December 30, 2008 by Sanjay.

Professionally, 2008 was indeterminate. Muddy. My experience starting a new venture is hard to compare with others’, especially given the amorphousness of consulting. But I confess that the ghosts of (regular) paychecks past have visited me more than once. I described the ups and downs of being self-employed to a childhood friend. Tridib put my ambivalence in stark relief by recalling our shared petite bourgeoisie upbringing in India. “Let’s face it,” he said, “you are basically a government servant type, as am I.” Ah, the bracing bluntness of old friends. Nevertheless, I remain determined to fight the entrepreneurial fight!

On the personal front, 2008 has been a year of highs. Chief among them was the opportunity to deepen and broaden my flying logbook. I flew two near-transcontinental trips – from California to Duluth, MN, thence to Springfield, IL and back, and a few weeks later, from California to Appleton, WI and back for that incomparable fly-in, Airventure. Each trip consumed an entire day, with actual flying time being in the 10+ hour range. The autopilot engaged and the plane purring contentedly, the long flight legs provided a great opportunity to observe and reflect.

Flying, as has been oft-observed, is humanity’s second-oldest collective dream, up there with immortality. To be above it all, to “slip the surly bonds of earth”, is divine sensation indeed. But flying is only partly sensual or spiritual. What it provides is a rarity in our circumscribed modern existence: a truly existential experience. No other enterprise places one so actively in the moment: existence precedes essence. The pilot’s actions determine the lived reality.

This connection is far more visceral than people who only fly commercial realize. In the few moments of take-off in a small place, you feel the earth’s slipping grasp as you as you escape her embrace. Within a few minutes, you feel her below you change from protective habitation to an incomprehensibly alien desolation wilderness.

And then, there is the magical experience of being in charge. A trained private pilot, in a well-maintained aircraft, is unambiguously in command. Not the air traffic controller. Not his boss or boss’s boss. Not even – for once – his wife! Before the flight, he decides on the route and stops. During the flight, he decides how to address the vicissitudes of weather and circumstance. After the flight, he decides what he takes from that particular flight by how he analyzes and logs it. Very little in life is so purpose-driven.

After all that analysis though, I return to the notion that the attraction of flight is elemental. Purely child’s play. The Kiwi poet Allen Curnow expresses it beautifully in A Time of Day:

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A small charge for admission. Believers only.
Who present their tickets where a five-
barred farm gate grapes on its chain and will file on to the thinly grassed paddock.
Out of the afternoon pearl-dipped light the
dung-green biplane descendedand will return later, and later, late as
already it is. We are all born
of cloud again, in a caulof linen lashed to the air-frame of the age
smelling of the scorched raw castor oil
nine whirling cylinders pelt

up-country-smelling senses with, narcotic
joyrides, these helmeted barnstormers
heavier scented than hay,

harnesses, horsepiss, fleeces, phosphates and milk
under the fingernails. I’m pulling at
my father’s hand Would the little

boy for selling the tickets? One helmet smiles
bending over yes, please let me,
my father hesitates, I

pull and I don’t let go.

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Happy 2009!

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June 6, 2008 by Sanjay.

It’s mid-morning, the week after the Ides of March. Homeward bound from Las Vegas, this time on the northern route over Mammoth and Yosemite. Approached from the east, the ridgelines of the Eastern Sierra run uniformly higher than 10,000 feet, the peaks over 13,000. Abeam the Casa Diablo Mountains, I begin negotiating with 3CD about climbing to 12,500 feet – to stay clear of the high terrain and appropriately high over the protected John Muir Wilderness Area – and turn westward from my previous northwest heading.

I have been dropped by Joshua Approach; the high desert is too topographically challenging and too sparsely trafficked for low altitude radar coverage. No need to talk, I turn up the volume as Amanda fades out and Joni sings her signature sepia blues

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
…
The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you

An unexpected alarm! At first I don’t even recognize that it’s the cell phone and stare at the gauges in confusion. Here? I’m getting a phone call at 11,000 feet over Lake Crowley? Hail technology! It’s my neighbor Bob, likely calling about our joint foray into commercial real estate barony. We have just begun the process of unraveling our partnership less than six months after anteing up for a “sure thing” office property. Dreams and false alarms.

I turn away from Bob’s call and begin looking for evidence of potentially interesting winds funneling through the high pass now straight ahead. Better to go up to 13,500 feet until clear of the pass. 3CD doesn’t protest but wallows hypoxically: till you get there yourself you never really know. Mono Lake, a shimmering mirror on the right, reveals a serration of inverted peaks.

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
Like icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms

Unexpectedly, I feel the prickling of tears. Could I be hypoxic? But I’m not remotely euphoric. I square 42 in my head without using my flight pad. After a few minutes I struggle out with 1764. No worse than I do at sea level. Not hypoxic, I think. Music-induced nostalgia; the response that can well me up during an Olympics commercials. I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude, and looking down on everything.

I switch the heading bug again, this time to 220⁰. Time to stop scribbling on the pad and re-lean the engine. 3CD smooths out at 8.1 gallons per hour, but cylinder 4 is still giving me the finger on the EMAX display. I turn my attention out and below. The ground is high and close now. Frozen lakes. A ski gondola hut reminds me of James Bond. It’s only March, so snow everywhere. I’m over the pass. Yosemite is ahead to the right. I reprogram the GPS direct to Mariposa airport and twist the heading bug.

I was 10 when I first saw an airplane at close range, Didi was on standby and she let me check out an Indian Airlines HS-748 “Avro” at Palam on a foggy Delhi morning. Today, here over the Sierra Nevada, it is severe clear. Ridgelines to each side and far to the west. Then nothing. The world ends. Alison sings.

Now that I found you
I built my world around you

Soon Joni is back. This time she’s obsessing improbably over boom-boom-pachyderms in a blue motel room. The ground below me is covered only in white bedspreads. A small open field below has four pines marching across it like an advance column supporting a Sherman battalion in the Ardennes.

Half Dome and the deep groove of Yosemite Valley below and Joan is right, there’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin. I’ve been up high for 25 minutes now; I need to bleed off 9,000 feet in the next 20 minutes. Mt. Boullion moves to the center of the windshield. I reset the autopilot, disconnecting the attitude hold. Emmylou flew here once, I’m sure.

I don’t want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there’s life below
…
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn

In summer this is prime forest fire country abuzz with air tankers and muddy with smoke. But not this early in the year. Besides, as of January, the Sierra snow pack is at 160% of its historic levels. This will be a very good year.

Mariposa does not have a control tower. But it does have cheap aviation gasoline and a very nice municipally-run pilot lounge. 15 miles out, I announce my position and intentions on the airport frequency. A student pilot with a lovely Spanish accent is working on getting her landings just right. Funny that getting back on the ground without bending metal is the trickiest part of learning to fly. I will learn later that she began flight training at this airport, moved away, began working with another instructor, and now returns on weekends to finish up with her original instructor.

I’ve been in the air for over an hour and a half, hydrating actively to combat the thin dry air. I feel an imminent urge to inspect the excellent facilities in the lounge. On cue, Hiromi peps into Desert Moon. I ignore the discomfort in my ears and steepen the descent to 1500 feet per minute. Ahead, I see the student pilot touch the runway, and then her engine roars. Slowly, her 172 wins its struggle with gravity.

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