decided. Flying like this wouldn't be advisable, or safe, or sane. Normally I'm the first guy to try something inadvisable, unsafe, or nuckin' futs, but I didn't feel like it this morning. Particularly not in a rented airplane. So I taxied back to the ramp (Harold had departed in the meantime), shut down, secured the plane, and stomped back to my car. I left a note in the cockpit explaining the trouble, and drove back home. That was Monday's flight lesson.

to Lancaster and Riverside

I went to two places on Tuesday that I've never been before in my life: General Fox Airport, 50 miles west of Apple Valley; and southern Riverside, within spitting distance of Corona, where the nearest scion of the National Bartenders School is located.

Let's begin at the beginning. Now that I've completed two solo flights (consisting of three touch-and-gos while staying in the landing pattern), it's time for me to step things up a notch. Now I need to start actually flying to different places. I have to complete, I believe, five hours of cross-country flight, including a flight of at least 100 nautical miles. Harold and I knocked off an hour and a half of dual cross-country on Tuesday. We traveled 52 miles from Apple Valley Airport west to General Fox Airport, which, if you've never heard of it (nobody has, including me) lies about halfway between Palmdale Airport and Edwards Air Force Base, near Lancaster.

Everybody should be familiar with Edwards Air Force Base, at least. Formerly known as Muroc, it's where a lot of groundbreaking aviation research has taken place. Or perhaps I should say "soundbreaking." It's the airfield where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his orange Bell X-1, "Glamorous Glennis." The X-15 tests were conducted there, too, as well as bunch of other stuff. There's oodles of history out there. My father used to work there, too (commuting over two hours round trip every day). The base sits at the end of truly massive dry lake. It's flat, wide and dusty: perfect for landings if the engines on your persnickety test plane suddenly decide to go out.

Anyway, the only difference between that day's flight and any other was that, before taking off, Harold and spread a chart on the vertical stabilizer of good ol' N42126 and plotted our course. It was pretty much due west. We'd overfly Victorville Airport, a rather uptight installation sitting in a bubble of Class D airspace extending up to 5,400 feet. That would be our first checkpoint. Then we'd pass another dry lake bed at El Mirage, roughly marking the halfway point. Finally, there'd be a big water tank on the last hill on the left before General Fox. That'd be our third marker. Then I'd call the air traffic controllers up on the radio and arrange a landing. Before the flight, Harold thoughtfully pointed out the ATIS, VOR, and radio frequencies I'd need. He also kept his flight guide (like a Triple-A guide book for private pilots) handy in the cockpit.

Oh, I'm sorry. Don't know what ATIS and VOR stand for? Welcome to my world. Piloting is sometimes just a load of alphabet soup. "ATIS" stands for "Automated Terminal Information Service." It's this nifty little report you get from the airport tower by tuning your radio to a certain frequency. They're updated often, sometimes ridiculously often if the weather's dodgy. They give you things like current wind speed, visibility, barometric pressure (so you can adjust your altimeter accordingly), and any special information you need to know. You tune into the ATIS, usually, before you take off from an airport and before you land at one, just to know what to expect.

