After a few minutes of a steep, rough ride, we emerged into a clearing in the otherwise dense forest. Burn marks surrounded the mysterious, misshapen circle, and the ground was scorched black. Looking around, I could not find the culprit. It looked as if a fiery, pancake meteor had hit the earth, resulting in a non-crater.

Turns out it was an airplane. From the lack of a debris field you could tell the pilot plowed straight into the mountain. They had since removed all of the remains— both man and man-made. Bone and aluminum.

My friend told me the story behind the crash. A gentleman around my age had plans to see his girlfriend in another state. The morning he was set to depart was foggy and near zero/zero. But he was instrument rated and his airplane had a parachute. Let’s go!

From the propeller marks it was later determined the airplane was making power when it hit the ground, so he most likely suffered some type of spatial disorientation— my bet would be somatogravic illusion.

• READ MORE: Conversations in Dispatch Can Get Tricky

I looked around the perimeter and found something in the weeds—a small, melted chunk of aluminum. I stared at the piece of metal in my hand and wondered, “Why didn’t he just wait a few hours?”

I could have titled this column “Pheromones” and made it a more generalized treatise about flying unsafely during courtship. But the truth is women aren’t this stupid. Just us. Men.

A woman would know that a man she liked would still be around in a few hours. They understand the theory of object permanence. Men, we wear blinders. We get tunnel vision. And miraculously, around this one particular subject—unlike, say, mowing the lawn or loading the dishwasher—we never, ever experience mission creep. We never lose the scent, so to speak.

I recently got a full panel of bloodwork done. My doctor called me in and told me that I was generally healthy, but she said the one thing that had changed was my testosterone levels. She explained that they were far lower than they had been in 2016, my last full test. She offered up supplements to bring them back up. I didn’t have to think long… Hard pass. I explained to her that the freedom of not being bound, pinned, and betrothed to that specific hormone was not something I would give up for anything.

In hindsight, if I were given the option to bring my levels down to where they are now back in 1989, I would gladly have done so. I would have made 20 more films, written a hundred more screenplays, and saved a million more dollars on drinks, meals, gifts, and who remembers what else—all working to appease one appendage with an outsized role in my decision-making process.

In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon’s character wants to “go see about a girl.” He’s very determined. He also has the sense to do this in a sedan and leaves Boston on an unusually sunny day. Well played, Matt. That being said, if he had access to a Bonanza on a typical overcast New England winter morning, I wonder if he would have waited for low IFR to lift before departing. My guess is no.

Most of you know about my incident in Telluride, Colorado, that I have written about extensively in these pages. There was a woman behind that. I had plans to fly to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with someone I had recently met, and whom I did not want to disappoint. Our morning got off to a late start and the winds had picked up. We missed our window. I pushed on. She was very beautiful. I totaled the airplane.

• READ MORE: Some Just Diagnose Problems Better Than Others

In the earliest days of my flying career, when I had only my private pilot certificate and no airplane of my own, I was flying a woman from my home upstate to a racetrack in New Jersey in a rented Piper Cherokee. When we departed KMSV, it was clear and a million, but down at Millville there was a solid overcast about 1,200 feet agl. I looked for a hole. There was none. All my friends were waiting for me just under that shallow cloud layer below us. They had a race bike ready for me to ride. We circled for a few minutes as I weighed the options.

I had the compulsory few hours of instrument training needed for my private under my belt, but nothing more. I knew the terrain fairly well, having flown there on numerous occasions. And apparently that was all I needed to make a horrible (and illegal) judgment call when I decided to slowly spiral down into those clouds. I didn’t even know what an instrument approach procedure was back then.

I kept myself in a steady state turn descending at 500 fpm, knowing/praying the ceilings would spit me out where the ATIS promised. And they did. We landed safely. I explained my drenched shirt as a gland issue. My companion was duly impressed, and I was permitted to mate. But anyone reading this who has flown an airplane knows how easily this could have gone south.

There are other stories. I’ll save them for another time. And no need to call my insurer. With my additional years and commensurate drop in Mountain Dude (testosterone), those days are long behind me. I write about them here so that maybe I’ll reach a young pilot, swimming in hormones who has similar thoughts about what he might do to gain favor in a woman’s eyes.

