Teamwork and Fresh Crab

Teamwork and Fresh Crab

This is a little story about teamwork. Teamwork is very important when flying or sailing together. Lessons in teamwork come to us in unusual ways sometimes. Roy and I woke up on a lovely, Indian Summer Saturday morning, did a little happy dance that the rain had not yet come to the Pacific Northwest, loaded up our RV-7A and headed north to Orcas Island where we keep our sailboat.

A few hours after leaving HIO, we sailed past the red and green buoys that mark the narrow entrance to Shallow Bay on Sucia Island. We gloated a bit that only a short time before, we’d been having breakfast at home, some 200 nautical miles to the south. Thanks to our “magic carpet” we were now in this spectacular anchorage. We also laughed that it took the same amount of time to motor seven nautical miles from Orcas to Sucia Island as to fly from Hillsboro to Orcas.

Inside the bay, we fetched a mooring ball, tossed the crab trap off the side of the boat, and settled in to enjoy the day. We ate lunch, took a nap, rowed to the island for a hike, visited with other boaters on the island, rowed back to Tranquility, cracked open a bottle of wine, made a tray of cheese and crackers, and got all comfy in the cockpit to watch the sunset.

The next morning I popped up out of the sack, quickly shaking off a slight red-wine hang-over. The crab trap. We’d forgotten about the crab trap. It is totally against the rules to leave a trap out overnight, and when it comes to harvesting from the Salish Sea, we are strict rule-keepers. We had our come-uppance though. While we’d been in relax-have-fun-and-sleep mode, the tide had gone out and come in and gone out again. And with that, Tranquility had swung around the mooring ball, not once but two or three times, taking the crab trap line with her. The water was crystal clear, we could see the trap 15 feet below on the bottom – and it was full of crab. We could also see that the line was wrapped around the mooring ball chain, and elephant kelp and entwined with seaweed. Roy and I surveyed the situation from the bow of the boat, and scratched our heads.

 I’m not letting this one go, I said. We’re going to have crab for dinner tonight, if I have to get in the water and swim down to get that thing. Roy snorted and laughed. Silly, he said. I’ll go get in the dingy.

Roy rowed the dingy, little Peace, around to the front of the boat. I un-cleated the crab pot line from the bow of the boat, lay on my belly, hung upside down off the bow of the boat, and unwrapped the line from the top part of the mooring ball, then handed the line to Roy. He couldn't see where the line went underwater from his vantage in the dingy, but I could from the bow of TQ. Row that way, I said. It was in the opposite direction that the line appeared to be going. Trust me, I said. Row towards that power boat over there. Roy looked at me skeptically, but followed my direction anyway. Ok, I said, now row back towards TQ, but go out around the mooring ball. He pulled in on the line feeling it go a little slack, and rowed towards our boat. Two more times of rowing in a circle, and the line was free.

Roy handed the line back to me on TQ. I hauled up the pot and had it on deck by the time he was back on the boat. We did a “High Ten” and admired our catch. The reward for our team-work was a limit-for-the-day catch of large crab.

That evening we had a great time sharing out catch with friends back in Hillsboro. All it took was a Magic Carpet, a Sailboat, and Teamwork.

Patterns in the Whole - EAA 105 Chapter Poker Run

Roy and I recently participated in the EAA Chapter 105  Poker Run. All types of aircraft – RV's, a Cessna, a Piper, fast planes, slow planes, young beginning pilots and pilots with many Hobbs hours, flew to a grass strip in the glowing, late summer morning light. We shared breakfast, picked our first card, got our T-shirts, admired the elegant, gathered planes, and commented to one another on what a gorgeous morning it was for flying. The poker run course took us over the Willamette Valley, over hay fields and beyond the thick, forested mountains. Earlier that morning, Roy and I left eastern Oregon, flying over the rugged Cascade Mountains, where lava flows spill out of thick forests. Now we hopped from airport to airport pointing west, to the wide, foamy, sea.

We were quiet that day - a peaceful, content quiet that filled the plane. Roy's soft, cotton T-shirt and scent of Irish Spring brushed against my arm. He pushed buttons, softly controlling our silver bird. Our world was above the earth, the rivers, mountains, clouds, and above the wide, blue water. The glacial plane of the Willamette Valley was a collage, a canvas, a brilliant masterpiece of gently woven patterns. Mown fields with loops and sworls, ginger, chocolate, and cinnamon cliffs that rose up in vertical towers towards the sky, deep black rivers of ancient lava, emerging from a blanket of green. I remembered a bedtime story I read to my daughter about a boy, stranded in the Canadian wilderness who learned to catch small game birds by seeing the pattern of an entire flock, instead of looking for a single bird.

