high point of 2009, part two: I JUST FLEW IN A FUCKING AIRPLANE!
A continuation of the best reason to subject a Leica to playa dust:
The Black Rock City Intergalactic Spaceport is located on the edge of town, and from the ground, makes for a staggering look back on the Thursday madness (yes, there’s a mountain range behind that wall of white, yes, we were about to get in a plane and fly through it):
Quickly meandering through the Black Rock Travel Agency,
we eventually found George, our pilot, right outside the coyote cafe.
Under normal circumstances, one might think twice about a shirtless pilot baking under the high desert, high noon purgatory, but out here there is an alternate translation which seems to filter just about everything.
Before walking out to the runway, we all rigged up, the FAA requires all passengers in a plane with an open door to wear a parachute.
All the observers were given a safety briefing by that guy in the mirrored glasses, thong and assless chaps. Best safety briefing ever. Awesome.
Walking up on this view, after lagging behind the group, the first wave of anxiety really managed to dig itself in deep. That 175 yards is among the longest distances I can remember walking in a very very, very very long time.
Enter the Pac 750XL. Designed for carrying really heavy cargo into runways on the side of mountains that have really high pitch approaches. Its a supercharged turbo prop engine built for maximum torque, maximum payload and maximum terror.
Lets get down to the fear. I hate flying. Actually, I passionately hate flying. When I climbed up the mediocre aluminum home depot ladder into this plane, it took just about all the strength I had to lift my leg up each step. Neil Armstrong has nothing on me… I was bonkers excited to challenge myself but nearly paralyzed with anxiety trying to get it in my head that I was actually doing this shit.
George would eventually strap me into that copilot’s seat which became the scene of the wildest emotional rollercoaster I have ever been on. Eternally grateful that John had offered me the ticket, providing me with the experience of a lifetime. Looking out the window at the talc fine playa dust coating intake valves and aerlons, eternally fearful that this would be the last thing I would ever do. Somehow I got to the point where I figure that would be ok. And it was in that moment that the engine turned over.
Now that was certainly a new sound. A familiar sound for sure, but one that had never had any personal meaning to me at all. Taking off in a tiny plane, for my first time: a vibrating, jarring, leap of faith. Then the throttle leaned forward and I flashed: flight canceled yesterday. Flight held a few times this morning. All from white out wind. Fuck, what am I doing. Taxiing down the bouncy runway, more throttle, more anxiety. That was a brand new sound. That was a brand new vibration. This sure as shit is a new level of anxiety. A Pac750xl at full throttle with the side door open was terror redefined for me. Maybe I could pull this lever, put my arm through that loop, jump on the shoulders of that guy, climb over the head of the next and use both feet to push into the abdomen of the jumper sitting in the door to propel myself out of the plane before we get to the end of the runway.
And then we were in the air. Air so windy and turbulent, so pissed off man had devised a way to use it for lift that all it could do in return was push the plane up, down, left and right, all at the same time. Mostly, I was horrified, but this instantly became the new standard for Awesome in my life. A standard that already had the bar raised to a ridiculously high point.
As the horizon broadened, the dust got smaller and smaller and the pounding of my heart found a rhythm beating against the whine of an engine screaming RPM’s, there was something new, rather, something I had forgotten about years ago: freedom.
The flight plan we had that afternoon was pretty interesting, we did a steep cork screw climb to a few thousand feet and then a leveled out to 11,000 feet over the city, around 15,000 above sea level. This is the first time I had ever been in a turbo prop, but Im under the distinct impression that not every plane could do the climb that we did, certainly not as fast at that pitch- that engine has brutish torque to climb.
I’ll never forget the moment I took this photo. The localized turbulence up to this point was brutal but things calmed down enough for my shaking, sweaty, cold hands to hold my M calmly enough to my face to snap this picture, lower it and pause for what felt like a lifetime looking at the road we’ve all sat on for hours waiting to get in, the city we had built at the end of it, and really, truly appreciate how lucky I was to be up here, above it all checking out some shit that only a small handful of people get to see each year from this perspective.
After a forceful, full throttle climb to jump altitude, the engine pulled back, the plane leveled out and the jumpers began to stir inside the cabin.
