Over the Atlantic

The flight back from Old Blighty was enjoyable and interesting.  My dad flew left seat on our excursion to the Shetlands but he had me fly most of the time, including take-offs and landings.  He was evaluating my piloting skills, determining whether they had eroded, and

I didn't land like this! The old man lies!

my ability to still handle the big tail-dragger, especially in crosswind landings, and even just in taxiing: the Beech has a reputation for ground-looping if you let it get ahead of you. It has a non-steerable, castoring tail wheel.  You steer with differential braking and throttle -- carefully!  You lock the tail wheel for take-off and landing, otherwise you could totally lose the airplane.  I read an accident report of a Beech 18 crash at Van Nuys where the pilot lost control while taxiing and slammed into a hanger. The plane exploded and burned killing all on board and also burned down the hanger, destroying the three  planes inside.  So taxiing the 18 is nothing to be casual about.

As part of our preparation for the Atlantic crossing, we checked out our survival gear: a life raft, immersion suits and an EPIRB for the raft. (The ELT would go down with the plane if we ditched.)  I also bought a PLB when I bought my immersion suit in Glasgow.  Dad and the crew had already bought theirs in Gander. I hadn't even thought about the need for survival equipment when I let the two big oafs talk me into letting my little boys fly with them across the North Atlantic.  If I had, and genuinely realized the extreme danger they could face, I would have screamed No!  But I never thought about it.  The next time I want to know what an idiot looks like, I'll go find a mirror.

We left Glasgow at night, with me in the left seat as PIC and the popster as co-pilot.  The decision to depart at night was mine, as I wanted to arrive in Iceland in the morning with the sun behind us, and I wanted to have the full day to settle into our hotel in Reykjavík and get the Beech refueled and serviced.

The Beech has positive stability around all three axes and is very easy to fly, even in turbulence.  Trimmed up, you can even fly hands off, and it's very friendly for instrument flying.  As the engines droned steadily and the hours passed not much was happening.  My dad began to doze so I suggested he go back into the cabin and lie down on the couch and nap.  He did that without protest, which I thought a good sign of his confidence in my piloting abilities.  Soon enough he was snoring like Don Ameche in "The Bickersons," the old radio comedy routine.  It sounded like he was sawing through a steel pipe with a hacksaw.  And just who was Gloria Gooseby anyway?

So I had the airplane and the vast canopy of stars all to myself, the drone of the engines a comforting background noise that I soon didn't even notice -- I would only have noticed it the sound stopped.  I put the plane on autopilot when I went back to the little girl's room and when I fixed myself something to eat, made fresh coffee or just to stretch my legs, otherwise I enjoyed the feel of the plane through my feet and hands.  I kept a dead-reckoning plot of our position which I compared to our GPS reading, so should our electric gizmos go on the fritz I would have some idea of where we were and where I should point the scareplane.  I was please to see how closely my dead reckoning positions matched what the GPS was telling me. 

Overlaying the tension of flying hundreds of miles across the North Atlantic at night, I felt a sort of contentment, for want of a better word, sitting in the cockpit alone with the soft glow of the instruments and the blackness of the interior of clouds, broken suddenly by the startling emergence into starlight, auroras and meteors as the clouds fell away, tumbling down like a snowy staircase in the starlight and the light of the waning crescent moon soaring up behind and to the right of us as it rose after midnight.  Some of the meteors streaking across the night sky left persistent smoke trails, clearly visible. Others popped like flashbulbs at the end of their runs. The auroras shimmied across the sky in wavering curtains of aqua blue and green. I felt like I was seeing things a human being was not meant to see.  The overwhelming impression I got was indifference: the earth, the entire universe, was wheeling through an eternity measured in billions of years while we puny humans measured our brief lifespans in tens of years.  If we existed or didn't exist it was nothing to the universe. 

I did not land like this. Don't listen to that old geezer!

