When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
“Make no mistake; your greatest teacher will not be what you expect. Your mentor will embody love, light grace, and compassion. However, your greatest teacher comes imbued with rage, darkness, fear, and judgment.” -Joseph Campbell
Summer 1995
I have this incredibly complicated relationship with my sailplane. It is made up of impatience, anger, love, fear, possession, burden, repulsion and attraction all at once. We are one, yet we are separate. Our lives are inextricably linked, here on the road, and in the sky. Through her I move in a circle of people who share my passions. Through her I am restricted in my time and attention to other matters. She is an inanimate object, but she breathes my desires. She depends upon me for her life, just as I depend upon her for mine.
Learning to fly is infatuating. How unearthly to think that you can soar in the air, like a child in a dream. How incredible to possess a plane that makes it all possible. Tales of Icarus come to mind, and I take heed, because what goes up does indeed come down.
There are times when it requires studious effort to keep my feet firmly planted. I am a pilot, I can fly. I am a pilot, I cannot fly.
I can keep the glider up all day. No matter what I do, I fall out of the sky.
Ups and downs. Lift and sink. Ego and insecurity. It takes a certain detachment to see the greater picture, to have a sense of time and continuity and progress.
For the moment what I see is my progress at this point in time, and I am flying. I am moving forward into unknown air. I do not know what what I will find. Weather briefings provide an overview but they cannot predict my flight. I have to hope that my preparations to date will be enough to keep us both safe. For Whiskey Oscar and I are one in the air.
And one on the ground. Separate but together. On the ground she is a burden. Stuffed into a long and ungainly trailer she has no purpose in this form. She provides me the company and rationale for my trip, but she is a responsibility of sometimes staggering proportions.
Love, hate, push, pull. Come close, go away. I love my sailplane. I love to fly.
Life wish, death wish.
For a time I wasn’t sure. I looked over that precipice and Death stared back at me. Here I am. Right here. I am fear. Come and get me. This way. Forget about flying, you are too afraid. No one cares. Let it go, let it go. Let your fear come in.
No.
My flying is a life wish. It pulls me forward into new air, into new realms, pushing me, challenging me, making me work for all I am worth. And then it rewards me with the accomplishment of new skill. I work hard, sometimes not understanding just where I am going, but eventually I will learn what I need to know. Eventually I will understand this task I fly, this route I have taken.
Love, fear, possession, burden.
I possess this exquisite plane. I know every inch of her fuselage, every curve in her wing. I know every chip in her gelcoat and how it was caused. I know from washing her down every day after flying, just where the mud tends to cluster, just where the bugs tend to splatter on her leading edge. I know how the bolt in her elevator drops and settles. I know just how the fittings feel when they are properly secured. I know how she flies.
Burden.
I worry about every noise and groan. Each chip needs repair. Insurance is due in June and payable in one large sum. I worry about her trailer, her canopy. Dust which can grind down the plexiglass and leave a scar. Wax which protects her body from the wear and tear of UV light. Tires which need attention. Brakes which need adjustment. Monthly payments the size of a small mortgage.
She is so beautiful. She is freedom, she is accomplishment, she is art in motion. She is fast and swift, so sleek in the air. She speeds instantly, she spins abruptly and dangerously. There is an edge in her flight, an edge you do not pass over. Past those limits she is not my friend. She becomes a wild creature that frightens me.
How do I sort out the contradictory feelings toward a piece of machinery? But she is not. She has soul as surely as she flies. She is my mirror, my reflection , my aspirations. She holds my fears, my love, my life in her tiny cockpit nestled between endless expanses of wing. She is my flight, my will, my destiny.
And where do we fly from here? What do I want? Where do I want to go? Talk to me Whiskey Oscar. Talk to me.
Long arms of white sit in their cradles in the trailer. Her fuselage lies motionless. Silence is her only reply.
Soaring is a metaphor for my life’s journey. May you see my journey and yours in my ramblings.
My friend and former Whiskey Oscar owner Heinz Wiesenmüller actually did the flying for this sequence.
***
Sam (my original World War II aviator/instructor) told me years ago that flying was better than sex. At the time I noted his advancing age and filed the information accordingly. But with experience comes wisdom and three years later the following entry appeared in my journal:
How can I begin to describe the joy, the fascination, the occasional terror, and the wonder of motor-less flight? Moving through the air is a complex set of manoeveurs to understand under any circumstances. To adjust to the conditions of the day, to impose your will of destination and to make them all come together is–well–mind boggling!
Flying, soaring, provides a wonderful mirror, an alternate universe of daily trial and tribulations, hopes, aspirations and unavoidable events that characterize life. Perhaps because all this occurs in a defined space in time, the intensity is increased.
