When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
MASA
I want to fly. It’s a glorious day and I have no airplane. This is not an acceptable state of affairs.
This weekend the club planes were suddenly unavailable. Sam and Johnny wanted to use them for an airshow and had not given me any warning. I woke up early, traveled to the airfield, only to find that on this most perfect day, I would be grounded. And I wanted to fly.
I had become an aviation junkie. And people who soar are absolute addicts. Like the worst drug addict, soaring pilots become so focused the sport that the other important aspects of life are ignored. AIDS (Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome) is rampant and more than one pilot has been known to show up at the airfield on a good soaring day, rather than the obligatory office.
I cannot describe the driving compulsion one develops to get in a sailplane and be pulled aloft. There is something surreal, a suspense of reality associated with being pulled into the air to go soar.
Inspite of the occasional moment of terror low over unfamiliar terrain, or perhaps because of it, the lure of motor-less flight is irresistible. Once I started flying, I found myself always looking to the sky, always looking for signs of lift, often playing an afternoon of hooky when good flying weather appeared. Other people commented on the time of year; the coolness of the weather or the heat. I saw only soaring conditions. CU’s, good lift. A frontal pass, good soaring by the second day. Temperature inversion, doubtful. Soaring had started to dominate my life and the possibility of not flying on a flyable weekend was simply unacceptable.
Unable to fly, I left Kampel in a huff and headed south. Somewhere down here I knew there was another club, and I was going to find it. Information gave me the phone number. I punched the number into my car phone as I drove.
“MASA,” a voice answered.
“Hi, perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for directions to the airfield, to the soaring club,” I inquired.
“Where are you coming from?” a friendly female voice asked. I told her I was on Route 15 South and she proceeded to give me detailed directions to the airport. I thanked her and drove on.
I drove along the ridge I could barely reach in the 1-26 I usually flew. But I knew that the sky gods, the pilots in their sleek fiberglass ships regularly cruised the ridges for hundred of miles. I hear their chatter on the radio at Kampel and I read of their exploits in my monthly Soaring magazine. They flew out of a field somewhere south, along this ridge.
Turn at the white barn.
I drove, paralleling the mountains along the eastern edge of the Appalachians. I passed towns I’d never heard of: Heidlesburg, Bigglersville. I passed Gettysburg and crossed the Maryland border. Above the skies were blue with puffs of cumulus, taunting me on this perfect soaring day. I turned off in Emmittsburg and followed the directions I’d been given. Right at the white barn, the first turn in Pennsylvania, then left, straight and several miles down the road I came to the airfield. My tantrum over not flying earlier today had brought me to the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Society (MASA).
I arrived just in time to see a red and white pawnee power up and climb onto the runway. On the ground, waiting the completion of preparations for a tow, a sailplane dips a long slender white wing to the runway.
I watch, recognizing only parts of what I witness. It is a silent ballet, a process of launching and leaving, with its own set of rules and rhythms. Each airfield has it’s own silent symphony. Here, a young man runs to the belly of the glider and falls onto his back, head under the wing, hand in the belly of the aircraft. His free hand opens and closes, with the obvious assent of the pilot. The canopy is closed, locked and the pilot gives a thumbs up.
Out in the field someone gestures and the pawnee pulls forward. The arms of the man in the field rotate, giving the go ahead and the launch commences without a word. For the first few seconds the planes are out of sync. The tow plane gives a tug and the glider starts to roll. They are not in step yet. It takes a moment for the energy to move from one vehicle to another, to translate from the plane to the rope, and from the rope to the sailplane. Then speed comes quickly and the sailplane lifts off, skimming over the runway as it waits for its powered brethren to gain the speed it needs to fly. The tow plane breaks ground,and the two are off into the sky.
Off into the sky. That is where I wanted to be.
Sky Gods flew here, as I heard on the radio every weekend. Pilots in their gleaming glass ships, they flew over the valleys, into the mountains and down the ridges. Their occasional chatter sparked the airways, with sounds of task starts, landouts and two minute finish warnings. They seemed oblivious to gravity, to the fact that their planes had no engines. The radio chatter was full of their exploits which took them through numerous states each and every weekend. This was a world well beyond my own flying experience.
MASA has a reputation for unfriendliness and the sign flanking the entrance to the airport reinforces this reputation. Go away, it warns. This airport is private property. Had I heeded the warning, my life would have turned out differently. But I was angry. I wanted to fly. So I pulled into the airport and joined the crowd that gathered along the flight line.
Planes line up on the grid, waiting to get towed aloft.
