Now I must say that flying in what looks like a funky go-cart with wings and a lawnmower engine was never high on my list of must-do’s. In fact, flying in anything smaller than a 200-passenger jet was never on my list of want-to-do’s.
Suffering from a fairly acute sense of vertigo and fear of heights, not to mention the occasional bout of motion sickness, getting into a bucket seat supported by thin Dacron “skins” and aluminum struts and flying several thousand feet above the ground with nothing, and I mean nothing, between me and the ground (we’re talkin’ legs dangling in the fresh air here), didn’t seem like a relaxed thing for me to be doing.
But hey, life is all about expanding our boundaries, right? So when James asked, on our first afternoon there, if either of us wanted to go up in an ultralight flight with him, I gallantly volunteered Chelsea to go first.
Dying of curiosity and anxiety (the anxiety was for me, knowing I’d be going up next), I couldn’t wait for Chelsea to get back. After being on the road so long with each other, Chelsea and I have learned how to communicate with each other with small shrugs, a look, an eyebrow, or only a few carefully chosen words, and this was one of those times. Chelsea looked windblown and delighted, and spoke volumes when she simply said, quietly in an aside to me, “I think you’ll like it… it’s not too bad…”, and gave me a grin.
I knew I was doomed. I’d have to try it.
So suddenly here I am, settling in, strapping on the seat belt, fitting the headphones, concentrating on the small stuff, waving to those staying on the ground…getting my hand firmly on the strut to my right, making sure my feet are on the pedals properly (omigod, the pedals are moving and I can’t control it!), we’re taxiing down the runway, and now we’re in the air!
I confess I had to relax my hand from the struts periodically during the flight (I was gripping so tightly my muscles were cramping), and I had to do a fair bit of deep breathing when we’d bank into turns, or hit a thermal, but I don’t think I left any permanent indentations on the struts from my hand clutching it so tightly. I was thrilled and terrified in equal parts, and the minute we landed, I wanted to go back up again.
Chelsea and I quickly compared notes on the ground. On her flight, James had cut the engine from quite high up, and they had simply glided in to a landing, with no engine sound at all. She was rhapsodic, telling me about it, and I was so jealous!
Then we both got really distracted, as there were a number of other pilots there by that time, and it was great fun talking to everyone. I wanted to ask James a question, but he was leaving to go up again for one last flight (the sun had already set) so I ran after him, calling out the question as I followed him. He turned around and asked if I wanted to go up. The thrill and the terror battled each other for about a second, but the thrill won, and up I went for my second ride.
This time the thrill was definitely outweighing the terror. James cut the engine for me, too, and it was just unbelievable to be up there in the sky, with only the wind in our hair, with no engine, gliding slowly down onto the airfield at sunset.
The next morning Chelsea and I were hanging around, enjoying the silence and the view, when we spotted a guy in the hangar. He saw us and came over to say hi and chat awhile. Turns out we had just met Fred Campbell Jr., an awesome guy, and destined to become a big part of our lives. After chatting awhile, we discovered that he owned his own 2-seater ultralight. He’d just gotten it the prior November, but he is so enamored of the flying, that he is up in the air at every possible opportunity.
Despite the fact that the winds were gusting up to 30 mph at times, Fred offered to take one of us up for a ride, and since Chelsea only had one ride to my two the day before, she went up. She came back with that same rapturous look on her face.
Much to my amazement, Fred offered to take me up next! Having the big gusts of wind hitting us ramped up the terror level, I must admit, but it was exhilarating at the same time. When we landed, the wind was really buffeting us, but Fred laid that plane down like a newborn baby. I felt completely confident the whole time, just excited that I had really gone up in the air, and in all that wind!
It’s hard to pin down what is so captivating about the flying. Perhaps the most amazing feeling is floating up in the air with so much silence. Yes, those lawnmower engines are noisy, but we wear headphones and communicate with the pilot by the headset, so it gives a feeling of being up in silence, drifting.
And it’s an amazing sensory experience with the wind and the currents in our hair, blowing our shirt tails and pants legs.
Have you ever watched birds floating and soaring up in the thermals? Many times it looks like they are just playing in the wind and the drafts. Then there are the times when they are clearly getting from place to place, focused and flapping steadily, headed out or headed home.
That’s the way it is in the ultralights. We’ll float around, taking in the sights, rising with the thermals above a hot field, feeling the turbulence of an approaching rain squall, getting buffeted with side winds. And then there are times when we are traveling to get to a certain spot, so there’s a sense of purpose and direction. We are buzzing steadily along, and it feels like a car ride, but infinitely more peaceful and far more interesting from a sensory point of view.
Another amazing part of the flying is getting to see things from such a different perspective. Here we are up above everything! We get to see so many things that we would never get to see on the ground, and we get such a sense of perspective seeing the “big picture” from the air. There’s no road through the fields, but we get to see everything in the fields –the trees, the cattle, the weeds, the old abandoned shed, the roseate spoonbill feeding in the crawfish pond.
We couldn’t possibly list everything we’ve seen, but you can check out our photo galleries. Chelsea got some beautiful photos of the Vermilion River, where we stayed for 3 weeks at the Schexnaider’s.
We saw the infamous Lake Peigneur, where the oil rig hit the salt mines and caused them to cave in and flood, sucking the barges in with them. We saw the salt mines and Avery Island at a distance in one direction and in other directions we saw the airport in New Iberia, the airport in Leroy, and the Cajun Dome in Lafayette.
We saw cock-fighting farms and horse farms. We saw the barge where Fred worked on a dredging job in the Vermilion River. We got to see a barge in the Vermilion River that hauls the limestone/shale and Fred showed us the asphalt plant where they truck the shale from the barges. We saw the airport at Abbeville and really interesting individual homes. Rosemary got to see Rayne from the air, and follow Interstate 10, and she got to chase the cars on Hwy 67 at 80-85 mph. Chelsea saw Vermilion Bay (Intracoastal City) and the menhaden factories. We saw crops of all kinds – sugarcane, soybeans, cattle, crawfish ponds, and rice.
Chelsea went flying above the clouds; we both went hedgehopping; Rosemary and Fred flirted with the edge of a rainsquall, narrowly escaping a rainstorm. We flew on calm days and in heavier winds. We went up in an aerobatics plane with Greg, and Chelsea did several rolls and a loop (upside down) with him. We each had a chance to be with James when he cut the engine and glided in to land in awesome silence. We saw the Schexnaider house from the air several times, buzzing it once; we checked out every bridge in the area. We played in the clouds; took photos plane to plane; played in the thermals; touched down on crop duster airstrips; and did a touchdown on Steen Road. We chased roseate spoonbills, wood storks and white egrets. We learned about crawfish farming and rice farming. And we fell in love with flying in a way we could never have believed.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr