Unwanted Passenger

I'm beginning to rethink my plan to stalk the guy who owns the Maule and ask him for a ride. Why? Because if he is even the tiniest bit as weirded out by some stranger asking for a flight in his plane as I was the other day, he'd still be getting the heebie-jeebies from me.

Now, to be fair to myself, I do not smell like stale booze and cigarettes, and it's not questionable whether I've started drinking at 7AM on a Saturday morning. I also am not about 100 lbs overweight, nor do I drive a rusty pickup with holes in it, nor am I unseemingly and sketchy. I like to think of myself as a normal person that would not creep someone out if I walked up to them and started a conversation. This guy, on the otherhand, did creep me out. Actually, it wasn't him as much as the fact that the second I pulled in to unlock the gate this truck that happened to be sitting at the airport at 7AM on a Saturday morning clunked into reverse and began to back-up slowly until it blocked my exit. That was what started probably one of the worst flights I've been on in a long time.

I was going to ask this guy who he was looking for, but apparently it was me. Not me specifically, but any pilot taking up a plane that morning. Or, I guess I should say, any naive pilot stupid enough to allow a complete stranger in their cockpit. Basically, he feigned interest in purchasing the Fargo as his in. He then asked to come look at it, making a point of driving inside the locked gate instead of remaining outside it and then walking through the gate like he should have. Then, once he looked it over thoroughly (and in my opinion should have come to the conclusion that he could hardly fit inside the 150 nevermind think he could fly the thing) he asked me if I was flying it that morning. I am a horrible liar and completely suck at coming up with excuses, and really, what the hell else did it seem like I was going to do? So I replied yes, and when he asked if he could come too, well, rather than do the intelligent thing and tell him I have a strict no-strange-loiterers policy, I told him, "I guess so."

Well, it just got worse from there. He definitely pushed the Fargo to its weight and balance limits, but tried to tell me something about how they're really weighed in at half their true limit as a safety net, or something like that. Honestly, when they manufactured a tiny, two-seater plane with a cockpit the width of a newborn baby, they did not plan on the pilot being a grotesque 300 lb alcoholic smoker. If that was the case, they would have made it with one seat in the middle and a picker that scooped up the pilot lacking the physical prowess to simply climb in. As it was, I was pressed against my door (which has a tendency to fall open at inconvenient times) as far as I could go and still could not get away from his overbearing presence.

As it was, we managed to get off the ground (good thing I only had half-tanks of fuel) to which he proceeded to tell me where to go, when to turn, how to operate my GPS and eventually, took over my controls. Why did I not stop him? I don't know. I'm not usually the type of person who is afraid to stand up for myself, but I was just so completely uncomfortable with the situation I just tried to make it as bearable as possible until I could get back down and away from him. But, I did have to draw the line at taking my controls, and I took them back and told him I was in a hurry so had to go in to land. Unfortunately, even that was not free of his unwanted expertise as he usually comes in to land in a slip and quickly straightens up right when he's going to touch down. Perhaps I should have explained to him that his unwanted presence had thrown the Fargo off-balance enough that flying straight was challenging enough. Then again, I should have told him no when he first asked to come, but it was too late for that.

I thought I was free and clear once we'd landed, but that was when he chose to ask questions about the Fargo under pretense of buying it, even though he had told me he was unemployed, living in a trailer park, and smelled like he couldn't afford enough hot water to shower, nevermind wash his clothes. But, looks can be deceiving, so I answered his questions and then told him I'd let him out the gate. It took nearly 30-minutes to get him out of there, what with him asking me how much I fly, my one-word answers, and his snooping about the other planes in the hangar. But get him out I did but then had to go home and shower and wash my clothes myself as his boozy-cigarette scented remnants were on them from the quick 30-minutes we spent together in the Fargo's tiny cockpit.

What did I learn from this? Never, never take some stranger up in your airplane. Especially one that is willing to jump into any plane he can regardless of who's flying. He didn't even ask if I had a licence, then again, he thought pretty highly of his own flying abilities (even though he could not pass the test) so must have assumed he'd be able to take over if I proved incapable. But now that leaves me incapable of doing the same thing myself! Here I am, completely grossed out by this creep and now having to replace the mouthpiece of my headset and sanitize the interior of the Fargo, and I was going to do the same thing to Mr. Maule. So really, that does not make me much better. Then again, I don't stink. And I have to say, that fact alone could have been what completely grossed me out. Perhaps if I shower, make sure I've got on clean clothes and just a little perfume, asking the owner of the Maule for a ride might not come across as a creepy, stalker kind of thing to do. Then again, adding perfume just opens up a whole other can of worms when asking strange men for favors, so really, maybe I'll just stick to flying myself in the Fargo for a while, and keep a passenger with me at all times.