There are three runways. A paved strip in the center and two grass strips on either side. Lined up on the center runway were ten or fifteen gliders. This was the biggest collection of gliders I had ever seen. And they weren’t the clunky 1-26 or Blanik that I flew. These were long, sleek fiberglass ships. Theres were the ships of the Sky Gods.
The crowd of people along the sidelines talked among themselves. They did not look friendly. One man turned, looked right at me as if making some sort of assessment known only to him, and looked away. It left me feeling awkward and uneasy, and I wondered if I really wanted to do this.
Another voice among the crowd. “Hi. My name is Phil,” a fortyish many extends his hand in greeting.
Phil. My early friend who showed me great kindness in the club. He and his wonderful wife who would eventually give me a kitten to help replace the loss of my beloved dog.
Their house sits at the edge of the overrun and overlooks the airport. An aviators dream house. Complete with a hangar. The hangar was one of Phil’s midlife projects. We kidded him that he watched the movie “Field of Dreams” one too many times. Build it and they will come. So he build the mammoth hangar on his property at the edge of the airfield, figuring I guess that aircraft would come and fill it. That or the FAA would come and tear it down since it encroached on the overrun. Phil was good natured about it all.
“I fly at Kampel. And I was curious about what was doing on down here, ” I explained to my new found friend.
“Let me show you around. We’d love to have you fly here.”
“Thanks. Today I’m just looking for some information.”
“Come on, let’s go down to the office and we’ll get you all the information you need.”
The office is literally downhill, as is the entire airport. An important fact to note if you decide to land your airplane in that direction. If you are at all high, you are going to float a very, very long way, or until you hit the trees.
Planes line the roadway, rigging for the day’s aerial adventures
We drove down to the office, past two long, low rectangular hangars on the left. Trailer hangars. The sailplanes I had flown were just tied down in the grass over night. These ships came apart every evening and lived in long sleek trailers housed in these hangars.
Phil held the door open to the office and ushered me in. A few people wandered about, not paying us much mind. “This is Sharon.” Phil introduced me to the voice from the phone that had given me directions.
Sharon. Fifty-ish, cheerleader extraordinaire. She always look like she just got out of a Talbot’s sale. Pressed, clean and cheerful.
“Hi,” she offered her hand. “I am so glad you found us. Were the directions all right? Did you have any trouble finding it? The turn at Emittsburg can confuse some people, and the stop sign sometimes makes them turn back.” Quick words gush, followed by a ready smile.
“Here,” Phil gestured to me and offered some paperwork. “This will tell you what you need to know about joining.”
I took the paperwork and paused.
At that moment, I heard the tow plane’s drone as the next ship launched. Time stopped and my heart went towards the beat of the prop. This time a cub towing another sleek white ship flew by the window, six feet off the ground. I watched every inch of the take off roll. I looked to the sky. It was blue, with puffy white clouds. There was lift everywhere and every fiber of my being wanted to being the air. I had to fly.
“How much do I make the check out for?” I asked. And I joined on the spot, oblivious to the consequences of my actions.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
MASA (Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association) has an interesting history and it attracts an interesting group of pilots: Washington diplomats, world bankers, financiers, doctors, military and professional pilots, and a host of others. The club owns both the airfield in Fairfield, PA and leases another in Maryland. The story of how this band of people came to own their own airport goes back some time when a small group of pilots from the Washington, DC area pulled together the first semblance of a soaring club. The group lacked a home airfield and they moved from airport to airport over the years. So when the opportunity to purchase Charnita arose, the club was naturally interested.
Charnita was a land development company formed in the sixties to develop vacation properties in the rural countryside near Camp David. The real estate developer would ferry potential customers from DC to his private airport in the country. Unfortunately–or fortunately depending upon your point of view–the endeavor failed and the company was forced to declare bankruptcy. One of the MASA pilots sat on the board of the bank that held the mortgage for the real estate development, which gave them the inside skinny on the bankruptcy proceedings. So, for the price of assuming the electric bill from the bankrupt developer, MASA bought an entire airport.
In addition to the airport, there was Martin. Martin was born in Austria prior to the Second World War. When the Germans over ran his home country, he took a good look at the situation and decided that he had a better chance of surviving in the air than he did on the ground. So he joined the Luffwaffe. His intuition proved to be right, and at the end of the war he emigrated to America and eventually came to Charnita as the company pilot and supervisor of the airport’s construction.
Martin lives in an old stone house across the road from the airport, and in the barn next to his house lives his motor glider. He has the large barn doors rigged on pulleys so the the entire side of the structure pivots up. He simply attaches a tow rope to the plane, pulls it across the street with his tractor, and takes off.
Martin’s launches are something to behold. His takeoff rolls are short and once off the ground he pulls the nose high and banks right, just clearing the trees. When he has enough altitude, he cuts the motor and goes soaring.
