Night Flight

I shifted my weight a bit on the fender of the car, feeling the warmth from the engine creeping up my bare legs. The sky to the west was still showing the warmth of the day although night, dark night had taken over most of the sky. The lights of the taxi way looked like hovering fire flies caught in a net of dark to make them unmoving.

Swish, swish of the security guards bicycle as he pedaled himself around the parking area paying attention to the lounging stranger yet acting as if he didn’t care. Clearly, at less than five foot two I posed no danger to him – although one might note that many of the population around here seemed to be between that height and five foot six. In any case I deserved no more than a noting glace. How did I come to be here in so casual a lounge? Night flight? Who would have thought that I would jump in a plane and cruise over a metropolitan area with the only other choices being mountainous terrain or black ocean. Love of flying, I feel my chest tighten and my heart race a little as I thought of soaring aloft … but at night?

I was reminded of the short flight the other day, a quick course along the north-west edge of the Island, a generous gift from a flying friend. Funny, funny, at home I would NEVER, ever jump in a plane to go anywhere with only sandals and there I was, locked in a strange kind of soul freeing ecstasy. The offer came and spontaneously I thought it the best deal of day spent painting the compass rose. We soared and watched the evidence of a whale breach, the foamy testament to its presence below the surface. With an eye to the gliders, tow planes, ultra-lights and the more insistent drone of the big brother twin, laden with those who would leave a perfectly functioning aircraft, we came in on final with a lovely view of our recent handiwork to the left, marking the lines only visible through the urging of the whiskey compass.

We spoke briefly of the possibility of a night flight, the aviatrix saying it would only be brief, if it were to occur at all. Brief? Brief, says I, the quintessential family pup when it comes to airplane rides! My thinking being, even to sit in a plane with the engine running and the potential of flight, even that stirred my heart. “Call me, call me if we can make this happen.”, I asked.

The night had grown in its velvet closeness as idly I snapped a few night shots of the runway and a couple of aircraft landing, knowing full well that they would be the pits as my camera just wasn’t up to the task. Hugh, bulky thing that it was, gazillion pixels but not of them particularly efficient at night. I resumed my roost on the fender waiting and listening to the call of what I later learned were small birds that inhabit the airport grounds. To me, neither knowing bats nor rats, I was convinced it was one of the two, more so, bats as they seemed to communicate with each other here, then there, then somewhere else and sometimes more than one.

Headlight appeared at the parking entrance and soon the car was pulled in opposing mine. “I have to get out of my high heels and into my flying boots”, she said. “Oh and I have tee shirts, we’ll talk later”.

Expertly she performed the preflight for the little Musketeer, after calling out to her as we walked across the asphalt. It sounded like “How are you baby” – maybe I made that up, maybe that’s what I WOULD have said, always sensing that aircraft, at some level, have the soul of a gallant steed and certainly for me, seemed to know my fears and capitalize on them.

The single piston came to life with no prodding, the instruments were bathed in sight-saving crimson as various values, trends and measures were noted, permission to taxi was granted. The radio transmissions were all garbled to my ear but the pilot responded with confidence and decisiveness; from her end of the conversation I was able to discern the runway, hold shorts and other instructions.

As we crossed one runway to our take off position I noted the light of a “heavy” reaching out to us and I momentarily wondered if he would make the correct choice – “of course”, I’m thinking, anything to make this more dramatic. We are cleared, the small plane, anxious to join the dark sky lifts easily off the runway and we head over to the freeway, our assigned position for our outward bound leg.

Dark, dark gaping areas, large, large ones, which envelop the Island edge, I know are ocean; the smaller ones, Diamond Head Crater, Coco Head, Eva plains. The lights of the city are like precious stones thrown across a velvet cloth, the undulations, the result of the folds and crevices of the cloth. Downtown and Waikiki are remarkable in the attempt of their lights to reach up and out. We see a cruise ship headed out to see. Tonight those folks will retire fresh from Honolulu, tomorrow to experience a new island. It is dwarfed on the ocean but we know it is a large ship just in relation to the lights around it. We can maybe see some light on Molokai; we believe this in our minds and have no taste for flying across the water to confirm our guess.

My ears are attune to the engine; it misses no beat, the idea of carb ice, foreign to this little beauty. Still, in some corner of my heart I wonder what the options are. We radio to confirm our 180 to return to the airport and on our return I am struck by the slashes of continuous light, known as the H1, H2 and H3. The H2 somehow strikes me in its tidiness, perhaps because I was on that freeway just the other day, having had more luck than planning, getting on to it so that I could get to Dillingham. It is much less tidy and defined at ground level. I am strangely conscience of my book bag at my feet, hoping that it is secure and will not coil itself around the rudder pedals like some treacherous beast should the little plane buck, shiver or otherwise misbehave. This is a very odd preoccupation given the craft has not given us one moment of concern and the bag has not moved an inch since our takeoff. While I note this, I explain it to myself as anxiety as I am not a night flyer and have huge doubts about the naturalness of flying at night – all excuses for my failure to achieve the rating I suppose, but that is a whole other story ….

We begin our transition …..