Approaching Reykjavik, dad was still sleeping.  He seemed really tired and I thought this whole trip must have taken a lot out of him.  I was pleased that he felt so comfortable with me driving that he could completely relax and let his poor old body get the rest it needed.  Of course, he had taught me to fly, as he did all his chil'ens, so he knew I could handle the plane no matter what situation might develop.  I decided to let him sleep as I got on the horn with Keflavik, Reykjavik's international airport. I dropped through some broken clouds but otherwise flew through a beautiful, clear morning (CAVOK), eased the Beech onto Runway 1 with a 19-knot crosswind (070 degrees).  Piece of cake. Well....   the demonstrated 90-degree crosswind component of our model Beech 18 is 16 knots so I definitely sat up straight and paid attention as I sat that little puppy dog down on the centerline and held it there.  Really not a big  deal: at our weight I came in over the threshhold, windward wing down, a little faster than I normally would have at 95 knots and, with a long runway ahead of me, didn't drop the flaps (they reduce rudder authority), set it down on first one main, then the other, and eased forward on the yoke to plant them firmly -- you don't continue to flair a taildragger like you do a trike; if you do, the plane will go airborne -- and added a bit of differential power and some rudder.  When we slowed to 60 knots and the rudders began to lose effectiveness, I dropped the tail with no delay, as I wanted to get that locked tail wheel down on the ground quickly to help maintain tracking, and pulled the yoke all the way back.  At the end of the run, I unlocked the tail wheel to taxi, using braking and differential power to steer. All routine for this airplane: no fuss, no muss, no rough stuff. But it's definitely no Land-O-Matic Cessna.

 Dad didn't wake up until I parked and shut down the Wasps.  The sudden silence brought him bolt upright, groggy but ready for action.  
"Relax, pop, we're here." 
"You should have wakened me and let me help you." 
"Nah, you were pooped and no help needed.  And look!  Such a beautiful day in such a beautiful land.  We made it!"
"Well, hallelujah, so we did.  Will wonders never cease?"

Truth be told, I was enormously relieved to have crossed what in my mind had been a vast and forbidding sea without incident. My ear had been attuned, hour after hour, for the slightest change in the sound of our engines. I stared hard at the instruments, never letting more than a few moments pass before I checked them again.  The immersion suit I was wearing was a constant reminder of potential disaster.  And why were we wearing our immersion suits?  Because should we need to ditch, there would be no time to put them on.  I rehearsed again and again in my mind what I would do in case of a ditching, opening the rear door, or if that wasn't possible, kicking out the escape hatch, grabbing the raft and manhandling it into the water -- I could do that, couldn't I?  I would have to.  What if dad were injured, could I get him out before the plane sank?  What if I were injured? What if we were both injured?  What if -- ?

But nothing happened at all.  The Wasps are long-proven, very reliable engines, with a failure rate of 11 per 100,000 hours according to the NTSB, and the Beach 18 itself was designed when they weren't sure how strong they needed to make an airframe for it to be safe, so they made it as strong as they could.  So the airframe, like that of a DC-3, has no lifespan. 

The folks at immigration thought it quite charming that a father and daughter had flown across the ocean together in their own plane, and such an old-fashioned one at that.  So we had a nice, if brief, chat.  Ground crewmen had also come over to check out the old bird -- the airplane, not my dad!  They promised to take special care of it.

We got a hotel a short walk from the terminal and next to a car rental place. I wanted to drive around the island a bit and see what it looked like and do a bit of shopping in the city, which I was told was about an hour's drive away, but dad said he would see to the airplane and get it ready for the flight to Greenland, then sack out.  Apparently, you had to make a special request to get a bowser of avgas rather than jet fuel, and there were other issues to deal with, from getting the right grade of oil to pulling the engine cowlings and going over everything to make sure nothing was loose, cracked, worn or leaking.  Dad was nothing if not careful and he didn't trust anyone but himself to either do what needed to be done or supervise those who did it.

We had dinner in the hotel that evening and chatted about the flight from Scotland and discussed plans for the crossing to Greenland.  A couple of men at the next table overheard us and joined our conversation.  It turns out they were British Airways crew and had seen our Beech 18 come in.  They complimented my father on the smooth job he had done landing the big tail-dragger in that strong crosswind -- they knew the reputation of the 18 for making fools of indifferent pilots on landing -- and when he said he was actually asleep in the cabin and that his little girl (meaning me, lol) had set the plane down, they were dumbfounded.  I don't think they really believed it.  I didn't care if they did or didn't.  My vanity is not tied up with how well strangers think I can or can't drive an airplane.  Okay, I was annoyed a little bit, but then I saw the funny side of it and under my breath began to scat sing "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," the Irving Berlin tune from the musical Annie Get Your Gun.  My dad gave me a sideways glance.  I stuck my tongue out at him.  The Brits had no idea.  

Thereafter I sat back and let the menfolks chat about their various astounding adventures.  Dad let the bus drivers do most of the yarning, and, boy, could they tell some tall ones. I felt like saying, hey, pop, tell them about the time over Haiphong and ... or that time in the Gulf of Sidra when ... or in the Straight of Hormuz when those ... or over Baghdad the time that .... but nah.  If I had, dad would have shrugged and said they were just typical days at the office.  You'll never get anything out of him about that stuff.  He's not interested in impressing other men.  He's interested in seeing if other men impress him.  If they do, they might be worth getting to know and be friends with.  The rest?  Just part of the passing parade.

