May 16th 2008
"Fly Away Home"
By now, most of you who have kept up with my blog know that I have built a plane and (at the time of this writing) am in the process of flying it from Washington State, back east - Home. After considering the blog format, and the tedious scrolling required to read the "journal" I’m keeping throughout this odyssey, I've decided to make this a standalone article that could be printed out and read if desired or, at the very least, read in a normal, linear format. Either way, this is my story of building an airplane and flying it across the country!
The Back Ground
I think the first thing I should explain, is the big WHY? Why fly? Why buy a plane? Why build a plane? And, of course, why fly a small single engine plane across the continental United States - especially this time of year? I'll start at the beginning.
I, like many other current pilots, have always wanted to fly. When I was thirteen years old, my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I didn't even think about the response before I blurted out "I want to fly!" I had heard of a classmate of mine whose parents had started him with flying lessons at age 13 and I wanted in. After finding out where this classmate of mine was currently learning to fly (Essex Skypark in Essex, Maryland) and after procuring a "Learn to Fly" flyer from my buddy, I had finally convinced my Mom to give me a single lesson for my birthday under the condition that I prove to her that I was serious. There were always "conditions" to everything growing up in my house; good or bad. If I wanted something - I had to always earn it in some way conditionally, and likewise, if I did something bad; the "conditions" were translated into "consequences" which were always designed to fit the crime so to speak. While not always fun, it was always a hell of a lot better than paying some arbitrary price for doing wrong. i.e. if I was running with juice over carpet after being warned not too, I wasn't sent to my room. Instead I learned how to steam clean the entire carpet - strange thing to experience at 6 yrs old. Anyway, to prove to my Mom that I was serious about flying, I checked a book out of the public library called "How to Fly Light Planes." I read it cover to cover about three times; something that, for me, was quite a feat as I never really enjoyed reading that much, always preferring to be out building contraptions and forts. Presenting my library card record to Mom was timed perfectly to coincide with the big day: July 28th, 1985; age 13.
True to her word (she was always true to her word - something I have always admired in both her and my Dad) she loaded my tiny frame into the car and drove me about an hour to the regional airport. I mention my small size only to elicit the determination of both my mother and me to fly that day. Upon showing up to the airport and telling the airport staff that her son was here for a lesson, they took one look at me and apologetically said they would only teach folks thirteen years old and older. My mother and I both loudly declared "I'm/He's thirteen today." Then came the, "I'm sorry he's simply too short - he won't be able to see over the dashboard..." Luckily, the instructor, a man who appeared to be about 65 yrs old, overheard the ensuing conversation and broke in and said "No problem I have pillows. Come on son let's fly!" I followed this man out to the plane, a Cessna 172, telling him everything I knew about flying that I had learned from my book. I wanted him to know that I was serious too. By the time we reached the plane it was clear that I had succeeded as he made a big production about asking ME where we should begin the pre-flight inspection, and what to look for when I sumped the gas drains.
Proudly declaring my answers in as much aero-tech-ease that I could muster, we became instant buddies. Having earned this seasoned pilot's respect, he knew I was serious! At least he must have been amused... I'll never forget my Mom sitting on the bench outside the FBO (a pilot acronym for "Fixed Base Operation" or "small airport terminal" in lay-speak) with my good buddy Steven Samarodin as I climbed into this giant bird (it looked big to me anyway), up on top of the pillows, and strapped in to the left seat; the captain's seat. Glancing one last time over at my Mom, I expected her expression to be one of concern but instead what I saw was pride, 100% pride. Even then I wasn't entirely sure why it hit me this way, but I knew it felt amazing.
There's something I think we tend to forget as we get older. Kids can read people better than anyone else. It's survival I think; especially when it comes to reading our parents for moods, mental states, and likelihood to give us something we want. For me, the greatest thing on earth was making my parents proud. Conversely the worst thing in the world to me was letting them down. To this day my biggest fear in the world is letting anyone down. But this day was heaven. After a beautiful flight over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and after experiencing the power and exhilaration of controlling this amazing machine above the earth for about an hour, we landed and picked up my Mom and Steve for a 1 hour Chesapeake Bay tour - with me still doing most of the flying. Unfortunately, our family finances were not such that taking lessons regularly was an option at the time, though the experience had impregnated in me an unparalleled desire to fly. I needed to fly as soon, as often, and in as many different types of aircraft that I could. The next summer my Dad picked up the torch and ran with it. For my 14th birthday he bought me hang gliding lessons at Kitty Hawk Kites in Nags Head, North Carolina. Another wacky story where I was too light for the hanglider, so I went to weigh in only after downing 2 pizzas and with my clothes still wet from a dip in the ocean. I squeezed by with a 1/2 lb to spare (I’ve always been big on overkill). Now that my flight-career-opus has been delivered, I'll just follow up to say that I went on to become a regular skydiver, paraglider, and paramotor pilot. The next logical step for me was to hop back in that single engine magic carpet and fulfill a thirteen-year-old's dream of finally being a pilot; A REAL pilot.
