Time. It’s the fourth dimension, right? The other three I’ve got down pat–I can make an airplane loop, roll, spin, or drop any which way I want. But when it comes to time, I’m totally out of my element. Not in the sense of “being on time”, mind you–but rather in how strangely I judge it.

For example, I did some math recently. After subtracting 1994 from 1999 the magic number of five mysteriously came to me. As in, five years since I graduated from college. Wow. Where has the time gone? Obviously someone is messing with the fast-forward button of my life, and the rate at which it’s passing is only picking up speed. I really am afraid that I’m going to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see the face of a 70 year old who has nothing but wrinkles to show for his time on earth. It’s a waking nightmare: almost a full year since Pick Up Ax, since I got back into the cockpit of a plane. How can this be?

On the other hand, there are times when life passes so slowly that it’s almost painful. Traffic school. Ground school. Freeway traffic. Essentially anything utilizing the words “traffic” or “school”. Another thing that’s going by very slowly is this opera season. Madame Butterfly is only six months past, but it seems like an eternity. Today was the opening night performance of the final production of the 1998-99 season, La Fille du Regiment (Daughter of the Regiment). In five days it’ll be over, and though it’s been very enjoyable, I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go. To quote the song writing genius of Air Supply, “everybody needs a little time away.”

The 1999-2000 season looks like another great one for the chorus, but I’m debating if I should go back next year. Life is like a puzzle, and sometimes you end up with an odd piece that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. Perhaps even the piece’s colors are wrong for the overall picture, so that you start to wonder if that piece didn’t come from another box. A freak piece is what it is. And more and more lately I feel like that puzzle piece at Opera Pacific. Everyone has their cozy place. They fit just fine there, even if this is only their first or second show. This is my tenth production, and if I don’t fit into the puzzle by now it just ain’t gonna happen.

Speaking of the opera, I received the nicest e-mail today Jason Daniel, a baritone and all-around great guy who sings at Opera Pacific. He dropped me a line to say that he was having a tough day–taxes, kids screaming, work, etc.–but as he was going through a box of receipts he found one of my cards. It containing the URL for the House of Rapp, so he visited the site and read the journal entry about Henri. Jason wrote that he hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. You could almost read the smile in his e-mail, and it was so contagious that it brightened my day immeasurably as well. So score one for the computer nerds.

In other (soap) opera news, my friend Paul made his debut as the peasant in Daughter. It’s a small role, but he did a great job with it, even if the wardrobe department did go the extra mile to make sure he looked like a stunt double for Juan Valdez (he looked out of place without the donkey and a cup of rich Colombian coffee). It’s always amazing to me that people who are singing next to you in the chorus one second can be center stage singing a solo line in front of three thousand people the next. I would like to think I could do that kind of thing too, but something tells me it requires what Henri often refers to as “talent”.

I’m starting to understand why all the serious aerobatics pilots live in Arizona or Florida. You’d think Southern California would be sunny and clear as often as either of those states. It ain’t necessarily so. But at least I’m getting some adventure out of waiting for El Nino, La Nina, Old Man Winter, Old Man River, or whatever they call this to pass.

I’ve been waiting about two months to get my phase check done, and I keep getting weathered out. And of course, all I need is one more flight. This checkout will give me the ability to fly the Decathalon in contests, fly aerobatics with passengers, and to legally fly any tail-wheel aircraft weighing less than 12,500 pounds. One typically doesn’t fly aerobatic planes in the clouds, because the thing that makes them so good at aerobatics is their extreme unstability–they don’t want to fly straight and level. In some of them, you let go of the stick and two seconds later you’re in a 40 degree banked dive toward the ground. Aerobatic aircraft are also sparsely equipped, and are often not legal to fly at night or in bad weather.

So when I was greeted this morning by a smarmy overcast cloud layer at about 3,000 feet, I knew this would not be the day. It’s not that you can’t fly the plane in weather like that–it’s that you can’t do any aerobatics in it (I typically use a block of airspace from about 2,000 to 5,000 feet above ground). But when I called Sunrise Aviation to cancel my flight with Tim, he had a modest proposal for me: the weather was closing in, and he needed to get the Pitts S2-B (an advanced level aerobatic bi-plane) out to Borrego Springs for the competition this weekend. Weather-wise, it was now or never. Problem is, he’d need a ride back after dropping off the plane. Borrego Springs is about three hours by car, but less than an hour by plane. So what if I followed him out in my plane? Was I interested?

