“Sometimes the most unremarkable flights are the most remarkable. Saturday morning flight, no exciting destination. no harrowing stories. no bad weather. no issues. just the meat and potatoes of flying . A one hour flight from the home base and back. Viewing the earth and our position on it differently.”
- Steve Schultz – 12/6/09
That flight was this past Saturday morning. It was a beautiful morning with calm winds, overcast broken cloud cover at 10,000 feet. We taxied N4958A down to Runway 21 and held in sequence as a $8 million Citation Jet came within 40 feet of us and settled down to land and roll out. We were given clearance and started to cook down the runway. Once airborne, the dense cold air lifted us like an elevator above the Scottsdale landscape. Although I may have seen the sight of the buildings getting smaller and the cars turning into little matchbox cars close to 800 times, it still intrigues me. The air was so smooth that is often doesn’t even feel like you are flying. My dad often welcomes light turbulence just because he likes knowing that something is under you, it reminds you that there is a physics lesson in action keeping you aloft.
As we cleared the Scottsdale airspace, we headed east toward the Verde River. Again, this track had been taken hundreds of times before by this airplane and this pilot and passenger. But it never ceases to amaze us as we point out the house North of Thom’s Thumb that is completely off the grid. We comment on how cool it would be to live there but how much my Mother would hate it. This time we decided to head out over a place we go out in the desert to shoot guns. I had never seen it from the air. As we got closer to the spot, I could make out the pick up trucks and jeeps parked in our familiar shooting spots. As always, it reminded me that we live in an amazing country that allows everyday citizens to drive out to the desert and blow targets to pieces. It was comforting seeing others out there enjoying that spot that we have enjoyed so many times before.
I then handed the controls over to my Dad for the duration of our exploration. We found ourselves flying back toward the McDowell mountains and over a small community called Fountain Hills. The community’s namesake is a huge fountain that sprays water for about 15 minutes every hour. The plume rises from a concrete water-lily sculpture in the center of a large man-made lake. The fountain, driven by three 600 horsepower turbine pumps, sprays water at a rate of 7000 gallons per minute though an 18-inch nozzle. With all three pumps and under ideal conditions, the fountain reaches 562 feet. As we came over the lake at about 4,500 feet, I noticed it was only 1 minute before the hour. I had seen the fountain hundreds of times before from the air and the ground but I had never seen it actually fire up. I had my had hold a constant heading as I watched the mouth of the fountain. Right on time, white water spewed out of the mouth higher and higher. Trivial but cool.
The world's fourth tallest fountain
That brings me to the point of this post, like my dad said, nothing crazy, awesome, or dangerous happened on that flight. But it was the little things. The shooting range, the fountain, the perfect weather we take for granted in AZ, the fact that the airplane ran flawlessly, and most of all, the company of my father for an hour of something we love doing together. That makes it all worth it.
- Never let the keychain hang straight down
–The Aerobat