One day he offered a ride in his motor glider to a young Navy test pilot in the club. This particular pilot is a very good aviator, as you would imagine, and not much upsets him. So Martin decided to see if he could.
Martin took off with his usual nose high attitude, only perhaps a bit too high. The Navy pilot pushed forward on the stick. Martin pulled back. In this manner, each man quietly pressed his will, as the pitch of the airplane hovered perilously nose high.
“What’s the matter, ” the thick Austrian accent asked the young Navy pilot, his hearty laugh filling the cockpit. “Do you want to live forever?” And Martin lowered the nose and the motor glider took off to find lift. But Martin had made the hot young pilot blink.
MASA. This strange collection glider pilots would become the center of my life and times for the next several years. This club that owned its own airport; this club of Sky Gods and Luffwaffe pilots; this club of contests and all the stories that go with them.
After joining MASA in my fit of anger, I realized that the airplane situation was no better than what I had encountered at Kampel. Indeed, if anything, it was worse. There were not enough club ships to go around. If you wanted to fly, you essentially needed your own airplane. So I continued to divide my time between Sam’s 1-26 at Kampel and this fascinating collection of Sky Gods (any pilot better than you) and their glass ships.
In the meantime, I worked and I flew. Working as an investment advisor, I was producing sufficient quantities of business at work that I kept winning trips. And luckily for me, the trips were usually within driving distance of a soaring facility. So I flew, and in Minden I had my first tantalizing taste of flying a 15 meter ship. I accumulated several hundred hours of time aloft, and very hefty flying bills. It was time for me to get my own ship.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
This is an excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane, about a previous #RoadTrip
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Flying from MASA 1992
It takes more than one person to fly a sailplane. Each time you climb into the cockpit you fly with a host of voices, past and present. Instructors who walked you through the basics. The person who runs your wing. The tow pilot upon whose skills you are dependent to get into the air. The designers of your plane. The people who helped you haul the heavy wings out of the trailer and anchor them to the fuselage. Help received in pushing to the line. The volunteer O.D. (Officer of the Day) who runs the flight line. The pilots you tour the skies with.
It starts with rigging in the morning and it runs through the evening when the planes are safely bedded in their trailers for the night and the pilots swap tales of the day. The stories that we all tell become part of your unconscious flying repertoire.
I know that there is always sink at Harper’s Ferry before I ever see the turn point. I know not to get low over Biglersvile, the fields that look clear are really fledgling orchards which will rip your wings to shreds if you try to land out there. I know that lift tends to form over the ridge, and that the next valley can be utterly absent of lift. I know that I need 3,ooo feet to get over those hills and back to the airport.
I know not to fly over P40, prohibited airspace over nearby Camp David. Howard, an editor for Forbes magazine who flies from MASA, goes to White House functions as a routine part of his job. He tells the tale of being taken aside by the Secret Service one evening. It was obviously a bit disconcerting, and having no idea what was happening, the editor dutifully followed the burly guards off to an area well away from the crowd.
One of the agents reached for a large manilla envelope and slid out a picture.
Of Howard.
In the cockpit of his sailplane.
The picture was so good that you could read the altimeter perfectly. And had there been a GPS in the plane, you could have read Howard’s position: Right over P40/Camp David. The Secret Service agents strongly suggested that Howard learn to stay out of prohibited airspace less some over anxious, young marine use him for target practice. Howard agreed. So it is that we all know to stay out of P40.
Other more frightful tales come to mind. Tales of dipping a wing and cartwheeling down the runway. Wind sheer in the trees on final. Disconnected control rods. Parachute jumps. Landing in the trees. All in one instant all these stories come to mind, and all in an instant they disappear, just a piece of your growing aviation knowledge.
The stories that fly with you. The stories that keep you safe.
Other voices fly with you as well. On the radio, news of good climb in a thermal. General conditions at a turn point. How to soar above a cloud. Reports of wave.
One voice in particular haunted me.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” the instructor warned me. The air had been rough that day, and after I took off, the airport had been closed to any more glider launches. There was a lot of wind and a lot of sink in the air. When I took off, the tow plane had to circle three times before even cresting the ridge.
I hated landing at this particular airport. It was a long, narrow strip at the base of the hill. The springtime frontal passages created winds that whip against the length of the Appalachians. As the air impacts the mountains, it lifts. You can ride the rising air to high altitudes or you can trade lift for daring speed and rush along the contour of the ridge. Either way it can be hazardous flying.
The approach to this particular airfield brought you in directly over the wooded hillside. One of the guys from our club had nearly died here last year when his plane hit sudden and inexplicable sink, and crashed through the trees. Without any power to save him, he watched as the tree trunks passed by his head in the cockpit. Miraculously he survived.
