Flying Carpet

One Day You'll Look Back...

I was on the ramp at Denver Centennial Airport, preflighting the Flying Carpet for our long flight home to Phoenix, when the young fueler arrived at the airplane. Bryan was his name, and as he neatly topped the tanks without spilling a drop, I asked if he was a pilot.

"Workin' on my commercial," he said with justifiable pride. "One day I'm going to be an airline pilot." Then, while he serviced the tires, we talked about his flying, his studies, and his plans for the future.

"Ever do any pleasure flying?" I asked, rolling the plane fore and aft so he could chase the tire valve inside the left wheel fairing.

"Yeah," he answered. "There's a girl I know in Ames, Iowa. I just got back from visiting her there last weekend."

"That's quite a trip," I said. "What did you fly?"

"A Cessna 172 - took just over 14 hours round trip."

He then told me about this special girl, how they'd met at a concert, how she's in Denver every summer but he tries to fly out and see her once a month during the school year.

"Lots of instrument flying on that trip," I observed.

"That's for sure," Bryan responded. "I've learned plenty!"

I, in turn, told him about my own long-ago flying romance, shuttling the much shorter trip back and forth between Champaign, Illinois, and Indianapolis.

"It was great fun," I reminisced. "And in the course of it I tapped every friend I ever had and then some to ride along and share the cost."

As we moved to the right wheel, Bryan began telling me of his pilot friend who shares the expenses and the flying on those lengthy Iowa trips. But my own thoughts had rolled back 25 years, to flights in the Flying Illini Piper Cherokee and Cessna 172. It was only an hour flight each way to visit my girlfriend, but the weather was often challenging.

I remembered flying the landing pattern for Eagle Creek Airport over a blue reservoir brimming with sailboats. And sneaking into dorms at Butler University to visit a bubbly dark-haired girl with sparkling eyes and a knack for wisecracks.

On my first flight to Indianapolis I couldn't find Shank Airport, where we were originally supposed to meet. It turned out that, although it was still on the chart, it had closed several months earlier. Somehow we managed to find each other anyway.

Another time we departed Champaign together on a trip to her home but returned after takeoff because of snowy weather. The conditions were too slick for my old Chrysler convertible, so I drove her back in my roommate's drafty VW bug with the hole in the floor.

We made other special flights together, to faraway places like Rochelle, Illinois, for her brother's wedding, and to Madison, Wisconsin. Then there was my embarrassing emergency bathroom landing on the long trip from Champaign to Beloit in a Cessna 150... not so cool for a young man trying to impress his girlfriend.

"Hey," Bryan interrupted my reverie. "Can you push the plane back a hair? I can't reach the valve inside the nosewheel fairing."

I pushed.

"Ever fly faster airplanes on that long trip to Ames?" I asked, seeking to return to the conversation and to the memories.

"I did check out in a 172 RG-you know, for my commercial," he replied. "But after all, one objective is to get flight hours, so there's no point in taking a faster plane." He paused for a moment. "Besides, I don't plan to be flying this little stuff for long anyway. I'll be flying jets!"

By now Bryan had almost finished cleaning the windshield. He asked a polite question or two about the Flying Carpet and how long it would take to get back to Phoenix. Then he walked to fuel the truck, stopping just before he got there to throw the windshield cleaner inside. But before getting in, he turned in my direction as if by afterthought.

"Say," he said, brow furrowed as I hadn't seen it during our brief conversation. "Hope you don't mind me asking....But what ever happened to that girl you used to visit?"

"Huh?"

"That girl you flew over to see, you know, in Indianapolis..."

"She married me."

"Great!" he said, suddenly beaming, "because I'm hoping this girl will marry me, too!"

With that he shook my hand warmly, climbed into the cab, revved up the engine, and drove away.

There wasn't time to tell Bryan what was going through my mind at that moment, and probably it's just as well, because he'll have to travel that airway himself to believe it.

But one day, I desperately wanted to tell him, 20 years from now when he's commanding a Boeing 777, he's going to ease back in his seat, having completed the cruise checklist, and say to his young first officer, "You know, this airline flying is a blast, but did I ever tell you about the best flying I ever did?"

"Was it one of those old Learjets you flew on your way up the ladder?" his first officer will ask.

"Nope," Bryan will reply. "The best flying of my life was a 14-hour round trip I made every month during college in a Cessna 172, all the way from Denver to Ames, Iowa, to see a very special girl there. And do you know what?"

"What?"

"She married me!"

Filled with those warm thoughts, I left the airplane and walked from the ramp out to the parking lot, from there to drive to a nearby hotel and pick up a dark-haired, sparkly-eyed girl who by now would be done with her business meeting and ready for the long flight home.

The best flying I've ever done, I thought to myself.