1,534 words exactly
NonFiction
(Published by "Flying" Magazine, 1985)
HYPOXIA
I'm hesitant to say it was like any other day in the steamy northwest the sun is as elusive as a blue moon, or a unicorn. But the population there had enjoyed three days straight of sweltering seventy five degree weather; a record, almost. A look to the satellite map revealed not a storm in sight, and that was a rarity, indeed. There was not the need to outline the Aleutians with the customary, imaginary dotted line; they were actually visible through a conspicuous absence of low stratus and murk, from a hundred miles up. It was to be a glorious weekend for that bit of mankind what flies. I'd been waiting for just such an opportunity to shake the cobwebs out of my ancient Luscombe--A perky 8A of respectable vintage. Flying VFR in the Northwest is often limited to pathetically short hops of dubious good sense. It's more than commonfor those of us who are radically conservative and instilled with an inordinately strong desire to liveto find ourselves flitting here and there, to and fro at the whim of the irritating Pacific storm track, seldom attaining any objective of real distance, or arriving where we'd planned, or hoped. Oh, there are the "men" of the aviation community.. They'll sit in the bar and smile and chuckle at we lesser individuals, we few who were not born with the ability to see through clouds. And at their funerals we smile...
We drop into an airport a mere two hundred miles away, and eat our lunch hurriedly, always with one eye to the west or south, expecting the worst at any given instant. And thus it is, when the sun finally bludgeons through the gray and the most insidious globs of moisture are fully three thousand miles to sea.... we fly!!
I fueled at oh six hundred. It was already sixty degrees; it'd be a scorcher, today. The Luscombe was a trifle slow, dragging the weight of twenty four gallons in an oversized tank. But the air was still and thick, and she carried me skyward as a faithful beast. We soared on to Port Angeles, my machine and I, a hundred and fifty miles to the north, and leaned at eight thousand feet there was petrol enough for nearly five hours more. We glided out to the coast. I joined with the aircraft more every minute. We were free; devoid of responsibility, of earthly careof the nagging inconvenience of a flight plan... There was guilt, nearly, at the thought of such immunity from the ugly part of life. We could fly forever.
Along the coast we settled to the ground, briefly. A phone call and a wait and a man arrived in a ratted pickup with four five gallon cans of "eighty". It was the "municipal" facility. And ten minutes later we merged, again, with the ethereal.
I leveled at ten thousand and drove headlong for the Olympic Range. The predominating breeze was light, pushing crystal clear air down from Canada. There was but the most dignified, gentle rocking of the ship through the great jagged crags, and then machine and keeper were flushed through the pass to the Puget Sound..
At two miles up we played; long and swooping wingovers, a loop, a rusty roll. What a glorious day! And as a pup and her child master we scampered off to Bellingham, romping and chasing as we went. At sixteen hundred hours we'd logged the previous nine in the air. My faithful machine and I; we could've gone on to the end of the earth, and never returned. But the thermals finally penetrated that cushion of space and reached up to tickle our belly. I was reminded of reality. We climbed to twelve, and headed along home, vowing to take half a turn about the apparition of Mount Rainier shimmering in the distance, before settling back to the ground.
And less than two hours later I was trimming up to ascend the great volcano. There was a bit of time, and a few gallons of fuel before mortality once more reared its ugly head I aimed her pudgy nose at the summit and settled back to grind through air as smooth as a marble street. Let's see how high she'll go...
At thirteen five I began to speculate on the effects of Hypoxia.. Not that any symptoms were present, or that I expected them, for air maintains a respectable viscosity even at such an elevation... I'd been there a thousand times before. But I was a cautious pilot I'd considered the potentiality, and that was evidence of eminent good sense. I was calm and content. The old girl was flying herself, a rare event Luscombe drivers seldom encounter. I'd have a smoke.
I fumbled for a new packGod I had to cut down... and I cursed myself quietly for such a lack of willpower. I'd consumed two packs of the stinking things already.. And I deftly pulled off the new wrapper and lit one up. I took a great, long drag.
The noxious smoke rumbled on down the windpipe; I recall the beginnings of the anticipated nicotine "charge", and then there was a curious kind of explosion in both lungs; an unfamiliar sensation. I pondered it for a moment, and then watched quite analytically as a gray curtain was drawn neatly over the eyes. It was the silliest thing....
In retrospect I believe there was some sense of comprehension of the event. That bit of the consciousness that remains thinking to the end had reasoned that it could be little else: Hypoxia. And in light of that there was but one solutiongo down... That scrap of the intellect that seems to work independently of the self we know from everyday life issued a command: Exert a forward pressure on the stick Yes, right now! And the unthinking muscles scrambled to respond..
Damn the gray! I shook my heador I imagined itto throw off whatever was covering my eyes. There was a notion of thicknessof the tongue, of the brain. I remember feeling the back of my head against the fuel tank, directly aft, as if I were an unwilling astronaut hurtling vertically for space.
There was a perceptible shaking of the plane. The stick struggled mildly to jerk from my hand. I forced my eyes to "see", and there was only blue. In a spasm of dyslexia the stick had come back, and she was fully stalled, twisting, trying to spin.
Perhaps the easing of G's allowed some blood to a starving brain, then, and for several instants I was granted some rational thought. The stick went forward, and in a breathtaking tumble there was a flash of mountain, the peak, some trees, and then as a falling arrow gyrates and wriggles to point for the ground, the relative flat of a glacier settled into view, filling the windscreen.
There are times when the mind accepts too easily its apparent fatedeath. I recall only a state of wonderment and a hint of irritation. In those few seconds I could quite vividly envision the impact; an anticlimax in the deep, soft snow. There would be but a "WUMP!", for no one to hear. Years would pass before they found the wreckage. The gas would have all leaked away, and I was embarrassed that the world would think me that incompetent. Pilot error again! He just ran out of gas What injustice. What luck. What a ridiculous place to crash.
But there was some unknown independence in the muscles themselves. While the conscious mind quietly contemplated the event as a whole, some other force rose to action. The stick came back, slowly, properly. And at a hundred feet we screamed down the mountain. There was some buffeting in light turbulence, and that tended to revive the failing reflexes. I swooped into a large valley and circled below the rim, hoping, in a still irrational state, to find "thicker" air. I circled there, erratically, diving and banking, sloppy on the stick. I strained to remember where I was, and where I desired to go. Down; that was enough for now. I snatched up a sectional and stared at the masses of lines and scribblings. I could remember marking a course from the peak to my home base, but I couldn't find it, or even recall if it was East or West. We lumbered on in this fashion for some time, demanding some solution, some sign of activity from the intellect, until at long last it cleared and came into view.
I hopped up over the ridge and found myself gliding down, following a river. With every foot of altitude lost some new facet of the brain began to come on line, and by six thousand feet there was a feeble semblance of confidence returning. I flew that last fifty miles white faced and shaken, finally to touch down in the old, familiar place.
On the drive home the muscles of the stomach at last began to relaxand to allow its contents to slip unbecomingly forth.
Shortly thereafter the habit was kicked.. And every activity of lifeflying not in the leasthas become a new adventure.
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