January 21, 1991
1:40 p.m.:
My precious, old classic airplane, annabelle, lies upside down in a field. Totaled. After crawling out, I stand staring at it. I am shaken but okay. I never dreamed something like this would happen to me. My heart is broken, and somewhere inside me, in the room that houses my self-confidence, a lamp just went out.

I do not get back up on the horse like I'm supposed to. I quit flying . . . 

October 1, 2006
10:30 a.m.:
 . . . until today.

The dream of piloting an airplane again has haunted me for fifteen years. In about three hours I'll have my chance: an opportunity to fly up the east coast of North Carolina in a four-seat Cirrus SR-22. A pilot will take me from Wilmington, North Carolina, north to Kitty Hawk and on up to Newport News, Virginia, and then we'll fly back home.

I'm hoping to take the controls in the air, and maybe for takeoff. There's a long shot chance that Justin Dillon – a pilot's name if ever I heard one – will let me land. It's relatively easy to take off in any airplane, but landing is more difficult, and landing an unfamiliar airplane could get dicey – especially after fifteen years of not flying.

Back in the early nineties, I kept Annabelle at Walker Field, in rural Pearson County, North Carolina, an airfield in the middle of the woods, all grass with a wooden hangar, a place from time past. The landing strip was short and uphill, so that you always took off downhill regardless of wind direction. Takeoff roll started around a dogleg and continued across a gravel driveway. On the day of my crash I'd lifted into the air and, at about ten feet up, I decided to land again – because of worry that a high tail wind would carry me into some trees ahead across a field. I touched down too fast to stop by the end of the runway, and rolled into the field in front of me, then into a shallow ditch. Annabelle stood up on her nose, and then fell straight over onto her back.

I decide not to mention all this to Justin.

Research tells me that the four-seat, single-engine Cirrus SR-22, the plane I'll fly in today, was FAA-certified in 2000. It is now the world's best selling airplane in its class, in part because of its unique parachute system. That's right – if you're in bad trouble, pull a handle over your head in the cockpit and, get this: the entire airplane (with the passengers inside discussing what they'll have for dinner) floats slowly to the ground. The existence of the parachute just might relieve a set of deep-seated fears.

Also, with a maximum speed of 212 miles per hour, the Cirrus cruises faster and farther without refueling – more than 1000 miles – than similar small, single-engine airplanes. It's roomy and very good-looking. Additionally, Cirrus Design Corporation offers one-stop shopping: insurance, financing, and instruction. They will even sell you a pilot for one year to teach you – and a couple of friends, if you want – to fly. The pilot will fly you and your family and friends wherever you want to go. All for one price.

I'm confident that this flight, this re-entry to piloting, is going to be fun. But Kristina, my wife, is worried. I haven't flown since she's known me, and she's heard me tell about my crash a few times too many. Surely, the parachute attachment convinced her that it's okay for me to go flying again.
No.

The superb safety record of the aircraft? 

No.

She demanded to know the credentials of the Cirrus pilot taking me for a ride, so I emailed the question and was told that Justin has 3,000 hours in the airplane and that he's an instructor of instructors.

Kristina has reluctantly agreed, and this afternoon's flight has her okay.

Garden & Gun and the people from Cirrus Design have granted my request for an old Air Force buddy, Johnny Hobbs, to come along, so Justin will fly him down from Newport News, pick me up in Wilmington, and from there the three of us will fly to Kitty Hawk.

There's one last kicker about this airplane, and I told Johnny it's a main reason I decided to invite him along: I discovered from an on-line photo of the cockpit that you control the Cirrus with what appears to be a stick grip, similar to the handgrip of the fighter aircraft that Johnny and I flew in the Air Force almost forty years ago. You fly the airplane (left, right, up, and down) with one hand instead of two. Many fighter pilots and old-timey airplane pilots don't like the two-handed yoke in most civilian aircraft – it's too . . . well . . . the yoke means "hauling stuff" and sort of lumbering around in a bus. The stick means "adventure."  Irrational and romantic, but real.