But I not only survived. I greased my landing.
“Have you found a plane yet?” the instructor and owner of the field asked me as I prepared to pay my bill for the day.
“Yes,” and I told him about the plane I had committed to purchasing.
“You are going to kill yourself,” he stated.
The words hit me like a door slamming into my face. I sat down, feeling nearly physically sick. It was as if I had been thrown into a vacuum of doubt, the air pulled from me.
“It’s a dangerous airplane,” the instructor continued.
I tried to breathe.
What had I done? Had I gotten in over my head? I had given my word I would buy the plane. My word was my bond.
“There’s no margin for error in that plane. I’d rather see you in something easier to fly,” he explained, as if concerned. Concerned that he had misjudged my seriousness about flying and missed a sale.
I nodded dumbly. I was speechless. From the pit of my stomach a queasiness started to grow. Was the path I had set out on a dead end? Life wish, death wish. Were they perhaps too close for comfort?
I walked over to the soda machine and steadied myself. Breathe, breathe, I thought. I pushed the button for a Coke. The sugar, the caffeine tasted so good, so sweet, so alive.
I sucked sustenance from the can.
I leaned myself against the wall of the building, breathing. Just breathing.
I want to go home, I thought. All the confidence I’d worked so hard to build was gone. I have no idea what I am going to do.
I looked up at the ridge which just earlier had been a source of my pride and ability as I rode the air along it, and now it appeared dark and sinister in the dusk.
Perhaps I have been fooling myself, I thought. I can’t fly like these guys.
Can I fly at all?
I wandered, staggered over to my car, conscious of my breathing, of the pain of being alive at all. A feeling of empty, gnawing fear grew in my stomach.
“Care to join us for dinner?” I looked up. A car containing three other pilots who had also been flying that day beckoned me to join them. Normally I would have. I love the talk that emerges around the field at the end of the day.
But not today.
And they pulled out of the parking lot, no doubt to to tell their tales of daring-do along the ridgeline. I pulled out with my tail tucked firmly between my legs.
The drive home is a pretty one, though I saw nothing of the road or the country. I felt only fear and disbelief. Terrible fear, with all my hopes dashed. I crawled into the safety of my garage and listened to the sound of the garage door close behind me. Two steps through the laundry room, into the kitchen. The answering machine flashes its welcome.
“I hear you flew the ridge today. Call me as soon as you get home.” The machine beeps.
I do not want to talk to anyone. Next message.
“That guy is an asshole. Call me when you get in.” Another pilot. Word travels fast.
“You don’t know me, but I flew the ridge with you today. We asked you to join us for dinner. What happened to you today was terrible. That guy is way out of line. If you’d like to talk about it, give me a call.” And the unknown voice, who has somehow found my unlisted phone number, leaves his name and number.
One of the great difficulties and blessings of soaring is that it is a small world. And here, not four hours after leaving the airfield where my soaring career nearly ended, I have messages from three pilots in three different states. I appreciate the concern, but I really don’t want to talk to anyone. But that is not an option.
The phone rings and I answer it. Another pilot. I recount the day’s events.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m ok. A bit shaken, but ok.”
“He does this to everyone, you know.”
“Really?”
Tell me more.
Tell me more because I need to know. I need to know that this isn’t about me, that it is about him, about his insecurities, not my inabilities. I need to know that I do indeed know how to fly. I need to know because I need to be able to muster the courage to fly again. And I’m not sure I can. I listen for everything I am worth, but I am not convinced.
***
“Don’t worry, he does this to everyone, ” Dave told me. “You should see what he did to me one year at a CFI re-certification course.”
But the edge had been taken off my delight of a new plane.
My plane, Whiskey Oscar, is a 15 meter sailplane. Gleaming white, with a spread of forest green stripes on her tail. Tail feathers. And a large WO under her wing.
Whiskey Oscar
She has a wingspan of nearly 50 feet from wingtip to wingtip. And flaps. Flap settings that ranged from negative 11 degrees (warp drive) to 44 degrees (which meant you were looking over your toes to land). Retractable gear and a cg hook. A cg hook, or center of gravity hook, just means that the glider is towed from a hook on it’s belly, near the main wheel, rather than from the nose.
What ever motivated me to buy such an airplane? I think I must have been slightly out of my mind, just as I was slightly out of my mind when I decided to start flying. If I had know what I had gotten myself into perhaps I would have taken a different route. If I had driven away the first fateful day at MASA, surely things would have turned out differently. If…
But I bought the plane and now I set about learning to fly her.