Très sexy, non?

 Addendum: El jefe wanted to take some retro 1940s-style plane-and-dame "cheesecake" snapshots with the Beech.  I didn't bring anything that would work for that, not expecting to be posing like a Petty girl.  We went shopping for some Forties-looking glamor rags but the would-be Ewing Krainin wasn't satisfied with anything the local shops offered. The closest get-up I could put together was cut-off jeans and a tee shirt. I hadn't brought any heels so had to buy a pair and the only size that fit from the limited selection available was not something I would have chosen if I had my druthers.  Jef had me pose standing leaning against the fuselage with a hopefully seductive, come-hither look (rather than appearing like someone who's about to  sneeze),  then wanted me to lie down on the wing and do the same, and while trying to do that I almost lost my balance and fell on my heinie.  Ah, the things we do for love.

Art originally on an Okinawa-based B-24.

Of course, the usual hanger flyers were lounging around the aerodrome and moseyed over to gawk as jef clicked away.  They opined freely on what we were doing.  The kibitzers good-natured comments made me smile, sometimes laugh.  I enjoyed basking in the male gazes of some half-dozen members of the patriarchy, loafer division, 3rd class. Alas and alack, they were more interested in the bodacious Beech than my bodacious bod.  They all wanted to climb aboard and go for a ride -- in the Beech!

Reprobates and scoundrels!

And here we have two of the grand instigators and culprits of this mad adventure, both looking innocent and happy as clams.  And ready to do it again.  My mother brought the boys home safe and sound and wildly excited to tell their mom everything they had seen and done, from firing a Spencer carbine light-loaded by a park ranger at a Civil War battlefield to gazing at an erupting volcano in Iceland to visiting the dungeon in the Tower of London.  They also saw the Spirit of St. Louis at the Smithsonian, toured the USS Constitution, took a boat ride on Loch Ness and visited the Normandy D-Day landing beaches.  They had so much fun and did so many things without me that I regretted turning down the offer to go with them.  I was happy for them but also began to feel kind of sad, realizing what a memorable part of their lives I had missed.  It was a portent of the days ahead when they, invested in their own lives, will forget to send mom a Mother's Day card and will want to be with their own families on Thanksgiving and Christmas and they'll promise to come and visit next year, for sure.  Oh, well.  Just another dumb decision to add to the ever-growing list. But maybe I am being selfish.  Maybe my original decision, that the boys should spend time with men doing man things, was best -- for them, if not for me. And, on that note, I shall close for now and write about the rest of the trip later.

      

         

 

 

 

 

Next:  On to Greenland

 (To be continued...)

Eighties Interlude

 Busy, be back soon. but in the meantime enjoy the grand era of bubblegum pop.  Frivolity, thy name is the Eighties. Plus it's great music to dancercize to and keep in shape while having fun and enjoying yourself.

Worries

 Well, the daring quartet, men and boys, are off on their grand adventure, having arrived at Gander.  And, being the worry-wart that I am, I have been reading accident reports involving the Beech 18.  Some of them I've read before, and most are due to pilot error or are undetermined.  Did you know that Otis Redding and Jim Croce were both killed in crashes involving Beech 18s, as was Osama bin Laden's father?  The Croce crash was clearly due to pilot error, the pilot taking off downwind on a hazy night and colliding with trees at the end of the runway. The Otis Redding crash occurred during landing approach three miles from the airport but the cause was undetermined, though I have my own ideas.  I couldn't find any information on the bin Laden crash other than that it was during landing.

None of those crashes, or others of a similar nature that I found, bothered me. But one crash in particular that made me think involved a Beech D18S forced to ditch at sea when it lost an engine.  From the accident report:

"The pilot stated that the flight departed with all five fuel tanks full and the left fuel selector positioned to the "main tank" position. Approximately 10 minutes after takeoff he switched the left fuel selector to the auxiliary position and remained on that tank for approximately 35 minutes. When the flight was approximately 20 miles east of Bimini, he switched the left fuel selector to the main tank position where it remained for 5 minutes before he added climb power. While about 45 miles east of Bimini, climbing through 2,300 feet with a good rate of climb, the left manifold pressure dropped to 27 inches and the propeller rpm dropped to 1,300. He turned to fly to Bimini, broadcast a mayday call, and reported no unusual vibration; the fuel pressure and oil pressure gauges indicated normal. He repositioned the fuel selector but the left engine would not restart. He then feathered the left propeller and secured the engine but was unable to maintain altitude with full power applied to the right engine. The airplane was ditched...."