Becoming a pilot is not cheap. I've heard recently that the average cost today is somewhere around $5,000. So it was with a four year run as the Host of "While You Were Out" on TLC, that I decided I had earned the right to treat myself to lessons. I began taking lessons the last year of taping the show in between cities. Over the course of a year I managed to accumulate enough hours and knowledge to pass both the written and practical tests with flying colors (pun intended). I was so enthralled with flying and wanted to share it so much that I gave my good friend Ryan "The Sound Guy" (from While You Were Out) a demo lesson for Xmas. The jerk went and managed to earn his pilot's license about a month ahead of me... Flying is a great addiction! And yes my wife LOVES to fly and can actually fly herself!
But what is it that draws me to flight? For everyone who flies the answer is very personal and I suppose I'm no exception. At thirteen, I'm not sure I even understood it other than answering a call that could only be described as a desperate need. Other than the obvious excitement of lifting off above the earth, and the power and freedom that comes from flying, I have since come to realize that for me the metaphor was as basic as they come. 
When I take off, it's just about the ONLY time I'm able to leave my problems behind me - or in this case "below me." I've lived a fairly intense life, and have (like most people) dealt with some pretty difficult life situations. There's never been a masseuse, a vacation, or even an exotic beach that could ever truly give me a break - something that I believe we all need from time to time in order to really heal. But the second I push that throttle in or launch my paraglider off the edge of a mountain I'm free. I'm 100% me in those moments. It's hard to describe, but all I can say is that it's my utopia. Nothing I've ever done on any scale has yet to compare with the simplest act of lifting up off the ground for a period of time.
So why build a plane? Well, now with my pilot's license in hand, I guess I somehow just knew that I'd eventually own a plane. I knew that I would eventually need 24/7 access to my "Utopia." Furthermore, I was never very comfortable renting airplanes. 
While it's extremely rare to have a problem with a rental plane (as they're held to a somewhat more stringent standard statistically than privately owned aircraft) I was always a little unsettled by being told "Oh she always runs a little hot" or "Yeah we've noticed that too and it's scheduled to go into maintenance in 2 hours - how long you plan on flying today?" Even doing the daily preflight inspections never really gave me the warm fuzzy feeling of - I know without a doubt, that this plane is 100% ready to fly. It occurred to me that there would likely be only two ways to have that 100% secure feeling; 1) go to Airframe and Power plant school (i.e. earn an A&P degree) or build a plane from the ground up. The latter seemed like a hell of a lot more fun and would yield an actual airplane in the end. After researching this last option, I discovered the Glasair, 2-Weeks-To-Taxi program while reading "Water Flying Magazine." I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to go through an intense "nothing-but-my-airplane-for-two-weeks-process," assembling each component under the best supervision available. Such a program, while far cheaper than buying an equivalent used, certified airplane, is still not cheap and a tough expense for me to justify to myself. So on the back burner it went.
This past summer, I was busy training for the NYC Marathon to raise money for Autism Speaks and had just about finished shooting the first of my newly formed Production Company's Pilots: "The $100 Hotdog." Since I had formed Bourgeois Farmer Productions with my good friend and colleague (David Bourgeois), I had declined several work opportunities to ensure the necessary time and concentration needed to build this new venture. At about the same time, my Mother began having problems with digestion relating to scar tissue from her Ovarian Cancer Surgery some 8 years earlier. She had announced to my sisters, Otto (her significant other) and I that she would be undergoing elective surgery so that should could eat normally again. 
I mention the "elective" aspect of it as she was currently winning her battle with ovarian cancer in many ways, but Mom always demanded a quality of life for herself - including eating like a normal person. This is the same woman who worked and raised children through 16 years of chemotherapy. Not eating good food was NOT an option and we all supported her decision to undergo the risky surgery. Risky, because any surgery involving the intenstines has a much higher risk of bacterial infection due to the nature of the bowels, even more so for a person with a compromised immune system. We were confident however because after all, she had gone through an equally risky surgery involving her lungs a year earlier and recovered better than expected. 
