On a wing and a dream

This a reprint of an article that appeared in the RV Builder's Hotline on December 16, 2006.

Saturday night is writing night at my house these days. The weekly Hotline has already gone out and somewhere in the back of my mind is a voice that's saying, "what are you going to put in there next week, Bob?" Such is the life of a one-week publishing cycle. But it's writing night and I can get a little of that done and, oh hey, have a head start on what's going to be in the next issue. This is going to be in the next issue. Simple, eh?

Other than during New England Patriot games and an occasional Cleveland Indians tilt, I'm not the type to get nervous about things. There are exceptions. When I started the fuel tanks on my RV-7A, I felt like I was doing open heart surgery. Same deal when I drilled the rear spar bolt hole when mating the wings. It always felt like disaster was just around the corner. It sort of was with the right-wing hole; I didn't drill it straight even though I meant to. But I've made a couple of shims and things will be OK.

Tonight I found myself in one of those positions in which I was alternately excited and nervous. I watched most of the last hour of the countdown to the launch of the shuttle Discovery. It is inspiring, actually, to watch NASA TV right up until the moment of launch, and realize the teamwork and intelligence that conspires to defy gravity. And yet, as I watch that moment when the sparks start going at the base of the shuttle and, I guess, the engine is starting (I really don't know how that whole shuttle engine thing works), I want to turn away because, well, disaster is just around the corner.



But I don't turn away, I watch and wonder what the astronauts are thinking and how exciting it must be for them. And I -- just for a second -- think, "I'm going to do this when I grow up."

My love of flying actually started as a love of the space program. When I was a young teen, I had my whole life planned. I'd go to the Air Force Academy, I'd become a pilot, I'd join the space program, and I go into space or, if not, I'd fly a commercial jetliner for a living.

That lasted as long as an eye-exam after getting the requirements for entry to the Air Force Academy (I chose the Air Force because I don't swim all that well and I figured in the Navy you'd have to, you know, swim). After that, I chose a lower altitude and thought maybe someday I'd fly a plane.

But even that gave way to other realities and writing and me seemed to get along OK and I liked sports and so I thought I'd end up working as a sportscaster in Boston. Years later I was working in Boston, but as an editor, not a sportscaster. Close enough. I love Boston. As I commuted to work aboard the Red Line train going over the Longfellow Bridge, I'd see the gorgeous city before me and think, "I'm 27, and I've already accomplished my dream of working in radio in Boston." By then, I'd forgotten about space, and about flying.

The years went by and somehow I ended up in Minnesota and my twin brother visited me one weekend and we started talking about old dreams. From somewhere, flying got mentioned. He had recently gotten his private and I recalled to him my dream of flight. I dropped him off at the airport at the end of our too-short visit, and a few days later he called me and said, "Happy birthday, you start flight lessons tomorrow." He'd dropped a wad of cash at the local flight school, enough to pay for my entire flight instruction if I didn't flunk too many checkrides.

Dreams are funny like that. Even after you forget they're there, they come back, and sometimes even come true.

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to RV builder Paul Dye, the lead flight director on the last shuttle mission, and astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, another Minnesotan, give a talk in Minneapolis about their careers, and about that mission. The video was astounding and as I watched it, I once again thought, "I'm going to do that when I grow up."

"Shuttle, go at throttle up," the voice said tonight, snapping me back from my dreams. For a moment, I turned away. Disaster is always around the corner, you know. But it flew straight and true and a few minutes later, I realized, a bunch of dreams came true for someone else. They were in space.

We sit at the end of the runway the way those astronauts sit on that bomb, or the way some of us approach drilling a spar hole in a wing doubler -- excited about what's to come, maybe a little nervous. Disaster might be around the corner, but we push the throttle forward, and we roll on toward a dream.

This week we'll, no doubt, read again of one more first flight, one more ordered kit, one more first rivet. Dreams, one and all.

Never give them up.