What Flying Is Really All About

More Power!
OK, OK, I’m caught up in muscle madness a little. The horsepower is piled on and the lean of peak glide ‘n slide is postponed for a while. And pass some of that nitrous around while you’re at it.

A contingent of the Texas EZ bunch is saddling up and preparing to leave the Lufkin County hundred dollar fajita brunch. The local folks ask for a flyby, or two. Lead’s brief leaves room for more. By the fifth or sixth circuit around the pattern the adrenalin is cranked up pretty high. Too soon we peel off to the north for home.

Rather than the milquetoast weekend fliers that arrived a couple of hours earlier led by Dash 5 in the slowest plane, we are now raucous white knights racing skyward with canarded lances piercing the crisp air in focused search of any dragons left to slay and any windmills needing to be jousted.

Leveling at cruise altitude we wordlessly form the valiant V, still giving no quarter to each other or the distant fuel pump back home waiting to suck up the credit card. Dash 3 zooms from below rolling up and over into a nice position off my right wing. That is a sight to behold. Even if anyone in the flight was foolish enough to ask, no one is likely in the mood to back off a hundred rpm.

Finally pacing Lead, I move in on his right and jokingly complain about having to slow down to fit in. Evidently Lead doesn’t see the humor. He is pulling away and I am caught in the sag, having to grit my teeth and tighten my stomach a little in catching up.

Enjoying this rush of the run home, I’m thinking of the much more sedate trip down earlier this morning, paced to the slowest plane. I am extremely glad not to have that distinction. As we hurtle along Dash 3 must be thinking along the same lines. He says, “I guess we’re not waiting for Dash 5...”

I think of the almost finished EZ Chronicle back home on the efficiency of the Long EZ and how it is a more practical airplane than my favorite subject the Varieze. I shake my head in mild self-criticism for now being caught up here in this raucous romp. And I grin. What a country. The thought wells up again...how can all those people stand to be down there on the ground and not up here doing this?

I hold on to the moment, marveling at the sleek skimming porpoises smoothly rushing and rising and positioning, pulling out far ahead of the workaday world chasing us from down below. Those around me are, in a sense, warriors. I know their stories. I know their diversity and their work ethic. I know their determination, how they fight the daily battle of life and mostly win, winning enough to grasp for their very particular brass ring.

We thunder along in the too rare atmosphere of free flight. I think that this is a high point of our life skirmish - of discipline and productivity in the battle for freedom to be fought and won here at home. I humorously imagine proudly rising to solemnly pledge allegiance along with hordes of patriotic muscle car massagers and Titleist bashers and Harley drivers and dirt track racers and struggling enthusiasts of every shade and brand.

Tongue-in-cheek I mouth a pledge to continue my part in upholding the struggle for the rights of freedom and hamburger fly-in loving mortals in this great country, as we work and produce and win and loose and get up and go again, pursuing and living the American Dream. But saying it, I realize how much I mean it. Scanning outside, the view is of blue skies and white clouds mirrored in shimmering blue lakes, the very embodiment of alluring travel commercials. And inside, snapshots of my Canard Pusher dreams - a woven instrument panel, a Brock control knob, the special instrument that I had so long hoped would someday come alive...

And that Oshkosh moment. There was a pretty good crowd around the VariEze. A man asked me how far the plane could fly. I pulled out the marked-up US map and showed him the tracks of flights radiating out across the country from Fort Worth. Another man elbowed up and asked with an accent, “Who give you permission to fly all dese places?”

In the silent moment that followed, I guess many of us in the crowd came up with our own answer. I grinned and said, “I give myself permission to fly. This is America! ” And then explained a little about our air system. But there is so much more to our country’s greatness. I look out and squint a little and can almost see the bearers of our freedom through the ages…

But everywhere I look the image of a picture from a few weeks ago haunts me. A hand written sign in a sandy US Marine outpost says,“America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war. America is at the mall.”

I remember in 1991 talking with a Fort Worth Marine recruiter. They were going to war flying Helos that still had my sweat in them. He said thanks but no thanks, and that they were getting calls like mine from all over the country from other former Marines volunteering to go back in.

I didn’t call them this go-round. Many of the CH-46s over there today got their baptism of fire in my era. This week there are several less. Sitting up here today, I know there is no free launch. I think of the true heroes, far distant, fighting my war, fighting for my kids, fighting to live, fighting to protect their family’s way of life here, paying the high price of things we take for granted, the things they long to get back home to.

This time cruising aloft here includes another prayer for our Patriots fighting this war, pretty much alone. I doubt that they know the width and breadth and depth of their support back here from comrades in arms, although many are finding ways to show our support.

I started building the plane on a nickel budget and got to liking the minimalist approach. I tend think a lot about simple efficiency. But not today, not right now. Pour on the coals. I look around at my fellow EZ travelers and relish the freedom of my spectacularly providential birthright to earn the ability to do something pretty spectacular in a pretty demanding arena in my own pretty small world. Every day as my kids and their kids get home safely, I thank God for those here and those far away from our country, standing almost alone, but standing firm.

It has been said that, one way or another, flying is about money.

No, Flying Is About Freedom.

Bill James, Fort Worth VariEze
EAA # 104225, Member since January 1975