If we were standing on earth, we would see each individual strand of hay, the furrows made in the grass by the plow and the occasional marring weed. Standing on the mountain, we would be in a field of rocks, the impossible heights of the peaks towering above us, rocky slopes rolling and tumbling away below. In the forest we would find ourselves surrounded by limbs, branches, bark, the hesitant deer or chattering squirrel. The ancient, emerging lava bed would draw our footsteps out across thumb-sized, pock-marked stones, and fascinating bits of obsidian, with smooth, sharp edges. Immersed in the beauty of the details, we would have no scope or vision of the sworls, the flow, the precipitous larger whole.

The kind people of the ocean town of Seaside hosted a BBQ lunch for our Poker Run group. We gathered around a runway, protected from the ocean breeze by a lining of trees. The local fireman grilled burgers and chicken. A pilot gave biplane rides. We shared peach pie, ice cream, stories and jokes with other pilots and people of the town.

People from the town gathered at the airport to see the planes; more planes than I've seen in so long, one said, and it's so great to have you all here, said another. In their eyes, we were a community of pilots and passengers, risk takers and adventurers, a group that builds planes, and takes to the skies. The EAA 105 Chapter is just that. It is a club, an entity, an organization. We host events, support aircraft builders and encourage would-be pilots. That is what we are from the distant outside.

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At the end of the day, we gathered in the chapter hangar at Twin Oaks. I was greeted by the wide, warm smile of the gal that organized the event, when she was not  running an avionics business and managing a home. I saw the steely blue eyes of a man who spent his life dedicated to aviation, and who lost his closest friend to that passion. I heard the story of the couple building a plane in their garage at night after their children go to bed, and about the pilot who spent an entire day helping people whose plane had a problem that day, fortunately encountered on the ground. I stood within the chapter hanger, and I did not see a club at all. Immersed in the beauty of the details, we are held together by the precipitous larger whole

For the Love of Flight, and Each Other

It was not a stormy night. Roy pulled 174RT out of the hanger. I pushed the button to slide the hangar door closed, and tilted my chin toward the sky. I smell rain, I said. Roy looked up. I think its fine he replied. I nodded. It was fine. The ceiling was high above us, in rolls and bumps and long tatters. Dark upon dark, I could tell they were clouds because they hid the stars in patches. Between the tattered clouds, the moon glowed with enormous effort, as brightly and warmly as it could. It was Valentines day and there were lovers below on earth. The moon longed to be a part of them, to illuminate their smiling faces and reflect the sparkle in each others eyes when they kissed.

The propeller was no longer off the plane. The plane had a new propeller, fresh from the factory. It replaced the old, oil throwing propeller. The new propeller was shiny, sexy, red and silver. It had been blessed by the hangar neighbors as looking fast even when standing still. Roy and I admired the sexy new foil, running hands along its smoothness, patted it, then climbed into the cockpit. I snugged my headphones down on my ears. The seat was leathery warm. Roy flipped switches, pushed buttons, lights came on and instruments beeped. A push of the big red button and the snazzy new propeller flew into action.The engine hummed with a rapid heartbeat. Roy called the tower with information Oscar, and asked me if I was ready. After three months of the airplane grounded for repairs, the flurry of the holidays, and weeks of fog and ice, I was more than ready. ATC gave the word. Roy pushed the throttle forward, tilted the stick back and our little plane ran down the runway, and leaped to the air. Roy and I were back in our element. We exhaled, smiled, whooped. In moments we were an arms length away from the tattered, dark, rain-breathless clouds that hid the stars and thwarted the eager moon.

There was no fog on the ground. The earth was scattered with man-made stars from houses, shops, restaurants. Streetlights were strung in long rows, dotted with cyclical red, yellow, green, brake lights and traffic lights. We flew over it all, past the lights, to the hills where the lights were scattered and dim, far away stars and hidden galaxies. We flew below the bumpy, full dark clouds, below the stars, below the yellow, eager moon and above the lovers, with stars in their eyes.

A click-click-click on the radio activation button and we were gliding back to earth between our own starts, our runway stars. Roy set the plane gently on the ground. The instrument lights reflected in his smiling eyes.

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There was no hurried work-day schedule or school-night to get home to. There was no distance between us. We held hands and walked on crunching gravel past the plane, through the gate to the cheerful, noisy, Valentines Day packed restaurant. We sat side by side in the booth, our palms still pressed together, our fingers entwined. Waitresses bustled between tables. Women were dressed in red and men in suits. The noise and chatter felt a world away. My ears till buzzed with the airplane hum, and the adrenalin of flight. My eyes were still full of the clouds, the stars, the bright yellow, reaching moon. Roy smiled at me. I smiled back. It's good to have the airplane back, isn't it, I said. It was more a statement than a question. Uh-huh, he replied and squeezed my hand.

For the Love of Flight.