The VOR is a navigational aid. We've come a long way from the good old days when airmail pilots used to navigate using roads and power lines. Now there are these handy-dandy VORs set up all over the States at regular intervals. "VOR" stands for "VHF Omidirectional Range." "VHF," as any dunderhead should know, means "Very High Frequency." They could've called 'em VHFORs, but that takes too long to say, and it sounds too Russian. Anyway, VORs put out a constant signal in the VHF range. By looking at a sectional chart of the area you'll be flying in, you can find out the frequencies for nearby VORs. Then, while in flight, you can tune your equipment to any particular VOR's frequency and use it to navigate. When you get out of range of one VOR, you can tune in to the next, and leapfrog your way across the countryside that way. It's advisable to memorize all these frequencies (plus the airport radio frequencies) before you go anywhere—or at least write 'em down. That's going to be a tricky for me, so I'm putting a kneeboard on my Christmas list. A kneeboard is a vital piece of cross-country flying equipment. It's a clipboard that straps to your leg, onto which you can jot notes, attach charts and airport guides, write down instructions from the tower, whatever. I'm going to need that when I go out on my big 100-mile cross-country to 29 Palms... Okay, anyway, back to the flight itself. Harold and I piled into the Cessna and off we went. I banked right once we'd reached pattern altitude. We skirted the mountains, and before we knew it we were almost over Interstate 15, which marked the boundaries of Victorville Airport's Class D airspace. That meant we had to give them a call and ask them if we could go through. Harold coached me on what to say beforehand. "Victorville Tower, Skyhawk 42126." Short pause. "Skyhawk 42126, Victorville Tower, go ahead." "We're about eight miles east of the airport at 4,500 feet, we'd like to transition your airspace to the west." (Oops! I forgot to give him my tail number again!) "Skyhawk 26, clear to transition airspace to the west." "Skyhawk 42126, roger." (Yes, I know 'Roger' is Army lingo and not Air Force, but sometimes I just get so excited. I had to forcibly restrain myself from saying 'over' after every transmission, too.) This was per Harold's instructions. He said it was best to just call out to the tower and give them your identification (which normally consists of the make and model of your plane and the tail number). Then they'd call back to you and tell you to keep talking. That way you didn't just start talking only to find out later that the man in the tower was on the phone or something and didn't hear you. I asked for permission to "transition the airspace," meaning pass through that Class D bubble without entering the pattern or landing or anything. Permission was granted, so we flew on. When we got clear of the airport's airspace a few miles later, I called them and thanked them, and on we went. We could already see El Mirage off our nose at about one o'clock. Don't know much about the place, myself. I think Chuck Yeager made a few emergency landings there when Rogers Dry Lake by Edwards wasn't an option. There were some long, low buildings off to the west of the dusty, suntanned lake bed. Harold informed me that his son-in-law lives there and is in charge of the organization that formerly administers speed trials for the race cars and speedsters which come to the lake bed to...well, conduct speed trials. That was pretty neat. Harold also told me to keep my eyes open, as a lot of gliders and RC airplane hobbyists operated from El Mirage, too. Nobody was out today, except for a lone streetcar sitting down in the middle of the lake with a few human figures next to it. Our flight continued uneventfully. Well, as uneventfully as any flight can be. Flights aren't really uneventful. It's hard to count the coolest thing any human being could ever do in his or her life as being "uneventful." The view was amazing. I could see all of the San Gabriel Mountains off to the south; the vast Mojave Desert spread out beneath us to the north, west and east; and nothing but acres and acres of blue skies overhead, shot through with cirrus clouds and contrails. Somebody down on the ground was burning weeds or something, too, because two gigantic plumes of smoke were climbing slowly into the air beneath us and then spreading out into a flat gray sheet across the countryside. From above, the effect was rather like looking at a lily pad from the shore of a pond. You could see the stem coming up from the bottom, and meeting the pad itself, and then the pad stretching over the surface of the lake. Only these "smoke pads" were big, stretching over a wide layer of invisible air. It was really quite something. The next time I solo, dang it, I am bringing my camera. After a little hunting about, we located the water tank on the hill. And then, by leaning forward at a 45-degree angle and squinting a lot, we were able to make out General Fox. We could barely see the airport buildings and the dark streak in front of them. Harold informed me that the streak was a park right next to the airport, over which we'd fly as we descended toward the runway. It was right about here, ten miles out, that Harold warned me to "keep my eyes peeled." There was occasional jet traffic between Palmdale and Edwards, he said. We'd be trundling right across the proverbial highway in the sky in our slow little Cessna, and we didn't want to get run over if we could help it. Fortunately, no jets made their appearance. I swung out to the northwest a little (taking care to avoid the restricted area that surrounded Edwards AFB, a double green line on the GPS) and set up for my landing approach. About ten miles away, we tuned in to Fox's ATIS broadcast. It was "Information