To go cross country, you need to let go of all that is familiar. There is no other way, no shortcut or compromise. Yet to let go requires extreme courage and faith. Courage and faith in the elements, in your plan, and most of all, in yourself.
The experiences are so immediate, so real. Every ounce of your being is focused on the task at hand. Take landing. At MASA Sunday the air was brutal. Those that launched early hit wave* and were gone. The latter half of the grid, including Happy Hooker and myself, fell out. I released at 3,000 feet over the mountains and found, much to my dismay, turbulent air. Given the tow, I expected some bumpiness, and the intense and abrupt sink countered by rare bursts of lift was hard flying.
I lost altitude and headed for the ski hill to contour fly the terrain with the hope of picking up some lift. And lift there was! My wings pulled and flexed with the force of the air as it slammed into the belly of my plane. I felt the strain of the straps on my shoulders and the twin tubes of steel which anchor the wing spars moved and grunted. I had been warned that the degree of flex in my wings could be troubling to behold. It is! I watch the wings wrap towards each other, over my head. Will they hold?
***
Landing in such stuff is nerve wracking.
I start my pattern high and with a tail wind, fast (the MASA runways sloped uphill; we nearly always ran the pattern up the hill, regardless of wind, which made for some very interesting landings). How much wind will I encounter, how much drift as I turn base and final? Shear over the trees? How violent? How much airspeed do I need to safely manage my passage back to earth? How much space will I need to dissipate its energy.
I concentrate on the task at hand.
Gear down. Flaps in thermal setting for the moment. Speed, trim, altitude and relative position to the field. I crab in, losing altitude, careful to turn final high above the trees. One wing in that turbulent air could be more than enough to stall the wing. There are no survivors in low altitude spins in a 20.
Landing. Everything at once moves too fast to comprehend, all in the slow motion reserved for dreams. The trees thrash at high speed, yet I see every leaf slowly turn its bottom for my review as I pass overhead. I descend, a close eye on my airspeed. In exactly this place, I have watched as my airspeed indicator dropped to zero as I encountered shear along the tree line. This would be a bad day for that to happen again. The air is very rough and uncertain.
I clear the trees and the ground approaches. Blades of grass wave as I pass by. I can almost feel each individual blade gently tickle the belly of the plane as we pass overhead in ground effect, waiting to settle and land.
As the plane lands, a whole new set of parameters apply. This lovely bird is not suited to the ground. Roll, roll, wings level although the air at the end of the ailerons ceases to cooperate. Stick back, negative flaps full forward. There. I can hold the wings now. Eyes far out, feet working the rudders and some sixth sense provides the feel for the positioning of it all.
Then I stop.
Except for the radio–and maybe an audiovario–it is silent in the cockpit. The yaw string hangs limp to the side. I breath. This is a moment of pause and transition. I flick open the canopy release and let the air flow into the cockpit. Straps unbuckled. Shute released. I touch the ground.
The plane sits, perhaps the wings stirring slightly in the wind as if seeking to fly again, eager to return to the sky. She exudes motion even in stillness, speed at stop. She is an extraordinary ride.
I regard my journal entry. I relive the moment, fully cognizant of the difficulties and danger of flying. But it is so exquisite. Exhilarating. Fantastic.
Sam was right. Flying is better than sex.
*This link is from Minden, NV which has some of the best soaring in the world. And where, just incidentally, I’ve lived for some time now!
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What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
Aparigraha is the last of the five yamas of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga. It often translates to ‘non-greed’, ‘non-possessiveness’, and ‘non-attachment’.
I am reading The Eight Limbs of Yoga, a gift from Bhava Ram. I do not think of myself as a greedy person, but the act of cleaning out my house would suggest otherwise.
I have far too many “things”. What was my intent in buying all this? Why did I hold onto it all for so long? What emotional purpose did it serve?
Bhava writes:
Consider for a moment the contents of your closets, garage and other storage areas. If you are like most of us, you will agree that you have far too much stuff. While this is not an overtly immoral or criminal act, it arises from the greed that has been imposed upon us by consumer consciousness and mass marketing. It is a form of external obesity, and just as obesity in the body causes a host of health problems, this external heaviness impacts our mental balance and well being.
I am “externally obese”.
My quest for things was a quest for beauty and perfection. I am very visual and it soothed me. It was in some ways an outward expression of what I felt within. But it was also bound in the throes of perfectionism and consumerism, a wonderful cultural means of distraction.
I’ve already sent dozens of boxes of books to the used book store. Reading has always been my favorite past time but now I keep many things electronically. I suspect I have another half dozen or so boxes that can also find their way to a new home.
I gave a beautiful set of china away. It brought me no pleasure. Some one else should enjoy it.