I know Johnny hasn't flown since 2001, so we're both rusty and out of touch – especially me. Is Justin Dillon a cautious man? Will he do all the flying, and leave us to sit and watch and reminisce about the good old days?  Or is he a generous and giving individual who will let us fly the airplane?  And if so, how much?

1:30 p.m.:
the cirrus, on time, taxies across the asphalt toward the flight hut on the outskirts of the Wilmington airport. White and sleek among the other aircraft sitting around, it's a sports car among sedans. There is something about the shape that reminds me of a T-38, the supersonic jet trainer that I idealized, drooled over, and flew during my Air Force training in the 1960s.

A ground crew member directs the parking with orange batons. The engine shuts down and the doors open. Johnny is in the left seat, and this tells me he's probably been flying some. Good. The right seat is normally used by the co-pilot, instructor, or passenger. Justin may be a generous and giving individual after all. He climbs down off the wing. Whoa – he's just a kid. I remind myself that so is most everybody else these days. Johnny and I are both past sixty. What the hell will Justin think about us?

They walk into the flight hut and meet my in-laws, P.M. and Hannah, and Kristina, and my three youngest children. Johnny hasn't met the youngest two, so we all sit around and talk for a few minutes.

Then Kristina corners Justin.

. . . "Yes, ma'am, the parachute does work.   . . . Yes, ma'am. It has been tested in real situations, and has worked at low airspeeds and altitudes as well as high in the air… Yes, ma'am, you just pull a handle… Yes, ma'am, I'm an instructor with three thousand hours in the aircraft… Well, I'm twenty-nine."

"Twenty-nine?!"

"I'll take good care of him. Don't you worry."

Johnny tells me he took off in Virginia and flew the airplane some and that Justin landed. I'm thinking, I'll fly, but I won't get to land.

The landing is a potentially beautiful phase of flight. If the airplane is set up just right on final approach – that is, if your speed is just right and the angle of approach is just right – and if you flare (pull the nose up a little) at the right time, the aircraft floats barely above the runway until it runs out of flying speed and settles gently to touch the asphalt. I've spent hours in the brush near Duck, up toward the north end of the Outer Banks, watching swans and geese fly in and touch down in Currituck Sound. Swans are especially graceful when landing, and the suspense just before touchdown seems to be present for them as well as for pilots.

But a pilot's landing can just as easily be ugly. One miscalculation and you hit the runway hard. You might even bounce the airplane up into the air and then hit the runway hard again – and be embarrassed, very embarrassed, especially if an Air Force buddy or a kid pilot is along with you.

I look at the positive side. If I don't land today, at least I won't embarrass myself by goofing up my first landing in fifteen years. And why don't I go ahead and ask Justin if I can land?  Well . . . because that's his business, his decision. He knows good and well I want to land the airplane.

We say goodbyes to my family and walk out to the aircraft, then walk around it for a visual inspection. I notice the innovative design of the wings, and, again, the clean, sporty lines. And I know from my research that inside I'll find the latest in cockpit instrumentation.

Justin asks me to take the left seat. Wonderful. Johnny takes the seat behind Justin.

Inside is lush and roomy. We crank up. The engine feels powerful. Justin tells me to taxi. "Steer with the brakes," he says, "but don't ride them." The brakes are activated by pressing the toes of the rudder pedals, the pedals beneath your feet. The aircraft feels very tight and responsive. I look back at Johnny. He's smiling. We're in a fine machine.

I fumble for my reading glasses so that I can reduce the blur of lines, graphs, and numbers on the two TV-like displays in front of me. I remember being twenty-nine, with 20-20 vision; I remember instrument panels holding mostly round dials with old-timey clock hands. What I have in front of me now is almost unfathomable, and Justin is already explaining – patiently, slowly, clearly. But I'm missing some of it because every fifteen seconds my mind says, "Oh, my Lord."  The displays are run by computers, and they literally think for you and do most of the math and remembering that were part of flying back when I carried maps in my lap and a pencil and notepad on my knee, and would do a lot of jotting and adding and jotting and subtracting during a cross-country flight. I could still do that in this airplane, but I can also punch a few buttons – you must, of course, know which ones – and the airplane will fly a complete, complicated flight by itself while showing your location and the locations of airports and other airplanes on your illuminated screen. And fly it precisely – everything but the takeoff and landing.

