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New York, Monday, 1995-05-29(1) 01:00 local (Z-4)
Well, since my last email from Palmdale, I returned to New York, then to Miami, then back to New York. Today it's back to Miami and then around 04:00 Tuesday local to Manauos and then Varicopas. Where are they? I'm really not sure. I'm not really even sure of the spelling of either, but I'll find out. Actually, I think they're both in Brazil—at least I'm pretty sure Varicopas is. My trip to Miami will be a deadhead, and then the Manauos-Varicopas will be my first trip on a Tower freighter. I'm kind of staying up late tonight so I can sleep well and early tomorrow evening (whoops, this evening). Does that make sense?
Palmdale was kind of fun. When I finally woke up, it was noon and a beautiful day. I took a run from the hotel up to a ridgeline. I protected my head, knowing the sparsity of hair would certainly allow a sunburn, but I didn't bother to protect my shoulders and picked up a sunburn—oh, well.
But it was a good day for my morale. I got out of the hotel, looked at the ridge top, and realized how incredibly lucky I was to be able to look at something a couple of miles away and know that I could still run to the top of it—and I did. Not, of course, without a couple of walking rest periods when I got to the seriously uphill part.
The desert area north of Los Angeles holds a bit of personal past history for me, and it was interesting to see it again after so many years. The Palmdale airport was where the old (now) XB-70 was assembled that I worked on in the early 60s and Edwards was where the number 2 prototype crashed (#1 is in the Wright-Patterson museum near Dayton, Ohio). As we were going to the airplane for the return trip, we got to see some of the test-bed airplanes in the Edwards hangars—nothing secret though I'm sure—and that was fun.
Took off out of Edwards and dropped about 300 of the troops at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah and then the rest off at Pope Air Force Base near Fayetville, North Carolina. Got back to JFK about 10:00 local Saturday, slept all day, hunted unsuccessfully for a laundromat (wound up washing a shirt in the sink), and then back to bed for the night and the Miami turn on Sunday.
The Miami turn was with a really laid back captain and was enjoyable (as was the Edwards trip, the captain of which I had known at Evergreen). I really started to again feel that “I'm back” when we returned to JFK. It was my leg, things were going well, and then they started holding us too high too long, and we found out that we were going get the Canarsie approach to runway 13L in a heavy crosswind. This time I was ready for it, and, when just before touchdown a gust caught the airplane, I reacted automatically, kicking the left rudder to straighten us out for the touchdown and dropping the right wing. A simple maneuver, but what was important to me was that I had done it without thinking. It felt really good, especially since I had begun to get apprehensive about the approach. The captain had remarked that he hated the Canarsie approach, felt he had paid his dues when he had had to fly it the day before, and was clearly not at ease with it himself. When I worked for Evergreen, I had flown the approach enough that it held no anxiety for me, but with the 2+ year layoff and the low level turn to line up in the usual heavy crosswind, I really would have rather had a nice straight-in ILS.
Oh, yes, this hotel has a guest laundry, and I now have fresh clothes!
Terry
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