And I hope no one reads this as anti-female.

Quite the opposite. Ironically, most women would not be impressed by this decision-making in the least. In fact, if they knew the risks you had taken without their consent, you would likely be kicked to the curb. If there were a being on this planet who would understand a flight delay brought on by real safety issues, it would be a woman. Women are patient and understanding and generally risk averse.

And, fellas, gonna let you in on a little secret… If she’s willing to get in an airplane with you at all, you can be sure she already likes you. So, take a cold shower and wait for VFR conditions and common sense to prevail.

To this day, I keep that hunk of melted aluminum in my flight bag. Sometimes I’ll even take it out and hold it. It’s a great reminder of what not to do when you want to “go see about a girl.”

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post The Things We Men Pilots Do to Impress Women appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It looked like airplane heaven.

Dawn and I had been living and cruising the Caribbean aboard our 42-foot sailboat, Windbird, for the previous three years. On long passages, we curled up in the cockpit at night, watching phosphorescence stream into the starlit combers sweeping under our stern and listening to the gurgle of water past the hull, and dreamed up our post-sailing life together. It would be centered around general aviation, we determined, but would also include terrestrial adventures like motorcycling, camping, and travel. It would involve a return to the Pacific Northwest, where we lived a decade previously and still missed. We’d get a quiet place in the country, with lots of room for our dog, Piper, to run and roam. We’d take an active role in forging our homestead, getting dirt under our nails and calluses on our hands while building upon some of the more practical skills we had gained in our years at sea.

This morning, almost exactly four years after I first laid eyes on our future home, I awoke to bright sunlight streaming through our bedroom window. It’s another beautiful summer day, with a light breeze just rustling the windsock past the handsome strand of cedars. I get up and put coffee on the stove then step out to the hangar. It’s a bit of a mess, with boxes and detritus from the move still scattered about, but I’m steadily building workbenches and custom shelving and getting things organized. I open the 44-foot hydraulic hangar door and sunshine flows over the Stinson, sitting rather incongruously gift wrapped in painter’s plastic. Last week, I noticed the finishing tape over the left wing spar was lifting and peeling back in two spots, requiring I take those areas down to bare fabric, iron the tape flat, reapply adhesive (Poly-Brush, as my airplane is covered with the Poly-Fiber system), and build the finish back up. Today, I’m spraying Poly-Spray, the silvery UV coating that likes to get everywhere (thus the gift-wrapped Stinson and tarps over everything nearby).

Just another day in airplane heaven.

Our 50-by-60-foot hangar is basically as I envisioned when I first saw the clearing it occupies, except it has an attached 15-by-60-foot, two-bedroom apartment that wasn’t in the original plan. The wooded building site up the hill is still undisturbed. We actually went so far as having an architect draft house plans based on a rustic design I’ve had in my head for years before COVID-19 and runaway construction costs made us choose what we wanted more: a house or hangar. But the apartment has turned out really well—better than I imagined, actually—and I think we’ll be happy to live here for some time. Both my life and career have tended to go in half-decade cycles, and I suspect that in five years or so I’ll start to get the construction itch again. For the moment, it is very well scratched.

The last time I wrote about our progress, in the April 2023/Issue 936 column, we still had bare studs in the apartment and a gaping hole in the front of our hangar. Over the following months, I assembled the hydraulic door with our contractor’s help, hired a drywall company to do Sheetrock and texturing, and painted the place myself. We ordered custom cabinets and quartz countertops, which contractors had installed along with the plank flooring. I installed the tub surround, toilet, and vanity, and did all the electrical and plumbing finish work, including installing the tankless propane hot water heater.

Outside, I trenched in the gas line conduit from the propane tank and drain hoses from the downspouts and catch basins to the county-mandated stormwater dispersion trenches, which were multiday projects in their own right. I used our immensely useful Kubota BX-23S tractor/backhoe (my first brand-new vehicle) to get everything filled and graded nicely, and our concrete contractor poured the apron, stoops, and side patio. I brought in three dump trucks of gravel to build up the driveway and four of topsoil for the yard. Seeding, covering, and watering the new lawn was a major project that is ongoing given the sunny, dry weather. We did all this, by the way, while I flew a full schedule at the airline and Dawn was busy baking and selling her popular dog treats at farmers’ markets around the area.