I've italicized the parts of the report that caught my eye. I don't like to try to form a definite opinion from an accident report, or to second guess a pilot doing his best in a high-stress situation, but when manifold pressure drops off suddenly when relative humidity is high as it likely was where the plane was flying it is probably due to carburetor icing. Icing can progress almost to the point of engine failure before it is indicated on your instruments unless you are alert. You have to keep an eye on carburetor air temperature.  If ice has already formed, it will cause your manifold pressure to drop.  You counter this by opening the throttles and increasing engine power settings until manifold pressure returns to normal.  If I encountered the situation that pilot did (I don't think I would because I would be constantly scanning the gauges and keeping an eye on the manifold temperature), I would have immediately increased power and added manifold heat (equivalent to carburetor heat on other airplanes).  I might also have switched fuel tanks, just in case, but my first impulse would not have been to do that. Of course, it could have been some other problem. I'm just saying what I would have done. 

I wonder why the pilot could not maintain altitude with "full power" -- 36.5 inches and 2300 rpm?  The plane will fly just fine, even climb on one engine at 33 inches and 2200 rpm, which is typical take-off power (and also the maximum continuous power setting). Climb power is 28 inches and 2000 rpm.

By the way, this plane had five fuel tanks: the fifth tank was in the nose, then two main and two auxiliary tanks in the wings. Some D18s don't have this nose tank (ours doesn't) and only have two mains and two aux tanks in the wings, but ours has four aux tanks, the outer two only used in level flight, but no nose tank.

Well, enough of this girl talk.  I'm sure if you read the word "adorable" one more time you will get the dry heaves.  Adorable!  Heh.

Well the second, I've managed to arrange Space-A  and Space-R (huzzah!) flights to Ramstein, although it took some doing and a call to a flag from my father, also a flag, to ensure I got priority all the way through.  RHIP bitchez!  But considering el jefe's short leave, Paris is out.  We'll just stay at Ramstein.  That will actually give us more time together as he can depart directly from there when his leave is over.  I suppose I could go to Paris on my own but that would be no fun.  I'll just catch a flight to RAF Mildenhall and then go on up to Glasgow to meet my father, who's decided that once my mother goes home with the boys and my brother's leave is up he'll go there and make sure the scareplane is in tip-top shape, fueled, oil topped off (each engine burns a quart an hour) and ready to go.  I'd like to visit the Shetlands since we will be so close and dad says we could fly into Sumburgh, about 260 nautical miles from Glasgow, and spend a day or two, then fly back to Glasgow to refuel and do a final once-over of the plane before taking off for Iceland.  I'd also like to spend a day or two in Iceland, as well, since it's on our way and I've never been.

Humans never cease to amaze me.  Since word has gotten out about us all flying the old Beech across the North Atlantic and back, people have been doing what they can to scare me.  And with this latest crash of an SNJ or T-6, whatever it was, with an aviatrix (!) at the controls, which eight people have rushed to tell me about, their dire predictions have soared into the stratosphere.  Like I care what they say: they are the kind of people who, when they hear about an airplane stalling, assume "stall" refers to the engine, not the wing.  Duh. My uncle says they are just envious, and he says, that he, too, is a little envious. So I said to him why don't you come with me and we can fly back together in the antique flying machine, soaring high over the bounding main.  He looked right and left and then said that he had this thing and...no...he really couldn't fit it into his schedule, but he'd be sure to attend our memorial service when we disappear without a trace over the vast reaches of ultima Thule's dread sea.  Weenie.

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

                              ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

Far Away Places

Well, I just reluctantly agreed to let my father and my brother fly my little boys across the Atlantic in the Beech, their plan being to see England, France and Germany and a few other places, show the boys real castles and famous places.  I only agreed after a serious discussion with my father about the old bird's (the airplane not my dad) range and what kind of weather they could expect to have, as well as how the boys were doing on the flights they were making now.

The Beech has six fuel tanks, two main wing tanks plus four auxiliary tanks, also in the wings.  These provide 318 gallons of usable fuel ("go juice," my dad calls it).  They've been flying at a cruising speed of 186 knots and burning 48 gallons per hour, but if they fly at 163 knots, they only burn 33 gph. That gives them a range of 1,380 nautical miles with a 45 minute fuel reserve. 
The longest leg of their flight will be that from Gander, Newfoundland to Nuuk, Greenland, a distance of 920 nautical miles.  The next leg, from Nuuk to Keflavik, Iceland, is a distance of 760 nautical miles, and then from Keflavik to Glasgow, it's 680 nautical miles, but that will be the longest stretch over open water.  So, if conditions are good, they can cut crossing time by cruising at 186 knots with plenty of reserve, but if necessary they can drop the cruise down to 163 knots and my dad says he could stretch their range even more, if needed, by dropping the rpm down to the bottom of the green and pushing the manifold pressure up (the old Charles Lindbergh range-extending trick).