Alpha" (ATIS broadcasts are labeled phonetically by letter, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). About eight miles away, I called air traffic control. "Fox Tower, Skyhawk 42126." Another short pause. "Skyhawk 42126, Fox Tower, go ahead." "Skyhawk 42126 is eight miles east of the airport with Information Alpha, we'd like to make an approach." (Ha! I remembered my tail number that time!) "Skyhawk 26, cleared for a two-mile final to runway 2-4, report the freeway." I hadn't been cleared to land, but I hadn't asked to be, either. The tower's transmission meant that I was okay to set up my landing approach (a long, two-mile descent, straight in). Of course, I had to let them know when I was over the highway. Highway 395 (or maybe it was 14) ran just two miles east of the airport. The tower used it as a sort of rangefinder for incoming traffic. I set up my landing and called the tower when I was over the freeway. "Skyhawk 42126, cleared for landing 2-4," they replied. When an air traffic controller in a tower tells you something, it's customary for you to repeat it back to him (or her), just to let them know that you (a) heard, and (b) understood. Nobody in tower wants to tell a plane to stay in the pattern only to see them coming in to land on top of another plane a few minutes later. Harold cautioned me to repeat the tower's instructions back to them verbatim at this point. "They tape record these conversations, you know," he said. "You want to repeat it back to 'em just like they gave it to you, so just in case something happens, you can say 'You cleared me to land!' and the tape will back you up." So I was very judicious about repeating my landing instructions back. "Skyhawk 42126, cleared to land 2-4," I said, heart thumping. They've got a big ol' runway there at General Fox, wider and longer than Apple Valley. It had more VASI lights, too. I was a bit high to start out with, and got a little low, but in the end I evened 'er out. The two leftmost lights were white, and the two rightmost were red. I touched down pretty smoothly (even despite the bumpy breeze down near the ground), braked, and exited the runway. Ah, but it still wasn't over yet. Fox is a towered airport, remember? You can't even move on the ground without asking permission. As soon as I got off the runway, shut off the carburetor heat, put the flaps up and set the transponder to "standby," I called up the tower and told them I was off the runway and ready to taxi. They told me to taxi to the parking area, and I repeated it back to them dutifully. Then we went. It was easy as pie. Harold had been here before and knew right where to go. We passed a handsome twin-engine Cessna, pulled up next to a brown-and-white 172, stopped, and shut down. And that was it. We were there. (WOOT!) Harold and I stepped inside the airport cafe (considerably larger and better appointed than Skidmarks at Apple Valley) and had a little breakfast. He had toast and I had two eggs. Harold let me have a piece, though. He's a chum. We ate, talked a bit, and watched the airfield outside (not much traffic today, thank goodness). I was amazed to see, in the distance, the giant white windmills at Tehachapi appear as minuscule white sticks on the slopes of the mountains. It took two hours to reach them from my house by car. I was dumbfounded that they were this close by air. I picked up the tab (might as well go the whole hog; I was paying for Harold's time and the airplane). Then we got back outside, snapped on the master switch, listened to the ATIS once again (things hadn't changed much), fired up the Cessna, got taxi clearance, taxied to the run-up area for runway 24, ran the engine up, got permission to take off and depart the pattern on the downwind leg (making a U-turn after taking off), took off, and departed the pattern on the downwind leg. Peachy-keen! The return trip was pretty much the outbound one in reverse, except the "smoke pads" had gotten wider. And that car I'd seen on the dry lake bed at El Mirage was now ripping around and kicking up dust. And I didn't have to ask permission of Victorville Tower to transition their airspace this time, because we flew back at 5,500 feet instead of 4,500, which meant that we were above that bubble of Class D airspace (yippee!). I made, if I may say, a pretty darn good landing back at Apple Valley. We parked, shut down, and that was it. I now have 1.5 hours of cross-country time in my logbook. I jumped in the Jeep and headed right back to Highway 18, thence to I-15, and headed south for Riverside. I was a man on a mission. Determined not to spend the winter flipping burgers to earn a little flying money (and my parents' rent), I've resolved to go to bartender's school. If I'm on the ball, I could get at least one flying lesson's worth in tips per night. Also, I'd have yet another occupational notch in my belt for my next overseas adventure. I could work as barkeep in Australia, for example (in case they're at a lack for journalism jobs too). Plus it'd be just plain fun to work in a bar, I think, even if it was busy...as long as I was well-trained. To that end, I sought out a bartender's school nearby. The closest one I came up with was a scion of the National Bartenders School, headquartered in L.A. This branch was in Riverside, a somewhat dilapidated, scummy urban area near San Bernardino. The drive was about fifty to sixty miles, lasting an hour to an hour and a half (on bad traffic days, which are depressingly common down there). That's a hell of a commute for bartender's school, I know. But my only other alternative was Palm Springs, and though that's certainly a better neighborhood, it's a lot farther away. The school's address was 12702 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside. Now, Google Maps gave the directions as follows:

