Dusty Logbook

It’s 5.30am. The light is not yet poking in through the gap in the blind I can never fix. It’s dark and, strangely for the inner city, it’s quiet. My body is on Mexican time. I give in to its refusal to sleep and creep downstairs to make coffee. My stomach reminds me it’s still yesterday, dinner time, and although I have few of the ingredients with which to make huevos rancheros, I do have eggs. As I eat my boiled eggs in the dark, I am reminded of the only times in the past decade that 5.30am and I have been acquainted: to fly. Aviation is the one thing that can bounce me out of bed in the morning when the world is still dark.

By the light of my phone, I seek out my logbook. I find it on the bookshelf, under two years’ tax returns and a flier for salsa dancing. If my logbook were an emoji, it would be the one with the sad face and the solitary tear. The last logged entry is March 25, 2017. If my logbook were a soldier, it would be MIA. Today is March 25, 2018. Clearly, nostalgia enjoys synchronicity.

The last aircraft I flew was a Cirrus. In fact, the last time I flew anything but a Cirrus was March 28, 2015 when I flew a C182 for a fundraising event. I calculate I have 136.3 hours total time in Cirri (30.5 dual, 105.8 command) garnered over my two years as Sales and Marketing Manager at Cirrus Melbourne. The most stable and consistent part of my otherwise chaotic and diverse logbook, if this section were an athlete, she would be at the top of her game. I had reached my dream, my goal, my raison d'être: to not only fly, but to be paid to fly; to have access to an aircraft I could know as well as I knew the route to the airport, or the Virgin lounge.

Nearly all of those Cirrus hours are in FIFi – not the first machine for whom I professed love, but certainly the finest. After years of feeling like an aviation imposter – having flown with, and learnt from, so many incredible pilots, I never felt in myself the confidence others would project on to me; always knew I was a writer who flew, rather than a pilot who wrote – I finally found my mojo with FIFi. She was not my first, last, fastest or most highly spec’d aircraft - others bemoaned the lack of yaw damper, FIKI or new style door – but to me, she was perfect. Somewhere in those 100 or so hours, I found an equilibrium: a balance between my skills as a pilot, my knowledge of the aircraft and my inner confidence. I had some near-perfect flights and discovered a part of myself I sincerely thought I would never attain. I called it Av-Zen.

When FIFi was sold to the Sydney Syndicate, I was allowed to continue to fly her until my replacement, KBZ, arrived. My last flight in FIFi was January 30, 2017, when she was on display at the Maitland Airshow. I never got to meet KBZ.

In May 2016, my dad, aged only sixty-four, was diagnosed with lung cancer. My sister and I arrived back in the UK in the nick of time, as we watched him deteriorate before our eyes. Four nights before he died, he insisted on taking us to the pub. Skeletal and unsteady, he bought us all a pint, confessed his sins (and there were many!) and talked about how he had very few regrets.

Ten days after our arrival, he was dead; a death that was rapid and brutal.

Being so very similar, we had a tempestuous relationship: we once didn’t speak for six years, after which I phoned him up and informed I was now a pilot and editor of a flying magazine. He hopped on a plane, and I took him flying, which resulted in an article we co-wrote; a piece of work I’ll always cherish. To this day, it’s one of my favourite memories, and the photo I took of him standing on the wing of an old Archer, beaming with pride, is the picture we displayed at his funeral.

My dad’s death triggered something in me which was very difficult to understand. I was consumed by an impulse to live recklessly, passionately and in the moment. On one hand, I was able to leave my grief, along with my impatience, my scattiness and my flamboyance, on the ground when I flew. Every pilot learns that they can’t take it with them. For months, I thought I was getting away with it: I flew well, I was there for my clients, I lived and breathed Cirrus. But on the other, something was pulling, stretching, niggling and bugging me, like a mosquito in the dark.

And then it broke.

It was January, 2017, in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was attending the wrap-up party after a week-long global sales meeting. It had been a fabulous week, culminating in the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to fly the Vision Jet. An exciting year was ahead. I was drinking fine wine, listening to a country band, eating home-made southern fried chicken on a waffle and watching trapeze artists fly through the room (Cirrus knows how to throw a damn fine party). As I sauntered over to the buffet table, I noticed a giant ice-sculpture of a Cirrus, placed bang in the middle of the grits, shrimp and mashed potato. As I stood and stared, watching it slowly, slowly melt, I was overcome with panic. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, and as tears silently streamed down my face, I was grateful that it was dark and that I was alone, far away in a hangar on the other side of the world. I finally pulled myself together, found a bus, made it back to my hotel, where I went straight to bed. The next day, the rest of the team went on to Nashville, or back to Australia, while the Crowne Plaza in Knoxville kept me safe. I stared blankly at the tv and binge ate burgers from room service. Not even a visit to Dollywood could lure me out. I was in lockdown for 32 hours.