It was an interesting feeling, watching my buddy get up to jump out of the plane that we were both in. In many ways, he was the tiny piece of security I had in there and in a few seconds, Id be all alone to deal with the plane headed to the ground, but hell, how hard could that be? The worst was behind us for sure…
In the midst of this thought I leaned over to snap this picture, unquestionably the most personally important single frame of film I have exposed in the last five years. We have had more fun inside that pentagon than should ever be possible and here I was above it, for the express purpose of making this image, with the guy who had originally brought me out to this place years prior. Critical amount of fun.
The poor guy in the foreground on the left, yeah, he cant hear out of his right ear anymore. More on this later…
With a wave and a gust of wind, jumpers were out. I was digging the new found cruising of that last thirty seven leveled out seconds so the sky divers could jump. And then, over the roar of the propeller, the blast of the wind screaming through the cabin, George leaned over to yell at me:
“Are all the jumpers out?”
Are all the jumpers out. Reflections from this echo still reappear in a dream every now and again. Not knowing what the fuck I was about to get into, I foolishly replied, “yes”.
There were critical pieces of information I did not know before I got on that plane, critical pieces of information I thankfully did not know.
That plane has gotta go up and down as many times as possible on the fuel it has available to allow for the maximum amount of jump flights. This means its flight times have to be as short as possible. There are some moments in life when “as short as possible” means, well, kinda short, quick even. Then there are other moments where it just means as short as fucking possible. This was most certainly of the later variety. I was scared shitless getting into the plane, terrified getting to altitude but I was just about to be reborn. And reborn hard.
Yes, all the jumpers are out.
The pilot nodded, leaned forward and cranked the door down with the hand crank attached to the wire which ran along the pulley to the side door.
He had seen me freaking out the whole time, he gave me this look, smiled and then cautioned, “hold on”. In that moment I remember looking at the blue sky out the side window and then instantly, and I mean *instantly* seeing the ground. This happened concurrent with what felt like twice the normal gravity pushing me back into my seat. All bets were off and now Im screaming like a girl and there is NO chance of any more photos ’cause Im just not nearly as hardcore as I would have liked to had thought.
There isnt much room in these planes, everyone has to sit legs spread, the parachute of the guy in front of you is resting on your chest the whole time. Eighteen seconds into the descent, the guy I mentioned earlier, well, he had the unfortunate pleasure of winning the unlucky lottery and got my freak out conducted, at certain death volume, a packed parachute width from his right ear. Clearly, something needed to happen: He turns around as best as he can and relays the following information:
Hey! Im a pilot! Everything is cool! This is totally normal. We’ll be on the ground in a minute. Just try to look out the window, focus on the horizon, everything will be fine!
Ok, right. Totally. Im being irrational. Chill your meltdown, listen to this guy. He’s a pilot. Everything is normal. Do as he says, just turn around, look at the horizon and everything is gonna be fine. Yes, that’s excellent advice. Turn around, look at the horizon, everything will be cool.
So I fight the gravity, lean forward so I can turn around, look out the front window of the plane and there it is. Brown. Earth. The fantastic detail of the black rock desert screaming up closer and closer through the blur of the propeller out the front windshield. No blue. No sky. It was in that moment that I put together that the pilot had put the plane in a full throttle nose dive to the ground. The absolute last thing I think anyone wants to see, looking out the window of an airplane is NO SKY. So there we were, in a nose dive losing 3,600 feet per minute
which ended in a thirty degree, probably-dont-need-to-ever-feel-this-amount-of negative-g-force, banking turn to line the plane up with the runway approaching the city. The horizon should never cut through your frame at this angle when you are holding a camera parallel to your feet…
It took 18 minutes for us to climb at full throttle eleven thousand feet. We lost that eleven thousand feet of elevation in THREE minutes. Three minutes to the ground, we beat every single one of the sky divers back to the ground. Eighteen minutes up, three minutes down. Holy hell, best ride ever. Ever.
Once on the ground safely, the adrenaline high lasted for close to 72 hours. Ive done some exceptionally cool shit in my life and this experience was the most mind bending thing ever. I suppose you can get into a skydiving plane just about anywhere and experience something similar, but flying over Burning Man, what a bunch of madness, neatly packaged, cautiously rationed, secretly gifted and rabidly received. Im a lucky, lucky, lucky motherfucker.
I thought it was odd, on the way out to the plane that George didnt have that shirt on. Had I seen what he chose to wear to work that day, I might not have made it onto the airstrip.
So that was 2009. I walked away from that plane with my temporary passport and before I got back through the point of entry, I was plotting how to get back in the air again for 2010.
Little did I know then, walking away from one of the all time best experiences of my entire life, that the best was yet to come.