My brother only has a 30-day leave, so he will have to get back to his ship not long after they arrive in Britain.  The plan is to then park the plane and do most traveling by train, which the boys should love, never having been on a train.  My dad, well into his seventies, can't be expected to supervise my boys through Europe and then fly the plane all the way back home from Europe by himself while also taking care of two little boys.  He says it's no problem, but he would. I know that is just too much for him and also unwise, especially on the flight back when he's going to have to direct all his attention to the airplane, so I will fly over to Albion and catch up to them and take charge of the boys while sight-seeing, then be co-pilot and babysitter on the return journey.  And, yes, I can actually be the co-pilot: I earned my multi-engine and instrument ratings on this very same D18S when I was in high school (part of my dad's plan to have me become another Nancy Love, Betty Gillies or Jackie Cochran).

I discussed this with el jefe and he is all for it.  He is going to see if he can get some leave and meet us in Europe and visit for at least a few days. I hope he can. I miss the dopey guy so much and the boys will go crazy to see him again.

Okay, to be honest, I am a little nervous about all this (a little she says...a little?), but everybody wants to do it and so I said okay. I can't be the one to put the kibosh on this grand adventure they are all so eager to undertake.  And it is a wonderful experience for my boys, one they will remember all of their lives.  And I don't want to turn them into scaredy cats by saying how crazy and dangerous I think the whole endeavor is (which I do).  I will trust my dad and my brother and cross the fingers on both hands. 

 Postscript 7/28: Okay, the way we have it worked out now, my mother will fly to Scotland and be waiting when the adventurers arrive in the Wright Flyer -- yes, she'll take the high road and they'll take the low road and she'll be in Scotland before them! -- and take charge of the boys and return with them on a commercial flight.  Once they are safely home, I will fly to meet dad and el jefe (who avows he will plow me like an Iowa cornfield -- el jefe not my dad!).  I'll meet them in Paris and we'll noodle around the 6th arrondissement for the remainder of jef's brief leave, hang out at Les Deux Magots and book shop along the Seine. They'll probably want to go out to the  Musée de l'air et de l'espace at Le Bourget. I'd like to see the remains of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's P-38 (actually an F-5 my menfolk would inform me) that they have on display there. Then I'll fly back with dad in the bug smasher (what he calls the Beech). I've got a feeling I will be doing most of the driving as dad will doubtless be bone tired and the drone of the radials is sleep-inducing.

Dancer or Cook?

Trying to figure out how to raise children, especially those of the opposite sex can be both puzzling and challenging.  What should you raise them to be?  What if they don't want to be that?  Are you teaching them how to survive and prosper in a world that won't exist when they reach adulthood?  Are you, in fact, teaching them to fail?  Are you raising them to be what you -- perhaps even unknown to yourself -- wished you had become rather than what you did? How can you know for sure?  

I'm in the midst of that stage of my life, a time when shaping the lives of my children is the most important job I have, and I don't know if I'm doing a good job or not.  Fortunately -- although sometimes I think unfortunately...kidding...sort of -- my mother is here to help me and give me advice.  Maybe her best advice was telling me that she didn't know if she was doing right by us kids, either, but she did the best she could to inculcate us with the basics of living a decent, productive, rewarding life.  Other than that, there's not much you can do and soon enough your children will have minds of their own, and their own lives to live the way they choose to live them.

Well, here's an episode of The Great Guildersleeve, broadcast over the NBC radio network on Veteran's day (I think it was still called Armistice day then), November 11, 1945.  Guildy wants Margery to prepare herself for marriage and being a good wife by learning to cook and clean house. Margery wants to have a career as a dancer.  Guildy tries to change her mind.  I think it's a charming episode and goes to show that nothing ever changes in child-rearing.  Ultimately, you have to let go of their hands and watch them walk away into their own lives, leaving you behind.

For the record, by nature and inclination, I was a dancer not a cook and that's what attracted el jefe to me.  But here I am, thoroughly familiar with the kitchen -- and a broom.  And happy to be so -- though I am certainly no June Cleaver!

 

Far from the madding crowd

The land as God made it.  No sound but the wind. No sign of civilization.

 

See the cattle in the distance?