• READ MORE: Delays, Mistakes All Part of Building a Dream Hangar

For three weeks in June and July, we received a huge help in the form of Dawn’s parents, Tom and Marg Schmitz, visiting from South Dakota. Like my own father, Tom is a retired contractor, and Marg is quite handy as well. While I was installing appliances, working outside, finishing odd jobs, and attending to various county inspections, Tom and Marg hung all the interior doors and undertook the herculean job of painting, installing, and caulking trim. I wasn’t even planning on having much trim done before we moved in, but Tom and Marg just about finished it. And then, when I learned that the county required all 4,000 square feet of siding to be stained before final inspection, our friends Brad and Amber Phillips showed up from across the country to help us knock it out in two days.

We moved in at the start of July—initially just for the Fourth of July weekend, to get Piper away from the crazy fireworks in town. We loved being up here so much—and our productivity went up so much—that we stayed for good, occupancy permit be damned. We moved all the furniture from our previous apartment one week later. There was a delay waiting on backed-up state electrical inspectors, but on July 25 we finally had our last county inspection and passed with flying colors. Dawn and I celebrated with an outrageously good glass of Balvenie PortWood 21-year-old Scotch, which I had kept on the shelf unopened for the previous nine months as a little extra motivation. The celebratory Stinson flight is waiting on my fabric repair.

So ended phase one of the project that we dreamed up on those magical starlit passages aboard Windbird and put into motion when we bought an overgrown, brambly piece of airplane heaven. Phase two—next summer’s project—will involve improved landscaping, insulating the hangar, installing a boiler for in-floor heat, and incorporating a standby generator.

A little further down the road we’ll likely install solar panels and incorporate other off-grid improvements. And, yes, at some point we’ll probably want a bit more space to accommodate our far-flung friends from around the country and globe, and we’ll build our little three-bedroom cabin in the woods. When that happens, perhaps we’ll turn the hangar apartment into a fly-in bed-and-breakfast.

For now, we’re simply enjoying living on the strip, taking a breather from our labors, and embarking on some fun adventures while we plan our next moves.

This column first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Just Another Day in Airplane Heaven appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

But today I’m finally taking a day off. I’ve had an ultra-productive week, I’ll be flying for work tomorrow, and Dawn just headed to her parents’ place in South Dakota. It’s just me and my flying pooch, Piper, living the bachelor life. It’s time for a playdate to go explore those Cascade mountain strips I’ve been eyeing from high above on the CHINS5 and GLASR2 arrivals. This would ideally be done in the cool, still air of morning, but I got waylaid by another project, and it’s after noon by the time Piper and I finally depart and turn northeast. It’s not a terribly hot day, though, and we’re light, and the highest airstrip is at only 3,000 feet in elevation. The puffy cumulus over the Cascades aren’t looking too threatening—yet.

I skirt south of Paine Field (KPAE) and enter the mountains via the dramatic Skykomish River valley, with 6,000-foot peaks towering over both sides. Fifteen miles in, the town of Skykomish appears around a bend along with our first destination, Skykomish State Airport (S88): 2,000 feet of turf runway, 1,002 feet elevation, trees on both ends. The left pattern to Runway 24 makes for a tight downwind along the southern ridge and close by a granite outcropping before turning a blind base. Turning final, the runway appears again out of the trees, and I ease down a groove and land on the grass. With just Piper and I and partial fuel, I easily turn off at midfield without getting on the brakes.

Piper is a much less anxious flyer these days, but he’s still always glad to clamber out of the airplane and run his little heart out. The airport is deserted today, so I let him wander off leash while I take a look at the picnic tables and camping spots. The field is ideally set up for group camping by an EAA chapter or a gaggle of friends. The guest book reveals mostly old taildraggers like mine, the most recent some 10 days ago. There’s no reason you couldn’t take a Cessna 172 in here easily if you kept it light, but alas, many flight schools and FBOs in the area now prohibit landing at unpaved airports.

