Ричард Бах - Biplane

This is getting ridiculous. We bank hard to the right, dive away from the wind, and I can pluck one single straw of consolation from seeing the highway scream past as I turn east. With the tailwind, my groundspeed must be 180 miles per hour. If I could only hold it, I could set a new biplane speed record to North Carolina. But I am wiser than to really believe that the wind will hold, and I know that just before I cross the South Carolina border into North Carolina the wind would shift to become an eighty-mile headwind, and I would hang suspended in the air one hundred yards from the finish line, unable to reach it. This is a wonderful day for playing all kinds of improbable games with an airplane. I can land the biplane backward today and take off straight up. I can fly sideways across the ground, in fact be more maneuverable than a helicopter could be. But I do not feel like playing games. I only want to accomplish what should be the simple task of reaching the other side of these mountains. Possibly I could tack back and forth, a sailboat in the sky, and eventually reach San Diego. No. Tacking is a meek and subservient thing to do, not befitting the character of an airplane. One must draw the line somewhere.

The only fitting technique is to fight the mountains for every inch I gain, and if the mountains for a moment prove the stronger, to retire, and rest and turn and fight again. For, when the fight belongs to the mountain, it is not proper to seek sly and devious means of sneaking around its might.

There is no mistaking the rebuff of the lesser mountain passes. They are making it clear that my adversary shall be the giant San Jacinto, ruling the pass into Banning.

I have burned a full tank of fuel in the fight to get across the mountains, and have gotten nowhere. Or, more precisely, I have gotten to Borego Springs Airport, one hard runway standing alone in the sagebrush and clouds of dust. Circling overhead, I see that the windsock is standing straight out, across the runway. In a moment it gusts around to point down the asphalt strip, and in another second it is cross again. To land on that runway in the gusting changing high-velocity wind will be to murder one biplane. Yet I must land, and haven’t the fuel to reach for Palm Springs again. I shall land in the desert near the Borego Airport.

An inspection of the dry land rules that out. The surface is just too rough. Catch the wheels in a steep sand dune and we’ll be on our back in less than a second, and only with incredible luck could we escape with less than forty broken wingribs, a bent propeller and an engine full of sand and sagebrush. So much for landing in the desert.

The infield of the airport itself is dirt and sand, dotted with huge sage. I turn the biplane down through the shuddering wind and fly over the windsock, watching the infield. It was level, once. The bulldozers must have leveled it when they scraped a bed for the runway. The brush is three feet high over it, four feet, some places. I could land in the brush, dead slow in the wind, and hope there aren’t any pipes or ditches in the ground. If there are, it will be worse than the open desert. We fly two more passes, inspecting the brush, trying to see the ground beneath it.

At the gas pump, a man stands and watches, a small figure in blue coveralls. What a gulf lies between us! He is as safe and content as he can be, he can even go to sleep leaning against the gas pump, if he wants. But a thousand feet, a hundred feet away, the Parks and I are in trouble. My cork-and-wire fuel gage shows that the tank is empty. We got ourselves into this affair and we’ve got to get ourselves out. The wind gusts at a wide angle to the runway, and a brush landing is the least of our evils. With luck, we will emerge with a few minor scratches.

One last climb for a few hundred feet of working altitude, throttle back, turn into the wind and drop toward the brush. Should the wind shift now, we shall need more than luck.

The Parks settles like a snail in a bright-colored parachute, barely moving across the ground. The brush is tall and brown beneath us, and I fight to keep from pushing the throttle and bolting safely back into the sky. As we scrape the tops of the sage, it is clear that we are not moving slowly at all. Hard back on the stick, hold tight to the throttle and in a crash and rumbling clatter we plow into a waist-high sea of blurred and brittle twigs. There is a snapping all about us, like a forest fire running wild, and twigs erupt in a whirling fountain from the propeller, spraying in a high arc to spin over the top wing and rain into the cockpit. The lower wing cuts like a scythe through the stuff, shredding it, tumbling it in a wide straight swath behind. And we are stopped, after breaking our way almost to the edge of the asphalt, all in one dusty piece, trembling in the wind, still throwing fresh-snapped twigs from the propeller. Throttle forward, we grimly crush ahead to the runway, turn to slowly follow a taxiway leading toward the gas pump.

“That was quite a landing you made, there.” The man hands up the hose, and searches for the sixty-weight oil.

“Make’em that way all the time.”

“Wasn’t quite sure just what you were doing. Can’t remember anybody ever landing out in the brush like that. That’s kind of hard on the airplane, isn’t it?”

“She’s built for it.”

“Guess you’ll be staying the night, in this wind?”

“No. You got a candy machine around, peanuts or something?”

“Yeah, we got a candy machine. You say you won’t be staying?”

“No.”

“Where you headed?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Kind of a long way, isn’t it? A hundred miles? I mean for an old biplane like this?”

“You are right, there. One hundred miles is a long, long way.”

But I am not dismayed, and as I pull the Peanuts selector handle, the oily image in the mirror is smiling.

IN FIFTEEN MINUTES WE ARE AIRBORNE again, slamming through the whitecaps in the air, beating north across the wind. The safety belt is strained down tight, and the silver nose is pointed toward the shrouded peak of San Jacinto.

All right, mountain, this is it. I can do without my self-righteousness now. I’ll fight you all day long if I have to, to reach that runway at Banning. Today there will be no waiting for the weather to clear. I will fight you until the fuel tank is empty again, then fill the tank and come back and fight you for another five hours. But I tell you, mountain, I am going to make it through that pass today.

San Jacinto does not appear to be awed by my words. I feel like a knight, lance leveled, plumes flying, galloping at The Pass. It is a long gallop, and by the time I arrive at the tournament grounds we have used an hour of fuel. Plenty of fuel left to fly to Banning, and to spare. Come along, my little steed. First the lance, then the mace, then the broadsword.

The mountain’s mace hits us first, and it slams us down so hard that the fuel is jerked from the carburetor, the engine stops for a full second and my hand is ripped from the control stick. Then calm again.

San Jacinto is inscrutable, covered in its Olympian mist. Quite some mace it swings. Lance broken, it is time for my broadsword.

Another impossibly hard crash of air upon us, the engine stops for the count of two and I clutch the control stick with both hands. We are sheathed again in rainwater and raindrops whip back over my head like buckshot. We don’t scare, mountain. We’ll make Banning if we have to taxi there on the highway.