Seeing one of those moving maps in a Cadillac or Lexus gives you an inkling of what you can buy with an airplane these days. Just imagine the display being much larger, then add another display, and factor in about a thousand tasks that might be accomplished for you as a car driver – phone numbers of people along your route, the weather, curves, amount of fuel on arrival, placement of all stop lights, bumps, and other automobiles.

Regardless of the instruments, any airplane has a "feel."  Just taxiing this airplane is thrilling. It's tight; it has that feeling of a car door going "thunk" instead of "jangle."

I taxi out onto the runway and Justin the Kid lets me take off. "Okay, watch the airspeed," he says as we quickly pick up speed. This sweetheart moves right along. "Pull back just a bit at seventy knots and let her fly off the runway."

I'm flying again!  Piloting.

Once we are airborne and level, Justin shows me how to engage the autopilot. He begins to explain the avionics to me – how the computerized display of maps and frequencies and course lines and heading lines work. We fly over New Bern and look down on the mighty Neuse River emptying into Pamlico Sound, then on north toward Currituck Sound, over wilderness areas I cruised above in Annabelle. I am happy to see that great stretches of green are still there just as they were fifteen years ago.

In no time we're entering the flight pattern at Kitty Hawk – where Justin the Kid takes the controls and lands the airplane.

We walk over to the scene of the first motored flight. Orville flew by manually wing-warping and controlling the rudder with a hip strap. The elevator, controlled with a stick lever, was in front rather than back; and he flew only twelve seconds on that first flight into the steady wind that's a gift to North Carolina's shoreline. There was no cockpit. I think about Justin taking him for a ride in the Cirrus. He'd be older than me even.

I learn that Wilbur and Orville each flew two short flights on that cold windy day back in 1903, and that just after the last flight their airplane was totaled when the wind blew it over. Nobody was hurt. Were their hearts broken?  Did a little lamp go out in one of their self-confidence rooms?  I doubt it. They got back on their horse. And they didn't wait fifteen years.

We hang around until just before sunset. There will be two more legs to this flight: the first, to take Johnny home to Newport News, along the northern reaches of the Outer Banks. This should be his leg to get the left seat, and then I should have the left seat on the second and last leg – back to Wilmington. But by the time we get home it will be dark, and I know the Kid will not let me make that landing.

Johnny insists I fly his leg. "This is your gig," he says. "I was just invited along."  I argue, but only a little bit. I climb into the left front seat and take us off. Justin is beside me, and Johnny sits behind him again.

The sun is about to set as we fly north along North Carolina's northern-most barrier island. The sky and islands, bays, and inlets of Currituck Sound are bathing in a dusty orange glow as the sun touches the horizon. On the land below I find the spot where, during sunsets in December, I've watched wild swans circle once, then again, drop their feet, set their wings, and touch down. Seen from the cockpit, the earth below gets no lovelier than during this hour before dark, when it seems so at peace.

I ask Justin if I might do some "slow flight," to see how the airplane handles at slow speeds. He says sure. I'm thinking that if I do well, he may decide to let me land at Newport News.  I slow the airplane to about eighty knots and make left and right turns. If you can imagine a sloppy, tires-spinning-in-the-mud kind of feel – that's how most single-engine airplanes perform during slow flight turns. But this little Cirrus – she turns as precisely and solidly as a new automobile on asphalt.

I fly the airplane past the end of the northern-most highway along the coast. Below is only a beach trail into Virginia and the headlight beams of vehicles driving  to and from a community of beach houses nearby. I fly into Newport News, into the traffic pattern, and then onto final approach. Justin is saying something about "nice energy management," … and the Kid allows me to keep right on flying … right on flying into the flare, and we're hanging just above touchdown, floating down the runway. It feels good, it feels right.

We touch down. "Great landing," Johnny laughs from the back seat. Even the Kid seems impressed. Yes, I did it. Mother Luck was with me. I greased it on.

I'm back on my horse. The lamp lights up again.