A long trip home

Cessna 210

Toward the end of the trip to Miami Beach with my buddies, I called my dad. He told me that a friend of his was flying a private plane to Chicago from Ft. Lauderdale, and that I could hitch a ride. I asked if I could bring a friend along, and he said it would be fine. I told my crane-climbing pal Jim that he was welcome to fly back with me in a private plane. He jumped at the opportunity. It would be his first time up in a small aircraft.

We met the pilot, Roger, on the airport tarmac and soon buckled in, with me in the copilot seat and Jim in back. Roger taxied the Cessna 210 to the end of the runway, applied full throttle and in seconds we rose steeply into clear skies.

The plane leveled off at 7000 feet. The dark green everglades glistened below in the bright sunlight. Jim seemed content as he looked out the back window. 20 minutes later, Roger tilted the plane and pointed to the left to get a better look at lake Okeechobee. "Fresh water alligators," he said above the loud din of the engine. I nodded, happy to be high above the spiny reptiles.

From a mile and a half above the ground, the country is mostly made up of green and brown rectangular plots of land. Occasionally, large cities and small towns pop up, then more rectangular plots for many miles.

An hour north of Lake Okeechobee, I noticed Roger checking control panel instruments. "I think we have a slight skip in the engine," he calmly said, adding "I just felt in the seat of my pants." Sure enough, a minute or two later I felt a slight vibration under me.

"Don't worry, I could land this plane in the middle of the mountains and we'd all walk away from it," Roger said. I looked back at Jim. He remained silent but looked like he had just seen a ghost.

My leather seat vibrated again, a little stronger than the last time. The propeller seemed to be functioning fine and there was no telltale skipping sound. The brief vibration repeated about every ten to twenty minutes. Roger told us we'd be landing in Macon Georgia to evaluate the situation. A half our later, we descended through light clouds and softly touched down. I was happy to be on the ground and Jim seemed very relieved.

Roger called my dad and they concurred that the engine problem didn't seem too serious. We would proceed to Chicago. I was a bit surprised, but went along with the plan. After all, how else were Jim and I going to get home that evening?

We ambled back into the plane and took off for the three-hour trip to Chicago. For the first hour the vibration seemed to have disappeared. A half hour later it was back, this time with a bit more intensity. Roger did not seem overly concerned. I was worried, but thanks to Roger's attitude, not scared out of my pants. We were now over central Indiana, and the sun had just set over the horizon.

Then it happened--so fast there was no time to soil my pants. The engine took a major skip, almost losing power. Roger reacted immediately, nosing the plane down to avoid stalling and adjusting the throttle. The engine kicked back in and we leveled off.

"That's it," Roger declared. "We'll land in Terra Haute. I'm not going to fly this thing at night." He guided it down for another perfect landing. We were all relieved to be on terra firma in Terra Haute, the dirt-track racing capital of the world. We boarded a commercial turboprop for the final two hundred miles to Chicago; a nice large plane--with two engines.

He climbed that too

StevieG, 16, Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan Mexico

The climb

At the age of 16, I took a spring break vacation to Miami Beach Florida with three high school buddies, Jim, Irwin and Barry. We split the bill at a cheap motel on the inner coastal waterway. By day, we hung out at hotel pools along Collins Avenue, and chased girls. At night, we hung out at Big Daddy's Lounge listening to Barry White music, and chased girls. No one bothered to card us, so we drank a few beers.

One afternoon, Jim and I stopped at a construction site next to the Singapore Hotel. A large crane stood dormant and there were no workers around. The steel ball at the top of the crane was level with the 11th story of the Singapore, about 110 feet high. I can't remember who first came up with the idea. We decided to climb the crane that night.

At about 9 PM that evening, we donned our Converse basketball shoes (for a tight grip) and headed for the site. At the bottom of the crane, we looked up, and then at each other, a little nervous. Sure it was dangerous, but the adventure far outweighed the danger or the risk of getting caught.

Like most standard cranes, the bars of the superstructure crossed in an X with a supporting bottom bar, all the way up. After a test climb of 10 feet, we came down and decided that it was no problem. We started to climb. 30 feet up, we paused to rest and look around.

At about 70 feet, we rested again and took in the sights. The warm fragrant wind blew in our faces as we tried to contain our excitement. We had done alot of crazy things in high school, but nothing could quite match this. We pressed on. At 90 feet, the ball at the top was clearly in sight.

Ten minutes later, we reached the top, touched the steel ball and settled into sitting positions. Small points of light dotted the ocean horizon. Collins Avenue traffic stretched north and south for miles as people walked a short distance from the unlit construction site.

We started down twenty minutes later. Methodically, in no rush, we negotiated every steel bar perfectly in a rhythm that kept us together on opposite sides of the superstructure. Pausing again at about the same levels as on the way up, I half-expected the police to be waiting for us at the bottom.

