Flight Training - November 2011 - 26

FLYING CARPET

By Greg Brown

PLUS View a slideshow.

SUNSET RAIN SHAFTS pummel Arizona's Verde Valley.

THE BEAUTY OF EVIL, VIEWED FROM AFAR

ENCHANTED JOURNEY

t’s 112 degrees outside, Greg, and mom has her thermostat set at 83. I can’t take it anymore! Will you pick me up tonight instead of tomorrow?” Just yesterday I had delivered Jean to Phoenix to help her mother prepare for surgery. I’d planned to retrieve her tomorrow morning when the air would be cooler and free of thunderstorms. But after a hot, sleepless night and then being unable
to access the Internet for work, my wife is desperate to escape. “I’ll do my best, but currently thunderstorms blanket northern Arizona. When do you want to leave?” “Could we meet at Scottsdale Airport at 7 p.m.? I promised to dine with mom and Lee.” I counter that if we need to dodge weather, I’d prefer not do it at night. So we settle on a 6:30 p.m. rendezvous, which will get us home just before dark. Weather on this 45-minute flight is usually benign, though the elevation gap between 7,000-foot Flagstaff and 1,500foot Scottsdale results in vastly dissimilar climates. On summer afternoons like today, monsoon storms brew over northern Arizona’s cool peaks. Likely they’ll fade toward nightfall, but possibly they won’t. At 4:30 p.m. thunderstorms still menace my route, but they appear to be diminishing in proximity and intensity, so I head for the airport. When a corridor opens to Scottsdale an hour later, I take off. If the passage closes and we can’t get home, I’ll at least effect Jean’s escape to some well-chilled hotel and a night on the town. Southward I cruise, savoring sights of Sedona’s scarlet spires against a towering curtain of ivory thunderheads. How beautiful evil can be, when viewed from a

TRAVEL LOG: SCOTTSDALE (SDL)
Runways: 3/21; 8,249 by 100 feet Elevation: 1,510 feet Noise abatement: Voluntary noise curfew 2200-0600. Air traffic control tower: 06002100 every day Location: Nine miles north of Scottsdale Phone: 480-312-7735 Extra: The Scottsdale Air Fair will be held November 5 and 6.

safe distance! Such reverie ends, however, when I descend from cool air aloft to brutal summertime in the Arizona desert. Plunging from 9,500 feet into the Valley of the Sun, I strip my sweatshirt, open the vents, and guzzle ice water. Sweat-drenched by touchdown, I pop the windows on rollout and dangle my arm into the stifling blast, futilely seeking relief. Then I don my broad-brimmed hat and hike to the parking lot where Jean and I will meet, there to slouch, sizzling, on a curb. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” says Jean, rolling up in our old airport car. “I got stuck in traffic on the 101. How’s the weather look?” “Flyable, but interesting,” I say, noting radar returns on my smartphone. “There are lots of cells, but for the moment they’re well separated; with 12,000-foot cloud ceilings, we should easily see and avoid them. For alternates, if necessary, we have Prescott, Cottonwood, Sedona, and all the Phoenix-area airports behind us. I’m glad we arranged to fly before nightfall, though.” Sweltering, and with Jean exhausted and a bit depressed, we launch northward toward distant towering cumulus. “Wow! Look how the setting sun silhouettes those showers west of Phoenix,” says Jean, perking up. Suddenly our fatigue and anxiety wash away, as if by the cool rivulets of light rain caressing our windshield. In an instant this trip has transformed from run-of-the-mill errand to enchanted journey. Gawking, we bypass a fearsome gunmetal-gray rain column, then steer for Flagstaff down a wide but imposing gauntlet. Now the sun squints through misty veils from beneath an ebony overcast. Soon it kisses the horizon, splashing

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Flight Training - November 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - November 2011