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.