Similarly, my party things are finding a home with people who entertain. With cancer, so many people and activities have passed me by, that I don’t really socialize that much anymore.
I have a set of old American Heritage magazines that belonged to my father. It’s one of the only things I have from him. They look great on a book shelf, but I never read them. Ditto for my years of Map Collector, although I do occasionally enjoy revisiting those. My history and cartography books are not negotiable. They represent a combination of past and adventure that I find endlessly fascinating. Those stay, at least for now.
For many years, one of my favorite consumer pastimes was Peruvian Connection. I’m not a clothes horse, but I love the quality of the company’s alpaca and cotton; I love the arty and unusual designs. Year after year, with each catalogue, I accumulated more things. Beautiful sweaters, vests, skirts. None of it was inexpensive and I had more than any reasonable person ever needed.
As I clean out my house, I wonder what am I going to do with all this? I am externally obese and I need to shed a few pounds.
I also need to cultivate non attachment when it comes to ThinkTLC. For months I couldn’t sleep; I was unable to eat, or what I did manage to eat, came right back up; the stress made my hair fell out.
ThinkTLC was my life-force and with no response to my emails; no code or product; and a refusal to communicate in any way, the tech creeps were stealing my life force.
I have many skills for stress management after eight years of living with cancer. My normal twice daily refuge of meditation eluded me. I practiced, but I could not still my mind. My exercising had fallen off, with the pain in my hip that resulted FROM the surgery. Yes my hip was better, I could walk, but I was still in almost daily pain. The orthopod suggested a series of injections that might help. I passed and headed for the yoga studio.
Intellectually I realized that eventually, with enough money, lawyers would find a resolution to ThinkTLC which was supposed to have been lauched in September 2016. But letting go, giving up the life-force that has propelled me forward, was–and is–a lesson in non-attachment to an outcome and in non-possessiveness that cuts to the very core of my soul.
“Dare to live by letting go.” – Tom Althouse
I need to give up a life to get a life. I’ve done this before; I can do this again. But what is the cost?
What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
Every now and then, we encounter a window in life. It won’t last forever. Do we step through, or do we let the opportunity pass us by?
One window that I allowed to pass by-and I’ve always regretted it-was when the Exxon Valdez had that horrible oil spill in Alaska. Volunteers were need to help clean up the birds and beaches. I could have gone, but I hesitated and the window closed. It’s always haunted me. I wonder if my life was meant to take a different turn had I gone.
I also had a window in my life after my divorce. At first, I stayed still. I worked and socked aside money. One day, when I found myself in bed with pneumonia, I knew another window was before me. Would I go on with a life that didn’t resonate with my soul, in a job I hated, or would I dare to do otherwise.
I dared to do otherwise and for that I’m immensely grateful.
As I contemplate events now, I see a different window, not one of my own making.
I nestle in this house, this life I’ve created, and it is so beautiful, comfortable and familiar.
I want to stay.
But I have to leave. It’s mid February and I’ve had zero information on the ThinkTLC platform since September.
I’m facing another window in my life.
“As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.” -Joseph Campbell
On a personal front, if I want to travel some more, this is the chance. I had hoped to travel with ThinkTLC, returning to my home and feline family. Adventure in a more controlled sense. But the prospect of being #HomelessWithCancer demands a new degree of boldness.
If I fast forward ahead a few years (or even months) and my cancer becomes active again, I will be facing more treatment. With an indolent lymphoma (and hopefully it stays indolent!), I should have some time before I have to make treatment decisions. But as I look at the downward spiral my health and fitness have taken over the last several years, I know that anything that lies ahead of me will also take its toll. Another round of chemo will further diminish my quality of life. If I want to do some things, the time is now. And while I would never have choreographed this set of circumstances, I can turn them into an opportunity.
This blog is helping me process the radical changes my life is about to undergo. Thank you for reading my vacillations, as I wrestle with comfort vs. adventure; trust vs. betrayal; stay vs. go. In search of some inspiration, I surfed the web this morning:
“To uncover your true potential you must first find your own limits and then you have to have the courage to blow past them.”
— Picabo Street
“The brave may not live forever, but the cautious don’t live at all.”
– Ashley L.
“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”
— Tacitus, Roman historian
“Come to the edge, He said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, He said. They came. He pushed them, And they flew . . .”
— Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet
Inspiration, joy & discovery through travel. Oh, did I mention with supposedly incurable cancer?
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CancerRoadTrip is about making lemonade out of lemons.
As you read my story, you may want to start at the beginning to "grok" how CancerRoadTrip came to be. You can click here to start at the end (which is actually the beginning) and read forward! The posts are chronological, with the most recent posts appearing on the front page.
