Flying High, and Low!

So apparently, I'm a natural.

For much of my early life, since around age 10 ish, well into my thirties, I would have a re-curring dream. I'm sure it varied over the years, but there are some consistencies I do remember. The dream always had to do with flying and motorcycling. Sometimes I would be pedalling some type of small aircraft, barely getting above ground level, as I got older, the dream took on different images.

I was on the Western Front, the year was 1914-1915. I'd vounteered, had come over from England, not necessarily to fight the Boche, but because I had a love of engines. The sound, the grime, the intricacy of all early engines. Once in uniform, my skills were put to use in tuning and repairing the ,then new aero engines installed in BE2's, Sopwith Pups, and later Camels, and SE5's etc. I wasn't interested in shooting down the Hun, I was interested in mechanical apparatus plain and simple. In my days on the Western Front of France, I rode around the countryside on a little thumper, a single cylinder motorbike of some sort. I may have known what it was at one time but you see, I stopped having these dreams in my early thirties.

The striking things I remember from them were how I felt free, valuable, and thorough... and I could make engines run that should have been scrapped, a vital requirement in those days. In my spare time, something there was precious little of back then, while grabbing a pint in the nearby village, I fell in love with a English woman whose father was also in the early air corp, and she herself had come over to administer to the wounded as a nurse. I don't remember her name, but she was soft spoken, with inviting, piercingly blue eyes, often with an underlying sadness from the horror of it all, and yet she was solid, reliable and devoted, and very beautiful in a simple fashion. The kind of natural beauty casting agents once looked for at Hollywood and Vine.

Over the years, she would appear in my dreams and I would court her whenever possible. We would ride off into the French countryside on my bike, wine, cheese, bread, whatever we could aquire. We would lay for hours in the sun, talking, sharing everything, from the War, to children, to our overbearing fathers or just laying and looking up, into the blue void.

Eventually over the months, we found ourselves telling all of our guarded secrets, dreams, desires and fears to one another. Yes, we were in love with one another.

And Yes, all this amid the follies of war.

All my life, I have wanted to fly.

Was it because of these dreams, was it something from a past life, or was it just the fantasies of a lonely boy growing up reading about pilots and airplanes and of course, motorcycles? I don't know which, perhaps a combination of many factors.

I have flown occasionally at the controls of Cessna's or other such planes, but what I wanted was to experience the joys and exhilaration of a motorcycle in the sky.

Many years ago, I was looking to purchase an ultralight from a seller in Indus east of Calgary, I remember he had an XS 650 twin that wasn't running so well. That idea got cut short when I'd had my heart attack. But I never give up on these dreams, never.




This week, while it's still winter in Calgary, I am at my second home in Glendale. It's been a cool and rainy visit, I got totally soaked today riding around doing my errands, and loving it! I am still getting out riding my bike and messing around following dreams, it seems.

I met Jim Blumer online searching the net for a school I saw, back a dozen years ago on my first trip thru here. I had the airport wrong but the location right and this past Friday, I had the excitement of speaking with Jim, sitting in the cockpit of a Challenger II and taxing the length of the runway. Once up in the air, 1500' above the desert floor, Jim handed over the controls and I flew the little bird for twenty minutes from as low as 500' up to our cruising altitude of 1500. I didn't get sick and it was a blast I must say. The plane is open, with a bare windshield in front of me, a three axis stick, simple controls and slow as a trail bike.

I loved it!

Would I put the expense into learning to fly and having my own little plane... don't know yet. But it's food for a hungry mind. The plane was built by the pilot in '91-92. It weighs about 450 lbs dry, or about the same as a liter sized sport bike. The engine is decidedly not like any sports bike though, it's an air cooled twin cylinder premixed Rotax 503. The same engine that powers many of Ski-Doos snowmobiles over the years. Nothing fancy, except for dual ignition, more a safety measure than a necessity and of course, no Vickers machine gun up front! The only trenches I saw on this flight, were the ones carrying water into Phoenix proper to water lawns and fill swimming pools.

Honestly, some of my friends do think I am somewhat shy of a buck, but as long as it varies between .97C and 1.06... I'm pretty much happy there.

Flying a Light Sport as they are now called, is really what it must have been like for Simon, my English aero mechanic from my other life/dreams. A simple craft held together by wires, fabric and tubing, with a simple air cooled engine to chug it along at what amounts to, not a whole lot more than the speeds my DR 200 is capable of. It really was/is like riding a bike in 3 dimensions.

Flying such a craft here, above the desert floor away from houses and the urban sprawl with only a stick and a throttle in hand, is akin to riding a bike in Baja. You are on your own, with only your wits, skills, courage (or fear) and your desires to guide you.

Like Jim said... it's still the Wild West even though we are only 60 minutes from D/T Phoenix.

I think, the next time I'm down, I will go up a couple more times before I make the decision to learn. Who knows... a hop once in awhile may be enough to sate my thirst.

Time will tell.