When I emerged, I hired a car and drove to Nashville. I felt different. Kind of joyless. I went through the motions of sociability, but I felt like an avatar. All my life, I’d been around people with depression – my friends are artists, musicians, academics: the sensitive types. It seems odd now, looking back, that I didn’t recognise it in myself. The colours dimmed and I felt sad, and tired, and terribly old. Other times, I felt manic, on top of the world, invincible. I suspected bipolar disorder, but was too afraid of a diagnosis, knowing that it would mean medication. Already in psychoanalysis, I stepped up my sessions to twice a week. My therapist helped me through the bleakness without medication, but we had a psychiatrist on standby, just in case

In March 2017, after twenty-four years of marriage, my husband and I decided to separate. At the age of 45, I was finely placed for what is commonly called a Mid Life Crisis. Personally, I like to call it a Mid Life Adventure, largely because none of life’s knocks can erode my optimism, and partly because a crisis implies loss of control. And, as any pilot, or indeed any Type A personality knows, loss of control is scarier than death itself. Pilots don’t have crises; they have adventures.

And adventures I had: I bought a vintage sports car; I engaged in a week-long residential therapy course where I met a man who showed me how to live my life in the moment; I bought not one, but two, motorbikes; I sampled a Cuban cigar in Havana and learned how to make the perfect Mojito, courtesy of a Cuban bar-tender; I smoked legal Marijuana in California, ate snails in Paris, zip-lined through the jungles of Borneo, attempted Muay Thai Boxing in Phuket, drank Singapore Slings at the Raffles hotel, drove a Chevvy convertible through the desert to Vegas, and lay on the softest sands of Mexican beaches.

However, because this isn’t a film trailer for a cheesy rom-com called Life After Forty, I knew that despite the crazy adventures, I had to face my dark side. I had left my marriage, sold my beautiful house and broke up my family.

And, because of the voice inside that tells me what’s right, I quit flying.

My last flight in command was February 16^th 2017. It was a beautiful flight, to Mudgee, with the man who showed me how to live in the moment. It wasn’t his first flight in a light aircraft, but I treated it with the care and compassion of a first experience. The weather conditions were gorgeous and as we tied up at Mudgee, I got chatting to another pilot, who kindly offered me his car. The man who showed me how to live in the moment and I found a tiny vineyard, serving delicious home-made food and locally grown wine (for him). Our flight home was super-smooth, with the afternoon light illuminating the Blue Mountains in a way that gives me goose-bumps. My landing was lovely, as if I knew it would be my last flight in command for the unforeseeable future.

In June 2017, I left Cirrus. I stopped work altogether, apart from my six annual articles for Flight Safety Australia, which kept my bond with aviation going enough to keep me relatively sane. Other than that, I largely disconnected from the aviation community, focussing on finding a new home, attending therapy and working out whether I would need to retrain, start again, build a new life. A health issue, which turned out not to be cancer, thankfully, helped to adjust my perspective on life.

So, when my last piece for FSA, entitled The Future’s So Bright – why now is the best time to fly GA – was written, I took the story as a way back to aviation. As I was researching the article, I posted on Facebook, looking for opinions and stories, and was shocked by the response: people were angry about the ‘state of GA’, about medicals, about the regulator. Some suggested my article could only be a work of fiction. Others were sardonic; some witty; a few, encouraging.

Suddenly, something in me moved. I felt my old passion for GA rise up in me and shouted, directly in the face of Facebook, ‘aviation needs optimists, dammit!’ I wrote the piece with a force of optimism and gusto that I really, really believe in.

As a consequence of the post – I’d kept a low profile on social media over the non-flying period – three separate aviation magazines contacted me, asking me if I was ‘back from the dead’ and available to write.

To write about flying requires actual flying. I know that to be true to myself that I must fly. I considered my options and decided that it was time. I accepted a job I know I will enjoy; a job that will be kind to me and give me the space I need to tentatively explore my next phase in aviation. I will continue to seek varied work in the industry once more.

It’s now 9.46am. It’s light, sunny and the noises of the city have commenced. I’m still in my writing position, my logbook open on my bed, my mug of coffee long cold.

After a year of adventures, a lot of solitude, time, patience and empathy, and nearly three years (to date!) of therapy, I have reached a place where I can understand myself and my grief without having to live under the label of a diagnosis.

I have turned the page, both figuratively and literally: my logbook is open on the next blank page, awaiting the stroke of my finest pen.

I don’t know when this flight will be, or where, or in what aircraft type. But I do know that I’m ready. If my logbook were a patient, this blank year would be its scars.