The biggest variables were the rapid acceleration of the ship compared to anything else I had flown and the fact that it had flaps. Flapped ships use their flaps, rather than just the elevator, to control their attitude and speed.
In the air, moving the ship’s flaps full negative is akin to engaging warp drive. All at once, without any indication of movement, the plane seems to part the sky before it and skim through the opening, swift and silent. I had never flown a flapped ship before, but today, this perfect windless day I would take to the air in my airplane. I was excited, but even beyond that, I was terrified.
Takeoff with a flapped ship would be decidedly different. By slowly, gently, perfectly easing the flap setting from full negative to back to a neutral setting, the air foil changes and the ship is lifted off the ground. One of the pilots at another club, a professional pilot with thousands of hours and the respect of everyone, misjudged the transition between settings once, dropped a wing, and cartwheeled his ship down the runway on takeoff. I decide to err well on the conservative side, and to take off in my new plane as if it were a standard class ship, at least to start. I leave the flaps in a neutral setting and lift off with stick and rudder.
There is great debate about whether or not leaving the dive brakes cracked helps gain aileron control earlier in the take off roll. Some argue it does. Some argue it’s dangerous and that failing to lock your dive brakes can cause an accident. All true. But at MASA, the runway slopes downhill, so whoever you fall in this debate, you will need your dive brakes opened and brake engaged in order to just stay on the runway. If not, you will roll over the tow rope and your cg hook will back release.
I will take off with my dive brakes open.
I look at this beautiful plane. How did I get myself into this? I hadn’t really thought this through. I don’t think that I can do this. I am terrified. I am in over my head.
The voice was right, I am going to die.
I push up to the line. Fifty feet of wingspan rolls gracefully along. The pointed white nose of the plane looks ready to take to the air. But my parachute is heavy on my back. I feel the weight of the pack, the weight of the voices, the weight of my own fear bearing down on me.
I pause. This is my last chance to just walk away. I don’t have to do this. Once I am in the plane, there is no going back. I breathe. It takes every ounce of courage I possess, but I push through an almost tangible portal of fear and I settle myself into the cockpit.
Nothing feels right. I sit nearly reclined, and it is hard to see over the instrument panel. The Navy test pilot puts some foam behind my back, and my position improves. Whiskey Oscar feels awkward to me. But actually I am the awkward one.
Controls.
Ballast.
Straps. Fastened and tight.
Instruments. I set my altimeter to zero for ease. Today I will return to my home field and not having to do the mental arithmetic in the pattern is one less thing to worry about.
Trim. I unscrew the little green knob and set it in place.
Canopy down and latched. One hook and then the other. I push up on the rails to test it, to be sure it is indeed locked in place.
One last look. I sit alone in the strange cockpit and in the pit of my stomach I feel ill at ease. I try to swallow my fear, to keep it at bay.
Ready.
The Officer of the Day directing the launch knows this is my first flight, and he holds everything waiting for any breeze to die down. He stacks the odds in my favor. All the other pilots stop what they are doing to watch.
I swallow hard.
Fools and idiots. I am both. God, please lend me the grace of student pilots.
Soaring is an amazing thing. You may not be religious when you start, but you will find yourself praying to all sorts of entities after not very long. To a traditional source of spiritual inspiration. To the Sky Gods, not your fellow pilots, but those forces that be, those forces that keep you aloft. You will pray to your instruments, your airplane, to a landable field. On rare occasion to your parachute. Soaring works wonders for your spirituality.
I look at the windsock hanging limp on its stand. I am ready. A high tow. A very high tow for my first flight.
Thumbs up. I give the signal with my hand while my stomach pleads to remain rooted to the ground.
The tow plane waggles its rudder, indicating it is ready to go. I do the same, even though I am not ready. But I will never be ready. If I am going to do this, I am going to do this here and now.
The tow plane’s throttle opens, and I start to roll down the runway. I veer off a bit to one side, but I stay more or less behind the plane in front. A bit of a drop of my left wing at first, but I get it up and I don’t PIO. (A PIO is a pilot induced oscillation where the pilot overcorrects and weaves first up, then down, on tow. The oscillations magnify and can be very dangerous. I tried it once and decided I didn’t like it at all!)
Up, up, let’s just get up in the air. This precarious no man’s land barreling down the runway without enough speed to fly is not where I want to be. This new plane is pulled form the cg hook, not its nose. Any directional stability is provided by me. I have flown planes with a cg hook before, but today the entire fuselage seems to perch ever so precariously from that one point. I stay with the plane, flying it from the very first moment of movement. Keep the wings level, keep the fifty feet of endless wings level, and the plane down the center of the runway. Everything is so awkward from this reclined position and the pavement rushes by just beneath my seat.
