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.

Damn Technology

I went for lunch today at the airport. My mother invited me, I had some time off and since the winds were beyond awful, I figured I may as well since I couldn't fly. She'd heard the food at the airport was really good, so I agreed to meet her there.

Now when I say the wind was awful, it was horrible. It was bad enough that it ripped my driver's side door out of my hands, smashing into the vehicle parked beside me when I tried to get out. Fortunately, my vehicle and the other vehicle are both white, and the one I hit was a City truck, so was quite used to being mistreated. Either way, I managed to wipe away my marks with little noticeable damage. Then again, I guess I could have just told you it was insanely windy without incriminating myself, but I am not one to hold anything back so there you go.

So I get blown into the restaurant and what do I see through the window? A helicopter sitting outside by the pumps. I have not been in a helicopter and am anxiously awaiting my chance, but I could not imagine flying one on a day such as this. You know in cartoons when the characters are being blown sideways in the wind, holding onto lampposts and trees to keep from blowing away? That's today. And yet, a helicopter will still fly. Then, not only that, but a little Mooney came in shortly after the helicopter took off. Now, am I doing something wrong to avoid taking to the skies when it's moving at gusts beyond 30 kts? Or is this another example of the inferiority of my flying skils and/or airplane. Because I doubt the Fargo could keep its wings on a day such as this.

Either way, even with the wind outside, I was jealous of the guy walking across the apron after landing his Mooney. Not that I would want one, no, wait, I would as my second airplane,  but I was jealous that he was at a skill level that he could take on a day such as this. I was also jealous of the fact that he obviously had to be somewhere (because who would fly in these winds for a little fun, jaunt about the countryside) that he couldn't hold off until the wind died down. So while these pilots were getting on with their day and their, I'm guessing, employed flying gigs, I was eating at the restaurant with my mother, jealous and pouty I wasn't going up there too. Which brings me to the original point of my blog....

Originally, I was going to complain that my stupid computer wouldn't let me renew my microsoft office and therefore I could not get started writing an article about the amazing restaurant at my airport that I was going to perfect and send in for publishing. Instead, I just complained that I couldn't fly in blustery, insanely windy conditions and get paid for it. Well, I guess we all go on tangents once in a while, and I'm usually guiltier than most (and yes, guiltier is a word, it might just be my own, but it's still a word. If you can read it, it's a word). So now I must try again to find a way to download Microsoft Word so soon you can all read my articles somewhere beyond this blog, let's just hope they make much more sense than this one did.