“Everyday forms of resistance make no headlines. Just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do thousands upon thousands of individual acts of insubordination and evasion create a political or economic barrier reef of their own. There is rarely any dramatic confrontation, any moment that is particularly newsworthy. And whenever, to pursue the simile, the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck itself and not to the vast aggregation of petty acts that made it possible. It is only rarely that the perpetrators of these petty acts seek to call attention to themselves. Their safety lies in their anonymity. It is also extremely rarely that officials of the state wish to publicize the insubordination. To do so would be to admit that their policy is unpopular, and, above all, to expose the tenuousness of their authority in the countryside—neither of which the sovereign state finds in its interest. The nature of the acts themselves and the self-interested muteness of the antagonists thus conspire to create a kind of complicitous silence that all but expunges everyday forms of resistance from the historical record.”
― James C. Scott

 

A lonesome road in a lonesome land at twilight.

“The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.”
― Henry Beston

I hitched a horse trailer to the old 4x4 truck and drove as far as four-wheel-drive would take us, unloaded my horses and rode far, far away.  I had two horses in my mount; one to ride and one to pack.  Each day I would switch them around. We traveled at a slow pace, I often dismounting to walk because I wanted to walk. I had no particular goal other than to see the land and be alone.  I enjoy being alone. I like the silence, the freedom, the ... looseness, for want of a better word.  My personality is other-directed and I am sensitive to the moods and desires of others and try to accommodate them.  I try and fail to not be so much that way because it stresses me out.  Not in a big way, but just a constant, low-voltage current crackling through my nerves.  The only way to stop that is to be alone and to know I won't be disturbed, something that in the normal course of a typical day is impossible.  I wasn't even aware, or not very aware, I was this way, until I came here and discovered being truly alone -- alone as in no other human being around for miles.  At first it alarmed me, but I've come to enjoy it.

When I found a place I liked, I made camp, usually a dry camp, but, anticipating that, I packed two old Army surplus 36-gallon Lister bags, each filled with only 15 gallons of water -- only that much because a pint's a pound the world around, and a horse can carry no more than about 30 percent of its body weight.  So, adding in the weight of the bags, the pack saddle (about 25 pounds), and some supplies, the horse was carrying all she could. Each horse drank about 10 gallons of that a day, so whenever I found a water source I let the horses drink and I refilled the bags, popping in a chlorine capsule. The water, so far away from any sources of pollution, was crystal clear and potable, but, being a bit of a germophobe, I took no chances.  

Since I'm not that heavy, probably no more than 135 pounds with boots and clothes, jacket, hat, sixgun strapped to my hip and some possibles in my pockets, my riding mount could carry full saddlebags and my trusty Winchester -- yo ho! beware ye ravening beasts, one mightier than thee approacheth!

As it turned out, I saw nary a bear nor lion and the big grazers I encountered ignored me or regarded me with mild curiosity.  I did hear the ever-present yipping and yowling of coyotes during the nights and should they have chosen to harry my mounts they would have been mightily sorry. I expect that, being the clever creatures they are, they knew that and so kept their distance.

Anyway, I would start looking for a good campsite when the sun began sliding down the western sky and usually found one a couple of hours before nightfall.  That gave me plenty of time to look things over, gather fuel and prepare the ground for and get a campfire going in time for it to burn down to hot coals by the time I was ready to cook supper -- I make a small fire, Indian fashion.  Indians say the white man makes a fire so big he can't get close enough to get warm: the best fire is no bigger than a man's hand. I make one bigger than that, but not by much.  

I also had time to select a good spot for a high line for my mounts, or if none were possible, hobble them comfortably and securely, see that they were fed and watered, inspected for wound or injury, rubbed down and relaxed.  I brought along my backpacking tent but only used it if it looked like we might have rain during the night.  But I did bring a sturdy camp cot to raise me well off the ground because I am afraid of rattlesnakes and didn't want any crawling in with me as I slept. Fortunately, dry camps were less likely to harbor snakes as they and their prey prefer damp areas with access to water.

As the sun lingered low in the west, I heated water and scrubbed down: you can't imagine how must dust and dirt you can accumulate horseback trekking across open land.  Once the fire had burned well down, I would prepare my grub.  Typical would be made-on-the-spot corn tortillas, rice and fried pinto beans mixed with home-made chipped beef, dried tomatoes, Serrano peppers and jalapeños, with a slice or two of hard cheddar cheese melted on top.  Salad a carrot, eaten Bugs Bunny style, dessert an apple.  Other nights I might make pan biscuits and bacon gravy, served with fried potatoes and onions, with maybe a garlic clove sliced and tossed in. What I wanted, what I needed, was chow that would stick to my ribs.  When I made pan biscuits or tortillas, I made enough for lunch the next day, eaten with some cheddar and an apple.