Somehow I manage to take off. Up, up we climb. We climb over the trees at the end of the runway. Don’t let the rope break. I am terrified. I am flying, but I am terrified. How did I get myself into this?
It is truly silent. I have never flown a plane like this before. So still, so smooth.
I keep the yaw string straight. I bank with the tow plane in front of me, carefully following the arc of its outside wing.
I sense my parachute. I feel its weight on my back, its straps over my shoulders. How will I ever get this back on the ground? Maybe I should just jump. Maybe that is the safer route. Just pop the canopy and bail out.
I glance at the orange canopy release handle. No, don’t touch that. Not yet. I keep my hand away from the temptation of the release, and I decide to hang on to the plane, at least for now. But I keep all my options open as I mentally rehearse possible exit strategies with a twenty pound shute hanging on my back. I have never made a parachute jump. How high do I need to be to bail out of this?
“You are going to kill yourself.” I keep hearing those words.
If I jump now, maybe I can just bounce off the trees.
“Altitude is your friend.”-Pithy Pilot Sayings
But I hang on, my hand wrapped tightly around the stick and I follow the tow plane to 5,000 feet. Altitude is my friend. This is it. I clear my turn and I pull the tow line release. The yellow rope snakes away in the sky, down, back to earth with the tow plane. I bank to the right, alone in the sky.
It is sooo quiet. Not a sound. I sit perched in my cockpit, riding on air.
Nothing could have prepared me for this experience.
Endless long white wings stretch out and ride the air on either side of me. They flex and bounce with the movement of the sky, as if to flap in delight at being airborne. Nestled between them in my little cocoon of a cockpit I sit, with only the thin shell of the ship between me and the ground thousands of feet below.
I take to the task of learning to fly my plane. Dave tells me to look out as soon as I get off tow. This plane moves fast, he warns and you’ll lose your bearings.
He is right. This plane really moves. I transition through the flap settings to see what will happen.
“You fly it with flaps,” I am told and I try to understand just what that means. So much of the talk at the airfield seems to be in some abbreviated form, like a foreign language. It is so hard for me to get the information I need, in a manner I can understand. I just keep moving ahead, learning as I go, and hoping I will be able to figure it all out.
Here on my maiden flight, I try to make sense of the things I have been told. In negative flaps, I am traveling close to 100mph, nowhere near red line at 165 but I am screaming silently, swiftly through the air. I have never experienced anything like this. Life wish, death wish. It is totally exhilarating and terrifying all at once.
“Ever spin a 20?” the navel test pilot asks. He laughs. “Most frightening thing I’ve ever done.”
He pauses for effect.
“First it enters sorta slowly,” he says in the drawl that all military pilots seem to have, “and the first rotation’s not too bad. But then it really whips around. Ya gotta be careful to have your flaps full negative, or you’ll rip the wings off.”
He is bent over, as if to simulate his position looking at the earth. He flings his arms dramatically back, to demonstrate the effect of wings pulling off an aircraft.
“Then ya go to recover, and it tucks. Ya dangle upside down in your straps and get a canopy full of earth.”
By now he is dangling in half from his waist, his head tucked, staring at the ground with his eyes large and round, his hands grasping an imaginary stick in total terror. He looks up at me.
“Then it pulls out.” He smiles somewhat maliciously.
“Best ride I ever had.”
Another pilot tells the same story of spinning his 20. “For the first time, I understand why people spin in. I took every it of courage I had to push that stick forward. Then it tucks.”
I fly level and carefully. Today I think I’ll just avoid a spin. I stick to approaches to turning stalls and a very, very gentle stall. I practice banking and turning in a coordinated fashion. I try to find lift and to climb.
Here I am at 5,000 feet. Terrified in my new plane. Did I say I like adventure? I take it back. I don’t want any more adventure. I want to get down safely. How am I ever going to land this thing?
“Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man. Landing is the first. -Pithy Pilot Sayings”
The air is silent, except for the pounding of my heart. No wind, no noise no sensation of speed. Just the feel of the air under me, over me, surrounding me. Just the feel of these strange controls. Just the feel of movement as the plane banks and turns, carrying me with it.
It is effortless to stay aloft. But after an hour, I am tired of the effort needed to learn to fly. My first flight should be a short one, a familiarization flight. Time to think about landing.
Landing I have retractable gear (which way was down?), six flap settings and fifty feet of wing to contend with. What if a crosswind has picked up? What if there is sheer through the trees. Perhaps I can still jump. Surely three thousand get is enough altitude for me to get out safely. My parachute sits still on my back, the orange canopy release handle taunts me. Here, pull here, it beckons.