The coast was clear. We scurried down the final 10 feet and hopped off the crane laughing our hearts out. We did it!

Over the years, I have told very few people about the experience. I save it mostly for myself during those times when I need to call on a reserve of pride and strength. A while back, I read somewhere that people rarely look up as they go about their daily business. So true--so true.

Stuck in Why

We left Tucson that morning feeling good about our trip to the Sea of Cortez in the upper most reaches of the Baja Peninsula. Our destination that day—Puerto Penasco--a sleepy Mexican seaport with a long stretch of white beach and interesting local beer joints.

Heading west along I-10, the desert stretched to the horizon on all sides. Occasionally, tin shacks of the Papago Indian Reservation dotted the side of the highway.

I had made this trip several times before, though never in a beater Chevy. Sure enough, three hours out of Tucson, the engine’s temperature gauge inched upward. 15 minutes later, a loud knocking in the engine; the car heaved like a wounded whale.

We pulled over, and flagged down a passing motorist. The man said he would notify a tower in Ajo to come pick us up. An hour later, Fred Nixon of Fred Nixon towing agency hooked the Chevy onto his truck and we were on our way. We had a look at the Map. The highway diverged in twenty miles at Why Arizona. “Just drop us off in Why. You can have the car,” Phil said. The dust from Fred’s truck lingered in the air a long time as he hightailed it out of Why, which was not exactly a town but rather a crossroads with one general store and gas station.

Dust devils formed a hundred yards out in the desert. Roadrunners skittered around near us as we stood under the sign “270 miles to Tucson.” We stuck out our thumbs at passing motorists. Having no luck, we approached an RV in the General Store parking lot and got the attention of the driver. “Hi there,” Phil said in the most pleasant voice he could muster. “We’re trying to get back to Tucson.”

The driver gave us a cold hard stare and said in a southern drawl, “Well, I don’t right like hitchhikers.” We explained that we're not really hitchhikers, but that our car had broke down. He had a few words with his wife, decided that we were ok, and told us to hop in. His Doberman Pincher kept us company in the back of the RV all the way back to Tucson.

UFO hunting in Tucson

The woman who published a small libertarian newspaper asked me, “Do you want to come UFO hunting with us tonight?” This would be a first for me, so I gamely accepted her invitation.

With my Pentax and tripod in tow, we picked up the others, bought a case of beer, and headed twenty miles NW of Tucson to a spot near the former Titan missile silo complex.

I quickly learned the art of UFO hunting. Drink some beer, erect tripod and camera, open up the aperture all the way, set on time exposure, and wait.......and wait.........and wait. Bats darted about, picking off small insects with the efficiency of a Hoover. There was a little conversation among us, but not so much as to ruin the effect of our mission--to locate and photograph aliens.

On the way to the location, the woman told me that her boyfriend was a hybrid, half human and half alien. She referred to him as a Visitor. I was happy she left him at home that night, and didn't bother to ask which parent was the alien, though I hoped it was the father.

I downed my fourth beer quickly, and looked to the Southwest. A blinking light above the horizon caught my eye. I alerted the others to it. It must be a plane, I thought, but it wasn't very high in the sky and the light was too irregular for a beacon. I stared hard and got behind my camera's 300 mm telephoto lens. A thin dark outline broke the arc of the sky 20 degrees behind the light. It was the edge of a mountain range, and the blinking light was a car traversing a tree-lined mountain road.

The aliens were probably two college students looking for a secluded spot.

Arizona ghost town

“So where did ya come in from,?” Dan asks.

I told him I had come from Tucson by way of Tombstone, and he kidded that I was a city slicker. I didn't bother telling him about my home town Chicago. Tuffy reached for a lighter inside his jacket to strike up a camel dangling from his lip. He sat still, silent, with a wry smile.

I asked Dan about the photograph inside the bar of two dead animals dangling from a pole. He nodded toward Tuffy.

“Proudest day of my life,” Tuffy said. “Bagged a mountain lion and a deer on the same hunt.”

I sat there for an hour with the two gentleman, asking questions about the area, its history, and other people that lived there. Besides our conversation, the only sound you could hear were leaves rustling in the wind. When it died down, total silence.

Gleeson had once been a bustling mining town in the 1800s, with a population over 5000. A steady decline set in after the copper ore was depleted in the 50’s. Dan’s mother had taught school in the one room schoolhouse. Dan stayed on at the family ranch to raise cattle. Gleeson now has a population of 12, which swells by a few if anyone is staying in the trailer park.

I thanked Dan and Tuffy for their time, told them I had all I needed to write my article, and was on my way. They told me to come visit again. The 70 miles back to Tucson was filled with thoughts of a most extraordinary experience, one I knew I would always remember. And I have.