Clean-up was quick and easy.  After putting everything away, I would patrol the campsite, maybe take a bit of a stroll, check on the horses, wash up again (I told you I was a germophobe!  And also a clean freak.) and hit the hay, tired to the bone.

The nights were warm, only getting chilly in the hours before dawn, and I could lie comfortable under a single wool blanket, gazing up at the night sky, usually moonless until after I had fallen asleep, the waning, shrinking crescent only rising after 1 am.  There was the Milky Way in all its splendor, the Pleiades, the constellation Leo low in the west after sunset, Regulus at the bottom, dim Mars just to the right, closing for a conjunction, and bright Venus lower and farther right.   And the other constellations and stars -- Aldebaran, Vega and Arcturus,  Scorpius and Antares, Altair, Vega, Deneb, and so many others.  Some nights, in the north I saw noctilucent clouds, electric blue high, high in the sky up in the Mesosphere, 50 miles and more above the earth.

They are formed by water vapor condensing around meteor dust.  They look blue because they are above the ozone layer and ozone absorbs red light.  When I wake before dawn there is the moon sinking in the west, accompanied by Jupiter. This earth, this sky, this universe, is filled with so much beauty sometimes it is almost too much for me.

 

First thing I do when I get up is go check on the horses and see to their needs.  Then I stir up the banked campfire, feed it some fresh fuel and make hot water to wash with and make coffee.  It's chilly and usually I sit hunched by the fire wrapped in my blanket, hands cupping that first wonderful cup of joe.  For breakfast, I have oatmeal and raisins sprinkled with nutmeg and doused with brown sugar and powdered milk, followed up with an orange.  Or I may have cream of wheat.  Then a final cup of coffee before breaking camp, saddling up and hitting the trail just as the sun peeps over the horizon, heading out for wherever whimsy takes me.

 

And where were my house apes all this time?  The two future warrior-conquerors were off with their grandfather and uncle flying cross-country in a Beech D18S to visit relatives back east, see the Pennsylvania Dutch country our Dunkard Brethren ancestors settled after being hounded out of Germany and the Delaware Valley where our English Quaker ancestors built their homes.  They'd also visit Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields, especially the Dunker church at Antietam, museums, etc.  I was invited to go, too, but I thought it would be good for the boys and men to hang out together without the constraints of a female tagging along.

And my mini-me?  Her grandma grabbed the chance to rescue her from my pernicious influence and have her all to herself for a change.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate, for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston

Entr'acte

 

Cold War keepsake

Mid-air refueling required intense concentration.

 I mentioned in an earlier post that my east coast grandfather flew B-47s during the Cold War.  Here's a photo during aerial refueling with a KC-97.  It looks scary to me.  No flexible hose and a basket to catch your probe, but a big steel pipe that has to go directly into a small hole in your airplane.  Talk about piloting skills.  I've read that, in order to execute the refueling, the KC-97 had to fly at top speed while the B-47 flew just above stall speed.  But I'm not sure that's true.  The

Whew! Glad that's over!

stall speed of the B-47E, the most produced model, was 177 mph while the cruising speed of the KC-97 was 230 mph and throttling up to military power would see it moving considerably faster.  But weights, atmospheric conditions and altitudes would modify these numbers, so I suppose under certain conditions that might have been true.  

Now to relax with some milk.

 I read that one time a B-47 flew non-stop from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam to Sidi Slimane Air Force Base in Morocco, a distance of over 11,000 miles, being refueled in mid-air four times.  The flight took about 22 hours.  Imagine how tired the men who manned that plane were.  The Air Force liberally supplied its  air crew with amphetamines back then, from what I understand (I don't know about today), so they were probably both exhausted and wired at the same time.

B-47 at Brize Norton.  Such a beautiful airplane.

When there was a crisis during the Cold War, as there often was, my grandfather's squadron would forward deploy from Pease AFB in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to England, basing at RAF Brize Norton, some miles northwest of London.  It's a  very Englishy town even today with all the changes in the world; imagine how English it must have been back in the 1950s before...you know....  When sent there, he brought back all sorts of English souvenirs for his family, including Raleigh bicycles for his kids, an MG sports car (carried home in the bomb bay -- no, really; I have heard that story so many times!) for his wife and Forgan golf clubs for himself among doubtless all kinds of other things:  Barbour jackets, Tunnock's tea cakes, Mcvities digestive biscuits and so forth. 

The B-47E parked at Brize in the photo to the left above was delivered to the USAF in 1953, converted to an EB-47E, an electronic intelligence gatherer, flying many a daring mission probing Soviet air defenses.  It was declared excess and withdrawn from service in 1965 and sent to Davis-Monthan, where it was scrapped in 1969.

