“I want to live everyday all days as hard as I can. We party hard, we love hard, we jump hard because we’re reminded way too often that it can end like that. We’re very aware of how precious life is. What a gift it is. So we use it. It’s not up on a shelf still in its bubble …
Tag: risk
Sooner or Later
“If you’re going to go to the Moon, sooner or later you’ve got to go to the Moon.” Flight Director Glynn Linney, summing up the rationale for the Apollo 8 ‘go’ decision, NASA meetings, 1968. Quoted in the 2019 book Shoot for the Moon. This was a huge decision, a quantum step from Earth orbit flights. Apollo 8 was the …
Control of Fear
“The control of fear is a necessary part of the inner work of flight.” William Langewiesche Breathe. Relax. Do the ‘what-if’ work ahead of time. All these are part of the Inner Work of Flight. Quote is from Langewiesche’s 2010 book Aloft: Thoughts on the Experience of Flight. And yes, his Dad wrote the book Stick and Rudder.
Mountains Are
“Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.” Reinhold Messner, All Fourteen 8,000ers, 1999. Wikipedia says this about Messner: He made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. He was the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, doing so without supplementary oxygen. Messner was …
Out of This Nettle
I live in Phoenix, Arizona. So the picture isn’t of English stinging nettles, but the top of a big prickly saguaro cactus. However, Shakespeare’s line from 1591 still rings true today: “’Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.”
The Impossible Climb
I was lucky enough to get an advance review copy of a new book coming out in March 2019: The Impossible Climb: A Personal History of Alex Honnolds’s Free Solo of El Capitan and a Climbing Life, by Mark Synnott. It’s pretty dang awesome. Highly recomended. Alex Honnold, the world’s greatest climber, went 3000 feet up shear mountain face, alone …
The Air Is
“The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and …
In the News Today, Living and Dying
Two big news stories today. One sad one happy. Both involve unique planes and expert pilots that I’ve flown with a few times. The sad one first: Man Killed in Plane Crash at Covington Airport was Avid Pilot I flew with Lance Hooley several times in the A320, about 14 years ago, when I was a first officer at the airline …
Safety is Number Three
#1 Don’t Panic. #2 #3 Safety. “Safety third. There’s not even a Rule Number Two. But even though there’s nothing in second place, safety is not getting promoted to number two.” Elon Musk’s family rules show a mature understanding of the fallacy of ‘safety first’. There’s lots of other good stuff in this long Rolling Stone interview 30 November 2017.
In Flying I Have Learned That …
Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father, Bishop Milton Wright, on 23 September 1900. That’s 117 years ago. And 3 years before they achieved powered flight. SaveSave