Instead I look at the landing checklist. UFSTALL. Undercarriage, flaps, speed, trim, altitude, look out, land. One of the guys at the airfield adds another item to his landing list. UFFSTALL. The F comes into play when you verbally run through it. You FUCKING Stall and You Die. It’s a bit vulgar, but it does get your attention. I add it to my checklist too.
I crack my dive brakes to bleed off altitude. It takes time. This plane really flies. Only at the time, I am too inexperienced to know that. I just know that I have to land.
I run through my checklist. “Don’t let the airspeed get away from you, ” I had been warned. Procedures help me to focus. Undercarriage, down. Flaps, set. Speed. Stay on top of the speed. Don’t let it get away from you.
Trim.
Altitude, no traffic in the pattern. Looking, looking. No wind. Thank God there is no wind.
You fucking stall and you die.
This is it. No second chances, no go arounds. I maintain my glide path and I descend, down, down. I don’t see the trees underneath me, I do not see the grass. I barely see through my own inexperience and fear. I thud onto the ground. Landing and a half. But I walk away.
“Any landing you walk away from is a good one.” -Pithy Pilot Sayings
And now I start to fly with a new voice, my voice.
You fly with weather, past, present and future. You fly with the terrain, with the wind, with the birds and the clouds. Most of all, you fly with yourself.
I learn many things about myself flying sailplanes. I learn that I have courage. I am smart and I am stupid. I have a good sense of direction , but I am navigationally impaired. I learn that I have a tendency to push too hard, sometimes beyond my abilities. I progress, but I take risks. I need to take careful ones, not careless ones. Sometimes I am careless. Sometimes I am lucky. On occasion, I am skillful.
I learn about trust. I learn to trust the day, to trust the weather and to trust that I have the skills to navigate the sky. I learn flexibility, as I adjust to changing conditions, sometimes holding back, sometimes pushing forward sooner than I had anticipated. I learn awareness of my environment. Patience. I watch the day unfold and cycle, the clouds as they build then exhaust themselves. I look to the birds for guidance.
I feel so extraordinarily alive in the sky. With each moment in the air, with each decision I make, I am fully present in the moment and acutely aware of my surroundings. It is such a gift, to be able to soar. For me, it is truly a gift and the love of a new life.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Pennsylvania to Indiana, 1995
Signs for a rest stop appear along the road and I pull off. Between the BMW and the thirty foot trailer shaped like an inverted speedboat, I am rather conspicuous.
My old BMW 535 towing Whiskey Oscar, secure in her trailer
I walk around the trailer to be sure everything is in good order, as I top the car off with gas. We take up an entire island, the car, Whiskey Oscar and I, but fortunately the station is not busy. A woman, a bit older than me, smiles and asks me what’s in the trailer.
“I am taking my glider cross country,” I reply as if it were self evident. And sensing a camaraderie in this stranger, I add, testing the impact of my evolving tale:
“I was married to a surgeon who ran off with his nurse who was pregnant with the child of another physician on staff. So I started flying airplanes without engines.”
I am psychotic. Why did I say that?
The woman paused, her mouth slightly opened. I have to stop doing this, I thought. Someone is going to shoot me or something. But to my delight and surprise, the woman starts to laugh! She howls with laughter. Tiny tears, tears of life, run out of the sides of her eyes. She takes her hand and wipes away the moisture.
“I was married too,” she tells me, sobbing with laughter. It is no longer clear just what she is laughing at. Me, my story, her marriage, mine. It does not matter. We have connected on some fundamental level. We share the laughter and the tears of two women who have traveled similar emotional territory, in different places on different days. But the stories are so familiar. The feelings are the same.
“There is life afterwards and isn’t it great!” she sobs through her laughter. She smiles lost in her own tales. She wishes me well and fortified by the encounter I continue on my way.
The rolling green hills continue forever. Pennsylvania fades into Indiana, and Indiana into Illinois, the state of trains and no hotel rooms. I have been driving since early this morning, with thirty feet of trailer sashaying behind me along the road, thirty feet which holds my precious Whiskey Oscar, and I am tired. But summer travelers have apparently booked every hotel room for miles. I go from one to another, only to be turned away. It is night and finally with the help of a kind desk clerk who gets on the phone to an out of the way University Club with rooms to let, I find a place to stay. It is 10pm my first day on the road to Oshkosh and I am just outside of Chicago.
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
What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
I live my life in 6 month increments.
This is much better than the every three month blood tests and check ups that I started with. I am grateful to be stable enough to go six months, for now. But I am always on the alert. Am I unusually fatigued? Is that lymph node a bit elevated? Is the itching a sign that it’s back?
Living with lymphoma, like all cancer, changes your life. Nothing is constant; nothing is guaranteed. The illusion of predictability or any control over life is long gone.