USAF museum photo of  a B-47 cockpit.

The photo on the left, from the Air Force museum, shows the cockpit of their B-47.  Note the logo disc on the steering yoke hub.  My grandfather pried that off one of the B-47s he flew and it ended up in a stash of his stuff that we have stored away.  I found it the other day and took a photo of it that I included in an earlier post in which I talked about his life.  Here's the photo again, below. I'm sure the Air Force frowned on souvenir vandalism, but I'm glad that he pried it off and pocketed it.  He probably took it to give to his son.   

Pried from steering yoke hub.

Why we have it I don't know. People store things at the ranch rather than rent storage lockers when they move and sometimes they reclaim all their belongings and sometimes they don't.  

Anyway, I'm glad I found this memento of the past.  I've held it in my hand, a physical reminder of a world that was, that actually existed and is not merely words in a book or on-line.  B-47s were real. Curtis LeMay was real.  The Soviet Union was real.  Do you understand what I'm trying to say?  I'm not sure I do, but I'm attempting to express all that I feel when I hold this little piece of plastic in my hand and brush my fingers across its surface and think about all that it means.  The jet bomber it was part of routinely carried multi-megaton hydrogen bombs and was primed on 15-minute alert to launch on warning and destroy the Russians before they destroyed us.  It may once have been assigned to intrude into Soviet airspace, the crew tasked with deliberately provoking Soviet radars to light it up, interceptors to scramble to shoot it down.  Once it had stirred up this hornet's nest, it had to get out of Dodge, pronto.  If it could.  An RB-47B flying a ferret mission didn't make good it's escape and was shot down over the Arctic Ocean on July 1, 1960.  Only the co-pilot and navigator of the six-man crew survived.  Captured by the Soviets, they were imprisoned for seven months before being released.  Their ordeal was overshadowed by the shooting down of a U-2 exactly two months before on May 1, 1960, and is forgotten, as is the B-47 and the Strategic Air Command, its bases abandoned or repurposed as civilian airports, all part of a vanished world of high drama, courage and daring that hardly anyone today even knows existed, let alone remembers.

What they tuned in to listen to on the AM band in 1959 on those long, tense waits in the alert shacks and on those hours-long flights patroling the Soviet arctic:

 

The ocean of learning

 

In an earlier post, I mentioned how when I was a kid my dad, as a hobby, designed his own open-ocean sailboat.  He used naval architect formulae to design the hull and sail form, decide what horsepower auxiliary engine would be needed, etc.  As I wrote, I used to hang around him, asking, "Whatcha doin'?  Why?  What's this for?  What's that a picture of?"  and so on, basically pestering the life out of him when he was trying to concentrate.  So he put me to work deriving the results of various equations he was using -- he put my curiosity and desire to hang out with him to good use.  Further, he didn't allow me to use a calculator but showed me how to work the equations using pencil and paper, then gave me the numbers to input and set me to work.  That quieted me down as I concentrated on solving these puzzles to please my dad.

Well, noodling around in a bunch of old boxes, I actually found the various equations the mighty popster  had me solve.  Man, what a blast from the past!  I was in first grade when he had me handle these for him. My mom had taught me to read and do math before I started kindergarten so I was well-prepared to deal with these.  Well, I was once my dad explained what the formulae meant and showed me how to solve them.  To me they were just fun puzzles that if I figured them out my dad would praise me and my heart would swell with joy.

Thinking back to those days, I remember now how my mother got chastised by the kindergarten teacher for teaching me to read, write and cipher in unapproved fashion and my mom basically said, ah, tell it to the Marines.  Heh.  Being as it was a DoDEA school, that response had some resonance. I don't mean to rag on my teacher, though.  She was just doing her job the way she was directed to.  I can't remember having a bad teacher until I matriculated to a civilian high school.

Am I teaching the fruit of my loins to read, write and cipher?   Yes, I am, as are my mother and father.  And, of course, el jefe, when he is not off explaining the lay of the land and their position in it to bad guys. We also teach the little rascals how to cook, operate, use, mend, build, make, repair, care for animals and each other and do countless other things.  Most of that teaching is hands-on observe-and-emulate instruction.  They also learn history, geography, geology, climatology, meteorology, astronomy, biology, ecology, ethology, chemistry, physics and on and on, usually as the subject comes up naturally during the day or as the need to know it becomes apparent.  Each child travels his or her own development path and I don't force them to learn anything.  That's not necessary at this stage of their life. That will come as they mature and the world shoulders in on our little bit of Eden.