After a quick lunch, Piper and I load up again, start up, and take off on Runway 24. I fly a mile beyond town and then turn around in a wide part of the valley, climbing steeply to have plenty of altitude before approaching 4,056-foot Stevens Pass. I see the alpine lake to which Dawn and I snowshoed last winter and turn north to cross a 5,000-foot ridge into the Rainy Creek watershed. I follow it down to beautiful Lake Wenatchee and the Lake Wenatchee State Airport (27W), elevation 1,936 feet msl. As I approach, I can see the middle half of the 2,473-foot runway appears to be bare dirt and decide to do an inspection pass down Runway 9. I don’t see any big rocks, but on the next approach I touch down right at the threshold to get slow before the bare patch. Even at reduced speed, we bounce around a lot, and I can hear stones hitting the underside of the fuselage. Maybe I ought to have landed beyond the dirt—there was a good 1,000 feet of grass left. Soon after we arrive, a Cessna 182 buzzes the dusty strip and peels off into the left downwind. I film his landing, which is a dramatic plop right in the middle of the rocky zone. The hardy Skylane seems no worse for wear, and I’m soon talking to Bryce from Las Vegas. He’s flown all the way here for the Touratech Rally for adventure motorcyclists in nearby Plain, Washington. We talk dirt bikes for a bit before I eye the skies and decide it’s time to go. Those cumulus have built a good bit. They’re not ugly enough to chase us out of the mountains just yet, but Piper and I should get moving.

I purposely came into the mountains with partial gas, necessitating a fuel stop at Wenatchee’s Pangborn Memorial Airport (KEAT). From there, we climb out over Mission Ridge, dodging rain shafts. My Stratus ADS-B receiver shows some strong precipitation northeast of Mount Rainier and over the Goat Rocks Wilderness, but so far it’s staying clear of our next destination. Passing Cle Elum, Snoqualmie Pass looks very doable—that’s my backup option. As I work my way southwest, though, the weather holds. Crossing Bethel Ridge, I marvel at a fantastic ridgetop trail and file it away for a ride on my KTM dirt bike. From there, it’s a fast drop into the Tieton River valley, where Tieton State Airport (4S6, elevation 2,964 feet msl) is nestled on the shore of Rimrock Lake.

In late summer, Tieton State becomes a busy Forest Service firebase, but for now it’s quiet. The vertiginous dome of appropriately named Goose Egg Mountain lies just off the north end, making this a mostly one-way-in, one-way-out airport. The wind is nearly calm. I fly out over the lake, make a spiraling descent, and set up a dogleg approach to 2,509-foot Runway 2. There’s a decent bug-out option to the left down to about 150 feet, but below that you wouldn’t want to go around without a good bit of power. This time, speed and glide path are right on target, so I continue over the shoreline and make a wheel landing on the grass. Overall the strip is in great shape.

Tieton looks like a fantastic place to airplane camp. There’s plenty of shady parking alongside the strip, an indoor pit toilet, and nice views over the lake and mountains. It’s a short walk to the beach, where Piper frolics in the sand. For a minute, he’s a young pup on Windbird again. But now it’s 5 p.m., and those overdeveloped cumulus are getting a lot closer. I can see rain shafts cutting across the far side of the lake. Our playdate is almost over. The hourlong flight home will take us up and over White Pass, past Mount Rainier via the Skate Creek and Nisqually River drainages, and thence via Puyallup and the Tacoma Narrows. As a young pilot, this would have been a grand adventure, and now it’s all part of my backyard.

My 20th wedding anniversary is coming up, and while we’re celebrating with a monthlong trip to New Zealand later in the year, we didn’t have plans for the big day itself. When I asked Dawn what she’d like to do, she said airplane camping in the mountains. I think Tieton State Airport will be a great place to base ourselves for a few days of exploration. I’m a very lucky guy.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Playdate Provides Chance to Explore the Cascades appeared first on FLYING Magazine.