For me, cancer brought my life to a dead stop. How could I have cancer? I was fit and active. Granted my diet included luscious blackened rib eyes and margaritas. But cancer?
In my case I would hazard a guess that the cancer was a combination of bad luck, genetics and a bit of personal trauma. Divorcing, moving across the country alone and starting over again (not to mention the flying!) did not create an emotional atmosphere of support. Quite the contrary. And moving into a town (Reno/Tahoe) with small town roots wasn’t easy. I assimilated by trying to fit in (which I didn’t); not making too many waves; and just putting one foot in front of the other.
I worked with several start up companies; at one point got a real estate license until that crashed; and generally lived well within my means. Which financially saved me (at least for a while) when the cancer diagnosis rolled around.
My first round of treatment was simply Rituximab (Rituxan) , a mono-clonal antibody that should have been simple. But it turned out to be my personal drug from hell. My chest tightened; I couldn’t breathe; I had head to toe hives; fatigue; and joint pain so intolerable that I would scream in the shower trying to move my hand. I couldn’t hold a cup of coffee. I spent two straight months mostly in bed.
Rituxan did not stay the cancer. So onto the next potion: RCVP (Rituxan, Cyclophosphamide, Vincristine, Prednisone) Each infusion took 2 days due to my problems tolerating the Rituxan. The prednisone for the 5 days following chemo was simply horrific.
I did six rounds, one every three weeks. My hair fell out. The exhaustion was indescribable. I vividly remember at the finish of the third round, feeling simultaneously terrified and optimistic.
“Yay! I’m halfway through!” That was my optimistic self.
My next thought was “Oh no, it’s half over!” Is 6 rounds enough? Will it work?
It was working. I could feel the tumors melting away. Publicly, I kept up a good front. I continued playing tennis (poorly). What no one saw was that two hours on the court put me in bed for two days.
The chemo brain that ensued was beyond comprehension. And, at that time in 2010/2011, doctors still doubted it was real. I remember breaking down sobbing in Costco one day because I couldn’t enter my 4 digit pin. This is from a girl who used to do log calculations in her head!
My cancer came raging back not long afterwards following a period of huge stress. The stress came from my neighbors who put a 9,000 square foot house on the property line next to my house. I had to re-landscape my yard simply to salvage any value in my property.
So, just after the end of chemo, exhausted and weak, I found myself dealing with a construction project in my backyard. Evenings I found myself straddling trenches for gas pipes and irrigation lines, to maneuver sprinklers and hoses in an effort to save the lawn and landscaping in the rest of the yard. I was weak from cancer and chemo; exhausted; and stressed.
If that weren’t bad enough, the incessant music from next door was so loud I couldn’t sit in my own house, with the windows closed, without feeling the boom, boom, boom of their outdoor stereo.
One night I simply stood in the construction site that had become my back yard, amidst the rubble that had become part of my life and I screamed. I screamed at the stars; I screamed at the neighbors; I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
I was not feeling well and I went to Stanford for another consult. I was told to be prepared to go on the transplant list. The doctor believed my indolent cancer had not just come back, but had transformed to an aggressive lymphoma that, if untreated, would be fatal in a short period of time. The biopsies that were taken, would confirm this.
Except they didn’t. My cancer was back, but it was still not super aggressive. I could “watch and wait” for a bit. Over the next two years, the tumors grew. I began to resemble a chipmunk but it was hardly cute. When I felt a large tumor growing at the base of my skull, I knew it was time to consider another round of treatment. The thought of cancer in my brain was more than I could deal with. The lymphoma had also returned to my neck, face and groin, and internally was growing throughout my body.
By 2013, a new treatment had been approved: Bendamustine + Rituxan. I was optimistic. It was supposed to be much easier than RCVP and they were getting good remissions. I was ready.
Except that nothing went as planned. My hair wasn’t supposed to fall out this time, but about half of it did and hasn’t fully returned. I wasn’t supposed to be tired; but I was. It was supposed to be relatively easy; instead my hip failed. I was no longer able to do the things I loved. The tennis friends that hadn’t fallen away during the first round of chemo fell away this time, as they went on with their lives and mine was sidelined by cancer.
By this time I had Anti-Cancer Club up and running. I vividly remember lying in my bed, exhausted and discouraged, wondering if I was reaching and resonating with an audience? Where was I going with this? Should I continue? Could I continue?
The answer of course was yes, I had to continue, even if I wasn’t sure why.
This year, 2017, we are reaching about 2 million people per month, and growing.
Inspiration, joy & discovery through travel. Oh, did I mention with supposedly incurable cancer?
What's on your bucket list?
Thank you for stopping by!
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.