I looked outside. I wouldn’t fly in weather like this. It’s called “scud running”–flying underneath a low layer of clouds, often in poor visibility. There was a time when scud-running was common place, but with the advent of instrument flight that has changed. When the weather gets bad, you’re supposed to fly on instruments. Many an accident has happened because pilots continued visual flight into instrument conditions. So obviously I should err on the side of caution and stay on the ground.

“Sure,” I said.

“Great, let me take care of a few things here and I’ll meet you out at Corona in the Pitts. Gimmie 20 minutes to pre-flight, and about 10 minutes to fly out there.”

A slight pause.

“Um. Okay. How is this going to work? I’m not instrument rated yet, you know? And the Cherokee isn’t IFR certified.”

“No problem. We’re not going to fly in the clouds, it’ll be VFR the whole way. And you’ll be flying with a student of mine. He’s instrument rated–he’ll be flying the Pitts at Borrego on Saturday.”

Thirty minutes later I’m sitting on the wing of the Cherokee. She’s preflighted and ready to fly, when the shiny red Pitts Special makes a perfect 3-point landing and taxis down the ramp. Tim’s student joins me in the Cherokee, and we’re off. The flight to Borrego, a tiny airport in the desert 50 miles south of Palm Springs, was actually quite uneventful. The clouds through the Banning Pass were a bit low for my comfort level, and some heavy turbulence was experienced over Palm Springs. But once we came through the pass, the clouds completely disappeared. Fifty miles visibility and pure blue sky all around.

In truth, the trip wasn’t really dangerous for me at all. The Pitts is faster than my Cherokee, so Tim was a good 20 miles in front the whole way, reporting the weather periodically on the radio.

Borrego was a trip! I’ve never seen so many expensive Pitts aircraft all in one place. One guy had a two month old Pitts S2-C with all the bells and whistles, about $250,000. I watched someone practicing in Sunrise’s Extra 300, arguably the finest aerobatic aircraft in the world. Those pilots, they’re a different breed out there. Right before we left, I watched a Learjet take off, fly low over the runway while raising his gear, and then climb to near vertical and pull into a hard 90 degree left bank, engines screaming all the while. Frustrated airshow pilot, perhaps?

The plane I most often fly, Decathlon 5535K, was out at Borrego. It has a beautiful red, white and blue paint scheme which seems to turn heads wherever it goes, even just sitting on the ramp. Anyway, whoever was flying it lost control on landing and scraped a wingtip on the ground. The winds out in the desert can be quite strong. I inspected the damage, which didn’t look too terribly bad, though Tim said it had hit the runway with enough force that the wing spar might have been cracked. So until it can be opened up and inspected, no aerobatics for that plane.

On the return flight, Tim gave me his rules for scud-running, which include establishing your own personal minimums for visual flight in poor weather. We were always in legal VFR conditions, so no FAA regulations were broken. But the thing about visual flying is that you never know when it’s going to descend below those legal minimums. Sure, you get a full weather report from DUAT or a flight service station briefer, and we got updates from Flight Watch en route. But still, those are just forecasts.

By the time we landed I was pretty trashed. Between monitoring the weather, watching for descending IFR and other VFR traffic, navigating, and turbulence it was time for a nap. But no such luck. We landed back at Corona around 5:30 p.m. which left barely enough time to drive home, shower and change clothes, drop Tim off at John Wayne Airport, and be at the Performing Arts Center for our 6:50 p.m. call time.

So would I do the whole scud-running thing again? Probably not. Or at least, I’d have some slightly higher minimums for the weather. It was a great learning experience though, and now Sunrise owes me a favor. Tim said he’ll get me some Pitts time if he can. Giddy up. It’s sad to think that I could have been out at Borrego competing this weekend if only the weather hadn’t slowed down my training.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

This is my stress level:

This is my stress level after taxes:

Any questions?

The usually clean and orderly house is a disaster area. Something big, fast, and tornado-ish definitely came through here. Clothes strewn all over the place, pillows in the wrong rooms, shoes and socks scattered along a path leading from the bedroom to the front door. What the hell was it? A twister? Evidence of mad, passionate sex? Was I robbed?

Not exactly. Let me back up and explain.

It’s Thursday, mid-morning. My muse is a five year old, and it’s screaming at me.