She always beat the odds. To a very large degree, her life story was entirely about beating the odds! Needless to say, my sisters and I rallied around to be with her for the surgery. I quickly realized how fortunate I was to not have a daily job commitment bearing down on me as it turned out that she would not do so well this time. Her brave battle ended on her terms exactly 20 days after her surgery. I was in a fog. We all were.
Here we were facing one of the worst moments of anyone's life; our Mom's funeral. 
I was in charge of carrying out a few of our mother's wishes for the final funeral arrangements, including playing the final scene from the movie "Fly Away Home" on a large screen TV. If you haven't seen it, it's the true story of a girl and her father bonding over an attempt to teach a pack of semi-domesticated geese to fly south for the winter using ultra lights. One of the ultra lights was actually fashioned to look like a Momma-goose (double click the picture to enlarge). The final scene of the movie begins with the girl finding her father hurt in a field after he had crashed his ultra light. The girl (played by Anna Paquin) laments that she wished her Mother (who had recently passed away) were there. Mom's just seem to make things alright no matter what. No matter how old we are, I think we all wish the same at trying times. Anyway, the father reveals to her that her mom WAS there, inside of her, inside the geese, inside everything around her. He tells her, "You take those geese, and you fly away." (I'm paraphrasing by the way) The girl does just that comforted in the wisdom of her father's words. It was a beautiful, comforting, sad, and enduring image that hit me like a ton of lead. Even in passing my Mom was being a Mom.
A few months later, as I'm starting to go through the almost unbearable process of administering my mother's estate, and after battling every ounce of confusing emotions related to it all, I found myself yearning for a way to say goodbye outside of the "Hospital Goodbye" that my sisters and I were so fortunate to have. I was looking for something that I couldn't really get a handle on and yet I still couldn't help but feel like it was too late. It really bothered me. 
Once again I found myself gravitating to the airport to fly every chance I got, seizing every opportunity to find just a moment of clarity. It was helpful that "The $100 Hotdog" is essentially a show about flying planes to new places, so I managed to distract myself somewhat with a huge variety of "Magic carpets." Somewhere along this path of distraction, It occurred to me that, if ever there were a time to stop, really STOP, and just live, it was now. For me "Action" has always been the most reliable path to answers. I'm a doer by nature. What I needed now though, was to stop what I was doing and get off the treadmill so to speak. I started thinking about an experience that would act as a tribute to my mom as a mother who not only encouraged me to fly, but who also sacrificed so much to provide for us and then taught me so much about living while she was literally dying. As I thought more about what this experience should or could be, I kept thinking that I needed to really shake things up a bit in my world. Perhaps by shaking it up, a crumb of meaning would somehow fall out and give me some peace. The problem for me is that it's not really that easy to shake me. I've always lived a fairly radical lifestyle where taking risks has always been a daily standard. The one thing that I've never been very comfortable with throughout my life however, is spending money on myself. The idea of building a plane re-emerged. It was an idea that would not only provide me ready access to the skies where I had been escaping in order to heal, but would also be a lasting symbol of Mom having lived a full and free life in spite having cancer. For me the actual build itself would be an immediate outlet to refocus just a little bit of the energy away from the pain I was experiencing.
So thus began my journey. 
I decided to build the Sportsman through the "2 Weeks to Taxi" program that Glasair offers in Arlington, Washington and then embark on a cross-continent self-discovery journey to bring the plane home. I know it might sound crazy, but even looking at the plane, it sort of looks like a backward goose - the tail forming a long goose neck, the cockpit a round "goose" body, with the landing gear swept backwards like legs and feet. Corny maybe, but with all of the elements combined this idea quickly went from being something I had only considered to something I had to do. I may have read far too much into the symbolism of it all, but the idea of "flying away home" became a powerful concept. 
I'm not sure if I will find closure during this journey or even if that's what I need, but I'm doing it anyway. I've always believed that when you go out there and simply do something as apposed to philosophizing about it, you seem to always find the answers you need even if they weren't exactly what you thought you were searching for. That's the kind of living my Mom taught me. I'm looking for a crumb that might not even exist, but maybe that's what makes life so interesting. I could go on about the other parallels between the life lessons I learned from her growing up and the concept of my current journey, but I'll let them reveal themselves (to me even) as I find them. So, I built a plane in Washington (Check my blog for that experience) and it's time to fly away home…