• Merge onto I-15 South. 49.7 miles
• Merge onto Ca-91 East toward Riverside. 1.9 miles
• Take the McKinley Street exit. 0.01 miles
• Turn right on McKinley Street. 0.03 miles
• Turn left on Magnolia Avenue. 0.00 miles
• 12702 Magnolia Avenue will be on the right.

Simple, right? Drastically more simple than most other Basin-based directions, I can tell you that much. Content in my navigational prowess (I'd just flown to an airport I'd never been to before, you know) I hummed and whistled as I drove down through Cajon Pass, past the San Andreas Fault, and finally came upon the junction of I-15 and the 215. Now, the 215 goes directly to Riverside. There is, in fact, a big green sign hanging over it that says "RIVERSIDE" on it. So, of course, even though my directions said "Merge onto the I-15 toward Riverside" and said absolutely nothing at all about getting on the 215, I got on the 215. I began to realize my mistake when, after reaching the 91 (considerably later than I would've reached it had I not diverted down the 215), I ran into a traffic jam. I got off the highway at Mission Inn Avenue, pulled into the near-empty parking lot of the Amtrak station, called up my dad at his office, and asked him, all contrite-like, if he could kindly find me a way from Point A in Riverside to Point B in Riverside. Turned out I was more screwed than I thought. I could either pull back out onto the freeway and brave the traffic jam (McKinley Street was just another couple of exits farther along) or I could drive further down Mission Inn Avenue until I hit Market Avenue, which eventually (after four or five miles) became Magnolia. That would be, as my dad called it, "stoplight hell," however. I heaved a sigh, thanked Dad, glanced toward the highway, and pulled back out of the parking lot and back onto California 91. I had at least enough sense left, after the last hour of terminal silliness, to notice that I was going west. I would be approaching the McKinley Street exit from the opposite direction indicated in my directions, so I would therefore need to turn LEFT on McKinley after exiting. I was so busy noticing this that I failed to notice the turn signal go green. The FedEx truck behind me had to remind me with his horn. When I got to the McKinley Street exit, I accordingly exited. The exit was one of those 180-degree turns that dumps you out at street level in the opposite direction you were heading when you exited. So, therefore, I actually DIDN'T have to turn left on McKinley after all. I still had to turn RIGHT. So, anyway, I was on McKinley, after failing to notice that turn signal go green as well, necessitating a honk from the youth group van on my six. You know, there's a multitude of reasons why flying is better than driving, and the utter lack of honking horns is one of them. I turned left on Magnolia, drove past 18800 Magnolia Avenue, didn't see another address number for a quarter mile, and then ran across 12402 or something. DANG! I'd missed it. Did I mention that Magnolia Avenue is a one-way street? I crossed the railroad tracks, finally managed to find a left-turn lane, whipped a U-ey, and came roaring back down Magnolia. I reached the intersection of Magnolia and McKinley after a few minutes, whipped another U-ey, and then went north back up Magnolia, this time more deliberately. You'd better believe I took the first available right turn after 18800. It was a strip mall. I drove down the row, peering at signs and banners, not seeing anything about bartender school. Frustrated, I pulled out of the parking lot, prepared to go further down Magnolia and take the next available right. As I was sitting at the light, waiting to turn, I glanced over at the strip mall's master billboard (the one where all the shops and stuff were listed). It was then that I noticed the address number stenciled upon it. 12702 Magnolia Avenue. Turns out the bartender's school was on the OTHER side of the building, where it was absolutely impossible to see from the street, thanks to the proximity of the building next to it and the narrowness of the parking lot in between. I found this out after whipping two quick rights: one onto Magnolia and one off, through the car wash, and back across the side street into the strip mall's parking lot once again. I got inside the school just as the day's free demonstration was beginning. Tasha, the head teacher, greeted me as I walked in, slapped a loaner textbook into my hand, bade me sit anywhere I pleased, and began a 45-minute lecture on highballs. We covered everything from Scotch-and-water to Freddy Fudpucker. The class, though extremely informal, was professional. Tasha was swearing up a blue streak and telling us off-color stories about her bachelorette party, but during that short lesson I learned a lot about serving drinks in a busy bar. This school is thorough, if I didn't mention that before. Most schools would just teach you how to make drinks. This one teaches you to mix drinks fast, to memorize a drink's ingredients mnemonically, to operate a POS system, and even the finer points of public-house conversation. After the lesson concluded I got the chance to talk to Tasha in her office. She told me that, for the school's flat fee of $595, I could sign up and take as long as I needed to to learn how to be a bartender. The classes ran on two separate schedules, weeks and weekends. I could attend whenever I pleased, however long I required. They had two sessions per day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. All in all, that was more flexible than I'd dared to hope. They had speed trials at the end of every class, twelve drinks in six minutes. If you could keep up that pace, you could serve drinks in any bar during happy hour, Tasha claimed. I now had the skinny: scheduling, fees, lessons, teaching style...the works. All that remained was to say yea or nay. I thanked Tasha, grabbed a copy of the schedule, and walked out. I deliberated for a time. Was that godawful commute really worth it? Would I get my money's worth out of this? Should I wait until later? But ultimately I decided to go for it, for the reasons I've listed before. It just seemed too reasonable, too convenient, too cost-effective, and too...exciting. I never used to think of myself as a guy who actively sought out and took on challenges, but it's beginning to look that way, kind of. I want to see if I can learn to memorize a hundred drink recipes, and mix twelve drinks in six minutes. I want to be a bartender. I managed to find my way back out of Riverside the way I should've come in, without incident. Good thing, too. I had a headache when I finally got back to the house, and was just generally wiped out. Flying cross-country and navigating the congested Basin highways in the same day will do that to you.