No, it’s not a child. It is, however, a five year old black “classic” Motorola pager. You know the kind. They don’t have all the bells and whistles of modern pagers, no sir. No CNN headline news, alphanumeric, two-way messaging, friendly or melodic audio alerts on this bad boy. It has only one mode: I’m-going-to-pierce-your-freaking-eardrum loud. I have to give Motorola credit. They must have done a lot of research, because they found a pitch so grating that even the deaf can hear it. If you could synthesize the sound of running ten long fingernails across a rusted blackboard, this would be it.

When you’re tired and it’s early, the sound can seem even louder than it really is. That was the case this morning. I had already ignored a telephone call, because hey, sometimes it’s just not convenient to answer the damn phone. I thought to myself, “Watch, they’re gonna page me.” Sure enough, not 30 seconds later, the Little Black Pager That Could does its thing (it’s “thing”, by the way, is to simply tell me I have to call in to pick up the actual message). I call in and am greeted by a voice touched with concern. Stress, even.

“Ron, it’s Jean. We’re all at the school for the 10:30 a.m. performance. Where are you? I hope you’re on your way.”

Time stops. Whoa. Obviously there’s been some mistake. The other seven members of Sound-on-Site, a educational outreach octet from the Pacific Chorale that I sing with, must have gotten the day mixed up. I mean, c’mon. It’s not Friday! And it’s not possible that I wrote down the date wrong in my… awww, shit. Okay, don’t panic don’t panic DON’T PANIC!! The performance is at 10:30, how much time do I have? Look at the clock.

It’s 10:28.

Okay, now you can panic. I instantly transform into the Tasmanian Devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons of old, complete with a look that says “ACME”–as if it were a four-letter word–written all over my face. Chuck Jones, who lives down the road from me, would have been proud.

The speed limit on Jeffrey is 45 m.p.h., but I just don’t care. Besides, my mind is preoccupied with weather or not I ran over my neighbor on the way out of my condo. I’m doing close to 90, and I realize that I left my wallet at home. Que sera sera. And yeah, that light I just blew through was technically red, but I just don’t care. Thank God for cell phones. I can just call the school and tell them that I’m on my way! Except the number I have for the school has been changed, and is it just me or do those “The number you are calling has been changed” messages get slower when you’re in desperate straits?

Finally I get the right digits and string ‘em all together, but then my cellphone decides it’s can’t get a signal. I drive with one hand while contemplating how far I can throw the phone out the window with the other. Technology sucks. But I just don’t care.

After what seems like hours, I arrive at the elementary school and manage to perform one of the worst parking jobs in the history of the horseless carriage. “Askew” doesn’t even begin to do it justice. But I just don’t care. The Tasmanian Devil whirls into the school, and though there are two hundred kids waiting to see our performance of “Around the World in Song”, the stage is still empty. I say the world’s shortest, yet somehow wildly intense prayer of thanks, and zoom backstage. Of course I try to walk in like I’ve got some semblance of control, but they just don’t care. They’re glad I made it at all. Sure, I’m hyped up as though I’ve inhaled a box of No-Doze, my clothes and hair are all disheveled, and I haven’t warmed up. Unless you count yelling obscenities at yourself warming up. But I’m there. The official Movado museum watch time is 10:34 a.m.

“Glad you could join us!”

Ahhh, the beauty of live performance. I’m not sure if Terpsichore, the muse of choral music and dance, is helping me or torturing me. But he/she sure keeps my days exciting. This particular show is a look at the world through the music of ten different cultures. It’s a satisfying and uplifting thing, singing for all those kids. Teaching them about music, and seeing their eyes light up. They don’t get much of that anymore, you know. It’s the first thing to be cut when money is tight. And when is it not?

There’s a bond between performer and audience in a live performance, a palpable exchange of energy that many adults don’t seem to be comfortable with. I think it’s because today, live performance has been replaced with staring at a television or movie screen. You owe the screen nothing, and most of America has been weaned on that. There is no obligation to give anything or be involved in what’s happening on a screen. And that’s too bad. Only the kids seem to understand that relationship, that it’s related to playing, that it requires using your imagination and even your brain on occasion. So what Sound-on-Site is doing is, in a small way, to ensure that educated and interested audiences are there in the future. To make sure the performing arts are alive to enhance the human experience for generations to come.

And about that, I really do care.

Note: This entry was also used as part of an Illumine collaborative project on the Seven Muses.